Steve Jobs

Apple WWDC keynote: Here’s what Steve will announce

Friday, June 8th, 2007
by lepton

First, he’ll talk about the iPhone. He’ll show a production model. He’ll talk about the tinyBluetooth headset bundled in the package. He will show the iPhone dock in the package that lets you plug in the phone and charge the earpiece. He will mention the iPhone dock connector is compatible with almost all current iPhone accessories that plug in to an iPod, especially the interfaces in many current automobiles. He will announce new iPhone interfaces in some cars that integrate both music and phone functions into the automobile. He will talk about the new stereo bluetooth headphones that are available and how great they sound playing music. He will mention iPhone’s software update system which happens through iTunes syncing. He will show functions he didn’t cover, including the calendar and notepad apps. The notepad is essentially the Mac Preview app and opens PDF, Word, Pages, and Keynote files. He will show new apps including Apple Remote Access and the GPS turn by turn directions tied into Google Maps. He will show printing to Bluetooth printers and over WiFi to printers on local networks. He will say DashCode widgets will run on the iPhone, allowing anyone to write simple iPhone apps. Oh, one more thing - he will sell iPhones to anyone at WWDC who wants one out in the hall right after the speech. WWDC attendees will be the first iPhone customers, two weeks before anyone else can get them.

Then he will talk about .Mac, which hasn’t been updated in a while. He will show full integration with the iPhone. He will show that .Mac will push EMail to the iPhone. He will show iPhone syncing directly with .Mac’s calendar, address book, and bookmarks. Oh, one more thing, a free year of .Mac comes with your iPhone.

Forty minutes in, he moves to Leopard. He will say everyone gets a full beta copy in their attendee goodie bag. A week later, it will be available for developers to download at ADC. It does not run on the G4. It will use a new default disk format called ZFS. Older formats will of course be supported, but you want to migrate your system disk over, as well as disks you want to use for Time Machine backups. This is for a few reasons. One, backups and Time Machine will be simple, fast and smooth, as ZFS makes snapshots of every change you make to your files as it goes. You will be able to set up very fine grain backups if you wish, not just being able to go back to a particular day, but even to a particular save. Another reason to switch involves Spotlight. Spotlight will be much faster and searches will be more detailed. Spotlight will be integrated into Time Machine and into more apps.

There is a completely rewritten Finder. It is much faster and much more efficient. It is more extensive in the way it displays and allows you to see and manipulate file metadata. It gives much better and faster access to Spotlight. Spotlight itself finds faster, is much more consistent in its interface, allows you to do much more detailed searches, yet is simpler to use. It is a very efficient app and file launcher, more like Quicksilver.

There is a new default User Interface look. Aqua is still available in the Appearance preference pane. The new look uses the unifies window look, colors tend toward smooth gray and blue gray. The look is flatter, more subdued. The look is similar to that in the current iTunes. Scroll bars are rounder, thumbs are blue gray. The look is made to fall farther into the background than Aqua, and be more neutral in color, to let window content be the focus.

Leopard fully integrates Multi-Touch into the system. Steve announces a new line of Multi-Touch displays available now. The new displays have a gray aluminum look, are thin, use LCD backlighting, and all have Multi-Touch ability. The displays can be oriented vertically, or placed flat on a table or at a low angle like an easel or tablet.

Leopard can be completely controlled by MultiTouch. Fingers can work as a mouse, tapping and dragging on the surface of the screen. Thus at this point, Macs can be controlled by a keyboard, mouse, voice, or touch, alone or in combination, and peripherals like the new touch displays will take advantage of that.

One more thing. One “remote screen” display model will be wireless and portable, around 10″ diagonal and 12mm thick, run on WiFi and uses Apple Remote Access to put a Mac’s screen on its own screen. This portable tablet is a display, not a computer, but works as a second screen to any Mac on a network. It can control all Mac functions remotely via Multi-Touch. It is available now.

There are a lot of predictions here, let’s see what comes true!

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iPhone: How the release and contracts will go down

Friday, May 25th, 2007
by lepton

June 11th, at the World Wide Developer’s Conference, Steve will give a keynote. One of the things he will talk about is the iPhone. In his speech, he will give all the details we haven’t heard so far - the AT&T cellular service deals you can get with the phone, and the date of release: June 20th.

Then Steve will say oh, there’s one more thing. We have iPhones for any attendee who wants to purchase one, right here, right now! Sign up and pick up your new phone right now out in the hall. Hundreds of attendees, and some press who attended the keynote, will go home from WWDC with new, working iPhones. Others can get them on the 20th.

Not only does the crowd go wild, but this gets lots and lots of advance reviews into the public a few days before the main launch. Press will print columns, developers will blog, the public will read.

Apple will do this because they know the reviews will be very, very good, especially with this crowd. And, it will get wide publicity for the new service plans and system they have set.

You will be able to get a 2 year contract with your phone. You pat full price with the phone, but the iPhone service and data plan, with unlimited messaging and data, will run about $150 less than the equivalent existing AT&T plan. You will also be able to get a no contract, pay as you go plan. With that plan you again pay full price for the phone, and there are per voice minute, per data kilobyte, per SMS message charges.

Why a pay as you go plan? This way, people can pick up an iPhone even if they have an existing phone and service with another carrier. They can simply use the device as a widescreen video iPod and Wi-Fi web browser, without even using the cellular system. Or they can make a call or send an EMail here and there from the road. When their old contract is up with their other company, they can switch to a contract plan with AT&T.

And WHY will they want to switch? Aside from falling in love with the phone, those pay as you go charges will make your eyes water. Did you know AT&T now charges up to ten cents per SMS message, and a cent per KILOBYTE of data? And that iPhone will suck up data faster than a tick on Dracula. Once you start using the phone, you are going to want to switch to the contract deal.

That’s my speculation. What’s yours?

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