 Apple Announces iPhoneOS 3.0Posted: 2009-03-17 21:57:45 Today, Scott Forstall & Co. (Apple!) announced plans to release iPhoneOS 3.0. I can only imagine what's happening at WWDC this June. I'm feeling really behind now. I have too many projects that are unfinished. I hope to catch up with this stuff soon. As usual, let's check out what Joe Wilcox is saying on both warfronts. ~B
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March 17, 2009 11:59 AM
Will iPhone 3.0 Spoil Microsoft's MIX?
If MIX09 organizers aren't pissed about today's iPhone 3.0 preview event, they should be.
They've been planning MIX09, which officially kicks off tomorrow, for at least year. MIX is one of Microsoft's showcase developer events. This should be a big developer news week for Microsoft.
But unexpectedly, on Thursday, Apple sent out invitations for an iPhone 3.0 event today. Since Microsoft's event is called MIX, I can't resist cooking metaphors. It's like Microsoft was baking a cake, and Apple plopped into the mix as an unwanted ingredient. The Apple flavor is consuming, overpowering. It changes the cake's flavor.
I predict that today's Apple event is going to upstage MIX09-it already has. Look at the weekend's speculation about iPhone 3.0 features. Worse: All the buzz yesterday about copy-and-paste finally coming to iPhone.
Copy and paste? A product deficiency is Apple news of the day? What is this, "Life on Mars"? ABC remade the BBC cop drama for American TV. The main character has an accident and wakes up in 1973. Life is so different, it's like he has gone to another planet. Did we all go to sleep in 2009 and wake up in 1973? Xerox PARC showed off cut-and-paste in 1974 and 1975, and Apple incorporated the capability into its PC operating systems in the early 1980s.
Copy-and-paste is no innovation. PC operating systems have had it for decades. If Apple could do copy-and-paste in 1981, why the hell not 2009? For iPhone. I dunno which is the greater lunacy-that iPhone has no copy-and-paste function or that the possibility of the feature made headlines yesterday. The latter is perhaps nuttier.
If copy-and-paste is so hyped before Apple announces anything, what happens in an hour when there is real news? For Microsoft, it's going to be Apple spoiling the MIX. Apple's mobile developer event will upstage Microsoft's Web developer event. Please, can the analysts, bloggers, developers and reporters restrain their excitement if Apple showcases other catch-up features. You know, like video capture, which is standard on most cell phones, but not iPhone.
If Apple makes any kind of netbook announcement, Microsoft MIX organizers might as well pass around the sleeping pills and hope they wake up in August 1995. Because the news of the week will be Apple's next-generation iPhone, available in a netbook-killing form factor. MIX will be, sadly, lost in the mix.
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Tuesday, March 17, 2009 4:41 PM/EST
The iPhone Platform Comes of Age
The iPhone is no longer a mobile handset. Today, Apple announced its transformation into a truly mobile computing platform.
Apple showcased iPhone 3.0 OS at an event on its Cupertino campus, starting around 1 p.m. EDT. For years, people have said that it takes Microsoft three tries-version 3.0-to get a product right. Maybe that axiom should apply to Apple, too.
Apple previewed some of the 100 new features and promised 1,000 new APIs. The new features and APIs will let developers tap deeper into iPhone OS and extend capabilities outward. More importantly, iPhone 3.0 promises to extend what developers will be able to do with their applications, such as better tap into location-based and mapping services, offer in-app purchases and make available peer-to-peer gaming. Other mobile operating systems already offer some of the new capabilities, so Apple is playing catch-up as well as extending the platform.
If the promises Apple made today bear out-and it's not always immediately obvious because the marketing hype is so thick-iPhone will become the next-generation computing platform developers have been waiting for. Whether or not that platform succeeds depends on many factors. Among them:
- How Google, Microsoft and Nokia shape up their mobile platforms in 2009-10
- How many marketshare-leading handset manufacturers adopt Android (HTC just announced three more Android handsets)
- How quickly Apple can expand its iPhone OS install base-and that includes iPod touch
I didn't attend today's Apple event; my eWEEK colleague Chris Preimesberger, who works in San Francisco and, therefore, is more local to Apple, has the heavy news duties. I'm doing armchair analysis from San Diego.
Today, I'm the Twitter journalist, which is a new role. I've never covered an event remotely relying on Twitter. The advantage: There are multiple confirmed sources, and the tweets are from people you know. Michael Gartenberg and Don MacAskill were my favorite event tweeters.
Dispelling Urban Myths
Before continuing, I must dispel an urban legend that Apple launched a preemptive strike against Palm. Today's iPhone 3.0 event wasn't about Palm Pre. I've read lots of bad armchair analysis about how Apple is trying to get in front of Pre. What planet are you people living on? The Pre isn't that exciting or innovative, and it's not even shipping. Meanwhile, according to Gartner, Palm smartphone shipments are free falling. Pre is no threat to iPhone, certainly not yet and probably never.
Apple held a similar event a year ago for iPhone 2.0. If Apple wants to release new iPhones annually, now is the right time to get beta software and new SDK in developers' hands. Apple isn't sweating the soon-to-be-released Pre. People, get a life! More importantly, Apple has mobile developer attention, which it must reignite before the fires still. App Store is a wonderful innovation, but it's not enough. Developers need an even better platform, with more exposed APIs, to build on. That's what Apple showcased today.
So, the event: In absence of convalescing Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Greg Joswiak, Apple's veep of iPod and iPhone marketing, took the stage. I've often felt that Greg hasn't gotten the kind of exposure he or Apple deserves. He's handsome and likable and commands good presence. Greg is often press frontman, but he doesn't get enough exposure at events like this one. With Steve on leave, Apple needs to put its best executives forward. Greg is among the best.
Not to quibble with Greg, but I must. He touted the same sales figure as other company execs. Apple didn't sell 13.7 million iPhones in 2008. It shipped that many. According to Gartner, Apple sold 11.4 million, for worldwide marketshare of 1.9 percent.
Whoa, rounding up, 2 percent marketshare! Break out the champagne. Yes, yes, I'm a sarcastic bastard. But Greg also claimed more than 30 million iPhone OS devices sold, about 17 million iPhones (minus inventory, which Greg didn't say). Oh? Now that's more exciting and means that Apple has sold at least 13 million iPod touches. The software may be called "iPhone," but it's iPod touch that gives the platform broader reach.
Defining a Good Platform
The iPhone platform is shaping up handsomely and with all the right stuff. All successful computing platforms share common attributes:
- They have at least one killer application people really want
- They make available a breadth of useful applications
- Development tools and APIs make it easy to create good applications
- Third parties make lots of money
The iPhone meets all these criteria and, from a developer perspective, all the more with version 3.0. But Apple has an advantage over all other mobile platforms and something not really seen since the early days of DOS/Windows: A unified platform. As I explained last month: Rather than there being multiple mobile OS versions, further fragmented by carrier distribution, Apple controls and distributes the updates. There is one iPhone OS version for all devices, and new updates are immediately available for all iPhones regardless of carrier. BlackBerry, Symbian and Windows Mobile are hugely fragmented mobile operating systems. Android is moving that way.
Compelling: Greg claimed that 62 percent of iPhone developers are new to Apple. More may line up for iPhone 3.0. Michael tweeted at the end of the event: "Bottom line? A good evolutionary update with some revolutionary elements. Developers have the potential to really raise the bar."
That's the whole point of a good platform. Developers make magic from the tools.
What Makes iPhone 3.0 Exciting?
Apple revealed many new platform features, the kind of stuff that really excites developers. Among them:
Accessory connections. This one capability is platform changing. It's will put iPhone on par with Windows PCs and Macs. Hardware will now be able to connect directly to iPhone through the connector and via Bluetooth. Apple should have had this capability in iPhone 2.0. The capability should be good for "Made for iPod" accessories to start and better as manufacturers release hardware iPhone or iPod touch can control.
Embedded maps. Developers will now be able to embed maps in their applications, which will be huge for mobile services, but others, too-like photography.
Don tweeted: "Yes! Finally! Can embed map application in our own apps now." He is CEO of photo-sharing service SmugMug, which was an early iPhone developer. More broadly, SmugMug offers mapping/location services that could be extended to and from iPhone.
Subscription services. Developers will be able to offer subscription apps. This is a hugely important change and should silence analyst naysayers asserting that most apps can't make money. They can, if people pay on an ongoing basis.
In-app purchases. This capability and subscriptions are two sides to a coin. From within an application, the end user could purchase additional game levels or in the case of a city guide additional city maps. Developers can better sell their stuff where people are most likely to buy it (in the app) and iPhone users don't have to search the App Store.
Peer-to-peer connections. This is a way-late capability that is both catch-up and category extending. Developers can enable apps to connect peer-to-peer via Bluetooth. So much for the Zune Social or Nintendo DS wireless gaming. If you and your buddy have got iPhones or iPod touches, you've got game.
Push notifications. Promises. Promises. Apple promised this capability a year ago. It's coming at last and as substitution for background running apps. During today's event, Scott Forstall, Apple's senior veep for iPhone software, claimed that background apps too quickly drain battery life. Standby time dropped by more than 80 percent with one instant messaging application test by Apple.
By using Push, there need not be a persistent running application or connection. Ian Betteridge tweeted: "Push notifications = only 23% battery drop. Joy! I'll only have to keep my #iPhone plugged in 16 hours a day! ;)" In a blog post, he called the 23 percent percent battery reduction "a canard."
I would still like to see a better battery and one that is removable. My daughter is using a Nokia E71, which has a huge battery and big battery life. She leaves AIM open seemingly all the time and manages just fine. Push is late and it's make-do. Developers need it, but that shouldn't.
Smartphone Is the Smarter PC
Apple's timing for maturing iPhone is exactly right. I've repeatedly asserted that the mobile phone will replace the PC as the primary computing device used by most people-and it's always on, too. Yesterday, comScore revealed that comparing January to January, more than twice as many people accessed the Internet from the mobile handset-24 million among the mobile Internet audience of 63.2 million.
On Sunday, Gizmodo's Jack Loftus made this observation about this week's South by Southwest conference in Austin:
"The tech and media savvy hipsters currently at SXSW could very well be a snapshot of things to come. The conference is chock full of smartphones, but there's nary a notebook (or netbook) in sight. It's anecdotal evidence, sure, but these folks are undoubtedly ahead of the curve on technology. And what they're saying is they're more comfortable using mobile devices as a primary computing and communications tool than they are with notebooks, or even netbooks.
The mobile phone's future is inevitable. It's not a question of if but when it replaces the PC, and there's still the unanswered question which device/platform becomes the de facto developer/content/consumption standard like Windows is for PCs. Apple is bringing some of the best development attributes of the personal computer to iPhone and priming the device to make a plausible grab for PC's crown."
Perhaps Michael best summed up the most compelling aspect of today's iPhone 3.0 preview event. He blogged: "The breadth and depth of the apps that Apple demoed showed capabilities that would simply be impossible on other devices and platforms at the moment." |
