1) Notifications are pretty poor. Android, Nokia and Palm all have better notifications. I hate pop-ups.

2) Needs a new home screen/lock screen.

3) Mail needs improvements. No push scheduling? Ugh. Nokia mail for exchange is a great example of e-mail on a phone.

iPod - iPods
iAd - iAds

Anagram of... Aids

Good one, Apple.

I've got Kindle and Barnes & Noble on my first generation iPod touch, not to mention my notebooks. Who needs iPad and iBooks?

What Jobs demonstrated (and eluded to) is not real multitasking. In fact, he kept talking around it and implicitly confirmed that it wasn't multitasking --though he tried to claim it is something like it -- so he used that description.

What he has provided is access to services that the OS has always had that were exclusive to Apple's apps on the iPhone. He even clearly states that this is just a matter of "using services". The end result is that the 3rd party application still essentially stops while in the background except for a small thread(s) that continue to monitor and communicate with those services that Apple has been using all along.

Real multitasking is when the applications fully run in the background and can be preempted by the OS. Cooperative multitasking is when an application completely runs but will cooperate and allow the OS to interrupt it.

What Apple's Steve Jobs describes is neither of these. The work they did was on the interface change.

The reason the 3G and original phones aren't supported has to do with the fact that they don't have enough actual scratchpad ram and hence they kill the OSes ability to adequately maintain the environment.

People may be slagging Apple off (bet they never used an iPhone) yet Apple are the market leaders for mobile browsing and have sold 50 million handsets and they make loads of profit from each one!! LOL they must be doing something right since people keep buying them. They have the highest rating for customer satisfaction 3 years running. Well I'm happy with my iPhone and since they only bring one out each year its not out of date 2 minutes later when Android is on yet another HTC phone. My mates just sold his HTC with Android to get an iPhone and I won't be buying an Android phone so call me a Fanboi maybe but I'm a happy one at that!

There was a time when the internals to Apples and Macs were relatively proprietary. Over the last decade, they started using standard components including memory, AGP and PCIe slots, dropping firewire for USB, etc., and the icing on the cake was switching to intel CPU's... so... basically they copied PC's and continued charging high prices.. awesome, lets rip our customers off... if we make our designs look nice enough, they'll just pay... innovative and original is Ford bringing model T's to the masses to allow people besides just the rich to enjoy automobiles. What's not innovative is taking a concept, like an mp3 player, making your own, have it made in a third world country, just like everyone else, put your brand on it, and selling it for 2-3x the price of the competition. Sure, maybe Apple's products often have a style or a few eye candy features that make them nicer and more well designed than the competition, but since when is taking a product that someone else makes (like tablet PC's which have been out for over a decade) and trying to do it slightly better become innovation? The only reason AT ALL that Apple looks so good all the time is the sheer failure of their competition to try and compete with Apple in a creative manner. So, basically, Apple is creative, original, and innovative merely because they copy other products, and find a few features no one else offers and offers those? for 2-3 times the price? Not in my book. When you buy something, anything, a house, a car, etc, you should look at and say, $xx.xx is how much that product is worth to me. The iPhone is worth about $99 to me. the iPad should be $200-$300... if Apple had those products in those price ranges, then maybe I'd be impressed. But they're devices aren't revolutions above their competition. They're just slightly better packaged, slightly better marketed, and perhaps, with slightly better implementation. That's not innovation, that's just knowing the weaknesses of their enemies.

Steve, tell me why to buy an iPhone?
I can get better elsewhere.

Then why do you keep reading so many articles about the iPhone... and even write comments about them?

Wouldn't you be MUCH happier reading about the cell phone you use and enjoy?

I don't find the news particularly interesting. The key here is that Apple is trying to, without the skill nor history, of actually redefining/implementing multitasking. What we expect multitasking to be on the iphone/ipad will likely not be the same thing that anyone recognizes as multitasking. If that were the case then they could have implemented it in the original iphone.

I was using multitasking OSes back in the day of the 486 and the early pentium CPUs. The OS at the time was Win95 and it was the first popular windows OS to actually implement preemptive multitasking. Prior to that we had cooperative multitasking, and though it didn't always perform well when an application failed to cooperate, it was light years ahead of what Jobs put into the iphone and the ipad.

OS9 and below all had cooperative multitasking and it was not likely to have changed given the architecture. It was likely to rot Apple to the point of it's demise. Jobs sale of the Next OS to Apple was a huge turning point.

Something tells me that this won't be the case with multitasking on the iPhone nor on the iPad. I suspect it will be some bastardized methodology that isn't quite cooperative, isn't quite what these devices have now, and certainly won't be preemptive. If you listen to Jobs' keywords you'll notice he never actually said that it would be true preemptive.

As far as laziness goes Jobs is allowing Apple to be lazy, as much so as he complains about Adobe's laziness. He could make the original iPhone multitask but he refuses.

Everyone really needs to keep an eye on how the whole direction of Apple is going. Apple is moving in a dangerous direction which will begin to set a lot of people off, especially those that are vocal and influential in their small communities. Jobs could be directing Apple into the same trench that Microsoft drove Windows with Vista.

I cant really understand what all the hypes about, multi-tasking has been available for over a year on Jailbroken iPhones.

Re hardware limitations, there are very few issues once you remove the throttle on the processor. My iPhone 2G copes perfectly well with running 4 - 5 background apps and coupled with a high capacity battery I fitted it works perfectly fine.

I've not upgraded to a 3GS because of poor unreliable reception issues, once Apple sort that I might, but for now the difference between the 2g and 3gs is so small its not worth it for me.

windows7 for phones also doesn't do multitasking I understand, and I don't quite get the argument about CPU capabilities since windows started on CPU's that were running at less than 100MHz, and macs alsso had poor CPU's compared to modern phones, so seeing that the current ARM range runs at least 500MHz and is 32bit unlike the old desktops windows started on, you'd think multitasking could easily work, but I think the issue might be one of fearing one application does something to another when it can run simultaneously, like 'hack' it into something more useful.

i suppose a fully working bluetooth facility would be too much to ask?

or how about every time you want to use the bluetooth you email mr jobs and wait for his consent?

well done on a fair review. it's a good job the enqueerer doesn't employ journalists who let their own personal bias into their work. obvious to me that this fool know pish about the iPhone. and yes I am a fanboy of the fruity toymaker. reason?. because the iPhone scats all over the competition. look how many copycat devices put there now. none of which come near yet.

@Psihomodo

Still spouting your nonsense I see. My Amiga could multi task. Couldn't stick it in my pocket though.

Do you see your muppetry?

@Michael Smith.

So Micky, you were having a great time lambasting Apple in another thread about all the great features Android had over the iPhone. Today, we see you still lambasting the iPhone over the features it NOW HAS.

'In fact Android 2.1 can do everything iPhone 4 can do only better AND faster'.

Straight from the Micky Smith book of big boy facts that one was it?

I love Android. In fact I am looking at the HTC Desire. Isn't it great we have all this choice Mick? You don't have to have blind hatred towards a brand or device, love the tech!

Actually, I thought this was an ok article. LL is actually pretty good (ie objective) when it comes to apple stories, regardless of his technical qualifications. Good journalism is what it's about. And the fanbois make Apple stories tricky at the best times. But of all the inq'er LL will tell it straightest...

..unlike that f*wit Nick who is probably still fuming that he's had some of his favourite apple/iphone-hating crutches taken away. Lets point and laugh.

And is it just me, or has anyone else noticed the emergence of that new species - the google/android fanboi? All the usual fanboi traits and evangelical zeal, but members of a different "church". I see Micheal Smith above has already resorted to that favourite fanboid activity - point scoring. Kudos.

Of course, I'm just jealous of any 'smart' phone users 'cos my crappy Nokia has a colour screen as it's single USP.

I love how people are heavily criticizing what they don't understand..

wow, your 386 had multitasking.. so did the first gen iPhone in that respect. The multi tasking that is being talked about here, is the developers being able to run processes in the background, outside their very heavily sandboxed environment. When apple said it wasn't an easy thing to do, that was true.

When they introduced the app store, they didn't want all the thousands of amateur programmers out there writing bad code that hogged system resources in the background, wouldn't quit and would force people to task manage individual processes. The iPhone is a consumer device, not a geek device, and the average user wouldn't even understand the concept of this.

Everyone keeps talking about android.. But up until the nexus, android was a waste of time. The nexus is definitely a nice phone, but like the fact its not iPhone OS that sells an iPhone, Android OS is not a reason to buy an Android phone. Its all about the applications that are available, and unfortunately Apple has a stranglehold on that market right now.. I do think the biggest threat to this is that Android is a Java based platform which makes development a lot easier. There is drawback to this however, as every tom, dick and harry can program in Java, so the quality of apps will probably plummet (worse than some of the crap thats on the iPhone right now).

As for iAd, its just a platform that developers can use to create a revenue stream from the 'free' apps they spend time and effort creating. There are already mobile ad platforms that are being used on the iPhone, this is just different approach, and is not going to be intrusive to the average user.. If you dont want ads in your app, stop being cheap, and buy the full version..

Surely HTC should sue Apple for stealing their multi tasking technology, oh wait Apple invented multi tasking in 2010. Silly me ;-)

I've been saying for ages that the 3G processor (and lack of RAM) aren't up to multi-tasking, so the lack of multi-tasking for the 3G model is no surprise to me.

I would expect a new model phone to be released in the summer to coincide with the updated OS.

Grow up and write something useful.

It's funny at first, and a few minutes later seriously disturbing how many people are brainwashed.

Really, it's scary to see someone praise old stuff as new. Like we all died and/or forgot about the last 20 years.

The same thing is being pushed in gaming, old stuff for even more money.

Any yes, still laughing XD

I think Jobs just killed his toy franchise right there.

People spending their good money on an iPhone, iPad, iPod or iWhatever can now look forward to waiting while intrusive, irritating advertisements "run their course" every 3 minutes. AND Apple takes 40% of the ad revenue.

Android wins:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2362406,00.asp

According to Jobs, iAd will combine the ability of the Web to provide interactivity, with the ability of TV ads to generate emotion. Apple will keep 40 percent of all ad revenue, ceding the other 60 percent to the developer. By theoretically placing an ad every three minutes in front of a user (who, Apple's research has found, spends an average of 30 minutes using apps), multiplied by the 80 million iPhones and iPod touches sold to date, is an "incredible demographic," Jobs said.

Wow, the fanboi's were on this article quickly. Are they all unemployed? Or, more likely, are they all on Apple's astroturfing payroll?

Irrelevant really though. No one with any sense buys Apple, or Sony. Another Apple non-event.

If you want a slick smartphone, buy Android. If you want an phone which can do just about anything you're computer can do, then buy a Nokia N900. If you want to live in Big Brothers world, and make Jobs rich, buy an iPhone - to go with your crippled AppleTV, your inferior Apple Airport and your brain dead iMac. Be a good consumer fanboi.

cutting edge features such as multi-tasking..

My 386 could multi task. my n900 can multi task, and the e90 before that.

not really cutting edge is it? idiot.

Ah well, little Steve Jobs comes out with his iHitler, sorry iPhone which can do multi-tasking but iPhone 'multitasking' seems to be a typically restrained affair. Can only multitask your app if it fits one of their use cases, but as an Android user, I *would* say that.

Folders! Wow! Wish Android had th- oh it does since version 1.0

Changing wallpaper! Wow! Wish Android had th- oh it does too and has done since version 1.0

Unified inbox! Wow! Wish Android had th- oh it does since version 1.0

Open attachments? Wow! Guess what? Android has always done that.

Bluetooth transfer - guess what? Yes you guessed Android has always been able to send files using an app from the market (free I may add) but since 2.0 you can now send and receive files over bluetooth which, wait, Jobs still doesn't want you to that.

In fact Android 2.1 can do everything iPhone 4 can do only better AND faster.

The question really is....have Apple (who we know in the past have 'adapted' their name from another Apple company and their logo too)stepped on patents owned by Google and HTC......now THAT would be interesting.

Jobs and the fan boys look at the Nexus One and become as green as little Andy the Android.

Try again Steve and co. Better luck next time.

By the way this isn't about brand loyalty; it's about the device that fits my needs better, and Android currently wins that battle and won that battle two years ago after I had the iPhone for 24 hours and found it wouldn't do what I wanted to do and refused to be dictated to by a company as to what I could do with their product.

My money went to Google and I had my reservations then but android has got better and is building strength and I believe will break Apple's stranglehold sooner or later.

Remember: Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Unless you're Steve Jobs or Jeremy Clarkson then their opinion is what matters and everyone else is wrong!

Your bitterness comes across as jealousy.

Years behind the pack? WTF??? Wake up and smell the coffee - no other company in the world innovates like Apple; Android, Copysoft, et al only ever react to what Apple are doing without realising that they themselves could focus on the value that design and innovation adds.

People love to criticise Apple for all of their faults without even thinking about all of the things they do right.

Do some research into Steve Jobs' philosophy and life before you call yourself a journalist.
Absolutely biased and uninformed article. Disgraceful.

lame. I couldn't be bothered finishing it.

Chill out some people love iphones some don't, if your writing a review look at booth sides.

http://ukgamer.com/index.php4?action=article&id=397&page=1

Look, an objective review from Latif! See, you can do it, unless....unless you've been told by your INQ paymasters to be deliberately trollish to provoke a reaction? No, surely not. That's like prostituting your integrity. Say it isn't so Lawrence?

Lawrence lAtif, a man who it appears has spent his life gaming, appears to think that we should pay attention to his pish on why the iPhone is such a failure.

Lawrence lAtif, entrepreneur, commercially aware, advertising exec, business leader, design expert, coding guru....are none of the things we would see on his CV.

If only it was as easy to be creative as it is to write tabloid level trash then maybe you could have been a contender Latif, you could have been somebody......

Steve, tell me why to buy an iPhone? I can get better elsewhere.

and please, for gods sake, stop putting i before everything.