The Smorgasbord of Douglas Bell

So, Apple’s WWDC happened this past week, and of course, the only part that any non-developer cares about is the big WWDC Keynote that happens on Monday morning. (And maybe, to a lesser extent, the Apple Design Awards. But I digress.) This year’s delivery from WWDC was quite massive, primarily divided into Mac announcements and iPhone announcements. Today, I’ll dwell with my thoughts on the iPhone announcements; my Mac thoughts will be showing up tomorrow.

iPhone 3.0
The iPhone 3.0 software update is obviously the most anticipated thing to come out of WWDC. I don’t think one can say much that’s bad about it. The implementation of Cut/Copy/Paste and that Shake to Undo feature is quite nice (who would have thought two years ago that shaking a device would be a means of user input?). Given how insane eleven home screens would probably be, I’d say that the Spotlight search feature is a great idea, and would probably get used more often on the iPhone than it’s big brother in OS X gets used. The Voice Memos app? Nice. It’s all good, is what I’m saying, and really helps to fill the remaining holes in the iPhone. Whereas two years ago, I had plenty to say regarding reasons I would never want an iPhone, I think Apple finally has an offering that doesn’t feel like a “version 1.0″ system, and finally feels fairly feature-complete. It’s like Mac OS X, which didn’t really start to feel feature complete until Jaguar’s debut, and more so with Panther. If I had the money/credit rating/all that other silly stuff needed to support a $70/month cell plan, I would totally go with the iPhone. But I don’t, which is why I’m not even bothering to waste my energy envying the thing.

AT&T’s Word is Disconnected
I love how on Tuesday, I got an issue of Macworld magazine with an article on reasons why Apple should ditch AT&T (or at least ditch their exclusive contract with them). They wrote that article too early, because the reasons doubled during Monday’s keynote. Between MMS and internet tethering, AT&T is dead on arrival when it comes to delivering these key features. And when was the last time that people in Canada or Europe got features in Apple products/services BEFORE customers in the U.S.? Never, as far as I know. Heck, I don’t even like SMS/MMS one bit, and I consider it the biggest ripoff in the cell phone industry. But when it comes to Apple’s implementation of MMS, they’ve actually taken something that was kind of trendy and made it useful for sharing information–not just photos, videos, and all that, but useful things like locations and vCards. That’s pretty good. But AT&T, of all folks, can’t get their act together? And as for tethering, that would really help bring me in towards the iPhone, but AT&T can’t make that happen either. Yet they had to pull NetShare from the App Store, when those lucky few who downloaded it in time are still using it beautifully. It was clear at the keynote that Scott Forstall was not happy about AT&T and he quickly brushed over their obvious absence. Apple, move on already!

iPhone 3G S: Anyone for Alphabet Soup?
“The ‘S’ stands for ‘speed.’” Okay, great, but isn’t this just getting a little bit like names that use weird letter/number combinations, rather than just real names? Or maybe this Joy of Tech comic really tells it like it is. You still can’t complain about much here, though. Faster is obviously great (and for a few apps, much-needed). Though I love how we’re just supposed to take “faster” at face value without any hard numbers to back it up, the way we would get with “faster” Macs. The built-in video camera is quite nice. As funny as it may sound, iPhone may become the biggest competitor to The Flip; I really see those in the same zone. And iMovie-like (okay, I guess it will be truly compared to QuickTime X once Snow Leopard comes out) editing and sharing right from the phone? Like I said, I could see using this over the Flip easily. And who needs an HD camera? Not me.
Voice Control is also quite nice, and I love the floating blue interface, it’s quite cool-looking. Though I will say that I’ve watched the iPhone 3G S Guided Tour a few times, and the system voice that confirms what you just said still creeps me out thoroughly. The Digital Compass is cool, now that I get the point of it (the Google Maps orientation). And of course, the lower price point of the 8 GB iPhone is still nice, but it still can’t woo me in because of that lingering AT&T plan right behind it. At least with the Palm Pre, Sprint’s plans are more reasonable.

But What About the iPod touch?
3.0 is another $9.95 update for the iPod touch, but it’s not going to get as much stuff as the iPhone, obviously. MMS support won’t be coming to the iPod touch, but that’s really a “phone” feature, along with SMS, so I wouldn’t expect to ever see that. Voice Memos won’t be coming to the iPod touch, according to Apple’s website, anyway. It would seem to me like it would be nice to have the Voice Memos app if people attached a microphone accessory, just like the iPod classic and iPod nano have its own Voice Memos functionality. No word on that yet. Apple doesn’t indicate that the iPod touch will get the “improved Stocks app” that the iPhone gets, but I would be surprised if that isn’t actually a new feature. I just love how it’s screenshot-worthy on the iPhone page, and not even mentioned for the touch. The iPod touch doesn’t get internet tethering, but then again, who needs to tether wifi?

As someone who would be more likely to get an iPod touch than I would an iPhone, here’s my personal wish list for the iPod touch (which will likely get its chance at an update this fall):

• The built-in video camera with editing. I know that rumors have been supporting this, and I would really think that it’s a great idea. The iPhone is really a convergence device done right, and I’d love to have that in the iPod touch for those of us who can’t converge on an expensively-planned cell phone.
• Voice Control. It’s creepy, but it’s cool, and there’s no reason why it wouldn’t be great in an iPod touch, even if the only thing you could do is control music. Quite frankly, I think the appeal of Voice Control is that it makes up for the lack of physical no-need-to-look-at-them-when-you’re-pushing-them buttons on these touchscreen devices.
• Digital Compass. Sorry, but being able to orient the map in the direction that you’re going is just too cool.
• Microphone. I really think that the Voice Memos app would be SO useful, and I’d like to see a microphone on the earbuds at the very least, if not integrated into the device. (If there’s a video camera added, it would probably need to be integrated into the device.)
• GPS. Okay, this is very unlikely to come down from the iPhone, but one can dream, can’t he? GPS and Skyhook (wifi location) DO complement each other nicely.
• Apple to stop thinking of the iPod touch exclusively as a gaming device. I mean, already, the iPod touch is a PDA that far beats out anything that Palm’s PDAs could ever do, courtesy of the App Store. Not just the Games Store–the APP Store. Heck, Palm doesn’t even make PDAs anymore, just smartphones. And for that matter, if Apple really is working on a bigger multi-touch tablet device, that would be cool too.

So with iPhone 3.0 and the iPhone 3G S, Apple takes another leap forward and AT&T takes another leap backward. It’s business as usual. I’m just looking forward to seeing what they do in the fall with the iPod touch, since I’ve been eyeing that thing for awhile, but I want to see that the 3G iPod touch brings before I throw down any money on it.