14 DAY TRIAL // A Twitter user, and presumably an Apple fan, has emailed Apple’s CEO to ask whether the company plans to continue supporting the first-generation iPhone. The device is also referenced as “iPhone 2G,” due to its limited ability of connecting to the web through EDGE.
MacStories has (what else?) a story about Steve Jobs replying a customer email regarding the future support for the iPhone 2G. According to it, Jobs clearly said, “Sorry, no.” The message, sent from his iPhone, appears legit. Jobs is still rocking iPhone OS 3.1.2, going by the screenshot posted as evidence by ven000m, the person in question.
MacStories appropriately points out that, “We didn’t get any confirmation about this at the latest Apple event, except that iPhone OS 4.0 isn’t entirely compatible with the iPhone 3G and old iPod Touch.” However, with Apple claiming that certain key features won’t be available even for iPhone 3G units, it is reasonable to assume that 2G handsets won’t be able to handle the new software altogether – not the way Apple intends it to, anyway.
In a recent news piece, Softpedia reported that multitasking, one of the unsupported OS 4.0 features on older hardware, could, in fact, be enabled on an iPhone 3G. Writing on the ModMyi forums, pauldanielash (MMi Staff Writer) revealed yesterday that, “Older iPhones and iPod touch devices can […] support iPhone OS 4.0 multitasking […] Apparently one of the properties in the capabilities plist of springboard.app (/System/Library/CoreService/SpringBoard.app/N82AP.plist) is MULTITASKING=FALSE. Change that to TRUE, according to Will, and you're all set.”
Given that Apple’s original iPod touch falls in pretty much the same hardware category as the 2G iPhone, support for the former is likely being dropped as well, come summer 2010. And – just so everyone is on the same level – Apple specifically states that the only devices supporting the new iPhone software (and not necessarily in a complete manner) are: iPhone 3G; iPhone 3GS; iPod touch 2nd generation (late 2008); and iPod touch 3rd generation 32GB and 64GB (late 2009).
