Peter Norris

At WWDC today Steve Jobs announced the iPhone will be coming to Canada. On July 11th, the new 3G iPhone will be available on Rogers (and apparently Fido). As Steve stated, it will cost $199 for 8 gigs and $299 for 16 gigs. As of now, there is currently no word on data plans. But suffice it to say, without an unlimited (or decent unlimited) data plan, the iPhone won’t sell very well (and I most definitely won’t be getting one).

The extent of iPhone information on rogers.com

I’m not going to go into details about the new iPhone, you can find all those here. For me, the one thing that really makes me want an iPhone is the support for 3rd party apps. The iPhone is an amazingly powerful platform and the possibilities for apps that could be developed are endless. Some of the apps that were demoed at the keynote today show off just how amazing the iPhone is, not just for blogging apps, but also for games. Just look at Super Monkey Ball- a game that is played entirely with the built-in accelerometer.

The new 3G iPhone

While I’m waiting for July 11th to arrive, I’m going to hope that I can drop the remaining two years of my contract with Bell and switch to an iPhone. That and learn Objective-C and Cocoa so I can develop iPhone apps.

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Its been over 24 hours since the Macworld keynote. I’m not going to go over every little detail, because you can find that anywhere you look on the internet. Instead, I’m going to talk about what I find the most important.

To start, iTunes Movie Rentals!!!! I think a lot of people were expecting this to happen. All the major studios are on board, prices are decent and they even have HD movies to rent. But, unfortunately, you can’t buy HD movies. At least you can rent them. But the thing about that is, only on the Apple TV. If you want to rent the movie in HD, you have to do so from your Apple TV, and you can’t transfer it to you computer to watch it there. Apple will be providing a free upgrade to the Apple Tv to support rentals. I think I might get one. But of course, no rentals in Canada yet. As usual, the service starts only in the US but Steve said it would go international by the end of the year. Hopefully Canada will be included in that, and before December.

Speaking of Canada, still no iPhone. Why the wait? Its probably because Rogers is being stubborn. I likely wouldn’t get one anyways, but I still want the option. The iPhone got some nice new updates in the 1.1.3 firmware. And the great thing is, the iPod Touch got those updates (minus the phone specific ones) and even got some of the original iPhone apps like Mail, Notes, Weather, Stocks and and Maps. But for a price. For $20 iPod Touch owners will be able to get the update. I don’t really want to pay $20, but I do want to update, and eventually I’ll be forced to update.

Along with these announcements Apple also released the Macbook Air. Well I don’t really understand the name, I do like the computer. Its thin with a decent design. But there is no ethernet port (but being a laptop I guess you don’t need one), no optical drive (but you can use an external one or wireless access the drive on another computer), and there is even the option of a solid state drive (for $1000 more). I likely won’t get one (I need more speed), but its still nice.

I think it was a decent keynote. Nothing revolutionary, but I really didn’t think there would be. Only like 5 months till WWDC. Maybe I’ll get to go this year.

PS: Oh ya. They also released Time Capsule. But thats nothing important. 

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Its that time of year again. The Macworld keynote is in a little over 2 days. Here are my predictions for this year’s keynote.

•  Apple will release the Subnotebook everyone has been talking about. I don’t have any predictions on specific specs, but there has been lots of supporting evidence lately, so its more than likely going to happen.
• iTunes movie rentals. There has been speculation about this for a while, but lately there has been news of contract negotiations and supporting keywords in the iTunes source code. Hopefully they won’t be in just the US.
• An update to the Apple TV. As Steve Jobs said, the Apple TV was a hobby. And it definitely was a disappointing hobby. Hopefully the Apple TV will see a bigger hard drive, and I’m hoping for the inclusion of a TV tuner and the ability to record and stream TV shows over the internet (kind of a Tivo Slingbox fusion).

Other things I’m hoping for but I feel may not happen.

• iPhone coming to Canada. I read somewhere (can’t remember where) that Ted Rogers (the CEO of Rogers who will carry the iPhone) was heading to Macworld. If he was this would definitely mean the iPhone has landed in the great white north.
• HD movie rentals/purchases.  I think a lot of people would love HD movie rentals/purchases through iTunes. However, I don’t think the bandwidth into the average person’s home could support it just yet.
• Blu-ray drives?

Hopefully I’ll see everything I want. But I doubt it. I know there will be something that surprises me. After all, last year I said there would be no iPhone and look what happened.

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Yesterday I purchased an 8gb iPod Touch. I have to say I’m impressed. It’s an amazing piece of technology and does exactly what it says it does. The only problem is, I managed to put a couple of scratches on the back less than 24 hours and buying it. Anyone have any tips on how to remove (or at least make less visible) scratches?

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Its now been 2 days since the WWDC keynote and I’ve finally had time to digest the news and I’m ready to talk about my opinions and thoughts. According to Jobs Leopard has 300 new features, 10 of which he presented at WWDC. However, 6 of these features he introduced last year, and so the majority of the keynote was almost exactly the same as last year. The only new features mentioned were a new UI, a new Finder, and Quick Look.  

While I’m liking these new features, these were really the only new announcements regarding Leopard. He did mention some new feature additions to what he talked about last year, but nothing impressive. They also released a beta of Safari for Windows. Despite the fact that there have already been a number of  bugs and security problems, Apple said they wanted to grow Safari’s market share and, because the iPhone uses Safari, help developers make Safari compatible sites. They said Safari on Windows loads sites fast, and while it might do that, the browser itself is feels very slow and chunky.

Speaking of the iPhone, Apple announced a way for developers to make 3rd party apps for the iPhone. If you want to make your own iPhone apps, all you have to do is make a web app. Jobs basically told everybody to make web apps using AJAX and other web2.0 standards. I don’t know how these are iPhone apps, but Apple thinks so. One major problem with this is using the apps when not on WiFi. Your apps are going to be slow and could use up your data plan if it has a limit fast. I have to say this was a disappointing keynote.

There were no hardware announcements and only a couple of new features announced. After the keynote Apple stock fell 3%. This just goes to show how much people have riding on these keynotes and how much people expect from them. Hopefully we will see some new Apple products and news soon. 

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Tomorrow is the opening day of Apple’s annual Wordwide Developers Conference (WWDC) which means that Steve Jobs will be hitting the stage at 10am PST/ 1pm EST to announce Apple’s latest innovations and products to the world. Here are predictions for this year’s keynote.

For Sure

• A look at some of the “top secret” features of Leopard mentioned last year, and hopefully a firm release date some time in October.
• A few more announcements regarding the iPhone and maybe a look at some more specific specs.
• A mention of iLife and iWork ‘07, and their likely dependance on Leopard.
• A long overdue update/rework of .Mac, including the potential for it being based on Google Apps.

Probably(/hopefully)

• New displays that could (possibly)  contain multi-touch support.
• The rumoured new iMac and ultra-portable Macbook.

I doubt it

• The ability to run Vista/XP programs natively without Windows. (I just don’t see it happening)

I wish

• Leopard is available today!
• Movies and TV Shows in the Canadian iTunes store.

Hopefully I will be right in these predictions, but only time will tell. I will definitely be watching the coverage live, wishing I was there.

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Through a series of 3 new TV ads, Apple has announced that the long awaited iPhone will be releases June 29th. Although, remember, this is the American release date. Back at Macworld in January his holiness Jobs said Europe would be getting the iPhone later this year, but so far nothing has been said about Canada. Rogers, the only GSM carrier in Canada, has confirmed they are carrying the iPhone, but no release date or price has been announced. (more…)

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