There's never a shortage of speculation surrounding an Apple product launch or update. The release of iOS 4.3 is no exception. Since iOS 4.2.1 became available for download, the Internet has kept itself busy trading in rumors, scrutinizing build notes, and picking apart the code of iOS 4.3 test builds in the hope that doing so might reveal what was next for Apple's trusty mobile operating system. Most likely, all will be revealed at this week's Apple Event. But do you really want to wait that long to find out what Cupertino has in store for us? Of course not. To that end, we've put together a list of what we know so far about the next iteration of iOS. The short version? It's gonna be awesome.
Apple dipped their toe into the waters of social networking with Ping, but with the release of iOS 4.3, it looks as if they’re getting ready to do a cannonball. From what many developers have seen buried in the update’s code, consumers may expect to see a FaceTime camera baked into Apple’s next iteration of the iPad, which is set to be revealed on March 2. That FaceTime camera means FaceTime calling for the majority of Apple’s mobile devices, so you’d better put on some pants.
Bolstering the company’s all-in FaceTime investment are three new online services that could finally see Apple standing shoulder-to-shoulder with social media giants like Facebook and Twitter. First in the trio is Find My Friends, which appears to be an opt-in GPS location-based service similar to Google Latitude or Loopt.
Once you sort out where your friends are, you’ll need something to talk about. Apple’s projected Photo Stream and Media Stream services could fill that niche nicely. It’s rumored that this duo of streaming services could provide for photo, video and iTunes streaming (finally!) with the aid of a MobileMe account. When you consider Steve Jobs’ comments this past December that MobileMe was going to get "a lot better in 2011," and the fact that the company just finished building a new server farm in North Carolina, we think that this set of iOS 4.3 rumors might just hold water.
This one’s a small thing, but definitely a nice thing. One of the newest iOS update rumors going around is that iOS 4.3 may support the ability to cancel the download of an app while in mid-stream. In order to cancel a download, all a iOS device user will need to do is tap and hold the app’s icon until is starts to shimmy and then touch the app’s delete icon. For anyone that’s ever started downloading an application like Infinity Blade over a Mi-Fi device or jailbroken 3G connection without realizing how big of a file they were dealing with, this is great news.
It looks as though Cupertino is listening to their customers. In the wake of the uproar over the iPad’s side switch raison d'être being changed from an orientation lock to operating as a mute button, it appears as if Apple will be including an option in the iPad’s Settings pane to set the switch as either a mute button or portrait lock.
We were bummed to hear that the rumored inclusion of four-fingered gesture commands for iOS were just that: rumors. As it turns out, Apple included the new multi-touch gestures in test builds of iOS 4.3, but they’ve been omitted from the final version of the operating system. It might be for the best: iPhone and iPad touch screens are hard enough to keep clean already. Can you imagine what a pain it’d be if we were all dragging our whole hands across them every five minutes?
Why should Verizon’s CDMA handsets have all the fun? It’s been a talking point for sometime now that with iOS 4.3, Apple’s personal hot-spot software would make its debut on GSM hardware as well. Whether or not carriers will allow the feature to operate on their networks (or at what cost) is anybody’s guess.
There’s been a lot of talk about Apple bringing games and apps to the latest version of Apple TV, and why not? The diminutive wonder’s got iOS under the hood. Should the iOS 4.3 update bring gaming and TV-sized apple functionality to the Apple TV, the console kings at Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo will have some serious competition on their hands.
Remember, between now and when the Apple lets loose with their Keynote during this week's event, nothing you read or hear surrounding iOS 4.3--or any other rumored new Apple products for that matter--is set in stone. Let's all hope that Cupertino brings their A-game with them to the Yerba Buena Center on March 2!
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tcoen@mac.com
March 01, 2011 at 8:45am
AppleTV improvement is interesting, the other phone and ipad "improvements" don't interest me. I discovered the jailbreak world. There is no going back. I got the improvements I wanted that way.
I think the iOS has kind of reached a functional plateau. The improvements I want require AT&T or Verizon to give we customers a better financial deal, i.e. cheaper plans, data, voice and tethering. Otherwise,,,, yawn.
So a great big "meh", to iOS 4.3
