Yesterdays iPhone announcements seem to have started some general momentum for the iPhone which is looking very attractive. The games produced for launch by EA and others are fantastic and make use of the accelerometers very effectively, even the SaleForce demo was great.
Today the BBC announced the iPlayer is available, albeit only over WiFi. This unfortunately harshley exposes the limitations of not having 3G support in the iPhone which is desparately needed. Roll on June …
I’m sorely tempted now that we have Exchange support, but its only available on O2, and its expensive. But I really want to wait for the upcoming 3G version before I really decide whether I can commit. I also want to be able to use it on T-Mobile so I can use their great data plan. I want the better camera and I want it to run a bit faster. So, definitely maybe, some time soon, maybe June.
So its finally here. After a long wait we have the iPhone SDK.
Actually, the most interesting thing for me is the announcement of the beta of iPhone 2.0 OS which amongst other things includes a native Exchange synchronisation client based on Microsoft ActiveSync. this is a good move as it brings the iPhone formally into the corporate support fold without having to use ’sticky tape’ to get messages from all your different email providers. Surprisingly, Apple implemented device wipe as well as part of the Exchange support. this is logical in the sense that Exchange supports this functionality, but I hadn’t quite believed that Apple would go so whole hog on the Exchange integration.
Anyway, you can watch the presentation here http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/keynote/
When I did my last update of Leopard before the code was released with the last test build some weird stuff happened. One thing in particular was that the DVD drive was no longer visible in the Finder. This made a big problem because now the DVD couldn’t be ejected. Apple send me a final retail Leopard build a while ago but I hadn’t installed it but now I wanted to get it updated, but I couldn’t get the old DVD out. A bit of research revealed the answer which was to use the command line DRUTIL tool which worked a dream…fire up terminal and type this command
drutil tray eject
The man page is here http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/drutil.1.html
So its official! in France iPhone fans will be buying via Orange. So, thats AT&T in the US, O2 in the UK, and T-Mobile in Germany, an odd strategy. France is the really interesting market for the iPhone because French customers have the right to have their phones unlocked from an operator by law. This was the first chink in the SPV armour back in 2002 when we could get device unlock via Orange France. I’m interested to see how the roaming works, will iPhone users roam only onto iPhone carriers when they enter their territories?
Apple announced ‘Leopard’ MacOS 10.5 ready to pounce on the public on 26th October. Somehow Apple have managed to accumulate 300 new features for leopard here http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/300.html although I think a few are overblown as ‘new’ features rather more slight enhancements or fixes. ZFS didn’t make the cut either technically or as a ‘new’ feature, but is available as a developer read only FS for the moment.
Interestingly, after all the hullabaloo about Vista copying MacOS, Apple have chosen to copy Vista by using an Aurora style theme in their promo shots, see below. Now just waiting for Apple to post the final build so we can download it, hopefully before 26/10…
MacRumours are saying that a R/W ZFS preview has been made available to Apple ADC members to test. As an ADC member myself I can’t comment. But, ZFS is a fantastic, modern OS and would enhance MacOS in many different ways and would be easily extensible by 3rd parties. I am hoping someone brave will do a port of ZFS to Windows, although I fully realise that it could be a support nightmare for Microsoft and probably not advisable for the OS partition unless a major (like SUN) does the port and supports it. I live in hope ….
This should be a marriage made in heaven, but I feel we’re still somewhere in upper purgatory. First the good news. It works! I performed the upgrade last night and it rebooted back with the new menu item for YouTube, I played a top selection video and it worked, hurrah!
Now the bad news. Not that many videos appear to be available yet, but I’m sure that will improve. However, the biggest issue is the search. Searching is appallingly bad with a remote control. Its just not quick enough. I was hoping Apple would have included support in the update for a keyboard, wired or wireless via a bluetooth extender. Sadly not.
Still I guess there’s a way to go yet, and on the positive side, it does work. I certainly recommend the update if you have an Apple TV.
I really like my Apple TV unit, sure it gets very hot and only wants to play stuff via a iTunes connected PC, but it looks elegant and the UI is gorgeous. So I was very pleased to hear that here would be official support for You Tube content from June (obviously later in June than now). This is a big step forward, now we just need official support for other non-Apple owned CODECs like XVid, DivX and Windows Media. Its unbelievably arrogant of Apple to pretend they don’t exist and force owners to perform long and expensive file conversions whilst simultaneously performing an incantation to prevent the conversion failing mid way through.
Yes I know I can hack the box to do these things, but I shouldn’t have to, Apple should be doing this for me and embracing the whole market, otherwise, how are they going to get broad acceptance of what is in effect a severely hobbled, but cheap Mac Mini. I just want it to work like it should work. You Tube support is a step in the right direction, keep going Apple!
Its a real shame that the AppleTV (iTV) has missed a real opportunity to be a cool home media centre. I was already to place my order until I read the small print. It doesn’t support Windows Media Video (WMV) and far more fundamentally it doesn’t have any interfaces to an RF signal or set-top box, so its yet another set-top box which does one thing, rather than my home media hub. What a missed opportunity! I was going to use the Windows Vista Media center for this, but it just gets out of sync after a while and stutters so its not a real solution. I had hoped the single fixed function iTV would be the solution … but no, what a pity.
including the iPhone announcement. http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/keynote/
Steve Jobs annual keynote didn’t disappoint with the unveiling of the Apple iPhone. On first glance I like it, I think that its super slim at 11.7 mm, beautifully designed and runs Mac OS X. However, its expensive, doesn’t have 3G, and despite running OS X, the user can’t install their own apps on it. Actually I had to do a double take when Steve said it ran OS X, thats a huge OS and it would need to be severely cut down to fit in the limited capacity of the device.
Clearly I’ll buy one when they become available in July, although it remains to be seen whether I can get it working here on a UK operator. The close link to Cingular will have benefits and disadvantages, I can see that it had to be done to enable innovative features like visual voicemail (but how important is that really?), but lack of availability on other operators like Verizon and Sprint may limit the uptake rather than draw subscribers to Cingular.
Whilst it looks elegant and sexy, it also appears to be potentially fragile with so much glass on display. Hopefully it will have a nice metal case and saphire scratch resistant glass which would make it more durable.
As a user I like it! As a developer I’m sitting here thinking how can I get my apps on there ?
