The IT Nerd

Today is the opening of the World Wide Developers Conference which means that Apple God CEO Steve Jobs usually has something to announce. So without further ado, here’s the major points conveyed to the thousands of Fanbois in attendance:

• The iPad will get an update “later this month” to allow in device PDF Viewing.
• “The Steve” spent some time defending both HTML5 and the App Store approval process which have both created all sorts of negative attention for Apple. He claims that 95% of apps are approved within 7 days and the ones that are rejected are kiboshed because they crash, use private APIs, or it doesn’t work the way the developer said it would. Just a thought, I don’t think that this explanation is going to be enough to make the critics go away.
• Jobs also mentioned a Nielsen study which says that in the US the number one smartphone is RIM with 35% marketshare, followed by iPhone with 28%, Windows Mobile  at 19%, and Android at 9%. I find it difficult to believe that Android is only at 9% in the US. But I guess he had to find a study that minimizes their biggest threat.
• Jobs announced the new iPhone 4 which pretty much is the same one that was lost in a bar by an Apple engineer and led to a real circus on the Interwebs and other media. It’s (as we already know) thinner and uses a MicroSIM card, and has an integrated antenna. One thing that popped out today is that the new iPhone has a Retina Display. Never heard of it? Neither have I. But according to “El Jobso,” the display has four times the amount of pixels compared to a regular display. The net result is really sharp text and images. Steve would have demoed how webpages look and some other things related to this display, but the demo didn’t work due to WiFi issues (or perhaps he was using AT&T and didn’t want to admit it). One thing is for sure, someone is going to get fired over this. But back to the iPhone 4. They’ve added a 3 axis gyroscope, and they’ve tied the accelerometer, compass, and gyroscope together for six axis of movement. Gamers rejoice as that will make games way more fun. The camera is a 5 megapixel one with a backside illuminated sensor and a LED flash for great low light shots.  Oh yeah, it does 720P video too. It will come in 16GB and 32GB flavors. I’ll let you look at the specs on Apple.com but I’ll say this, everything that Gizmodo said in their report on the iPhone that they “acquired” is accurate. Clearly that was the best $5000 that they ever spent. I hope they don’t get tossed in the slammer over it. You can pre-order yours on June 15th (Assuming you’re in the US, France, Germany, UK, or Japan) and they will start shipping on the 24th. They’ll be shipping to more countries “in July.”
• Apple has ported iMovie to the iPhone. The question is, why wouldn’t I just pull the video into my Mac and edit it in iMovie? But I guess “The Steve” feels that people want it because it’s coming to your iPhone for $4.99 USD.
• They’ve renamed the iPhone OS to iOS4. They’ve added Bing (I’m guessing that’s a slap at Google) to the available search engines, plus a bunch of other updates including multi-tasking, iBooks, and the aforementioned PDF viewer. It will be available “soon.” One thing that jumps out at me is that iOS is a Cisco trademark. So are Apple and Cisco going to go toe to toe in court and be forced to make nice again? I digress. It will be a free update to iPod Touch users (finally!) and iPhone 3Gs and 3G users (although iPod Touch and iPhone 3G users won’t have all the new cool features) which will be available on June 21st.
• iAds will be available to developers for in product advertising that will help to keep the cost of apps down. Great…. Having said that, the demo that he showed looked very interactive. iAd will go live July 1st for iOS4 devices.
• The “one more thing” that Jobs is famous for was a feature called FaceTime which is on the new iPhone 4. It allows for video calling from iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 (given that it has a front mounted camera). It only works with WiFi, at least for now. According to “The Steve” he has to work a bit with the carriers which I think means that AT&T’s network isn’t up to snuff for this just yet. Also, it’s based on “open standards.” Given Apple’s HTML5 demo page, I’ll take that with a grain of salt.

When Apple decides to post the QuickTime video online. I’ll post it here. But in the meantime, please post a comment or two below with your thoughts.

UPDATE: My “best friends at Rogers” e-mailed me to let me know that they had a new posting on RedBoard that states that Rogers and Fido will be selling the new iPhone “in the coming weeks.” Any other carriers want to give me their plans for the new iPhone?

UPDATE #2: According to this blog post, Cisco has licensed the iOS name to Apple.

UPDATE #3: The Video is now up.

This entry was posted on June 7, 2010 at 2:06 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple, iPhone. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.