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Apple's iPhone Software 4.0, multitasking demoed in videos [u]

Apple on Thursday said that this summer's iPhone Software 4.0 release will include long-awaited support for multitasking, which can be seen in action via the following video. [Updated with walk-through video].

In order to deliver multitasking without incurring a performance hit in battery life, the iPhone maker said it has created seven different multitasking services for developers, each tuned to solve different multitasking scenarios.

Among them are Background Audio, Voice over IP, Background location, Push notifications, Local notifications, Task completion, and Fast app switching.

When combined with Apple's Dashboard-like user-facing interface for fast app switching, the end result is what can be seen from the below video of an iPhone 3GS running the first external beta of iPhone Software 4.0:

A more extensive walk-through of the iPhone Software 4.0:



31 Comments

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mstone 18 Years · 11503 comments

I think many people are already using double home for things like camera or iTunes control. I use the later and I like having the immediate access to cut the audio as quickly as possible when necessary.

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jupiterone 18 Years · 1521 comments

Quote:
Originally Posted by mstone

I think many people are already using double home for things like camera or iTunes control. I use the later and I like having the immediate access to cut the audio as quickly as possible when necessary.

Yeah, I was wondering the same thing. Would this be just another option to the current setting or would it replace the Settings > General > Home setting altogether.

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msnly 17 Years · 378 comments

Quote:
Originally Posted by mstone

I think many people are already using double home for things like camera or iTunes control. I use the later and I like having the immediate access to cut the audio as quickly as possible when necessary.

Yeah, I hope they provide another way to control iTunes without opening the App.

🎅
macinthe408 18 Years · 1050 comments

Phewww, I was afraid it was going to be a deck-of-cards-like interface employed on Palm's WebOS.

Looks pretty snazzy!

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chronster 15 Years · 1893 comments

Quote:
Originally Posted by JupiterOne

Yeah, I was wondering the same thing. Would this be just another option to the current setting or would it replace the Settings > General > Home setting altogether.

Is long key press reserved?