#comments

Ok, WWDC has come and gone this year. There was a tremendous build up to it and I think a lot of people left feeling unsatisfied, I know I came out of it vaguely disappointed. If you missed it you can watch it on Apple’s site or just read the internet today and you won’t be able to do any 3 consecutive clicks without coming across more WWDC coverage and analysis. Like this one!

MobileMe, cool… I guess.

MobileMe, the successor to the never popular .Mac, was introduced. Basically a sync platform it’s touted as Exchange for the rest of us. It lets you sync calendars, contacts, pictures, files and email across your various computers and iPhone all over the air. I guess that’s cool, although, a lot of it can already be done, if you’re on IMAP your email already does that and I bought Spanning Sync which for much cheaper sync’s calendars and contacts with Gmail. Which to me is a plus, because I don’t want to switch everything I do to all Apple all the time. And I share my images with Flickr, which has the added bonus that Flickr integrates with every other service known to man.

As far as I can tell this does not work as a convenient backup solution – no Time Machine integration or anything. For $99/yr it’s not expensive but it isn’t cheap. It’s a very good solution if you don’t need to use any third party versions of the features they offer, I suspect it’ll be more popular than .Mac was, but I wonder if it’ll really pull in that much more business. Some folks have been comparing it to Microsoft’s Mesh, but from what I can tell that isn’t accurate. Mesh is about connecting everything to everything your computers, your devices and whatever web services you use. MobileMe is about enhancing your pure Apple experience.

The iPhone is what this shindig was all about

That brings us to the main course of the Keynote the iPhone 2 hardware and iPhone 3G. First of all, does this confuse anyone? This is confusing nomenclature, the likes Apple typically does not fall into. So, ok, iPhone 2 is the second version of the iPhone’s software. The next version of the iPhone’s hardware is called iPhone 3G, but where that 3G does stand for third generation, it isn’t the third generation of the iPhone, but the 3rd generation of the radio it uses. But ok, whatever.

The SDK brought us no surprises. A stable of new app demonstrations whet the appetite (ok, I will give Apple much money and play MonkeyBall and that Caveman Racing game all the time). $9.99 for a game seems pretty reasonable for me – only if you’re used to paying a couple bucks for a song or movie does it seem expensive, but looking at games for the DS which clock in at $20-$40 it isn’t bad. That you can download them over the air (if they’re small enough) is pretty great. I hope that Apple and its developers take a cue from Amazon and allow free trial downloads of their apps. Play a level or 2 for free and then click here to automatically pay and download the full version instantly. Slam. Dunk.

Apples no-background Push solution – cool and creepy?

I guess the big news on the SDK front was the announcement that there’s still no background processing, but Apple’s going to build a push technology for developers to use. So basically, there’ll be a service on the iPhone that talks to Apple on behalf of all the apps that might normally want to run in the background. Then the developers are responsible for sending all the things that the apps want from the internet through Apple to the phone, so Apple acts as the gatekeeper for all of these updates.

Since the phone needs to have just a single connection this is apparently pretty battery friendly. Probably stability friendly as well. But it doesn’t seem like it will be developer friendly, basically forcing any application that might need to run in the backround into becoming a service that the developer must provide. Instead of the app simply going and pinging a chat server, mail server or Google Reader or whatever for it’s data, now the developer must create a conduit that users must register for and then that conduit has to pull all the data from the chat server (or whatever) and send it through Apple. Which sucks. At least that is my guess as to how such a thing must work, no?

Also, sending all of this data through Apple, isn’t that hella creepy? And if that gateway goes down, so does all your stuff. I’m not sure, but my magic 8-ball says “weak.”

iPhone 3G? No surprises.

So the iPhone 3G hits and again no surprises. Which is fine, because I want very much to buy one. The faster radio will be great (I’d like to see real world confirmation that their 3G radio is 30% faster than other phone’s implementations). The GPS will be super great, I love the geotagged photos and can’t wait to get TomTom on the iPhone.

Ok, the camera hasn’t been enhanced. Eh, it’s good enough for my needs. I’m sure someone will build in video. MMS, ok, it’s dumb they don’t have it, but I never really used it so I’m not missing it. The big surprise for me though was that they still haven’t built in copy and paste. Ah well, maybe some 3rd party app will be able to hack this in?

This whole thing is just an Apple power play

For me the big, big news was the pricing cut and the move away from carrier subscription fees. This is indicative of Apple’s strategy with the iPhone. They’ve become a much more standard phone for the carriers, no revenue sharing, yes carriers can subsidize and lock in to contracts and here have an iPhone for $199 or $299. This will put a major dent in Palm’s Centro and RIM’s consumer sales. As Apple adds features and drops prices we’ll see if Nokia and Palm remain thankful to the company. The big push into the enterprise is also a key to the strategy.

Apple’s going for volume, they don’t need to make a huge profit on each phone anymore they’re looking to take the halo effect of the iPhone and freaking turn it to 11. They’re using the iPhone as their backdoor into everything. The SDK is OS X. Now that major gaming companies and the enterprise will be falling over themselves to create applications for the iPhone, it’s not a stretch to believe that they’ll use this newly garnered developing skills to start creating apps for desktop macs. And with those apps will come a greater acceptance of OSX. How many times have I heard someone say, I want a mac but my company uses windows. I suspect in the upcoming years we’ll hear less of that.

As well this WWDC to me was all about Apple emphasizing what a closed system it is. Apple everything, they’ll provide you all your services and you’ll pay them for it. They’re the single gateway for applications (unless your a company, then they’ll provide you servers and software to get your apps onto your employees iPhones), they’re the single gateway for background updates. Apple, Apple, Apple! I am currently fine with all this and maybe in the end it will be great, but it does underscore the various worries that people have.

It’s always been in Apple’s DNA to cannibalize itself, they don’t wait for a product to peak and competitors to catch up, they simply keep releasing new products on top of currently successful ones. In this case, they’re taking the iPhone’s success as a huge profit center and trading that for leverage in making all of Apple more successful. The iPhone is Apple’s trojan horse and they’re going to make sure everyone’s got one. I know I want one. July 11th can’t come soon enough. What about you? You going to get one? Or are you bored out of your mind with this stuff?