...And We're Back!

Woah! It's been nearly a year since anyone posted anything on here! Sorry about that if you're even still reading this. WWDC 2010 is less than a week away already, and WWDC '09 was the last thing I posted about on here. That's about it. Don't be surprised if this drops of the planet again, but I'll try to keep this updated.

WWDC Updates

So far this is what has happened.

Entire notebook line refreshed.
15" MacBook Pro starting at $1,699 with a new 7 hour battery. Also adds SD card slot
17" MacBook Pro starting at $2,229
13" MacBook starting at $1,199
13" MacBook Air starting at $1,499

Safari 4 leave beta stage, goes public.

New features in Snow Leopard:

• Quicktime X
• Rewritten Finder
• Expose built into Finder
• Ability to use more cores and RAM with Grand Central Station
• Support for Microsoft Exchange

Snow Leopard available in September for $29! Can you believe that?!

iPhone time now! Updates soon.

iPhone OS 3.0 Features

• Cut, copy & paste
• MMS
• Landscape keyboard
• Spotlight search across entire phone (notes, email, ect.)
• Parental controls
• Tethering over USB dock cable or over Bluetooth
• Faster javascript engine in safari
• support for HTTP streaming audio and video
• HTML 5 support!
• Support for more languages
• All languages include portrait and landscape keyboard
• Find my iPhone - MobileMe service that will find your iPhone on a map if it is lost.
• Peer-to-peer connectivity over bluetooth
• App connectivity with hardware accessories through the dock connector
• Google maps for developers
• Developers now allowed to make turn by turn directions
• Push notification: text, numerical badges, custom alert sounds.

iPhone OS 3.0 available June 17 as a free update for iPhone owners, $9.95 for iPod touch

New iPhone model named "iPhone 3GS". Same on the outside, new on the inside.

Faster, new camera with video built in. 3.2Megapixels, autofocus
Tap to focus feature. Sweet!
Voice controls for calling and controlling iTunes.
"Hey, iPhone what am I listening to?" It tells you.
"Hey, iPhone play more songs like this one." It will. Amazing.
Built in digital compass and compass app.
Improved battery life. Up to 9 hours of web surfing!
Only $199 for 16GB and $299 for 32GB
Both models available in either black or white.
8GB 3G model will remain for sale at $99

WWDC is one hour away...

...and the Apple store is down. Could this be a sign of something to come? This pretty much means there will be some sort of product announcement. Likely hardware. Maybe a tablet or a new iPhone? Maybe even a netbook? We'll find out shortly. Stay tuned for WWDC updates.

WWDC Rumor Roundup

So the WWDC keynote is tomorrow. It will be presented by Phil Schiller (as it was announced) but I personally believe we might see an appearance by Steve Jobs.

Based on the banners that have already been hung at Moscone West, it's pretty obvious that the spotlight will be on both the iPhone 3.0 OS and Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Rumors have also been flying around about a new generation of the iPhone possibly called the iPhone video. It would have a built in camera capable of video capture and the video could be easily uploaded to YouTube and other video sharing sites via new tools in iPhone 3.0.

For iPhone 3.0 and the new iPhone model, they'll probably announce a release date in early July like they did for the iPhone 3G. During the iPhone 3.0 demonstration, they will probably have various developers demo their apps to show off certain new features in the SDK like In-App Purchases and Bluetooth multiplayer for games.

Since we really haven't seen anything about Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard since they first announced that it was going to be called that at last WWDC, I think that they will give a brief demo of the OS and give a release date sometime in August or September.

I'd also really like to see a media tablet Mac, but I don't really think it's something Apple is going to do. I'm just being hopeful that they might.

Check with us tomorrow for live updates during the Keynote.

Long Time, No... Post?

I'm back, and I'm sincerely sorry for the lack of updates in the past 2 months. I'd like to add a few more people to the iBlog team to ensure that we will have pretty regular posts. If anyone is interested in blogging for us, please comment on this blog post and I will try to get back to you. iBlog will continue, I'm not going to just let it die out.

Apple Unveils New iPod Shuffles

This morning, Apple released the newest version of the iPod Shuffle. The new shuffle has 4GB of flash storage and can hold up to 1000 songs. They have a new more vertical shape than the shorter old model. There is also a new feature called "VoiceOver" which uses text to speech to read the titles of your songs to you before it plays them. All of the controls on the device have been moved onto the headphone cable. The only button the device itself is a slider to turn it off, to shuffle, or to playlist mode. The new shuffle is even smaller than the old generation, though it is slightly taller.

Apple has posted a video tour on their website here.

New Mac mini: It's about friggin' time. (Other desktop Macs too)

Finally... the long awaited Mac mini update, and it's pretty much identical to what I predicted almost a year ago. It comes in a 2.0GHz and 2.26GHz configuration. Both versions now have an 8x SuperDrive which was previously reserved for the high end Mac mini. The new version also sports 5 USB ports (the previous had 4), a MiniDisplayPort, a mini DVI, and a FireWire 800 port.

There were also updates to the Mac Pro and iMac.

I'll start with the iMac. There are 4 versions and here are the specs:

• $1199. 20-inch 2.66 GHz iMac. 2GB RAM. NVIDIA GeForce 9400M Integrated graphics. 320GB HD. Mini Display Port
• $1499. 24-inch 2.66 GHz iMac. 4GB RAM. NVIDIA GeForce 9400M Integrated graphics. 640GB HD. Mini Display Port
• $1799. 24-inch 2.93 GHz iMac. 4GB RAM. NVIDIA GeForce GT 120. 640GB HD. Mini Display Port
• $2199. 24-inch 3.06 GHz iMac. 4GB RAM. NVIDIA GeForce GT 130. 1TB HD. Mini Display Port

That's pretty much self-explanetory. Just spec updates, no aesthetic changes to the product.

The Mac Pro also recieved a spec bump, and now it comes in these 2 primary models:

• $2499. One 2.66GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 3500 Processor. 3GB of RAM. NVIDIA GeForce GT 120. 640GB HD.
• $3299. Two 2.26GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5500 Processor. 6GB of RAM. NVIDIA GeForce GT 120. 640GB HD.

The Mac Pro also now sports a MiniDisplayPort and a DVI port so it can support the 24" LED Cinema Display, or the 30" Cinema Display.