In a 90-minute session this morning, Apple unveiled the upcoming iPhone OS 4.0. This, after the iPad launch, was one of the most-anticipated announcements of 2010 so far, and thousands “attended” from around the world by watching live blogging feeds and Twitter. But what does the new mobile operating system mean for mLearning?
There are over 100 new features in the new operating system, but only seven of them made it into the preview this morning. Most of the benefit of the seven features seems to fall to improved media consumption and user experience. Only three features have immediately obvious benefit for learning. However, one of the three is multi-tasking, which is huge in and of itself, and it includes a number of services that will be of interest to developers who are creating m-Learning and performance support applications.
There was no discussion of plans for a new version of the iPhone (although many expect the next-generation iPhone to arrive this summer) or the iPod Touch. This was an OS-only event.
High-level feature rundown
These are the seven features highlighted in the preview. Apple has made little or no information available about the other 93, so my assumption is that most are fairly minor and may even simply be enhancements. However, there were some tantalizing hints about a few of the user features, and I will mention these later in this article. I have marked (*) the three features that seem to me to be of most direct benefit to mobile learning and to performance support.
- Multi-tasking *
- Folders
- Enhanced Mail *
- iBooks for iPhone *
- Enterprise features
- Game Center
- iAd (mobile advertising)
There is still no Flash or Java support on the iPhone or the iPad, nor will there be, ever. Steve Jobs was very clear about this.
Availability and support
The new OS will be available on newer models of the iPhone and iPod Touch “this summer.” However, it will not be available at all for the first-generation iPhone (the EDGE phones), and not all features will run on first- and second-generation iPod Touch units, or on the iPhone 3G. The third-generation iPod Touch and the iPhone 3GS will be able to use all the features of the new OS. OS 4.0 will not be available for the iPad until “this fall.”
During the Q&A session after the main event, someone asked Steve Jobs whether he was concerned about the effect of these details on owners of the older devices. Jobs said that the iPhone 3GS is the biggest segment of users, and if users of the older devices want the new 4.0 features, they will need to buy the new hardware.
Other comments made during the announcement event seemed to indicate that “this summer” means after WWDC (the World-Wide Developers Conference), now expected to take place June 28 to July 2. The OS is available to developers today, so by the time the rest of us get the new version there should be plenty of software available that will take advantage of the features.
Details of selected features
Much of what was said this morning will be of most interest to developers. Developers will now be able to access (among other things) Calendar data, the photo library, still and video camera data, Quick Look, and SMS, all from inside their apps. Automated testing tools that Apple uses in-house are now available to application developers. There are over 1500 new APIs for developers in this release.
Little was said about user features other than the highlighted seven, but here are three of them that seem somewhat more significant for mLearning and performance support, at least potentially:
- Camera features will include a 5x digital zoom and tap-to-focus for video.
- There will be support for Bluetooth keyboards.
- Mail will add filing.
What about the major features that will really make a big difference to mLearning?
Multitasking
Apple has added a simple task switcher. The user double-clicks the home button, and a multi-task tray (containing the running apps) pops up at the bottom of the screen. This pushes the regular UI for the phone up higher on the screen. In the demo, Steve Jobs showed 12 apps running in the tray. There was no indication as to the limit on the number of apps that could be running simultaneously.
Jobs said during the demo that multitasking is done in a way that preserves battery life and device performance. One more benefit of this approach is that app switching is very fast. Later comments indicated that apps get the foreground as needed, so that the user doesn’t have to be an app custodian. If an app doesn’t need any resources, the system won’t give them any. Jobs commented that multitasking will not slow down the app in use. When the user goes back to a previous app, it will open again where the user was.
During the Q&A session, someone asked whether multitasking will increase data usage, and is AT&T prepared to handle this. Steve Jobs said he didn’t think that multitasking will increase data usage.
Within multitasking, the new OS offers several services, most of which will be of interest to developers and which will certainly improve user experience. Here are a few of the ones that seem most likely to be useful for e-Learning.
Background audio
As demonstrated, this means that a user could listen to, for example, Pandora (music) while doing other things. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that this feature could be useful in performance support apps.
Voice over IP (VoIP)
This has pretty exciting possibilities for Webinar/virtual classroom applications. The demo this morning was Skype. Until now, if you weren’t running Skype in the foreground on your iPhone, you couldn’t receive calls, and if you left the Skype app during a call, the call would disconnect. Now even when the phone is locked, you will still be able to receive Skype calls. When the phone is asleep or when the user is running other apps, VoIP apps can receive calls. When you send Skype to the background, incoming call invites will appear as the standard iPhone/iPod notification. Clicking the answer button brings the Skype app back. One question in the backchat during the presentation was whether there might be a new iPhone coming with a front-facing camera for such calls, but this went unanswered.
Background location
The new OS, in the background, will use cell towers to detect the phone’s location, in order to minimize power demands. The primary use of this service will be for turn-by-turn navigation. The secondary use will be to support social networking apps, such as Loopt. The OS has privacy protection for this service. An indicator on the status bar lets the user know when an app is using his or her location. The user can enable and disable location use by individual apps. This service could be useful for “location-based learning.”
Push notifications, local notifications, and task completion
Developers will be able to make better use of push notifications, and applications on the device will be able perform notifications, including when tasks are completed. These are primarily going to be useful for performance support, in my opinion.
Folders
This is a solution that allows the user to place apps in folders and to flick rapidly between them. The folder acts like an icon, and the user can park folders in the dock at the bottom of the device screen. Besides the housekeeping benefit, this also raises the app limit on the iPhone from 180 apps to 2,160 apps. This could have a number of uses for learners-on-the-go, but I don’t include it as one of the obvious mLearning features.
Enhanced Mail app
This new feature adds some significant improvements:
- Unified inbox: the user no longer has to jump from one mail account to another.
- Exchange: the user can have more than one Exchange account.
- Fast inbox switching: the user can go quickly from one account inbox to another if not using the unified inbox.
- Organization: the user can organize mail by thread and group messages by date.
- Attachments: the user can open attachments with whatever matching app is installed.
This seems to me to be a natural for mLearning support, particularly the ease and convenience with which a user can open documents for reading.
iBooks on the iPhone
Users can read books on any device (iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad). The books sync between devices, so that a user can stop reading a book on one device, then open it on another, and at the same place. This could be extremely handy for textbook use.
Enterprise features
These are fairly significant to IT managers, and may be important to mLearning implementation, depending on the situation.
- Improved data protection, including encrypted email and attachments
- Mobile device management
- Wireless application distribution (iTunes sync not required)
- Support for multiple Exchange accounts
- Exchange Server 2010 support
- SSL VPN support from Juniper and Cisco
In another comment during the Q&A session, Jobs noted that it will not be possible to run unsigned apps on the iPhone.
Two new features that may not do much for mLearning
The new OS features a Game Center that supports social gaming with automatic matchmaking and leaderboards. The OS also adds iAd, which is support for mobile advertising of the push variety. There was a great deal of positive chatter in the back channel about the former feature, and a great deal of dislike expressed for the latter.
Summary
While most of those presenting OS 4.0 at this morning’s session were surely not thinking about mobile learning, I was happy to see how well the new features could serve designers and developers in our field. Multitasking of course is huge, and opens up many possibilities, especially for the iPad. But there are applications for most of the other features as well, and it seems certain that by the time that DevLearn rolls around in November (and possibly by the time of mLearnCon if the OS launches sooner than expected), we will be seeing a whole new world of mLearning opening up.
