Oh no - is Apple now a phone company?

I’ve just been checking out the live keynote coverage on MacRumors, and ugh… The whole first hour has been dedicated to the iPhone. I’m glad I didn’t go now; I’d have been bored senseless. What, with the dropping of the “Computer” from their title, the disaster of the MacAir (so many users clamouring for a subnotebook and they deliver something thin but still wide and with no connectivity…) and the apparent concentration of all Apple efforts on the iPhone, I’m getting a teeny bit worried about the future. Surely the vast majority of developers at WWDC are not iPhone developers? Does Steve really want to convince them all to start developing for it? Oh dear…

Yes, it’s my usual WWDC blues…

All the best,
Keith

EDIT: Ouch. There is mention of the next OS, Snow Leopard, in there, and apparently it’s going to be demo’d after lunch by someone else (and so won’t be available to view by everyone as the Keynote always is). That’s painful - a new OS isn’t worthy of the Keynote at all? Hmm, where did I put those C++ books just in case…

To be fair, Snow Leopard is widely rumoured to essentially be a bugfix update to 10.5 optimised for Intel Macs. I’m sure we’ll get a big old keynote about it in January, shortly before it’s also rumoured to launch.

And you may be interested to learn that the MBA has apparently surpassed sales expectations. It’s not for everyone, by any means, but the people it’s aimed at (road warriors and poseurs) seem to have snapped it up.

Finished with the keynote (kind of disgusted)

Yes the WHOLE keynote was only on the new iPhone 3G and the new iPhone software 2.0

And of course the name change from .Mac to now

MobileMe
apple.com/mobileme/

The iPhone 3G
• Faster speeds
• Slimmer
• Flush Headphone Jack (no need for funky adapters when using 3rd party headphones)
• Full Enterprise Support built in (Exchange, activesync) Office Documents.
• Push Notification services (Look for IM clients soon on iPhone)
• Built in GPS device (look for a slew of GPS software)
• SDK Tools
• Plastic back instead of metal (Black only on 8GB Black or White on 16GB)
• Ties in with MobileMe services (subscription based $99 a year. Think a revamped .Mac)
• PRICE DROP! This will really piss off any iPod Touch user.
8GB iPhone 3G - $199
8GB iPod Touch = $299
16GB iPhone 3G - $299
16GB iPod Touch = $399
That ought to really piss of anyone that ones or wants to buy an iPod touch. Oh and if you are an iPhone user the 2.0 software is FREE. If you are an iPod Touch customer you have to PAY $9.99 for the software.

• OSX 10.6 (Code Name Snow Leopard) - No mention in the Keynote. Rumor is it may be Intel Only although some are saying there will still be some limited PPC support. Supposed to be more or All redone in Cocca (rumor is they are dropping Carbon completely). ALso it may be only speed and security enhancment and NOT a feature enhancement. Why would they do something like this?
Transistion INTEL users to an optional upgrade (10.6) and put them inline to release 10.7 Around January 2010.
Right around the time Windows 7 should come out…

So Snow Leopard may be big under the hood for some users but other users would see no improvements (Apple may do this as a free upgrade like they did with 10.1)

No mention of the patent for the remote with the accelerometer sensors.
No mention of upgrading the Laptop designs (MBP is an old and tired design)
No mention of Blue Ray support or build to order options.
No Mention of any new iPod designs or a price drop for iPod Touch.
No mention of any new hardware except iPhone 3G

Basically it was the first keynote that left me feeling disgusted.

They are distancing themselves (Apple) more so away from the Mac Line and the Computers and seem to be pushing themselves more in the direction of a Home Electronics Store.

Maybe I will feel better as more news becomes available but right now it seems the WWDC was actually the

WWiPhone Conference

One man was quoted as saying that there are 3 major platforms now
WIndows
OSX
iPhone

Sad. This conference seems to mainly focus on iPhone a the cost of everything else.

I love my iPhone!

f.

you`re kinky

Info on Snow Leopard:

forums.macrumors.com/showpost.ph … stcount=69

Antony - the MBA sales surprise me. It still strikes me as absolutely bizarre (and frustrating) that Apple have not, two years down the line, provided a proper replacement for the 12" iBooks and PowerBooks. To me, they had the perfect form factor. I love my MBP, don’t get me wrong, but a 12" lighter version for hawking around but without losing any of the connectivity would be great. An all wireless machine seems madness to me, especially installing things wirelessly…

Anyway, that’s off-topic.

Wock, I agree with you. I was really, really disappointed by this Keynote. It showed absolutely no commitment to the Mac platform, in that Snow Leopard was relegated to a footnote and a session under NDA, and all the excitement was focussed on the iPhone. Okay some people love their iPhones (hello chefpogo! ), but I hate mobile phones myself. They’re just annoying. They interrupt conversations have annoying ringtones and beep away while you’re trying to read a book quietly on the bus or train. Half an hour on the iPhone I could take. Even an hour I could live with. But two whole fricking hours? And making the devs applaud the iPhone team after showing an ad twice? If I had gone I’d be sitting there thinking, Hmm, I’ve spent the past several years of my life developing a kick-ass app for your Mac platform, I’ve spent a fortune on the conference, and the Keynote is about something else entirely? Great.

I hope Wock is right, that Snow Leopard will be a free upgrade - the title even indicates its just an evolution of Leopard - given that there aren’t going to be any particularly new features.

But honestly, if you know of any good Vista/Linux programmers in the UK (in the South West is even better) who love Scrivener, tell them to e-mail me. Just in case.

All the best,
Keith

Snow Leopard is a year away and still in development, give 'em time.

Love my iPhone now, not sure I’ll get the new one right off if only because there isn’t 3G where I live.

I adore my MBA - it’s a perfect writing machine, imo. Light enough to pop in a tote and go where I want, perfect keyboard, and I’m loving the trackpad. Went back to my old 12" iBook just for comparison’s sake and have to say the MBA is much easier to use. Can’t speak to being a poseur since that’s an external judgment.

Not sure what is meant by ‘no connectivity’ - I have the ethernet adapter for when I need it (haven’t yet, but it’s there if I do ) but I also have a cell modem so can be wireless pretty much anywhere. Really looking forward to the (ghastly-named) MobileMe features.

By no connectivity I just mean that there is no DVD drive, no built-in ethernet port (remember that the UK is always about two years behind when it comes to wireless, broadband etc), one (?) USB port and no firewire port (correct me if I’m completely wrong here). I rely on all of those things for backups, memory card, mouse + connection to monitor + printer etc. Mainly the no DVD is a killer for me, though. And at £1200… Ouch. They do look and feel very nice. It’s just these issues that make it no good for me.
Best,
Keith

I do have the Superdrive external DVD and have used it all of one time (to install Word, grimacing all the while as I did so), but I don’t watch movies, etc., so have very little use for one anyway. I keep thinking I’ll use Remote Disk, but so far everything (other than Word) that I’ve wanted to install I’ve been able to download. (Yep, Scrivener was first. )

The one port I do miss is the firewire, and that’s only because I like being able to boot my machines up in target mode if I have to.

I even bought a little USB hub but so far haven’t used it, mostly because all my studio gadgets are plugged into my Mini already and I can access them with my MBA through sharing. The cell modem has a microSD slot built into it, so I have 4GB of backup space already there if I’m using the modem, and with the new MobileMe features - 20GB idisk! YAY! - I can just back up to that when I’m out and about. At home, I use a Time Capsule wirelessly, so that’s all set up for when I’m at home with my MBA.

But I’m not a developer, so my needs will be different from yours, of course.

I, too, wanted a small and portable notebook computer and I bought an EeePC back in late December of '07 only to have it be big (er, small?) disappointment. The keyboard was practically unusable for me and the tiny screen a constant bother. (Not to mention no Scrivener!) I waffled for weeks about the MBA before buying it, but after having used it a while now I can say my only regret is not buying it the moment it came out. It’s just a dream to use.

We’ll see YOu on Boston Legal. Stop this insane objectifying. My Nokia is 8 years old and bounces. What more could one ask of a phone?

When I last walked into a phone shop (2 years ago) to upgrade because my phone finally bit the dust, I gave them a very simple list:

1. It needs to make calls
2. It needs to send text messages
3. It needs to store a contact list
4. It needs to have a better than 50% chance of surviving if it falls off a table.

The assistant looked around, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “I can’t help you with that, but this one has a 2 megapixel camera”

Matt

More info on SNow Leopard
apple.com/macosx/snowleopard/?sr=hotnews

The iPhone is what I call “Latte Tech”.
In all honesty the iPhone (Newton 2.0) is really just a mobile secretary and penny arcade in the end.
There is only so much you can do or will be willing to do on a small limited handheld device. This may be nice sitting in a coffee shop or riding mass transit but is it truly Apple’s Idea of their Flagship?

The MBA was a great idea but implemented poorly. One USB 2.0 port and a Wireless card? They should have gone for adding a FW and Ethernet port.

Blue Ray Support? The jury is still out at Apple on whether Blue Ray will become a supported build to order Option.

iPhone still does NOT support Flash. Jobs did NOT want a mobile flash or “Flash lite” for the iPhone and has been pushing Adobe to Create a unique robust flash application for the iPhone.
Still hasn’t happened and is a big drawback for users surfing the web on an iPhone.

Pricing inconstancies with the iPod Touch and the iPhone 3G. When or will that even be addressed?

What about Carbon? Carbon64 was dropped and has caused a major ripple with Apple Users who use Adobe Products.
Mac users are mad as hell that PC Users will have 64BIt Photoshop in CS4 but the Mac Version will only be 32bit and will remain 32bit maybe until CS6!
Adobe is going to have to rewrite Creative Suite in Cocca instead of Carbon and is reluctant to implement this in a timely manner (they are estimating a few years)

Big question is does SNow Leopard support Carbon APIs at all, limited, or like Leopard? This is a huge question because many of the “Big” apps written for Mac are still in Carbon and could either cause delays or troublesome times with patches, updates and incompatibles.

These are just some of the reasons why the keynote left me disappointed.

It is a DEVELOPERS conference and many of these questions are ones developers have been asking for a LONG time and instead of going over a spectrum of questions about hardware and software they over 20 minutes showing off penny arcade games for the iphone. (groan)

I find it quite ironic that “gaming” on the iPhone is being touted yet gaming on OSX and on all other Apple Hardware is a joke.

Ahh well. Fashion and trend.

I think Apple’s next product will be the Digital Coffee Cup. WHile you drink your goats milk, no-carb, high-protein, ant-acid, power bar crunchie, hershey sprinkled, honey-mint graham cracker, cheese curd, moccha-mocchoa-latte-expresso you will be able to have a voice (inside the cup) read you your email, tell you how many users have checked your Face-Book account since the last sip, look for a hair salon, get play by play replay of the local high school dodge ball game and get directions to the nearest Wal-Mart Tailor. All the while you can be jamming out to the newest trendy cover of a cover of a cover remake through bBose speakers in the handle of the cup. The gps locator will give you step by step directions to every single place you can walk to in your Nike+iPhone sneakers.

And of course all of this will be tied into the subscription service “TrendyMe” (formerly known as iTools, aka, .Mac, aka, MobileMe) so you can get a play by play of your whole day and publish this all on facebook with a tally of everything you bought so in good emulation everyone on your friends list can follow your footsteps and purchase the same exact stuff increasing the trendiness and fashion and becoming perfect mtv wannabe atuomatons for the corporate fashion world.

Oh and the iMug will be able to play Tetris as you take a sip you just wiggle your nose to move the pieces.

sigh

The iphone is nice. WHat it does it does very well BUT what it does is the same thing all the other devices have been doing for awhile. iPHone is just doing it in a better GUI way.

Push services Apple should have had years ago, the same with Exchange compatibility.

In the end the “news” from the keynote in summary was

the iPhone 3G is now as fast as the other “smart phones”

the iPhone 3G has a GPS locater in it now like most other “smart phones” already had

the iPhone 3G now supports Enterprise technologies (ie exchange) like all the other “smart phones” already did.

In other words. The iPhone has now caught up to the technology that has already been available for over 2 years that most other smart phones have already been using.

A whole keynote and the main focus of the WWDC is summed up as

“Apple finally caught up with their competitors in the smart phone business.”

I really hope Steve doesn’t get too focused on the iPhone like he did the LISA.

Man, all this bitterness is depressing. Yes, it’s a developer conference - which is why the first entire hour of the keynote was aimed at them - but the keynote is also a massive front-page-news media event. You really think Jobs is going to spend two hours talking about whether or not Carbon will still be in 10.6? Zzzzzz.

No, he hasn’t. In fact, Jobs (or rather Apple, but let’s not split hairs) has done exactly the opposite, specifically forbidding Adobe and Sun from making their own runtime implementations and evangelising AJAX tech instead.

When Apple redesigned their website to coincide with the iPhone launch, they eradicated all flash or java elements from it. The entire Apple website, complete with all those fancy transitions, pop-down search results, and popup movies, is standards-compliant. Jobs wants to kill Flash, not embrace it.

In terms of hardware, sure. But strangely, a full 18 months after it was first revealed, none of their competitors have come anywhere close to matching the iPhone’s usability. Which is the very, very big point I think you’re missing here.

Look, I’m as old-school Apple as they come - this is my 20th year as a Mac user. But I’m delighted about this, and all their recent movements into consumer electronics. A company that wants to sell me products that make the increasingly digital-reliant lifestyle we all lead easier to use and more reliable, leveraging technology and know-how already matured over the past ten years? Sign me the hell up.

It’s not like they’re going to release the iPhone SDK for Windows, you know? All those Windows-compliant apps are there for one reason only; to encourage switching. The Mac ain’t going nowhere.

I am a little confused

The other fear I am hearing is if Adobe finally finishes the “missing product” and iPhone strays away from the ARM chip will that delay Flash development further?

Or is this more manuvering like the YouTube native features (ipHone and Apple TV) which when you read the fine print you find the one where you can only watch videos that have been rolled over to the H.264 Codec.

I guess my frustration stems from the fact that Apple is becoming more aligned with Trendy Toys instead of Productive Tools in my opinion. They are more worried about glitzy press releases and making releases early or on time instead of worrying more so about quality (Leopard). They delay everything for the iPhone, they dedicate most of their resources to the iPhone. Yes it is nice. Yes it is helping the stocks rise! Yeah!

But for those that use Macs as tools for productivity are feeling more and more like old news.

More and more stories of lemon hardware, glitchy software, bad user experiences at a vital time when Apple is expanding its market share it is acting more and more like an Electronics Company and less like the Mac experience many of us have enjoyed since the Apple II.

So we have a phone that now is on level with many other phones, has less market share, but has the most inspiring GUI. Already companies are making knock-offs so we all know the iPhone has become a household name.

But Apple is expending so much energy on things MOST Mac Users don’t use or will never use.
In other words a bunch of passing trend fads.

Wow. I can sync my address book with my email and my calendar through a subscription service…

This of course is such a must have amongst all mac users that things like hardware revisions, supporting blu ray (big deal for audio and video editors), actually fixing the bugs in Leopard, revising the MBA, the Mac mini which is very long in the tooth, the MBP which is using a design that is over 8 years old, the Mac Pro case design is long since been reused enough, and maybe designing a mid size tower, all of these just pale in comparison when it comes to syncing with face-book.

I mean look at the hidden feature in Leopard. You can sync your Google account (gmail) with your own address book. Whats the catch? You have to OWN an iPhone or iPod Touch in order for the hidden preference to become available. Unless of course you hack it.
arstechnica.com/journals/apple.a … ryone-else

But that is just another example. A simple system preference that is witheld from the mac community, that is unless you are in with the in crowd and bought an iPhone or iPod touch.

More and more I see little things like this happening and it makes me shake my head. Will Apple fall?

No. If anything they will exceed very well.

Will Apple be like they were?

No. Think more on the lines of MTV.
Music Television. Rember MTV was a channel for watching Music Videos! And look what it has become!

A very trendy reality tv show for teenagers.

Apple seems to be sailing the same cash cow seas.

I presume the next very important thing on Apple’s mind will probably be something in a clothing line or maybe sunglasses…

But it seems they are forgetting the path that brought them this far…

Sad Panda here.

I hope. No I pray I am wrong and this current method of business is just “fad”.

After all “Snow Leopard” should have been part of Leopard to begin with but they had to meet that 12-18 Month promise Steve made, even though they pulled resources away from the OSX development and testing and delayed it in order to get the iPhone to market. Then they rushed out Leopard and their next big feat in OSX development?

Finish fixing Leopard.

For a fee.

A big A-men to all that Antony said.
I’m buying two of the new iPhones this summer.
Main reason: Verizon is costing me a bundle for 3 lines.
With MobileMe, I’ll get push-synch of contacts, calendars, and e-mail
To all my Macs and phones. Gotta love it!

Don’t worry about the computers. The new iMacs are outta sight.

Druid,

AT&T has upped the monthly fee by $10 a month and increased the unlimited Data package to $30 a month in order to cover the upfront costs of subsidizing the iPhone. So don’t be surprised at forking out $100 or more a month per phone. (I think this move by AT&T will still keep the phone out of reach of many people)

Good thing is Mail, Address Book and iCal should all support not only the MobileMe services but Exchange servers as well so your choice of syncing services has grown as well. This should also help with Macs appearing in some Enterprise situations easier.

The bad news is you can no longer activate an iPhone through iTunes. You have to take into a physical store to have it activated even if you buy it online from the Apple Store.
I think this was done to close the security loop so in the future “legal unlocked phones” will be scarce or non-existant and in the US it will be AT&T only for the next 4 years.

I think that’s exactly it, yeah. They just want people to stop using flash. And, to be honest, I’m 100% behind it. Nothing makes me close a browser window faster than flash.

Well, for a start I’d disagree that the iPhone isn’t a “Productive Tool”, and so would all the business guys who were featured in that keynote, I’m sure. But that aside - why does this matter? Are we not allowed to use technology for, you know, fun and recreation? Why so serious?

The two of which are almost certainly related. You hear more stories about hardware glitches and so on because more and more people are using Macs. As a percentage, my own unscientific observation is that really, it’s about the same as it ever was. Better than PCs on average, not 100% perfect (what is?).

People said the same thing about the iPod. How many Mac owners are there now without an iPod?

I’ve said this before, but I’ll reiterate - there are plenty of things Apple could do better. I don’t see the major issues with Leopard that you seem to have, case design refresh is really not something anyone should get their panties in a bunch about, and you can forget about that “mid size tower” because the Mac Mini is the headless mac everyone asked for… but I agree that things like Blu-Ray support, better graphics cards, less reliance on iTunes etc. are all things worth complaining about. Apple aren’t perfect, and I’d never say they are.

But that’s kind of my point. They never were perfect, and the “good old days” never actually existed. It’s all just rose-tinted nostalgia. Right now, Apple is producing the best hardware and software, with better support, that it ever has. But because they’ve also tapped a goldmine with the iPod and iPhone, people seem to think they’re somehow abandoning computers.

The sky is falling!

PS: nobody knows yet whether 10.6 will be full-price, free, half-price or whatever.

Yeah, that’s one thing I am pissed at them about. Totally counterproductive, in my opinion. At least we’ll be able to take out a pay-as-you-go package here in the UK, but I do feel for those of you in the US. AT&T totally stiffed you.

Antony - really, I’m just pretty miffed that there wasn’t a vast amount for the vast majority of developers in the keynote at what is supposed to be the developers’ conference. I understand it’s also a big press event and hoop-la, and fair enough to use it as a platform for launching the 3G iPhone. What’s not fair is to spend two whole hours doing that - two whole hours on the iPhone. Half an hour, okay; but no the whole thing. Because whilst the keynote may be free advertising, there are hundreds of developers sitting in there who have paid over a thousand dollars for the privilege of being there, and unless they were all thinking of developing iPhone apps then I wonder what was in it for them. It seemed to fail to recognise the developers to which the whole conference is supposed to be dedicated. I also didn’t see anything in it for me, a developer devoted to the platform.

But also, I can’t help thinking: It’s a ****ing phone. Get over it. To me, it would be like spending the whole keynote talking about the iPod. Yeah, it’s great. It’s a lovely piece of technology (hey, I even have an iPod). Well done you. Now what about the developer’s conference?

Best,
Keith