2010 in review: Rise of iOS

Here, in no particular order, are some of the top stories we saw in 2010. The year was packed with Apple announcements, some planned and one unplanned. The real standout this year was iOS coming into its own. This year's WWDC was all about iOS, for example. The Apple TV now runs iOS. iOS 4.2 breathed new life into the already-new iPad, another major story of the year (a wildly successful one at that).

Even OS X 10.7 "Lion" has some iOS-inspired elements from what little we've seen. But it's looking like 2011 will be a return to the Mac side. In 2010 we saw the new MacBook Air, which Steve Jobs called the "future of notebooks." What surprises does Apple have for us on the Macintosh side of the house? 2011 will be an interesting year (again) to watch!

iPad

In 2010 the iPad was revealed and the netbook industry felt the impact. The tablet industry has awakened. We expect 2011's CES to have an enormous range of tablet computers. iOS 4.2 was released months later, giving the iPad features like multitasking which should have been there to begin with. Still, with paltry RAM, no front-facing camera and still not enough storage, the iPad has plenty of room to grow in 2011.

Apps on the iPad made news in themselves, with some apps being available for both iPads and iPhones, some costing more for "HD" versions (a term Apple doesn't endorse, by the way) and some only available for iPad. The new realm of a tablet format opened up possibilities for developers and we continue to see innovation from them on Apple's latest product.

Still, the publishing world was a little dismayed to see the iPad not take off as an e-reader on its own. Digital magazines are falling flat (in part due to Apple's lack of a proper subscription model) and the iBookstore has had its own problems.

iPhone 4

We all knew the iPhone 4 was coming thanks to a forgetful Apple employee and some poorly executed shenanigans from Gizmodo. If only they had tested the antenna!

The iPhone 4 introduced the high-resolution Retina Display, plus a sleek new form factor that brought about "antennagate" and a subsequent press conference to address the issue. iPhone 4 cases were given away and the problem was mitigated by a clever Apple marketing/communications team.

The iPhone 4 also heralded FaceTime as a video calling service (and potential open standard, although we hear inside Apple there is little impetus to release the open portions needed to bring the service to other platforms). The iPhone 4 introduced a front-facing camera to facilitate video calling.

The iPhone 4's addition of an LED flash introduced another wrinkle into the app approval process in that developers quickly started writing flashlight apps which took advantage of the powerful (but battery-killing) light source. Guess what? Apple finally woke up and wrote some clear but open-ended app approval guidelines that addressed many of the previously-unknown guidelines surrounding app approvals.

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2010 in review: Rise of iOS originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 31 Dec 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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