Apple to reveal iPhone OS 4.0 this Thursday



Yes, iPad mania has captured the attention of tech geeks around the world, but it's not the only Apple creation worth talking about this week. iPhone OS 4.0 arrives on Thursday -- in demo form, anyway -- at a just-announced Apple event. Members of the press were just invited to cover the announcement, but the invitation didn't include any details about what new features might be announced.

Fortunately, we've been watching the iPhone 4.0 rumor mill, and we've caught onto a few things you might be hearing about on Thursday. Multitasking is a strong possibility -- giving third-party apps the ability to run in the background -- and Steve Jobs himself has confirmed that a unified inbox is coming to Apple Mail, so maybe that will be part of 4.0. Better access to the iPhone's filesystem might also be on the menu, so you can actually download files to your iPhone HD and use it for storage. We've also heard rumors about connecting your iPhone to an external display, and a stylus-based "handwriting keyboard."

None of this is 100% certain, and Apple has been known to surprise in the past, so we'll just have to hang in there until Thursday and see what happens.