…the iPhone 3G S sports 256MB of RAM — up from 128 in the original iPhone and iPhone 3G — as well as a faster processor running at 600MHz, compared to 412MHz in the first two iterations of the device. The second-generation iPod touch also sports a faster processor than that found in the first two generations of iPhone, running at 532MHz.
Sweet.
From a DriveSavers email blast:
DriveSavers just launched the first and only hard drive simulator for iPhone and iPod touch! Known as DriveSaver, the free hard drive simulator features a virtual environment that allows you to explore the inner workings of a common hard drive. It simulates various types of hard drive failures using ultra-realistic sounds and visuals and includes essential backup and data loss prevention tips.
DriveSaver is a fantastic demonstration tool to help illustrate hard drive data storage technology. It’s educational, it’s functional and it’s fun! It might even help you identify problems with a bad hard drive. Anyone who has ever wanted to see inside a hard drive or learn how drives work and why they fail, must try it!
It’s a pretty useful tool to show people what can - and very often does - happen. The app is free, and is in the App Store now.
Check out this post by Gizmodo, showing off part of Apple’s display at WWDC:
Apple stationed a little bit of eye candy in the Moscone Center lobby: a 5x4 matrix of Cinema Display monitors, set adorned with thousands iPhone app icons. The twist? Whenever someone purchases the app, it pulsates.
Apparently it’s not quite real-time, but the effect is extremely slick. Grouping the icons by their approximate colors creates a subtle gradient, which is a nice touch.
A few days ago, John Gruber wrote:
Also, in Mac news, I’d bet a small amount on a refresh to Apple’s notebook lineup, with a branding change where the “MacBook Pro” designation is used for all aluminum models,and just plain non-Pro “MacBook” is used for plastic models.
Gruber was right. The new 13-inch based notebooks both have backlit keyboards and FireWire 800 ports. The 15-inch got a new display panel, but lost its ExpressCard/34 Slot. All of the machines are faster, built-in batteries (like the 17-inch model) and all 3 sport lower prices.
The 13- and 15-inch models both have an SD card slot, a first for Apple.
So what does this all mean? The first thing that came to mind was “They’ve finally replaced the 12-inch PowerBook.” With the lower price points and faster processors, these machines are a better deal than ever. I think that 13-inch MacBook Pro is going to be a best-seller in no time - which is what Apple needs.
Apple will be releasing the final version of the 3.0 software to exsiting iPhone and iPod touch customers on June 17, with the new iPhone - the iPhone 3GS - two days later on the 19th.
It’s a good thing. Last year - on July 11 - Apple released the iPhone 3G and OS 2.0 on the same day. Between all the new devices being activate in iTunes and everyone upgrading (and thus re-activating with iTunes), the iTunes servers bit the dust. Hopefully by spreading the pain out over a couple of days, Apple’s infrastructure won’t fail this time around.
Dear Diary, Jill woke me up in the middle of the night, saying I was crying again in my sleep. I keep having the same dream. Phil’s on stage, and the clicker stops working. He makes a little joke, and retrieves the spare one from the table. We always have a spare one. But the extra clicker also fails. Instead of joking, he takes the clicker and chunks it into the Cinema Display on the table, then grabs the demo iPhone, smashing it into bits on the stage.
After Jill calmed me down, I got a glass of water, went to the bathroom, and went back to sleep.
We spent today working on getting the slides roughed in. We were all freaking out, but Phil was just sitting at his end of the table, feet up, shoes off, eating a burrito - at 9 a.m. He keeps saying things like “Guys, chill. We’ve got plenty of time.” The guy who sits down the hall from me - I think his name is Jim - was just sitting in the corner, rocking back and forth muttering “Steve will get us. He knows it’s not ready.”
Phil dismissed us at 11 so he can spend the rest of the day playing Sonic the Hedgehog on his iPhone. I can’t believe he still uses the first-gen one. I guess Steve didn’t let him upgrade, or maybe Phil didn’t want to pay AT&T the extra money each month for the text messages. I’m gonna go play some golf this afternoon after a bite to eat.
Dear Diary, golf was good yesterday - one of my better rounds this year. One bummer - a couple of the guys working at the clubhouse saw my Apple badge on my belt and started asking me about the iTablet. I decided the truth - that I’m working on THE keynote of the year - was probably unwise, so I said I was just a low-level UNIX programmer working on some new APIs for syncing multiple directories in a managed environment.
That shut them up.
I’ve gotta remember to take off that damn badge when I get in my car after work.
Work was a little more productive. We ended the debate that we were having between using the “metal” or “wood” design for the graphs showing how more awesome the new iPhone is compared to the 2008 model and how much faster 10.6 is than 10.5.
Unrelated: I’ve gotta ask someone how to drop a .tiff into a Keynote presentation. Every time I do, Keynote “unexpectedly quits.” Dear Keynote: It is not “unexpected” if I can re-create it. Maybe it’s this “Developer Preview” OS I’m running. Who the hell codes this stuff?
After getting to work late - some idiot in a Ferrari caused a wreck on I–280 - our group really made some progress today. We got the “Snow Kitty” part of the presentation just about nailed down. It’s a lot shorter - less exciting- than previous OS preview we’ve done.
The gist of the presentation is: “Holy shit, it’s fast.” I have $5 on Phil actually saying that exact sentence against $5 from some guy over in the iPhone OS group. Like those guys know what they’re talking about.
Phil and the other executives keep going back and forth on the order of the presentation. Scott wants the iPhone 3.0 stuff to be first. Not surprising. I once saw the guy spill a few drops of soy sauce on his iPhone in the cafeteria and lick it clean. LICK IT CLEAN.
Of course, Bertrand wanted Snow Kitty up first. He gave Scott the evil eye during the whole meeting. Of course, that’s hard to say for sure - I mean, I’m sure he’s a nice guy, but DAMN. I think they’re going to let Tim settle it, but he was off running a marathon or something this afternoon.
I’m writing this at lunch, so I apologize if I spill something on you, Diary. The team got all the “boom moments” in the Snow Kitty slides ironed out last night after I went home. They’re aren’t many of them.
So today, we got the iPhone slides done. I always get this tingly feeling when seeing something new. Of course, I haven’t actually seen it. Just the pictures.
The “leaked” photos online aren’t that far off, but that’s as much as I dare to write. And of course, OS 3.0 is looking good.
After lunch, Phil started rehearsing the 10.6 portion of the keynote. It’s simple, and he’s doing well with it. But it keeps saying “Leopard” instead of “Snow Leopard.”
Phil suggested that a snow machine - like they use in the movies - would be a nice visual addition to the whole thing, and help him remember the “Snow” part of the name. Thankfully, someone talked him out of it.
We’re headed to San Francisco in the morning to finish this project up at the Moscone Center. Jill and I are going out tonight to see UP and get some drinks.
Ah, San Francisco. I love this city. The drive up was uneventful, except that I reached a new high-score on DoodleJump. What a sweet game. After parking, swinging by the Apple Store so someone could pick up a iPhone USB cable, we headed to Moscone. I love how Apple Store people think of themselves. Silly kids.
Moscone is looking good - the logo’s out front, and the banners are up. Phil spent the afternoon on stage, practicing while we finished up the iPhone slides. Everything is coming together so well, we have tomorrow off, but have to report back here at 7 Sunday morning for final rehearsal.
So much for a day off. We had planned to go down to the Bay, and maybe even take a tour of Alcatraz. I should have known better.
Anyways, by the time we got the call to come back, it was lunch time. Phil was in a frenzy, having realized that he didn’t know the slides by heart. What this has to do with me, I have no idea. I just MAKE the slides, I can’t IMPRINT THEM ON HIS BRAIN. Sigh.
But what could I do? We helped him go over them again and again. It’s now almost midnight, and we’re finally finding food. Feels like a Stevenote, all of a sudden.
Well Diary, we made it. Sunday. The day before the keynote. Sundays can be great, or hellish. After yesterday’s study session, everyone is feeling better.
Sunday is when we add the OMT slides. OMT, of course, being “One More Thing.” Only my boss is involved in creating them. He and Phil went off into a closed room to create them. It is only in that room that anyone outside of the executive team is told what those slides will entail - if anything. If there’s not a OMT, this meeting still takes place, for the benefit of the other employees.
Anyways, my boss adds the new slides to end of the master copy of the presentation, which then goes on an encrypted disk image, copied to a flash drive and handed to a member of the PR team, who is not give then password to mount the image. Only Steve has that password. I’m not sure even this year - with Phil doing the talk - that anyone but Steve has the password.
Of course, my boss is escorted back to his hotel room afterwards, and isn’t seen or heard from until Monday morning. That’s when the fun is. See you then, diary.
WWDC is set to start Monday with a keynote from Phil Schiller at 10 a.m. PST. Here’s what I think we will see.
• A refined GUI - darker, more like iLife ’09.
• A good look at how Exchange integration for iCal, Mail and Address Book will crush Entourage.
• Apple will show a bunch of graphs showing how much faster it is than Leopard.
• A quick tour of 10.6 Server. Expect updates to imaging and push mail/calendars/contacts. Think ‘MobileMe for Companies.’
• An early-October release date.
• Snow Leopard is Intel-only. The sun has set on the PPC era, folks.
• We’ll see demos of apps using APIs new to 3.0. A bunch of demos.
• More MobileMe integration.
• Content ratings in the App Store - think G, PG PG–13, etc. Apple will be lifting some of the rules set on developers about offensive content. iPhone users will be able to set what levels of content/apps they will allow on their device. Still no pornographic images in the App Store, though.
• A early July release date, with Beta 6 being shipped this week to developers. $10 upgrade for iPod touch users.
• Additional features tied to the 3rd-gen iPhone (see below).
• Matte, rubbery back. No more shiny, slick plastic like on the 3G.
• Faster processor and more RAM with the same battery life as the 3G.
• Front-facing camera for video chat, but video chat will be Wi-Fi only. Built-in iChat for older models, too, but just for text-based and audio chat.
• Auto-focus camera (front and back)
• Early July release - 6 models. 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB, all in black or white. $149, $249, $349.
• Still AT&T only.
• Maybe a joke or 3 about the Palm Pre.
• No tablet. No mention of a tablet. No vague mention of a tablet.
• Update to MobileMe - faster iDisk (why doesn’t Apple just buy Dropbox? I mean, come on..), faster web apps, etc.
• Brief update on Steve, who will be back end of the month (Maybe to announce faster notebooks?)
Jolicloud, a new Linux-based OS out for a select group of netbooks, generated some buzz after screenshots of the interface were leaked a few months ago.
The OS looks great, and ties in to web services easier and better than probably any other OS out there. TechCrunch took it for a test spin:
Even when you run Jolicloud for the first time, everything is quite visual, making it easy to navigate even when you’re not familiar with all the buttons and processes. Compare it to switching from Windows Mobile 6 on your smartphone to the iPhone OS: it’s incredibly easy to get used to, and it’s just a better general user experience, particularly if you use a lot of web applications.
These days, it’s just a matter of time before new gadgets get taken apart for their guts to be shown to the world. Here’s what the inside of the Palm Pre looks like. Pretty.
With the best release notes ever:
In order to get more feedback from developers, we have early developer channel versions of Google Chrome for Mac OS X and Linux, but whatever you do, please DON’T DOWNLOAD THEM! Unless of course you are a developer or take great pleasure in incomplete, unpredictable, and potentially crashing software.
How incomplete? So incomplete that, among other things , you won’t yet be able to view YouTube videos, change your privacy settings, set your default search provider, or even print.
Meanwhile, we’ll get back to trying to get Google Chrome on these platforms stable enough for a beta release as soon as possible!
Electronista, discussing a leaked Best Buy memo:
An unusual aspect of the memo is Best Buy’s proposed marketing angle, which describes the OS as more than “just a ‘Vista that works,’” with benefits such as improved simplicity, performance and productivity. The memo may thus be a tacit admission that Vista was flawed; prior to the Service Pack 1 update, the software was frequently accused of problems like driver incompatibility and slow file transfers.
I loathe Best Buy, but things like this always make me chuckle.
It’s great to hear that Jobs is doing well and is on track to return to full-time duty, but I don’t expect to see him at WWDC. Sure, it’d be a surprise, the audience (yours truly included) would go into conniptions, and the stock would jump five or ten points. But then what happens the next time there’s a keynote address where Jobs is not the scheduled speaker? Everyone will expect Jobs to show up as a “surprise.“ I’d love to proven wrong on this one, though.
The funny thing is that if Steve doesn’t show up at WWDC, then he’s doing just what he said he would do:
In order to take myself out of the limelight and focus on my health, and to allow everyone at Apple to focus on delivering extraordinary products, I have decided to take a medical leave of absence until the end of June.
Monday is not the ”end of June."