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The Apple-focused blogosphere is swirling around like a hurricane this week. At the center of the storm is Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, where CEO Steve Jobs took center stage to announce the much-anticipated 3G iPhone.
A wide range of other developer-focused news came out of the conference, including more details about the next version of OS X, dubbed "Snow Leopard," in which Apple will take a pause on new feature development and focus instead on improving performance so that applications can truly take advantage of multiple processing cores.
MobileMe -- the rumored .Mac replacement -- sparked quite a bit of interest, of course, particularly among the iPhone-loving crowd.
3G Is Here (Almost)
The 3G iPhone is finally announced -- though it won't be available, Jobs noted, until July 11. It looks very similar to the original iPhone, but it's a bit thinner around the edges and slightly thicker in the middle, and the volume buttons are now metal. Audio should also be improved, and aside from 3G, the coolest new addition is a built-in GPS (global positioning system) capability. It will come in an 8 GB model for US$199 -- apparently subsidized by AT&T (NYSE: T) in the United States -- and a 16 GB new white model for $299. Voice plans start at $39.99
As for the pricing, there's a new wrinkle: AT&T's unlimited consumer data plan is now $30 per month instead of $20, the price offered on the original iPhone. The bump sparked some irritation among bloggers -- at least initially. In doing the math, the extra per-month charge pretty much wipes out the savings found in the lower cost of entry.
"I think this is something a lot of people are going to have to realize. The first-generation iPhone was something special in the fact that AT&T adjusted their pricing to give us a better deal -- the iPhone was expensive, and the plans were not," noted ziggyonice on the MacRumors.com post on the subject.
"But with iPhone 3G, we're looking at getting an affordable phone with better service. While yes, the pricing won't come out even, we're getting as good a deal as Blackberry users get. So with a great phone by Apple, and the usual service by AT&T, this seems perfectly reasonable. If the minimum $75/month (voice + data + text) doesn't work for you, look into other options," ziggyonice added.
Overall, many posts picked and prodded at the iPhone, and while some features seem to be missing, like a front camera for video conferencing, both excitement and criticism seem generally muted -- most likely due to the fact that the 3G iPhone is an evolutionary product rather than a revolutionary introduction like the original.
"I think Apple on Monday made a statement that they want to be one of the top cell phone providers, if not No. 1, at some point in the future. They have a lot to learn, there's a lot of things they need to do, but I think the speed at which they brought a mature platform to the cell phone market, one that has few bugs, the increase in distribution to 70 countries, the speed at which developers can build applications -- I'm very impressed with how much they've been able to do in very little time," Ken Dulaney, a vice president and distinguished analyst of mobile and wireless for Gartner (NYSE: IT), told MacNewsWorld.
"I think they are still fundamentally a consumer company, but they've done enough for business to lower the barrier so they can get in for the bulk of organizations, at least for e-mail, calendar and contacts," he added.
MobileMe's Emergence
Speaking of consumers and business features together in the same sentence: Apple's new .Mac replacement, MobileMe, offers some business features for consumers. "Think of MobileMe as [Microsoft] Exchange for the rest of us," Jobs noted. "Now, users who are not part of an enterprise that runs Exchange can get the same push e-mail, push calendars and push contacts that the big guys get."
With a MobileMe e-mail account, all folders, messages and status indicators look identical, whether checking e-mail on an iPhone, an iPod touch, a Mac or a PC, Apple says, and the service is tightly connected to iPhone. New e-mail messages are pushed instantly to an iPhone over the cellular network or WiFi, removing the need to manually check e-mail and wait for downloads. Push also keeps contacts and calendars continuously up-to-date so changes made on one device are automatically pushed up to the cloud and down to other devices. The push works with the native applications on the iPhone and the iPod touch, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Outlook for the PC, and Mac OS X applications like Mail, Address Book and iCal.
Among bloggers, much of the reception was positive, but some resisted the change.
"Mobile me is a lame name. I much prefer .mac. As for the service it provides, it may prove useful for iphone users but others may find more utility in the free gmail accounts. It has potential if apple dropped the price," commented DMarrero on an AppleInsider.com post on the topic.
Fortunately, Apple did note that users could retain their .Mac e-mail addresses.
"The current .Mac web mail program is pretty much the same thing I'm seeing in the demos. The .Mac web gallery is pretty much the same as the new one. The drag and drop on the calendars is cool, I guess. Maybe a few other minor features that are new. It's just funny to me how the right marketing and branding can evoke a more positive response from essentially the same product," commented mrjoec123. "Now, adding the iPhone sync integration is really, really, awesome. It essentially takes away the need to plug my iPhone into my computer, except for major firmware updates or when I want to add movies or music."
Still, MobileMe requires a bit of exploring to figure out how it can be valuable to each customer. It's a fragmented service where one piece may or may not be best-of-breed, but the sum of its parts add up to something amorphous.
"First, I'm glad Apple doubled the storage to 20 GB," Sven Rafferty, director of Internet technology for hypersven.com and editor of svenontech.com, told MacNewsWorld.
"It's getting better, but if you're going to tell users that you can use this as a 'backup repository' then give users some real storage! Most other sites start at 50 GB if not unlimited," he explained.
"Second, I love the interface. Looks like someone took a queue from Microsoft's replication of Outlook Web Access (OWA). Guess Microsoft does do something right. ... The Web 2.0 integration is superb. The ability to share images from the iPhone to MobileMe is 'about time' and well done," he added, noting that overall MobileMe is a great improvement from .Mac.
