WWDC 2011 Annoucements!

This years World Wide Developers Conference was a blockbuster keynote with three big acts making up an amazing amount of news and information about things coming very soon to the Mac and iOS platforms. I don’t think Apple has made this many changes at once in their history. Coupled with the meteoric growth of the Apple brand in the last several years Jobs promised with the introduction of the iPad 1 thirteen months ago that Apple had a number of bold moves planned and they are not about to disappoint.

First this year the World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) sold out in 2 just hours this year. There are now more developers of iOS and Mac OS than Apple can get space to work with at a yearly conference. In years past they didn’t sell out and now they are selling out in just hours.

As part of the normal Keynote Apple likes to talk about numbers. Apple now has 54 million active Mac users. 73% of all Macs sold are laptop computers. The PC market shrank-1% last year and the Mac platform grew 28% outpacing the rest of the industry five years running.

Act I

Lion Top Ten List

Apple has choosen to highlight the top 10 new features in the Mac OS and give a few more honorable mentions of other items at the end giving just a glimpse of the more than 200 new features being touted by the latest iteration of the OS.

First up multi touch gestures such as inertial scrolling, tap to zoom, pinch to zoom, and swipe for navigating photos and web pages. Currently you can also rotate images and a few other gestures in the current OS but Lion is really going to take full advantage of one through 4 finger gestures much like Mac’s iOS cousin. As a visual enhancement scroll bars appear when you activate scrolling (using a two finger gesture) to give a sense of place and movement direction to the user, and disappear when not scrolling to get out of the users way and free up screen space.

Second item on the agenda was Full Screen Apps. With the touch of a button on the top right of a Window any app will be able to take up the full screen, eliminating distractions and giving a clean appearance. With a simple swipe the user can jump between full screen apps or go back to the desktop or into the widgets.
      
Third is Mission Control the unification of Spaces Expose and Dashboard. with a single three finger swipe up gesture the user can show all spaces and current desktops you are working on with access to widgets and allow quick access to other spaces created by the user. The spaces which are virtual desktops appear tiled at the top of the screen. Just grab the plus to add a space or drag an application window to the top right to create more spaces. In the center of the screen windowed apps are displayed above the desktop grouped by application. A quick gesture over one application can fan them out for easier viewing. Along the bottom of Mission Control are thumbnails of all full screen windows giving the user a quick glance at everything that is open at the same time.

Fourth is a revamped App Store. The first App Store was an interesting experiment and we will see where it heads in this next iteration. This is the one feature that seems to have generated the most fear and hostility in the media. Rumors have flown that Apple will lock down the OS and stop people from loading software by other means and all kinds of conspiracies. I don’t see that happening although most users will use it just out of convenience. Since App Store was rolled out in 10.6.6 Snow Leopard just a few months ago Apple has become the #1 PC software channel for buying software. Adobe and Pixelmator has made more than a million dollars in just a couple of months each on sales. One click updating for all programs makes it as easy to keep your Mac software up to date as it is to keep your iOS apps up to date.

App Store will be built into Lion and will include in-app purchase for developers. Users will be able to buy a graphics app and then order plugins they use as an example right through the app. The new App Store is also adding Push Notifications and options for developers to Sandbox their apps for security. Also software updates will be done through a delta download so only the files that change will need to be downloaded.
      
The fifth major new feature is Launchpad. Once you download your app from the App Store or install via installer the app appears on the LaunchPad with a pinch gesture at the desktop LaunchPad appears and you can swipe between screens or tap on folders to group apps just like iOS. In theory making it easier to find apps on your Mac.

Feature number six, seven and eight all work hand in hand. Apps will remember their state and even what you have highlighted in a document. You can resume your work environment right where you left off even after a reboot of the computer. The Auto Save feature will incrementally save your document as you work. Type a line of text and close the editor no saving needed it just works. Auto Save also gives you the option right from the document name icon in the tool bar to revert to Last Opened, lock the current version if you really like it or make a duplicate of the file from right within the app and continue editing the duplicate. The last piece of this puzzle is Versions which allows you to control versions of your document. To conserve disk space it uses subfile versioning to only save the changes to the file and not the entire file over again. With a Time Machine like view you can look back through all of the previous versions of a document. When you send a document to someone it only sends them the version you selected and not the entire revision history. Past and current versions are all live documents so you can even copy and paste between them if you just want a small piece of a document you can copy it from the Version history and paste it into the current version.

The number nine new and exciting technology is Air Drop. This might finally make file sharing truly simple. Using peer to peer networking technology Air Drop shows you the people around you with their picture. Drop a file on the person you want to send the file and when they confirm they want to get it OS X creates a secure encrypted connection and transfers the file. Easier than a USB stick and faster than Bluetooth file sharing.

Number ten of course is the venerable and somewhat long in the tooth Mail app. Now with two or three column view options and displaying the message to the right instead of below the snippet pane by default. This new version of Mail sports a more iOS like user interface, support for Exchange 2010, and a whole new search system. Once the search system determines what you are looking for it converts it to a token and allows you to further refine your search. No more partial search and then scan the rest of the list you can drill down to messages from a person where something was not included and something else is. It looks like it has the potential to be a very flexible search system.

Also new to Mail in Lion is the Conversation view which shows your messages with page breaks instead of indenting and changing colors. Attachments are kept inline as well so the whole context of a conversation can be maintained. When the conversation is done they can be archived or deleted. The Conversations feature is totally compatible with all other mail clients but still looks like the quoted messages everyone else is used to seeing. Users can also turn the feature off with the click of a button.

To reply to a message just float over the message and the reply button appears. Click it and your reply window pops out and you are ready to reply.

The Grab Bag

Apple made a few announcements during the show and some have trickled out after that really don’t fall squarely in iOS or Mac announcements as they affect both or are currently minor changes that just didn’t feel like they belonged in a top 10 list or just showed up on a slide but didn’t get any real time to discuss.

Safari 5.1 currently in beta is adding a new feature called Reading List new to Safari like Instapaper but built into the browser and able to sync between iOS and Mac OS devices. This is a great way to get me to stop opening dozens of tabs to hold on to sites that I will go back and read later.

Face detection technologies. Shown off in Photo Booth new effects allow targeted facial enhancements like larger eyes, or birds flying around your head. While it is a fun toy I would be interested in seeing what practical applications these might have.

A few other features will include a new FileVault 2, Windows Migration Assistant, Lion Server add on $49.99, FaceTime Free, Preview Signature, Time Machine Local SnapShot, App Sand-boxing, Folder Merge, Search tokens, Yahoo Messenger in iChat, iChat service plugins, XSan built in, Resize windows from any edge, and Push Notifications where just a few that were on the slides but not even talked about.

Mac OS X Lion will only available in the Mac App Store with a single click to buy, download, and upgrade. The install weighs in at about four Gigabytes and installs in place no reboot from optical disk needed. One copy supports all your Macs you sign in to the app store with. The prices will be $29.99 and it is coming in July 2011.

Unresolved Questions

There were a few things not mentioned in this section of the presentation I would still like to know more about. Nothing was said about the rumors of the Windows File Share compatibility being totally rewritten. What about diagnostic tools for OS X if there is no boot DVD anymore? How do companies order copies of OS X Lion for their employees?

Act II

iOS 5

First Apple has sold 200 million iOS devices. Making them the number one mobile OS with 44% of market. This would likely include the iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad. There were 25 million iPads sold in first 14 months they were available. 15 billion songs have been sold on iTunes music store. iBooks Store has sold 130 million books in 14 months. 14 billion app downloads have happened in less than three years. Apple has paid out more than 2.5 billion dollars to developers who have written apps for iOS devices. Recently apps have been approved for use by FAA and AMA. In a recent update Webex has added multi party video conferencing that works on iPad2.

iOS Top 10

First up and long overdue is new notifications. Notification Center drops right out of your menu bar with a swipe of your finger. I was hoping for more from Apple with this given the amount of time we lived with modal dialogs but at least we have a better system now and it brings iOS up to par with Android in that respect. Apple has handled 100 billion push notifications since the launch of the service. Getting two many notices quickly became a problem and required a new way to handle notifications. Notices appear at top of screen while the device is being used then hides itself. A new lock screen shows notifications on screen and allows you to swipe to respond to the notifications or swipe to unlock your phone at the bottom.

It is a good first step for Apple in improving the notification system and I am sure more changes will come to it. I have been using it all day today and I will say it makes the user experience on the iPhone much better already.

Number two is a companion to iBooks called News Stand. Many magazines and Newspapers have already signed up for news stand. WIth a single location in the app store to access and subscribe to them. When a newspaper or magazine updates it is downloaded in the background so it is ready when you are.
      
Number three is Twitter integration through a single sign-on setup in the system menu and Twitter aware apps can use that to login. Twitter is also built into the Camera, Photos, You Tube, Safari, and Maps apps. Allowing you to send photos, links and text to your Twitter followers. With Twitter integration iOS can also add @twitter handles to your contacts list and update your Contacts photos in your address book with Twitter photos if you like.

Single Sign-on for twitter apps. Support for multiple accounts. Twitter is integrated into Camera and photos, videos from You Tube, links from Safari, and businesses in Maps, Contacts integration that can update photos in your contact list and add @names to your contacts.

Safari has become the most popular Mobile Web Browser with 65% market share versus 27% Android which still uses the open source core of Safari WebKit as the basis for its browser. This is according to Net Applications US April 2011. The new Safari includes the Reader feature to remove clutter from the webpage and let you focus on the content. You can now email the contents of a story instead of just a link to the story. Also the new Reading list feature will remember the links you want to visit later and syncs between iOS devices. Safari has also added tabbed browsing like its desktop counter parts making it more natural to move between Safari on the desktop and on the iPad.

Reminders a new app in iOS gives us to do lists and in an elegant way. Set reminders based on time or on geo location. Tell a reminder to trigger an alert when you leave somewhere or when you arrive somewhere. This is going to a huge feature and it is capable of handling multiple lists and with a swipe move between lists. Reminders also supports iCal sync and Outlook sync with Exchange.

Camera is now faster to access by putting the button on the lock screen. Even if a passcode is set you can take pictures but do nothing else until you enter the passcode. The Volume Up button can now be used as a shutter button when the camera is open. Grid lines are now an option to help you compose the shot better and now zoom is done through a pinch gesture and AE/AF lock by holding your finger on the screen.

Photo editing can now be done right on the iPhone or iPad. With features like crop, rotate, red eye reduction, auto enhancement are built right in. With the iCloud Photo Stream feature you can take a picture on your iPhone and have it sync right to your iPad for editing.

Number seven to get a facelift is our trusty Mail App with Rich Text Formatting, control indentation, draggable addresses between to cc and bcc, and support for flagging mail items. The search engine now includes entire message contents on iPhone and the mail server. iPad picked up a swipe to inbox gesture in portrait mode. Support for S/MIME has been added for the security conscious. Plus the Dictionary is now a service built into Mail and all other iOS apps look up a word in the dictionary with a tap and hold.

Plus Apple demoed new keyboard styles on the iPad with a thumb typing split keyboard . Just grab the handle on the keyboard key and pull it up to split the keyboard into side by side thumb keyboards. This will be great for people who want to type in portrait mode while holding the iPad with both hands.

The eighth innovation in a post PC era is now here. iOS supports over the air updates, Delta updates only download what changed , a setup wizard built in longer requires a computer to configure your device. Users can now create and delete calendars right from within the device. Creating and deleting mailboxes can be done right in Mail. You can now use an iPad or iPhone as your only computer!

With over 50 million Game Center users in just 9 months Game Center is bigger than Xbox live with its 30 million users since launch. The new Game Center adds Game discovery to find new games, buy and download games right from Game Center, photos to see pictures of your friends. Plus a new points system to compete with your friends in games. Also added support for turn based games right into the OS. This will free developers up to focus on the game play.

The tenth new feature is iMessage for iPhone, iPad, iPodTouch built in messaging for all iOS customers. Everything a messaging app does, text, message, photos, videos, contacts, group messaging plus Delivery Receipts, optional read receipts, and typing indication. Messages are pushed to all devices so you can start a conversation on one device and pick it up somewhere else. iMessage works on 3G and Wi-Fi and encrypts the messages when it sends them.

This has the potential to really reduce the number of SMS messages that people send and I am sure something the carriers are not happy about. Apple didn’t give a heads up to the carriers before announcing this so they found out when the public did that the days of charging outrageous fees for simple text messages may be coming to an end. This is great for customers and if iMessage can’t deliver the message you can still fall back to SMS right in the app or send SMS to non iOS customers.

Coming soon to the Apple TV is Airplay Mirroring mirror the whole iPad screen to your AppleTV. iTunes now supports Wireless iTunes sync and auto wifi backup of your device. Plus the experimental multi-touch gestures introduced to developers in 4.3 will now be standard in iOS 5 including swipe up to show the task manager, five finger pinch to close an app, and four finger swipe to move between apps.

iOS 5 will be available for the iPhone 3GS & 4, as well as the 3rd and 4th generation iPods, and all iPads. iOS 5 will be shipping this fall.

Act III

iCloud

Apple is dropping MobileMe which is leaving a lot of questions swirling about the future of iDisk and web hosting on MobileMe. For now the new iCloud initiative does bring us some interesting new technology. First the computer has been demoted to a device in our digital lives and now the cloud is our new hub. Devices don’t have to even be removed from your pocket to sync. iCloud is being tightly integrated with apps so it is all automatic and “It just works”. Steve Jobs admitted MobileMe wasn’t their finest hour and learned a lot from it.

First Mail looks like it will continue to work as it always has. Everything syncs to all devices and it just works. Plus in a little swipe at Google they mentioned no ads on the webmail app.

Contacts now auto stores on the cloud and pushed to other devices to keep them in sync. This has been updated on MobileMe and tested extensively. It has worked great for me over the last several months.

Calendar has moved to the CalDav format and now includes calendar sharing. You can share calendars with other people and both can update the group calendar.

The App Store buy apps on a device and re-download anything in purchase history even if app is not on the device. Future purchases iCloud downloads the app to all devices automatically.

iBooks offers bookmark syncing via iCloud. Buy a book on one device it automatically downloads to all devices. Read a few pages on the iPad and have to leave, pickup right where you left off on your iPhone.

iOS Backup for those that want to be PC free. Enter your AppleID and your Purchased music, apps and books, camera roll photos, videos, device settings, and app data backs up wirelessly daily over wifi.
      
Documents in the cloud is a service that when you create a Pages document on say your iPad it automatically stores in the iCloud. Then pushes to all your other devices with Pages. So far this is built into Pages, Numbers and Keynote. This new feature works with all iOS devices as well as Mac & PC too. The API has been released to developers so others can start using it as well.

Photo Stream takes a photo from any device and automatically uploads to cloud and places it in the camera roll of all other devices including the Mac. Importing photos to Photo Stream from iPhoto library is also supported. Photo Stream even works with PC pictures folder and is built into Apple TV. Photo Stream automatically stores the last 1,000 photos in iOS and the Macs or PCs stores all photos locally. The Apple servers store images and videos for 30 days to give Macs and PCs time to sync the photos or the user to save it permanently by moving pictures to existing or new albums.

iTunes in the Cloud shows songs you have already bought and can be re-downloaded anytime. Buy on one device and auto sync to all devices up to 10 devices now.

iCloud is Free and will be available in the fall. MobileMe is going away and will be discontinued in April 2012. iCloud is offering 5 GB of storage for backup not counting Purchased Music, Apps, & Books those don’t count against the cap and neither do photos. It seems as though only documents will count against the 5 GB cap.

Some parts of iCloud are available Today. A Developer Beta is also currently being tested for a roll out in the fall coming with iOS 5. iTunes in the cloud is live today on iOS 4.3 devices with no update or download necessary.

One More Thing

iTunes Match Service will scan your ripped CD’s and match it to songs in the store. With over 18 million songs in the store it is likely most will match. This will afford users the same benefits of music purchased from iTunes 256 kb AAC, re downloadable from the cloud, etc. It only takes minutes to run on an iTunes library. If it isn’t in the library it will uploaded to your own digital locker. iTunes Music Match will cost $24.99 a year.

I still have a few questions about iTunes in the Cloud and iTunes Music Match service that have yet to be answered. Like is streaming an option or does music always have to be downloaded? What about videos will we be able to do this with them as well at some point?

Lastly Apple finally talked about the North Carolina Data Center. It is Apple’s 3rd and largest datacenter. It has been designed to be as eco-friendly as possible and it is enormous to accommodate all of these new cloud services and sync technologies.

Apple still has a lot of questions that need to be answered regarding the other services in MobileMe and what will become of them. Also questions about other new features like enhanced voice recognition was never touched upon either. Corporate licensing for OS X and OS X server was never touched on either. Hopefully over the next several days more of these questions will be answered by Apple.

Just after the keynote Apple quietly released a new version of iBooks 1.3 that included a Read To Me feature for children where a narrator reads books and the words in the iBook highlight and enhanced books also include audio and video elements. So while Apple made the keynote an overview of 29 large things they are doing in OS X, iOS, and iCloud it seems as though Cupertino has a lot of other things going on at the same time and we are just starting to see the large changes that are ahead.

Hulu Plus, Netflix, and iTunes replacement for cable?

After a few months of testing I can say I have a pretty good feel for Hulu Plus. First the application runs fine on the Mac, not quiet as nicely as Netflix with its Silverlight technology and ability to run in full screen on an extra monitor while you work on other monitors, but it runs fine if you are just looking to watch TV on your Mac. The iPad and iPhone applications are fantastic for watching TV shows while you are mobile. The picture quality is a little lower on 3G but still watchable.

For comparison I tried Hulu on the Mac, iPad, iPhone, and PS3. The PS3 was just a bad experience. Every time a software update comes out Hulu gets stuck on the login and will not open completely or close to allow the user to update without holding down the power key and rebooting the PS3.

On the iPad and iPhone It is a completely different experience. Just tap the app and you are ready to watch TV. The search is a little non-intuitive and new full episode availability is still limited. The older series library is growing constantly allowing viewers to revisit old favorites or even discover old series they missed for the first time Recently some content has starred showing up as web only not allowing it to be viewed by anything but a Mac or PC. Since there is a $7.99 a month subscription fee i should be able to watch any content on any device I own. That has been a problem for several shows I watch.

At $7.99 a month for Hulu it isn't a bad deal if you want some TV on demand or your DVR missed a show, but I am not throwing out my satellite TV just yet.

Netflix is another TV / movie on demand service with a large selection of movies and a $7.99 a month streaming only option. The system recommends movies based on what you watch and how you rate movies. It is easy to discover movies you may never have heard of before. Or if you happen to be at home and in the mood to watch a movie you can just flip through and find something without having to go out of the house or buy a movie from the cable or satellite company.

Netflix on the Apple TV, iPad, and iPhone are great experiences. Again on the PS3 the User Interface changes every time you sign in making it a little confusing to use. I keep hearing that Netflix is trying to find the right UI and getting feed back from customers on the three leading ones. My recommendation is let us choose which one we want to use and don’t assign a random one.

While Hulu is focused on TV Netflix is definitely focused on feature length movies and a few older TV series on DVD.

Netflix will also for an extra dollar a month will mail DVD's to you. The entire catalog isn't available for streaming yet but, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings says they plan to have the entire Netflix collection online in the next year and sees an end to mailing DVD's in the not to distant future.

iTunes has come a long way since it’s early days of just syncing the iPod. Adding a music store, a movie store, and a TV shows in addition to the app store. iTunes became one stop shopping for programs and content. In the early days we could only purchase content which was a little expensive for just watching a movie. Later they added rentals and HD content. Now with the Apple TV2 renting movies is simple and competitively priced with cable and satellite. The 720p HD stream looks great and it is most of all totally convenient. The only thing Apple is missing now is a subscription service to let you watch all the movies and TV’s you want for a low monthly fee. Maybe a few content deals from networks and we could see competition with cable and satellite. I don’t think that is likely to happen since most of the networks own cable companies as well. It would be good for consumers as it gives us choice. What is more likely and will be slow coming is independent content creators will start making their own deals and getting themselves into iTunes, Hulu, and Netflix and start making the big production companies and cable networks less relevant. Much like the Internet has given everyone a voice to share content they have created we could see the same thing come to streaming services in the future. This would give consumers more choices and more diverse content, give advertisers a less expensive medium to get the word out about their products and give us access to content anywhere, anytime, anyplace.

For the providers of content it is time to get on board with streaming from iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, or even your own app that is available on multiple platforms. Just last season my DVR had an issue and stopped recording a series I watch. I didn’t notice until the end of the season and missed several shows. Not wanting to get lost in the story I stopped watching and started looking for the season once it ended. It isn’t available in any streaming format and is coming out on DVD but really not worth me going out of my way to get it and to buy it. So the network just lost a regular viewer due to a technical glitch and their inability to make the show easily available for me to catch up and resume watching on my DVR.

So I am not quiet ready to give up satellite TV yet but Netflix, Hulu, and network TV apps that deliver content to any digital device might make a compelling argument for leaving cable behind. Particularly for road warriors who are on the road frequently and don't always get a chance to watch their favorite shows.

iPods, iOS, and AppleTV Oh My!

This past Wednesday Apple made their September music announcement at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco. In typical Steve Jobs fashion this presentation was a three act play. First getting, the numbers out of the way quickly, he announced Apple retail is doing well with 300 stores worldwide. The second stores in China and France just opened to huge fanfare as well as a new store in London. Ten countries now have Apple Stores and soon to be eleven with a new store opening in Spain. Some days these Apple Stores are seeing over 1 million visitors in a single day. Over 80,000 one to one classes are being held every week and over half of the new Mac buyers are first time buyers.
The First Act of Steve’s three act play was to discuss iOS. Over 120 million iOS devices have been shipped since the iPhone was introduced in 2006. Currently Apple is activating 230,000 iOS devices per day. These devices have downloaded 6.5 billion apps from the app store, about 200 apps per second. This week Apple will be rolling out iOS 4.1 for iPhone and iPodTouch. The new version fixes issues with the proximity sensors solving problems users have had when holding the phone up to their face. This release is also correcting issues with Bluetooth connectivity. Also some enhancements have been included to solve some iPhone 3G performance problems. I have been running this for the last week on my iPhone and the Proximity Sensor is fixed. I haven’t noticed any issues with my bluetooth so I will have to talk to some other people on that. I have heard online that 3G performance improved a little bit.
Some new features that have been added to iOS 4.1 are HDR (High Dynamic Resolution) photos. This is the first camera phone to support this feature. Only a few pocket cameras have even started including this technology. When you shoot a photograph where you have sky and shadow a normal digital photo will blow out the lighter part of image and the dark parts will just show as black. With HDR the camera will take three pictures quickly one with the exposure it thinks is correct and one an F-Stop higher, and another an F-Stop lower. Then the software will blend the three images to create a single photo that displays all three images in a balanced way revealing details that couldn’t be seen before. This is an exciting new technology and one that, in my testing, I have been impressed with.
HDR doesn’t work with action shots or where the scene is changing rapidly and parts of the image that are in motion while photos are being taken tend to blur. So if you are taking pictures of moving people or objects turn HDR off. If you are shooting a still scene or one with little motion by all means use it.
Apple has no added the ability to upload HD videos over WiFi so now you can shoot, edit, and upload video to You Tube right from your iPhone. TV Show rentals have also been added to the iTunes Store on the phone. So if you are heading out for a flight, or to catch a train and you missed last nights episode of Eureka you can rent it right on your phone and watch it on your trip.
We also now have Game Center, a social gaming platform for the iPhone. Currently the iPod Touch has over 50% of the portable gaming market and this coupled with the Unreal Game engine coming to the iPhone this winter is just going to grow that gap even further. Now people can challenge their friends and see what they are playing online through the Game Center app or in any Game Center enabled game. Game Center is on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and later this fall the iPad.
iOS 4.1 for the iPhone and iPodTouch will be available later this week.
Apple also gave us a sneak peak at iOS 4.2 coming in November. This will bring multi-tasking, Game Center, Folders, HDR photos, message threads, unified inbox, and wireless printing to the iOS. I have head other people commenting this must mean that iPad is getting a camera. While I have no doubt Apple will someday add a camera to the iPad I wouldn’t look for it before next April. I believe iOS 4.2 just brings iOS for the iPhone and iPad together so they can start releasing one OS for both. iOS 4.2 will give us printing from our iPad and iPhones, so if you wish to print a document just click on Print, and tap the Bonjour printer in range you wish to print your document on.
iOS 4.2 is also going to bring us a new technology called Airplay. Airplay will allow us to stream movies, TV shows, or music from our iOS device to an Apple TV but more about that a little later.
In Steve’s second act he announced their have been over 275 million iPods sold and an entirely new line of iPods are being introduced this week. The shuffle got its click wheel back and kept voice over and its clip to make it wearable with 15 hours of battery life and comes in five colors for $49.00. He never said in the keynote but I assume it is still 1 Gig of storage. The iPod Nano gets a total facelift making it nearly half the size and weight. Apple did away with the click wheel and replaced it with a small multi-touch display and the new nano appears to be running at least a stripped down iOS. It makes me wonder if the iPod apps will reappear at some point for the Nano. The Nano also dropped its camera and video recording capabilities in favor of the much smaller size. Also included in the new Nano is an FM Radio, pedometer, Nike +, and a battery that boasts 24 hours of music play back. It doesn’t appear they included an accelerometer either to determine which direction is up as the screen doesn’t rotate on its own. It requires the user to make a multi touch twist motion on the screen to set the orientation. The new Nano comes in an 8 gig form factor for $149 and 16 gig for $179.
Last in the line up is the new iPod Touch. The iPhone without a contract. iPod Touch is being updated to include a new retina display just like the iPhone. The unit is thinner has Apple latest A4 chip in it. A 3 axis gyro was added for more accurate game play and a front facing camera for FaceTime video conferencing. Also an HD camera on the other side for recording and uploading HD video. Now iPod Touch and iPhone users can call each other using FaceTime over a WiFi network. The new touches will come in 8 gig for $229, 32 gig for $299, and 64 gig for $399.
Also in the area of music Steve announced iTunes 10. First thing I noticed that is missing from iTunes 10 besides color is it still isn’t 64 bit for the Mac, and Apple has not given us a brilliant Apple like way of managing the content on our devices. This was the one thing that was and is still sorely lacking in iTunes. What we did get is apparently faster syncing with our devices. My iPad takes half the time to sync up as before. The iPhone has always been fairly quick but it even got faster. Since digital downloads are poised to overtake CD sales this year the CD has been dropped from the logo and now we have a music note on a blue background. It looks nice in the dock but makes the other icons around it start to look a little dated.
The new hybrid view is a great way to look at your music and see album art for albums where you have more than five songs and it takes up no more space. The view is nice and I will probably start using it as my default view.
Also new to iTunes Apple’s foray into Social Networking with Ping. If you want to follow me on Ping and see what I am listening to just click here. It is like Twitter or Facebook but dedicated to music. This may be Apples way of sticking their toe into the Social Networking water. If the music social networking goes well perhaps Apple will expand ping to be a direct competitor to Facebook.
And as a third act Steve talked about Apple’s hobby. AppleTV is now smaller, cheaper, and easier to manage. AppleTV was introduced in 2006 and was not a big hit. It wasn’t what the main stream user was looking for. The average user doesn’t want to think about syncing their device. So the new Apple TV doesn’t have any storage on board and no way to buy new movies or TV shows. Currently the Apple TV is rental only. $0.99 for HD TV shows and $4.99 for HD first run movies and the price goes down for movies as time goes on. Also Apple TV can stream content from any computer with iTunes on the network. It is equipped with HDMI, Ethernet and 802.11n wireless and comes with an aluminum Apple remote control. Streaming of Netflix and YouTube has also been added to the new AppleTV. Also with the new Airplay feature coming in iOS 4.2 you will be able to stream content from your iPhone or iPad to your Apple TV device at the touch of a button. This still gives users who want to buy a movie or TV show the ability to buy on the iPad and download it, then watch on the Apple TV. The one question I have is will Quicktime X see an Airplay feature added?
I have already placed my pre-order so I will have an in depth look at the new Apple TV when it arrives.
Many people were expecting a TV revolution this week that didn’t seem to come. There was no mention of the North Carolina datacenter and what it will be used for later this year and we still haven’t heard when FaceTime will be coming to iChat. There was no mention of apps on the AppleTV or a streaming TV show service. I would love to download apps for the channels I watch and just pay for the channels I like instead of everything. Apple can revolutionize TV just like they did with music and multi-touch applications on smart phones. But they apparently have decided to a take a slow steady approach.

Using iTunes U

One of the great secrets of iTunes seems to be the iTunes University. iTunes U is a huge selection of classes that are available from Universities all over the world. The classes are all free to download and are in Video or Audio format and some even include PDF's of the presentations.

The early classes were mostly technology related but now almost every topic is covered and available for download. If you are looking for something new to learn for the sake of learning or you are a student looking to get a jump on classes you are planning to take, or a little older and just want a refresher of classes you have taken before iTunes U is in amazing resource.

This has the ability to change the face of education. Imagine learning a

bout subjects from the leaders of their field no matter where you live. You just need a computer, an internet connection and iTunes.

So here is how you get to iTunes U in three easy steps.

1st download iTunes from www.apple.com/itunes

Now you are off and learning form the top teachers and some of the top schools in the country from the comfort of your own home and it is totally free. This is great for kids to discover new interests and get ahead in school.

Is Apple Big Brother? Reality Check

In an email this past week Jason Calicanis wrote a Case Against Apple in Five Parts detailing where Apple is going wrong as a closed platform and how their control of the platform can ultimately hurt them. This got a lot of email sent to Jason, some agreeing and others well let's just say vehemently disagreeing. I am a fan of Apple but folks there is no need to be ugly about it when someone expresses an opinion on how Apple might improve.

In addition to those emails Techcruch and The Daily Beast have both run stories about both Jason's email and the responses. So I thought this week I would wade into the discussion with a few thoughts of my own.

Jason stated since the love affair was over he was going to buy a Zune. Here is my question to Jason. Isn't the Zune less open and ultimately more expensive than the iPod? First if you want to use the Zune you have to use the Zune 3.0 app to sync your Zune with your computer. The Zune software only works on Windows XP Sp2 and higher. No Macs, no Linux, are even welcome on the Zune without the use of Parallels, VMWare, or some other Virtual Machine Application and Windows. As iTunes runs on both Mac and Windows it seems as though the iPod is more open than the Zune.

Still most people just don't seem to care for the Zune even with the Social features it has that iPod doesn't. The iPod is still selling millions and the Zune is only about 3% of MP3 sales.

On the Mac OS the thing that has made the OS so stable and rock solid for years is the fact Apple has kept tight control over both the hardware and the software. By doing that software developers new pretty much what they were righting their software for and the OS developers new they only had a few types of hardware devices to worry about so making things integrate tightly and be stable was a fairly easy task.

Anyone who has worked on Windows knows that sometimes adding a sound card or other peripheral could cause unexpected results once the drivers were loaded. Microsoft is even starting to deal with that issue requiring drivers to be signed in Windows 7 and device manufactures have to pay to get their drivers signed. A great way for Microsoft to make more money and finally force manufactures into some sort of standard to reduce the number of issues they have with their operating system.

I argued in a blog post in 2002 that Apple should make an Intel version of OS X. Of course I didn't know then they already were in preparation for a transition to move their hardware to Intel. I thought they should be doing it and still controlling the experience by partnering with Dell, HP, and others allowing them to build their brand to an Apple spec and allow those machines to run OS X.

This would allow more people to use OS X and increase its market penetration and let the other manufactures benefit from Apple's design. People who are going to buy Macs aren't going to stop but their might be some lower end markets that are still untapped because they can't or won't spend $1000 on a laptop or desktop computer. Apple could still make money off the OS license and make it a little easier for people to make the leap to OS X. Plus pushing more OS X installs out their make for a larger install base for developers to write software too. It is a win/win for everyone.

But Apple is a hardware company that uses software as a value add to sell their hardware so I don't see them doing that any time soon. I wish they would but it just isn't likely to happen. Plus Atari made the mistake of opening up their platform to anyone who wanted to write a game for the platform and ended up with some low quality unreliable games and the console took the criticism for it. Ultimately Atari went away and every console manufacturer since has kept very tight control over who is allowed to distribute games to avoid the same fate as Atari. Apple by comparison has been very open allowing anyone to produce apps for the computer, but keeping a tighter control on the phone.

The iPhone while having a tightly controlled ecosystem of Apps it has the largest ecosystem of Apps of any smart phone. The device has gone from non-existent 3 1/2 years ago to a Gartner Group estimate of 13% of smart phones in just that time and still growing by leaps and bounds. Do we love everything that is being done? Of course not. We want Apple to end the exclusivity agreement with AT&T which has been a hallmark of the American cellphone market for more than a decade and allow users choice of network. Many European countries have been doing this for years and our own FCC is finally looking into the practice to determine if it is harmful to customers. The answer is in short yes it is. Handset manufactures have been largely forced to hobble their devices and stifle innovation because the carriers didn't want devices on their network that might tax it or force them to upgrade the network to keep up with changing demands.

Apple is getting a lot of heat over the rejection of the Google Voice Application which is what has touched off this firestorm. Apple has been fairly arbitrary in accepting and rejecting Apps on the App Store for some time and with no real good reasons ever given. It leaves one to wonder how much of the seemingly arbitrary decisions are Apple's and how much is it a contractual obligation with AT&T?

I would like to see Apple more open and continue their expanded market penetration. It is good for us that already use Mac OS and will push companies that only develop for Windows to start thinking about both. I have clients in Real Estate and Accounting that struggle with large companies not making websites or software that work on anything but older versions of Windows or older Internet Explorer Web Browsers. Larger market share will inevitably lead to these companies innovating and creating apps that will work on Windows or Mac and creating websites that are not hooked into a particular browser. Historically Microsoft has been the big brother anti-competitive company who has created methods to tie people into one browser, one OS and it is coming back to bite them and their customers. How many people are stuck running IE 6 because one website won't allow them to upgrade?

Is Apple Big Brother yet? No, they have the potential to someday maybe. However I hope by then they will not feel the need and allow users to tweak and customize their devices as much as they can their OS. OS X is very configurable to look and feel how a user wants to make it look and feel. Maybe once AT&T is just a player in the larger iPhone ecosystem we will see the iPhone move the same direction as OS X in terms of the variety of apps a user wants and the kind of experience a user wants. Does the user want the Apple preferred I don't have to think about my device and just use it experience or the hacker let me tweak, customize, and see what I can make it do experience?

One thing is for certain cellular networks will have to look at protecting their network from the network side and stop meddling in our handsets. Thanks to Apple that trend is starting slowly.