WWDC09 is fully abuzz after the opening keynote today. Although some hoped for major announcements and possibly a surprise appearance by Steve Jobs himself, this year's Apple event marked more of a transitional checkpoint than anything else. It slated a milestone in the maturation of Snow Leopard, the iPhone, and the company's long road to eco-friendliness. Oh, and there was some minor bashing of the newly announced Palm Pre too.
Here's an overview of some of the major highlights, in the order they were announced:
Apple Notebooks: Higher Specs, Dropped Prices
- MacBook Air: Slashed to $1499, $1799 for SSD ($700 price cut!)
- 13" MacBook: Now part of the "Pro" family. 7-hour battery, SD card slot, 8 GB ram, backlit keyboard, slashed to $1199
- 15" MacBook Pro: 7-hour battery, SD card slot, now supports up to 3.06 GHz CPU & 8 GB ram, slashed to $1699
- 17" MacBook Pro: price cut to $2499
(Note: The plastic 13" Macbook is still available for purchase. Its specs were silently bumped a few days prior to WWDC.)
Snow Leopard
- Uses a whopping 6 GB less disk space than Leopard, installing 45% faster
- Minor signs of interface tweaks to designate it apart from Leopard. New, yet similar Aurora wallpaper.
- MS Exchange support built into Mail, Calendar, and Address Book.
- Expose is redesigned to conform to a more grid-like form factor. Clicking a dock icon now displays all active windows.
- Stacks: Ability to scroll through its contents and browse its folders from directly within a stack.
- Asian character recognition for trackpads.
- Quicktime X: Redesigned, simpler interface. Pop-up controls. Easier video editing. (As seen in previous dev builds.)
- Selective thread control based on an application's level of activity. (Basically, this boosts responsiveness.)
- All above features will be available for test driving in the latest dev build, out today.
- $29 upgrade for Leopard users, $129 for everybody else, hits stores in September.
Safari 4
- Officially out of beta. Grab it now for Tiger, Leopard, and Windows.
- Minor interface tweaks and improved history searching.
- Crash Resistance: Plugin crashes no longer interrupt web browsing. (Exclusive to the Snow Leopard version?)
iPhone OS 3.0
- All new features showcased in the iPhone 3.0 media event were re-iterated, including push notifications.
- Tethering capabilities with multiple carriers. (AT&T doesn't plan on supporting this any time soon, however.)
- MMS support. (AT&T will be late in supporting this, only making this feature available after by Fall. Great job, again!)
- Language support for 30 new countries added.
- "Find my iPhone." Locate lost or stolen iPhones via MobileMe. Ability to remotely sound audio alert or wipe disk.
- TomTom is releasing an official GPS-based app, complete with an optional car kit.
- Free for iPhone users, $9.99 for iTouch owners. Available June 17th.
iPhone 3GS
- Same general design, dimensions, and form-factor of 3G. No matte finish.
- The added "S" stands for "speed." Faster CPU and more RAM than previous model, running apps 2x faster.
- 3 Megapixel camera with auto-white-balance and tap-to-focus. Video recording support. (No front-facing camera.)
- 7.2Mbps HSDPA data transfer and built-in hardware encryption.
- Share video via MMS. (Again, AT&T will not be supporting this.)
- Voice Control: Hold down the "home" button to give your iPhone audio commands for calls, music, and more.
- Built-in digital compass. Integrated into Maps to orient it based on your relative position to magnetic or true north.
- Comes in white and black variants.
- $199 for 16GB version, $299 32GB. Available June 19th.
- The 8GB 3G will be kept available in Apple stores, slashed to $99 starting today.
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