Snow Leopard, iPhone: certainties, hopes
I’ve been studying all day for an exam I have on Wednesday, and I only started learning anything useful two hours ago.
It so happens that this Monday, the WWDC kicked off with a keynote by Steve Jobs, the prophet who guides all Apple fans throughout the world. For the uninitiated, “WWDC” stands for “Worldwide Developer Conference”, and it is one of the major yearly Apple-related events.
Last year, Steve Jobs showed the world a feature-complete version of Mac OS X Leopard, among others. But this year, big disappointment if you’re not much into the iPhone and were hoping for a sneak preview at “Snow Leopard”, the next version of the OS. Disappointment, but surprise right afterwards.
At the beginning of his keynote address, Steve Jobs stated that he was “going to take this morning to talk about the iPhone” (source: Engadget).
And it is indeed admirable that for the following 90 minutes, Jobs and many developers talked about how many things were coming to the iPhone platform.
I own an iPod Touch, and will definitely be hoping to upgrade my iTouch software: lots of great improvements, most notably the App Store, which looks like it’ll hold a good number of free quality apps.
But no talk of the next version of the OS. Pity, really. The developers will hear about it later today.
No, the real news is twofold.
First, the change affecting the old .Mac service, and secondly, the new 3G iPhone, which is the first example I’ve seen of Apple taking international pricing into consideration.
Regarding the new .Mac, entitled “MobileMe” and featuring great syncing between Macs, PCs and mobile devices (read: iPhone/iTouch). Still $99 per year though.
But now, the 3G iPhone will be much cheaper and available in many more countries:
“The maximum price around the world is $199 USD” (source).
This move surprises me. Since when does Apple make affordable devices whose pricing isn’t going to change throughout the world?
Does this mean European customers (among others) will soon see more similar prices for Macs?
Just speculation. But this is good news for me.
And in other news, MacHeist has spiced up their “Retail Bundle”, and it seems that you can now get “14 Top Mac Apps for just $49″ (and a bonus app if you buy as soon as it launches).
All in all, a very good week for the Mac community and for the growing iPhone/iTouch community.