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.
