To a considerable extent, the launch of the Apple 3G S new phone, was a damp squib, and most attention this week in Apple announcements was paid to the imminent delivery of the iPhone 3.0 software upgrade this week.
It reminds us of the hysteria when in 1998, queues stretching back miles as people queued for a first copy of Windows 98, and we wrote a paragraph which effectively said ‘Oh yes and this week Microsoft offered a Windows upgrade.’
The lack of Steve Jobs at Apple is not so much showing, but the specter of his return is stopping anyone doing anything foolish, like stealing his Rock Star-like thunder for the next major Apple announcement. We’re not saying that when Jobs steps down at Apple things won’t change, but that may not be for another 20 years if he really is over his health problems.
Meanwhile Apple watching has become a US national pastime, and as a result we sometimes fail to see when Apple has done very little. The Apple World Wide Developer’s Conference did feature some announcements this week, but by previous Apple standards they are ‘house keeping’ rather than revolutionary.
There is a new 3G phone, but the design of the 3G S model will need some unraveling over the coming weeks. Someone has to take one apart, tell us what the processing upgrades are and why it is faster, and how Apple has achieved the longer battery life ‘ but essentially, along with the new software upgrade dubbed the iPhone 3.0, which has already been widely discussed, the headlines should read, Apple delivers slightly better software and hardware for iPhone.
What Apple did NOT do, was launch the significant upgrade to the iPod Touch which everyone expected. Most Apple pundits got wind of this in the week’s leading up to the conference and said that it was coming, but would more likely have its own event in 3 months time. It’s tough to see for sure whether the product is real, but a number of Apple bloggers, with connections inside the company, said in the lead up to this event that yes it’s real, a big screen version of the Touch and no it’s not yet.
Most Apple watchers have wanted Apple to respond to the arrival of cheap Netbooks and Smartbooks which are likely to be on the shelves not much before Christmas (right now you can buy expensive Netbooks but not many cheap ones), so why should Apple get there much before them with its response, presuming that the response really is an enlarged iPod Touch.
Details of the new software, Apple iPhone 3.0, were announced in March, and the upgrade will begin going out to existing iPhone 3G customers this week. It includes lots of new APIs which allow new features for applications such as buying things from inside applications, intended for buying magazine subs or new game levels from within a game; and APIs which support Peer-to-Peer connections, so that P2P games can operate. The biggest software upgrades came from things that customers had been asking for ‘ cut and paste between applications using touch, a landscape view for mail, text and notes; stereo Bluetooth; syncing notes to the Mac and PC; shake to shuffle and parental controls for TV shows as well as search features across the entire iPhone, sharing calendars and syncing them with other web calendars, and push notification.
On the hardware front, Apple has kept well away from the expensive arms race which other smartphones are into, and its camera is still just a 3 megapixel autofocus one, while Samsung and Sony Ericsson are touting 12 MP cameras on some new devices.
The new 3G S phone has easier controls when recording video (says Apple) and hands free voice control. It also has more storage, with a 16GB model costing US users just $199 and a new 32GB model for just $299. As a result the price of the original iPhone 3G will fall to $99 with a two year AT&T contract for the 8GB version.
Apple said that the iPhone 3G S takes advantage of the OpenGL ES 2.0 standard for stunning high-quality 3D graphics, making mobile gaming and other graphic intense applications better than ever and that it will work with 7.2 Mbps HSDPA ‘ which means that it works with the recent AT&T network upgrade.
The voice control feature allows user to speak commands to dial by name or number ‘ no big deal, as this has been available on phones for three years, as have other ‘improvements’ such as a built in compass. This is Apple catching up with the more basic features of smart phones, rather than forging ahead ‘ filling out its offering.
Let’s face it, this is an iPhone ‘ which is good for the interface and the tight graphics integration ‘ it is responsive and functional ‘ but it just has had a few tweaks to get rid of annoyances and it’s not a step forward for Apple, this is just business as usual.
Probably the most noticeable thing when you get this in your hand will be that web pages will render that little bit faster, and feel a little less clunky. The iPhone web experience is already far less clunky than most other smart phones, so it’s important, but it’s not going to mean throwing away your old iPhone.
There is a new VoiceOver system which is a screen reader which speaks out loud anything that appears on the display, for visually impaired users, and this is perhaps original because although it is easy to do, it’s not in many smart phones.
iPhone 3G S will be available in the US on June 19 at Apple and AT&T’s retail and online stores, Best Buy and Wal-Mart and Apple says it will be launching it in more than 80 countries in the coming weeks. Now that’s a tougher trick than designing it.