Apple’s newest operating system for the iPhone will be made available for download today is available now. iOS 4 comes installed on the new iPhone 4, which some of you will be lucky enough to get this week. iOS 4 will also work on an iPhone 3GS, and a 3GS can take advantage of just about all of the new features. If you have an iPhone 3G, you can install iOS 4 but some of the great new features which require more horsepower, such as multitasking, won’t work. iPhones earlier than the iPhone 3G cannot run iOS 4.
If you want an overview of the reasons that you should install iOS 4 on your iPhone, read my post Why Lawyers Will Love iPhone software 4.0. If you want a great and detailed look at all of the iOS 4 features, Rene Ritchie of TiPb wrote this great article. Apple’s website also has this page on the new features in iOS 4. And perhaps of some interest, Jeff Gamet of The Mac Observer offers his tips for upgrading an iPhone to iOS4.
What time today will iOS 4 be available? Rene Ritchie noted in this post that last year, iPhone OS 3 was available at 10:30 am Pacific / 1:30 pm Eastern. We’ll see whether Apple follows a similar schedule this year. [UPDATE: Apple was just a little bit earlier this year. The update became available shortly after 10 am Pacific / 1 pm Eastern.]
It’s 9:20 pm EDT and I can’t count the number of times the iOS4 download has failed (on two different PCs) since 1:00 pm EDT.
[Jeff responds: So sorry to hear this! It worked great for me, the first time.]
Turns out the fault was mine not Apple’s servers. All is well and iOS4 is incredible.
FYI, I recently made two decisions which affect my early adopter rep. 😉 1. I bought a 64GB wifi iPad this past weekend. Jeff, I know you’ve been a holdout like me. Don’t holdout any longer. Even with it’s obvious limitations, this darn thing is flat out fun and useful. I’m selling my Latitude XT (reasons are beyond the scope). 2. The CDMA VZW iPhone chatter is causing me to not pre-order. I initially held back because I wanted a fanboy white iPhone 4 but now with iOS 4 working well on my 3Gs, I’m committed to waiting until 2011 (I really dislike AT&T).