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The iPad is released today at the Apple Store.  I will probably be the only one that will not be rushing out to buy one of these.  I think they found a good niche between phones & laptops, but for me I rather have either end.  I think this device could replace magazines and newspapers with easy to operate & read capabilities.  I will probably wait for the iPad2 to probably come out next year.

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I could not believe that it has only been 1 year since the grand opening of the Apple iTunes AppStore.  I guess it’s just been in the media and growing so fast it seems like it has been around much longer.  50,000+ apps are already available in the store.  That is some major growth!  Be looking forward to later this week for an annocement of a project I and some friends have been working on.  I am quite excited about it!

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Apple presented at the WWDC at noon today.  I missed my lunch watching the live updates come from MacRumors (thank you and great job, guys!).  For those that did not want to miss their lunch – here are some updates I thought were interesting:

• Steve Jobs did not make an appearance
• iPhone OS 3.0 will be released for the older models June 17th (Free for iPhone users – iTouch will be $9.99)
• iPhone OS 3.0 New Features (Copy/Paste/Undo, Cross Program Search, MMS Support (Not until possibly late summer for AT&T customers, PC Tethering (Yep, not suppored by AT&T again), website form autofill support, and more Landscape keyboards
• New iPhone 3GS will be released June 19 (Faster hardware, Better auto-focus camera, records video, and voice control)
• New Pricing with the iPhone 3GS Release - 3G 8GB: $99, 3GS 16GB: $199, 3GS 32GB: $299
• Apple Reports Current Apps offered on each platform: iPhone (50,000), Andriod (4,900), Nokia (1,088), Blackberry (1,030), Palm (18)

UPDATE: Here is a link to the actual full video keynote from Apple.

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iTunes 8.2 was released with the major update offering support for the iPhone 3.0 operating system.  I have been a registered iPhone developer for some time, so I have been playing with the new iTunes while in beta. 

iTunes hasn’t changed too much, which I was a little disappointed.  I would like to see some development with the management of the Applications.  You can make Playlists for music – but you can’t sort Applications in iTunes other than it’s default alphabetic.  I love the iPhone, but I want a mouse when I have 8-9 pages of Apps on my phone that I want to sort.  Matt with usrlocal.com posted that after he restored his configuration from before the beta upgrade, the order of the applications on your iPhone are not saved to iTunes.  So, if you spent a good amount of times getting all those apps in the right spot, currently those apps will go back to default order.  I will be upgrading my phone with the release as soon as it comes out – so I will report if this is still true out of beta, but I have a sneaky feeling it will act the same.

With the iTunes update coming out this week – it is looking very good that the iPhone 3.0 will be annoced at the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference next week.  Rumor has it, that Steve Jobs will be there as well.   I do hope he will show up for this important release (and also a release of a Apple Tablet? Hmm….)

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Apple is about to hit a billion apps download from their iTunes App Store.  Although I am not a fan on searching through the store to find apps (I will hopefully have a solution for that soon) - I love the idea of the app store.  I have not yet taken a look at the Windows Mobile or Blackberry app stores yet that are being created to hopefully get some of the Apple success, but I will soon and make a post on those.

Apple wants to celebrate the billionth app – so they are going to be giving out a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card, an iPod touch, a Time Capsule, and a MacBook Pro.  You can be entered to win if you download an app from the store, or you can enter free at their website.

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I exclusively buy my music on iTunes well before I even had an iPod.  I love getting quality music very easily.  When Apple started offering the “Plus” music that was DRM free with better quality – I knew it was just a matter of time while they tested the market with the new pricing when they would move all pricing to the “Plus”.

This is a snip from the Wall Stree Journal:

Under Apple’s new pricing plan that will take effect in April, Mr. Schiller said songs will cost 69 cents, 99 cents or $1.29. He said the “vast majority” of the songs will cost 69 cents, though people familiar with the matter said the most sought-after songs — which generate most of the sales on the service — will likely cost $1.29 as both Apple and the major record labels try to boost revenue growth. Wholesale prices charged by the record labels are likely to change to reflect the new price points; spokespeople for Apple and major record labels declined to discuss their agreements.

Reading this, I was actually excited.  No more DRM, which I didn’t have a large problem with, and possibly songs at $0.69.  I have YET to find one song that I recognized for that price.  All I did see what anything that is new or popular move to $1.29 immediately.  What “vast majority” could Apple be talking about?  Was the person who said that a large polka fan?

Lastly, I thought I would be excited since they no longer offer the older version of some of the songs I had – I was wondering if there is a free upgrade after seeing the link in iTunes.  Nope – a nice $0.30 to upgrade the songs they still have.  It would cost me about $60 to upgrade my library.  Hmmm…no.

I did use Amazon’s music service before (only to redeem my PepsiStuff points), and found the downloading difficult.  Once downloaded – it had a nice app that automatically imported the song into iTunes.  But with the 5 songs I got, I had to already contact their support to authorize a song for another download that didn’t work.  Apple’s smart – they know I will just suck it up and pay the extra 30% for each song that I want.  For others though – will this increase music priracy for those that were ok with paying $0.99 a song?

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I haven’t had an iPhone too long yet, but was very excited to hear that there will be some new things already coming announced today.  First, I love the numbers of the iPhone sold.  The market was expecting 10Million, and Apple blew them away by selling 13.7Million in 2008.  They next went to the AppStore where they bragged 25,000 Apps have already been approved, and that they approved 96% of all submissions from unpopular thought.  Lastly for summary information, they have had 800Million downloads from their AppStore already.  That’s quite impressive with about 50 downloads per phone with the numbers we have.

Ok, on to the iPhone OS 3.0.  Here are the major items that are going to be included in the release slated for this summer:

• In-App Purchaes: This allows a developer to sell items within their app like an eBook or another level in a game
• Peer-to-Peer: This will expand the ability to find other iPhones or iTouches that are using the same app by IP or Bluetooth
• 3rd Party Hardware Development: Apple is now allowing your app to talk directly to a device that is plugged into the device.  This can be used for such things as a heart monitor
• Maps: You can now embed Google Maps directly into your application instead of calling it outside your App
• Turn-by-Turn Directions: This is now able to be done, but you have to supply your own maps.  You cannot use Google’s due to licensing
• Push Notification: This should work how all developers hoped it would.  You pass notifications to Apple – and they in turn pass it to the notification service on the iPhone.  They still aren’t allowing background processes to be developed due to the battery drain it causes.  (Just install some of those Apps on a Windows Mobile device -ugh)
• Cut, Copy & Paste: They finally got this in their OS!  Hurray!  This is how it works.  You double click on the word you want to copy (must like in Microsoft Word) and continue to drag on all you want selected and it then pops up a bubble asking if you want to do one of the 3 functions.  You can just shake the iPhone to cancel (how like Apple to throw some fun in).
• Pictures: You can now select and copy and paste multiple pictures into other apps such as mail.  Bravo!
• Landscape Keyboard: Yes, they finally did it.  Across all their apps, you can type now in landscape for Mail & SMS!  All those big fingered folks out their are cheering!
• SMS: Not only can you Forward and Copy messages now – they are adding support for MMS!
• Voice Memos: Allows you to record audio from your phone to a file for later or to tag to an appointment or message.  I’m sorry for all those developers that have made an App for this.  Looks like you better make yours with more functionality
• Search: Finally – If scrolling through alphabetic lists wasn’t your style, they have added searching to your contacts, calendar, email, and SMS.  They claim it will be added to all of their core applications.  It’s a new application called “Spotlight” to search across all applications if you choose that route.

This upgrade will be free to all iPhone 3G owners, and a $9.99 price for the iTouch.  Engadget did a great job taking pictures during the presentation – check them out on their Live Blog.

My final thoughts are Bravo, Apple.  They included most things that really annoy us, and gave us some great new things to develop with.  I can’t wait to download the new SDK and start playing around.

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In a post written by Wired they claim that with the new iPhone OS update they are also going to release a new update to the AppStore as well.  The rumor states that Apple will give special placement of a developers App if it sells for $20 or more.  Since Apple receives 30% of each App sale, you can see why they would be motivated to do this.  The thought it Apple doesn’t want these premium apps being lost in the background tocheap popular apps, since their sales will probably be less than a $0.99 app.

I have always thought it would be a very good idea for Apple to redo their AppStore since I get very frustrated on finding iPhone Apps inside iTunes.  That is why I am working with some others to help make that process a lot easier.  I will get into that in another post.

Just like in grocery stores or in the retail stores, vendors will pay for premium placement either at eye level or on the end of the aisle.  I think it only makes sense for Apple to set applications apart from others to help with better high-end sales.  I just hope they don’t make it too hard to find the other great inexpensive apps!

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Apple announces that it will be announcing what will be included or updated in their new iPhone OS 3.0 on March 17th.  I love Apple on how they do these.  Getting hype for the hype of something to come out later.  Genius.  After looking at a few sites I found this site on PCWorld that had some guesses of what will be included in this new release.  I have  included them below.

1. Push Notification: Although the mail client in the iPhone works pretty well, it still has to poll the servers to check for any changes.  To offer a push notification to the phone when something changes will really get this phone in the business space.
2. Adobe Flash Support: As any iPhone user would love to have flash on their device, this one I will be shocked if it becomes included.  I still think that Apple is trying to make some competitve player to flash (which I hope is not Quicktime) like Microsoft is doing with Silverlight.
3. Advanced Bluetooth Functionality: Some iPhone users are wanting Apple to add more functionality into bluetooth in the phone to be able to do connect more devices like a keyboard or be able to file share with other phones or devices.  I don’t think this is a very eye catching feature to add, so I think it might be something that Apple will overlook this round.
4. Copy & Paste Functions: As any iPhone user will ask – how can I copy and paste?  You can’t.  It’s something that users have been waiting for since the phone first came out.  Although I don’t copy and paste at lot using the phone – trying to copy a web address or trying to email the phone it does make for an annoying limitation.
5. Background Processing: With working on some iPhone applications on the side, a lot of what I first wanted to do required background processing, so I could notify the user when some event happened without keeping the application open.  As a developer I think this is required to be added to get even more rich applications to the iPhone.  However, as a user I’ve used a Windows Mobile device and when you let 3rd parties run code constantly on the device it slowed the device up drastically.  I had to reboot my Windows Mobile device almost weekly if I wanted to run any of those apps.
6. Horizontal Keyboard: This I do see them adding.  A lot of apps already have this functionality in the typing functions of their apps, but why can’t we have this for email or texting.  I’m not sure of a good reason.  This will ease typing with making the “keys” larger for minimal work on Apple’s part.
7. Video Conferencing: I often wondered why they didn’t build a webcam app in the OS that allow you to stream or record video.  I do not agree with PCWorld on this one, and think the best Apple will do is make it so you can record video from your phone to sync with your PC later.  I don’t think AT&T will allow Apple to put such a bandwidth h0g on their network.
8. Iphone Broadband Modem: With owning a Blackerry 8830 as well – I was very unhappy to find out that the iPhone could not be tethered to my laptop to serve as a broadband modem.  AT&T claims that it Apple who did not want to include it, which I agree since AT&T would love to charge extra for the service like Verizon does.  This has a large posibility of being added in 3.0.
9. Global Search: This could allow a user to search for all data stored on the device instead of just searching your contacts.  With email and text file attachments – I agree with PCWorld and say “Why not?”
10. Extra SMS Options: I really don’t use any SMS since you can find free ways to send those items, but they really do need to improve how these are handled.  Going out to a website is a unnecessary step.  If they improve on this too much I will feel sorry for all those app developers that have made some nice work arounds.

But again, who really knows?  Bloggers and Twitter will be going nuts on Tuesday with the news, I’m sure.

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I love it when Apple comes out with something brand new.  I always thought it would be nice to make something that was easier to use while riding a bike or running then trying to find the iPod in your pocket or waist.  I won’t be rushing out to replace my current Nano, but I think Apple will get some good response with the active croud.

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