WWDC 2010 – iOS4, iPhone 4 and more

Bring on the big guns – in this case, the loose cannon known as Steve Jobs who was greeted with applause all round as he takes to the stage, espousing all the phenomenal sales figures of the magical iPad (one sold every 3 seconds) as well as the growth of the app market for the particular platform. More importantly, the iPad will get a built-in PDF viewing enhancement in the iBooks update which will be released later this month for the iOS4. Apart from that, you can also make notes on the page itself, alongside new bookmarks and a new page to display all your previous notes and bookmarks for easier referencing. Not only that, you can download your book wirelessly onto the iPhone, iPod touch or iPad without paying any additional charge. iBooks will automatically and wirelessly sync your current place, not to mention your collection of bookmarks and notes. What else is new at WWDC 2010? Read our summary in the extended post.

Jobs also continued to vouch Apple’s support for HTML5 and the App Store, where the latter is dubbed “the most vibrant app store on the planet” in a jibe to its rivals. Needless to say, he’s pretty proud of the approval rate – 95% of submitted apps in a week’s time, with the rest not conforming to his, er, Apple’s guidelines.

Up next, we have Netflix for the iPhone which will be released this summer without costing you a single cent. Of course, it is a no-brainer to say that you will need to own an iPhone first. You will be able to pick up your viewing place from your iPad to your iPhone, assuming you own both devices for that added touch of convenience. Apart from that, you will also get all the other bells and whistles including search and instant queue, as Netflix takes advantage of Apple’s adaptive bitrate technology which will switch between networks seamlessly.

Farmville, a popular game on Facebook, is now ported over to the iPhone. Fret not – it will synchronize with your Facebook farms to make sure you remain on top of things all the time. Guess this is another time killer for your boss to watch out for if his/her employees are all huge Farmville fans who own iPhones as it hits the market at the end of this month. Moving on…

Still on games – Activision has rolled out a new Guitar Hero experience on the iPhone and iPod touch, bringing classic tunes from Queen and the Rolling Stones, merging tapping mechanics and a new strumming method in a bid to offer a perfect gameplay experience, all for $2.99 when it comes out. Will it be able to beat the Nintendo DS version’s experience?

Ah, on to the main event – the iPhone 4! After weeks of rumors and image leaks, here we are with the real deal. To sum it all up, it is the thinnest smartphone in the world at 9.3mm, offering Apple’s A4 processor within with features such as quad-band HSDPA (7.2Mbps) support, a compass, an accelerometer, a micro SIM tray, a camera with LED flash behind, a top headset jack, a noise cancellation microphone, a 3-axis gyroscope (that’s new), GPS, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi-n connectivity to boot. Its antenna has also been built all round courtesy of its band which is part of the primary structural elements of the phone, letting you receive signals in difficult places – at least in theory. The display has also been improved, where you get 3.5″ of IPS technology that sports a 960 x 640 resolution (as predicted earlier) and 800:1 contrast ratio. Not only that, a built-in gyroscope should make games all the more fun on the iPhone 4 as you have new ways to play and stay entertained on the go. Its camera has also been upgraded to 5 megapixels, where one will benefit from 5x digital zoom, tap to focus, an LED flash, and a backside illuminated sensor. Oh, it does HD video recording as well – 720p at 30fps. The iPhone 4 will come in white and black colors, where you can fork out $199 for the 16GB model and $299 for the 32GB model.

iMovie now hits the iPhone as well, where it will record geolocations automatically, adding them to selected themes (five in total – how pitiful!), where transitions will change automatically when you switch themes. The quality of its video seeemed to take away the breath of those on the showfloor though. iMovie for iPhone will cost you $4.99 on the App Store.

iPhone OS 4 is up next, with multitasking being the first feature to be paraded. Steve decided to put the iPhone 4 to the test by playing music, checking his mail (that boasts a unified inbox and threading for easier reference) and even surfing the Internet simultaneously. So far so good. Surprise, surprise – Apple also included Microsoft’s Bing search engine to iOS4, while giving kudos to the company Bill Gates built. iOS4 will be out soon, but how soon – we do not yet know.

Last but not least, we have iAds that has become more interactive than ever, but how many people will know that an ad is worth clicking on and checking out? Something tells me that until ads become as cool as trailers for movies, they won’t get the same degree of click through rates. What do you think of WWDC 2010? Did it live up to your expectations? Looks like the rumor concerning free MobileMe is just that – a rumor, so we’ll have to shelve that for the moment.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Apple, Events, Top Stories
Tags: Apple Inc, ios4, iPhone, iPhone 4, iphone4, san francisco, Steve Jobs, wwdc