iPhone OS must have been too long to say in general conversation, because Apple have gone ahead and changed the name of one of their most defining pieces of technology. iPhone OS will now, and forever be known as iOS, which is definitely a lot easier to say. Of course, that means that with the introduction of iOS 4, the name will be forever official.
There are upwards of 1,500 new features being released with iOS 4. Things like Folders, Unified Inbox, and Multitasking (which we’ve seen before) are coming along for the ride. As Steve Jobs put it, they weren’t the first on the market with multitasking, but they took the time to make sure that it is done right. If you don’t, then you kill your battery, and that’s just not a good user experience.
The other new features include Retina Integration with all of the applications — developers don’t have to do anything to make it work. The enhanced camera, obviously, as well as plenty more. Stay tuned with the liveblog, because it doesn’t look like Jobs is ready to quit any time soon.
Tomorrow marks the kick off of WWDC 2010, Apple’s annual developer event, and despite all the leaks, rumors, intrigue and speculation, Steve Jobs is still promising that we “won’t be disappointed.” Top of the list of expected announcements is the fourth-generation iPhone, tentatively expected to be the iPhone HD, and SlashGear will be at the Jobs keynote tomorrow morning, Monday June 7th, to liveblog the whole event at http://live.slashgear.com/.
After the cut… iPhone HD, Safari 5 with lashings of HTML5, iPhone OS 4.0 and more!
The iPhone HD is tipped to have a higher resolution, 960 x 640 IPS display making for the crispest graphics on a smartphone to-date, together with a choice of black and white casings. It’s also expected to be slimmer and more squared off than the existing iPhone 3GS, with a higher resolution main camera – complete with 720p HD video recording and an LED flash for the first time – and a front-facing camera for video calls.
Of course, while that seems as good as locked in, there’s no shortage of other rumors to contend with. Steve Ballmer may not be on stage, but the persistent talk of a Verizon iPhone continues to circulate. Still, that’s not expected to arrive until later in 2010. Meanwhile there’s talk of Safari 5 making its debut – though sometime during WWDC, rather than necessarily at the keynote – complete with new RSS functionality, faster JavaScript, the addition of Bing Search to the options, improved HTML5 support and new developer tools. Considering HTML5 is already going to be a big part of the WWDC developer sessions, the new browser looks increasingly likely.
Finally, we’re expecting news on when exactly we can expect iPhone OS 4.0, bringing with it multitasking, background processes for certain key functionality like streaming audio and navigation, new media playback controls, file sharing and more. Full details on OS 4.0 here.
As always, our liveblog system is auto-updating thanks to some nifty push technology, so you’ll always see the latest news as it’s added and it won’t bog down your browser. We’ve also added in a push comments system this time around, so that readers can add their own feedback to the keynote. We’ll be kicking things off just before 10am PST tomorrow morning (1pm New York; 6pm London), Monday June 7th 2010, at http://live.slashgear.com/, so join us for all the news!
Research analysts Nielsen have released their latest smartphone market share report, covering the first quarter of 2010, and in terms of growth only iPhone OS and Android are really shining. Both platforms climbed 2 points quarter-on-quarter, though the iPhone still holds a significant lead over its rival, comprising 28-percent of the smartphone market compared to Android’s 9-percent. The report follows earlier, contested figures from NPD which suggested Android had overtaken iPhone OS in the US market.
Meanwhile Windows Mobile – set to be replaced by Windows Phone 7 by the end of the year – and BlackBerry OS each dropped two points, though RIM’s platform does still hold the top spot at 35-percent. User satisfaction seems to be higher among iPhone OS owners, too; in pure percentage terms, twice the number of current Android users said they’d be keen to try an iPhone as their next device, as current iPhone owners said about Android handsets.
Apple is due to announce a new iPhone – tentatively dubbed the iPhone HD – at their WWDC 2010 keynote tomorrow, Monday June 7 2010. SlashGear will be liveblogging the whole event at http://live.slashgear.com/ so join us at 10am PST!
It’s oftentimes easy for us to get swept up in Android mania and forget that Google’s mobile platform is still in its infancy. Then we get cold hard numbers like these — showing iPhone OS owning 28 percent of the US smartphone market and closing in on RIM’s leading 35 percent — and we face up to the realization that Android handsets still account for less than one in every ten smartphones owned by Americans today. In spite of collecting 28 percent of all consumer smartphone purchases in the first quarter of 2010 (according to NPD), Google’s OS was only able to climb up a couple of percentage points in terms of total market share, showing just how long a road lies ahead of its world-conquering plans. Guess that now explains why Apple’s response to the earlier numbers was so nonchalant.
Other intriguing figures include a high rate of loyalty among iPhone OS and Android users, with 80 percent of the former and 70 percent of the latter expressing a preference for the same OS in their next phone — both rather shaming Microsoft and RIM’s numbers, which were a mediocre 34 and 47 percent, respectively. Funnily enough, despite its inflammatory title, this report finds Android and iPhone users are more similar to each other than anyone else — an uncomfortable fact for both parties to deal with, we’re sure. The source link contains some more demographic comparisons, so why not go check them out and drop some sage analysis for us in the comments?
The consumer electronics industry has had its share of great rivalries. Apple vs. Microsoft; Microsoft vs. Google; Google vs. Yahoo; and though these companies surely remain in competition, the intense rivalries that drive product development and benefit the consumer have mostly faded. Apple and Microsoft may jockey for position in measurements of market capitalization, but they’re both successful with dramatically different product categories now. Microsoft may want a piece of Google’s search pie, but Google holds a commanding lead that seems unlikely to falter. And do I have to even explain how Yahoo is no longer competitive with Google?
Sure, there’s plenty of overlap. Apple and Microsoft both make smartphones. Google will have its own OS on netbooks by the end of this year. Many of Yahoo’s best services, like Flickr and Yahoo Groups, compete directly with Google products. But these rivalries have either faded or the fire is dying down to embers.
So what’s the next big battle? It isn’t Google vs. Apple, as many have claimed. Sure, both companies are focused on the hot smartphone market, but Android products and iPhone products can peacefully coexist for the foreseeable future. It’s a big market, and though the systems may seem similar in their functions, in fact they specialize in different features. The Apple iPhone is a multimedia powerhouse, and it comes with a more carefully curated app store that offers games, productivity apps and social networks, but mostly games. Android is an open system, highly customizable for users and carriers alike. It’s complex, but rewarding, where Apple’s iPhone OS is simple and dazzling.
The next big battle will be between Google and Facebook, and it will be over the basic question: where do we go first? When we wake up our laptops from sleep, or pick up our smartphones off the bedside table, what’s the first site we visit? Because that site will set the tone for the rest of our Web experience.
When Apple and Microsoft compete over operating systems, what they’re really competing for is our dollars. One of them makes a product we want and we buy it, pure and simple. When Google and Facebook compete, they aren’t after our money. We don’t pay Facebook for our social network, and we don’t pay Google for search. Both of them make money through ads. We are the product, and we are being sold to advertisers. When Google and Facebook compete, they are competing over who can do the best job selling their users.
Why does Facebook want to eliminate privacy so badly? Is it Mark Zuckerberg’s utopian view of society? Of course not. The more personal data Facebook can collect and offer to advertisers, the more money they can glean for ad space. Why stamp “Like” buttons on Web sites across the Internet? Is it so we can express ourselves as we read a story on CNN, or watch a video on FunnyOrDie.com? Of course not. Facebook wants us to follow our friends and visit the sites they visit. Facebook wants to show CNN that it can deliver the goods. Facebook can prove to advertisers that it can drive eyeballs like a shepherd corralling sheep.
How about Google? Why would Google give away free email with huge storage capacities? Why give away an operating system to phone manufacturers? Because when we use Gmail, we see Google’s ads. When Google jumps into the mobile advertising pool – and they’re already on the diving board – Android users are going to get soaked with Google’s advertising.
Google and Facebook are the next big tech rivals because their services don’t just overlap, they preclude each other. Facebook’s now-ubiquitous “Like” button is a shot across Google’s bow. Sure, if we need a targeted search, we’ll still use Google to find the proper site, but those aren’t the sites that we’ll return to daily. When a friend recommends a site she likes, we’re more likely to visit, more likely to return and much more likely to tell other people.
Likewise, Google offers great services for email, photo sharing, blogging and even microblogging, but in the end we probably won’t rely on both Google and Facebook for the same tasks. If I post all my pictures on Facebook, with tags, am I really going to post them again on Picasa? Why bother? If I have something interesting to share, will I use Buzz or update my Facebook status? For a while, I might try both, but eventually I’ll use the one that most of my friends read.
The rivalry is really about which site we go to first. That’s what’s most interesting to advertisers, because they want to catch us at our most attentive, when we’ve just finished our coffee and we’re ready to procrastinate. That is how Google and Facebook will sell us.
So, what should you do? Delete your Facebook page? Don’t be silly. I’d sooner throw out my address book and old high school yearbooks than delete my Facebook account, because that’s what Facebook is. It’s a way to overcome distance and time to reconnect with people. It’s a way to get in touch with people you know without worrying about their phone number or email address. You don’t need those specifics with Facebook, you just need to know their name.
Should the government step in and break up Google’s search monopoly? That would be just as silly. The government stepped into the fray against Microsoft, but Microsoft didn’t change in the long run. Not because Microsoft beat the government, but because Microsoft didn’t have to change to fix the problem. A monopoly on operating systems doesn’t matter when every important feature takes place within a Web browser. In that case, there is no monopoly in the browser wars. Even if Google holds a monopoly on search traffic, that won’t matter when the Internet moves past search as a primary tool and becomes a conduit for social traffic.
We should do nothing. Don’t bother, there’s nothing we can do, we’re just the product being sold. There will always be value in social networking, just as there will always be value in Internet search engines. Facebook will always gather the most personal data it can find to sell to its advertisers. Google will track trends and search patterns to provide the most targeted ads.
That’s okay, because advertising, for lack of a better word, is good. To paraphrase Gordon Gekko, advertising is right; advertising works. Advertising clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the consumer spirit.
Advertising is our friend. It has always given us something for nothing, starting with radio, through television and now Internet services. Sure, it’s a friend that calls us fat and influences us to make crazy decisions from time to time, but it can be funny or poignant, and it always wants to talk about our favorite subjects. Aren’t those the friends who are the most fun to be around?
I wouldn’t advocate giving up privacy, but I’ve been using the Internet long enough to know that everything I post online may someday be available for the whole world to see. There’s no privacy on the Internet just like there’s no privacy walking down a busy street. I would no sooner post nude photos or outrageous opinions on a telephone pole in Union Square than on Facebook.
Advertising is a fact of life, so it might as well be good. That’s what we’ll get from this tech rivalry. Advertisers will be able to reach exactly the audience they want, and we’ll be able to see only ads for the products we might find interesting. After all, do I want to see an ad for a new Honda right now? No, because I’m not in the market for a car. But with a toddler at home, I might be interested in strollers and life insurance. With summer fast approaching, I might be interested in travel deals or some new clothes. If advertisers can figure that out from my Facebook page or my Google search history, it will creep us out, but we’ll get over it.
If they do it right, we might not even notice it at all.
This isn’t so much news as it is a public service announcement: even in markets where iPhone tethering has launched, you’ve never been able to use it to connect to an iPad, and you won’t be able to when AT&T flips the switch on tethering with the release of OS 4. That’s clearly not AT&T’s fault, it’s Apple’s — the iPhone inexplicably supports only USB and Bluetooth for sharing its internet connection, even though jailbroken apps like MyWi prove that a WiFi connection is totally doable and countless other handsets already support WiFi routing. And iPad doesn’t support using another device as a Bluetooth modem, either. And as long as you’re paying the tethering fee, there’s no reason why AT&T wouldn’t want you tethering the iPad; you’ll certainly be able to do it with any phone in AT&T’s lineup that can create a WiFi hotspot, after all, and we’re sure they’d be happy to take your overage cash once you hit 2GB regardless of the device you’re using to gobble the data.
In the meantime, you know what you can tether to an iPad? A phone running Froyo, for one — Google was certainly happy to show off that capability back at IO. Or pretty much any device running S60 from the last several years. Or a Palm Pre Plus… yeah, you get the idea.
In case you hadn’t heard, Steve Jobs got downright conversational last night at D8, riffing on questions from Walt, Kara, and the attending audience of elites. You can hit up the entire liveblog for a timestamped play by play, or browse through some of the highlights below.
We put some extra scintillating quotes after the break to shield the eyes of your children. Just a note, however: all of these are paraphrased quotes typed live as Steve was speaking, and not to be construed as the verbatim Word of Steve Jobs, though the gist is certainly there.
Sure, you read our liveblog of Steve Jobs’ D8 conference — and believe us, it’s heavily quotable — but don’t you want to see and hear the Apple CEO claim HyperCard was huge in its day? Or perhaps you’re more interested in his thoughts on Flash, market cap, and the iPad origins — either way, videos are after the break, with presumably more to come from All Things D.
The Wall Street Journal’s annual “All Things D” conference kicked off tonight, and it started off with a presence that’s all too familiar in the technology industry. A presence that actually hasn’t made an appearance in a few years. And, above all, a presence that’s a welcomed entity on any stage, in any location. Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, sat on the D8 stage tonight with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, talking about everything that involves Apple. Of course, they took the time to talk about everything else, too; including Adobe, the next iPhone, casual gaming, and even security and the App Store. After the break, take in the comprehensive coverage, from start to finish, noting all the important parts.
The interview with Steve Jobs opened with some recent news regarding Apple surpassing Microsoft in market capital. Steve Jobs was quick to comment, saying, “It’s surreal, but it really doesn’t matter.” Curious answer, if you ask us, but at the same time it would seem to make a lot of sense. After all, the market capitalization is always changing, and even as the story broke, Microsoft continuously inched closer. The numbers are always changing, in favor and against every company out there, and despite the fact it is a momentous occasion for the Cupertino-based company, we can see why he’d want to shrug it off, and keep his focus on what’s coming next.
It didn’t take long at all before the conversation turned to Flash, Adobe, and Jobs’ recent “essay/letter” that was sent out a few weeks back, and how Apple felt about the company and their product. One of the more interesting quotes from Jobs would have to be: “Apple is a company that doesn’t have the resources that everyone else has. We choose what tech horses to ride, we look for tech that has a future and is headed up.” He goes on to say that sometimes you have to pick the right horses, and according to Jobs, HTML5 is the right horse. Adobe’s Flash may have had its time in the limelight over the past several years, but that’s not stopping HTML5 from rising, gaining more traction, and ultimately taking over.
We should note that Jobs compared Adobe’s Flash with HyperCard, stating that it was “huuuge” in its day, but we all know what happened there. Furthermore, Jobs went on to say that Apple didn’t pick a fight with Adobe; in fact, he never expected it to turn out the way it did. “We’re not trying to have a fight with Adobe. They came after us… we were getting tired of being trashed by Adobe in the press.”
When it comes to Flash, Apple and Steve Jobs do not believe it makes the perfect Internet experience that Adobe and its advocates preach. Jobs is trying to make a great product, and he (along with Apple as a whole) does not believe that Flash aides them in this cause. That’s why they chose to leave it out, plain and simple.
Of course, the lost iPhone came up. Just as we should have always expected it to. The story itself is one that we all know too well, and Jobs even considers it to be an amazing story. He doesn’t come right out and say it, but he basically equates it to a mystery story, with its devilish plot twists and everything else in between. He admitted, just as he had done before in other venues, that the iPhone that was found, and subsequently sold to a particular entity, was indeed a prototype being tested in the wild. He adds that it’s still up for grabs whether or not it was found at the bar, or stolen out of the person’s bag. That’s something we imagine won’t actually get decided upon; but if it does, it will come out of the police report that will follow the investigation that the District Attorney is still following up on.
We’ll tie together the talk about Foxconn, Microsoft, and Siri right here. First and foremost, Jobs wanted to make sure that everyone knows that the factory is not a sweatshop. By any means. He points out that the facility, which seconds as an entire city with upwards of 400,000 employees, has restaurants, theaters, swimming pools, and other things to make the experience better. “For a factory, it’s a pretty nice factory.” As for being in a platform war with Microsoft, Jobs had some enlightening words on the matter, after being asked by Mossberg whether or not he views the situation as another platform war. “We never saw ourselves in a platform war with Microsoft . . . Maybe that’s why we lost.” Jobs adds that he and his company just wanted to make good products, and focused only on that. When he was asked about whether or not he felt “betrayed” by certain entities at Google, Jobs replied, “My sex life is great.” Which, for the most part, completely destroyed that line of questioning. As for Siri, Jobs pointed out that it isn’t a search engine, and that his company has no plans to get into the search business. He chalks Siri up to being an AI company, and that’s it.
Jobs did a good job of defending the wireless carrier showing off Apple’s iPhone. He said that for what it’s worth, AT&T is doing a great job. Especially considering “they deal with way more data traffic than anyone else.” He went on to point out that he believes if the iPhone had launched on any other network here in the States, the capacity that it did, that network would have done the same thing under the pressure. Bold words for the strengthening of AT&T’s network, even on just a “belief” basis, but it looks like Apple still has a lot of faith in the second largest wireless carrier here in the States.
The obvious question about an iPhone appearing on a new network came up, just as everyone knew it would. When he was confronted about it, Jobs remained stolid, unmoving. If you had to guess an answer based just on his facial reaction, you’d probably get the same answer he gave vocally. When Mossberg asked if there would be advantages of to having two [carriers] in the US, Jobs replied, “There might be.” And, more directly, when asked if there was an iPhone coming to a new carrier, Jobs simply said that, “You know I can’t comment on that.” Very vague wording, if you ask us, but at the same time we’re still weary.
Probably one of the most interesting parts of the conversation, though, came out when Jobs admitted that the iPhone began as a tablet. In fact, Jobs charged Apple with creating a tablet first, but when their first incarnation of the hardware, together with the software didn’t equal up to what Jobs wanted, he changed the plan to a phone. And, as the old saying goes, the rest is history. “My God, this would make a great phone,” he reportedly said, before the tablet idea was shelved.
As for the iPad, Jobs said that despite the range of tablets that had come out before it, they had to essentially start from scratch. They couldn’t use a stylus, and they couldn’t use a PC OS, so they had to make something brand new. As for what it means for the publishing industry, he went on a wide array of points. But, while he believes that the iPad is going to do quite a bit, if not most of the work in of itself, to save the publishing industry as its own industry, he wanted to make very clear that, above all, he wanted to make sure that the print industry can’t fail. To the point, he said, “I don’t want to see us descend into a nation of bloggers. I think we need editorial oversight now more than ever.” Strong words, but it’s obvious that he believes the old world of print media, or media in general, still holds a place in this world, and that if Apple can aide in its survival, then that’s exactly what Apple will do. Quite a large weight on their shoulders.
App Store rejections came up, and Jobs was quick to defend his baby. As well he should be, as he points out that Apple supports an open platform in HTML5, but that the App Store itself is on a “curated platform.” Also known as iPhone OS. They have to judge each application that comes into the App Store, and doing that causes some problems. Unfortunately, based on their explicit rules, even the applications that probably shouldn’t be denied get blocked sometimes. And of course, these are the applications that make the news. “We have a rule that says you can’t defame people,” says Jobs, noting that political cartoonists by virtue of their profession sometimes defame people. The cartoon app was rejected on those grounds, he adds. “Then we changed the rules, and in the meantime the cartoonist won a pulitzer. But he never re-submitted his app. And then someone asked him, “Hey why don’t you have an iPhone app?” He says we rejected it and suddenly it’s a story in the press. Bottom line is, yes, we sometimes make mistakes, but we correct them.”
“People are using apps way more than they are using search,” says Jobs. “So if you want to make developers more money, you’ve got to get the ads into apps. But the mobile ads we’ve got today rip you out of the app.” This very telling quote is from a question regarding iAds, the new venture from Apple that will debut in iPhone OS 4.0. The main goal of the platform is to make developers more money, as it makes the ads part of the application, and not something that’s necessarily “separate,” and therefore more obtuse and obtrusive. He wants to change ads, because he believes they aren’t good enough at the moment.
In the end, there was a Question and Answer part, and while there were some good questions, we feel like we should end on somewhat of an entertaining note. Jobs was asked by someone in the crowd, “Steve, we love our iPhones, but our concern is that we can’t make a phone call on it. Is someone working on that?” Jobs replied: “You can bet we’re doing everything we can do. … I can tell you what I’m told by reliable people: to make things better, people reallocate spectrum and they do things like increasing backhaul and they put in more robust switches; and things in general, when they start to fix them get worse before they get better. If you believe that things should be getting a lot better real soon.” Hopefully you weren’t expecting any kind of iPhone HD announcement tonight — WWDC is right around the corner, and that’s where the big news will hit. Of course, you need to also remember that we’ll be there, liveblogging the whole thing, which you can find at http://live.slashgear.com, and you need to be there to be caught up on all things Apple.
Well, Steve Jobs just dropped a little nugget of history on us during his chat with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher at the All Things D conference. When asked by Walt why they originally put their new OS on a phone and not a tablet, Steve said, “I’ll tell you a secret. It began with the tablet.” After working on the tablet OS which had a glass display and multitouch, another idea occurred to Jobs. “My God, I said, this would make a great phone … so we shelved the tablet and built the iPhone.” And there you have it.
