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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.
This whole conference was crap. All Apple did was bash Windows, introduce a service pack for Leopard priced at 29USD, and introduce a phone which, well, is only evolutionary, and tell everyone in the US that tethering via AT&T isn't an option for god-knows-what-reason.
They also took out an ExpressCard slot from their MacBook Pros, worsened the battery situation on said laptops, and generally just ripped everyone off. What a waste of time.
What was with the Windows-bashing? They didn't even give a reason. All they said was that it's built on top of Vista... well, duh? Snow Leopard is built on top of Leopard. That's supposed to mean something? Apple is spending a good amount of effort trying to become the biggest troll on the planet... for what? What's the benefit? Too many of my friends were turned off by the unnecessary Windows-bashing; I guess if Apple was trying to win over the enterprise crowd, they did a good job of alienating them right from the start.
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Apple agreed to the app and it was in the appstore for a day, then pulled it without word. Then they agreed to put it back up, then after waiting a long while, they finally said "no" without explanation. I would say they broke the original agreement to sell the tethering app through the app store because someone in their dev group said it was supposed to be a killer feature in iphone OS 3.0. Abuse of monopoly power. Or... They killed the nullriver app because AT&T told them to behind the scenes. Collusion and abuse of monopoly power.
OS 3.0 features : no surprise as per the beta, ie = where are the Java support ? the Flash support ? Tethering is fine but is not allowed yet on major operator :(
3GS features : where are the SD port ? the front camera for 3G visual call ? the standard plug port like miniUSB or microUSB ?
This is still a brillant product, but with new Android phones coming soon (next week ?), I am not sure it will keep contenders far away from the apple's tree.
The brilliant idea of the keynote : zipcar, just a cool way to rent a car, like the one we have in europe to borrow a public bike (velib, velov http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velib ). But we don't have remote horn on our iphone app :)
Let's wait for iPhone 4.
Go ahead and mod me troll, but... oh wow a Slashdot news story on the same day as the news?!
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
Aww, the poor reality-isolated fanboys threw me a flamebait mod.
I'm not the one who copied the Windows 7 taskbar into the Snow Leopard dock. Don't get upset with me. It wasn't me "starting my photocopier."
Face it, fanboys - Apple thrives on the adversarial mentality. They can't promote themselves on merit because they have exactly the same shit as everyone else, give or take some details.
And I own several Apple products. This isn't just some blind bullshit I'm throwing out here. I'm just not susceptible to the marketing. I don't believe owning a Mac makes me better than a Windows user, no matter how badly Steve Jobs wants me to feel that way.
If you can't buy it over the counter sans service contract for $99, then it's NOT a $99 iPhone. It's a lie!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."