10:00 — Steve Jobs takes the stage and talks about the success of the iPad.
10:10 — iBooks app update, including in-line notes, new controls for bookmark functionality, ability to read PDFs. Out later this month.
10:12 — 225,000 apps currently in the app store.
10:20 — Zynga announces Farmville for the iPhone. Available at the end of June.
10:30 — iPhone has 28% of U.S. market. Android has 9%. iPhone has 58% of mobile browser usage, with Android at 23%.
10:31 — iPhone 4 announced. 100+ new features. 8 to be highlighted in today’s keynote.
10:32 — New design with glass on front and back, and steel on sides. 24% thinner.
10:34 — Front-facing camera. Rear camera with a LED flash. Micro-SIM tray. Second mic for noise cancellation.
10:35 — Steel band around sides is partly an antenna. Part is for Bluetooth, Wifi and GPS. Other part is for wireless.
10:36 — 960×640 pixel screen. 326 points-per-inch.
10:47 — Will feature Apple’s A4 chip.
10:49 — Bigger battery with 5-7 hours talk time, 6 hours of 3G, 10 hours of Wifi or video, 300 hours standby.
10:50 — Uses 802.11n for Wifi. Quadband wireless for higher speed than available now.
10:51 — Gyroscope for better rotation detection.
10:54 — 5 megapixel camera with better sensor for low-light photography. LED flash.
10:55 — Record HD video at 720p and 30fps.
10:57 — iMovie app for iPhone allows editing right on the iPhone. Uses themes, transitions, Ken Burns, titles, etc. Exports to 360, 520 or 720p. $5 app.
11:07 — iPhone OS now officially named iOS. This will be iOS 4.
11:08 — iOS 4 features multitasking, folders for apps.
11:10 — Mail has threaded messages, unified inbox.
11:15 — Bing added to Safari on iPhone as third search option, but Google to remain default.
11:15 — iBooks app to come to the iPhone with iOS 4. Purchase once, get on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Syncs place in book, bookmarks and notes.
11:30 — Apple’s iAds will start showing in apps on July 1.
11:32 — Front-facing camera enables video chat. Called “FaceTime.” Uses Wifi. Works on any call between two iPhone 4s. Can also use main camera.
11:38 — FaceTime uses standards which they hope will in turn be made into a video calling standard as well.
11: 40 — Comes in black and white. With 2-year contract will cost $199 for 16GB, $299 for 32GB. Any contact that expires in 2010 will be immediately available for upgrade pricing.
11:42 — On sale June 24. Pre-orders start on June 15 for U.S., U.K., France, Germany and Japan. 88 Countries by September.
iTap VNC: http://macmost.com/a-itap
Air Display: http://macmost.com/a-airdisplay.
MacMost headquarters just upgraded to the newer Airport Extreme Base Station which promises better performance when using a variety of wifi devices. And guess what? It does. All of our devices, from an old 802.11b iMac to the iPhones, iPads and 802.11n Macs seem a little happier.
If you like strategy board games, along the lines of Risk, then Strategery is for you. It works on both the iPhone and iPad. You play on a random map with many rule variations to keep the game fresh. It only takes minutes to play most scenarios for a quick hit of strategy game fun.
iPhones get location data from GPS satellites, mobile phone towers and nearby wireless hotspots. Chances are you use your iPhone at home or work most often, and perhaps your own wifi base station isn’t in the database of wireless hotspots. You can fix that by submitting it yourself at http://www.skyhookwireless.com/howitworks/submit_ap.php.
Ahead of the announcement of a new iPhone and the iPhone 4.0 OS, AT&T has completely overhauled its wireless 3G data plans. In addition, it has announced tethering plans that will be available when the new iPhone OS is released.
The old unlimited data plan, costing $30/month, has been replaced with a $25/month plan that limits data to 2GB. Additional blocks of 1GB will cost $10. A $15/month plan caps data at 200MB, with additional blocks of 200MB for $15. Those with existing $30 unlimited plans can stick with it if they wish.
Tethering, the ability to connect your Mac to an iPhone and use its Internet connection, will cost $20 per month for those on the new $25 plan. You must be on the $25 plan to use tethering.
This also affects iPad 3G users, who will have to choose between the new $25 and $15 plans when signing up for service. They can also stick with the $30/unlimited plan, but it is unclear what happens when iPad users skip a month with this data plan.
On Monday morning Steve Jobs will take the stage at the annual Apple Worldwide Developers Conference. It is anticipated that he will announce new iPhone hardware as well as release dates for the iPhone OS 4.0 operating system for current iPhone 3GS models.
It’s the end of an era. The “Get a Mac” ads starring Justin Long and John Hodgman are done. The ad campaign started in 2006 and the lines “I’m a Mac. And I’m a PC,” became well known worldwide. Apple announced the end of the ads last week and also removed its library of videos from the Apple.com Web site. They remain available as an Apple podcast, at least for now.
Signs are certainly pointing to a new iPhone model soon. The old iPhone 3G, available until this week as a low-end sub-$100 model has been removed from the Apple Store. The lowest-end iPhone 3GS has been discounted to less than $100 at Walmart stores. And Steve Jobs has been confirmed as the keynote speaker for the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference on June 7.
This will typically mean the announcement of new or updated products. Rumors are floating around that AT&T employees have been warned of a new iPhone launch for the month of June. It is likely that the new iPhone will be announced on June 7, and then available for sale at the end of the month.
On the other side of the news, Apple is being scrutinized on three new fronts this week. First, the U.S. Department of Justice is looking into allegations that Apple put pressure on music companies to not enter into exclusive early sales deals with Amazon.
Also, reports of more suicides at electronics manufacturer Foxconn has led many to suggest that working conditions there might be a problem. There have been nine suicides and two other attempts so far this year, out of a population of about 400,000 workers. Apple has said it is launching its own investigation. Foxconn also makes products and parts for HP, Dell, Nokia and Sony.
Even U.S. Apple workers are getting in on the act, with a class-action lawsuit filed in California that claims that Apple Store employees were not properly compensated for missed breaks.
These kinds of things can be expected more often now that Apple has surpassed Microsoft in market capitalization, making it the world’s largest technology firm. It is also the second largest U.S. company, just behind Exxon Mobil.
Looking for some real-time strategy for your iPhone? Lost Empires is an RTS with a RPG flavor, nice graphics and gameplay. It shows that you can get a big game experience on the little iPhone for a little price as well.
Using the Apple menu at the upper left, you can select Recent Items and launch recently used applications or open recently used documents. But if you hold down the Command key, you can reveal those applications and documents in the Finder, rather than run or open them.
Get a piece of spam in your inbox and wish you could lash out? Sending a response only tells the spammer that your email address is a real one and that you read his email. But you can make it seem like your email never got to you by choosing Message, Bounce in Apple Mail. This sends a message back to the spammer letting them think your email address is wrong. Chances are this won’t stop any future spam, but it sometimes feels good to do it anyway.
The debate over which Twitter app to use is pretty much over. While third-party apps will always try to offer extra functionality, it will most likely be the new official Twitter app that gets the majority of users. It’s free, and coming from Twitter itself it will always have the inside scoop on the latest Twitter features.
Apple updated its basic MacBook this week. The look and basic features are the same, as well as the $999 price tag. But the laptop now features a slightly faster processor and video chipset, as well as a new battery that claims to give it 10 hours of runtime.
Early in the week there were rumors that Apple planned to redesign its pro-level video editing tool, Final Cut Studio, to make it more user friendly to non-professionals. Many professionals expressed concern that the application would not meet their needs if this happened. But later in the week Apple responded by saying that any new version of Final Cut Studio would take into account the needs of its existing users.
Apple released updates to all three iWork apps on the iPad: Pages, Keynote and Numbers. All three apps get some bug fixes and support for more languages. Pages now supports more of its features in horizontal orientation that were previously only available in vertical orientation.
An update to MobileMe’s web mail interface is coming, and some users have been invited to beta test. The new interface features multiple display modes, including one that looks much like the iPad’s Mail app. There are also rules that can be applied in the web interface that will also automatically file messages into folders in client software, such as the iPhone and iPad.
In Beatles-on-iTunes news, Paul McCartney said in an interview that it is the record company EMI that is creating the problem. He said there are “all sorts of reasons” why the middlemen at the company don’t want to put the Beatles catalog on iTunes.
