During my break from blogging the the internet has been busy with Apple announcing and releasing iPhone 3.0, WWDC and Palm releasing the Palm Pre. In this post I will attempt to catch up on all I have missed and give my views.
WWDC
With Apple pulling out of Macworld in the years to come WWCD is left as Apple only regular annual event. Even without Steve Jobs giving the keynote it was a riveting presentation to watch and there were many exciting announcements.
MacBook Pro’s
The new Macbook Pro line now includes a 13″, 15″ and 17″. The introduction of the new 13″ initially confused me as to where Apple are going with this, but after a bit of thought I believe Apple are moving their laptops in to the MacBook Pro label leaving the MacBook label free for something new.
As an avid photographer I have been waiting for the day that Apple would add some sort of a card reader into there laptops and finally they have. The addition of the SD card slot may seem insignificant but it is one of those little thing like the backlit keyboard that will help set Apple laptops apart from the rest.
Another feature Apple were emphasising was the improved 7 hour battery life. I have used my MBP for nearly two years now. As a heavy user of my laptop the battery is nearly dead (lasting just over 1 hour on a full charge). Apple are claiming that their battery will last 1000 recharges compared to a typical 300, if this translates into real life use then I am one step closer to an upgrade.
With all these great updates you would expect in the economic climate of today that the prices would rise but Apple lowered the prices.
Snow Leopard
As expected Apple went into some depth on the new OSX release. They focused on the refinement they had made, for example the reduction of the OS by 6GB and on a MBA that would be a significant help. There are also simple speed improvements throughout the OS due to many of the refinements. They spent some time discussing the new improved Quicktime 10 and the addition of exchange support.
Apple are billing this update as a no thrills update with a software speed bump, because of this again they came out with some radical pricing to entice existing uses to buy it. At $29 could anyone say no to updating?
iPhone 3.0
Before WWDC Apple held an event to talk about the 3.0 update. Some of the highlights were cut and paste, tethering and in app purchasing. Cut, copy and paste were finally announced and from playing around with it well implemented. Tethering has been a hot topic of discussion with a few free work around’s already been put out.
With the ability now to create turn by turn GPS apps, the in app purchasing is being used as a subscription method. Spotlight is another feature that in my experience has been very useful. The average person has page after page of apps on there iPhone and with spotlight it makes it easier to launch all those apps.
A feature that has been neglected is the ability for apps to now interact with add on hardware. This would be great in a word processing app where you could add a keyboard, but there is much more you could do, a barcode scanner for delicious library, or even if you want to buy something off amazon you could find it in a real store and scan the barcode then purchase it from amazon while standing in the store.
A feature that was only announced at WWDC was Find My Phone, it uses the MobileMe service to track down your iPhone and place its location on a map. We have already seen how it can save people from loosing there phones and might make MobileMe a worthwhile purchase.
iPhone 3GS
The climax of WWDC culminated in the announcement of the next version of the iPhone. The new phone offers an improved camera with 3 megapixels, auto focus and video. The new phone is reportedly much faster and has a built in compass which dramatically improves the GPS experience. There is no alteration to the case design which in my opinion was a mistake, the matt backing which we saw in many of the leaked photos would have been a good choice for the new 3GS model.
Palm Pre
Just before the announcement of the iPhone 3GS Palm released the Palm Pre. From what I can gather from reviews of the Palm Pre, physically the device is nicely designed but where it really excels is in the Web OS it uses. Its use of gestures makes it easy to navigate around the phone and the UI is very good. Palm are also taking a very active ad campaign against the iPhone as users come to an end of their two year contracts. The Palm Pre is by far the iPhone’s best competitor but personally I think the iPhone still offers more.
