If you have been watching the apps you have purchased getting updated over the last few days, don’t get too excited. It is important to look at the list of features and see how many will only work if you have OS4 installed. iPhone owners get iOS4 this Monday, iPad owners don’t get updated for a few months yet.
Many updated apps have features for us to enjoy on our iPads running the OS we have now. But, the longer list is around the new OS. OS4 will let us have some parts of apps continue running when we exit to another app. Multitasking for most apps wont mean that the app is still running at 100% when it isn’t the front app – most developers are only having some features able to run in the background. A bigger feature for the new OS we want on the iPad is being able to leave a document open in an app, do processes in another app then return to the document still open. No need to open the documents app and find the actual file to open and return to editing. For around the office, this will be a huge time saver.
Case in point (not to single out Evernote, this is one of a dozen today), Evernote has released an update today that has many bug fixes and some enhancements to image management for the iPad. But the release notes start off with the apps ability to continue to record to a voice memo even when you move to another app and your notes are able to since between the Web storage and the mobile app when the app isn’t the front runner. Both of these last two features will only be available for the iPhone with it’s 4.0 OS this coming Monday.
Looking forward to the many capabilities when the OS is updated for the iPad too!
