iOS 4 supposedly has "1500 new APIs." What are they?

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dave June 17, 2010

iOS 4 supposedly has "1500 new APIs." What are they?

During the keynote last week, Steve Jobs mentioned that iOS 4 has 1500 new APIs that developers can take advantage of, which include the 7 or so multi-tasking features (summary generously lifted from Macrumors):
"1. Background audio - Allows your app to play audio continuously.
2. Voice over IP - Users can now receive VoIP calls and have conversations while using another app.
3. Background location - Navigation apps can now continue to guide users who are using other apps
4. Push notifications - Receive alerts from your remote servers even when your app isn't running.
5. Local notifications - Your app can now alert users of scheduled events and alarms in the background, no servers required.
6. Task finishing - If your app is in mid-task when your customer leaves it, the app can now keep running to finish the task.
7. Fast app switching - This will allow users to leave your app and come right back to where they were when they left - no more having to reload the app."

Via: www.macrumors.com/2010/06/17/first-ios-4-multitask...

So, what are the other ~1493 new API calls that developers can take advantage of? That's a pretty huge number. Is it really a lot, or do 1300 of them represent different API calls for gyroscope motions?

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connorg 2010-06-17 13:09:29

A handful of them were shown on-screen at the OS4 even in April.

live.gdgt.com/2010/04/08/live-iphone-os-4-0-event-...

I would be interested in seeing an actual full list though. Some of the ones shown on the screen are pretty insignificant, so chances are the remaining 1450 or so are REALLY, REALLY insignificant.

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dave 2010-06-17 13:17:28

Ah, good call. I totally forgot about this picture. Which is especially amusing, because I took it!

Anyway, here is what I was able to see from the photo:
Date data detectors
Automated testing
Performance profiling tools
Accelerate
Embed PDF metadata
Draggable map annotations
Full map overlays
Power analysis tools
Carrier information
ICC profiles
Calendar access
Block-based animation
Full access to still and video camera data
Address data detectors
iPod remote control accessories
In-app SMS
Regular expression matching
Date formatters
Photo library access
Image I/O
Half-curl page transition
Quick look
Package (?) documents
Call event notification

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connorg 2010-06-17 13:29:38

And I'm sure there's a handful of APIs related just to GameKit.

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dbreuning 2010-06-18 05:10:51

Date data detectors < this one's pretty neat. I run iOS 4 on my iPhone 3GS and when I get an email saying "come to my party on June 17th 2pm" the date and time gets underlined. Clicking on it can create an event directly into the calendar app.

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Psytek 2010-06-17 15:13:55

The way they define APIs is completely arbitrary, you can wangle it any way you want, In one sense, the iPhone has only one API, and if you class every software feature for every hardware feature, there are probably millions.

Sounds like they are being a bit liberal with calling fairly small and related features separate APIs.

But I'm a sceptic, maybe as I develop more I'll start finding all these APIs.
Thus far I've seen maybe 5 things I'd class as APIs while developing for iPhone.

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