First of all, I am still an Apple fanboy. I love my iPad and am using it more and more throughout the day. The same goes for my iMac. Fabulous device, really easy to use. However, I’m a bit disappointed looking at their current vision on development. Or: I think Microsoft is moving faster than apple right now and might be ahead of Apple in one or two years. I guess this requires some explanation.

The iPhone has been revolutionary. It was so revolutionary that the guys at RIM even thought it could not be true. But it was true and people are loving it. As they are loving iOS. However, I think that iOS is too static to last that long. The idea of unlocking your device, whereafter you are immediately confronted with your apps is cool. But in iOS, it is kinda static. Dev’s are still not able to put live info into their app icons. Which I think is the logic next step. Microsoft took that step. They allow you to create bigger or smaller tiles on your home screen. And they can be used to display live information on them. So instead of a static app home screen, you get instant access to the information you were going to look for.

I really appreciate the live tiles in Windows Phone. But that’s the mobile OS. Let’s take a look at the desktop OS’s. Apple did a nice job in refining their Mac OS X with the latest Lion release. But they are still thinking in the traditional desktop environment box. Although they now have the function available where it shows me all my installed apps in an iOS way, I have to press a button there to see static app icons. Actually, all they did is move the applications folder from the stacks to all full screen overlay. Without live info.
If I look at the upcoming Windows 8, Microsoft did step outside that box. You don’t have to click anywhere. You immediately see the apps you want to see. With live info attached, even if an app is not running. That is smart!

And by releasing Windows 8 to the public, more than 1 billion people will have the opportunity to upgrade to the Windows Metro style UI. Which is similar to the Windows Phone 7 layout. And once the people have the desktop environment, purchasing the mobile counterpart is the logic next step. Especially as Microsoft will make it possible to have your apps running on both platforms. So think about interoperability between apps!

The future is looking good, but I think we have to look through windows.

UPDATE: iCloud seems to be working flawlessly under Mac OS X Lion: 

More details here.

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Sorry, that won’t be the case. Apple has created a small set of API’s for developers to be implemented within their Apps, in order to be Multitasking-ready. And, in order for an App to qualify for iOS 4, the only thing a developer has to do is to compile its App with the iOS 4 SDK. That means that developers DON’T have to implement the new background features.

The following API’s are available:

• Background Audio
  Allowing applications to play audio in the background such as Pandora and Spotify.
• Voice Over IP
  Allowing applications such as Skype to remain ‘open’ after the app as been closed.
• Background Location
  Useful for Navigation Apps such as TomTom and Navigon. Navigation applications will continue to run if the app has been closed.
• Push Notifications
  The Push Notifications as we know them, for Twitter updates and Instant Messaging Apps.
• Local Notifications
  The same as Push Notifications, but on a local level. Think about scheduled events in those Farmville games.
• Task Finishing
  Uploading a movie YouTube, posting a picture to Flickr. All these activities can be run when the app is closed.
• Fast App Switching
  Probably the most important one. This API allows ‘state freezing’. When re-opening an app, it will look exactly the same as when you left it. It has not been running though and therefore did not consume any battery.

We can say a lot about multitasking and whether it is real multitasking or not, but I won’t do that here. Instead, I have done something else. In order to get a clear overview of the Apps that support any of these API’s, I have created a list (here) that shows the various applications under their respective category. Please use the form to submit apps that are not on the list yet.