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According to AppleInsider sources, iPhone firmware 4.0 will bring multitasking to the platform this summer. And it may look at lot like Exposé.

The “full-on solution” to multitasking will support “several” third party apps running at once in a “multi-tasking manager that leverages interface technology already bundled with its Mac OS X operating system.” To us, that sounds a lot like Exposé, a multi-window view that’s already found its way into phones like the HTC Legend, which would be quite different from the proof-of-concepts we’ve seen thus far (like our lead shot).

But frankly, I don’t really care what it looks like, so long as I can pull up my email while web browsing as easily as I can on any Android phone. The iPhone’s uni-tasking Gmail support is straight-up punishing in comparison. [AppleInsider]

Fighting games have always been awkward—and a little sad—as portable experiences, like Rottweilers stuffed in sweaters. Touchscreen controls, you’d think, would be adding a bowtie. But Street Fighter IV iPhone is a poodle in a cardigan. It fits.

It’s a gorgeous port of Street Fighter IV, from flaming dragon punches—when you can pull them off—to ultra moves, which retain the quick cut scene close-up as a prelude to beating the unholy crap out of your opponent, to the booming, overly enthusiastic announcer that no Capcom fighting game is complete without. If you remember the days of Mortal Kombat on the Game Boy, it’s kind of awe-inspiring how richly they’ve translated the audio and visual experience, even if the framerates do get a little choppy on anything pre-3GS.

What’s missing? A bunch of characters, namely. You get just seven and a half: Ryu/Ken, Guile, Bison, Axel, Dhalsim, Chun Li and Blanka. Where’s Honda, or Zangief? Multiplayer is over Bluetooth only—no Wi-Fi, no online service to get your ass beat by Japanese dudes who can EX counter your every move, half a world away.

Oh yes, the controls. The make or break. You have a sparse selection of buttons, at first glance, just four onscreen, plus the virtual joystick: punch, kick, special attack (which can be used for fully automatic specials, or just be the button you tap after performing the full movement for EX specials), and saving, which is used for focus attacks and counters. What you didn’t know is that the ultra and super meters are buttons themselves, which you can tap to unleash ultimate destruction, if your meter’s filled. Truthfully, this layout is as good it could get. It works, and feels as natural as it possibly could, tapping on a piece of glass with no feedback as to whether you hit the right “button.” You won’t even notice all that much that you’re covering a bunch of the screen with your meatnuggets, honest.

What’s both shocking natural and at times utterly frustrating is the joystick. It’s awesome and smooth when you want to do nothing in particular. Like jumping, or moving back and forth. But when you NEED to nail that dragon punch, it will fail you more often than not. If it’s more complicated than a hadouken, you will not pull the maneuver off flawlessly ever single time. I guarantee you. (This, I suspect, is one reason Zangief, my main character, got ditched. I’d have a stroke trying to pile drive people.)

If you’re using a notebook right now, I want you to make a dragon punch motion on the trackpad with your thumb. See how weird that feels? Also, notice how you have no feedback as to whether you actually swiped correctly? There’s no precision. And nothing guiding you to be precise. So, if you’re a skilled player, who expects to nail your god combos flawlessly, you’ll be frustrated by the touchscreen controls, because it’s not going to come out every time you want it to. In fact, the better you are at Street Fighter, and the more skillfully you try to play this, the more this game will piss you off.

But! If you’re in their spamming fireball motions, jabbing at punch and kick trying to kick the shit out of somebody for fun, you will have a blast. It’s real Street Fighter, in your pocket, and it looks, sounds, feels and just plain is awesome. [iTunes]

It’s not that Brizzly’s perfect, or that it does justice to its source material (the unassailably pretty, wonderfully lean Birdfeed)—it’s that it comes close enough, and it’s free.

First, a quick lesson in the history of iPhone Twitter apps! Once, there was an app called Birdfeed. It was clever, fast, and visually distinctive. In fact, it was (up until just now) quite possibly one of the best Twitter apps available. It was also expensive, at $5. The developer, who was tired or something, sold the app to a little startup called Brizzly, which aggregates Twitter and Facebook feeds into a single interface (it’s actually kinda neat, as an online service.) And so here we are.

Brizzly’s rerelease (not an update; Birdfeed is no longer in the store) of Birdfeed changes the name, tweaks the UI, and slashes the price down to zero. The interface isn’t as dazzling as it was before, and Birdfeed’s trademark lack of a menu bar has given way to a standard row of icons. Brizzly actually adds a few new features, including a trending topics-esque News tab, for explaining what’s going on in your feeds, and the same lovely pull-down feed refreshing as the other best iPhone Twitter app, Tweetie.

Even its apparent shortfallings aren’t so bad: Yes, you have to sign up for a Brizzly account in order to use the app, but one you have, it’s completely transparent. It’s like Meebo in that sense. And no, the app doesn’t have push notifications of its own, like Echofon does, but premium Twitter apps have long offloaded that responsibility to dedicated push apps like Boxcar. (Which is great beyond Twitter, by the way.)

In short, if you need a Twitter app but don’t want to pay, Brizzly’s the one. [iTunes]

Sam Fisher will be a busy man next month. Just as Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction rolls across Xbox 360 and PC in April, the former Third Echelon agent is also infiltrating the iPhone. At the Game Developers Conference today, I sat down to ride shotgun through a handful of missions in the upcoming iPhone stealth action game.

Conviction on iPhone borrows a lot from the console edition. The plot is very similar, with Sam being pulled back into the world of Third Echelon and international intrigue. Michael Ironside voices Fisher in the iPhone game, as does the remainder of the cast. Conviction also mirrors several gameplay concepts from the console game, such as the use of mark and execute to tag enemies and then eliminate them with lightning fast shots before they can react. Fisher can also use a last known position technique to lure enemies into disadvantageous positions, which is something I employed in the windowless building mission to get an enemy to step into Fisher’s home turf: the shadows. As he investigated where I was recently spotted on the rooftop of a security checkpoint, it was easy to creep down and pull him into a hand-to-hand kill.

These hand-to-hand kills are critical in Conviction because that’s what awards you the ability to use mark and execute actions. There are multiple types of kills, from pulling an enemy over a ledge if you shimmy beneath them to drawing them into a human shield position, which protects you from incoming fire.

Please remove your belt and shoes before stepping through the scanner.

Though the version of Conviction I played was in that nebulous zone between alpha and beta, it was already featuring some nice touches, like the painting of objectives on walls. The controls are a little touchy right now, but moving Fisher around with the virtual stick was fine. Scrolling through gadgets such as frag grenades and camera grenades, though, needs some tightening. Too many times I wanted to use a camera to spy on an enemy outpost, only to roll a frag into their midst and reveal my position.

Conviction on the iPhone lacks multiplayer, so no co-op missions or deathmatches. But with 10 missions stretched from Malta to Iraq, there should be plenty of action to keep gamers busy. As Conviction draws nearer, look for additional details on IGN.

If you’re anxious about switching from a PC to a Mac, consider this: There are a multitude of ways you can virtualize Windows within OS X, and they all work uniquely well. Here’s how to choose the right one.

There are three major virtualization products for Mac, and at their core, they’re all quite similar. Each creates a virtual machine, which is to say, crudely, a software implementation of a separate computer. When you install Windows in a virtual machine, Windows thinks it’s installed on a PC with a somewhat generic set of hardware. In fact, the hardware it thinks it’s installed on is a software construct, and any time Windows utilizes what it thinks is a hardware component, its requests are actually being passed through to your Mac’s real hardware.

Anyway! What’s going on under the hood is conceptually similar among the most popular virtualization apps, but the ways they install, run and integrate Windows inside of OS X vary wildly. So, assuming you’re ready to take the virtualization dive, which app should you use? VMWare Fusion 3? Parallels 5? Sun VirtualBox? They’re all different, but in a strange way, they’ve ended up falling out of direct competition—each one is right for certain kinds of users. So which one’s right for you?

If You…

• Want to run Windows 7 within OS X, and basically nothing else?
• Want to run Windows apps as if they’re part of OS X, visually and behaviorally?
• Think a virtual machine should integrate into OS X almost completely, rather than live inside its own window?
• Want to play 3D games in your virtual machine?

Then You Should Use…

Parallels 5! This is a paid solution, and while it’s a full virtualization suite—you can run Linux and other OSes from within OS X as well—it’s the one most purely dedicated to making running Windows 7 as seamless as possible. Installation is almost completely hands off, and once you’ve got it up and running, it can actually be themed to look more like OS X. This has the dual effect of making the OS look more natural when it’s running in windowed mode (where the OS is isolated to its own window, like an app), and making the so-called “Crystal” mode, which lets you run Windows apps as their own windows in OS X, and which integrates Windows menus into Apple’s operating system, such that it’s barely even clear that you’re not running native apps.

Parallels’ strength lies in how thorough it is in trying to make Windows integration seamless. Windows 7’s system-wide transparency effects, powered by Aero, work fine out of the box with Parallels; you can enable OS X’s multitouch touchpad gestures for MacBooks in the OS with a simple options menu; pulling an installation over from a Boot Camp partition is just a matter of walking through a wizard; sharing files and clipboard items between OSes was trivially easy.

DirectX support is legitimately good enough to actually run a mid-range game without terrible performance degradation. (Games like BioShock or Crysis will run, but unless you’ve got a top-end iMac, you’ll probably suffer from serious slowdowns. If you’re serious about gaming on a Mac, just install Windows natively using Boot Camp.) It’s kind of like magic!

Parallels’ Windows powers are unsurpassed, but come at a cost. First, in dollars: It’s $80. Then, in features beyond Windows integration: There aren’t a whole lot of appliances—preconfigured packages that let you install other operating systems, like variations of Linux—as compared to VMWare, and there are stability issues; I’ve had to close down the entire virtual machine a number of times over the course of testing, and I couldn’t identify a particular trigger. One second I’d be seamlessly toggling between Internet Explorer and Safari, and the next I’d be trudging through a prolonged virtual machine restart routine.

So yeah, it’s worth it, if you’ve got a handful of Windows apps you can’t live without, or if you want to play fairly recent games without booting into a separate partition. [Parallels]

If You…

• Want to experiment with more than Windows
• Need bulletproof performance with Windows
• Want to run Windows and Linux apps as if they’re part of OS X, albeit without too many interface flourishes?

Then You Should Use…

VMWare Fusion 3! VMWare’s virtualization software is a reliable option no matter what you want to do. The way it integrates Windows into OS X is fairly transparent, but not quite as aesthetically consistent as Parallels. Gaming performance isn’t as strong as in Parallels, though 2D rendering—like Windows 7’s Aero—runs a bit smoother in Fusion than in any other solution. As with Parallels, Fusion automates the Windows installation process to a degree, and makes importing a Boot Camp installation fairly simple.

VMWare is a workhorse, and for most tasks—be it cross-platform website testing, running Windows versions of Microsoft office, or syncing with a Windows-only device like the Zune HD—it won’t let you down.

Tinkerers will find a massive library of preconfigured appliances, so you can try out virtually any operating system you’ve ever heard of (as long as it’s freely available) with little more than a file download and double click. Fusion 3 costs $80. [VMWare]

If You…

• Need Windows emulation
• Don’t want to pay anything for your virtualization software
• Don’t need to do any serious gaming
• Don’t mind rougher integration of Windows into OS X

Then You Should Use…

Sun VirtualBox! While the prior two options are paid, and not exactly cheap, VirtualBox is free. Totally. This means that, if you’ve got a spare Windows license, you can install Windows to run within OS X without spending an extra dime, and without suffering too much of an inconvenience as compared to VMWare or Parallels. (Full Windows 7 installation guide here)

VirtualBox doesn’t have the same level of DirectX support as either Parallels or Fusion, so while gaming is theoretically possible, it’s probably not worth your time. There is a “Seamless” mode for minimizing the Windows desktop and running Windows apps as if they’re native OS X apps, but it’s neither as seamless nor visually integrated as Parallels’ or Fusion’s.

But really, these are minor complaints. If all you want to do is run the odd Windows apps, try virtualization or configure or access some Windows-specific peripherals, VirtualBox will get the job done. It doesn’t have the polish of its paid competitors, but let’s be real here: We’re virtualizing an operating system. All solutions are by definition going to be less than perfect. VirtualBox will accomplish 85% of what Parallels or VMWare can do, in terms of running Windows apps or booting into alternative operating systems, at 0% of the cost. And for that, it deserves your attention. [VirtualBox]

Apple originally promised the iPad to drop in late March, but has officially moved the first wave of iPads into early April. On April 3, the three non-3G models parachute into Apple stores, starting at $499 for the 16 GB Wi-Fi iPad. However, you do not need to camp out in front of an Apple shop for this one. To avoid the mess of snaking lines, Apple is opening pre-orders for the iPad to North American customers on March 12. Pre-orders will be accepted at both retail locations and on Apple’s site.

Daily Fix Video March 05, 2010

This news and more in the Daily Fix. – Portal 2: Holiday 2010 - iPad Hits Stores April 3rd - A Sony iPad Killer? - Friday Giveaway!

The initial wave of iPads includes 32 GB and 64 GB models for $599 and $699 respectively. They will be joined later in the month by the 3G-enabled iPad that add $130 to the base model price. A 16 GB 3G iPad, for example, is $629. The 3G models work on a month-to-month subscription to AT&T service. 250 MB of download data is $14.99 a month while unlimited data is priced at $29.99.

Delays do not affect the later release of 3G iPads.

Apple is mum on the reason behind the delay, although reports of production issues were picking up steam and could be a possible explanation for the later – but not too much later — release. Having more units available at release will alleviate concerns of disappointed customers being turned away, which occurred at almost every single Apple retail location when the iPhone 3G debuted in summer of 2008

Vlingo: Vlingo’s updated their popular (well, BlackBerry popular) voice transcription app with a new interface. The core functionality—voice actuated calling, web, Facebook and Twitter updates and mapping—is still there, and the newly organized homescreen literally spells out how to use each function. The catch, though, is that to use the new features, like the email and SMS transcription, you have to pay either $8 each, or $10 for both. This feels steep, considering that equally capable transcription apps like Dragon Dictation are free, and offer shortcuts for copying transcribed text for pasting into emails or SMSes. There’s still enough in the free version to justify a download, though.

Hot Tub Time Machine Soundboard:

Step one: watch this preview.
Step two: watch it again.
Step three: Make your friends watch it, so they understand why you keep injecting this soundboard into your conversations.
Step four: Bask, smugly, in your role as king of a miniature comedy empire that you created, and that you’ll rule until the day this movie comes out. Then, it will crumble. But hey!

Buzzie: The first native iPhone app for Google Buzz sadly isn’t free, but it’s good enough to justify its $2 price for avid Buzzers (whoever you are):

As the first iPhone app for Buzz, Buzzie gets a lot right. The minimalist UI recalls thhttp://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ragdoll-blaster-2/id353846826?mt=8e classier breed of Twitter apps, like Tweetie, why the local and map views are a treat to see rendered natively, in the app and on a Google Map, respectively. My only reservations? I don’t see a way to post images in a new Buzz, which is kind of a big deal for avid users. That, and I’ve found that even when I check the “Remember Me” box, I’m sometimes logged out when the app starts up.

Poynt: Another BlackBerry transplant (Hey, BlackBerry devs, why now?), which works as a multi-purpose concierge app—you can search through businesses, restaurants, movies and people. “But there are other services that do that,” you might say, “like CinemaSource and SuperPages and CitySearch and OpenTable!” Well, what this app does, basically, is draw directly from all those services. So it’s really just four apps in one, and it works fairly well. Free.

Fart Hero: Rhythm games are popular, and a lot of people resent this. Fart apps are also popular, and even more people begrudge that. So, it is a proud moment for me when I can present to you the most resentable app of all time: Fart Hero! It’s like Guitar Hero, except instead of playing an imaginary guitar, you’re playing an imaginary anus. You may max out the game’s humor potential in a matter of seconds, but using it will bring you one broad step closer to understanding the ineffable essence of the App Store, as we know it today.

Ragdoll Blaster 2

This game is philosophically problematic. Why must these poor human-like things be launched into dangerous situations? And in the service of solving a seemingly infinite set of puzzles? I don’t know. The ragdolls don’t know. It’s a sad situation. It’s also an extremely catchy game, especially if you appreciate a good physics game.

Kid Care: If I suddenly found myself possessed of a child, I would panic. (For a variety of reasons!) Beyond the issue of the child’s mere existence, I would flip the hell out at every tiny problem I encountered. When are you supposed to feed this? How much does it eat? Why is it making these noises? Kid Care tries to answer newbie parent questions of a medical variety, so you don’t rush your kid to the hospital every time his vomit changes viscosity. Free.

Movie Mystic: A movie finding and ticket booking app, with a small twist: select an occasion, like “Date Night” or “Time for Tears,” shake the app, and it’ll actually suggest a current movie, and offer your the option to buy tickets to see it at a local theater. The aesthetic can be a bit garish, and I ran into the occasional slowdown, but it’s a fun alternative to more straightforward movie apps like Fandango or Movies, and beyond the crystal ball start screen, it can do just about everything those apps can. Free.

Expedia: Expedia’s updated their TripAssist app to include trip itinerary importing from other sources (like individual airlines), a revamped interface, SMS and email alerts, and flight seating charts. Free.

Happy Hours: Finds you nearby bars with running drink deals and happy hours, with a respectably full and well-maintained database. It’s useful in the cities where it’s available, and obviously useless in the ones where it’s not. Either way, it’s free.

All-In-1 Gamebox: We’ve written about how there’s massive pressure on app developers to hit rock bottom prices in the App Store, wondering, earnestly, how can a developer thrive in a 99c economy? It as an interesting question! Well, ha ha, we were so naive. All-In-1 Gamebox is a single app with 25 unique games packaged inside. They’re all distinct. Most of the are fine. Some of them are good. A couple of them are worthless. A handful of them could have easily been sold for 99c. And each is sold here for roughly four cents, minus Apple’s cut.

Granted, it’s not like 25 developers are going in on a single app here—the games all come from one source, as far as I can tell—but still, an app like this sets our price expectations hilariously low. Alas, you are not devs, so here’s what you need to know: aside from the best of the best of the $1 games, it’s hard to imagine a better timewaster that AI1 Gamebox, at least for the price.

There are over 170,000 apps available for your iPhone. Sorting through the crowded App Store to find the best downloads for your iPhone or iPod Touch is time consuming and fraught with the risk of dropping good money on a bad app. Because even though most apps cost just a few dollars or Euros, that still was your hard-earned coin. So, IGN is starting a series of Top 5s for various genres and categories in the App Store to help you make the best download decisions. If you’re new to the App Store, we hope to make the discovery of new apps and games more fun. And if you’ve had an iPhone for years, perhaps you’ll find something new and fun. Because that’s what makes the App Store such an exciting place: there is always something new behind each click.

Because the iPhone was born out of Apple’s revolutionary iPod line, it includes all of the functionality of those successful music players. But thanks to the cleverness of developers, the iPhone and iPod Touch can do so much more with music than just replay it. Now you can interact with your music, create your own sounds, and play rhythm games. Our inaugural Top 5 charts the best music apps in the App Store, ranging from a brilliant little puzzle game to a voice-altering app that turns you into the next hip-hop star.

Pandora Radio
Publisher: Pandora Media
Price (as of 2/26/10): Free
Download this app

Pandora is an unparalleled music source. This Internet radio service is one of the world’s most popular music destinations for good reason. It’s easy to set up your very own personalized stations so you listen primarily to the bands and music genres you like, but Pandora’s smart DJ pulls. I cannot tell you how many forgotten songs and new bands were introduced to me by Pandora. The free iPhone app works just as well as the website, easily streaming music through your device (as long as you have a connection) and its integration with iTunes right on your handset means you can buy new tracks with just a few taps.

Beat It!
Publisher: Glu
Price (as of 2/26/10): $2.99
Download this app

We named Beat It the best iPhone music game of 2009. And unless somebody steps up their game, it might end up coasting through 2010 as a top choice, too. Beat It is a rhythm-puzzler. You must recreate music on a grid, tapping in notes and beats until you successfully mirror the sample track. Over time, tracks grow more complex, adding new instruments to the mix. As you match the music, the backgrounds explode in color and light with a distinct 16-bit aesthetic that will please classic gamers or any fan of cubism. Glu recently updated Beat It so the music making mode now lets you share created clips with friends and other players, which was our lone sticking point with the original release. So now, it’s pretty much perfect.

Shazam / Shazam Encore
Publisher: Shazam Entertainment
Price (as of 2/26/10): Free / $4.99
Download this app

Many of the best apps are those that offer a solution to a problem that wasn’t exactly pressing, but present all the same. Shazam identifies music. We’ve all caught the back half of a song on the radio, loved what we heard, and then screamed at the DJ for not telling us what it was called or which band performed it. Quickly fire up Shazam, point your device at the speaker, and within seconds, the app tells you the name of the song and the band, as well as offering links for buying the track or sharing it with friends. Like Pandora, Shazam is about exploration. As you tag songs you like, Shazam starts offering recommendations. The Encore edition of Shazam will cost you, but it offers increased speed and additional features, like a car mode that monitors the radio and keeps a running playlist.

RjDj
Publisher: Reality Jockey Ltd.
Price (as of 2/26/10): $1.99
Download this app

Your iPhone or iPod Touch is already loaded up with your music, but why not make a little of your own? RjDj is a reality mixer of sorts. Though there are a number of downloadable songs to pull into RjDj, the thrust of the app is to using the noises around you to affect the tracks. You can also move your fingers around scene to change the song, creating new sounds. It’s a trippy little app and one that is easy to sink a lot of time into if you connect with it. You’ll bust it out when you go to new places to see how the ambient sounds of that environment affect the music. You can save the music you make with RjDj and either listen to it later or share it with friends via the usual social networking suspects. This is precisely the kind of crazy-cool app that makes the iPhone such a unique experience.

I Am T-Pain
Publisher: Smule
Price (as of 2/26/10): $2.99
Download this app

Auto-Tune is everywhere now, for better or worse. Smule’s I Am T-Pain lets you use a simple version of the voice-altering software that defines hip-hop artist T-Pain’s sound. Using the iPhone mic or an mic input on a Touch, you record your voice (either by itself or over a backing track) and then run it through Auto-Tune. You select keys to determine the results. Using freestyle mode over no backing track is a fun way to make little messages for friends, but I Am T-Pain is much more engaging when you sing over a backing track, really experiment with the Auto-Tune settings to create something unique, and then share it via Smule’s global network. (Really, there is a globe you can spin to select I Am T-Pain creations from all over the planet. And this app is indeed global.) Oh, and lest we forget: shawwty.

Although we intended to just highlight the absolute top five, we cannot help but steer you to one more music game that is also worth your attention. Though not the best in class, it has all of the elements to be one of the best rhythm games on the App Store with revision and the addition of new artists:

Riddim Ribbon feat. Black-Eyed Peas
Publisher: Tapulous
Price (as of 2/26/10): $2.99
Download this app

Tapulous is the most successful music game publisher on the App Store, thanks to its catalog of Tap Tap Revenge games. However, the Guitar Hero-like gameplay of just tapping notes as they stream down the screen is just no longer fresh. That’s where Riddim Ribbon comes in: this is a cool riff on the rhythm game. Instead of touching notes, you tilt to steer a marble through lines that represent the song. Depending on which route you take at branches, you mix the song. PlayStation 2 gamers will see hints of Frequency and Amplitude in Riddim Ribbon, but considering those were the first music games by Harmonix (inventors of Guitar Hero and Rock Band), that’s pretty good inspiration. If you don’t like the Black Eyed Peas, there are additional tracks to unlock in Riddim that may be more to your liking. Plus, Tapulous has franchise plans that will branch out into other genres and artists.