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By Brian X. Chen and Priya Ganapati
Apple delivered several major announcements in rapid fire Monday, including iPhone and MacBook upgrades, significant price cuts and an in-depth look at its next-generation operating system.
The most anticipated announcement was the iPhone 3GS smartphone, successor to Apple's popular iPhone 3G. The "S" stands for speed, referring to the performance boost of the new iPhone — up to two times faster than its predecessor, according to Apple.
Other items that inspired "wows" from the audience revolved around price. The current iPhone 3G is remaining in the lineup with a $100 price tag — down from $200. Mac OS X Snow Leopard, Apple's next-generation Mac OS, will cost $30 for current Leopard users. Also, Apple upgraded the hardware of its MacBooks and lowered their prices by hundreds of dollars.
"The OS wars have finally begun," said Mike Gartenberg, technology strategist and vice president of Interpret. "The bar has been raised once again. Apple is very well positioned in the PC space for consumers, and we can expect Apple to begin its first major onslaught in the business market."
Traditionally, Apple has focused its Worldwide Developers Conference on software, as the event is devoted to training developers to code for Apple platforms. However, this year's sold-out event included a heavy load of hardware-related news tailored toward impressing consumers, demonstrating that Apple is at no loss for communicating to its fans after choosing to abandon the Macworld Expo trade show.
"WWDC is the only real, public venue for Apple now," said Tim Bajarin, principal analyst with Creative Strategies. "It's their only opportunity to talk to their larger community.
The big star of WWDC was iPhone 3GS, whose improvements are internal, as the overall physical design remains the same as its predecessor's. The 3GS introduces a digital compass for improved GPS navigation, enabling the iPhone Maps app to display directions based on which direction a user is facing. Another major addition to the handset is an improved, 3-megapixel camera, which includes autofocus, auto-white-balance and video-recording capabilities.
A less-expected new feature of iPhone 3GS is a voice-control interface. By loading an app, users will be able to dictate commands to perform various tasks, such as calling a contact or playing a song in the phone's iTunes library.
Looking ahead, the iPhone 3GS includes support for 7.2Mbps HSDPA — a faster, next-generation network standard that many carriers plan to adopt. The 3GS will cost $200 for the 16GB model and $300 for the 32GB model.
Apple is aiming to i-vangelize as many consumers as possible by offering its current iPhone 3G smartphone for $100 beginning today. Gartenberg said this price cut is significant because it will force rivals to devise new solutions to compete.
Though the new iPhone 3GS does not come with a new look, it will still attract early adopters, Bajarin said. The price drop on the current iPhone 3G to $100 should also help expand the company's market share in the smartphone segment. The revamped lineup of phones should help Apple pull ahead of competitors like the newly launched Palm Pre and the BlackBerry phones, Bajarin said.
"Apple is staying in the same price point as its earlier iPhone 3G, which is where all its volumes were," Bajarin said. "Right now they are just giving buyers a range of pricing options for their phones."
"With all the new features, the iPhone is really a Mac in a pocket," he added. "The difference between the iPhone now and the Pre or the BlackBerry is night and day."
Apple also slashed prices across its MacBook line. Its 15-inch MacBook Pros now start at $1,700 — $300 less than before. Previously called MacBooks, the 13-inch unibody models now also sport the MacBook Pro name, and they start at $1,200 — down from $1,300. Additionally, the MacBook Air received an upgrade and dropped to $1,500 (from $1,800).
Apple's aggressive pricing for its MacBook line and the price drop on its lightweight MacBook Air will not compromise much on its profit margins, Bajarin said.
"They are not favoring market share over profitability in a big way," he says. "They have already taken the pricing curve down on the unibody and chipsets, so they are building on those lower costs."
Showing no mercy, Apple also announced a low price tag for its next-generation Mac operating system, OS X Snow Leopard. Priced at $30 for current Leopard users, the OS will sport a number of refinements. But it is still based on the earlier Leopard version's code base, Bajarin said, which means Apple can afford to give it away for a lower price."
The iPhone 3G and new MacBooks begin selling today with their new price tags. The iPhone 3GS is shipping June 19 — two days after the launch of the iPhone 3.0 operating system. September is the scheduled release for Snow Leopard.
Gadget Lab covered today's announcements live from the Moscone Center, where Apple made them as part of its Worldwide Developers Conference. Scroll down for the blow-by-blow and more photos.
*Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
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12:05pm Looks like we're wrapping up.
Some stats about WWDC: 129 sessions, 147 hands-on labs, 1,000 Apple engineers are here to help devs.
And we're done. Stay tuned for some follow-up news stories on Gadget Lab!
12:02pm Now they're playing a new iPhone 3GS ad. __
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12:00pm In addition, iPhone 3G is staying in the market at $99
3G for $99 starts today
iPhone 3GS ships June 19
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Will roll out to 80 countries over the next two months__
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__11:57am __ Battery life has improved as well. Apple reports 3GS now has 9 hours internet surfing on Wi-Fi (compared to 6 hours on the 3G)
12 hours of 2G talk time up from 10 hours.
Environmental soapbox: iPhone 3Gs has arsenic-free glass. It's BFR-free, a mercury free LCD (sorry no OLED), PVC-free system.
Price: $199 for a 16GB model and $299 for a 32GB.
It'll come in black and white.
__11:56am __Next, built-in digital compass. (So far all of our predictions have been right)
Compass app is integrated into Maps, which orients to the direction you're facing
Next, support for Nike+. Go on your run, gets your iPhone to talk to the sensor in your Nike +.
Next, Encryption. All data is encrypted so it's protected.
Encrypted iTunes back ups and instantaneous remote wipe.
11:55am Call Scott Forstall for example will find and call him.
You can also choose to call his work or home by saying "work" or "home"
You can even say something like Play songs by The Killers or Play playlist Workout
You can ask iPhone What's playing now? And the iPhone will speak back to you the song artist and title.
"Play more songs like this" will create a Genius playlist.
__11:51am __For video, simply go into the camera app and you'll see a switch that lets you toggle between video and photo. 30FPS with audio.
All the camera's functions will work with video camera: Auto-focus, etc.
Oh you can also trim the videos by tapping.
Next, Voice-control interface.
The commands you can make are scrolling by so you know what to say.
11:50am The 3GS is ready with 7.2Mbps HSDPA support for next-gen networks.
Improvements to Camera. 3-megapixel autofocus camera. Also: Auto-focus, auto-white balance, auto-exposure. Also low-light sensitivity is improved. Auto-macro. Macro photo of something as close as 10 cm away. Best thing about this camera: It also captures video.
11:48am New phone! iPhone 3GS
"The S stands for Speed. This is the most powerful, fastest iPhone we've ever made."
2.1x faster with launching message, loading SimCity 2.4x faster, viewing an Excel attachment 3.6x faster. Loading NY Times — 2.9 times faster. All these speed tests running against iPhone 3G.
It has the same design as the iPhone 3G
11:47am He choses a graph of how ahead Apple is with its App Store. 50,000 apps versus Android's 5,000 apps. BlackBerry barely broke 1,000. Palm has 18.
11:45am Now Phil Schiller is coming back on stage. Here we go. He's talking about the iPhone 3G.
He calls the 3G "The phone that has changed phones forever."
"2/3 of all mobile browsing is done on an iPhone or iPod touch," Phil says.
11:42am OK we're done with demos. Will we hear about a new iPhone now?
No, not yet. More iPhone 3.0 details: Free for all iPhone customers. $9.95 for iPod Touch. It will be available worldwide June 17.
(Just like we thought -- wouldn't be announced today.)
11:38am Final demo: Line6 (digital guitars and amps) and Planet Waves (made the iPhone app ChordMaster). They're working together on an app.
They're on stage with an electric guitar. Using the accessory framework you can connect an iPhone to the Line6 amp and then you can choose different amp effects! This is exactly what we were asking for in our Dongleware wishlist.
Some examples: Turn an electric six string into an acoustic 12-string. Another neat trick: You can change the tuning of the guitar strings without even touching the guitar strings. (WTF?) Tuning app will let you adjust each string.
__11:35am __ZipCar(urban car rental agency) is up next. Some "woots" in the audience.
Luke Schneider of Zipcar is on stage. He's demoing the Zipcar iPhone app. Scenario: Jonathan is picking up his friend, but he doesn't have a car.
He taps the Zipcar app to instantly find a Zipcar location. Then a map pops up and he can search, pan and zoom into Zipcar locations all around the city. Tapping on a location presents location information.
From there on he can choose a car! Shows the price, car info, and he can set the amount of time he needs it for.
Forgot where he parked? He can also hear where his car is by simply tapping a horn icon on the iPod and an unlock icon unlocks the car.
Wow.
11:29am Co-founder Neil Young (not the musician) is on stage. He's showing a game called Star Defense, a tower-defense strategy game that takes place across 3D planets. You defend a 3D globe against alien ants and other creatures.
They're adding a store to buy an expansion pack. $3 buys you an entirely new galaxy, another 100 new hours of gameplay.
Also, push-to-play challenges that allows you to play head-to-head with other players who send invites.
The game will cost $6.
Wayne Grant of Pasco is up next. An educational iPhone app for collecting, displaying and analyzing science data. It's called Spark.
Selected a graph that depicts when a balloon bursts. Scott Forstall is performing a demo. Their balloon inflater doesn't appear to be working.
Crowd is laughing at them. If it worked, the app's graph would show the pressure increasing then dropping because the balloon expands.
Sad demo. The graph is showing a flat line. Spark is launching this fall.
11:27am TomTom has also created an accessory, the TomTom carkit. It will securely dock your iPhone, attach it to your windshield. You can rotate it to use iPhone in portrait or landscape.
It also includes a microphone for hands-free calling and listening to your music. It also powers your iPhone as you drive.
Next up is game dev Ngmoco.
11:25am Peter-Frans Pauwels, cofounder and CTO of TomTom, is on stage. TomTom uses GPS to give you the best route depending on the time of day based on traffic and other factors.
It also gives you vocal, turn-by-turn directions
@markmcc says: "Very long demo section here — some good looking iPhone 3.0 applications. TomTom showing their turn-by-turn GPS!"
__11:24am __Next up is TomTom. Portable navigation company.
11:22am ScrollMotion is on stage demoing its Iceberg store, where you can buy and download books and magazines.
You can also read the downloaded media within Iceberg
You can also copy text and e-mail it. Could come useful for students wishing to e-mail passages from books.
11:17am Dr. Cameron Powell of Airstrip Technologies is coming on stage.
He's talking about a medical iPhone app called AirStrip CC.
He can live-monitor a person's data (heart rate, critical care unit information) on the app. That's amazing.
Solves the problem of bringing any data to any doctor anywhere on the iPhone.
__11:16am __An Audi R8 is spinning around on the screen. In the game you can open up the car stereo and choose songs from your iTunes library. (iPhone 3.0's new media access allows this.)
11:13am A few devs are coming on stage to demo what they've done with iPhone 3.0.
Mark Hickey of Gameloft is on stage. He's announcing a 3D racing game called Asphalt 5.
11:12am Next, Accessories. (We called this dongleware. http://stag-mantis.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/04/accessory-power/) Companion software apps can talk right to the accessory.
This will work wirelessly via Bluetooth or plugged in to the dock connector.
Next, Cocoa Touch control to allow you to embed Google Map service right into your application.
11:10am Scott is moving on to iPhone 3.0's 1000 new APIs. Example: In-App purchases. That'll open doors to magazine subscriptions, game devs to add levels.
Business terms are the same: Dev gets 70%, Apple takes 30%.
One caveat: This will only work for paid apps, not free apps. No selling stuff within free apps.
11:08am You can even send the phone a message saying "this is a lost phone" and force it to play an alert sound, whether or not it's in silent mode.
If your phone really is lost or stolen, you can send it a remote wipe command which will delete all your data.
This will erase all your contacts, mail, everything. If you ever find the phone again, plug it in to iTunes and restore from backup.
11:07am Moving on to Languages. A multi-lingual user can tap on a globe button and switch to a different language. We're adding support for even more languages in iPhone OS 3.0. Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Korean and Thai. We now support more than 30 languages in iPhone 3.0, Scott says.
Every one of these languages has a portrait keyboard and a landscape keyboard.
Moving on to "Find My iPhone"
If you lose or misplace your phone, it can be somewhat traumatic. They're showing a 30 Rock clip. Tina Fey lost her phone, and someone found her phone with her nude pic. The guy who found it is offering it back for $3000
For situations like this that Apple created Find my iPhone.
If you lose or misplace your phone, you can log in to MobileMe in any web browser and it will show you on the map where your phone is.
11:06am Next, Safari. We've got great improvements to Safari. Faster performance. Auto-fill for example to easily log in to your web sites. Support for HTTP streaming audio and video.
11:04am "It is a seamless experience." Once you turn on tethering on your phone, there's no need to run any other app. This also requires carrier support — 22 carriers around the world that will support this in iPhone 3.0.
AT&T is NOT on board with tethering.
Crowd is laughing.
@markmcc says: "AT&T should be embarrassed. If the company were capable of that. What a completely lame company."
11:03am Moving on to Tethering. Allows you to share your iPhone's internet connection with your computer.
This will work with Macs and PCs. Works wired over USB with the same cable that came with the phone, and also it works wirelessly over Bluetooth.
__11:01am __Next, you can also rent videos through the iTunes app on the iPhone
Next, Parental Controls. A parent can limit their child to only viewing say, G and PG movies. Likewise you can limit your child to only running apps on the App Store that are age-appropriate.
10:59am It brings with it 100 new features. (Read our previous report on iPhone 3.0: http://stag-mantis.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/03/liveblog-apples/)
A few examples of features: Cut, copy and paste. Undo support — shake gesture you can undo your last action. Also, support for Universal Landscape mode throughout apps.
Talking about MMS again. Send and receive photos, contacts, map locations
MMS requires carrier support. 29 carriers around the world will support MMS at the launch of iPhone 3.0. AT&T will be able to support
MMS later this summer.
Later this summer?! Geez, AT&T is behind.
Crowd is booing
10:57am* @markmcc says "iPhone app video drives home what a huge advantage this dev community is over something like Pre."
*
10:55am Now we're moving on to iPhone 3.0, the next-gen operating system.
10:50am Some developers are saying they're traveling around the world while making games. Success of their iPhone apps allows that.
__10:48am __Now we're moving on to the iPhone. Scott Forstall, senior vice president of iPhone software, is coming on stage
The free iPhone 2.0 SDK has been downloaded more than a million times by developers, Scott says. There are now more than 50,000 apps in the App Store.
40,000,000 iPhones and iPod Touches have been sold.
On April 23, App Store surpassed 1 billion apps downloaded. Scott is thanking the users and the developers.
They're showing a video of iPhone success stories.
Some developers are saying they're traveling around the world while making games. Success of their iPhone apps allows that.
This is a long ass video.
__10:44am __Just like that you have all your Exchange e-mails, folders, to-dos, everything immediately. And you can still use OS X features such as Spotlight to search the messages.
Something cool: You can drag an Exchange contact into an event in your iCal. Easier way to enter contact information for people you're meeting, for example.
The price? $130 retail. $30 for current Leopard users. If you have several machines, you can get a family pack for $49.
Snow Leopard will be shipping September. And today Apple is making a near-final version available for developer preview
That about wraps up Snow Leopard.
10:42am They're demoing Exchange support now. Opening Mail, adding an account, typing in an Exchange password and Mail automatically discovers your company's Exchange servers.
10:40am Now, Open CL. C-based language that automatically optimizes your hardware configuration. It'll be open source.
Moving on to Microsoft Exchange. They're building Exchange support into Snow Leopard. It'll work through Mail, iCal and Address Book.
It's as easy as filling in your e-mail address and password and you're set up with Exchange in all three apps.
__10:38am __Apple's solution is Grand Central Dispatch. Built-in support for multi-core across all of Snow Leopard.
High-level libraries will make it really easy to program for. Apple is providing the tools.
Leopard Mail for an example: When Mail is busy, it uses more threads to take advantage of more cores. But when Mail is idle, it gives all those threads back to the system. Overall you get a big win in performance and responsiveness.
10:37am Bertrand is back on stage talking about the advantages of 64-bit mode. Long story short: It's super freaking fast.
Moving on to multi-core processors. A challenge of multi-cores is how to take advantage of them, how to program them.
__10:34am __@markmcc "Safari 4: Cover Flow view of browsing history. Flip through pages you've seen. Plus full searching of history."
10:33am Full spotlight search of the Safari content — even the text in the pages.
Moving on to QuickTime 10. It's been reengineered. Playing a family video — once you move your mouse cursor off the video screen, the window bar and playback controls fade away, move back and they reappear.
More controls: You can also select trim and get a visual timeline of the video. Choose in and out points and there's your edited clip
"Those are a few of the many many touches to Snow Leopard."
10:32am Safari 4: Snow Leopard ships with the final version of Safari 4. "It is the fastest browser on any platform."
Google Maps loads really quickly with the nitro-JavaScript engine.
Top Sites: You get an intelligently laid out panoramic view of all the sites you visit the most
10:30am He's starting with Dock and Finder. Preview thumbnails are beefed up. You can step through PDFs and even view videos without opening them.
Exposé: Now with Dock Exposé you can click and hold an application and see all the windows for that application
10:25am Craig Federighi, VP of Mac OS engineering, is coming on stage to talk more about refinements.
10:23am Also, Chinese characters are hard to type, but now with Snow Leopard you can draw the characters on the multi-touch trackpad.
Mail is even faster now.
Apple's Safari 4 browser is shipping for Leopard, Tiger and Windows.
Safari 4 will also be included in Snow Leopard. There's a couple extra features for Snow Leopard: Crash resistance. Browser plug-ins are a primary cause of crashes. Snow Leopard will prevent this.
Another feature with Snow Leopard: Even more speed. 50% faster JavaScript performance
10:22am Some examples: Exposé has been built into the dock. Also, installation of Snow Leopard is up to 45% faster. And when you install Snow Leopard, you recover up to 6GB of disk space.
10:21am Lots of refinements across board. New technologies and Exchange support. Serlet is saying 90% of OS X's 1000+ features have been refined.
__10:20am __ Bertrand Serlet, head of Apple's OS X team: "You have the same old technologies. DLLs. The registry. Disk defragmentation. No end user should ever have to go about that."
"We love Leopard. We're really happy with how it's turned out.... So we decided to come out with Snow Leopard to build upon Leopard. The challenge we set for ourselves was to build a better Leopard."
10:18am "We're really proud to say this is the world's greenest lineup of notebooks.'
Segue: "Good hardware deserves great software."
The topic is OS X Snow Leopard
Apple is dissing Vista and Windows 7.
10:16am The MacBook Air gets an update too. 1.86GHz for $1499 — $300 less expensive than before.
If you want the SSD config, the 2.13 GHz MacBook Air is $1800 — $700 less than previous config.
Phil's saying all of the MacBooks meet the EP gold standard for environmentally friendly design.
10:15am 13-inch starts at $1199.
For 13-inch "MacBook Pro": $1199 you can get the 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo; 2.53 GHz Core 2 Duo for $1499.
__10:13am __13-inch MacBook is getting the battery upgrade too. And supporting up to 8GB memory.
And it's getting a FireWire 800 port! They're reviving it!
They're calling it a "13-inch MacBook Pro" now.
10:11am It's starting at a lower price — $1700. $300 less than before.
$1699 it starts with 2.53GHz. $1999 you get the 2.66GHz. the 2.8GHz is $2299.
17-inch is also getting a bump too-- 2.8GHz processor, for $2500.
They're all shipping today.
10:10am The rest of the specs remain the same, except for the express card slot is being replaced by an SD card slot.
Processor and memory changes: 3.06 GHz intel core 2 duo processor for the 15-inch MBP. And up to 8GB RAM.
__10:06am __Phil is talking about Macs. He says notebooks are the hottest sellers. He's recapping what Apple did with the MacBooks starting with the MacBook Air — the unibody. He's announcing an upgrade to the 15-inch MacBook Pro.
It's going to include the same battery as the one in the current 17-inch MacBook Pro
7 hours battery lifeMost notebooks can only last 300 recharges. The lithium polymer batteries will last 1,000 charge cycles.
10:00am Schiller says OS X users have grown to 75 million users thanks to the popularity of the iPhone.
Phil Schiller is on stage welcoming everyone. "We have an amazing week planned for you...there's over 5200 developers from 54 countries around the world."
John Hodgman is on the screen. A new Mac ad. Hodgman is talking about a billion iPhone apps sold and stumbling over his words. Then Justin Long appears and says, "Hello I'm a Mac, and what PC was trying to say was have a great conference."
Dimming the lights. We're starting!
They're playing that annoying song on the iPhone "there's an app for that" commercials.
They're telling us to turn off our cellphones and paging devices. The conference will begin in a few minutes!
We're seated and Apple is welcoming us to the event. The crowd applauds.
The Gadget Lab liveblog team of Brian X. Chen, Jon Snyder, Mark McClusky and Priya Ganapati is seated and set to go. It's showtime!
Don't forget to follow @gadgetlab for live tweets courtesy of Priya Ganapati. And follow @markmcc for additional commentary.
Check back here 10 a.m. PDT Monday for Wired.com's live coverage of Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference 2009. Yours truly will be live blogging the keynote, accompanied by staff writer Priya Ganapati and photographer Jon Snyder.
Prefer your news through Twitter? Priya will be tweeting juicy bits of the keynote on the Gadget Lab Twitter account. What are you waiting for? Follow us now!
Meanwhile, keep up with all our WWDC-related news. We're anticipating an exciting Monday, aren't you?
See Also:
- What to Expect From Apple at WWDC 2009
- Apple Posts WWDC Details; No Mention of Jobs
- Expect Next iPhone Hardware, Software in Early July
- Rumor Round-Up: Everything We've Heard About the Next iPhone ...
- Analyst: No New iPhone at WWDC 2009
- Jobs 'On Track' to Return to Work; WWDC Speculation Ticks Up: WSJ ...
Photo: Adam Jackson/Flickr
