Apple's extremely hyped iOS 4 operating system is now available for free download via iTunes and would work on new models of iPhone and iPods. It would not work on old models from 2007 and on iPad. Since Apple made a lot of noise surrounding its launch, it is only right to analyze its usefulness for businesses.
Analysts are of the belief that Apple’s newest iOS 4 operating system is not of much use to the business and IT users, at least not yet. The most hyped feature, multitasking, would not be available until individual apps are updated to take advantage of it. The reason for this is this that unlike Windows or Mac OS X, iOS 4 does not leave the multitasking as a general OS capability automatically implemented but as one that must be explicitly used by the application. Maybe over a period of time but as of now it is just a hollow promise.
The other feature which was promoted as IT friendly is the set of APIs that allow BlackBerry-like management of the iPhone, such as auditing of policies and apps, over-the-air provisioning of apps without iTunes, and over-the-air configuration and policy management. Again a hollow promise as the various mobile management tools that have been reworked to take advantage of the new iOS 4 capabilities won't be available until July or later.
For business users, iOS 4 would be a little more comforting as iOS 4's handling of e-mails has come in for praise from the analysts. If one uses Exchange, he can now set up multiple Exhange accounts. iOS 4 also has the feature that lets the user to see all his emails in one list, as well as switch to specific accounts to see just their emails. The feature has been dubbed as 'unified inbox' by Apple.
But this feature too has a discrepancy. The user can't tell what account each message was sent to. If the user replies to a message it'll be sent from the account where he received it, but that's not the same as knowing upfront. And the unified inbox shows only what's in the user's main inbox, not what's in any subfolders, so its utility is limited to only seeing what's new.
The bottomline is that iOS 4 may become an indispensable part of IT and business users' Apple devices in the future but for now it is nothing but undelivered promises.
