WWDC 2011 Impression

The streaming video is available on Apple’s site now.

1. OS X Lion.
The show started with Phil Schiller talking about Lion and some of the features like gestures and what not. We’ve seen this before. Craig was showing the demo, showing the new scrolling paradigm and the new photo booth app. The focus is full-screen apps. What’s nice about it is how smooth things are. Whenever Craig swiped stuff around, the OS looks just silky smooth, something I like about Apple. Craig also showed the more intuitive mission control for spaces. Not bad, but nothing superbly amazing.
Launchpad is basically iOS-like launcher for OS X. Resume and auto-save seem like basic ideas, but I bet these will require app support for full functionality. Versions has the similar vibe of something that Microsoft is already doing on Windows (shadow copy, previous versions, etc). But obviously Apple is doing it with a lot more flair, with a Time-Machine-like UI and interactivity.
Airdrop is a nice feature, peer to peer encrypted wifi file-sharing. No more trying to find that USB stick. Oh, and also a confirmation that the server “version” will be an add-on, probably via the app store. Available July, but only available via the app store? What about a clean install? As for price, as I predicted, it’s just $30. The beauty is, since it’s part of the app store, it means you just spend $30 to upgrade ALL your Macs. Amazing! No more family pricing and whatnot. Microsoft, take a hint here, how much are you going to charge for Windows 8?

2. Mac App store
Yeah. Apple wants that cut, and at the same time, developers want the sales. Phil was saying how the Mac App store is the number one software retailer (not sure what measurement they are using, but whatever). The biggest change is app updates. Right now, as with iOS app store, whenever there’s an update for any of the apps, you’re downloading the whole apps again. Looks like Lion will allow delta updates. Hopefully this means everytime Apple updates iTunes, I don’t have to re-download the whole iTunes software anymore. 😛

3. New Mail.
Basically Mail on OS X is getting a UI refresh based on Mail on iOS with additional niceties like conversation view. By the way, Craig is just good at demo-in all of these. The way he talked and what not definitely shows you that the whole keynote is well produced, especially when you start comparing keynotes from Google/Microsoft/HP.

4. iOS5.
Scott is up, talking about the typical sales and whatnot. Yadda yadda. iOS5 is the news here. Finally, a revamped notification. The dumbphone-level notification is too silly for a smartphone. Notification Center. What is it? A copy of Android’s notification system. Yeah, it is even invoked by dragging the top bar down, JUST like Android. LOL @ Apple. Lock screen is improved by showing the notification with direct access to the app that got the notification.
Newsstand is just an extension of the iBook store, but for newspaper and magazine subscription. Meh, can’t remember when the last time I read newspaper or magazine. There’s already something better, it’s called RSS feed. 😛
Tighter twitter integration with support for single sign-on right on iOS, and twitter services from other apps.
Mobile Safari is improved with the same reader function like the desktop version. Many websites actually don’t like this as it gets rid of ads and page click. Oh, and full tab browsing for the iPad, with the tabs on the screen instead of having to go to the thumbnails of websites.
Reminders. Uh oh, this doesn’t bode well to some apps as before, you need a 3rd party app. The beauty is the geo location where you can trigger a reminder when entering or leaving a particular location.
Improved Camera app. Now there’s a camera icon on the lock screen of iOS5 that immediately brings you to the camera app. Gee, how did Apple get this idea? *cough*Windows Phone 7*cough*. Even funnier, using the volume button to take picture. The irony here is that Apple took down an app in the past that brought that functionality. There’s also AE/AF lock when you touch the area on the screen, a great feature. Editing is now built-in so no more trying to find a 3rd party apps for simple cropping. Of course, 3rd party devs may not be as happy.
Improved Mail… meh.
And, a split keyboard for thumb typing on the iPad. Hmm, where didn’t we see this very recently? Yeah, on Windows 8. LOL @ Apple.
One of the biggest feature would be PC free. This means no need for iTunes activation (phone can be used out of the box), OTA OS updates (delta, not redownloading the whole OS like before), just like, oh, any other phones out there. LOL.
I couldn’t care less about Game Center.
iMessage (gee, what a creative name), a messaging service for any iOS devices, including iPod Touch and iPad (not just iPhones). If you and your family/friends have iOS devices, pretty much you don’t need any of those IM apps anymore. Oh, and this could mean you can bypass your greedy wireless carrier’s SMS charges extortion. Neat. 😀
Other stuff: AirPlay Mirroring, Wi-Fi sync to iTunes (Finally!). Not mentioned: LED flash for incoming calls/alerts (obviously iPhone 4 only), Smart Playlist sync from iTunes, different tones for voicemail/mail/calendar alerts, emoji, ability to delete songs, and oh, custom vibration patters. LOL. Available this Fall, and still supports the 3GS! Hopefully it won’t bog down the 3GS like iOS4 did for the 3G.

5. iCloud.
Steve is back on stage and talked about multiple devices syncing driving them crazy. Agreed. Thus iCloud as the “hub,” automatically upload and push content from/to all your devices (presumably just Apple devices, meaning iDevices and Macs). Oh, and Steve poked fun at MobileME. Good one. iCloud is going to replace MobileME and available for free (What happens to my subscription?). I think I’m gonna love this, and makes drinking Apple’s kool-aid a bit sweeter with this kind of integration, but since I also have Android, I think I may have to stick with Google services for things like contacts and calendar.
App and iBook syncing, which is crucial to the PC-free idea for iOS5. Also backup to iCloud, and just like Google’s Android, you will be able to buy a new iPhone and once you signed on, iCloud will push down all your stuff to the new device.
Documents in the cloud pretty much syncs your projects from Pages, Keynote, and Numbers via iCloud. Not a new idea, but neat for those that use those apps.
Photo stream, same iCloud syncing for photos. This would be awesome, but how about capacity? Apple is only going to store the last 1000 photos, and only for 30 days. Errr, yeah, what happens after 30 days? What if I want to view it a month or 2 later? You have to save it to an album. Fair enough I guess, but it means it’s still a local copy then. So the iCloud is just a temporary basket, not a true picasa/flickr replacement.
iTunes in the cloud, which basically allows you to re-download previous iTunes purchases on any iDevices. Make sense I guess, and should’ve been a feature from way back when. It also pushes new purchases to other devices. Again, critical for the no-PC idea, but you’re stuck with the iTunes ecosystem. What if you have your own music? That’s the one more thing. Well, Apple is offering iTunes match for $25 a year. Basically iTunes will match your songs to see if it has it in the store. If it does, it uses its 256kbps AAC for the song (wonder how this will work with the recording labels? Will it require the CD? Or can people get matches based on MP3s?). If not, it will upload the track. But then how about storage? Need more explanations here.

5GB free storage for mail and backups, and oh, photo stream is not counted! Well duh, because Apple deletes them after 30 days.
Beta today, and will launch together with IOS5 in the Fall.

so what happen if I already paid for MobileME? And where’s the new iPhone? 😦
Update: I logged in to my MobileME account, and there’s an option to request a refund. Phew. 🙂
So MobileME will officially end on June 30th, 2012.

 

WWDC 2011 prediction

WWDC 2011, Apple’s developer conference is coming up, and Steve Jobs is going to do the keynote on Monday. Let’s start the predictions:
1. Mac OS X Lion. We saw a preview of it late last year. We would probably see a bit more of a rehash, but maybe also a price and shipping date. Considering Apple charged just $30 for Snow Leopard, I doubt they would price Lion back into the $130 price range. My bet is it will be still $30, with the option to download it from the Mac App store as a bootable image that you can put on a USB stick.
2. iCloud. Apple’s online services. It was .Mac, then MobileME, then iCloud. Free for simple email and Apple ID (for Facetime, iTunes, etc), but I think Apple will still keep most of the good stuff for a cost. Who knows how much would it be (previously it’s $99 per year for .Mac/MobileME), but I wonder if Apple would consolidate this with their iTunes streaming service.
3. iTunes streaming. We see Amazon and Google jumped in first. Amazon has a nice integration with its MP3 store, while Google is just offering a basically online storage where you can upload your own music. Apple would need to do better than Amazon in terms of integration with the iTunes store and all Macs and iDevices. We’ll see.
4. iOS 5. Hopefully Apple revamp the notification system. Let’s face it, at its current state, notification on iOS is like a dumbphone. It’s even sillier on the large screen iPad. We see good examples already, from Android, WebOS, and various implementations by the jailbreaking community.
5. iPhone 5, or maybe iPhone 4S. The rumor is Apple don’t have a new iPhone ready. Well, I don’t know. It’s a bit risky to extend the iPhone 4 to compete with the slew of new dual-core Android phones. I bet we will see a refreshed iPhone, probably the iPhone 4 with A5 in it. All I want is for Apple to sell the damn thing unlocked in the US, something that apparently is a difficult concept for them. The iPad sales have proven that people are willing to pay Apple $500+ for an unlocked device. No reason to deal with AT&T anymore that is obviously unwilling to unlock iPhones forever.

Well, there you go. I hope Apple do a live stream of the keynote.
Live blogging from:
–Engadget
–Ars Technica
–This is my next

 

Back to the Mac

Apple did yet another event yesterday, Back to the Mac. The video is available streaming via Apple’s website and iTunes. If you downloaded the podcast version via iTunes, redownload it. The first video is botched, won’t work on iOS devices.

So let’s get to it.

1. Steve Jobs opened up the keynote, but handed it off to Tim Cook right off the bat to talk about sales. Marketshare, blah blah, Steam & Autodesk, blah blah, Shanghai store, blah blah. Next please.

2. Job’s back to introduce iLife 11, as expected. Phil went on stage to show off iPhoto 11. Nothing too drastic. Full screen mode for events is great, presumably a transition towards touch-based UI of future Macs. It made the UI a bit more similar towards the photo app on the iPad. A bunch of new slideshow themes, great, but I expect they’re going to be overused fairly quickly as everybody is using the same templates. Email and Facebook integration inside iPhoto is great too. Hopefully Apple will allow iPhoto to upload higher res photo to Facebook. Previously, iPhoto is stuck at lower than VGA res photo for Facebook uploads. Book creation is neat, but I have never done/ordered one. Interestingly enough, there’s a Letterpress documentary built-in into iPhoto. Nice, but really?

3. iMovie 11. Randy is up. New features are:
-Improved audio editing. More granular control over fade-in/out and audio levels. Very neat, not needing to deal with Garage Band. Audio effects is also a nice touch.
-The new video effects are awesome, especially the freeze frame effect. Wow, I can’t wait to play with this.
-Movie trailers. Basically themes that present videos like movie trailers. Simply awesome. It can make plain videos into amazing videos, with just a couple of clicks. I truly can’t wait to get my hands on this. People that got bored watching this demo don’t know what they’re watching. Imo iMovie is the killer app on the Mac. You cannot simply do the same thing with any other app on any platform with the same ease of use.
Really, iMovie 11 alone is probably worth the price of the iLife bundle. Super awesome.

4. Garage Band 11. A product manager called Xander is up. Who is he again? Ah who cares.
-Groove matching. This is probably one awesome feature that you could only find in pro apps in the past. It basically syncs up all tracks to match into a single track’s rhythm in 1 click. Amazing! I probably would hardly use Garage Band, but this is just too cool.
-Flextime. Uh, yeah, you can lengthen or shorten a clip. I mean really, if you think about it, with this and groove matching, you don’t really have to know how to play music anymore, just like some of the artists out there. LOL.
-More lessons.
Garage Band is one of those apps that most people wouldn’t know what it is, but those that do will love it.

5. iLife 11, $50. And yeah, I ordered it already.

6. Facetime, on the Mac. Yeah, move aside iChat, the new meme is Facetime. It’s strange that Apple did this in the first place instead of building on top of iChat, but I guess there’s gotta be a technical reason, especially on iOS. Seems to work great as it auto-detects the rotation on the iOS devices. Interesting enough, Apple doesn’t call the camera on Macs as iSight anymore. It’s Facetime camera. so peeps, learn the new meme.

7. Mac OS X Lion. Yup, the next OS X, 10.7. The idea is taking some ideas from iOS back to the Mac. Touchscreen iMac? Steve said no way. LOL. He’s right though. Touch screen on a vertical screen is weird, and doesn’t work. Just look at those touch screen PCs by HP. I’m guessing the magic trackpad will have a bit more focus in the near future.
App store for the Mac. A lot of people started to be leery about this, thinking Mac will be as closed as iOS for apps. I don’t think that will be the case, but we’ll see. Some nice features for the regular consumers would be auto-updates for all apps and licenses of apps for ALL your Macs. Yeah, see that Microsoft?
Craig is up for demo.
Launch pad. Well, it’s iOS home screen on the Mac. Not too thrilled about it. It’s the same as iOS, including folders. You know what it is? A full screen Start menu. LOL.
Full screen view is pretty neat. Unlike Windows, looks like Full-screen in Lion removes the menu bar too. I guess devs have to re-engineer their apps.
Mission Control. Huh? Yeah, it’s unlike Apple having a feature named “Mission Control.” It seems silly. It’s basically expose 2.0. Oh, and the Magic Mouse sucks. Even Craig is having a hardtime swiping here and there. Should’ve used that Magic Trackpad.
OS X Lion, Summer 2011. Heck, I’m not even on Snow Leopard yet, still on Leopard.

8. One More Thing. Macbook + iPad? Yeah, new Macbook Air. The leaked pictures are true.
-13.3″, 2 USB ports, SD card slot, SSD only (good!), full size keyboard (but not backlit anymore, boo), 1440×900 screen res, Core 2 Duo (Steve re-emphasize that this is a fast processor, probably to ease users since everybody is expecting the Core i3 at least), GeForce 320m, 7 hours battery life, 30 days (!) stand-by time.
-11.6″ version. Yeah, the rumors were true too. 1366×768 screen res, 5 hours battery life, but no SD card slot (boo!).
Prices? Apple is going aggressive here. $999 gets you 11.6″ with 64GB, 1.4GHz CPU, 2GB RAM. Wait, 2GB RAM? Yeah, Apple cut off a corner there. Good thing is, unlike the previous Macbook Air, you can order BTO to 4GB RAM for another $100. Downside, it’s BTO only as the RAM is soldered to the motherboard, so you cannot upgrade the RAM yourself. The 13.3″ starts at $1299 with 1.86GHz and 128GB, and same 2GB RAM. Apple is going to rake in a lot of $100 4GB upgrade.
One weird thing is a microphone on the side of the Macbook Air. WTF? I don’t understand the logic. Wouldn’t it be better to place that near the camera? And how does the 30-day stand-by time works? Hibernation? But it’s instant-on? Huh?

Oh, of course, the obligatory documentary by Jony Ive. I think he should voice all documentary videos about anything. LOL.

Having the iPad, I don’t really see a need for these ultra-portable laptops anymore, but boy, it’s Apple, and I’m still drooling over it. LOL.

Overall, great keynote. I’m really surprised how a lot of people are “disappointed” and/or got bored with this. Apple has always demo iLife apps on every new version, and nobody ever got bored before. I guess it’s just a trend to hate anything Apple. It’s the “cool” thing to do. iLife allows normal people to make great photo slideshows and videos. I love it, and I think iLife 11 is another awesome update. The catch is, it requires Snow Leopard, and I’m still using Leopard. GRRRR! So I have to shell out $29 for SL too. Oh, and I’m not looking forward towards re-formatting my iMac.

Well, that’s it, my rundown on Apple’s latest event. No pro apps updates. No Verizon iPhone. We’ll see what’s more to come before the holidays.