Apple Annonuncements

By now anyone with even a remote interest of the goings of of a certain fruit mascotted company from Cupertino has seen the keynote and various announcements of said company.  Of course I would be remiss if I didn't add a few of my thoughts on the various, product revisions, operating systems and "phones" announced yesterday to the ether. 

I should start off by saying that I was steadfastly predicting there would be no new iPhone announcements (beyond talk of iPhone 3.0 the software) without Steve Jobs on the stage doing his thing.  Obviously I was quite wrong but in true Apple fashion it took them forever to get to the point the everyone was waiting for.  Of course there was some notable news on the Mac side of things.  

As far as the MacBook announcements went I felt like the two biggest announcements were the replacement of the ExpressCard slot with an SD card slot and the rebranding of the Aluminum MacBooks as MacBook Pros. So the SD card slot, I was happy to see this as I have never once used my ExpressCard slot. However I have found myself wishing quite often for a built in SD card slot each time I have to go and hunt for the USB SD reader I keep in my backpack. It seemed some were wondering what was up with Apple's decision to rebrand the 13" Aluminum MacBooks to MacBook Pros. For one thing I think it just makes logical sense given who similar the design is but I also wonder if it might not be freeing up space in the lineup for a new MacBook or perhaps the long desired Apple netbook-like device.

Snow Leopard is the next version of Apple's OS X operating system I guess it will be version 10.6? Interestingly Apple bashed Windows 7 for simply being the next iteration of Vista and as only they could in the next breath declared that Snow Leopard would build upon Leopard by being primarily a refinement of it. Yeah. Uh Hu. Frankly as primarily an end user of OS X (and not someone who is going to dive deep into 64-bitness, or OpenCL, etc) I didn't see anything all to awe inspiring on the UI or feature front, though I'm confident Apple will come up with a couple 100 things before all is said and done. I of course applaud the $29 upgrade fee as a current Leopard user but was hoping maybe we'd see a release before September, but I can deal.  I've also been giving Safari 4 a trial run over the last day or so I can't tell if it really seems faster or what, I will say for as much as I miss aspects of Firefox it does seem snappier just for the fact that it is built on native UI.  We'll see how long I can really tolerate it.

iPhone, iPhone, iPhone. And yes despite not being able to get the hour of iPhone app demos back (okay ZipCar was cool even if I'll never use it) I am going to skip over them like the didn't exist.  So the iPhone in typical Apple fashion they decided to cram everything into about 20 minutes and any one of the announcements they made by itself is probably newsworthy.  For example though it wasn't the marquee announcement the iPhone 3G 8GB is now only $99 dollars (with 2-year plan) as if EVERYONE on the planet didn't already have an iPhone this should blow the doors open once again like the drop to $199 did.  Then of course there is the iPhone 3GS which I must admit as I'm still using the iPhone EDGE I am pretty excited about.  Biggest things for me are the Video, new camera, GPS (since I don't have a 3G), oh and I almost forgot Voice Control looks really nice and should be very convenient when driving.  Of course all the other iPhone 3.0 features like Copy/Paste, etc. certainly round things out to make the iPhone 3GS what I consider to be a very significant upgrade from the original iPhone.  From the iPhone 3G however I'm not sure it's as big an upgrade of course the most rabid of Apple fans are likely to disagree, and loudly.  Bottom line on the iPhone 3GS for me however is that I will likely pick one up when circumstances permit. 

Of course it's hard to talk about the iPhone these days without mentioning it's worst feature, namely AT&T. Aside from the obvious AT&T sore points like the fact that it is the most expensive network, the slowest 3G wise, the laughable hypocrisy of the "more bars in more places" (someday I'll find one of these places), the dropped calls, clearly I could go on.  However yesterday AT&T seemed determined that they were ready to stick it to iPhone user and delight while doing so. First there's their not being ready with MMS or Tethering for launch. There's also an additional $18 fee to upgrade an iPhone that's not present on other phones, why? Heck if you're AT&T why not?  Then of course there is the fact that if you are an iPhone 3G owner you aren't eligible for an upgrade to the 3GS yet and will have to pay retail.  Now personally I've always thought it total idiocy for the cell companies to penalize their EXISTING customers in this manner but sadly it is a very common practice throughout the industry and not just on the iPhone.  

I think part of the AT&T/iPhone problem here is that the rabid (and very vocal) Apple fans have come to expect something more from Apple.  Apple is the company with the genius bar so the stuff AT&T pulls on a daily basis seems at complete odds with the perception of how Apple operates. However none of that excuses AT&T for just being an overall poor experience.  It seems to me that AT&T is kind of taking advantage of the true Apple fans because they know that they'll put up with it for the promise of the latest iPhone. Which is of course also perhaps and indictment of Apple fans as well.  Then of course though there is the issue of Apple's lack of leverage what can they do? Threaten to go to the only other GSM network here in the US, T-Mobile? Seems like an empty threat to me and AT&T likely knows that.  Will Apple deny exclusivity and then go to Verizon with CDMA? I personally doubt that just because it complicates things for the international market.  I often wonder if all of this might not have been avoided by selling the iPhone unlocked and unsubsidized which of course would have meant FAR less iPhones sold.

Of course when all is said and done I'm still a fan of what Apple is doing, I can't help it really, and I look forward to the next chapter!