WWDC '08: My 2t
Yesterday, Apple's CEO Steve Jobs took the stage at the Moscone Centre in San Francisco for the World Wide Developer Conference and made a number of announcement. Some old and some new; here is my take:
iPhone SDK: Not much new here and just more demos of how easy it is to code for the iPhone. This, in my opinion, was the most boring part of the keynote.
The only new item was how the iPhone would handle applications that need to keep running in the background such as Instant Messaging clients. Apple will use a push notification service that developers can tap into to push text alerts, icon badges and sounds to the iPhone. This is a brilliant idea as it allows such programs to continue getting notifications without draining memory and battery resources on the phone (loved the picture of the Windows Mobile task manager to illustrate this point).
The iPhone SDK (now at beta 7) will go live on July 11th.
iPhone OS 2.0: Again, nothing much we didn't already know about in here. A lot of focus has gone into Enterprise features such as Exchange support (push email, contacts and calendars), Cisco VPN support, enforced security policies, remote wipe, WPA2/802.1X, certificates and identities etc.
Apple has also tweaked the existing applications by adding instant search to AddressBook, multi-email deletion/move, support for iWork documents and all MS Office documents.
I suspect more will be revealed when the iPhone OS 2.0 is released on July 11th. Here's hoping for Copy/Paste and a better Bluetooth stack (A2DP)!
iPhone 3G: with the new version of the iPhone OS, Apple has also announced a new version of the iPhone. Dubbed the iPhone 3G, it adds two hardware upgrades, namely, 3G (HSDPA) connectivity and a-GPS receiver. Everything else, spec wise, remains the same. The back of the phone is now a glossy plastic white or black. As with the original iPhone, I will reserve judgement until I actually hold one of these in my greasy palm.
Apple has halved the price of the iPhone to $199 (£99) for the 8GB model (available in black only) and $299 (£159) for the 16GB model (available in black and white).
MobileMe: MobileMe is Apple's take on Cloud computing. As a subscriber of Apple's .Mac service, this update has been long overdue. MobileMe will offer push email, contacts and calendars just like a hosted Exchange account but will also offer a photo gallery and snazzy web 2.0 apps for access to these services. The services will cost $99 (£60) per year and includes 20GB of storage.
Anyone else notice the resemblance between the MobileMe logo and the Windows Me logo? Creepy!
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Mac OS X - Snow Leopard: For the second year running, OS X has taken a backseat to the iPhone at WWDC. In fact, Steve Jobs only mentioned this upcoming version in passing during the keynote. Not much is know about this cat except that Apple has put a hold on new features and will instead focus on performance, stability and frameworks to move the OS into the future (I have a feeling this is how they came to the name "Snow Leopard"). Snow Leopard will bring native Exchange support to OS X applications, read/write support for ZFS file system, extends the 64-bit technology to address up to 16TB (terabytes) of memory, improve support for multi-core processors and OpenCL (allows developers to tap into the processing power of the GPU for general purpose computing)
I actually like this plan. In this day of "bringing the wow" at the cost of everything, it is very refreshing to see a company focus on tuning its OS to save hard disk space and gain performance. I do however hope that they don't charge full price for this update.
OS X Snow Leopard is not due out until June 2009.
Summary:
As with just about any Apple event, there were a lot of rumours, hype and speculation as to what was going to get announced. Unfortunately this leads to many people feeling disappointed with reality (really, expecting Apple to announce a new iPod at a developer conference was simply not going to happen). I for one am pretty happy with the direction Apple is going.
Many people see the iPhone as a hardware device akin to a Sony Ericsson this or HTC that and they point out its missing features. They are missing the bigger picture. The iPhone IS the start of the third great platform (Desktop belongs to Microsoft, Internet belongs to Google, Smart-phone - no clear winner). Unlike other Smart-phones, the iPhone is built on the best desktop OS on the market and has a great, well thought out ecosystem. On top of that, one cannot underestimate the fact that it is being steered by the company that invented the personal computer. While this may sound like the rantings of a rabid fanboy, one cannot argue with history. Apple lost its market lead in the desktop OS market due to its own mistakes such not listening to customers, alienating developers, inability to form partnerships and over-pricing its hardware. Looking at where the iPhone is today, you can see that Apple clearly learnt its lessons. They have added most of the features people requested, the SDK is free and has had over 250,000 downloads (WWDC was sold out to over 5000 attendees), it has partnered with key players such as Microsoft (for Exchange/ActiveStink....sync), Google (for Google Maps and mail) and Yahoo (Yahoo push mail and contacts) and finally slashed the price of the phone by half!
With the above information, I have no doubt that the iPhone will surpass and turn Windows Mobile into another PlayForSure effort for Microsoft (who will then release the ZuneFone). It will however face a tough fight unseating the Blackberry platform from the Enterprise.
posted by Steve at 6:11 AM
5 Comments:
Keynote Demos: I wasn't at all impressed with the demos. Ok, so there's an SDK and some big names are using it; but come on - the demos look like third rate Nintendo DS games. I'd be suprised that this is all the device is capable of. Quake for Windows Mobile has been out for a while (years) now. Still, the SDK is very welcome! So is the camera, 3G, and GPS. Oh, and the price drop! Oh, and LOL on the Mobile Me / Windows Me comparison!
My wife thought that the crowd at the keynote were put up to all the cheering. I thought they were all drugged with something in the drinks before the event: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgZKjJt-TkU
No, its a combination of the RDF (reality distortion field) and the cool-aid!
Serously though, mobile phones have had games for a while. What I think differentiates the iPhone is the inclusion of the APIs for the accelerometer/tilt sensor in the SDK. Also, the way games and applications will be consumed is completely new to the industry. Remember that MP3 players were playing music years before the iPod arrived on the scene.
Yes, and I don't use iPod as much as Windows Mobile. For a start; iPod doesn't have bluetooth so I can't use my bluetooth headset :P
I think the success of the iPod is the desirability of the form factor and the proliferation of the iTunes desktop application wanting to seek out an iPod like a tree seeking out water.
For example; have you ever seen those chavs on street corners? They all seem to be using Executive phones. Nokia N95's, etc. I bet they're all carrying iPods along with their knives too :)
Ditto BMW, Mercedes Benz, Audi cars..
(Yes, I've got an iPod :P)
I'm not sure I fully understand why someone would go with a more expensive iPod with less storage and features than a rival device, which struggles if you don't use iTunes with it. Nor do I understand fully what an iPhone user is thinking (my current Windows mobile phone is almost a year old and has HSUPA instead of 3G, a GPS and a camera already, plus strong Exchange integration).
Having said all that - the new iPhone is much cheaper than all the other executive phone competition, comes with much more memory as standard, has the brilliant multi-touch interface and I think it's going to steal substantial market share away from Nokia this year...
I understand where you are coming from Mike. But you must remember that you are and I are techies (no offense). The reason the iPhone (just like the iPod before it) will own the market is that the blonde next door or the pensioner down the road can buy and play music/videos, send email, surf the web, install custom applications and make phone calls, all on this device with ease. And right there is the key, these are features that have been burried in other phones' user manuals for years. What Apple does best, is make them accessible for everyone. These people don't really care or know about HSDPA v HSUPA etc.
As for Windows Mobile, after owning 5 devices in the past, I decided to give up on it. The hardware manufacturers offer great hardware that ticks a lot of boxes but are severely let down by the OS which is stagnant (development wise) and slow; so much so that the OEMs are having to create their own UIs to make it more useable.
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