Apple’s 2009 World Wide Developer Conference is going on this week. Yesterday was the Keynote in which they made a series of exciting announcements… well, exciting to me.
Here are my notes taken while watching the Keynote, in preparation for an on-air discussion for the George Hale – Ric Tyler show on 101.3 / 103.9 The Voice of Maine.
Miss me on the radio this morning? Listen Here.
(One correction, Maine does have 3G service in Portland, but the rest of Maine is out of luck for now.)
What is the WWDC?
A gathering of 5200 developers, attending seminars and workshops, learning and talking about development of products and services in the Apple ecosystem.
Computers
New Laptops, their fastest yet, and at even lower prices.
Macbook Pro – Unibody Aluminum design, new more vivid screens, 7 hours of life, 1000 charges (5 Years), typical battery recharges only 300 times. Fastest laptop they’ve ever made. Up to 8 gigs ram, 500gb hard drive. Lower price. Starting at $1699. Available today.
13 inch has gone pro, backbit keyboard, 7 hours of battery life, new more vivid screens, The “Pro” now available in 13″ package. New lower price, $1199.
Dropped the price of the high end, ultra light weight Macbook Air by $700.
Mac OS X
OS X, use has tripled in the last 2 years.
The current version is 10.5 (Leopard) the next version 10.6 is (Snow Leopard)… Current OS, Leopard is phenomenal, new version Snow Leopard has been almost completely rewritten to been faster and use up less space on the computer. Some really ingenious artificial intelligence built in. Scheduled to be released in September.
While Microsoft is charging hundreds of dollars for users to upgrade from Vista to the newest version of Windows, Windows 7, Apple is charging only $29 for the newest version of OS X.
iPhone
More than 50,000 Apps on the Apple store, available for iPhone and and iPod Touches. Over 40 million iPhone and ipod touches in users. Developers are making everything from games to medical technologies, to watching live television.
The thing to remember is that the iPhone announcement is 2-fold.
The first is that Apple is updating the software with lots of new features, making it faster and more powerful. The second is that there is a whole new iPhone, the iPhone 3GS.
The new software, version 3, has over 100 new features, including:
- Copy and Paste now available. Undo just by shaking the phone.
- Landscape keyboard, now can turn sideways in all apps for wide keyboard.
- Multi Media Messaging (MMS), you can now send pictures, video and audio right from the same place your send texts from. Many phones already offer similar services, but nothing near the quality and ease of use of that the iPhone will feature.
- You can now rent and purchase movies and television shows right on your phone.- New parental controls: settings for age appropriate television shows, movies, and apps.- Companies are now creating apps that will work with different devices, for example diabetics and see their blood glucose levels and it will then calculate home much insulin you will need to take at your next meal, based on the meal.
- Apps that let doctors can directly monitor patients from their phone, stats just like on the monitor in the patients room.
The Star Trek Tri-Corder is here. You can now hook sensors up up to the iPhone, with basically limitless possibilities.
All of these great features come free to iPhone users / Available June 17th.
Your not just buying a phone, you’re buying a hand-held computer with more games and applications at your finger tips than you can find for a computer when you go to Best Buy.
The current iPhone is the iPhone 3G ($99). Now there is a new Model, the iPhone 3GS. ($199) Available June 19th.
It’s the newer speedier model. Looks identical. Faster better gaming, and new features like:
A better camera that takes higher quality pictures, and now records video. You can even edit your video and upload it directly to YouTube.
You can control your phone with your voice, using natural commands like “Call Ric Tyler”, “Play work out mix”, or “What song is this?” and it will tell you.
The iPhone completely changed the way people think about phones and it’s now changing how people think about portable computing. In a few years handheld computers will be as ubiquitous as cell phones are today.
Watch the 2009 WWDC Keynote Click Here.
Tags: Apple, Gadgets, hardware, iPhone, software, Technology, WWDC
