One thing I didn’t touch on in my earlier posts about the WWDC Keynote today was the App Store and the addition of the Enterprise features to the iPhone.
First the App Store.
This is something that’s been in the works for awhile and is shaping up to be a very important part of Apple’s strategy. The App Store will allow developers to offer software applications to iPhone/Touch users with installation as simple as buying a song from iTunes. Judging from the demos of a few games and apps today, there are some pretty polished products waiting in the wings to be unleashed. Games from companies like Sega, with Super Monkey Ball (watch the demo linked in the middle of this page) prove that the iPhone could be a worthy contender against other handheld devices like the Nintendo DS or Sony PSP.
Dedicated apps like the auction browsing one demoed from Ebay and the music making app, Band were impressive as well….although these kinds of apps have been available on Installer for jailbroken iPhones for months, albeit not necessarily from the source company as in the Ebay case. A location based social networking app, Loopt was also demoed but reminds me of Twinkle that I covered previously which is arguably better since it’s using Twitter as the base social network. I’ll reserve judgement until I play with it myself though.
It’ll be interesting to see how stable and reliable these will become when they are legitimately available via Apple although some will be at a cost, like Monkey Ball which will be $9.99. I guess that price is okay considering a DS game would be triple that but it makes impulse purchases less likely than if it was priced in the $5 range. It’s unknown if demos will be available to download before purchase which may clinch the sale.
A very welcome feature of the App Store, unlike the iTunes Wifi Store is that as long as the app is under 10mb, you’ll be able to download it over Edge (or 3G) instead of having to use the desktop iTunes/sync method or Wifi. So if you’re on the go and want to check out that new app that came out, most likely you’ll be able to do it no matter where you are. The update notification will be nice too.
Okay. On to the Enterprise stuff.
One of the biggest things that needs to be done in order to help the iPhone penetrate the corporate world is offering integration with Microsoft Exchange Activesync servers which Apple will soon be offering. Corporate (push!) email on the iPhone will be a dream for many Blackberry toting people although I can understand the reluctance to give up the tactile keyboard for some of the people. When I had my Treo I thought there is nothing that could replace a physical keyboard for me but I’ve adapted to the touch keyboard quite well so they shouldn’t fear it. I wouldn’t hold my breath either for a bluetooth keyboard add-on. Apple doesn’t roll that way and neither should you.
Another interesting item as part of the Enterprise rollout is that the supported email attachments has expanded to include Keynote presentations. This means you can email your presentation to the phone (would be nice if you could sync or retrieve via browser) and then plug in the av cable to the iPhone and then plug that into a projector to display your presentation. Will be interested to see how that functions and if you lose anything in the process like transitions or video playback if they are included in the presentation.
Good for the Enterprise but sad for the employee will also be the ability to lock down the apps on a company deployed iPhone. I understand that this is a necessary evil but still don’t like it. I guess a locked down iPhone is still better than a Blackberry. Custom application downloads will also be available to the Enterprise via their intranet.
I wonder how Rogers will try to entice companies away from their competition using the iPhone now that it can compete against the Blackberry.
While the 3G iPhone was the ‘big deal’ announced at the World Wide Developer’s Conference today, Apple also announced some other things. One of those things was ‘Mobile Me’ which is basically a rebranded and upgraded .Mac service offering using the cute me.com domain. This time it includes a lot more features for iPhone/Touch users.
Upon checking my .Mac email after the keynote, I got this:
Dear .Mac member:
Today Apple announced a new Internet service called MobileMe - taking the best of .Mac and adding a host of new features. As a current .Mac member, your account will be automatically upgraded to MobileMe in July. For a closer look, watch the MobileMe Guided Tour and read below for an overview of your new service.
Mac integration you know and love. With MobileMe, you’ll continue to enjoy features that take advantage of seamless integration with Mac OS X and iLife - Back to My Mac; access to your iDisk in the Finder; Mac-to-Mac syncing of Dock items, preferences, and more; iWeb site publishing; and photo and movie sharing directly from iPhoto ‘08 and iMovie ‘08.
New web applications for when you’re away from your Mac. MobileMe features a suite of web applications at www.me.com that have the familiar look and feel of the applications on your Mac. Because these web applications stay in sync with your Mac and other devices, you’ll have the same information wherever you go. Here’s what you’ll find at me.com:
Mail, the anchor of the new suite, is even better with a refined interface.
Contacts has a new three-pane interface, contact groups, maps integration, search, and photo support.
Calendar is a brand-new web application that feels just like iCal, featuring multiple calendars, click-and-drag event creation, and more.
Gallery lets you manage your collection of shared photos and movies from anywhere. You can now upload photos, rearrange their order, and set sharing preferences, all from a browser.
iDisk now has the familiar look of the Mac OS X Finder. It features drag-and-drop filing and an easy new way to share large documents, by sending an email with a link for downloading the file.
Account lets you manage settings such as storage allocation.
To use the new web applications, make sure you have one of these browsers: Safari 3, Internet Explorer 7, or Firefox 2 or later.
Push email. Push contacts. Push calendar. In addition to Mac-to-Mac syncing, MobileMe now keeps your iPhone, your iPod touch, and even a PC in sync. MobileMe pushes new contacts, calendar items, and bookmarks to your Mac or PC, and over the air to your iPhone or iPod touch. For example, if you add a calendar event on the web, the change will automatically be pushed to your Mac and iPhone. New email will be pushed to your iPhone in seconds, eliminating the need to check for messages manually.
As a MobileMe subscriber, you can continue to use your mac.com address for email. You will also be issued a me.com address with the same user name that you can use if you prefer. The choice is yours.
Double the online storage. To give you plenty of space for your email, photos, and other files, MobileMe doubles your storage from 10GB to 20GB for an individual subscription.
We’ll be sure to update you when the new service goes live. In the meantime, if you have any questions about the upcoming transition from .Mac to MobileMe, please visit the MobileMe FAQ.
Sincerely,
The MobileMe Team
I only have a .Mac account because I got it dirt cheap…otherwise, I wouldn’t have it because it’s very overpriced for what you (currently) get. I have been using it to sync my MacBook Air and my iMac address book and calendars which then update my iPhone when I dock it.
One big thing that Mobile Me is offering me is the ability to sync this wirelessly. I’m still not sure it’s worth the $99US price tag as that feature should have shipped with the 1.0 iPhone. It remains to be seen if you can ‘roll your own’ server setup and do this yourself as many people have with the .Mac type services.
The other parts of Mobile Me look nice but I’ll have to wait and see once I’m upgraded in July to see how compelling they are to my normal usage. The fact that they are integrated into almost everything Apple makes might make it harder to not renew next year. Push email adoption will also depend on the data plan pricing for the iPhone in Canada as well.
Today, during Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco, Steve Jobs announced the new 3G iPhone. It’s going to be available in Canada from Rogers and Fido on July 11th.
It’s interesting to note that Fido will be selling the iPhone in Canada as well as Rogers as you can see from the screenshot below:
Unfortunately, at this time, nobody at Rogers or Fido seems to know this. Calls to both Rogers and Fido sales and customer service resulted in transfers to the clueless department. Great way to promote something this big - not tell any of your frontline staff anything. Meanwhile both the Apple Canada website and Rogers website are getting hammered with interested buyers looking for more information. I’d expect a proper press release to come out soon where they detail the pricing of their data plans so keep an eye (or subscribe) to Rogers news release page.
The phone itself will cost no more than $199US for the 8gb version so I’d expect it to be $199 Canadian. Subsidies haven’t been announced at this time but Apple said they wanted to make the phone available to more people and have reduced the cost to facilitate this.
I was at the local Apple Store to ‘watch’ the keynote coverage live with some friends (a larger crowd formed around us) and play WWDC Bingo (close but no cigar this year). Unfortunately it wasn’t broadcast via video but there was someone streaming audio via Ustream as well as a number of tech blogs had coverage. I was with a few friends and we used a 30″ Cinema Display and a fully loaded MacPro to watch the action. The store staff were pretty accommodating and kept checking in to see what was being announced. Apparently they had a computer in the back some staff was watching the updates as well but they didn’t have anything like a live feed. We were asked to turn it down a couple of times as the 3G iPhone details were spelled out by Steve….the applause was deafening on the Ustream feed.
See you in line on July 11th! Anyone want to buy a 2G iPhone?
Update: Here’s a link to Apple’s release regarding the iPhone in Canada. Still waiting for Rogers to release theirs. Thanks to Buzz for the link.
Update 2: Rogers has finally posted their news release regarding the iPhone:
Rogers and Apple to Bring iPhone 3G to Canada on July 11
WWDC SAN FRANCISCO and TORONTO, June 9 /CNW/ - Rogers Communications and Apple(R) today announced that the highly anticipated iPhone(TM) 3G will be available in Canada on July 11. iPhone 3G combines all the revolutionary features of iPhone with 3G networking that is twice as fast(*) as the first generation iPhone, built-in GPS for expanded location based mobile services, and iPhone 2.0 software which includes support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync and runs the hundreds of third party applications already built with the recently released iPhone SDK.
“Rogers has a long history of bringing Canadians the very best in wireless services, networks and handset innovations,” said Rob Bruce, president, Rogers Wireless. “With iPhone 3G, we will provide our customers with an amazing mobile experience over Canada’s fastest wireless network.”
“We’re excited to be working with Rogers to bring iPhone 3G to Canada,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s COO. “We can’t wait to get this revolutionary phone in the hands of even more people around the world.” iPhone 3G will operate on Rogers’ High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) wireless network, the fastest mobile network in Canada. HSPA is nationally available in the top Canadian urban centers from Vancouver to Halifax, covering more than 60 percent of the population. iPhone 3G will also operate on Roger’s coast-to-coast GSM/EDGE network, proven to be the country’s most reliable wireless network. Starting July 11, iPhone 3G will sell for $199 for the 8Gb model and $299 for the 16Gb model, on a three-year plan. More details on price plans and retail availability will be available soon.
Note that it will be $199/$299 (8gb/16gb models) on a 3 year term with Rogers or Fido.
Update 3: Tod Maffin has some more info from an inside source - if true, could mean that current 1st gen iPhones may be usable on Rogers if you lock in to their data plan(s) which still hasn’t been outlined
In quite possibly one of my favorite Lab with Leo segments ever, Dave Olson chats with Leo about his multimedia publishing empire that started back in the 80’s and how now with the internet, it’s all coming back around, except this time, you don’t have to pay for copies on his parents ditto machine.
Dave, we have to hang out again soon….it’s been too long!
Head over to Michael Gist’s site for information about a new bill that could be introduced as soon as tomorrow that will have huge impacts on peer to peer file sharing in Canada. The main bullet point is that file sharers would be fined $500 PER copyrighted file they shared.
I have a hard time believing something like this, at least in it’s current state, would get passed in Canada without any controversy.
We’ll know what Steve has up his sleeve and (hopefully) us Canadians will be activating our shiny new iPhones on the updated iTunes that was released.
June 9th is fast approaching and so are the rumours swirling around the next version of the iPhone.
I won’t be posting any more iPhone related posts here until after the keynote on Monday, so keep an eye on the “Check this out” section on the top right of this site…assuming you are actually visiting the site (people still do that?). I’ll be sharing any juicy posts I come across. You can also subscribe to the feed or visit the google page of my shared items for the latest rumours, spy photos, etc.
Check back on Monday to see if any of my predictions came true.
File this under ‘news any real guitar player already knows’ but thought I’d make a quick post to save you some cash if you have a bunch of plastic guitars piled up in the corner from RockBand and Guitar Hero.
Don’t buy the crappy stands from the videogame/big box electronics stores, go to a real music store. I went to a local Long & McQuade store and had a choice of proper guitar stands starting as low as $11…I opted for the $14.50 model since it had black foam instead of the orange that the cheaper model had. These can be had online for even cheaper if you shop around but you’ll probably pay shipping so it’s your call which is easier.
As you can see from my photo, it easily holds two guitars..possibly three.
Beats paying $20+ for one at Future Shop or Best Buy. Don’t buy their USB cables either….hit a dollar store instead.
I’ve had my AppleTV for awhile now and it’s great at doing a few things: playing back anything I have in my iTunes libraries on any Mac in my house (I have 4), renting and downloading movies from iTunes, viewing photos off Flickr and playing Youtube videos.
The only thing really missing from it, that I’m able to do with my Xbox 360 is play back divx video, ideally over my network as I have a large media server - I could even do this on my original Xbox using the Xbox Media Center. So close yet so far….until now.
There has been a number of ways to hack the AppleTV to make it more useful. Some are free and others costmoney.
One friend tried the free way….but there is a lot of reading and gathering of files to do it. He was never able to get it working properly so he gave up and just restored the Apple TV to it’s factory state and went on his divx-less way.
Then one company got a lot of press because they were selling a usb thumb drive with all the files needed to just plug-in and go. While reading up on this company, I was directed to a site that had a members only forum ($15/year) where all the same software could be found as well as installation guides. Both of these for-pay options have been criticized for charging for work created by others and offered freely. I’ll let you decide what’s right or wrong in this case, after all you are hacking something. It was just easier for me to get a packaged download that was tested than to wade through endless forum/wiki posts trying to track down all that was needed.
Watching this video is what finally sold me (it’s long):
Needless to say if you watched the whole video, I am now able to easily watch nearly any format of video on my AppleTV while still being able to revert it back to factory should I need to. I’m able to stream anything over my local network and so far the playback has been pretty much flawless. I have run into a couple of bad videos but they are flaky on other machines as well so I’m not too concerned about it. The software is a little on the beta side but there are updates available from within the tools installed which will hopefully stabilize things even more.
There are a number of other plugins available for installation on the AppleTV once this hack is up and running and I’m just starting to explore them - like the Couch Surfer web browser (webkit) shown above. You have full ftp/ssh access to the AppleTV. It reminds me of the early days of hacking the iPhone and is just as fun.
I can’t help but think how many more AppleTV’s would be sold if Apple at least offered divx playback natively on it. After all, Microsoft and Sony both allow it on their game consoles (for free), but of course this would crash head-on into their digital media strategy with the iTunes store.
