The buzz around today's conference is absurd, the predictions of the technology press have been all over the place, and the lengths people are going to to get a scoop on this stuff is incredible. I think my favorite so far is that group that monitors customs to try to find big shipments of products, and how they found an enormous shipment of "Electric Computers" being sent to Cupertino.

What do you guys predict? So far, I've heard rumors of a new iPhone with 3G, GPS, a second camera on the screen side for video conferencing, and most importantly a white or black back instead of chrome

The only other rumor I've heard (as far as I can remember), is that Apple will be releasing some other product, possibly an internet tablet kind of device, like the Nokia 880.


As for the iPhone rumors, it's pretty much a certainty that a new phone revision will be released, what with the depleted stock in AT&T and Apple stores, which is really the only solid information we have going into the conference. That, and the uncovered option in the new iPhone firmware to turn off HSDPA. So if nothing else, it's probably 90% certain that there will be a 3G iPhone announced. I have no idea if the other stuff is true, but the GPS would be pretty neat.

As for the second device, I'm pretty skeptical. When the iPhone was released, it was billed as one third internet tablet. I'd be surprised if Apple tried to get into that market, considering how small that market is (really, how many of those Nokias have sold?).

So, what are your predictions?

Mr Jobs will look very pleased with himself and everyone in the hall will cheer loudly.

Is this where he goes "and one more thing...."?

I'm waiting on the new iPhone. I'm glad to hear that it looks like this time around the price will be subsidized! I'm hoping that they add Bluetooth sync, for at least the calender.

That one has been all over the place, but I'm 100% confident everything visual we've seen about it has been faked.



They released this last year. It's called an iPod Touch.



I think the most solid information was when Steve Jobs told the world that a 3G iPhone would be released this year. Straight from the horse's mouth trumps all the speculation. No amount of speculation and container ship spying can tell you when the announcement will come though. Today just happens to be the best opportunity given the imminent launch of the App Store. Not to mention extolling the benefits of a firmware 2.0 release and new hardware capabilities to the biggest crowd of Apple developers in one location. There aren't any other scheduled events where Jobs will be up for a keynote this year either.

Instead of any other hardware announcements, I'd rather hear that the new iPhone falls outside the exclusivity contracts Apple has previously announced and that it comes unlocked when you buy it. Kind of shitty to have a quad-band phone that you can't just toss another SIM into when you're traveling.

I've been waiting to pull the trigger on an iPhone, so today is the big deal for me. Everyone is fairly confident about the new feature set for the 3G iphone, the only real question has been: When can we actually buy one? That'll be announced today, and will decide whether or not I'm going to the Apple or AT&T store right after work.

But how many people know how Apple is going to roll it all together? That's going to be the tastiest part of all.

On the flip side, you can see what happens when some of the other handset makers reveal the full details on their products. Hardware that sounded promising suddenly looks like a pile when they unveil their software. Samsung's latest being a timely example. Tomorrow no one will even remember Samsung makes handsets at all.

Damn, it's 10 minutes in and nothing's been announced yet. Hurry up Steve, I need to go to the can.

Why the heck is he spending so much time on software at a developers conference

The apps from eBay, AP and MLB could probably all have been done through Mobile Safari - which would probably save a few squares in the app launcher.

Bruno

I've been watching at http://www.macrumorslive.com/ and so far they're concentrating on all the new software features of the new iPhone 2.0 stuff. They said "Early July" for all this software stuff.

Still no mention of whether the actual new iPhone hardware is available now or if it will be July.

Big oops. I go to me.com and get redirected to snappville.com, which clearly has nothing to do with Apple.

It's official Tony...3G iPhone with GPS

Yup, saw that, still waiting for the one tidbit I need: A buy-it-now date...

More importantly is the price. With a huge push to new markets, this thing is going to put an enormous dent in WinMo phone sales as well as hardware products from TomTom, Garmin and other GPS makers. Those last guys better start cracking with the iPhone SDK real soon now if they haven't already.

Woot! You can get an iPhone in Malta!

Holy cow, what a price drop. $199.00 for the 3G iPhone 8gb.

There have been phones with built in GPS for years now. The iPhone 2 isn't going to make TomTom/Garmin/Navman/whoever start worrying anytime soon. They don't cater for the geek with the GPS smartphone.

Umm, other "phones" don't matter. They weren't the iPhone. Like it or not, it's made a huge impact on the industry with a small roll-out over the past year.

The price has just been dropped to $199 for 8GB and $299 for 16GB. This thing is going to make an Earth-killing crater-sized impact.

Mom, dad and the grandparents are going to be using the iPhone. They're not going to be picking up a $400 Nuvi anymore.

But not until July 11th, it seems.

Right. They're going to continue to buy the $25 phone that comes with the service.

Small roll-out?

Dude?

Wow, that was all pretty dull. I know it's a developer's conference, but did they have to highlight TWO boring medical apps that nobody cares about? It just feels like the wrong venue to showcase new hardware.

I also have two questions:

1) is that an absolute price point, like the last one was? Or will I need to sign up for a contract? I would assume he would mention something like that.

2) I need to see some official specs on this thing for one reason: will it finally have A2DP? I know it sounds freaking insane, considering the capabilities and price point of this phone, but I might hold off if they still don't have A2DP in there. My phone cost me $20 eight months ago and has A2DP.

All in all, it seemed a little...anti-climactic. Maybe it was that all the wild speculation before the event was more exciting, and didn't contain any of the horribly dull software discussion.

Oh, and one last thing: "Mobile Me" is a terrible name.

People I know got the TomTom because its easy to use and just works. It does one thing and one thing only and thats how they like it. There isn't any way of them screwing it up. The cheapest TomTom is £120 here so its not going to be $400+ in the US.

Does the GPS in the iPhone even do full routing?

Bingo! I recently got my folks to switch to AT&T, and instead of buying two of my phones for $40 total, they went with the free ones. Both phones were sliders, so they didn't see any difference.

Four million in six months is small, right?

I'd assume that it was still under contract and heavily subsidised.


Doesn't mention it on the website. Just has Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR so again, assume not.

Ya, small, in terms of markets. For the longest time it was US-only. Then finally opened up to a few other countries. In those countries saddled with exclusivity like in the US. Now going to open the floodgates to the masses in 70 countries with many having availability on multiple networks.

Bitt, have you ever been to Europe? Sure a lot of people here (in Canada) as well as the US pick nothing but the nearly free feature-phones, but the number or people dropping $200 on a relatively basic phone is enormous. I see every day what the carriers are offering and what people are carrying.

I'm not saying it's going to be an overnight iPod, but it's going to get a lot bigger than it's been.

I would assume so too, but that wasn't the case for the previous iPhone. There was a single price no matter whether you were signing up or were five months into your contract.


Yeah, just saw that here. That, to me, is unbelievable. Am I wrong in remembering that someone said the hardware was capable of A2DP? Something tells me that if they didn't care enough to implement a seemingly simple feature in a year, but were able to put all this other stuff in, they're not going to do it anytime soon. That's really disappointing.

*edit*
And yes, I realize that this isn't a very widely popular feature, and there aren't even many headphones that can do it, but there are plenty of phones out there with it already, and new A2DP headphones are coming out all the time.

Unless you're buying the latest greatest smartphone then most are under $100 and usually totally free. After a few months when the initial demand has passed then they end up free. Even the smartphones don't debut for very much and they also soon drop in price.

If you're not interested in the iPhone then WWDC this year was pretty uneventful. New .Mac replacement and thats pretty much it...

GPS just does positioning. Routing is all a matter of application software. As far as I know the new iPhone doesn't even come with a routing application. I don't have much doubt we'll see something from TomTom appear on it. But so too will apps from other vendors show up.

I used a Garmin Nuvi for 3 solid weeks in Portugal and for a week here in Canada before I left for vacation. It was anything but simple and bulletproof. If the execs at the GPS companies aren't worried about the iPhone then they've got their heads in the sand or elsewhere.

Ask the execs (or former) at Motorola or any number of other handset makers about their comments leading up to the iPhone's announcement in January 07. Better still, about the comments from early in 2006 and prior stating with complete certainty that there was no way Apple or anyone else was just going to jump into the mobile game.

When I picked up a current-gen iPhone I found a number of things wrong with it - or things I simply didn't like. I'm willing to bet it's going to be the same situation with the new one. But anyone can see how wildly popular it's been with limited roll-out, no official support for third party applications and a significant price-point barrier.

The only way you're not going to see an iPhone everywhere later this year is if you lock yourself in a room without any access to the outside world or images of it.

WWDC is really about the sessions, not the keynote, which is pretty much just a glimpse at the glossy cover of a really rich book. I'm sure the developers there are going to soak up a lot of information. I'll get more myself later this week once I've had the chance to ping a few people.

To be fair, he wasn't talking about the Garmin. He was talking about the Tom Tom, which has a very different aim, as far as I've seen.

*edit*

Which is why I said I thought it was odd that they do hardware reveals at this thing. Is it just to get people to attend?

And I'm amazed that Apple doesn't do a streaming video of this thing. It was hell trying to find a stream. There was one on Yahoo Live, but I think the guy got kicked out. I ended up listening to an audio stream that had someone clacking away on his laptop the whole time. It was maddening.

I brought the topic up and I'm talking about both of them. Both companies have an assortment of products with overlap within their own range as well as with what may be available in the iPhone at release time. Their built-in maps app will in fact do routing. Though it's not what I'd mount to a dashboard while driving. Someone else will have to release something with voice instructions and the other bells and whistles. I didn't mean to imply at all that Garmin or TomTom would be doomed. Not by a long shot. They can actually turn the iPhone into quite an opportunity if they choose not to turn their back at it and blow it off as an unimportant platform.



No. The hardware reveals usually have some link to the development community. The iPhone is no different. There's a heavy focus on iPhone development which you can see by the number of dedicated sessions for it. Every feature described for the new software and hardware platform will be open for developers to take advantage of and really make shine.

Apple has also been pulling out of trade-shows run by other parties, such as the summer Macworld and Mac Expo most recently. The iPhone could warrant its own press event, but WWDC is an opportunity to have Steve speak in front of a larger audience. And again, really get the devs focused on the new goodies.

The odd announcement for WWDC was actually MobileMe, not the hardware.



They do. Just not a live streaming video. It will usually show up sometime after the event.

I usually stick to coverage from one or more of the blogs providing live updates with text and photos.

Is it possible that Apple is deliberately leaving out A2DP because of what I just read in the wikipedia article?

Well, it seems the built-in Map application will in fact do turn-by-turn directions. The software implementation isn't a stand-alone GPS killer in its current state for most people though. At least it doesn't look to be from Apple's own web page on the subject.

But here's a nice article from Popular Mechanics on the then speculative features of the upcoming iPhone. It features the choice nugget I alluded to earlier:


Anyway, what excites me the most is the development potential because it's practically set in stone this will be a prominent platform.

Either they've fixed me.com, or the DNS changes were still rolling out earlier. I'm guessing that they paid a buttload to purchase the domain and then waited 'til today to change the DNS so that the media didn't pick up on it.

On the plus side for snappville.com, more people probably visited today than in the entire history of their company

I meant live video streaming. Actually, they usually have full video after the fact, which is how I watched it last year, but I don't want to wait!


Yeah, I was refreshing Engadget while listening to an audio feed from some other site.

I'll also be curious about AT&T's plan pricing. Sure, the phone might just cost $199 now, but are they really going to keep charging the same price for HSDPA that they do for EDGE service?

I'm also a little surprised they didn't upgrade the quality of the camera. 2MP is getting pretty low even for phones these days

The only other thing holding me back (besides lack of A2DP) is the storage capacity. I'll probably wait until the iPhone has 32GB. Even 16GB is too little for me when it comes to a PMP.

I'm quite curious about this as a matter of fact. What do you see as the main differences between something like the iPhone maps applet versus a standalone GPS receiver?

I'd like to decide whether or not to replace my current Magellan GPS mount with an iPhone mount next month. I certainly like the idea of reducing the number of devices I'm using. And the Magellan software isn't all that great. What do you think would bug me about using my iPhone as my GPS navigator?

Some quick things relevant to the 30 some posts:

Bluetooth 2.0+EDR doesn't mean yes or no to A2DP. A2DP is a profile possible on the Bluetooth 2.0 spec, just as hands free is a different profile (HFP). Apple doesn't list every profile the iPhone supports, so it's hard to know either way.

Regarding GPS, yeah, the built in Google Maps does directions, and has since day 1. The feature missing currently is realtime rerouting if you veer off course, but that should be easy enough to add. However, I don't see this as being a complete GPS killer yet. Strong competition for sure, but as long as it requires a data connection, it can't replace a standalone GPS unit. Just yesterday I managed to drive somewhere 30 minutes outside of Austin and had no cell phone service. Thanks to the lack of standards, areas even close to metro areas still lack service in the midwest US.

The interesting thing to me about the keynote was the reveal of Snow Leopard in a public way, but nothing beyond that. It is being talked about after lunch at WWDC, but likely in NDA sessions. I'm surprised they just didn't keep quiet about it till after the press was gone.

Engadget has a few more details on Snow Leopard than was talked about in the keynote, but not much. They do say it'll support 16TB or RAM, though

Thanks for the info on the GPS stuff. I'm not sure I understand, though. Will it not track your movement as you drive? Is it not true GPS or something?

Also thanks for the clarification on the A2DP stuff. I'll hold out hope that they've changed their minds. The only reason I can see that they wouldn't do it is the common complaint that audio quality is poor over bluetooth, and they don't want that to reflect on the iPhone, given how big Jobs is on audio quality.

It'll also be interesting to see how much noise the iPhone 3G makes next to speakers. Isn't the old iPhone pretty noisy?

A couple thoughts after flipping through the iPhone web pages and whatnot:

Speed / battery life. The claimed improvements are less than I was expecting, but still appear quite impressive.

Price. Apple hasn't announced all of the terms of the deal, but if it's a standard two-year lock-in or something similar, it's a reasonable deal for what you're getting.

Bluetooth A2DP. Not an announced feature. Unclear whether or not it will become one. Boo on Apple if they leave it behind.

Depth of dev support. The litmus test is whether Skype can implement a first-class client that runs over AT&T's data network. Without that, I'm not impressed. Presumably, we'll at least be able to get text Jabber support.

Sync. I have this fantasy that, on every web browser, or using local apps on the phone or whatever, everything stays synchronized properly: contacts, calendar, mail. Right now, Apple seems to be saying "you can have this if you've got an Exchange shop, or if you buy into MobileMe." I, of course, want it from Google. Others will want it from Yahoo. I suppose I could always wait for an Android phone, but heaven only knows how long that will take to become real.

(Incidentally, since Google continues to fail to offer decent to-do list management, I've gotten sucked into RememberTheMilk.com, which happens to have a brilliant Firefox plugin that renders a new column on the right of your Gmail, nicely integrating to-do management with everything else.)

Apparently not.

So:

Current iPhone: $399 base price + ( 24 months * $20 for data) == $879 + voice plan

3G iPhone: $199 base price + ( 24 months * $30 for data) = $919 + voice plan

Certainly, $40 over two years is not a lot to pay for 3G speed and all of the new features the new iPhone brings... But saying it's more affordable is a bit of a dodge.

Yeah, I just saw the pricing details too. I expected as much. I suppose it's too much to ask for the old technology to be discounted, while the new tech gets entered at the same price. That will be a concern for me, though.


I have no link, but I heard a completely unsubstantiated rumor that HTC is trying to get an Android phone out sometime in July. At the very least, I've heard that many manufacturers are trying to get them out by the end of 08. I am in exactly the same boat as you, though. My whole online life is in Google, so it would make a lot of sense for me. I'm hoping we get some phones soon, though, or I won't be able to resist the call of the iPhone


I don't really understand this. I suppose I just don't understand exactly what my phone is doing, but my Sony Ericsson W580i gives me push email through GMail. At least, that's what it calls it. I do know that I get emails on it instantly, and most of the time before my desktop's GMail notifier has time to refresh and notify me.

The iPhone definitely supports IMAP, which I assume is also true of your SonyEricsson. That solves the email sync problem, but doesn't do anything for contacts, calendar, or to-do lists.

But IMAP doesn't equal push email, does it?

*edit*
Just to clarify, that's a question, not a statement I wish text had inflection

Gmail does push on POP3 and IMAP now.

Don't think it can do contact syncing using SyncML though. Stuck with scraping I think.

It can do. If the client and the server are both implemented properly then the connection can be kept open and the server can tell the client when new mail appears in folder that the client is watching.

Much like the held open http connection that Microsofts push email uses.

In reality most clients and servers don't implement the spec well enough for it to work properly.

What's the speed of ATT's UTMS network? Do they have HSDPA in all their markets yet? Engadget was getting about 2x EDGE speed which is complete crap IMO.

I used a nice USB HSDPA modem while in Portugal with an impressive 7.2Mbit downlink. I didn't do any in-depth speed measurements, but it was at least as fast surfing and downloading images as I seem to get with my 10Mbit cable connection here at home. How fast are modern 3G phones downloading in Europe right now?

Incidentally, TomTom has already done what I predicted. Made their software run on the iPhone. They've unofficially announced it today but failed to provide a price or release date. I don't think Garmin is going to be able to give away their Nuvi phone...

I'd have loved to see a 5megapixel camera on the iPhone with an LED flash of some sort. But what's there now is definite appetizing enough. A 32GB model can't be too far behind, I just wonder if it will come in like the larger capacity model did last year, bumping out the low end one. 32GB at $299 would be mighty sweet.

Anyone taking bets on how long it's going to take (after release) for an unlock to appear?

If we're talking about bets, I'm wondering how long before somebody gets Android running on an iPhone. That would be quite a trick...

What I mean is that the current Google Maps software allows you to bring it up, enter a destination, and it will give you directions. Lets say half way through the trip you make a wrong turn. The iPhone currently won't realize this and update the directions to get you back on track, while dedicated GPS devices like a TomTom will. 2.0 may change this on an iPhone 3G with the GPS chip, but nothing has been shown to prove this yet.


This would be RF interference, and the iPhone 3G will be running on the same frequencies as the normal iPhone does now. AT&T runs most of their GSM network at 850 mhz, and this seems to interfere a lot with unshielded speakers and such. My AT&T razr did this, my friends T616 did it as well. T-Mobile tends to stick to 1900 I think in the US, so very little noticeable interference. I'm not sure offhand what frequency the other providers use.


Very few people ever bother to look at lifetime cost. The up front cost being cheeper is going to have a huge impact on the success of the device. The interesting info coming out is that AT&T and Apple won't be sharing revenue on the monthly plans, so that brings up two good questions:

1. Will the new iPhone data and voice plans be eligible for corporate discounts?

2. Is this an end to the free major software updates to the iPhone 3G, or is Apple going to defer accounting on it like they do the Apple TV?


More info is out at Apple.com now. With no new notable consumer features, I really hope Apple treats this like 10.1, and releases the upgrade for the cost of the disc. Snow Leopard just doesn't strike me as something to pay $129 for, and the name almost hints at this too. The 64 bit comment seems to hint that the rumors of Apple dropping 32 bit may be true. This would mean that all MacBook Pro, MacBook, iMac, and Mac Mini units that shipped with a Core Duo (not the Core 2 Duo) will not be able to run it. And while not spelled out on the site, it's pretty clear PowerPC is dead, since "Snow Leopard dramatically reduces the footprint of Mac OS X", ie, ships without fat or Universal binaries. At least that is not terribly unexpected, but it will be annoying if they do kill off Rosetta as well.

It isn't the actual frequency that GSM transmits on that causes the issues. It is because the timing of the data bursts is at an audible frequency that actually causes the ditditditdit noises you hear on speakers/radios.

I see no mention on how this will effect the iPod Touch, if at all.
The new iPhone will come in $100 cheaper (but plus monthly subscription) then the current iTouch. Shall we, for example, see an iTouch with GPS (granted it wouldn't have the A-GPS features)?

Huh? 850MHz is wwaayy above any creature's hearing ability. What did you really mean there?

Exactly what he said, I expect. You don't hear the carrier frequency. But if it transmits a packet (or a byte, or whatever) at a regular rate of (say) 100 times a second, there's a 100Hz frequency component present, and that's the component which the speakers reproduce and which is audible.

Peter

Mmm.. that's pretty unlikely in reality, especially given the 200 times/sec channel hopping that (most) GSM systems utilize, on top of the PSK modulation and code spreading.

More likely is some internal thing in the specific handsets that happens to resonate just right, like how I can "hear" the Core2Duo in my notebook under certain loads.

Cheers

Yup. What Peter said. Appnote about this topic.

Each TDMA timeslot is 4.615ms apart so you end up with a 217Hz "square" wave.

Well, as one might have assumed:

So yeah, for a vast majority of new iPhone purchasers, the actual price of the phone is not $199. I sort of feel it was disingenuous to not mention anything about this in the keynote. The actual cost is probably going to be the same as before or not much less.

Naturally, I'll be in the same boat with any other phone that I might have an eye one, since I'm only part of the way through the first year of my two year contract, but the difference is that when all other phones come out, they're upfront about their price being a subsidized one.

TDMA with a 4.615ms time slot will give you ~217Hz and if you pump that out at 0.5W then you're going to hear it on anything with an amp that isn't shielded/filtered against this.

If that is the case then why does every single GSM phone that I have ever come across make exactly the same chirping sounds when placed next to anything with an unshielded amplifier when it checks in or receives a text message ?

It's probably just the phone's internals doing it -- eg. tiny spikes from switching the Tx power on/off 200+ times/second. Not the actual 850/900/1800/1900Mhz RF signal.

Cheers

Yeah, I have no idea what the actual source of the noise is, I was just challenging you suggestion that only certain handsets did it

Which is very similar to what I said above...

The frequency of the signal has something to do with how noticeable it is though, at least from my experiences. I had a Sony Ericsson T610 on TMobile that ran on the 1900mhz band. A friend of mine had the T616 on Cingular running at 850mhz. Pretty much identical phone internally except for the radio. The T610 could use 900, 1800 and 1900mhz. The T616 was 850, 1800 and 1900. The notable difference? His would cause the noise on a ton of speakers while sitting in his pocket, including overhead PA speakers at his work if you listened closely. I'd have to put my phone practically ontop of unshielded wire to get any noise out of the speakers.

It's not anything I was ever concerned about until I switched to Cingular/AT&T a few years ago. Now I have to make sure my phone is across the room when using voice chat on my computer, because the mic input on my headset or USB sound card isn't isolated well enough against it, and the people I am talking to will hear it quite loudly. My speaker lines seem to be shielded well enough on the headset that I won't notice though.

The problem is the unshielded amplifier rectifying the RF signal. Any non-TX signal needs to be well below the TX level for spurious output specifications, usually at least 60dB down from the carrier.

Yeah, I was going to chime in and say that the people saying their cell phones made noise on "speakers" were using the wrong word. It's actually the phone interacting with a poorly-shielded amplifier that makes the dit-dit-dit noises. Example: If I put a cell phone in the trunk of my car near the amps, I get the dit-dit-dit noises, but not if the cell phone is in the vehicle cabin.

I also wanted to say how utterly hilarious it is that they put that little dit-dit-dit noise into Grand Theft Auto IV.

Originally I posted about the ditditdit noises in regard to the iPhone because I'd heard it was worse on it than with other GSM phones. I wasn't saying that others don't do it, mine does, but that the iPhone was particularly bad about it.

And is it just the interaction with the amp that does it? On my phone, if I manipulate the cable coming from it it seems to help quite a bit...

A friend of mine who used to live very near a mini-cab company would occasionally hear their dispatcher faintly over his speakers which were plugged-in to a hifi amplifier that was switched off, but I imagine that that was with much higher transmit power, and much dirtier (probably illegally so) sideband than any mobile phone.

Peter

What I'm saying is that there's not enough energy in the cellular data signal to move a speaker cone on its own. (God I hope not, or else the folks worried about cellphone cancer might not be so crazy after all.) So saying that the cellphone makes interference noise with your "speaker" is a misnomer.

In order to get those dit-dit-dit noises to come out of a speaker, the phone has to be causing the RF interference at the amplifier stage or somewhere prior to the amplifier stage. For instance, if it is near the amplifier circuitry, near the line input circuitry, or near a live microphone transducer.

In many cases all of those circuits are near each other anyway. For example with self-powered speakers, with a car stereo, or with a computer laptop speaker system. So it *seems* like the phone is interfering with the speakers.

I'm sure if you induce enough RF energy onto the cable feeding a speaker then it will move. Bear in mind, at higher frequencies you don't need to move a cone much either.

A friend of mine used to set burglar alarms off with his in car CB rig which was attached to a massive burner. It got to the point where I used to try and cover my privates every time he keyed up for fear of radiating something I might need later on.

People will say speakers as they're the bits that make the noise. Just smile and nod safe in the knowledge that you know more than they do. Most people hate being corrected.

What I haven't heard anyone mention is whether or not you'll finally be able to wirelessly sync with the new iPhone OS. You can buy apps wirelessly, but how about syncing contacts, music, photos, etc? I'm not talking about the push capabilities of MobileMe now.

It would be cool to be able browse your iTunes running on a machine within your network as if you were browsing music on the device itself. Then pick the songs to copy over directly from within that iPhone UI . You know, think different, sync different. Hopefully this is something that can be implemented in the realm of a third-party application. Though I have my doubts such apps will be able to actually touch the music storage area without breaking at least the development agreement.

But back to push... It would be nice to also support push among your own networked devices without the need for Apple's own server in the "clouds." BTW, what pretentious asshat coined that term? Probably some twitter-using good-for-nothing. Syncing without having to press a sync button or fire up special software manually on your Mac (or PC I suppose).

Aside from Exchange Server and MobileMe, I don't think that's in the cards. I'm sure they would have said so if that were made a feature.

I wonder if there's a specific reason for that? Perhaps they don't want to have to answer for the speed, reliability, and battery life issues that would inevitably come up when synching music and photos over 802.11 wireless.

Don't you have to pay for .Mac (and now Mobile Me)?

Or maybe they don't mean that the phone is directly affecting the speaker cones and are just saying it that way for simplicity.

Also very true.....

So no background applications...

What if I wanted to write a small app that sat in the background and posted my latitude and longitude to my website every 5 minutes, but would still allow me to surf the web and make calls.

Can something like this be done at all on the iPhone? I don't imagine it does cron jobs

Both Exchange and MobileMe are about syncing schedules and contact information. The first to a group server and the second to a personal offsite "cloud." Neither of which I could care less about.

I have it on good authority that wireless music sync is definitely not in the cards. A shame that with such a "connected" wireless device, you have to attach a 1990's USB cable to it to get any of your own information/content onto it.

I can't fathom the thought process at the Apple design meetings about this. You can wirelessly purchase music, but you can't wirelessly transfer music to the iPhone that you've previously purchased with iTunes on your computer. What a backwards little device in so many respects.

This is what I was talking about. I can rip the thing to shreds by finding all its shortcomings, but that doesn't change my opinion about it doing exceptionally well in the marketplace.

I think it's still missing some features before I jump on it. I'll also need to see it jailbroken and unlocked. There's no way I'm signing a 3 year contract with anyone, let alone one of the worst companies in Canada (worst in treatment of the consumer and contract violations).

The unofficial SDK would let you do that but I don't know whether the official SDK will.

Your battery life would probably suck though. The non 3G iPhone relied on it going to sleep regularly and shutting down EDGE and WiFi.

Battery life I'm not worried about since I'd only be running this while in the car with the phone plugged in to a power source.

Thanks, maybe I'll give it a try.

That said...will waking up every 5 minutes just long enough to do an http post really eat that much extra battery?

I think the kind of background applications people wanted to write involved a temporal resolution finer than five minutes.

But to answer your question: Yeah, it really would eat battery. If my iPod Touch is any indication of battery life and its usage with wifi, what you describe would mean that if I charged the player before I went to bed, I'd need to charge it again before I could it to listen to music during my morning jog.

I know that your particular application wouldn't be left running while you slept. But some of the background apps people want to make *would*. Hence it's a big deal.

Anecdote:

One time about 12 years ago I had a rental car driving to DC to do some work. I had brought along a portable CD player with cassette adapter so that I could listen to music on the trip up. I also had a cell phone with me, a MicroTAC that I kept in a pocket in the dash below the radio. People were calling me throughout my trip. I quickly noticed the ditditdit induced in the cassette adapter cable before the phone would ring.

However, it took me at least a dozen calls before I realized that somehow the portable CD player was pausing on its own each time I got a call. I can only imagine that the voltage induced in the cable got sent back to the CD player over the headphone port it was plugged into and caused it to freak out. It would be really neat to think that somehow some engineer got the bright idea of watching for that signal and automatically pausing the player, but I imagine that it was simply fortuitous.

Wifi kills the iPhone battery real quick. So by going cableless for music syncs, you get all your new music right about the time you need to dig out the cable to charge anyhow.

I do wish I could sync other stuff wirelessly though. Mobile Me should do that well enough when it comes out, though I do wish I could get the same capabilities on my own servers.


There will be support for background notifications in September. It doesn't sound like your idea would work under this setup though.

well...I thought about that. It could at least notify me when it's time for the next update so I could open the app.

Kinda crappy solution, but better than nothing.