Live Blogging of the Live Blogging Audio Stream
Well, that’s what I’m reduced to. I’ve done it before, posting my reactions to others’ reactions. But since Apple stopped streaming video of their keynotes, this is the only game in town. Why they don’t stream, I don’t know–if they were worried about selling out, they shouldn’t have–it sold out. One would think that baseball rules apply–blackouts lifted in the case of sellout crowds. But apparently not. Maybe Apple just figured they didn’t need to.
So instead, the Mac blogs have taken over the load, doing live blogging via WiFi (cellular connections?) from the event–and their pages are heavily trafficked. MacRumors, Engadget, Gizmondo, and many others. iPhone Alley is streaming audio–but it sounds like the adults on a Peanuts TV special. But just this moment, it just got a whole lot better. Jobs’ voice is very clear… although he’s mostly just talking about how well things are going.
Al Gore is there…
Jobs presented some enterprise stuff, Exchange, businesses and so forth saying “we can use the iPhone” in so many different ways. Push email/contacts/calendar, etc. Now they’re talking about how great the SDK (software developer’s kit, which allows developers to create software for the iPhone) is. We could probably go on for a while with only stuff that people already know or that only developers would be interested in.
It’s easy to build apps for the iPhone… blah blah blah. Okay, I know it’s important for developers. But it’s 2:30 am here in Japan–get to the good stuff!
Some app demos being shown. A $10 game called Super Monkey Ball with 100 levels… eBay auctions… Loopt, keeping track of friends with iPhones with location-aware software–seeing photos they’ve taken, setting up lunch meetings–free software… TypePad! Photo-blogging over the iPhone, also free! (I’m getting that–erm, unless it’s not WordPress-compatible… I’m sure that WordPress will have something compatible)… Associated Press, all kinds of ways to access news… Pangea games (okay, enough demos, thank you)… “Band,” software that allows you to play musical instruments virtually on the iPhone, recording your musical doodling… Medical anatomical learning…
I really like the fact that several of these apps will be free; I was under the impression that everything would cost something. This could really be good.
As usual, Apple stock is doing weird stuff–down $10 despite seeing a lot of good stuff. Maybe they’re going down until they see something really tasty. However, one thing the endless demos do is show you the breadth and depth of all the apps available, and if you look at it carefully, you can see the potential of all this.
Okay, finally the developers have finished. So what next? One feature request asked for: alerts for an app that isn’t even running. A better system than Windows mobile: Push Notification for all apps, not just Enterprise. IP connection from server allows the background software to run remotely, saving the battery life of your phone. Really, a lot of great tools here. Apple stick has just regained $5, so it’s only $5 down.
New features: contact search–about time. iWork and MS Office document viewing support. Scientific Calculator by turning the phone sideways… parental controls… Many languages, including two forms of entry for Japanese! And Chinese. Drawing kanji with your fingers… switching between languages on the fly. Forget the plastic keys!
Another thing: Ad hoc distribution: certify up to 100 iPhones, run and sync all those iPhones.
Mobile Me!! “Exchange for the rest of us.” Apple’s own service with Push services. Hmm… worth the $99 price after all? So all messages, changes automatically updated on all linked devices, over cell networks. Web 2.0 apps: on me.com, rich email environment, as expected in rumors, like having Mac apps on the web. Mail, iCal, etc. Also file browsing–like having your Mac on the web. 20GB per account, 60-day free trial. Mobile Me replaces dot-mac.
Now about the iPhone: already a success, 80% using 10 or more features! 6 millions iPhones until they ran out 6 weeks ago. 3G iPhone! Enterprise Support. 3rd party app support, more countries–“believe me, they’re in use in more countries!” The iPhone more affordable: taking it to the next level: iPhone 3G, this is what it looks like: flush headphone jack, much better audio.
3G speeds approaching WiFi… great battery life: standby time 300 hours: up to 5 hours talk time; 5-6 hours of high-speed browsing time; browsing 24 hours, video 7 hours.
GPS built-in! Can do tracking…
No mention of video conferencing or a front-facing camera.
Playing the song “It’s a small world,” listing all the countries. Now in 6 countries, goal of 12 countries, stretch goal of 25 countries, total of 70 countries… and before Japan came up on the map, I accidentally quit my browser. That’s what comes from staying up until 3:45 am….
Okay, Japan is on the list. And I’ve restarted my browser.
And the keynote is over. No front-facing video-conferencing, no various-sized iPhones… but I don’t think that anyone is disappointed. The Apple store is still offline, but should be back up soon. But at almost 4:00 am, I won’t be able to stay up long enough. Not everything that all the rumors predicted–no look at Snow Leopard yet, no tablet Macs–but certainly good enough. The only question is, will Wall Street think so?
The Apple Store Japan is back online and they have the iPhone–but I can’t find the release date, and am too tired at this point to do so.
I’ll be back tomorrow morning for a quick comment.
I’m going to buy this thing when it comes out and give my 1.0 iphone (for which I paid the $599 – arg! – to my wife). I’m also thinking about writing an iphone application, maybe a hiragana dictionary. Any ideas for a cool iphone app?
Like Alex, my iPhone 1.0 is going to my girlfriend.
As far as the iPhone and WordPress, there’s already some decent plugins for WP that allow iPhone use. In fact, there’s a theme that you can load so that anyone viewing your page with an iPhone gets an iPhone-friendly look to the page, but viewers on regular browsers get the normal page.
Then there’s one that gives you power as an admin, including writing posts and so forth. About the only thing that I haven’t found that would work easily is integrating photos to the blog- which the TypePad thing looks like it’s built to do.
Mobile blogging cries out for photos- it’s the internet equivalent of a live TV remote. Hopefully someone works up a WP version of the same thing soon.
And GPS! Remains to be seen how effective it is, but it sounds like they’ve got a newer version of a GPS chipset that doesn’t suck power and is fast to start up… which is cool.
I don’t know if I will jump on the new iPhone so fast. But I’m looking forward to the software update and the new Kanji input method. The current hack which allows Japanese input is functional but the keys become so small I often mistype. It is too bad that a vertically oriented keyboard is still unavailable anywhere but the browser.
Alex, if you have access to the new input method data, it could make for a good 3rd party application for testing kanji skills.
Alex, Paul: along the lines of iPhones and girlfriends, I might just buy two iPhones when they come out, unless SoftBank decides not to subsidize and the thing costs 50,000 yen (about $500) or so. But if it’s lower than $300, we’ll probably get two, and go for their “White” plan, which costs $10 a month, allows unlimited free calls between Sachi and me, unlimited free calls to any SoftBank user until 9pm at night, and generally doesn’t cost very much after that. My only concern is that they don’t seem to have an unlimited data plan, and data usage may be my big thing with the iPhone.
I’ll be very interested in checking out the iPhone themes–though it does seem to suggest that I’d have to completely re-work the them to maintain my blog’s current appearance. Not that I’m averse to it; the theme I based this on currently is a dog as far as a lot of the coding goes, with problems with comments and other stuff as well. I like the idea of an iPhone-themed site, I’ll have to check that out.
But what I was really hoping for was a stand-alone iPhone app which would simply allow me to blog directly into whatever theme I’m using; I’m sure that there’ll be something like that available at some point, if not immediately.
Luis, I think you’re in luck … Steve Jobs said that the black one wont be more than $199USD world wide.
Alex: I really hope you’re right, but I can’t find that statement–there’s a lot of stuff about the price in general, talk about selling in the U.S. and maybe some other specific countries, but I can’t find anything about the price everywhere.
Likely I would get the 16GB one myself, and Sachi would have the 8GB version–I doubt she’d be using it for large amounts of data or anything.
Luis, Softbank does have unlimited data plan. For normal handsets its around 4400yen I think and for their smart phones (x-series) it caps at 9800yen. So there’s a good chance the iPhone data plan will be priced similar to their current smart phones.
Roy: good to hear. I looked at SoftBank’s web site and nothing was listed where I could find it. I’ve seen mention in blogs tonight that there are plans, but I see varying accounts–yours is probably the most clear, linking the price plans to specific phone models. 9800 per month, ouch! I better set up a WiFi base station (I have an extra here) at my office and keep mobile browsing to a minimum, unless they make a special plan for the iPhone.
A nice application for iPhone: press button in corner (so you do not need to look at devie), enter audio message to self, press same button in same position, phone turns off, and you are done.Then have list of memo’s to self on iPhone and also computer (needs to sync w/ other devices).
Here’s the link to the X-Series Packet Plan. It starts at minimum 1,029yen and caps at 9,800yen.
http://mb.softbank.jp/mb/price_plan/X/packet/index.html
Ah! It’s flexible, the ¥9800 yen is a cap. A bit better. Still, ouch! Don’t unlimited data plans in other countries top out at $30 or $40 a month? This would be a reversal from the way Japanese ISP costs are lower than the U.S. and the speeds ten times faster….