The iMedia The iPhone and double your fun!

If you want to know more about what the iPhone is all about, go to Apple.com and watch the twenty minute video. About as close as you can get. Though Apple has fostered the greatest speculation based advertising campaign in history the most predictable thing about Apple and it’s products is the iMedia. The pundits both pro and con are happy to keep the sizzle alive and thus ensuring some lively entertainment while we wait for the next thing to ship.

If you want to double your fun you can make a trip to Tulsa for the grand opening of a new Apple Retail store and witness the iPhone launch at the same time. Doors open June 29th at 6 pm.

iPhone and Developers

It is somewhat of a stretch to call myself a developer but in a small way I count myself among that number and hence my interest in the iPhone development issue. Here are three views.

• In the original announcement it seemed that the iPhone was a closed device which was received with some grumbling but there was at least a future hope.
• At this years WWDC Steve says hey guys you can write Web 2.0 apps! which was received with less than enthusiasm. It didn’t take too long for someone to quickly mock up a webkit app for the iPhone and for another group to point out the obvious problems with that; namely that you have to be in Safari to make the thing work. Developers felt somewhat slighted that they weren’t told, we’re working on an SDK but it’s not ready yet but for now you can do web apps.
• There is a third possibility. Steve Jobs is kind of a legendary guy in the industry by all accounts and one thing he is not fond of doing is saying things like “we can’t”, or tried and failed or something similarly negative. So it could be that there are other “new technologies” that he doesn’t want to talk about and as a result didn’t want to say anything about an SDK one way or the other.

Until we know what is really meant about security and stability beyond the obvious we will have to wait. I think the iPhone will do very well and at the same time there will be things that people don’t like. Whatever happens it will continue to improve as the refinements come about; ship then test!

My initial reaction to the iPhone was, this is too much in a package that small but with time I have to come to see that anything less might not have captured the imagination of the buyer.

Oh Yeah my Dot Mac Wish!

Since I can’t run out and buy the iPhone or whatever Steve announces there IS “one more thing”… I hope he will roll out the new dot mac and grandfather me right into the all the new features. I need to get a lot more use than a little iDisk storage and some email. So…

WWDC 07 + Hardware observations

While I think updates or new hardware at WWDC this year is up in the air, I do think we can expect some new things by October. It’s not likely Apple will try to go from now till October on the strength of the iPhone alone. My guess is we will see some new hardware of the following types by October; new iMacs, widescreen iPod, a new “multi touch” device. Twenty four hours from now we will know a lot more.

WWDC 07 Predictions, The Software…

While I would love to see some revolutionary hardware announced at WWDC this year I am more inclined to think we will hear more about software than hardware. The lion’s share of what we hear will center around Leopard; if you don’t mind me mixing my felines. I’ve read some great predictions regarding the “secret features”, my own take on that is that much of what we see will involve core animation. With all the coding headstarts and other emphasis Apple has placed on getting programmers to WWDC it would seem that new code will be required to take advantage of all the new features in Leopard. A new interface is seen by some and it wouldn’t surprise me at all.

Rather than cover what has been said by so many others I would like to jump to what I see as the path that Apple is on. The interface between man and machine has to change. Last January Steve said “who wants a stylus? .. nobody wants a stylus, we’re going to use the best pointing device, we’re going to use our fingers. Touch technology is on the rise and I hope we can get back to the simplicity and immediacy of the pencil.

iPhones and Beyond…

By now everyone has heard, the iPhone debuts on the 29th of June to a throng of seekers of the latest cellular experience. It’s really more than a phone and if you haven’t previewed all the features you can do so at apple.com. Since there is no small bit of coverage of the iPhone I will dispense with the usual topics and move on to what I see reading between the lines.

In large part I think the iPhone is going to perform well but there are some areas that could be problematic. In no particular order:

• Bandwidth could cause some slow internet experience.
• It will be tempting to theives, so insurance is necessary. [ read extra cost of ownership ]
• Battery life could be an issue simply because it’s a problem on most portable devices.

On the positive side I hear some promise coming from Apple via Steve himself at the All Things Digital conference.

It looks like third party applications will happen at some point and that really puts the computer in a cell phone form factor. I can see things like widgets and GTD apps getting some really good mileage out of this.

Mr. Jobs also went as far as saying that he thought there were a lot more of these highly focussed devices out there or on the horizon like the iPhone and the iPod. What might Apple be producing? Maybe, a widescreen ipod with internet, a tablet device done right, perhaps some better implementation of a navigational device.

Steve and Bill went on to discuss where they thought things were going with regard to the internet which they called the cloud and whether or not we could have a low end device that would rely on the power of a big client to handle all the processing. There answers were revelatory; basically they see some things working in that way but for the real rich media stuff we’re still going to need a pretty good box sitting on our desk or lap. Although the internet pipe is getting bigger all the time it is going to take some time before it’s big enough to handle everything and be everywhere. We’re just not there yet.