9 ms·

Steve Jobs live from WWDC 2010

108 points by agotterer 16y ago

tvon 16y ago
I'm not really clear on what the gyroscope adds that wasn't there before, can someone clarify?
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- ugh 16y ago
  I think the accelerator can only pick up pitch, yaw and roll while the gyroscope might also be able to pick up left/right and up/down (or is it the other way around?). Not sure about that, though.
- tomerico 16y ago
  If you have ever used a wii remote, it's like the Wii Motion Plus add-on (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii_MotionPlus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii_MotionPlus) In short, the accelerometer detects movement the gyroscope detects exact direction.
- jasongullickson 16y ago
  Accelerometers can only detect orientation relative to gravity, gyros can detect it relative to themselves. This is the same thing that Nintendo added to their controllers a few months ago. For example I wrote an app that calculates Horsepower based on weight and acceleration, however it's hard to determine if detected acceleration is due to the vehicle or gravity (if the device tips or tilts during the test). By having the gyros available, I can detect and compensate for the error-inducing influence of gravity.
  - dkokelley 16y ago
    Also, astronauts can now use the iPhone effectively in space.
    - snissn 16y ago
      ' "With Farmville on the iPhone, you'll be able to farm anytime, anywhere." '
  - hexis 16y ago
    I would imagine that this will be handy for people making augmented reality apps.
- joezydeco 16y ago
  My guess is that it will improve the response of the compass. Really handy for navigation.
- mike-cardwell 16y ago
  The G1 has one of these in. Not sure about other Android based phones, but I'm assuming it's going to be fairly common if it was available in the original Android phone...
stanleydrew 16y ago
Market share: iPhone 28%, Android 9% Mobile browsing: iPhone 58.2%, Android 22.7% Looks like Android is edging the iPhone in mobile pageviews per user. Or am I thinking about this wrong?
- gyardley 16y ago
  That seems right, but it's possibly because iPhone users are more likely to use the native-app version of popular websites.
  - enjo 16y ago
    Is that not true of Android users as well? Most of the sites I use on a regular basis have an Android presence as well (Facebook, Yelp, etc..) I think the probable reason is that the web-browsing data tends to be a few months ahead of those gartner market-share estimates.
    - stanleydrew 16y ago
      The Gartner market-share data is from Q1 2010 I thought. I guess that is a few months old now.
    - gyardley 16y ago
      Maybe. We have an analytics client for both platforms, though, and we just don't see the same level of application usage per user on Android. Why this is I'm not sure.
j79 16y ago
Goodness. Just read about the iPhone using a "Backside illumination" sensor, Googled it, and found this Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backside_illumination http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backside_illumination At the bottom: "The new iPhone 4 uses this type of sensor in its camera." I love the times we live in.
yurisagalov 16y ago
Looks like we're not sparing any hits today. First a shot at Google Ads, followed by an indirect shot at Adobe. Actually I found the shot at google ads amusing. The quip about how (Theo? I can't read his first name) Gray earned more money on the app store than in 5 years of operating Google ads on his website periodictable.com, appears to have taken down his site (The slide I'm referring to is http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/06/apple-wwdc-2010-089-rm-eng.jpg http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/06/apple-...)
- tvon 16y ago
  I think those were fairly light shots, at least compared to what was said at Google I/O.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
SandB0x 16y ago
"With Farmville on the iPhone, you'll be able to farm anytime, anywhere." Be afraid. Be very afraid.
- jakarta 16y ago
  "Its really going to piss me off that my phone call isn't going through because some jerkoff is harvesting virtual cabbage."
  - pohl 16y ago
    Whoever said that must not be able to talk & use the network at the same time?
    - nooneelse 16y ago
      No, you missed the point. The point was that the people farming are going to be taking up bandwidth and this will (further) degrade network performance for others. And so when the speaker has a call fail and this occurs to them, it will be annoying, presumably due to how frivolous a use of bandwidth that activity seems to the speaker.
- spencerfry 16y ago
  AT&T will never be able to keep up with the crop production!
bl4k 16y ago
gdgt coverage: http://live.gdgt.com/2010/06/07/live-wwdc-2010-keynote-coverage/ http://live.gdgt.com/2010/06/07/live-wwdc-2010-keynote-cover...
- andrewcaito 16y ago
  This was submitted here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1410917 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1410917, but I wanted to comment to mention that it automatically refreshes with good pictures.
  - bl4k 16y ago
    ye I also prefer it because the site scrolls easier, comments are better and there are more/better pictures
jasongullickson 16y ago
Looks like it's the year of bombing demos...even Steve's has been hit!
- muhfuhkuh 16y ago
  Steve couldn't get on that vaunted AT&T network. Someone shouted "Verizon". Haha.
  - jodrellblank 16y ago
    Hurr Hurr but look at the pictures - it's on WiFi. http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/06/apple-wwdc-2010-187-rm-eng.jpg http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/06/apple-...
    - joezydeco 16y ago
      So the wifi is saturated because there are 500 people streaming photos and tweets from the hall. C'mon. Can't Apple just live stream these keynotes from here on out? Everyone on all sides knows these announcements are in the public sphere 250 milliseconds after Steve says it. For being so controlling of their media message, why let the bloggers run the final leg?
      - enjo 16y ago
        It's a really nice way to get a lot of really influential people on your side I'd think. By letting the media outlets have control over the dissemination of information it gives them a lot of incentive to stay on your good side (see: gizmodo not being invited to the keynote).
        joezydeco 16y ago
        But the media outlets that really matter to Apple (Newsweek or WSJ/Mossberg for example) get access way before the launch so they can write their articles.
jodrellblank 16y ago
Ars Technica coverage: http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/06/wwdc-keynote-steve-jobs-liveblog.ars?comments=1#comments-bar http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/06/wwdc-keynote-steve... MacRumours coverage: http://www.macrumorslive.com/ http://www.macrumorslive.com/
ovi256 16y ago
The antenna idea (the metal frame is divided, acting as multiple antennas) is really nice, and so obvious in retrospect. Yeah, everything's simple in hindsight. I wonder if Apple invented and thus patented that.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- wmblaettler 16y ago
  Won't your body affect the antennae when you hold the device though?
  - ovi256 16y ago
    If you touch the two parts, in theory you short the antenna to the ground and you absorb most of the radiated power. But I'm sure they have thought of that. You see, RF (radio frequency) waves behave quite differently than DC (direct current). Your skin must have a high enough impedance to RF that it does not affect the antenna. But then, what happens if you short the gap with metal ? That sounds a lot less nice. I'm sure the RF power amp must be shortcut protected, so you don't risk damaging it, but if you short the gap, and thus the antenna, bye bye outgoing packets. Maybe it's more complicated than that, and the other metal half is not the ground for the antenna, but it's insulated - floating - from the exposed antenna. Therefore shorting the gap would not short the antenna to ground but it would modify the physical characteristics of the antenna, therefore its impedance, therefore the radiating efficiency. This is all messy, as I have never practiced RF design, only took classes.
- bl4k 16y ago
  It has been done in laptops for wifi antenna for a while now. the macbook air uses its frame as a wifi antenna as well. I doubt you could patent it (or protect it)
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
jasongullickson 16y ago
iOS 4 - do I sense another Cisco trademark battle?
- FluidDjango 16y ago
  Jobs said that Apple had worked out "an arrangement" or some such with Cisco.
danielnicollet 16y ago
So with all this great stuff (amazing new features, great market share, etc.), I wonder how Apple doesn't open the iPhone to non-ATT carriers. That's the single reason I have been staying on my good ol'RIM BB. Any ideas?
- wmf 16y ago
  The reason is simple; AT&T is paying them.
- pavlov 16y ago
  Getting a device on Verizon's network is not a matter of the device vendor wishing it to happen.
- unexpected 16y ago
  There's an AT&T exclusivity agreement in place. It was for 5 years, set to expire in 2012.
mdg 16y ago
Please just say its coming to Verizon already.
- tvon 16y ago
  I think AT&T giving discounted renewals six months in advance is good indication that they will be losing exclusivity early in 2011.
  - agotterer 16y ago
    Interesting. Wouldn't it be an advantage for another network to leak that information to deter signing with att?
    - maukdaddy 16y ago
      I would imagine there are HUGE penalties for this. Also, just because AT&T's exclusivity agreement expires in 2011, doesn't mean another carrier has agreed to carry the iPhone yet.
  - ubernostrum 16y ago
    It is, or at least I thought was, well-known that the exclusivity agreement Apple entered into when developing/releasing the iPhone had a term of five years.
gbhn 16y ago
I'm not sure I follow the "Retinal Display" name. Is this just branding on a 300dpi pixel resolution? Or is there something to do with multi-resolution support for apps (those coded in the old resolution will still get up-converted text resolution, it sounded like).
- ugh 16y ago
  It’s just a name for a 300+ ppi display. At that resolution and at the distances you usually hold a phone from the eye you shouldn’t be able to discern individual pixels. That’s it. The app things seems obvious, would be a serious oversight if they didn’t do that.
  - hboon 16y ago
    I wish it means this though - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_retinal_display http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_retinal_display
    - stcredzero 16y ago
      Typical marketer move - steal the term from even more advanced tech to hype an incremental, quantitative advance on current tech.
- alain94040 16y ago
  Let this be a lesson in marketing to all of you... As geeks, we'd tend to say "New and improved screen resolution: 300 DPI!". Which doesn't mean anything to 99% of the general population. But "retinal display", withs its attached explanation, now that's really something. Words matter.
  - raganwald 16y ago
    You see this all the time on everything from advertisements to infomercials. There are two simple templates for every feature you want to pitch: Problem First: Tired of text that looks like it was built out of lego blocks? iPhone 4.0 has a 300DPI Retinal Display, which is so sharp that the human eye cannot see individual dots on the screen. Feature First: iPhone 4.0 has a 300DPI Retinal Display, which means you will never see blocky pixels again: the display is so sharp that the human eye cannot see the dots. ... Tired of working around the clock on a cool new feature only to have customers ask you "So What?" These two feature pitch templates explain why customers should care, which means more sales for you! Or perhaps: Reg Braithwaite's "World Of Go" uses gestures instead of buttons, which means the entire screen can be devoted to the board, making it look like a Go board instead of like a Go program.
expertcs 16y ago
no iPod touch update? I was hoping they will at least have a camera in the iPod touch added.
- Mark_B 16y ago
  If they added a camera, then you might not have a reason to buy an iPhone.
- rje 16y ago
  The iPod line is usually updated at its own event in September. I expect to see an iPod with a front facing camera then.
- Teese 16y ago
  iPod touches are traditionally updated when the iPod line is refreshed in the fall.
crocowhile 16y ago
HD display and movies, 5MP camera, increased battery life, folders and multitasking, gyroscope... I have all this on the Nexus One and that is a 6 months old phone. I think this WWDC is signing the end of an era: jobs has lost his famous innovative advantage and now he is running behind. Android/HTC had these features in their last generation phones and with EVO coming out they are going to make the iPhone 4 obsolete already.
- george_morgan 16y ago
  The iPhone has never had the competitive advantage based on it’s feature count.
  - crocowhile 16y ago
    It's not matter of features count. It's matter of innovative features. Hardly anything innovative in this product.
    - Daishiman 16y ago
      Why is the parent being downvoted? It's true! This are just evolutionary improvements for some things and playing catch-up with others. Doesn't stop it from being a great product, but it's not the aweomest thing Steve wants you to believe.
      - jodrellblank 16y ago
        In what way isn't it awesome? It's faster, smaller, brighter, screenier, cameraier, videoier, batterier, storagier, more sensor laden, better looking, and runs better more useful software. I agree that it's not spouting a coffee filter and electric razor, but strongly disagree that you can step to "not innovative" "meh, useless catchup". One part of not being measured at features/$ checklist is not being measured at -$ per lack of never seen before feature. You've seen the Netflix announcement, now take a look at this: http://lonelysandwich.com/post/662129889/ipad-tv http://lonelysandwich.com/post/662129889/ipad-tv 1 day ago that was posted, today we have a HD camera, iMovie and videophone announcement on a device with an upgraded screen, and talk of working with carriers for videophoning (i.e. transmitting video over the cellular networks). This "no innovation" device might not need a USB hoover attachment to be a cornerstone piece for turning another major industry upside down in a way that others could not mostly by virtue of lots of integration, evolutionary changes and a pleasant enough UI that people wont resist.
siculars 16y ago
CNN is streaming the keynote 30 minutes behind real-time. http://www.cnn.com http://www.cnn.com
- karzeem 16y ago
  Wow. You know you've got marketing down when CNN's top story is simply a feed of your product announcement.
  - bonsaitree 16y ago
    I think that's more a reflection of CNN's lax journalism.
    - mkramlich 16y ago
      CNN is in the field of journalism?
jokermatt999 16y ago
This somewhat tangential, but I have to say that I've only seen one "live coverage" method that really worked well IMO: Lifehacker's LiveWaving of Google IO. I still haven't really used Wave at all, but that really seemed to work well for a live coverage event. It felt much less "hackish" than the auto-refresh and scroll down method.
turtle4 16y ago
I can't believe that the demo isn't being run off of its own network. Seriously, if you can't get good reception inside, at least run your own dedicated wifi network. What were they thinking?
- poutine 16y ago
  You don't understand WIFI. All WIFI devices share the same 2.4/5GHz bandwidth and thus if you have too many devices in one physical location you're screwed.
  - herdrick 16y ago
    Sure, but why didn't they use directional antennas to get a demo-dedicated network on the stage? Which would be a good permanent feature for any big conference room come to think of it.
    - bbatsell 16y ago
      That doesn't eliminate the problem of interference from all of the other networks on the same channel (or on the neighboring channel that shares part of the spectrum), which are all using omnidirectional antennas. It can help, certainly, but 570 Wi-Fi networks in one ballroom is going to be hell on any network chip trying to sort through all the noise.
      - jokermatt999 16y ago
        Clearly the solution is to stick a Faraday Cage in between the audience and the stage. Seriously though, I know very little of these matters, but it does seem like there should be some sort of solution developed for them with the frequency that these issues keep cropping up in major tech demos. It seems embarrassing that companies that are supposed to be innovative and great with technology are being stymied by the lack of WiFi.
        bbatsell 16y ago
mclin 16y ago
Video chat. It's been available in asia for ~5 years? yet no one uses it. Will it be different in North America?
- jokermatt999 16y ago
  Smart phones were available in the US for ages before the iPhone, yet Jobs' and Apple's star power helped them to become more widespread. The whole "reality distortion field" can be used for good if it's to help spread adoption of interesting technologies, imo. I think the fact that it's coming from Apple will help adoption, even if the implementation is the same or even worse.
  - mclin 16y ago
    It's not smart phones that do this legacy video chat, it's 3G feature phones, which are pretty much non-existent in NA. Pretty much every [candybar, flip] phone in asia has 3G and a front facing camera, so you can video call anyone, anytime. Part of the reason people don't is because it costs extra. Actually since these phones were around before youtube and real mobile browsing, the main marketed reason to get a 3G phone originally was video chat.
    - jokermatt999 16y ago
      I honestly did not realize that the adoption of them was that widespread. Thank you for the correction, that definitely does make a difference to my post. Still, don't you think that video chat at no extra cost will be a rather huge innovation? If part of the reason it isn't used is because of the cost, wouldn't make it free help that? I know that video calling isn't necessarily better in plenty of cases, so I don't think it will completely replace voice calls (at least not for a long, long time if at all), but the facts that it's 1) free and 2) has Apple behind it and 3) therefore tons of media hype behind it will help usage (edit: changed from adoption make my meaning clearer) by a large margin?
      - mclin 16y ago
weeksie 16y ago
The FaceTime thing is epic. That said, it just gets more and more dangerous to go out and get hammered and start drunk-dialing people . . . The number of post-bender apologies that I usually have to make will probably go up by at least 50%.
- NZ_Matt 16y ago
  It's only iphone 4 to iphone 4 so it's basically useless most of the time.
  - tel 16y ago
    I'd say that iPhone users have many friends who are also iPhone users, anecdotally.
  - tvon 16y ago
    Jobs: "we’re going to make FaceTime an open industry standard." Should be interesting.
    - gokhan 16y ago
      They have to. It will be dead otherwise, based on the current prerequisites (iOS4 to iOS4, only on wifi)
      - FluidDjango 16y ago
        I seem to recall he said the "only on wifi" was a temporary thing - while "we work with cell carriers" (I noted the plural: carrierS).
        jodrellblank 16y ago
        Hello from outside America; we don't have AT&T.
        tsally 16y ago
ThomPete 16y ago
I am beginning to wonder whether iAds is the reason Apple don't want Flash on their mobile devices.
- jodrellblank 16y ago
  When half a dozen easy non-conspiratorial technical reasons just aren't enough, make up some unverifiable accusations of unfair play instead!
  - ThomPete 16y ago
    There aren't any technical reasons that can't be said to exist with HTML5. If you think so you obviously haven't looked at many of the HTML5 demos that are supposed to be as good as Flash. Second of all. I am an Apple fanboy. I have more or less everything they do and don't care whether flash is on there or not. That does not mean that I have to buy weak arguments just because they come from Jobs. And they are in my opinion weak I would gladly explain in further detail. I call it as I see it and given that Apple has now both entered the ad space and is said to be developing a new framework for HTML5 I frankly don't see why that would be conspiracy theory. Last but not least. I never ever talked about unfair play, so why you would claim such a thing is beyond meaning.
    - jodrellblank 16y ago
      I frankly don't see why that would be conspiracy theory. [..] I never ever talked about unfair play. You suggest that Jobs' open letter to Adobe, and Apple's stance on Flash generally, is a deliberately deceitful and misleading cover story for some underlying real motive. Then suggest that the underlying motive is them conspiring to force Flash-using ad providers to move to iAd. Sounds like unfair play to me. Specifically, I think Apple do want ad providers to move to iAd, but I don't think they are doing so by covering up a big plot with a stance of lies. Adobe hasn't shown a stable mobile flash implementation yet. That sounds like a pretty convincing technical argument on it's own, and is the one I'm most interested in hearing about it's weaknesses. Maybe the battery life / CPU use one is something Adobe can solve, maybe the security updates could be rolled into Apple's iOS updates, maybe Adobe could push for stability, maybe they could even come up with a way of mapping mouse/click/hover onto multitouch in a way that works usefully enough for many things without rewrites (though I have reservations that they could do that to Apple quality). But to put them all together, mostly things which Adobe could have done over the years and haven't, which Apple could not do because of the closed nature of Flash... for what reward? Punch the monkey flashing ad banners filling the small iPhone screen? Games and all-flash websites stretching off the edges? Intro movies to websites? Scribd style "readers"? Flash DRM enforcers and downloaders? Clunky Flash recreations of common GUI elements? Not much reward for a lot of effort, is it? Particularly when other platforms are trying to promote HTML5 and marginalise Flash, so they would want to support HTML5 anyway.
nexneo 16y ago
"Video calls" is one more thing of the day!
nixme 16y ago
Re: iOS 4 upgrade price, "We finally found a way to get them for free to our iPod touch users." I'd guess the GAAP changes Apple lobbied for [1] made the difference. [1] http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/09/accounting-rules-change-could-end-ipod-touch-update-fee.ars http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/09/accounting-rules-c...
- awolf 16y ago
  Ah interesting. I'm a cynic: I assumed their motive for doing this was to make their iAd platform more compelling to advertisers.
  - masklinn 16y ago
    Though it probably helped as well.
butterfi 16y ago
The good news: A Netflix client! The bad news: AT&T just cut your data plan...
martythemaniak 16y ago
Here's something I wrote back in December based on no info: http://martin.drashkov.com/2009/12/iphone-4g-predictions.html http://martin.drashkov.com/2009/12/iphone-4g-predictions.htm... Not that it means very much - changes like the screen, storage and ram/cpu were pretty obvious.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
stevejohnson 16y ago
This will probably get lost in the noise, but I want to make an important point about the WiFi issues: it's not because there were too many users, but rather that there were too many access points. There were _570_ access points in the room, probably the result of people bringing along their MiFis and similar devices. Running a 571th device would not have solved that problem.
- rmorrison 16y ago
  Sounds like my apartment in San Fran at any given point in time = ) Included in the long list of wifi networks here are several by a company that spam advertises through SSIDs. From their website: "Freedom of Expression"...
fjabre 16y ago
It looks like Apple now represents a very real and serious competitive threat to Google's #1 money maker: ads. They now control a 3rd of the mobile market (iPads excluded) and are seemingly poised to continue this trend with the new iPhone packing several new and revolutionary killer features. Again this excludes the sold-every-3-seconds iPads. We all know that they'll get the lion's share of what's left of RIM and Windows mobile in a year or two. Also, Jobs definitely didn't hold back when introducing Bing and iAds during the presentation. I'm a little uneasy about all of this of course. I love the web and have devoted much of my career to building web apps that run on laptops and netbooks but I have to say, love it or hate it, Apple is bringing some serious game changing shit to the table and continues to iterate faster than anyone can catch up.
- walkon 16y ago
  >We all know that they'll get the lion's share of what's left of RIM and Windows mobile in a year or two. I disagree - I think Android devices will experience more growth than iPhone OS (or iOS) in a year or two.

108 points by agotterer 16y ago

tvon 16y ago

I'm not really clear on what the gyroscope adds that wasn't there before, can someone clarify?

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
ugh 16y ago
I think the accelerator can only pick up pitch, yaw and roll while the gyroscope might also be able to pick up left/right and up/down (or is it the other way around?). Not sure about that, though.
tomerico 16y ago
If you have ever used a wii remote, it's like the Wii Motion Plus add-on (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii_MotionPlus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii_MotionPlus) In short, the accelerometer detects movement the gyroscope detects exact direction.
jasongullickson 16y ago
Accelerometers can only detect orientation relative to gravity, gyros can detect it relative to themselves. This is the same thing that Nintendo added to their controllers a few months ago. For example I wrote an app that calculates Horsepower based on weight and acceleration, however it's hard to determine if detected acceleration is due to the vehicle or gravity (if the device tips or tilts during the test). By having the gyros available, I can detect and compensate for the error-inducing influence of gravity.
- dkokelley 16y ago
  Also, astronauts can now use the iPhone effectively in space.
  - snissn 16y ago
    ' "With Farmville on the iPhone, you'll be able to farm anytime, anywhere." '
- hexis 16y ago
  I would imagine that this will be handy for people making augmented reality apps.
joezydeco 16y ago
My guess is that it will improve the response of the compass. Really handy for navigation.
mike-cardwell 16y ago
The G1 has one of these in. Not sure about other Android based phones, but I'm assuming it's going to be fairly common if it was available in the original Android phone...

stanleydrew 16y ago

Market share: iPhone 28%, Android 9% Mobile browsing: iPhone 58.2%, Android 22.7% Looks like Android is edging the iPhone in mobile pageviews per user. Or am I thinking about this wrong?

gyardley 16y ago
That seems right, but it's possibly because iPhone users are more likely to use the native-app version of popular websites.
- enjo 16y ago
  Is that not true of Android users as well? Most of the sites I use on a regular basis have an Android presence as well (Facebook, Yelp, etc..) I think the probable reason is that the web-browsing data tends to be a few months ahead of those gartner market-share estimates.
  - stanleydrew 16y ago
    The Gartner market-share data is from Q1 2010 I thought. I guess that is a few months old now.
  - gyardley 16y ago
    Maybe. We have an analytics client for both platforms, though, and we just don't see the same level of application usage per user on Android. Why this is I'm not sure.

j79 16y ago

Goodness. Just read about the iPhone using a "Backside illumination" sensor, Googled it, and found this Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backside_illumination http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backside_illumination At the bottom: "The new iPhone 4 uses this type of sensor in its camera." I love the times we live in.

yurisagalov 16y ago

Looks like we're not sparing any hits today. First a shot at Google Ads, followed by an indirect shot at Adobe. Actually I found the shot at google ads amusing. The quip about how (Theo? I can't read his first name) Gray earned more money on the app store than in 5 years of operating Google ads on his website periodictable.com, appears to have taken down his site (The slide I'm referring to is http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/06/apple-wwdc-2010-089-rm-eng.jpg http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/06/apple-...)

tvon 16y ago
I think those were fairly light shots, at least compared to what was said at Google I/O.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

SandB0x 16y ago

"With Farmville on the iPhone, you'll be able to farm anytime, anywhere." Be afraid. Be very afraid.

jakarta 16y ago
"Its really going to piss me off that my phone call isn't going through because some jerkoff is harvesting virtual cabbage."
- pohl 16y ago
  Whoever said that must not be able to talk & use the network at the same time?
  - nooneelse 16y ago
    No, you missed the point. The point was that the people farming are going to be taking up bandwidth and this will (further) degrade network performance for others. And so when the speaker has a call fail and this occurs to them, it will be annoying, presumably due to how frivolous a use of bandwidth that activity seems to the speaker.
spencerfry 16y ago
AT&T will never be able to keep up with the crop production!

bl4k 16y ago

gdgt coverage: http://live.gdgt.com/2010/06/07/live-wwdc-2010-keynote-coverage/ http://live.gdgt.com/2010/06/07/live-wwdc-2010-keynote-cover...

andrewcaito 16y ago
This was submitted here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1410917 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1410917, but I wanted to comment to mention that it automatically refreshes with good pictures.
- bl4k 16y ago
  ye I also prefer it because the site scrolls easier, comments are better and there are more/better pictures

jasongullickson 16y ago

Looks like it's the year of bombing demos...even Steve's has been hit!

muhfuhkuh 16y ago
Steve couldn't get on that vaunted AT&T network. Someone shouted "Verizon". Haha.
- jodrellblank 16y ago
  Hurr Hurr but look at the pictures - it's on WiFi. http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/06/apple-wwdc-2010-187-rm-eng.jpg http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/06/apple-...
  - joezydeco 16y ago
    So the wifi is saturated because there are 500 people streaming photos and tweets from the hall. C'mon. Can't Apple just live stream these keynotes from here on out? Everyone on all sides knows these announcements are in the public sphere 250 milliseconds after Steve says it. For being so controlling of their media message, why let the bloggers run the final leg?
    - enjo 16y ago
      It's a really nice way to get a lot of really influential people on your side I'd think. By letting the media outlets have control over the dissemination of information it gives them a lot of incentive to stay on your good side (see: gizmodo not being invited to the keynote).
      - joezydeco 16y ago
        But the media outlets that really matter to Apple (Newsweek or WSJ/Mossberg for example) get access way before the launch so they can write their articles.

jodrellblank 16y ago

Ars Technica coverage: http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/06/wwdc-keynote-steve-jobs-liveblog.ars?comments=1#comments-bar http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/06/wwdc-keynote-steve... MacRumours coverage: http://www.macrumorslive.com/ http://www.macrumorslive.com/

ovi256 16y ago

The antenna idea (the metal frame is divided, acting as multiple antennas) is really nice, and so obvious in retrospect. Yeah, everything's simple in hindsight. I wonder if Apple invented and thus patented that.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
wmblaettler 16y ago
Won't your body affect the antennae when you hold the device though?
- ovi256 16y ago
  If you touch the two parts, in theory you short the antenna to the ground and you absorb most of the radiated power. But I'm sure they have thought of that. You see, RF (radio frequency) waves behave quite differently than DC (direct current). Your skin must have a high enough impedance to RF that it does not affect the antenna. But then, what happens if you short the gap with metal ? That sounds a lot less nice. I'm sure the RF power amp must be shortcut protected, so you don't risk damaging it, but if you short the gap, and thus the antenna, bye bye outgoing packets. Maybe it's more complicated than that, and the other metal half is not the ground for the antenna, but it's insulated - floating - from the exposed antenna. Therefore shorting the gap would not short the antenna to ground but it would modify the physical characteristics of the antenna, therefore its impedance, therefore the radiating efficiency. This is all messy, as I have never practiced RF design, only took classes.
bl4k 16y ago
It has been done in laptops for wifi antenna for a while now. the macbook air uses its frame as a wifi antenna as well. I doubt you could patent it (or protect it)

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

jasongullickson 16y ago

iOS 4 - do I sense another Cisco trademark battle?

FluidDjango 16y ago
Jobs said that Apple had worked out "an arrangement" or some such with Cisco.

danielnicollet 16y ago

So with all this great stuff (amazing new features, great market share, etc.), I wonder how Apple doesn't open the iPhone to non-ATT carriers. That's the single reason I have been staying on my good ol'RIM BB. Any ideas?

wmf 16y ago
The reason is simple; AT&T is paying them.
pavlov 16y ago
Getting a device on Verizon's network is not a matter of the device vendor wishing it to happen.
unexpected 16y ago
There's an AT&T exclusivity agreement in place. It was for 5 years, set to expire in 2012.

mdg 16y ago

Please just say its coming to Verizon already.

tvon 16y ago
I think AT&T giving discounted renewals six months in advance is good indication that they will be losing exclusivity early in 2011.
- agotterer 16y ago
  Interesting. Wouldn't it be an advantage for another network to leak that information to deter signing with att?
  - maukdaddy 16y ago
    I would imagine there are HUGE penalties for this. Also, just because AT&T's exclusivity agreement expires in 2011, doesn't mean another carrier has agreed to carry the iPhone yet.
- ubernostrum 16y ago
  It is, or at least I thought was, well-known that the exclusivity agreement Apple entered into when developing/releasing the iPhone had a term of five years.

gbhn 16y ago

I'm not sure I follow the "Retinal Display" name. Is this just branding on a 300dpi pixel resolution? Or is there something to do with multi-resolution support for apps (those coded in the old resolution will still get up-converted text resolution, it sounded like).

ugh 16y ago
It’s just a name for a 300+ ppi display. At that resolution and at the distances you usually hold a phone from the eye you shouldn’t be able to discern individual pixels. That’s it. The app things seems obvious, would be a serious oversight if they didn’t do that.
- hboon 16y ago
  I wish it means this though - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_retinal_display http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_retinal_display
  - stcredzero 16y ago
    Typical marketer move - steal the term from even more advanced tech to hype an incremental, quantitative advance on current tech.
alain94040 16y ago
Let this be a lesson in marketing to all of you... As geeks, we'd tend to say "New and improved screen resolution: 300 DPI!". Which doesn't mean anything to 99% of the general population. But "retinal display", withs its attached explanation, now that's really something. Words matter.
- raganwald 16y ago
  You see this all the time on everything from advertisements to infomercials. There are two simple templates for every feature you want to pitch: Problem First: Tired of text that looks like it was built out of lego blocks? iPhone 4.0 has a 300DPI Retinal Display, which is so sharp that the human eye cannot see individual dots on the screen. Feature First: iPhone 4.0 has a 300DPI Retinal Display, which means you will never see blocky pixels again: the display is so sharp that the human eye cannot see the dots. ... Tired of working around the clock on a cool new feature only to have customers ask you "So What?" These two feature pitch templates explain why customers should care, which means more sales for you! Or perhaps: Reg Braithwaite's "World Of Go" uses gestures instead of buttons, which means the entire screen can be devoted to the board, making it look like a Go board instead of like a Go program.

expertcs 16y ago

no iPod touch update? I was hoping they will at least have a camera in the iPod touch added.

Mark_B 16y ago
If they added a camera, then you might not have a reason to buy an iPhone.
rje 16y ago
The iPod line is usually updated at its own event in September. I expect to see an iPod with a front facing camera then.
Teese 16y ago
iPod touches are traditionally updated when the iPod line is refreshed in the fall.

crocowhile 16y ago

HD display and movies, 5MP camera, increased battery life, folders and multitasking, gyroscope... I have all this on the Nexus One and that is a 6 months old phone. I think this WWDC is signing the end of an era: jobs has lost his famous innovative advantage and now he is running behind. Android/HTC had these features in their last generation phones and with EVO coming out they are going to make the iPhone 4 obsolete already.

george_morgan 16y ago
The iPhone has never had the competitive advantage based on it’s feature count.
- crocowhile 16y ago
  It's not matter of features count. It's matter of innovative features. Hardly anything innovative in this product.
  - Daishiman 16y ago
    Why is the parent being downvoted? It's true! This are just evolutionary improvements for some things and playing catch-up with others. Doesn't stop it from being a great product, but it's not the aweomest thing Steve wants you to believe.
    - jodrellblank 16y ago
      In what way isn't it awesome? It's faster, smaller, brighter, screenier, cameraier, videoier, batterier, storagier, more sensor laden, better looking, and runs better more useful software. I agree that it's not spouting a coffee filter and electric razor, but strongly disagree that you can step to "not innovative" "meh, useless catchup". One part of not being measured at features/$ checklist is not being measured at -$ per lack of never seen before feature. You've seen the Netflix announcement, now take a look at this: http://lonelysandwich.com/post/662129889/ipad-tv http://lonelysandwich.com/post/662129889/ipad-tv 1 day ago that was posted, today we have a HD camera, iMovie and videophone announcement on a device with an upgraded screen, and talk of working with carriers for videophoning (i.e. transmitting video over the cellular networks). This "no innovation" device might not need a USB hoover attachment to be a cornerstone piece for turning another major industry upside down in a way that others could not mostly by virtue of lots of integration, evolutionary changes and a pleasant enough UI that people wont resist.

siculars 16y ago

CNN is streaming the keynote 30 minutes behind real-time. http://www.cnn.com http://www.cnn.com

karzeem 16y ago
Wow. You know you've got marketing down when CNN's top story is simply a feed of your product announcement.
- bonsaitree 16y ago
  I think that's more a reflection of CNN's lax journalism.
  - mkramlich 16y ago
    CNN is in the field of journalism?

jokermatt999 16y ago

This somewhat tangential, but I have to say that I've only seen one "live coverage" method that really worked well IMO: Lifehacker's LiveWaving of Google IO. I still haven't really used Wave at all, but that really seemed to work well for a live coverage event. It felt much less "hackish" than the auto-refresh and scroll down method.

turtle4 16y ago

I can't believe that the demo isn't being run off of its own network. Seriously, if you can't get good reception inside, at least run your own dedicated wifi network. What were they thinking?

poutine 16y ago
You don't understand WIFI. All WIFI devices share the same 2.4/5GHz bandwidth and thus if you have too many devices in one physical location you're screwed.
- herdrick 16y ago
  Sure, but why didn't they use directional antennas to get a demo-dedicated network on the stage? Which would be a good permanent feature for any big conference room come to think of it.
  - bbatsell 16y ago
    That doesn't eliminate the problem of interference from all of the other networks on the same channel (or on the neighboring channel that shares part of the spectrum), which are all using omnidirectional antennas. It can help, certainly, but 570 Wi-Fi networks in one ballroom is going to be hell on any network chip trying to sort through all the noise.
    - jokermatt999 16y ago
      Clearly the solution is to stick a Faraday Cage in between the audience and the stage. Seriously though, I know very little of these matters, but it does seem like there should be some sort of solution developed for them with the frequency that these issues keep cropping up in major tech demos. It seems embarrassing that companies that are supposed to be innovative and great with technology are being stymied by the lack of WiFi.
      - bbatsell 16y ago

mclin 16y ago

Video chat. It's been available in asia for ~5 years? yet no one uses it. Will it be different in North America?

jokermatt999 16y ago
Smart phones were available in the US for ages before the iPhone, yet Jobs' and Apple's star power helped them to become more widespread. The whole "reality distortion field" can be used for good if it's to help spread adoption of interesting technologies, imo. I think the fact that it's coming from Apple will help adoption, even if the implementation is the same or even worse.
- mclin 16y ago
  It's not smart phones that do this legacy video chat, it's 3G feature phones, which are pretty much non-existent in NA. Pretty much every [candybar, flip] phone in asia has 3G and a front facing camera, so you can video call anyone, anytime. Part of the reason people don't is because it costs extra. Actually since these phones were around before youtube and real mobile browsing, the main marketed reason to get a 3G phone originally was video chat.
  - jokermatt999 16y ago
    I honestly did not realize that the adoption of them was that widespread. Thank you for the correction, that definitely does make a difference to my post. Still, don't you think that video chat at no extra cost will be a rather huge innovation? If part of the reason it isn't used is because of the cost, wouldn't make it free help that? I know that video calling isn't necessarily better in plenty of cases, so I don't think it will completely replace voice calls (at least not for a long, long time if at all), but the facts that it's 1) free and 2) has Apple behind it and 3) therefore tons of media hype behind it will help usage (edit: changed from adoption make my meaning clearer) by a large margin?
    - mclin 16y ago

weeksie 16y ago

The FaceTime thing is epic. That said, it just gets more and more dangerous to go out and get hammered and start drunk-dialing people . . . The number of post-bender apologies that I usually have to make will probably go up by at least 50%.

NZ_Matt 16y ago
It's only iphone 4 to iphone 4 so it's basically useless most of the time.
- tel 16y ago
  I'd say that iPhone users have many friends who are also iPhone users, anecdotally.
- tvon 16y ago
  Jobs: "we’re going to make FaceTime an open industry standard." Should be interesting.
  - gokhan 16y ago
    They have to. It will be dead otherwise, based on the current prerequisites (iOS4 to iOS4, only on wifi)
    - FluidDjango 16y ago
      I seem to recall he said the "only on wifi" was a temporary thing - while "we work with cell carriers" (I noted the plural: carrierS).
      - jodrellblank 16y ago
        Hello from outside America; we don't have AT&T.
        tsally 16y ago

ThomPete 16y ago

I am beginning to wonder whether iAds is the reason Apple don't want Flash on their mobile devices.

jodrellblank 16y ago
When half a dozen easy non-conspiratorial technical reasons just aren't enough, make up some unverifiable accusations of unfair play instead!
- ThomPete 16y ago
  There aren't any technical reasons that can't be said to exist with HTML5. If you think so you obviously haven't looked at many of the HTML5 demos that are supposed to be as good as Flash. Second of all. I am an Apple fanboy. I have more or less everything they do and don't care whether flash is on there or not. That does not mean that I have to buy weak arguments just because they come from Jobs. And they are in my opinion weak I would gladly explain in further detail. I call it as I see it and given that Apple has now both entered the ad space and is said to be developing a new framework for HTML5 I frankly don't see why that would be conspiracy theory. Last but not least. I never ever talked about unfair play, so why you would claim such a thing is beyond meaning.
  - jodrellblank 16y ago
    I frankly don't see why that would be conspiracy theory. [..] I never ever talked about unfair play. You suggest that Jobs' open letter to Adobe, and Apple's stance on Flash generally, is a deliberately deceitful and misleading cover story for some underlying real motive. Then suggest that the underlying motive is them conspiring to force Flash-using ad providers to move to iAd. Sounds like unfair play to me. Specifically, I think Apple do want ad providers to move to iAd, but I don't think they are doing so by covering up a big plot with a stance of lies. Adobe hasn't shown a stable mobile flash implementation yet. That sounds like a pretty convincing technical argument on it's own, and is the one I'm most interested in hearing about it's weaknesses. Maybe the battery life / CPU use one is something Adobe can solve, maybe the security updates could be rolled into Apple's iOS updates, maybe Adobe could push for stability, maybe they could even come up with a way of mapping mouse/click/hover onto multitouch in a way that works usefully enough for many things without rewrites (though I have reservations that they could do that to Apple quality). But to put them all together, mostly things which Adobe could have done over the years and haven't, which Apple could not do because of the closed nature of Flash... for what reward? Punch the monkey flashing ad banners filling the small iPhone screen? Games and all-flash websites stretching off the edges? Intro movies to websites? Scribd style "readers"? Flash DRM enforcers and downloaders? Clunky Flash recreations of common GUI elements? Not much reward for a lot of effort, is it? Particularly when other platforms are trying to promote HTML5 and marginalise Flash, so they would want to support HTML5 anyway.

nexneo 16y ago

"Video calls" is one more thing of the day!

nixme 16y ago

Re: iOS 4 upgrade price, "We finally found a way to get them for free to our iPod touch users." I'd guess the GAAP changes Apple lobbied for [1] made the difference. [1] http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/09/accounting-rules-change-could-end-ipod-touch-update-fee.ars http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/09/accounting-rules-c...

awolf 16y ago
Ah interesting. I'm a cynic: I assumed their motive for doing this was to make their iAd platform more compelling to advertisers.
- masklinn 16y ago
  Though it probably helped as well.

butterfi 16y ago

The good news: A Netflix client! The bad news: AT&T just cut your data plan...

martythemaniak 16y ago

Here's something I wrote back in December based on no info: http://martin.drashkov.com/2009/12/iphone-4g-predictions.html http://martin.drashkov.com/2009/12/iphone-4g-predictions.htm... Not that it means very much - changes like the screen, storage and ram/cpu were pretty obvious.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

stevejohnson 16y ago

This will probably get lost in the noise, but I want to make an important point about the WiFi issues: it's not because there were too many users, but rather that there were too many access points. There were _570_ access points in the room, probably the result of people bringing along their MiFis and similar devices. Running a 571th device would not have solved that problem.

rmorrison 16y ago
Sounds like my apartment in San Fran at any given point in time = ) Included in the long list of wifi networks here are several by a company that spam advertises through SSIDs. From their website: "Freedom of Expression"...

fjabre 16y ago

It looks like Apple now represents a very real and serious competitive threat to Google's #1 money maker: ads. They now control a 3rd of the mobile market (iPads excluded) and are seemingly poised to continue this trend with the new iPhone packing several new and revolutionary killer features. Again this excludes the sold-every-3-seconds iPads. We all know that they'll get the lion's share of what's left of RIM and Windows mobile in a year or two. Also, Jobs definitely didn't hold back when introducing Bing and iAds during the presentation. I'm a little uneasy about all of this of course. I love the web and have devoted much of my career to building web apps that run on laptops and netbooks but I have to say, love it or hate it, Apple is bringing some serious game changing shit to the table and continues to iterate faster than anyone can catch up.

walkon 16y ago
>We all know that they'll get the lion's share of what's left of RIM and Windows mobile in a year or two. I disagree - I think Android devices will experience more growth than iPhone OS (or iOS) in a year or two.