Notes from the WWDC keynote

So, the keynote has passed. I’m sure some people had big hopes, and some had big disappointments.

Among the surprises we see that Apple has taken down the prices for all the line of macbook models, which will probably help its adoption. They have also brought back the 13″ MacBook Pro model. They have replaced the Expresscard slot on some of the models with an SD slot. It seems not many people actually use the Expresscard slot (I do, but I have a media reader in there).

Safari 4 is finally out of beta, and offers increased speed and resistance to plugin crashes. Snow Leopard (the next major release of OS X) provides 64-bit performance, a redesigned Finder in Cocoa and a better Dock with integrated Expose. Quicktime X was also demoed with a better interface and the option to trim and share videos using a visual timeline. Another new feature for Snow Leopard is the “Grand Central Dispatch”, a thread manager that takes advantage of 64-bit capable, multi-core computers, like all the intel-based Macs. Snow Leopard will also take advantage of the GPU on most Graphics Hardware with its open standards OpenCL library.

Another feature for Snow Leopard is full Microsoft Exchange support. Although I understand the business reasons for doing this, I think they should’ve instead provide a better mail server than Exchange.

The great news for current OS X users is that the upgrade price for Snow Leopard will be only $29, and it will be available in September.

On the iPhone side, in just a little more than one year after they released the SDK, there has been over 1 million downloads, more than 50,000 Apps have been approved in the App Store and over 1 Billion apps have been downloaded from the store! 40 Million iPhones/iPod Touch are around there using these apps. With 3.0, you will now be able to find your iPhone anywhere if you are a MobileMe subscriber, and you can even wipe your data remotely in case your iPhone gets stolen. You can now connect the iPhone to your computer, and use the 3G network to surf on your computer (This is called Tethering). It seems that AT&T was not announced as supporting this feature, though. Another cool feature is Push notification, which will allow you to receive alerts from applications even if they’re not running.

For iPhone developers many features were announced. Over 100 new APIs have been integrated into 3.0, including in-app purchases, Peer to Peer connectivity through Bluetooth and most importantly opening up support for hardware accessories to talk to the software. Developers will now be able to take advantage of the music loaded in the iPhone inside their own apps.

Probably the biggest news announcement was the release of a new iPhone model. The iPhone 3G S (S stands for Speed) comes with a faster processor, and it’s a complete redesign on the inside but not on the outside. It comes with a new 3MP camera with auto-focus and video capabilities (30 FPS VGA with audio). It also features Voice Control and a digital compass. The 16GB version will cost $199 and the 32GB will cost $299, and it will be available on June 19th. They also reduced the price of the regular 3G 8GB version to $99.

All in all, there were some exciting news.