According to rumors, the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 4.3, will be released on February 14th. At 10 a.m. PST to be precise. Unlike the cheap box of chocolates that leaves you guessing whether the next bite brings nougat or that strawberry cream filling, we’ve already figured out much of what we can expect for iOS 4.3.
So, if you find yourself pining and alone on everyone’s favorite holiday, just remember that you have a date…with iOS 4.3.
According to Apple-centric blog MacStories, current beta versions of iOS 4.3 will include AirPlay, bug fixes and code maintenance, as well as a series of APIs to bring subscriptions to apps.
ReadWriteWeb’s Sarah Perez looked at the features expected for the next version of iOS and came up with this list:
- Wi-Fi Hotspot: As we already knew, the personal hotspot capabilities are present for GSM devices, although it’s up to individual carriers to implement this setting. It’s doubtful that AT&T will be one of them. Verizon, however, is.
- AirPlay support for third-party native and Web applications: Previously in iOS 4.2, AirPlay, the feature that lets you stream video from your mobile device to an Apple TV or other third-party AirPlay-enabled hardware, was only available to the built-in Apple apps. With 4.3, any third party app can offer this functionality, too.
- A redesigned FaceTime icon: A minor change, but it looks good.
- Support for fullscreen iAd banners on iPad: A new iAd format which Apple says is “easy to implement,” allows its users to collect 60% of the revenue generated.
- Configurable switch for the iPad, as mentioned above, the toggle can be used as a mute button or orientation lock
- HTTP Live Streaming Statistics: This allows developers to track their video streams’ popularity and measure their performance.
MobileCrunch warns not to pin all of your hopes and dreams on an iOS 4.3 release on February 14th exactly, but says that “just about all of the rumors pin the launch sometimes around the middle of February.” The real question, however, is how long until iOS 4.3 is jailbroken?
