WWDC Recap - Finally!

About 3 weeks ago Apple held its annual conference at Moscone West, where Apple C.E.O. Steve Jobs would take the stage to commence the weeks activities. He opened by saying that they were going to be talking about iPhone that morning. Then after lunch they’d be having a session with Bertrand Serlet who will introduce Snow Leopard.
The keynote started with a talk about the iPhone 2.0 Software. First topic: Enterprise support in the new software. To sum it all up really quick; this means than an employee can do push forwarding/active sync with their business or a business with their employees. Also adding support for VoIP, etc etc, To the average consumer this means nothing, to businesses and their employees this means a lot.
Next in the program came a long talk about the iPhone SDK (Software Developers Kit), if you don’t know what this is, this lets third-parties build applications for the iPhone. Scott Forstall (SVP of iPhone Software) started by giving a run through of the SDK for those who may have missed it back in March. There wasn’t a lot to this part, just him showing how quick and easy it is to build an App in the SDK. Then he let some various developers show off their creations, starting with Sega. Sega had presented the first stages of their game for the iPhone, Super Monkey Ball back in March, and simply showed how it had evolved since then. Then eBay showed off their application for the iPhone; which I found useless because first off, I don’t use eBay at all. Also, I don’t really think many people are going to spend time bidding on items through their phone. Yes, I understand the iPhone is a mobile computer so to speak, but it still seems pretty useless.
Then Loopt, TypePad, and the Mobile News Productions made their presentations. Loopt, a social network that uses the iPhone’s “location base” to find friends nearby. This was the beginning of developers talking about “location base” (besides when S. Forestall mentioned it) which hinted at GPS in the (rumored) new iPhone. TypePad presented a nice looking blogging application, but I wouldn’t use it simply because I don’t want to have to pay for a blogging service. The Mobile News Network application uses your location to find news thats relative to you, you can also view the photos and video that are related to those articles.
Thats when Pangea Software took the stage, at first I seemed excited for their presentation because, Pangea is a Mac game developer. However, I lost interest when they mentioned they were simply porting some Mac games over to the iPhone, both really boring. The first was Cro Mag Rally (a game which was a big deal when OX 10.1 was released), the second was a puzzle game named Enigmo (which looked pretty boring to me). (All the bloggers who I pay attention to were saying they were bored back when Sega presented, and now it was just plain dreadful.) Then this guy came on stage who made an application called “Band” for the iphone which lets you play software instruments on the iPhone - interesting but still nothing too exciting. Then a man from MLB came up and presented a baseball App for the iPhone which had some really cool features, considering this was being run on a phone (for example, you can watch the game almost as its happening; its like a minute and a half behind he said). Finally, there were 2 more developers who presented, an anatomy application for medical students, and another game (which looked really cool but it seems like it’d be really hard to navigate on a phone). Then Scott closed with Apples push notification solution which lets Apps notify without running in the background (which would suck up CPU power).
Finally Steve, came back on stage and gave us a quick run through of the new features that will be in the 2.0 software which are: contact search, iWork and Office support (so you can read documents sent to you via email; you can’t edit to my current knowledge), Bulk delete/move of eMail messages, the ability to save email images, also when you turn the iPhone landscape while in calculator it transforms into an advanced calculator, it now has parental controls, and finally tons of language support. Jobs closed by saying that the new software will be free for iPhone users, and $9.95 (USD) for iPod Touch owners.
Then Steve said that they had something new for us, finally in anticipation of the rumored iPhone 3G we were sitting on the edge of our seats. However, we were disappointed again, because he asked Phil Schiller up on stage to introduce: Mobile Me. I started watching Apple’s stock as it fell due to disappointed Apple fanboys who were anticipating the iPhone 3G. Basically Mobile Me is dot-Mac’s replacement and is the same as Enterprise except its for the average person and not business executives. It simply keeps your iPhone in sync with your computers (both windows and Mac) and vise versa. So that if some of your information changes, such as a calendar appointment or an address change, all your devises are updated so that you always have the latest, up to date information. I think Mobile Me is a nice replacement for dot-Mac, and its very useful, but that $99 a year price tag is just too high for me.
At this point there was only 15 minutes left in the keynote, and Apple stock had dropped about 10 dollars. Thats whens Steve started talking more about the new goals for iPhone, the first one: 3G. That’s when the crowd went nuts, and Jobs unveiled the iPhone 3G. The new iPhone features a black (or white) plastic back, with recessed headphone jack, and metal buttons (the volume rocker and silent switch), besides those 3 things; there aren’t many cosmetic changes to the iPhone (thank goodness). Obviously, the iPhone 3G has 3G internet support, which is supposedly just a hair slower than actual wi-fi, which is amazing if thats true for everywhere (its not a surprise when you’re getting good speeds in a big city). The iPhone also packs in “real” GPS and better battery life. Apple also says that iPhone will be available in 70 countries by the end of the year, which is a remarkable feat.
However, the most amazing part of the iPhone 3G (at least in my opinion) is the remarkable price drop. When the iPhone was originally released, the iPhone 8GB was $599, the current (original) iPhone is $399, and now its only $199, The 16GB model is available for only $299, which is so amazing. Sure, it seems like there are way more strings attached, but whatever I’ll take it!
So enough of iPhone and the keynote, now I need to talk about OS X (10.6) “Snow Leopard.” Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Okay, maybe I’m not giving it a fair chance, but c’mon I posted a blog about this in April. 10.5 is not mature enough to be passed off for 10.6, however in a way Apple justifies its move to 10.6. What Apple has done is they’ve put a hold on the new features in Snow Leopard and focuses directly on performance, this is good, because Leopard definitely needs some improvement. So, in a way I’m all for Snow Leopard (and I like Apple’s play on words with how they make the name alike Leopard but not exactly Leopard), but at the same time can’t help but feel that this shouldn’t be a “major” upgrade (meaning it should be like 10.5.5 instead of 10.6). So thats my little WWDC recap. Sorry its late, and sorry its so long.