Worldwide Developers Conference 2008 Opening Keynote: What happened and my perspective

For the past few days, I have been awaiting many different things. Those things were supposedly all going to happen at this keynote. Over the weeks (or should I say, about a month or two) preceding this keynote, many rumors have popped up, such as rumors of a new iPhone with 3G internet speeds and GPS, as well as the release of 2.0 right after the keynote. Even such an unbelievable thing as a new OS X announcement. Well, that and more is almost exactly what went down at this year's Opening Keynote.

For me, there were several highlights of the session. Firstly, Steve Jobs announced that Bertrand Serlet would be previewing Mac OS X 10.6, named Snow Leopard. What followed was Scott Forstall, once again (referring to when he first did it at the March 6th Meeting when the SDK was first announced), explaining the features of the layers of iPhone OS, as well as explaining and demoing the SDK. Same old stuff. What really caught my attention to this part of the Keynote was when Scott got some developers to come out an show their results with the SDK. The first one was Ethan Einhorn of SEGA, demoing the application which caught tons of attention at the March 6th Meeting, Super Monkey Ball. Ethan started by announcing that the developers for the game have made an astounding 110 levels and have let you, the user, select from the four monkeys, instead of only being able to choose AiAi. Then, he demoed the app, which looks amazing. He finished by saying that Super Monkey Ball will be available on the App Store for $9.99 when it launches. The rest of applications, with the exception of one, didn't catch my attention as much. Remember though, I am only a 14 year old kid, not a person in his twenties or thirties. So, I won't put as much detail for the next ones. So anyways, next up was Ken Sun of eBay, showcasing an eBay applications, supposedly called "Auctions". After him was Sam Altman, who was describing a social networking application called Loopt. This application lets you post photos, text talk to your friends, call them, and even see where your friends are, using location pinpoint technologies. After Sam was Michael Sippey, showcasing an iPhone application for the blogging service called TypePad, which allows you to post pictures and blog as you go. Then, was Associated Press's Benjamin Mosse, who talked about an application called "The Mobile News Network", which lets you see news for a certain city, or even the city you are in. You can also look at news video using this app. Next was Pangea Software, who ported two of their Mac games to iPhone. Brian Greenstone walked us through these two games, known as Enigmo, a physics based puzzle game with the objective of collecting drops of water, and Cro-Mag Rally, a 3D Caveman Racing game. After Pangea Software, was the other application I was ecstatic about, which is from Mark Terry, who is also known for making instrument applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch (thanks to Jailbreak) under the alias MooCowMusic. The app he talked about was one of his more popular ones, known as Band. Band lets you play instruments as a Piano, a Funky Drummer, a 12-note Blues Bar, and a Bass Guitar. You can then record these instruments and save the work. After, Mark was Jeremy Schoenherr, describing MLB.com's native application for the iPhone, which lets you see game info and watch footage of the game. Next were two medical applications, from Modality and MiMvista respectively, which I'm not going to get into huge detail about. FInally, Digital Legends, a company based in Barcelona, Spain, showcased a heavily detailed RPG that they are developing, which will be released in September. After the whole showcase of Apps, Scott came back on and talked about a new feature being released for third-party applications called Push notifications. This means, even when you close an app, such as AIM, and you go into another application, you will get three different types of notifications whenever you get something, like a message. Those are a badge notification, signifying how many messages you got, a sound notification to tell you you got a message, and a text notifications to do the same, like for the SMS application. Then, Scott Forstall came off the stage and let Steve Jobs back on, who talked about some more new features of the 2.0 iPhone Firmware. These features include better Mail organization, a scientific calculator, Parental Controls, and tons of Language support. He then said that 2.0 will be out in Early July, with a $9.95 fee to iPod touch users. To finish the 2.0 part of the Keynote, Steve talked about other ways people could release apps that people requested for, Enterprise and Ad Hoc. To quote Steve Jobs, "something completely different" was about to be revealed.

Phil Schiller now came up and talked to everyone about MobileMe, which was described as "Exchange for everyone else". Basically, what it is is a way to keep your Conatcts, Calendar, Mail, Photos, and iDisk synced between several computers and iPhone and iPod Touch devices. It works with both native applications on devices (e.g. Photos, Mail, Calendar, Contacts on iPhone, iPhoto, Mail, iCal, and Address Book on Mac, and Microsoft Outlook on PC) and the applications available for use straight from me.com. Through Push services, it keeps all of the devices in sync. Along with explaining all of this, he demoed MobileMe. Phil's final statement was that this would come for $99 for a one-year subscription, along with a 60-Day free trial before and that it would replace .Mac . Sadly, there was no exact release date announced.

The final part of the Keynote belonged to Steve Jobs. He started by talking about how far the iPhone has come, with such factors as 90% Customer Satisfaction. Then, he listed what people have been demanding in a list of five things; 3G Internet Speeds, Enterprise Support. Third party applications, More Countries, and More Affordable. To solve these problems, he introduced the iPhone 3G, which has a black plastic cover, metal buttons, and finally, a flush headphone jack. Firstly, he displayed how fast its 3G speeds are, compared to EDGE and Wifi. It is much faster than EDGE! Also, Steve talked about a new feature in the iPhone 3G, GPS. Next, he said how he already explained Enterprise and third party apps. Then, Steve played a video with " It's a Small World" playing in the background, showing how many countries the iPhone would be coming to, which will be a whopping 70 countries!! That's 2.8 times as better as their stretched goal of 25!! Finally, he talked about the new price of the iPhone, only $199 for the 8GB model and only $299 for the 16GB model which also comes in white. Then, he thanked Scott and Phil's teams for what they have done and dismissed the crowd.

Now, you all are probably wondering (or maybe not), what would a 14-year old say to all of this? Well, all I can say is that I am amazed at all the content revealed and how accurate the leaks were.

First of all, I can definitely see why Apple would release their next OS X as Snow Leopard. OS X Leopard is phenomenal, and there is almost no point in changing it. So, all Snow Leopard is is an upgrade of Leopard. No new features are being added, only bugs and the such are being fixed, which I 100% agree with doing. Secondly, the quality of the Applications introduced is amazing. I mean, what took place way back in March completely blew me away. These applications, on the other hand, have done even more than that. I mean, who would think that you could view and quiz yourself on parts of the body on a mobile device (Note that I am describing the app that Modality introduced. I really didn't talk about it, but if you want a more detailed explanation of it, you can watch the Keynote from the link I will post at the end.)??? Or even watch News stories and Baseball gameplay videos!! Heck, who would think of playing Super Monkey Ball on a mobile device?!? Well, once App Store comes out, you will be able to do that and even more!! Personally, I think that this is quite a feat for Apple. And after that, Scott Forstall explained Push Notification, which is also amazing, and Steve Jobs explained even more superb things about 2.0, such as mass mail move and delete options, a scientific calculator, and extreme language support!! The only part about the whole SDK and App Store session that saddened me was that the 2.0 Firmware release date actually got pushed back from Late June to Early July, which means I won't have it for camp. Oh well, you can't get everything you want I guess.

The next thing to be announced, as I said before, is MobileMe. Now, being a 14-year old kid means that I don't have a whole gallery of contacts, nor do I have any need to set Events on a Calendar. In fact, the only things that really would interest teenagers about MobileMe are the push mail and push photos. But, Gmail and such other free web mail services solve the problem of email, which only leaves Photos. So, overall, I think most people under 18 wouldn't be too interested in MobileMe. Besides that, I think it is fantastic, being able to keep many different things in sync with many of your devices. The next thing, on the other hand, is what really caught my attention. That is, as the commercial descries it, the only phone to ever beat the iPhone, the new iPhone 3G. First off, this phone has all of the features I described so far, which is amazing by itself. Secondly, it is thinner, and cooler-looking than the original iPhone. It has metal buttons and comes in a sleek black model and an also cool white model (white is only for 16GB, though). Also, it has a flush headphone jack, unlike the original. So, lets say I lose the headphones the iPhone 3G comes with and I don't want to spend thirty bucks on headphones. Well, now you don't have to. iPhone 3G also succeeds in completing all five things people have been asking for, which are 3G internet speeds, Enterprise support, third-party applications, availability in more countries, and for it to be more affordable. FIrst of all, it has phenomenal 3G internet speeds, being extremely close to WiFi and about two-and-a-half times better than 2G, or EDGE speeds. This is great if I want to download an application from the App Store that is large or if I want to browse a web page with a lot of pictures. Along with 3G though, the new phone has GPS, which is especially good for Maps and applications that search for your location, such as Loopt. The next two things on the list were already talked about, so I'm not going to go through them again. Fourth, was as I said, more countries. Being a member of the iPodTouchFans community, as well as the ModMyiFone community, I see a lot of foreign developers and members. Imagine how much they would have to pay for phone service if it wasn't for being able to unlock an iPhone!! Well, that problem is solved. Finally, the one which most attracted me to the iPhone 3G, price. With the new price of $199, the iPhone 3G is much much more affordable and can reach more of a crowd. The only problem with the pricing is that You have to sign a two-year contract with AT&T when you get the phone (in America at least), which has to have, at minimum, the 3G data plan of $30. You can also add a voice plan for $40. In total, for unlimited 3G internet, 200 Texts a month, and 450 minutes a month, that's $70 a month!!! Personally, I find that to be a total rip off!! Otherwise, the 3G iPhone looks amazing. And the commercial for it is pretty cool!!

Overall, Worldwide Developers Conference 2008 seems like the best of them yet. Even though it is the first one I have paid attention to. That's all for this first blog post in a while. I'm looking forward to a great 2 weeks of blog stories. Also, below are links to the Keynote, as well as the commercial for the iPhone 3G I was talking about:

http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/0806wdt546x/event/index.html - Opening Keynote
http://www.apple.com/iphone/gallery/ads/hallway/ - iPhone 3G Commercial

Also on Apple.com, you can find lots of info on the 3G iPhone and see it in action. The same goes for MobileMe, which has a guided tour. And, if you can't seem to view the Keynote from the link I provided, feel free to watch it on iTunes. See ya!