April 8, 2010

Apple today previewed its iPhone OS 4 software and released a beta version of the software to iPhone Developer Program members.  The iPhone OS 4 beta release includes an updated Software Development Kit (SDK) with over 1,500 new Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and over 100 new features that will be available to iPhone and iPod touch users this summer.  New features include Multitasking for third party apps; Folders to better organize and access apps; improved Mail with a unified inbox, fast inbox switching and threaded messages; enhanced Enterprise support with even better data protection, mobile device management, wireless app distribution and more; Apple’s new iAd mobile advertising platform; and iBooks, the new ebook reader and online bookstore recently debuted on the iPad. Read More

That's it from Apple's presentation.  We will be doing detailed coverage of iPhone OS 4 later today.  Check it out on TechzTalk. 

A: If you want to kill an app... you don't have to.  We architected something so the user doesn't have to be the custodian of applications.  We'll give the apps in the foreground as needed.  The user doesn't have to worry about that at all.  The user just uses things.  In multitasking, if you see a task manager, they you blew it.  Users shouldn't have to ever, ever, ever think about that stuff. 

Q: How do you close applications?  And can people use stuff other than iAd and Game Center? 

A: iPhone 3GS has been a huge hit, and iPod touch sales have also accelerated last year.  So a lot of these products, the install base, are the most recent products.  The old ones will still live the new features, but they'll just miss ones like multitasking.  If that's an incentive to get people to upgrade to the new phone, that's fantastic. 

Q: Are you concerned at all about multitasking and other features that wouldn't work for the older devices.  Will this OS upgrade be enough to get people to upgrade their phones and renew their contracts. 

A:Steve says we can enhance the App Store any time as its a sever side program, it doesn't depend of iPhone OS releases.  We are working constantly to improve discoverability via features like Genius. 

Q:How are you going to improve App Store for discoverability? 

A:Even though we've been using these internally for sometime, you still have butterflies in your stomach the few weeks before launch.  You never really know until you get it into customers hands, and they tell you what they think.  The feedback we've got has been off the charts.  We think this is a profound gamechanger.  We think when people look back some number of years from now, they'll see this as a major event in personal computation.  What's been really great for me is how quickly people I've never talked to before just telling me how much this product is... How much they think this product is going to change their life and what they do.  People are getting it very quickly.  Says Steve. 

Q: Anything surprises you about the initial reaction to the iPad so far? 

A: There is a porn store for Android to go to.  You can download them, your kids can download them.  That's a place we don't want to go.  We're not going to go there. 

Q: Are there any plans for you to run unsigned applications, like on Android? 

Steve says multitasking was depended on hardware and that was the only limiting factor. 

Steve is talking about iAd for iPhone platform and how it is much better than ads on the desktops.  today. 

A: Everything is possible. 

Q: So widgets are possible on iPad? 

A: We just shipped it on Saturday.  And then we rested on Sunday. 

Q: Why have you veered away from widgets on the iPad? 

A: We think it works better with the push notifications as it's in place now.  The fast-app switching is very complicated and more impressive than what we demoed. 

Q: It there a reason why you won't be able to see a timeline in Twitter or an IM conversation in the background? 

A: This isn't necessary.  They're all HTML5 ads and people can choose any tools they want.  As long as it's HTML5. 

Q: Will Apple provide platform for ad development? 

A: No

Q: Is there going to be any change in Apple's position on Java and Flash in iPhone OS 4? 

A: I think there will be some boundaries, like you can’t run any ad on ABC.  There are some ads we’d rather not run, but the concept are that these advertisers will pay to run ads, and they’ll pay to run ads that are well received by the audience.  I’m not sure there’s going to be anything but a light touch. 

Q: Will Apple have approval process for ads? 

A: The problem was there are a bunch of different social networks out there.  So the goal was to build it into the platform, and everyone can be on the same gaming platform.  We expect developers will build this into their games because they’ll have a wider audience. 

Q: Will social gaming network supplant all the social gaming networks already available?  and what will Apple do different? 

A: No.  It'll still be near the end of April. 

Q: Will hugh ipad demand impact international launch? 

A:I dont think it uses that much data. 

Q: About Pandora? 

A: I'm not sure that's a correct assumption. 

Q: Multitasking will increase data usage, How will AT&T handle it? 

Steve Jobs, Phil Schiller and Scott Forstall are on stage for Q&A.

This is for the presentation.  Apple will have Q&A section after a short break. 

iPad will get it in Fall.  The iPhone OS 4 will be available for iPhone 3G and 2nd gen touch but some features like multitasking won't work on those devices. 

Steve is now naming each of the seven new features that were shown just now.  He says there are over 100 new features for users. 

The ads can have content like video, games, images and even downloads.  He is now showing NikeiD ad where you can design your own shoe.  And now Target ad.  The ads are very interactive and fun.  I never thought I would say such a thing about Ads. 

He is demoing a news app with Toy Story 2 ad.  When you click on the ad it loads within the app and lets you interact with the content in the ad. 

Main features of iAd are Emotion + Interactivity, Ads keep you in your app, built into iPhone OS, Apple sells and hosts the ads and 60 percent revenue goes to developers. 

Steve says iAd is about both interaction and emotion.  It's about motion plus interactivity.  The ads keep you in your app.  Today when you click on a banner ad, it yanks you out of your app and throws you onto the advertisers web page.  So people don't click on the ads. 

Steve is showing interaction vs emotion graphic, and say most ads today are either interactive or emotion and they are not good at both. 

He says average user spend 30 mins everyday using apps and if they view ad every 3 minute it's 10 ads per device per day.  Which is 1 billion ad impression per day. 

The seventh feature of iPhone OS is iAd.  Steve says "We have a lot of free or reasonably priced apps... we like that, but our devs have to find ways to make money.  So our devs are putting ads into apps, and for lack of a better way to say it, we think most of this kind of advertising sucks." 

The sixth feature of iPhone OS 4 is Game Center.  it will offer developers APIs for features like Social gaming network, Invite friends, Matchmaking, Leaderboards and achievements.  In short Xbox Live for iPhone. 

Fourth feature is iBooks on iPhone.  The app is very similar to iPad and Steve says "We think customers will really enjoy this." 

The third feature is enhanced Mail app.  It now offer unified inbox, multiple exchange accounts, fast inbox switching, threaded messages and open attachments with third party apps. 

user can have as many Folders as he wants and can keep them anywhere.  Folders will now allow users to keep up to 2,160 apps. 

The second new feature on the iPhone OS is called "Folder".  Steve says "I want to make a folder with games in it.  I have several games, so I just push my finger on an app, they start to jiggle, and I just drag one app on top of another and it instantly makes a folder.  It also automatically names the folder based on the categories of these apps, or I can rename." 

The last two multitasking APIs are Task completion and Fast app switching.  Some application like photo uploading takes time uses can switch application will the photo uploads and the Task completion and Fast app switching will take care of rest. 

Next he talks about Push notifications and says that Apple has served over 10 billion notifications in past 9 months. 

Scott says that GPS uses fair bit of power which is ok for turn by turn navigation apps, but for location aware social networking apps Apple uses cell towers that are always connected. 

The third multitasking API is background location that can be used by applications like TomTom for turn by turn navigation. 

Scott is back on stage

He says Until today navigation away from the app meant that I would go offline.  Now I go into the background, but I can still receive calls.  he shows few screen shots of Skype working in background. 

David Ponsford from Skype is on stage to demo VOIP background API for their application. 

Pandora uses background audio API one of the seven multitasking APIs.  Now Scott is talking about VOIP background API. 

Pandora team is on stage and demoing multitasking for the app.  Pandora can now be controlled from lock screen. 

Scott says Apple developed seven multitasking services as APIs and developers can access them depending on type of application.  he is showing and example using Pandora. 

Scott Forstall is on stage to explain how Apple did this while preserving battery life and performance..

The UI puts all the apps that are running at the bottom of the screen like a Dock and you can access all the running apps by double clicking the home button. 

Demo Time: "I'm gonna launch mail, this has a URL - so I jump to safari - so I want to go back to mail... I double click the home button and a window raises that shows me all the apps that are running." 

Steve says that Apple figured out how to implement multitasking without performance loss and uses a great UI to accomplish that. 

Apple is going to talk about 7 new features and the first one is Multitasking

So today we are giving a developers preview of iPhone OS 4.  It has over 1500 new APIs, 100 new user features and framework for hardware accelerated math functions. 

Steve says "Now let's get to the iPhone."  He says iPhone has won JD Power award three years in a row, has 64percent mobile browser user share, over 50 million iPhone sold and total of 85 million iPhone and iPod touch sold. 

Steve is showing off apps specifically designed for iPad like Marvel, ABC, Epicurious and MLB. 

We will be doing live coverage of the iPhone OS 4 event that will be held on April 8th at 10 AM PST/ 1PM EST / 6PM London.  Apple sent out invitations for the event yesterday, which will be held on Apple’s campus in Cupertino CA.  Join us here on April 8th for live coverage on live.techztalk.com.  Bookmark the link. 

Australian Macworld is reporting that Apple will be updating their MacBook Pro lineup next Tuesday, April 13th.  The website received a tip from person familiar with Apple product cycles and inventory levels.  The Macworld wrote:“The source said that an update to every MacBook Pro model was expected on Tuesday, 13 April, but was unsure about the MacBook Air. ”Read More

April 7, 2010

At the iPhone OS 4 event on Thursday, Apple will show the next generation of iPhone OS, which would include direct printing support, multitasking for third party apps, API for new iAd mobile advertising service and better support for game development. Read More

April 6, 2010

Verizon’s CEO Ivan Seidenberg said before Council of Foreign Relations that the company has told Apple it wants to carry the iPhone.  He further added he has no information if Apple is working on such a device now.  He decline to comment if and when the popular smartphone will be available for Verizon customers. Read More

AnandTech ran comparative benchmarks on iPad, iPhone 3GS and Nexus One to see how Apple’s new A4 SoC stacks up against the Samsung chip in iPhone and Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8250 chip in Nexus One.  The Snapdragon will also be used in many tablets coming later this year, so this comparison should give an idea of what we can expect performance-wise from those tablets.  AnandTech ran two tests, in the first test they recorded load time for various websites and in the second test they used WebKit SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark tool. Read More

For Apple, iPad was yet another successful product launch, as the device sold more than 300,000 units in first 15 hours.  This prompted HP to release video of their upcoming iPad like tablet called HP Slate.  The video highlights features of Slate that are missing from the iPad, like webcam, USB port and SD card slot.  HP shows Skype running on the tablet, a photo gallery application, iTunes, multitouch and video recording. Read More

April 5, 2010

Just two days after iPad launch, Apple today sent out invitations to media outlets for an iPhone OS 4 event that will be held on April 8th.  The invitation shows the shadow of number ‘4’ and says “Get a sneak peek into the future of iPhone OS.”  No other information is provided on the invitation about the event. It is rumored that iPhone OS 4 will bring multitasking for third party apps, better notification system and unified mailbox.  We should find out more on April 8th.  We will be doing live coverage of the iPhone OS 4 event.  Please join us on April 8th at 10 AM PST/ 1 PM EST on live.techztalk.com. 

Apple today announced that it sold over 300,000 iPads in the US as of midnight Saturday, April 3.  These sales included deliveries of pre-ordered iPads to customers, deliveries to channel partners and sales at Apple Retail Stores.  Apple also announced that iPad users downloaded over one million apps from Apple’s App Store and over 250,000 ebooks from its iBookstore during the first day. Read More

April 4, 2010

BGR is reporting that iPad OS has some interesting references to upcoming Apple productions.  The devices section in the filesystem shows new model references including iPhone3,2, iPhone3,3, iPod4,1 and iProd2,1.  The current model number for iPhone 3GS is 3,1, for iPod touch is 3,1 and for iPad (aka iProd) is 1,1.Read More