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Apple's WWDC Unveils iPhone 3.0, OpenCL, Laptop Updates, and More
Lots of big news from WWDC today including updates to almost all of Apple's laptops. They added a 13-inch version to the MacBook Pro line, updated the MacBook Air, and added a few new ports to some of the machines including an SD slot and firewire 800 port. Software updates saw Safari 4 launched, OS X updates including threading changes, Exchange support to mail, calendar, and address book, and OpenCL a new open graphics standard. The iPhone got quite a bit of love in 3.0, much of it just confirming older news. Cut, copy, and paste, shake to undo, developer APIs, Cocoa Touch support for text, landscape mode updates, spotlight, and MMS all made the bullet list. You will now also be able to rent and purchase movies directly from your iPhone. Other new features in 3.0 include the much debated tethering ability, allowing you to use your iPhone as a cellular modem (unfortunately there was no mention of AT&T actually supporting this feature, a wonder there wasn't a riot), integrated TomTom GPS navigation, and game features galore. New functionality also allows you to locate your iPhone via MobileMe, play a sound to help you locate it (regardless if it is set to silent), and even wipe your data remotely. The New iPhone hardware updates, "3GS", adds a 3 megapixel auto-focus camera, voice interfaces, twice the processing power, and hardware encryption. The 3GS comes in 16GB ($199) and 32GB ($299), pushing the 3G (which they are keeping on the market) to $99. Lots of other small updates amidst the bustle, looks like another successful WWDC.
FTA: and OpenCL a new open graphics standard
Not quite.
...a framework for writing programs that execute across heterogeneous platforms consisting of CPUs, GPUs, and other processors.
OpenCL is like CUDA, but supposed to be more open along the lines of OpenGL, hence the name. The same guys who manage OpenGL (Khronos) manage OpenCL as well. You could probably use it to do graphics, but that would be stupid.
You are still innocent until proven guilty. What's changed is what they do to innocent people. - notnAP, #26891325
Software updates saw Safari 4 launched, OS X updates including threading changes, Exchange support to mail, calendar, and address book, and OpenCL a new open graphics standard.
To be clear, the updates to OS X referred to are features of OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) which will ship in September and cost $29. It is not an update to 10.5 and is not yet available outside of developer previews.
Requires new two-year AT&T wireless service contract, sold separately to qualified customers; credit check required; must be 18 or older. For non-qualified customers, including existing AT&T customers who want to upgrade from another phone or replace an iPhone 3G, the price with a new two-year agreement is $499 (8GB), $599 (16GB), or $699 (32GB). (from http://www.apple.com/iphone/buy/) Kudos for the new corporate aftertaste and giant spanking to current customers!
That $99 price is WITH a contract.
Also, the 8GB iPhone 3G was $199 while the 8GB iPod touch 2G was $229.
Uh.
How about my Nokia N82? Or the N71 I had before that?
What about the el-cheapo LG I had before then?
Pretty much every 3g phone has a front facing video camera (albeit most of them are 320x200 - 640x400).
It's $99 after the subsidies from the 2 year AT&T plan. You have to buy an iPod touch outright.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
It was removed from the North American App store. In North America the Iphone is exclusive to ATT. ATT does not allow tethering. You will not be able to use the Apple tethering app in North America.
CF slots are too bulky for Apple's design. Atleast thats my guess.
The Nokia N95 had a front (and rear) facing camera 2 years ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N95#Multimedia_Features
The Toshiba VM-4050 had a forward facing camera. There were two screens, a small one on the outside and a larger one when you flipped it open. Res wasn't great though. http://reviews.cnet.com/cell-phones/toshiba-vm-4050-sprint/4505-6454_7-30734023.html
Sorry about the mess.
You're seriously complaining that the tech toy you bought went down in price and was replaced by a newer, better model? Have you never bought a computer before? Some might think I'm being a troll, but seriously, this is nothing new to tech products across the board - tech toy is released, sells, goes down in price and is replaced by better model, rinse and repeat until the model is phased out. Nothing new.
New to buying Apple products? Consult: http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/
Old Apple consumer getting ready to buy a new Apple product? Consult: http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/
Analyst/Gypsy Fortune Teller (their almost the same thing) guessing what products Apple is likely to release soon? Consult: http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/
Excuse me?
1) Apple spent maybe a minute bashing Windows. Since OS X is a competitor to Windows, this makes sense.
2) Snow Leopard is not a service pack. It has new features, some of which are revolutionary such as a 64-bit kernel, exchange support, OpenCL, Grand Central and dramatic performance improvements. http://www.apple.com/macosx/
3) Perhaps they took out the express slot because not enough of their customers wanted it. I have a MacBook Pro and never saw the use for it.
4) The batteries now have way more battery life, which isn't "worsening" the battery situation in my book. Perhaps you're referring to the fact that the battery is not removable? I don't see that as a major issue. How often does a MacBook Pro user replace their battery?
5) How did Apple "rip everyone off"? Apple is pricing their notebooks more aggressive *and* improving the hardware.
6) Vista was badly received and Microsoft built Windows 7 on top of it. That was their point. I can't say whether or not Vista sucks, since I haven't used it that much.
7) How is Apple "the biggest troll on the planet" for making fun of Microsoft for less than a minute? Other companies do the same things to their competitors.
8) How does less than a minute of making fun of one of their competitors "turn off the enterprise crowd"? Oh, I forgot. All of your friends must comprise 100% of the "enterprise crowd". Maybe features like Grand Central Station, OpenCL, 64-bitness and Exchange Support, not to mention remote wipe and encryption will win the enterprise crowd. After all, you don't get enterprise accounts by selling vapourware. Apple knows this.
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For a little bit there was a new page:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/snowleopard/
It was pretty light on details and basically had all the same info that was on this PR page that now 404s:
http://www.apple.com/ca/press/2008_06/snow_leopard.html
Here is the original that I gleaned from ars:
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/8300945231/m/102001262931/p/9
"SAN FRANCISCO--June 9, 2008--Apple® today previewed Mac OS® X Snow Leopard, which builds on the incredible success of OS X Leopard and is the next major version of the world's most advanced operating system. Rather than focusing primarily on new features, Snow Leopard will enhance the performance of OS X, set a new standard for quality and lay the foundation for future OS X innovation. Snow Leopard is optimized for multi-core processors, taps into the vast computing power of graphic processing units (GPUs), enables breakthrough amounts of RAM and features a new, modern media platform with QuickTime® X. Snow Leopard includes out-of-the-box support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 and is scheduled to ship in about a year.
"We have delivered more than a thousand new features to OS X in just seven years and Snow Leopard lays the foundation for thousands more," said Bertrand Serlet, Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering. "In our continued effort to deliver the best user experience, we hit the pause button on new features to focus on perfecting the world's most advanced operating system."
Snow Leopard delivers unrivaled support for multi-core processors with a new technology code-named "Grand Central," making it easy for developers to create programs that take full advantage of the power of multi-core Macs. Snow Leopard further extends support for modern hardware with Open Computing Language (OpenCL), which lets any application tap into the vast gigaflops of GPU computing power previously available only to graphics applications. OpenCL is based on the C programming language and has been proposed as an open standard. Furthering OS X's lead in 64-bit technology, Snow Leopard raises the software limit on system memory up to a theoretical 16TB of RAM.
Using media technology pioneered in OS X iPhone(TM), Snow Leopard introduces QuickTime X, which optimizes support for modern audio and video formats resulting in extremely efficient media playback. Snow Leopard also includes Safari® with the fastest implementation of JavaScript ever, increasing performance by 53 percent, making Web 2.0 applications feel more responsive.*
For the first time, OS X includes native support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 in OS X applications Mail, iCal® and Address Book, making it even easier to integrate Macs into organizations of any size."
Any iphone devs have any idea how the new graphics chipset might affect things? Are there going to be GS-specific graphics API calls?
Also I wonder if we'll see 3gs-only games? Obviously it would unwise to do so from a sales perspective, but I wonder if apple will even allow such a thing.
Yes, the GS has OpenGL ES 2.0, which is not backwards compatible with OpenGL ES 1.1. So we'll probably see some GS-only games.
Really? The fact they seem to have seriously updated the Finder back end code is good. The faster mail is nice. The full Exchange support is going to be huge for many people.
It's $30. You're not forced to upgrade. You're not being asked for $400 for Business Ultimate Platinum edition.
Just because Apple isn't competing in the $200 netbook category doesn't mean they are screwing up. It means they care about the customer experience.
When did Apple ever release "me too!" products to jump into temporarily hot markets?
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
The place I think Apple is still blowing it is in the "netbook" space. I will not spend over $1,000 for an Air to just do email and surf the net. In fact I just bought a Dell Mini 12 with Ubuntu for that, and at $500 is much easier on the wallet. No entry here by Apple despite Apple having a Mobile ready OS, unlike bloated Windows (reason why netbooks run XP), which I just do not get. Just do not fully understand Apple's poo-pooing the netbook space. I see a Netbook as a supplement to my bigger system, that I prefer not to carry. The iPhone can do some basic stuff on the road, but the screen is just not big enough for "surfing" the web, and handling documents etc...
Based on my experience with the Mini 9 and Windows 7 RC compared to the same machine with Ubuntu and XP, I think it's going to take a lot to beat MS in terms of performance on a netbook any time soon.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
Taking a picture of yourself with the iPhone is easy. When you can see yourself in the reflection of the Apple logo, take your picture. Works just fine and dandy.
Haven't people learned by now that this is total BS? 64-bit addressing is independent of instructions per cycle, bus width, or anything like that. (Of course, newer 64-bit systems may be happen to be faster for other, unrelated reasons.) The old "64-bit is twice as fast as 32-bit" is a line of hooey that has been sold to the public for years now (I recall it gaining prominence when Intel started promoting its Itanium plans), but I thought it was finally dying out.
If a thing is not diminished by being shared, it is not rightly owned if it is only owned & not shared. S. Augustine
Another Apple tradition gone by the wayside: Apple has long supported their older hardware better than most PC makers. (I still visit classrooms quite happily running Mac OS 8 on old PowerPC hardware, for example.) But the new Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) will be the first that will not run on PowerPC Macs. That makes my barely-out-of warranty PowerBook G4 end of line as far as Apple is concerned. I'm not alone in this--I don't know how many million PPC Macs are still running, but Apple was selling them new three years ago. I'm more than a little annoyed. No doubt soon I won't be able to get Apple OS security patches, updates to iLife and iTunes, etc. It's almost like running Windows XP. Fortunately, it's still Mach *nix based, and as long as FOSS developers check their code against the PPC compilers, I can still get current versions of Firefox, Thunderbird, etc.
no phone in the history of the universe has had a front facing video camera
Except almost every other freaking 3G phone ever made.
The Nokia N79 would like to have a word with you.
Most carriers don't want front facing cameras because then people will start asking for video conferencing and that goes against the philosophy of "If the customer buys a data plan, it must be as hard to use and crappy as possible to drive them back to the insanely profitable SMS and MMS instead". Video Conferencing doesn't qualify, it uses way too many bits unless you really work hard to make it near unusable.
I read the internet for the articles.
Yeah, you can buy the 13.3" MacBook Pro they announced, which adds Firewire 800 and an SD card slot to the MacBook configuration they've dropped. Sadly you will have to pay an extra -$100 for this configuration.
no phone in the history of the universe has had a front facing video camera
You are wrong: Nokia N82 has both a 5Mpixel camera at back and a 352x288 front cam specifically for video calls.
Nope. The 8GB version is only a 3G, not a GS. That means it has the old camera, no compass, etc.
Pretty good deal actually.
I wonder if they'll kill the $100 version when they run out of stock, or keep it for the market share.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I'm gonna buy one and put it next to my Apple II GS. :)
Was that a joke? Some of us actually HAVE working Apple IIGS machines.
Too bad the comparatively low-res iPhone (competing phones are at WVGA resolution) is still much higher-res than an Apple IIGS.
I'm _still_ looking for a TransWarp GS accelerator board for my GS ... I'd like to get it beyond the default max of 2.8mHz. Maybe some day I'll find one on eBay. *sigh*
It's good to bring up the TCO including monthly fees, but it would be good to compare that to other cell phone plans in order to be fair.
Any other random phone might cost you $0 + $45/mo x 24 months = $1080. So even if the TCO of the iPhone is $1700-$99, it's only $521 (32%) more for the Internet access, built-in iPod everywhere you go without carrying two devices, etc. over two years. This assumes you'd have a cell phone no matter what.
Newer DLSR's are pretty much moving in bulk to SD cards already. CF is already on the way out for pro gear.
No, this is incorrect. Low-end consumer dSLRs are certainly using SD; but those aren't pro gear. Pretty much all the new higher-end cameras from Nikon (D700, D3, D3x), Canon (EOS 5D mark II), Sony (Alpha A900), even Hasselblad (H3DII) are using CF.
The only higher-end cameras I can find that use SD are the Leica Rangefinders - and people might debate whether or not those are "pro" in the usual sense of the word (they are certainly pricey!).
#DeleteChrome
the express card slot is slightly less worthless... I can think of only a single purpose for it (that is not duplicated by the firewire port, firewire does nearly everything for expansion purposes), a 3G card
eSATA is the other big one. It's faster than FireWire (even FW800) and on OS X supports SMART monitoring so you can get warnings before your drive fails.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Not just requires Leopard - it runs only on Macs with Core 2 (or some Xeon) processors. That means not only no PPC love, but even the first several Intel Macs are out of luck. Like my wife's 2-year old laptop (only 1 year old or so when they finally released Java 6).
HCSD is quickly replacing MiniDV tape in "prosumer" video cameras.
I'm using all of my mod points to mod ancient memes down. Please join me.
Most 3G phones have front facing camera's. When 3 (a UK Mobile phone company) first started all of their LG and Motorolla phones had front facing VGA cameras so you could make video calls, interestingly the first 3G Nokia they sold didn't support video calling. Some Nokia Offeringswith a front facing camer
Nokia N Series
Nokia 5800, two cameras on this baby
The Sept 2006 released Nokia N95 which has two cameras and a tilt sensor
The 2006 E63
Sony Ericsson
The 2006 P990
2006 Sony Ericsson with a full VGA Camera on the front
CyberShot phone!
Motorola
The Razor
Your right obiviously no one has put a video camera in the front of a phone along with one in the back so users can take decent phones with one and make video calls with the other. Thats crazyness! My nokia 5800 will let me choose which camera (back or front) to use to take video/photos and which camera to use for calling, its certainly a new innovative feature.
32-bit is with alpha.
You're right. 24 is good, 18 is what they are.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Can't Apple produce 15" or 13" laptops without that damn glossy display? These mirrors mounted on laptops get really annoying, and I'm not the only one who thinks that non-glossy displays are superior to their allegedly cheaper glossy displays.
One more guy who's looking for a used MBP on ebay.
Why buy used? There are other options for anti-glare screens.
They just didn't have an announcement ready.
See the engadget article, while brief confirms its availability http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/08/atandt-well-offer-tethering-on-the-iphone/
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
CF is being phased out. Most of the new DSLRs coming out are using SDHC. As usual, Apple is dropping support for old formats, which inevitably ticks some people off.