I ‘m always excited about Apple events that involve the iPhone, so I was on the edge of my seat today taking in the WWDC 2009 keynote and awaiting news on the new iPhone model and the new OS 3.0 release, and all that good stuff.  Have to say, I enjoyed it a lot, by the end that is. 

I was following along mainly via live blogging coverage from Engadget and my new favorite for all these Apple events, the gdgt site, and listening live via Ustream.  I was also having big fun over at EIC ‘s ‘Not so live blog ‘ “ where we had a very active (and very bored for about 1 hour, 45n minutes of the event) chat room, and where I even got to pitch in with some of the moderation and throwing up polls and all that fun stuff.

Now I ‘ve got some very quick thoughts on the new iPhone 3G S coming next week, and about all the iPhone related news we heard today

Boy These Events Are Long & Patience Is a Virtue

Like many folks, I felt pretty empty and a touch bored up until around the 1:45 mark “ as before that all the news was about new Mac laptops (great looking and better priced, but no in my budget or plans), a lot of restating of all the OS 3.0 stuff we already learned about at the 3.0 Preview event a few months back, and a bunch of app demos showing off how cool they ‘ll be on 3.0.  None of it terrible stuff, but not what we were all waiting to hear.

The event just felt a bit like it was dragging.  I think they just all seem quicker when Steve is keeping us all pumped up.

Then the last 15 or so minutes packed in all the juicy news we were waiting on.  So that part zoomed by at a very quick pace.

Good Things We Learned About the iPhone 3G S and OS 3.0

I ‘m mostly happy and encouraged by what we learned about the new iPhone 3G S. The emphasis on speed sounds good to me “ although I would feel a lot better about that aspect if we had heard specs for processor and RAM, as in heard that they have both been significantly upgraded.  I really hope the lack of mention does not mean there have not been any major upgrades to these components.

In the meantime, a little more on that S in the name and speed improvements:

It ‘s the fastest, most powerful iPhone yet. What ‘s inside is entirely new. It ‘s a REALLY fast iPhone. Everything you do will have incredible speedups. Launching a messaging app: 2.1x faster. Viewing an attachment: 3.6x faster graphically intense site like NYT, 2.9x faster

Available on June 19th.  I ‘m happy with that “ had the small, forlorn hope we might see it out today, but next week is fine “ though I ‘m sure I ‘ll feel impatient leading up to the day.

As expected, we got video recording, and I ‘m very happy to see that.  The editing and sharing features sound like they may be very cool.

The upgraded camera also sounds quite nice.

Added hardware encryption “ that fills in a big check box for businesses considering the iPhone on the security side of things.

Improved battery life “ if their numbers are accurate and battery really is better, hurrah.

Voice Control “ I love this feature and can ‘t wait to see it, and how well it works.  Liked this partial description of it via gdgt:

All kinds of commands work: call a user, control playback ( ‘play songs by The Killers ‘), ask iPhone ‘what ‘s playing now? ‘ You can also say ‘play more songs like this ‘ and Genius will play more songs like this.

Tom Tom app is coming to iPhone, this summer.  I don ‘t need it, but I know this one will please a lot of folks.

Find My iPhone and remote wipe capability are both excellent, though not exciting for me personally as I no longer use MobileMe, and my understanding is they both require it.

Although we were all busy thinking ‘Get off “ bring us new iPhone news ‘ during the app demos, some of them sounded very cool, and I ‘m keen to see them when Apple ‘s video of the event is out (probably later today).

iPhone OS 3.0 looks great and has tons of cool features for users and developers “ but we already knew all that.

What Was Missing or Not So Good?

Here ‘s a few of the things we either did not hear about, or did not hear particularly good news about:

Those processor and RAM specs.  All the rumors leading up to today had indicated a *very* significant processor upgrade and a possible doubling up of RAM memory.  I ‘m very keen to see what the score is when we see full specs.

On MMS, AT&T is bringing up the rear it seems:

29 carriers will support MMS when we launch… AT&T will be ready at the end of the Summer

OS 3.0 available 2 days before the new iPhone 3G S is launched.  OK, it ‘s not the same day like last year, but I wish they would have left a larger gap between these two events, as I think this just leads to Apple being swamped and not able to cope with the demand for support etc.

On iPhone Tethering, once again AT&T not making many friends:

Going over controls. Tethering got some applause. 42 partners supporting this at launch, more rolling out later. AT&T was a no show

Push Notifications “ we didn ‘t learn any more about how these will work.

Background apps “ no mention at all. I was hoping maybe they ‘d have something to pull out of their sleeve on this.

Upgrade eligibility for AT&T customers not clear yet.  As of right now, as a 3G owner (since 3G launch day) I don ‘t know whether a 32GB iPhone 3GS will cost me $299 or $499. And two large AT&T stores here in Austin do not have an answer for that yet either.  They ‘ve said things like ‘just got the email ‘ and ‘try back tomorrow ‘ for better answers.

From a Business / Market Perspective

This is the side of things I am tremendously unqualified to comment on “ but I ‘ll do so anyway.

It seems to me that Apple may have hit a home run on this side of things.  Sure, lots of iPhone power users will gripe about missing features and so on, but the big plus points I see in this area are:

Selling the iPhone 3G at $99 has got to result in some huge sales.

Over 80 countries will have the new iPhone 3G S available by August “ that is a massively faster international rollout for an iPhone than ever before.

The standard pricing for the 16GB / 32GB models seems attractive enough at $199 and $299.

I think all of their timing surrounding this stuff must not be at all good for Palm.  They only just launched the Pre (their supposed make or break device) two days ago, and the iPhone now swoops in to steal their thunder.  And the thunder likely won ‘t let up from now until launch day for the new iPhone 3GS “ in fact it will probably increase.  And we ‘ll hear about far longer lines for the iPhone than for the Pre and so on.

What ‘s Your Take?

Those are my very rapidly slung together thoughts on today ‘s keynote.  What are yours?  Happy with what you heard?  Disappointed?  Planning to get the new model?  Or the $99 iPhone 3G?  Think Palm is worried? 

Would love to hear all your views

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