Apple Debuts iPhone OS 4.0

Apple latest iPhone OS is currently being showed off today at a media event at Apple's Cupertino, California, headquarters.

Taking the stage this morning at 10am sharp Apple CEO Steve Jobs opened with a list of some rather impressive (and some unimpressive) numbers. Jobs said Apple has sold 450,000 iPads since its debut on Saturday, users have downloaded 600,000 digital books and 3.5 million applications. Add to that some 50m iPhones and 35 iPod touches sold to date.

The main focus today was not the new iPad, but rather then new features in the new iPhone operating system. iPhone OS 4.0 will offer seven main features and over a 100 minor features with multitasking being the most prominent of the major changes. We don't have a full list of all the new features but some of the more minor details include GameCenter, iBooks, in-app SMS, home screen wallpapers, Bluetooth keyboard support, and “tap to focus” for video with 5x digital zoom, spell check and iPod out.

As mentioned multi-tasking was the biggest and most asked for feature. To preview the new feature Apple's Scott Forstall showed off an iPhone using Pandora. Double tapping the home button now brings up a “multitasking dock” which shows up to four programs possibly running at once. From there you simply select the app you want to use tap it and boom you're there. The current application state is saved as you're double tapping in and out of apps.

Forstall showed how users running Pandora and such can now be streaming audio non-stop and how they can now navigate away from the app to use any of the other 3 running apps all while still listening to their songs. This also means Skype users can still run apps while still being able to receive calls. This also applies to navigation apps, which means you can receive calls and do everything else without killing the TomTom app. Social networking apps, however, while able to take advantage of this new service will drop the GPS while in the background and instead run off of the cell-based A-GPS system.

All in all there really haven't been many surprise in today's announcements. The one that did reportedly shock the crowd the most was the delay of the iPhone OS 4 release for the iPad. Jobs told the crowd iPad owners will have to wait until this fall for the new OS to be ready for them. For iPhone 3GS and third-generation iPod Touch users IPhone OS 4 will be available starting summer 2010.

Update: iPhone OS 4 keynote video now online!

If you want to watch the full video of the keynote as given by Mr. Jobs you can head over to Apple and get a copy.