iPhone OS 4 (iOS 4) ships June 21


Apple announced Monday that it will ship the next major revision of the iPhone OS in two weeks.

iPhone OS 4, renamed today to iOS 4, will hit the Internet for the iPhone and iPod Touch on June 21. The update will be made available for free to all compatible devices. Officially iOS 4 will run on the iPhone 3GS, 3G and iPod Touch 3G which was released last fall. For the iPhone 3G, some features will be missing, specifically the multitasking features. The iPhone 3G is lacking multitasking support likely because of being equipped with less memory, but no official reason has been given by Apple. The new iPhone 4 of course support all features.

Today at its annual developer conference, Apple announced that it is releasing iOS 4 GM to developers. GM or Golden Master is the final candidate designation for a software/OS release. The GM is designated the production version of the software. By releasing it to developers, they can spend the next couple weeks testing their apps and prepping any needed updates before it hits consumers.

The iOS 4 release will be three days before the iPhone 4 is released. Last year Apple started issuing its OS release a couple days prior to iPhone launches to spread out the hits on its servers.