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| My iPod's home screen |
iOS is Apple's mobile operating system. Originally developed for the iPhone, it has since been extended to support other Apple devices such as the iPod touch, iPad and Apple TV. As of January 14, 2011[update], Apple's App Store contains more than 300,000 iOS applications, which have collectively been downloaded more than 10 billion times.
The user interface of iOS is based on the concept of direct manipulation, using multi-touch gestures. Interaction with the OS includes gestures such as swipe, tap, pinch, and reverse pinch, all of which have specific definitions within the context of the iOS operating system and its multitouch interface. Internal accelerometers are used by some applications to respond to shaking the device (one common result is the undo command) or rotating it in three dimensions (one common result is switching from portrait to landscape mode).
iOS is derived from Mac OS X, with which it shares the Darwin foundation, and is therefore a Unix-like operating system by nature.
The operating system uses roughly 500 megabytes of the device's storage, varying for each model.
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| Multitasking on iPod. |
Multitasking
Before iOS 4, multitasking was limited to a selection of the applications Apple included on the devices. Apple worried that running multiple third-party applications simultaneously would drain batteries too quickly. Starting with iOS 4, on 3rd-generation and newer iOS devices, multitasking is supported through seven background APIs:
- Background audio
- Voice over IP
- Background location
- Push notifications
- Local notifications
- Task finishing
- Fast app switching
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