iOS 4.2 serves up revealing prelude to iPad 2 and iPhone 5

iOS 4.2, Apple’s touchscreen operating system as of today, accomplishes far more than merely unifying the company’s current iPad and iPhone products while tossing in a laundry list of minor-ish features for each. Even as 4.2 accomplished exactly that in the short term, the directions Apple steers iOS in with this straddling-the-radar release will provide the best insight yet as to what the company has planned for down the road. And no, we’re not talking about iOS 5.

Well, not directly, anyway. Consider this: in a tightly integrated hardware-software ecosystem such as iOS, the operating system will be pushed precisely as far as the hardware can handle and vice versa. iOS 4.2 is, in essence, the most operating system that the iPhone 4 and inaugural iPad can handle. But we’re getting into the latter stages of iOS 4 by now. Yes it’s only four months old for iPhone, and is just now arriving for iPad in any form. But consider that no version of iOS has ever made it past the x.2.x stage, and one realizes that iOS 4.2 may well be the final x.x release for iOS 4, with any further releases in the next eight months being mere x.x.x releases as Apple’s engineers turn their primary attention to iOS 5 development behind the scenes. Once you frame 4.2 as being perhaps Apple’s last big iOS 4 push, you realize the company is going to get its licks in on this one as best it can with the hardware involved. And while the headline features are already known, it’ll be the hands-on usage which reveals the subtle-yet-there new tendencies that Apple’s engineers will reveal via iOS 4.2, minor enough not to fundamentally alter the nature of the platform but noticeable to make the more curious users wonder what Apple is up to. And right there will be your hints about what the company has in store for the iPhone 5 and iPad 2. After all, Apple already knows what those devices will entail hardware-wise. So the directions that the iOS 4.2 update ends up nudging the platform in will be the same directions Apple is already planning to take its hardware in.

Sure, visualizing the nature of iPad 2 and iPhone 5 by analyzing iOS 4.2 is like trying to figure out what a house will look like by analyzing its wooden frame while it’s awaiting full construction. And as of today we’ve not even yet gotten our hands on the wooden frame, so we won’t know what the hints are until we do. But the forthcoming update of the current generation iOS will give you some idea of the framework for the future generation hardware.