My Vacation on IOS 4
So how many of you have eagerly downloaded IOS 4 on their iPhones? I was intending to write an article letting know what to expect.
Unfortunately I've got to start on a bad note for 3GS users. With IOS 4 being able to run several apps at once (so a low memory situation), the update has exposed a problem with the code in My Vacation executed directly after a picture is taken, causing a crash. I have isolated the problem, and am going to send an update out today and hopefully Apple will approve it in a week's time.
In the meantime if you have this problem, try running My Vacation with fewer other apps running. The occurrence is fairly random. I hope you can appreciate that the pre-release environment for IOS was not ideal for testing, and there have been reports of other apps having teething problems with IOS4.
Onto more positive issues:
1) ... the camera... yes I know what I just said above, but the camera is noticeably quicker. Also the 5x zoom is worth discussing. The camera control now has a digital zoom. Photo enthusiasts may scoff at digital zoom, because it's rightly not a replacement for optical zoom. However, doing some tests produced some interesting results with regard to use in My Vacation. Here are two zoomed shots:
Zoomed out
Zoomed into the max
Both were taken with an iPhone 3GS, saving maximum photo size (2048x1536). Both pictures are zoomed in on this web page for demonstration. The difference between them is when taken on My Vacation the left hand side was not zoomed and the right hand side had maximum zoom.
So what can we take from this? Well whilst the zoom is digital, it would seem the camera sensor can sample at higher than 2048x1536 (the maximum apps are allowed to get from the iPhone camera libraries).
Therefore, make use of the digital zoom!
2) Google maps - looks to be quicker too, and has 3D buildings in supported areas. For instance in the example trip in Florence you can see the difference here:
3) Email. I have received feedback from people that sending a lot of photos from email can cause problems. The problem is that you can only send around 10Mb this way. After that photos start becoming sent as empty. My Vacation also suffered from running out of memory when exceeding 10Mb.
Now there seems to be more protection from the iPhone email system, which gives you a notice to reduce the size of the photos when sending from the app (and tells you the size).
4) Tap to focus video - seems to work well
5) Wireless keyboard support. I haven't got a keyboard to try this out on, but I'm sure it will help writing those journals. Let me know if you have got this working with My Vacation!
6) Multitasking / Quick switching. My Vacation already remembered your last screen when launching. However, a future update will properly embrace the new IOS 4 multitasking features.
7) Improved camera. For those lucky to be getting a new iPhone, the camera will be a nice boost I'm sure. For those users the large photo sizes taken in My Vacation should scale up to 2592x1944 (5 megapixel)
I'd be interested in hearing your feedback, and please accept my apologies if you are affected by the camera issue.
