Disclaimer: News gathered here are from a variety of sources.
This year’s WWDC starts with a massive crowd, the majority of whom are using iPads. And some enthusiastic people raised iPads spelling out “WWDC”. Cool.
Okay, on to the major updates. I’ll try to keep it as short as possible.
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As usual, Steve Jobs comes on stage, greeted by a standing ovation.
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1) iBooks (on iPad)
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-New in-line notes that look like post-it notes.
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-New control to add bookmarks which shows as a red ribbon, which is also displayed in the content menu.
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-Now you can view PDFs in iBooks as well, functions just like the normal books you buy off the iBookStore.
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Moving on, Jobs also talked about HTML5. Basically, any developer who writes in HTML5 will have their content on ALL Apple systems, iPad, iPod Touch, iPhone and Mac. Apple is clearly behind HTML5 100%
Jobs also addressed the issue about why certain Apps get rejected from the App Store. Most of the time, reason being their private APIs, which will pose and issue when the iPhone OS gets updated cos it’ll break the APIs.
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Steve Jobs continue to highlight and demonstrate certain Apps.
eBay
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Netflix. Ya, it’s finally coming to iPhone. No word on 3G support though.
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And of course, Farmville.
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Guitar Hero. Yeah man… Available for only $2.99
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And remember Apple mentioned about the revenue sharing thing on the App Store? Apple has since paid out $1 billion. Cool figure.
Continued to share about the US Smartphone Market Share
Poor Andriod with only 9%. BB still going strong at 35%.
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And now, the major announcement we’ve all been waiting for. iPhone 4. Here’s a look at the history of the iPhone.
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Complete with an all new design, which unfortunately, most of us has probably seen it. But not in detail though!
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Glass on the front and back, and steel around the sides. 9.3mm thick, 24% thinner than current iPhone. There’s a LED flash at the back with the camera.
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Some have commented about a weird black line alone both sides of the iPhone 4.
Well, basically, just the band antennas. Illustrated below.
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iPhone 4′s summary.
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Also, the screen got a new upgrade too. 4 times as many pixels in that small tiny space. Resulting in amazingly sharp text.
326 ppi.. Mad…
Basically, 300ppi is the limit of the human eye retina when reading stuff at 10-12 inches away. Clearly this beats it.
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See the difference between the old and new screens..
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Now moving to testing the webpage load speeds on both iPhone, one 3GS and one 4.
Apparently, they had a network glitch with their WiFi network? Someone’s gonna go down for this… And they switched to AT&T’s 3G network, but that didn’t work either, popping up all sorts of error messages about “not being able to connect to the Internet”. Nice..
And someone shouted “Try Verizon!” I like that. Hahaha…
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Concluding about the iPhone 4.
And of course, powered by the Apple A4 chip.
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Components of the entire iPhone 4. Look at the size of the A4 chip.
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Bigger battery, plus A4 chip.
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New also on the iPhone 4, 3-axis gyro. Meaning, complete with the accelerometer, it can now detect motion velocity in 6 axises. Jobs then proceeds to demo it on the iPhone 4, turning around and the graphic of a block of wood on the iPhone, moves as well.
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Jobs goes on to talk about the new camera system.
New 5MP camera with a 1.75 micron pixel sized backside illuminated sensor for better low light photography.
Now shoots video in 720p at 30FPS. Hmms. What about if I want in 25FPS? Bummer.
LED light can stay on throughout the video recording though, so ain’t that bad. Haha.
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And something really new.
iMovie for iPhone!!
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Workflow is very similar to that of the iMovie for desktop Macs. But the UI for the iPhone seems much more intuitive, possibly cos it’s touch screen. Can you imagine editing HD videos on FCP on a large touch screen? That’s my dream…
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And you can even export in different sizes, 720p, 540p and 360p. Meaning, now you can shoot, edit and export your movie, entirely on an iPhone. Amazing.
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At this point, Jobs starts to turn off the WiFi, and asks the audience to set their laptops on the floor, so as not to disrupt the demos. Apparently, 570 WiFi base stations were responsible for the network jam.
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Moving on, iPhone OS 4 is now iOS 4.
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Going through some of the features like multitasking, folders, unified Inbox in Mail, etc etc.
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Overall of iOS4.
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Apple is also apparently, adding “bing” support for it’s search in Safari.
A comparison of all 3 search engines. Yahoo, Google and bing.
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Also new to iOS4, iBooks! Now you can sync your iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone iBooks together! Wirelessly!
And once again, Jobs demos it on the book “Winnie The Pooh”
And btw, it’s free with every iBook App.
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PDF viewer in iBooks as well, as previously mentioned.
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Going on to show iAds. Basically an advertising platform on the iPhone, throughout Apps, that allows developers to earn money by advertising on the iPhone. (This is clearly not the proper explanation, but you get the idea.)
Only different from the normal ads we see in our iPhones now, is that iAds doesn’t close your app to take you to another page. It keeps you within the app itself. Something like, an app, within an app?
It has really cool features, check it out when Jobs first introduced it when he announced iOS4′s SDK.
And many companies have signed up for the iAds too.
Nissan, Citi, Unilever, AT&T, Chanel, GE, Liberty Mutual, State Farm, Geico, Campbells, Sears, JC Penny, Target, Best Buy, Direct TV, TBS, and Disney, just to name a few.
iAds will be turned on, on 1st July for all iOS4 devices.
That wraps up iPhone 4 and iOS4.
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And Apple did their thing again. Their “one more thing” thing.
Video call! Apple calls it FaceTime, though it’s a really weird name if you ask me.
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See that FaceTime icon at the bottom? Hmm. What happened to the “hold” button?
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However, it’s only available over WiFi, citing reasons to collaborate with cellular providers on this. And only from iPhone 4 to iPhone 4.
Now doesn’t that sound a bit like skype? Or perhaps the quality is better?
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Standards wise…
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So that’s wrapping up the iPhone 4.
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iPhone 4 comes in black and white. $199 for the 16GB model, $299 for the 32GB model.
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iPhone 4 will be available in US, UK, France, Germany and Japan on June 25th. Coming to another 18 more countries in July.
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iOS 4 will be free for iPhone 3GS, iPhone 3G (not all features supported), and iPod Touch, excluding the 1st generation. Apparently they’ve found a way to make iOS free on iPod Touch too.
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Jobs goes on to show a video about the iPhone 4. Very similar to those of the MacBook Pro Unibody Video and the iPad video too.
After which, Jobs takes the stage again.
Talks about Apple not just being a tech company, but integrating liberal arts as well. So developers don’t need to mess over integration.
Ends off with “This is our new baby, I hope you love it as much as we do. Thank you very much.”
Awesome.
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So… Last thoughts.
Is Starhub or any of the telcos going to offer some nice package for customers to upgrade to iPhone 4? Come on, you know you want that business going…
Also, the new iPhone 4 uses the new micro-SIM card too. Same ones that you’ll find on the iPad.
No Mac Pro news, no basic MobileMe package too. Oh wells. Quite bummed about the lack of Mac Pro updates though.. Lets see if they’ll announce it at the end of the month.
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