Hand Circus' Oliver: iPhone 4.0 OS is a huge set of announcements

Having made two of the best iPhone games ever in the rolly shapes of the Rolando series, we caught up with Simon Oliver of developer Hand Circus to get his opinion on Apple's just announced iPhone 4.0 OS.

Simon Oliver: I think it's a huge set of announcements and puts Apple in a very strong position going forward.

One by one it's tackling the remaining features that other platform holders claimed advantage on. The way that multitasking is handled seems particularly well-thought out.

Some of the smaller refinements to mail and the home screen are very welcome too. My own home screen has become a sprawling mound of apps (although I guess I have to take some responsibility there), and this will certainly help organisation as people's app collections rise from the tens to the hundreds and perhaps even the thousands.

Overall it felt very bold; directly challenging competitors on multiple fronts.

It's a little early to tell at this stage, as Apple hasn't declared the full extent of its intentions.

The iAds presentation was certainly impressive. I can imagine it being a very attractive proposition for advertisers and I'm sure Apple will make integration straightforward.

I've not seen any figures other than the stated 60 percent revenue share, so I'm not sure how potential revenues would compare with AdMob or similar, but any additional opportunities for developers to make a profit in what can be a difficult market can only be a good thing.

I don't think it was stated explicitly in the presentation, but it does appear that the first generation iPhone and iPod touch aren't included in the list of iPhone OS 4 compatible devices. This clearly provides an additional headache for developers as you can no longer simply recommend that your users upgrade.

This creates four tiers of devices to support (first generation iPhone/touch on OS 3.x, iPhone 3G/touch second generation, iPhone 3GS/touch third generation, and lastly iPad).

While these differences are nowhere near as pronounced as on Android, it's going to be increasingly challenging to make your game run great and take advantage of all platforms. IPad is quite a special case, though - it's definitely a different class of device - and is perhaps better thought of as an additional opportunity than just a fragmentation of the iPhone platform.