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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.
I, too, don't understand why Apple decided to replace the ExpressCard slot with an SD slot on a supposedly pro-level notebook.
The ExpressCard slot provided the only high-speed expansion option on Apple's notebooks. Maybe I'd understand this move if there was a docking station available that added other expansion options, but there isn't.
I do a lot of photography and often shoot gigabytes of raw photos in a single shoot with my dSLR (which uses CF, not SD). Yeah, the sort of work the MacBook Pro is supposed to be aimed at. Besides that, I also do a lot of work with large disk images for the IT work I do.
Doing such work on my aging MBP is a joy because I have an ExpressCard Serial ATA adapter that lets me use external hard drives without the limitations and overhead of USB, FireWire or ethernet. If I wanted, I could also use the card to connect to an external RAID enclosure at SATA II speeds.
What good are the performance increases with the CPU, memory, graphics, etc if the only expansion option that provided the quickest data transfer speeds is now gone? Disk i/o will be an even worse bottleneck for me on a new MBP than my old one. No thanks.
I was looking to upgrade my 2.5 year old MBP with a newer model, but I refuse to do so until Apple brings back an ExpressCard slot or something better.