Apple Wordwide Developer Conference June 2009

Hello again.

This June it is time once again to welcome the Apple Developer Conference. Unfortunately, I was unable to be able to go to one of the biggest tech events of the year. Instead, I got the live feed which was constantly being updated throughout the event second by second.

Prior to the event, many sites and forums compiled a list of things that would be introduced or changed in the event, here are some of those items:

• Mac OS X Snow Leopard will be released
• A new iPhone will be released
• iPhone and iPod Touch OS 3.0 will be released
• New versions of LOADS of Apple software will be updated and released
• New Mac Books will be released with the possibility of 3G

These were just some of the many items that sites were rumouring Apple would release on Monday 18th June. Many, if not all of these sites were completely right when they made these guesses. In fact, ALL of the guesses I mentioned were released by Apple at the event. Here comes a more in-depth explanation of what was released at the event.

• Mac OS X Snow leopard – The new operating system for ALL Macs has been released for the rip off price for the whole OS is a mere $29. There have been loads of changes including 3D Rendering on the Dock; Exposé on the Dock; the install frees up 6GB of Disk Space; The installation is 45% faster; and JPEGS and PDFs load over 1.5% quicker.
• A new iPhone – The new iPhone has been called the iPhone 3G S, S for Speed. It has double the RAM and a huge processor. Not only that but it can go up to 32GB, unfortunately, the S is not available with the 8GB.
• iPhone OS 3.0 - As mentioned in the iPhone SDK video a few months ago, many of the features listed in this video were echoed in the demo at WWDC. In case you managed to miss BOTH of these events, here is a quick run through of many of these features: Landscape keyboard in loads of apps including notes and mail, cut, copy, paste and undo, Peer to Peer game and app sharing, in app subscriptions. Just available for iPhone: Push notifications, Find my iPhone, a feature to track your iPhone and also wipe it remotely with a password if you lose it. With Find my iPhone, iTunes will automatically back-up the contents of your iPhone. OS 3.0 will be released on June 19th 2009.
• New versions of LOADS of software – Quick Time is being updated from Quick Time 7 to Quick Time X (10). I think we all need a moment to think about what would be in 8 and 9 if they were ever to be released… OK, that done, we can now just take a small look at the new features in Quick Time X when it will be released: Users will be able to to basic video editing in Quick Time (time line) without having to go into iLife and other programs; It will act more like the iTunes video player as the controls (and title bar on a Mac, not sure about Windows) will all disappear when the mouse is not hovering/moving. There are loads of other features including the completely new UI and icon. Not only that, but the WWDC did not mention anything about the differences between the Pro and free versions, nor the price of the Pro. This has made many people (including myself) simply assume that Quick Time X and Apple have dropped the pro feature and all the features will be available in one free version. Furthermore, Apple have completely re-written the WHOLE of the Finder, this time in Cocoa allowing loads more possibilities. Despite this, the UI is the same, it just has a few more features. Finally, Safari 4 is being publicly taken out of Beta and the full version is being released. The main new features in Safari 4 will be explained in my video when it is released in a few days.
• Finally, ALL the Mac Books have been completely revamped. They all have a brand new display and the Apple lithium battery offering over 500 charges and 7 hours of battery life. Not only that, but all of the Mac Books have been turned into a Mac Book Pro, making a series of 3 different Mac Book Pros and only one Mac Book: The one with the plastic back. Not only that, but all Mac Book Pros now have some very good new features: the already mentioned battery, screen and graphics cards; the fire wire 800 port has returned; an SD card slot has been added; and the processor count has shot up, most of the MBPs (15 and 17”) now have 3 different varieties, with the processor going up to over 3Ghz. Unfortunately, there were no hopes of a 3G Mac Book, so that idea goes out the window for the time being.

As you can see, this year’s WWDC was a big and important one for many Apple enthusiasts, though many things that were rumoured were not included:

• Steve Jobs (former Apple CEO until his ‘sick leave’) did not make an appearance which was very unexpected as his Wikipedia Page states that Jobs: “announced a six-month leave of absence until the end of June 2009 to allow him to better focus on his health”
• There were no updates to any of the other iPods other than the Touch and iPhone, suspected rumours included the Nano getting a camera and updates to the shuffle also.

Other than this, the Keynote went down a treat. Everyone just hopes that the next Keynote from Apple will be even better.

In Other News: The Safari video is almost ready, just a final bit of editing to go. The Google I/O video will be taking a while as I cannot find a video editor compatible with MP4, any advice is welcome. However, Quick Time X WILL be able to do this in the video cropping feature, when it is released, so I may be testing that, in which case another article will be done on that.

For now,

Yours,

Ratscallion