Steve made it again. As Microsoft is going to “copy” Apple’s iPhone banning multitasking for 3rd parties apps, the “most advanced mobile OS in the world” makes another leap forward adding a multitasking implementation that provides a “multitasking experience” to users while preserving battery life. The new release adds 7 services for developers that allow their apps to perform selected tasks in the background.

iPhone OS 4 will also introduce more major “tentpole” features and a long list of minor enhancements. The top seven features are multitasking, app Folders, Mail improvements, Enterprise features, a Games Center, and Apple’s new iAd network.

A developer preview of iPhone 4 is available now, the release will ship sometime this summer. All of the features will be available to last year’s iPhone 3GS and the 3G iPod touch.

The 2008 iPhone 3G and 2G iPod touch will get “many things,” but will not support multitasking, as their hardware is significantly slower and has less installed RAM.

iPhone OS 4.0 will ship for iPad this fall.

We’ll cover more deeply each of the features in a series of posts tagged “iPhone OS 4”. Stay tuned :)