One of the more useful (from a developer standpoint) features coming in iOS 4 (formerly iPhone OS 4) is the UIAutomation tool. This lets you run an automated set of tests against an application, and test to see if they had the expected results. Unfortunately, at the time of this writing, there is minimal documentation for the tool, so here's a quick walkthrough of how to use it.

To start, you need the iOS 4 SDK, which is available as of today from developer.apple.com. Next, you need to make sure that you have your application set up to be easily run by the UIAutomation suite. The main thing is to tag all your UI controls in Interface Builder with names, by setting the Accessability label to a unique value for the view.

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Today, Apple has begun emailing iPhone app developers to let them know they’re now accepting iOS 4-compatible apps in the App Store. Just as it does each time before a new OS launches (such as earlier this year with the iPad OS, which was iPhone OS 3.2 — yes, it’s a little confusing), Apple wants to make sure it has apps to show off when the new OS hits on June 21 (three days before the iPhone 4 launch).

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