MacMost: Making the most of your Mac, iPod, Apple TV and iPhone.

   When I started making the video today about the iPhone lines, I wanted to find both people that were upgrading from an existing iPhone and people that were getting their first iPhone. I thought it would be hard to find the later. I mean, if you find it worthwhile to wait in line for an iPhone, wouldn’t you have already had one 6 months or a year ago? Shouldn’t the line people be the early adopters?
    But no, the opposite was true, I had to try really hard to find someone who had an iPhone already. Most of the people, inclusing those at the front of the line, were buying their first iPhone. So that meant that of the 500 or so people that waited in line all day last year, perhaps only a handful came back for another line. At the same time, Apple did a good job of hyping this launch, to get the new users onboard.
    A geekier reason may have been that iPhone 2007 users may have wanted to wait to update their old iPhones to the 2.0 OS before they deactivated. That was my only hesitation on buying a new iPhone right away.
    Update: Cali and Neal from Geek Brief told me the same was true for their line.

   So I spent some time this afternoon playing Super Monkey Ball, Band, and trying out some of the other apps. Super Monkey Ball looks great and runs smoothly. It is a tough game because of the way you control movement. As a gamer, I’m not so sure I like the idea of the challenge being in how you can control movement. I prefer strategy or reaction time.
    Band is interesting, but I got bored with it quickly. It may be more fun if there are a few people who have it and you can “jam.” Or, it may grow to be an excellent app once more instruments are added and perhaps there is a better system for saving and editing music. I’d love to see a desktop version so you could start composing on your iPhone and then polish it off on your Mac later on.
    By far, the app I like the best is Pandora. Pandora is the Web site/service that plays music it thinks you will like based on feedback. I’ve been a user for a while, and I love the commercial-free “make your own radio station” idea. Now that it works on the iPhone, oh boy. That’s the end of radio for me. I even tried it in the car on the drive home and it played song after song over the Edge network without missing a beat.
    I was a little please and also disappointed in AIM (AOL Instant Messenger). This is basically iChat for the iPhone, as you can use your AIM account or your .Mac (MobileMe) account. It just seemed very buggy. And I used an AIM account at first, and the only way I could figure to switch to my .Mac account was to delete the App and re-install. Likewise, Twitterrific seemed unfinished. I can’t seem to get it to display the most recent tweets when I start the App. It is still easier just to go to Twitter.com on the iPhone and get what I want faster.
    Looking through the App Store, I saw a lot of junk. There were Apps for $1 that really didn’t do much. There were others, like the FaceBook App that did LESS than the equivalent iPhone-formatted Web site. So what’s the point?

   Breaking news: once you have downloaded iTunes 7.7, which is available via software update, click on this special link in Safari and iTunes should launch and take you right to the app page for the iPhone Remote application. You can even download it, though I guess we will have to wait for iPhone 2.0 software to install it.
    You can then use the navigation at the top to go to other sections of the App Store.

   1. Headphone jack. The new iPhone will have a flush headphone jack. This means you can plug in any standard headphone or speaker device without a $10 adapter. You know, the adapter you discover you left at home just after you get to the airport.
    2. 3G. Well, this is a given. You should get twice the download speed on Web pages, videos and email.
    3. GPS. Now you will really know where you are. But I can’t wait for the 3rd party apps that will be built around this. I’m sure it will rival expensive GPS devices in functionality before long. Geocaching may go mainstream.
    4. Better battery life. I expected battery life to suffer with 3G, but it looks like we’ll have more battery life than every before.
    5. Lots of countries: Friends in Canada and Australia will finally be able to get one, as well as lots of other countries.
    6. A scientific calculator in iPhone 2.0, which means there will be no more reason to have a piece of hardware called a “scientific calculator.”
    7. Lots of free iPhone apps. I predict that a majority of iPhone apps will be free, cool gizmos created by hobbyists. Something new to discover every week, most likely.
    8. Bulk delete for email. Sounds silly, but this eats up a lot of my time.
    9. MLB.com live game updates. This is one of the primary things I use my iPhone for right now, via Safari. A dedicated app would be great, as long as there isn’t a subscription fee attached.
    10. The price. For $199, a lot of people will start coming over to the iPhone.

   Live Updates, local San Francisco times:
    10:05 — Steve Jobs takes the stage as the keynote speaker. Al Gore is in the audience (Apple board member).
    10:08 — Announced that the new version of Mac OS X will be called “Snow Leopard.”
    10:10 — Talking about iPhone 2.0, starting with the success of the SDK beta program.
    10:10-10:25 — Talk about the SDK, similar to what was presented 3 months ago about how the SDK works.
    10:27 — Sega to demonstrate Super Monkey Ball, updated with full features. Will be available at launch of iPhone App Store for $9.99.
    10:30 — Ebay to demonstrate iPhone app.
    10:32 — Loopt is demonstrating using a location-based social network app.
    10:35 — TypePad demonstrating blogging application. App will be available for free from the App Store at launch.
    10:37 — Associated Press application.
    10:40 — Pangea Software, demonstrating two Mac port games: Enigma and CroMag Rally. $9.99 each.
    10:44 — Mark Terry is showing an app named “Band” which turns the iPhone into a musical instrument.
    10:47 — MLB.com (Major League Baseball) demonstrates “At Bat” — live game box scores and stats.
    10:50 — Modality with medical software that helps med students learn.
    11:52 — More medical application software from Mimvista.
    11:56 — Digital Legends entertainment shows a fantasy adventure game, Krull. Ready by September.
    12:01 — Announced “push” notification ability for applications as a substitute for running processes in the background. So after an application is quit, the user can still get push messages and sounds sent to their iPhone. It will be a unified service for all developers. Available in September, seeded to developers earlier.
    11:03 — Jobs back, announcing new features for iPhone: Contact search. iWork document support, including keynote. MS PowerPoint too. Bulk delete of messages. Save email images to photo library. Scientific calculator. Parental controls. More languages. Character drawing for asian languages.
    11:07 — iPhone 2.0 available in July. Free for iPhone users. $10 for iPod Touch users.
    11:08 — iPhone App Store. Free apps are free. Pay apps give 70% to developer. Available wirelessly in more countries. Apps less than 10MB can be downloaded through mobile networks. Others through WiFi.
    11:10 — Enterprise developers can distribute apps to only their users by authorizing iPhones in their enterprise to run those apps. Distribution can be internal to their organization.
    11:11 — Can also use ad hoc distribution to distribute apps to 100 iPhones. Used for college classes.
    11:12 — Mobile Me: brand new service through Apple. MS Exchange for the rest of us. Push information up and down to all devices. Will use me.com for Web-based client, Mac and PC. Uses iCal, Mail and Address Book too. Works with iDisk too. Anything updated/added on one device will update on all devices instantly.
    11:26 — 60 day free tried for MobileMe. MobileMe replaces .Mac service. All .Mac services still there. All .Mac users automatically updated to MobileMe. Early July.
    12:27 — Jobs talking about iPhone. Sold 6 million iPhone before running out.
    12:29 — 3G network, enterprise support, 3rd-party application support, more countries, more affordable.
    12:30 — iPhone 3G. Plastic back, flush headphone, jack, improved audio.
    12:32 — Faster data downloads. Jobs demonstrates 3G speed vs. old iPhone and N95.
    12:35 — Battery times: stand-by time: 300 hours, 2G talk time: 10 hours, 3G talk time: 5 hours, 3G browsing: 5-6 hours, video: 7 hours, audio 24 hours.
    12:37 — GPS. Will be able to track as you move on a map.
    12:39 — Countries: 25 as goal: Mexico, Canada, Australia, China, Japan, 29 in Europe, 15 in South America, 8 in Asia/Australia. 70 counties in next few months.
    12:43– Price: $199 for 8GB, $299 for 16GB. White version available too.
    12:45 — Rollout on July 11 in 22 countries.

   One of the rumors for next week is a re-launch of .Mac, Apple’s ISP-like service. While there isn’t much fuel behind this rumor, it does make sense as .Mac is ripe for change.
    So, basically, here is what .Mac currently does:

   The problem is that most of these can be done on other services for free. Sometimes better. But each of these services has the potential to be a best-in-class with a little improvement.
    What I would really like to see is all of these tied into each other in a social network-like interface. One reason to not post photos to .Mac in favor of Flickr is that people use Flickr like a social network — checking in on their friends’ photos. On .Mac, it is like posting to your own isolated site. No one will know you posted new photos without getting a reminder from you.
    But what if .Mac worked like FaceBook, but with a Apple interface. You could post photos, blog entries, status updates, audio and video etc. And people in your social network would see it. Maybe people in other social networks would too — for instance if you could link your FaceBook account to your .Mac account. Or have an automatic Twitter message sent out.
    So that is my wish for .Mac. Improve everything slightly. Then tie it all together and connect everyone.

   We’ve mentioned and reviewed products from OtterBox at MacMost before. I like them, not just because their product protects my iPhone on a daily basis, but also because they are located just north of Denver, the home of MacMost.
    You’ve probably heard of the tornadoes we had last week. Nasty. And not too far from OtterBox, as it turns out. They made out OK, but homes in the area were lost. They decided to help out their neighbors. They will donate 10% of online proceeds from sales in June 2008. So if you have been thinking about better protection for your iPhone, June would be a good time to purchase from OtterBox.

   After blogging about a music video that used the Mac OS interface, MacMost viewer Ian wrote in about Scientific American’s 60 Second 60 Second Science video podcast which also uses Mac OS in an interesting way.

   Most of the news in the Apple world in the last few days has been about the iPhone being out of stock both online and in Apple stores. The general wisdom points to this being an indicator of a new iPhone model coming out soon. For weeks now, there have been rumors that a new iPhone model will be released at the WWDC on June 9.
    But there could be other explanations as well. This could simply be a manufacturing oversight on Apple’s part. They simply ran out of iPhones. Or, it could be a planned shortage, designed to boost demand. Sort of like the strategy everyone believes that Nintendo uses, controlling the supply of the Wii.
    Or it could be something in the middle. It could be that a new iPhone model is coming out, but that it isn’t a 3G iPhone, but simply one with more memory.
    It does seem to be a bit early for Apple to run out of stock if they don’t plan on releasing another iPhone until June 9. Some are speculating that a new iPhone is coming out but that it will actually come out before June 9, perhaps even in the next week or so.
    None of this really fits into an obvious pattern that Apple has followed before. So perhaps, later this week, the iPhones will reappear in Apple stores with no explanation. We will never know the cause of the shortage.
    But if that were true, why would Apple list the iPhone as being out of stock? Instead they would list the iPhone as simply shipping in 2-3 weeks or something like that. Then they would fill orders as they received more stock.
    It does seem a bit early for Apple to come out with a completely new hardware for the iPhone. A release on June 9, would mean a second generation of hardware in less than a year. Plus, the main new feature rumored to be in the second-generation iPhone is the ability to communicate with faster 3G networks. But the reason this wasn’t in the original iPhone was because there was no low-power chip available to communicate with 3G networks. I would have thought that we would have heard rumors of a chip manufacturer delivering a new low powered 3G chip to Apple before this happened.
    Adding to all this is the fact that Apple seems ready to roll out iPhones in some new countries. If the original iPhone is truly at the end of its life, then they surely won’t use that in these new markets. Which means a second-generation iPhone must be just around the corner.
    I’m going to go out on limb and say that the iPhone shortage is caused by all the factors above. On the one hand, Apple didn’t make enough first-generation iPhones. But, they don’t mind a shortage as it will increase demand. This also prevents people from buying old iPhones just when a new iPhone is about to come out, which could lead to returns and exchanges.

   Here’s a fun music video someone made completely using images from the Mac Desktop like Dashboard Widgets, iMovie, iTunes, text windows, and so on. The song is “Again & Again” by The Bird & the Bee. The artist that made the video is Dennis Liu. I particularly like how the video ends.