I have now had more than a day to digest all of the information that came out of Steve Jobs’ keynote speech at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco on Monday. I have broken down my reaction into sections based on the different parts of the keynote speech.
iPhone 2.0 Software Update
The first part of the keynote was devoted to the upcoming iPhone 2.0 software update. This update was originally announced in March along with the software development kit. This part of the speech was probably the most boring part for me since most of the information was already discussed in March. They made the speech even more painful buy bringing up numerous developers to demo and talk about the applications they had written for the iPhone. While I don’t mind a quick demo or two, the number of demos they had was a bit excessive. By the fourth or fifth I was pretty tired of the whole exercise and wanted something different.
Mobile Me
After the iPhone app demos, Apple introduced Mobile Me. This is a service that allows you to keep your email, calendar, and contacts on a central server have all of that data pushed to all your computers and mobile devices (like your *ahem* iPhone). All of this data stays up to date on all of your computers and devices. If you update a calendar appointment on your computer, your iPhone is updated automatically. This has been around for many years in the business world. Apple even bills Mobile Me as “Exchange for the rest of us”. Apple has also made a set of pretty cool AJAX web applications for email, calendar, and address book so you don’t even have to use a desktop client if you don’t want to or can’t. I really like the idea of having all of your data up to date on your devices. It has been something I have wanted to do myself for a long time. While this server is very appealing to me, the price is not. It is $99 USD a year. I much rather host a server on my own network and perform the same services that Mobile Me does for free. We will see if I can do that or not.
iPhone 3G
The final announcement that was made I am extremely excited about but kinda figured it was coming. On July 11 Apple will be releasing the second version of the iPhone, named iPhone 3G. The 3G refers to the HSDPA modem now included that will allow for much faster data and Internet access. The main reason I held out on buying the original iPhone (and got an iPod Touch) was due to the slow data transfer speeds via EDGE. So I am definitely going to be purchasing this new iPhone. The best part is Apple dropped the price to $199 USD for the 8GB model and $299 USD for the 16 GB model (I’m sold on the 16GB so I can hold all the cool new apps). One annoying rumor I’ve heard is that Apple won’t be selling the new iPhone on their web site as they have done in the past. That means I am going to have to camp out in front of my local AT&T store to get one.
Mac OS 10.6 “Snow Leopard”
While they didn’t really talk about it at the keynote, they did mention that the next version of Mac OS X, or 10.6, will be called “Snow Leopard” and the developers there were going to get some more information on it during the week. Apple did post a small page on their web site and it seems that they are really going to focus on stability and making 64 bit a requirement. Rumors are saying that this next release might be Intel Mac only which finally gives me an excuse to buy a new Mac.
There you have it; my reaction to the WWDC keynote. Looking forward to what Apple has up its sleeve for Macworld San Francisco in January.