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The WWDC 2008 keynote is over and If you missed our live cast you can read it on this post.
07:17 am Vincent Nguyen: Onsite at Moscone West! The line outside is packed with attendees. Press registration starts at 8am.
07:38 am Vincent Nguyen:
07:39 am Vincent Nguyen: Quick video of the gift bag that apple is giving out to antendee — has t-shirt inside.
08:39 am Vincent Nguyen: Before things get too crazy later (n 1 1/2 hours) I wanna do a quick shout out to my buds at the Chandler Fashion Square mall in Chandler, AZ! Thanks for saving my ass (long story — HDD failed on MBP 2 days prior to event!)
08:44 am Vincent Nguyen: Damn DOOR! It’s is the only thing keeping me from the entering .
09:27 am Ewdi: Roughly 30 minutes to the event…..
09:41 am Vincent Nguyen: Door is open, but broadcast journalists are allowed in first
09:49 am Vincent Nguyen: And we’re in!
09:50 am Vincent Nguyen: I’m in the third row from the front, music still playing and ten minutes or so to go
09:53 am Vincent Nguyen: It’s going to take a while for everyone to get in - this is a big room
09:56 am Vincent Nguyen: No shortage of special guests. Al Gore and Walt Mossberg already in the room.
10:03 am Vincent Nguyen: The stage is looking pretty lonely - just two iMacs on there
10:04 am Vincent Nguyen: Apple ushers are trying to settle the room down, asking people to turn off their phones
10:06 am Vincent Nguyen: Lights are dimming
10:07 am Vincent Nguyen: Steve is on stage
10:07 am Vincent Nguyen: Massive applause from audience and Apple staff
10:08 am Vincent Nguyen: “We’ve been working hard on some stuff we can’t wait to share with you”
10:08 am Vincent Nguyen: “There are 52,000 attendees at WWDC”
10:08 am Vincent Nguyen: They sold out the venue and couldnt’ find anywhere bigger
10:10 am Vincent Nguyen: They’ll be talking about the iPhone this morning and the developer programme
10:10 am Vincent Nguyen: After lunch, we’ll be looking at Snow Leopard
10:10 am Vincent Nguyen: The new version of OS X
10:10 am Vincent Nguyen: 250,000 ppl have downloaded the iPhone SDK
10:11 am Vincent Nguyen: Of those, 4,000 have been in the beta program
10:11 am Vincent Nguyen: Out of 25,000 applications
10:11 am Vincent Nguyen: Starting to talk about iPhoen Enterprise features
10:11 am Vincent Nguyen: Recapping the last announcement: Exchange support, etc
10:12 am Vincent Nguyen: Push email, contacts, calendars, global address book
10:12 am Vincent Nguyen: 35% of the Fortune 500 companies have been testing the new iPhone enterprise functionality
10:13 am Vincent Nguyen: They’ve been closely working with Cisco on the VPN and security side
10:13 am Vincent Nguyen: They’ve also been working with higher education establishments
10:13 am Vincent Nguyen: Steve is showing us a video of how iPhone 2.0 has been used
10:14 am Vincent Nguyen: Multiple talking-heads with company CTOs discussing the appeal of iPhone 2.0
10:14 am Vincent Nguyen: According to Steve the feedback has been “fantastic”
10:15 am Vincent Nguyen: Company IT people are falling over themselves to praise the platform
10:16 am Vincent Nguyen: Including contacts search - finally! - that filters as you enter search terms
10:16 am Vincent Nguyen: The army has been playing with the iPhone too
10:17 am Vincent Nguyen: Video over, Steve back on stage with Scott Forestell to discuss SDK
10:17 am Vincent Nguyen: Apparently Apple internally uses beta release SDKs
10:18 am Vincent Nguyen: He’s recapping that much of the iPhone code is the same as in OS X
10:18 am Vincent Nguyen: The same native APIs
10:18 am Vincent Nguyen: Cocoa Touch, Media, Core Service, Core OS - that last is very similar to OS X
10:19 am Vincent Nguyen: They’re particularly proud of the OpenGL implementation - it’s “very fast”
10:19 am Vincent Nguyen: Core Services include everything from database layer to core location so combining functionality is straightforward
10:20 am Vincent Nguyen: Cocoa Touch, as discussed last time, is all about making the GUI as quickly as possible
10:20 am Vincent Nguyen: Steve is discussing the development tools
10:21 am Vincent Nguyen: Scott is going to demo constructing an interface using Interface Builder
10:21 am Vincent Nguyen: App is called Nearby Friends and ties into the address book API and the core location API
10:21 am Vincent Nguyen: Displays whoever is within 10 miles of you
10:22 am Vincent Nguyen: XCode imports the APIs and then Interface Builder is used to drag in icons and controls
10:22 am Vincent Nguyen: It’s all ridiculously slick, but it’s nothing we didn’t see last time
10:24 am Vincent Nguyen: Demo is continuing
10:25 am Vincent Nguyen: Interface Builder has been told exactly what the iPhone can display, and it’s reflowing the icons to suit the screen
10:25 am Vincent Nguyen: Scott is showing the app in the iPhone simulator (that comes with the SDK)
10:26 am Vincent Nguyen: Cue applause as the finished app works and doesn’t crash anything
10:26 am Vincent Nguyen: Took just 10 minutes to make
10:26 am Vincent Nguyen: Now imagine how slick it would be with GPS too!
10:27 am Vincent Nguyen: The developers are going wild, you’d think they’d hate coding or something
10:27 am Vincent Nguyen: Scott has a Big Book of Praise full of happy quotes
10:28 am Vincent Nguyen: “You’re witnessing the birth of a third major computer platform: Windows, OS X and iPhone” - quote from David Pogue
10:28 am Vincent Nguyen: Developers are being invited onto the stage to show off their wares
10:28 am Vincent Nguyen: SEGA are back with Super Monkey Ball
10:29 am Vincent Nguyen: Ethan Einhorn from SEGA is discussing how impressed he was when they set to coding Super Monkey Ball
10:30 am Vincent Nguyen: Because development was so quick, they could add lots of levels: over 100, all the monkeys
10:30 am Vincent Nguyen: Tilt control demo is super-slick
10:31 am Vincent Nguyen: Ethan is playing a Super Monkey Ball level, tilting the iPhone to move through
10:31 am Vincent Nguyen: It took them 95 days to code and will cost $9.99
10:31 am Vincent Nguyen: from the official App Store
10:31 am Vincent Nguyen: eBay have been invited up to the stage
10:32 am Vincent Nguyen: Ken Sun from the online auction site is discussing their eBay app for the iPhone
10:32 am Vincent Nguyen: You can track your watchlist, add items to it
10:33 am Vincent Nguyen: It’s not quite as exciting as Super Monkey Ball, I’m afraid, but it looks very usable
10:33 am Vincent Nguyen: Plus Ken says it only took them five weeks to develop
10:33 am Vincent Nguyen: eBay app will be free
10:34 am Vincent Nguyen: You can bid directly from the iPhone, as well as browse listings and look at all the photos with a gesture-based scroll
10:35 am Vincent Nguyen: The people from Loopt are on-stage, it’s a location-aware app
10:35 am Vincent Nguyen: Similar to Buddy Beacon from Helio - shows your friends pinpointed on a map
10:36 am Vincent Nguyen: You can see more at loopt.com
10:37 am Vincent Nguyen: There are Facebook-like status tweets for each person: “Check out this giant redwood tree” for instance
10:37 am Vincent Nguyen: Each person has a user profile, with photos they’ve submitted and a log of where they’ve been
10:38 am Vincent Nguyen: It’s cross-profile - will work on other mobile devices and all of them play nicely together - and will be free when the App Store launches
10:38 am Vincent Nguyen: TypePad are next, with a dedicated iPhone blogging tool
10:38 am Vincent Nguyen: Has photoblogging functionality, with geotagging
10:39 am Vincent Nguyen: According to the TypePad rep photoblogging is one of the platforms most popular features
10:39 am Vincent Nguyen: Photo can be taken directly from the camera or picked from shots already in the iPhone gallery
10:39 am Vincent Nguyen: It’ll also be free
10:40 am Vincent Nguyen: Associated Press (AP) are on-stage now
10:40 am Vincent Nguyen: They’re here to plug their Mobile News Network - thousands of news sources funneled into your iPhone
10:41 am Vincent Nguyen: It’ll cache news so you can read it while underground or trapped in the hold of a plane
10:41 am Vincent Nguyen: Includes images and video
10:42 am Vincent Nguyen: You can also send them news and video for the network
10:43 am Vincent Nguyen: It’s also tied into your location, so it will show topics relevent to where you are
10:43 am Vincent Nguyen: Pangaea software are on-stage, talking about two new games
10:43 am Vincent Nguyen: Both ported from OS X
10:44 am Vincent Nguyen: One is physics-based, you need to touch, drag and rotate
10:44 am Vincent Nguyen: The other is a driving game: Cro Mag Rally, in 3D
10:44 am Vincent Nguyen: You play as a racing caveman
10:45 am Vincent Nguyen: According to Pangaea it only took 3 days to port it all across
10:45 am Vincent Nguyen: Including changing the controls so that tilting the iPhone mimics a steering wheel
10:46 am Vincent Nguyen: Both will be priced at $9.99
10:47 am Vincent Nguyen: A lone developer from the British insurance industry is on-stage, Mark Terry
10:47 am Vincent Nguyen: Thankfully it’s not about insurance - it’s a game, virtual instruments called Band
10:48 am Vincent Nguyen: He’s demo’ing it by playing with Imagine by John Lennon
10:48 am Vincent Nguyen: Consists of drum background, a piano and more
10:48 am Vincent Nguyen: Best of all - and the crowd love him and it - is the fact that he developed it in his spare time
10:49 am Vincent Nguyen: Sorry, it’s actually called Cow Terry, not Band
10:49 am Vincent Nguyen: You can record what you play
10:50 am Vincent Nguyen: MLB.com are on-stage, talking about their new baseball app
10:50 am Vincent Nguyen: Jeremy Schoenherr demo’ing it - lots of stats and live game info
10:51 am Vincent Nguyen: It can tell you who is playing where, what the score is, real-time video highlights
10:51 am Vincent Nguyen: Both it and Cow Terry will be available when the App Store launches, but no prices given
10:52 am Vincent Nguyen: A doctor from Modality is on stage with two medical apps
10:53 am Vincent Nguyen: Basically using the iPhone as a teaching tool
10:55 am Vincent Nguyen: Ouch, it’s almost 11am and there have been no big announcements
10:55 am Vincent Nguyen: Second medical app lets consultants and specialists look at medical imaging while mobile
10:56 am Vincent Nguyen: It’s tricky to get excited about this without wearing a white coat
10:58 am Vincent Nguyen: MultiTouch gestures are used to rotate and flip the images, pull up rulers and shake to get rid of them
10:58 am Vincent Nguyen: The final developer is on-stage, and it’s another game
10:59 am Vincent Nguyen: Digital Legends Entertainment - they only started working on their title 2 weeks ago
11:00 am Vincent Nguyen: Basically a fighting game, touching the screen moves the fighter
11:00 am Vincent Nguyen: It’s unique to the iPhone and will appear in the App Store come September
11:01 am Vincent Nguyen: Uses OpenGL and dynamic graphic rendering, it looks like a decent 3D fantasy adventure actually
11:02 am Vincent Nguyen: Apparently developers have been asking for a way to know when users aren’t running an app
11:03 am Vincent Nguyen: Apple is criticising Background Processes as the wrong way to accomplish this - they eat battery and CPU cycles
11:03 am Vincent Nguyen: Ouch, they’re showing Windows Mobile Task Manager, and it’s not as an example of good practice
11:04 am Vincent Nguyen: “We’ve come up with a far better solution, a push notification service we’ll provide to all developers”
11:05 am Vincent Nguyen: The iPhone maintains an ongoing connection with an Apple server
11:05 am Vincent Nguyen: When you quit an app, updates are shuffled from server to iPhone; developers send the updates to Apple
11:06 am Vincent Nguyen: Uses Badges, which alert the no. waiting, Custom Alert sounds and Text Alerts that are similar to text alerts
11:06 am Vincent Nguyen: Won’t be available until September, but developers will be able to access it soon
11:06 am Vincent Nguyen: iPhone SDK has been updated
11:07 am Vincent Nguyen: Now includes iWork document support together with Word, Excel & Powerpoint compatibiltiy, plus the ability to save images (finally!) and a new scientific calculator
11:07 am Vincent Nguyen: Bulk and move mesages, parental controls and new language support
11:08 am Vincent Nguyen: Finger-drawn Chinese and Japanese character entry
11:08 am Vincent Nguyen: They’re popular additions in the room, the crowd is v.excited!
11:09 am Vincent Nguyen: The 2.0 firmware will be available in early July
11:09 am Vincent Nguyen: Free for iPhone, $9.99 for iPod Touch owners
11:09 am Vincent Nguyen: Now Steve is discussing the App Store
11:10 am Vincent Nguyen: Sorry, $9.95 for iPod Touch owners
11:10 am Vincent Nguyen: Confirming App Store T&Cs: 70% of revenue kept by developers, FairPlay verification, no charge for free software
11:11 am Vincent Nguyen: There’ll be wireless downloads direct to your device, and automatic updates
11:11 am Vincent Nguyen: App Store will be available in 62 countries; will check your connection and the app size before download starts
11:11 am Vincent Nguyen: if the app is under 10MB then it will come over the mobile network; bigger, and it’ll use either WiFi or iTunes
11:12 am Vincent Nguyen: Enterprise clients can set up their own private App Stores on their intranets and limit employee iPhones to access them
11:13 am Vincent Nguyen: That’s been a specific request from business customers
11:13 am Vincent Nguyen: Discussing a new way to distribute and test apps: Ad Hoc
11:14 am Vincent Nguyen: create a group of up to 100 iPhones and send apps to all of them; Steve suggesting this would be useful for testing betas or in classrooms
11:14 am Vincent Nguyen: Something entirely new: MobileMe
11:14 am Vincent Nguyen: “Exchange for the rest of us” - demo by Phil
11:15 am Vincent Nguyen: Push email, calendar and contacts without an Exchange server
11:15 am Vincent Nguyen: Ouch, Phil Schiller has just called ActiveSync “ActiveStink”
11:16 am Vincent Nguyen: Works cross-platform and info is pushed up and down: e.g. new email goes to all devices and from all devices
11:16 am Vincent Nguyen: Continuous, automatic syncronisation
11:16 am Vincent Nguyen: And it’s all done over-the-air via the cellular connection
11:16 am Vincent Nguyen: Mail, iCal and Address Book on Mac all supported, as is Outlook
11:18 am Vincent Nguyen: New site: Me.com
11:18 am Vincent Nguyen: Recreates the desktop experience but online from anywhere
11:19 am Vincent Nguyen: Syncs everything - including photos - and looks just like Apple’s Mail, Contacts, Calendar and Gallery apps
11:19 am Vincent Nguyen: They’re calling it a “breakthrough web 2.0 app interface” and it looks amazing
11:20 am Vincent Nguyen: iDisk is integrated into Me.com; Phil Schiller is demonstrating it now
11:20 am Vincent Nguyen: It includes everything you’d get with Outlook Web Access, with more besides - it all acts just as you’d expect the desktop version to
11:21 am Vincent Nguyen: Drag’n'Drop, multiple message select, in-line replies, complete control over pane and window resizing
11:22 am Vincent Nguyen: Contacts includes live searching and ties with Google Maps
11:22 am Vincent Nguyen: Calendar has color coding and you can drag’n'drop events, as well as display multiple views
11:23 am Vincent Nguyen: Gallery has thumbnail scrolling and drag’n'drop
11:23 am Vincent Nguyen: Hard to believe this is all web-based, it’s miles ahead of the competition in terms of interface
11:24 am Vincent Nguyen: iDisk app can send files to individuals through the web interface
11:24 am Vincent Nguyen: They’re demonstrating the over-the-air capacity: iPhone sync’ing with Me.com
11:25 am Vincent Nguyen: It’s all happening live: email, contacts, appointments, all show up on both at the same time
11:25 am Vincent Nguyen: With read status and any amendments intact
11:26 am Vincent Nguyen: Very little lag when something is changed, though presumably this is all via WiFi not cellular data on the iPhone itself
11:27 am Vincent Nguyen: Thank goodness for unlimited data plans!
11:28 am Vincent Nguyen: “Exchange for the rest of us … The perfect companion”
11:28 am Vincent Nguyen: $99 a year
11:28 am Vincent Nguyen: That includes 20GB online storage; MobileMe replaces .Mac
11:29 am Vincent Nguyen: 60 day trial and available in early July
11:29 am Vincent Nguyen: .Mac users auto upgraded
11:29 am Vincent Nguyen: Steve’s back on stage
11:29 am Vincent Nguyen: First iPhone shipped on June 29th last year
11:30 am Vincent Nguyen: Um, Steve is using a photo of me to illustrate the launch
11:30 am Vincent Nguyen: 90% customer satisfaction
11:31 am Vincent Nguyen: 98% of ppl use it to browse online, 94% use email, 90% SMS messaging, 80& ten or more features
11:31 am Vincent Nguyen: Apple ran out of stock several weeks ago - 6m sold
11:32 am Vincent Nguyen: Next challenges: more affordable, 3G networks, enterprise, third party apps, mmore countries
11:32 am Vincent Nguyen: 3G iPhone!
11:32 am Vincent Nguyen: “today we’re introducing the iPhone 3G”
11:33 am Vincent Nguyen: Black back panel, thinner edges, full plastic back
11:33 am Vincent Nguyen: “it’s really nice” says Steve
11:33 am Vincent Nguyen: Massive applause here
11:33 am Vincent Nguyen: solid metal buttons, flush 3.5mm headphone adaptor
11:34 am Vincent Nguyen: same 3.5-inch display, improved audio
11:34 am Vincent Nguyen: “Feels better in your hand” apparently
11:34 am Vincent Nguyen: They’d comparing EDGE vs 3G in a demo
11:35 am Vincent Nguyen: download in the browser takes 21 seconds on 3G and EDGE crawls along
11:35 am Vincent Nguyen: EDGE finally finishes after 59 seconds
11:36 am Vincent Nguyen: Steve is comparing 3G with WiFi speeds
11:36 am Vincent Nguyen: 17 seconds to download on WiFi
11:37 am Vincent Nguyen: 3G is 2.8x faster than EDGE
11:37 am Vincent Nguyen: Plus the iPhone 3G is 36% faster than other 3G phones (e.g. Treo 750 & Nokia N95)
11:38 am Vincent Nguyen: Email attachment takes 5 seconds on 3G, 18 seconds on EDGE
11:38 am Vincent Nguyen: Plus, Steve points out, the results are better to look at on the iPhone compared to rivals
11:38 am Vincent Nguyen: Standby time is 300hrs
11:39 am Vincent Nguyen: 3G talktime is 5hrs
11:39 am Vincent Nguyen: 2G talktime up 2hrs to 10hrs total!
11:39 am Vincent Nguyen: 5-6hrs of 3G browsing, 7 hours of video, 24hrs of audio
11:39 am Vincent Nguyen: GPS now built-in
11:39 am Vincent Nguyen: The room is going wild here
11:40 am Vincent Nguyen: It’s also assisted GPS, uses WiFi and cell towers to better pinpoint position
11:40 am Vincent Nguyen: Steve thinks location-based services are the future on the iPhone
11:40 am Vincent Nguyen: Can do tracking and work as a compass - without the dedicated compass Google recently showed in their Android prototype
11:41 am Vincent Nguyen: Demo GPS with a moving car icon on Google Maps
11:42 am Vincent Nguyen: Current iPhone available in 6 countries today, will be 12 countries for 3G version
11:42 am Vincent Nguyen: 25 countries over next few months
11:43 am Vincent Nguyen: Showing different countries getting ticked off on map - Canada, Sweden, Mexico, Norway, Netherlands, etc
11:44 am Vincent Nguyen: Seventy countries in total, including China, Australia and Japan
11:45 am Vincent Nguyen: Rollout over next few months
11:46 am Vincent Nguyen: Now price: was $599 at first launch, now $199!
11:46 am Vincent Nguyen: $199 for the 8GB iPhone 3G!
11:46 am Vincent Nguyen: $299 for the 16GB
11:47 am Vincent Nguyen: The room here has just exploded
11:47 am Vincent Nguyen: They’ll make a white version too
11:47 am Vincent Nguyen: Rolled out at the same price all over the world
11:47 am Vincent Nguyen: Available July 11th
11:47 am Vincent Nguyen: They’re showing the new advert
11:48 am Vincent Nguyen: Advert is showing a safe carried by security guards, with the iPhone 3G inside
11:49 am Vincent Nguyen: “The iPhone 3G is one of the most amazing products I’ve ever had the privilege to be associated with”
11:50 am Vincent Nguyen: iPhone teams are being called to their feet, and the applause is deafening
11:51 am Vincent Nguyen: “WWDC 2008, I think it’s going to be our best so far”
11:51 am Vincent Nguyen: The lights are coming up and it looks like the keynote is over
11:51 am Vincent Nguyen: Steve has left the stage
11:52 am Vincent Nguyen: There’s no “one more thing”, but a 3G iPhone should make up for that don’t you think?
11:52 am Vincent Nguyen: Thanks for reading the iPhone Buzz Live Blog - we hope you’ve been as excited about this year’s WWDC keynote as we have been!
11:52 am Vincent Nguyen: Make sure to keep reading iPhoneBuzz.com for all the details of the new iPhone 3G
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