One of the most obvious features on the iPhone 4 & iOS 4 is “Folders for Apps” to organize your apps. This is how you can cope with the food of apps – at least on your own iPhone. iOS 4 automatically names the folder and you directly can customize the name. But what about changing the name later on?

Creating folders for apps

• If you’re in rearrange mode – by tapping and holding on an app on the home screen until the app icons start to shake – creating folders is easy and intuitive: You only need to drag an app icon over an other app icon and the iOS instantly creates a folder and automatically names it.
• The folder opens up and shows the included apps.
• You can change the automatic generated folder name by clicking into the rounded white name field.

Rename an existing folder for apps

• Changing existing titles of folders for apps is only working in the app rearrange mode.
• So, you have to tap and hold one of the app icons on the home screen until the icons start to shake.
• Then you tap on the folder you want to rename. The folder opens up so you can see the apps and the title in edit mode.
• You only have to click on the title. Now the keyboard appears and you can rename the folder.
• Just press the home button once you are finished to exit the rearrange mode.

Hope this saves some time.

Yesterday, Steve Jobs presented the next iPhone OS generation to the developer community as well as to the interested public. Now, iPhone developers have access to experiment with iPhone OS 4 SDK and can optimize their apps for the new operating system. This summer, Apple will roll out the new OS to iPhone- and iPod-touch-users. This fall iPhone OS 4 will also be available for the iPad.
It’s quite obvious, why Apple is revealing the next version of their mobile OS now: The app developers need to implement the new features – like multitasking – to their apps … only if they do so, the iPhone OS 4 will be a success. But, calm down, Steve Ballmer: It will be a success
This is a quick overview over the 7 tentpole features, Steve Jobs and Scott Forstall (Senior Vice President iPhone Software) presented at the event (Quicktime-Video-on-Demand of the event):

1. Multitasking – specific functionalities, like audio or VoIP, can run in the background, now. Also fast switching between apps by preserving the exact status within the app can now be enabled. To achieve all this in a battery- and cpu-preserving way, app developers need to integrate these new features explicitly by using those new APIs. Apple provides the developers with seven multitasking services via the iPhone OS 4.0 SDK:
   - Background audio … example app: Pandora
   - Voice over IP … example app: skype
   - Background location … example apps: tomtom, Loopt
   - Push notification
   - Local notifications
   - Task completion … example app: Flickr
   - Fast app switching … example app: TapTap
2. Folders – Now, apps can be organized within folders. Using folders, you can install a maximum of 2.160 apps instead of 180 on your iPhone
3. Mail – Improved Mail-app with unified inbox, multi Exchange accounts, fast inbox switching, threaded messages and open attachment with apps.
4. iBooks – the iPad iBook-Reader and the iBookstore are transformed for the iPhone.
5. Enterprise – the operating system addresses the needs of major companies for handling large installations of iPhones as their corporate communication devices:
   - Even better data protection
   - Mobile Device Management
   - Wireless app distribution
   - Multiple Exchange Accounts
   - Exchange Server 2010
   - SSL VPN support
6. Game Center – Now, game developers can use the social gaming network built into the native iPhone SDK:
   - Invite Friends
   - Automatic Matchmaking
   - Leaderborads
   - Achievements
7. iAd – Mobile Advertisement – Apple implements a mobile advertisement service deep into the iPhone OS itself. The revenue share is an industry “standard” of 60% for the developer and 40% of the advertisement revenues for Apple.

Again, Apple achieved to integrate a bundle of innovations into the next iPhone generation … very good news for the growing number of iPhone-developers. Other players in the mobile industry, like Google’s AdMob, have to expect heavy seas ahead. This leads me to one of these wonderful Bob Dylan songs: “The times they are a changing …”

Happy Valentine’s day 2010!

Last year, 30 German iPhone developers joint their forces and reduced their app prices to the max to make you smile on Valentine’s day … this year everything is bigger: Now more than 80 apps are reduced to the max to please our customers.
CompareMe shopping utility is also available for $0.99. So check out AppsForSale.de maybeyou’ll find a real bargain. Only on 14.02.2010!

This is the day: Apple will start their press event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco. At 10:00 am PST or 07:00 pm MEZ.

Like the legendary Steve Jobs Keynotes in the past, it is quite a tradition that some journalists blog live from the event … so Apple fans all over the planet can take part on the press conference. Here are the most important liveblogs:

• Jason Snell, Dan Moren & Jonathan Seff, Macworld.com
• Jason Chen for Gizmodo
• Erica Ogg for cnet news
• Joshua Topolsky for engadget
• John Paczkowski for All Things Digital
• Technologizer staff for Technologizer
• Ars staff for Ars Technica
• John Biggs for TechCrunch / CrunchGear
• Brian X. Chen for Gadget Lab at Wired

As soon as the videorecording of the event is online as a Quicktime videostream … there’ll be an update

Apple invited the press to their “Come see our latest creation” event in San Francisco on January 27th. And the computer and e-book industry starts trembling with fear: Companies like Microsoft and Amazon are getting really nervous, because Apple may conquer the emerging market of Active Content.

Apple did not announce that the company will be engaged in the e-book or tablet-market – but the rumors about an “iSlate” or “iPad” are quite persistent. Therefore Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer tried to steal Apple the show at his keynote at the CES in Las Vegas: He just renamed the tablet-PCs on stage as “slate-PCs” … but it’s not about a name.

Now Amazon announced, that the company will open up their e-book platform for third party developers: Within some month, they’ll release a Kindle Development Kit (KDK) and will also provide the sales channel for the active content created with that software development kit (SDK).
The revenue sharing model looks quite familiar to iPhone developers: 70% to the developer and content provider, 30% for Amazon. But Amazon charges an additional $0.15 per MB for content delivery … as the Kindle is not sold with a mobile phone contract. Amazon has to pay the distribution costs to the mobile network operators if the content is delivered via the mobile data channel.

Amazon is probably in a better starting position in the battle for market shares in the emerging market of Active Content: They have a lot of experience with content distribution with the Kindle and they are in direct contact with the publishers … but Apple has the ability to rouse the e-book-market from slumber by innovation. They may transfer the pathetic e-books into a new and emerging market: Active Content.

There are a lot of advantages for Apple to tip the scales:

• big and growing iPhone SDK developer community … Amazon has to build up a comparable dev community around the KDK
• well-engineered and sophisticated iPhone SDK … with a full bandwidth of network-, graphic-, data- and sensor-support
• color instead of grayscale screens and computing and graphic power
• touchscreen with gestures
• amazing design
• … and there are probably some innovations we don’t expect

Amazon’s move to open up the Kindle to 3rd party developers and create a platform for Active Content is absolutely right … but can it compete with Apples offering? On January 27th 2010 we’ll know much, much more.