Being an Apple fan is a blessing and a curse. I am blessed because I can appreciate the wonderful products that Apple releases each year, but I’m cursed because when they do make an announcement, Apple becomes my primary focus. I couldn’t not do a post about Apple, so here it is.

The highlight of the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is the keynote, traditionally given by Steve Jobs (a.k.a. El Jobso, the Steve, Ruler of Heaven and Earth, etc.) and Jobs took his time this year to speak about the iPhone. The first hour was admittedly dull, but in the second hour, things began to get much more interesting. I’ve summed up the highlights of the highlight in chronological order.

iPhone SDK

Apple enthusiasts heard about the iPhone SDK at an event on Apple’s campus in March. The SDK, or software developer’s kit, allows a developer to create an application. iPhone users have been able to use online applications for a while and some of them are quite well done. Facebook and Bank of America both did an excellent job with their online iPhone apps, but these only work if you’re connected to the Internet.

Advantages of having an application reside on the phone itself include the ability to tap into some of the information stored on your phone (i.e. Contacts) or some of the equipment on your phone (i.e. Camera). For example, if I want to chat with friends using AIM, I could use an online application, but an application that resides on my phone would give me the ability to assign a screen name to a contact. I could also assign a buddy a new contact photo by using the built-in camera. The SDK allows developers to do this without jailbreaking the phone.

The Applications

The bulk of the first hour of the keynote was taken up by developers sharing their iPhone applications. In an endless parade that should have been a lot shorter, developer after developer told the packed Moscone Center about how easy it was to develop for iPhone, even though they’d never written a line of Objective-C or how they’d written a seemingly complicated program in three days. I didn’t gain anything out of this part of the keynote, except I now know that in the time I was listening to these developers drone on, I could have written an award winning iPhone application.

There are, as you might imagine, a few games coming out for the iPhone, but I’m not particularly interested in those. For a few months, I’ve been very interested in the more practical uses of iPhones, even for education. Apple satisfied my hunger for information on non-frivolous application development with one developer who is working on an application for doctors. (Apparently the medical community is looking for an easy-to-use portable solution for viewing X-rays and such). I won’t talk too much about this now; I’ll save it for a future post.

Enterprise Features

Apple is targeting a relatively small audience with their new enterprise features, but in an apparent attempt to grab some marketshare from RIM (makers of Blackberry), Apple has built in features that are need in a corporate environment like the ability to remotely remove sensitive information from a phone, the ability to activate many phones at once, and improved security.

I don’t yet work in a corporate environment, so these features don’t mean a whole lot to me, but once again I see the opportunity for some educational uses. Indeed, several institutions of higher learning have participated in Apple’s private beta of the latest version of the iPhone software.

Mobile Me

I’ve never used Apple’s .Mac service before because it always seemed like a waste of money. Apple seemed to think so too. Mobile Me replaces .Mac and adds a whole ton of new features. There are som great online applications for photo sharing and other frivolous features, but I’m interested in the more serious features, namel push e-mail, calendar, and contacts. Anyone with an iPhone or iPod Touch is familiar with the dawning realization every week or two that they should probably sync their device with their computer so they can get the latest calendar items and contacts on both phones. Mobile Me will allow this to happen instantly over the cell network or over the wireless network. No we just need Apple to make wireless syncing happen with iTunes songs!

A few people have remarked on what they view to be high pricing ($99). Considering the service in completely advertisement free and has great features, I’m willing to fork over the $99. But I’m actually only going to pay $69, by virtue of an Amazon discount. A little explanation: Current .Mac users will be automatically upgraded to Mobile Me for no charge (.Mac will be defunct as of 11 July). Amazon currently has a deal to get .Mac for only $69, so I’m going to buy .Mac and then get upgraded automatically. Fun!

iPhone 3G

There was a point during the keynote when I got really scared. We were an hour into the keynote and Steve had barely been on stage. I started thinking about all the iPhone rumors. What if they were just that: rumors? What if Apple wasn’t ready to release a second iteration of the iPhone? The Steve came to the rescue.

You can check out the full specifications here, but the iPhone 3G will be released on 11 July, at a heavily subsidized price of $199 for the 8 GB version or $299 for the 16 GB version. There’s a great ad for the iPhone 3G here. From what I can tell, it’s much improved over the first version with a nice, new plastic back that will improve reception, the abilitiy to use the much faster 3G data network, GPS, and it will ship with the next version of the iPhone software.

The Wrapup

Buy these products. All of them. I am. All of them. You can see the full address here, or a quick summary by Mahalo Daily here.

I love blogging and I love podcasting.  Every day I wish that there were no technical problems, I would have a full soundproofed studio with a Neumann microphone, a Mac Pro with Logic Studio for editing, a ton of luck, and a whole bunch of other stuff not listed here.

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