Today MacWorld keynote was quite likely the worst in apple history.  It is now obvious why Steve Jobs didn’t bother showing up, he was afraid he would fall asleep giving the presentation.

I will give Phil some credit, he is a great speaker, and he did manage to get the crowd worked up over several of the features in the newest versions of iLife and the new threat to Google, iWork.  Really, though, neither of these products are worthy of headlining what was the most prominent of Mac days in the year.

Phil spent over an hour discussing these two pieces of software, which is more time then the original release of OS X got, and there are some really cool features which we will cover in detail later.

The new MacBook Pros, which I don’t think should be considered as new since they are just upgrades to an existing line of laptops. While these are obviously awesome machines, they’re are some glaring issues.

One major problem, no removeable battery.  Seriously?!?  I realize they are touting an eight hour battery life, but I still want to have the ability to carry an extra battery with me and switch them out.  It also lasts 1000 charges, which is about 3 years.  Now, the laptop I am writing this post on is 4.5 years old and on it’s second battery … so I guess I will a process to go through to replace the battery in a few years.

Also an issue is the lack of a glare free screen …  These high end MacBooks are not going to be used by people who want to watch DVD’s, some of us want to do real work on them, in coffee shops, and offices with windows during the day … I guess that will be a thing of the past.

The “one last thing”, was iTunes.  iTunes finally adopts a DRM free platform, and bring iTunes to 3G instead of forcing wifi.  Both of these things are very very cool, but also very very late.  This all should have been a part of the iPhone 3G release last year.  DRM Free had to come, but I am not sure it came in time to salvage iTunes place as leader in music sales, from competitors like Amazon and Walmart that have been selling DRM Free for some time now.

In the end, todays keynote seemed to be a waste of two hours, and dissapointed many.  Since this is the last MacWorld that Apple will attend, I was really hoping that they would have made more of an event rather then pushing out a random marketing exec, and leaving us with little more then a software update.

In no particular order :

1. [ Watchman ] movie will be pushed back and will end up being a Christmas blockbuster instead of the summer blockbuster starter they were hoping for. Thanks Fox for taking something beautiful and trying to crap all over it.  Just one more, in a long list of reasons to despise you as a company.

2. Nothing excitingly new will come from this years, and Apple’s last, MacWorld.  By the end of the year, Steve Jobs will have stepped down as CEO and will fill an emeritus roll of some sort.

3. [ Twitter ] will be overrun by malware, spam, and hackers making the service useless and a thing of the past.  We have already seen the start of this, and unfortunately the twitter API is full of security holes, and the twitter dev seems to have reactionary view of security instead of a precautionary view.  Since Twitter is finally starting to make it stamp in histories timeline of the internet, it will draw far too much exposure from unwanted forces.

4. Net Neutrality will finally get the political backing that it needs to become an actual reality, and yet somehow, the US gov’t will still think that they have the ability or the right to control content on the intertubes.

5. [ Wolverine ] will kick so much ass, that it will make us forget, at least for a little while, how pissed we are that [ Watchman ] still hasn’t been released.

Today Steve Jobs issued a statement to apple fan boys, most still upset that they don’t get to see him this week, dispelling rumors that his chronic weight loss over the last year, and recent decision to ditch MacWorld, are signs that he will be leaving Apple, and possibly the planet.

Job’s statement was followed by an official release by Apple’s Board of Directors stating emphatically that if Steve ever decides to move on from being the CEO of Apple, we will know it.

Here is Steve’s announcement [ apple  site ] :

Dear Apple Community,

For the first time in a decade, I’m getting to spend the holiday season with my family, rather than intensely preparing for a Macworld keynote.

Unfortunately, my decision to have Phil deliver the Macworld keynote set off another flurry of rumors about my health, with some even publishing stories of me on my deathbed.

I’ve decided to share something very personal with the Apple community so that we can all relax and enjoy the show tomorrow.

As many of you know, I have been losing weight throughout 2008. The reason has been a mystery to me and my doctors. A few weeks ago, I decided that getting to the root cause of this and reversing it needed to become my #1 priority.

Fortunately, after further testing, my doctors think they have found the cause—a hormone imbalance that has been “robbing” me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy. Sophisticated blood tests have confirmed this diagnosis.

The remedy for this nutritional problem is relatively simple and straightforward, and I’ve already begun treatment. But, just like I didn’t lose this much weight and body mass in a week or a month, my doctors expect it will take me until late this Spring to regain it. I will continue as Apple’s CEO during my recovery.

I have given more than my all to Apple for the past 11 years now. I will be the first one to step up and tell our Board of Directors if I can no longer continue to fulfill my duties as Apple’s CEO. I hope the Apple community will support me in my recovery and know that I will always put what is best for Apple first.

So now I’ve said more than I wanted to say, and all that I am going to say, about this.

Steve

And here is the Follow-up from the BoD [ apple site ] :

It is widely recognized both inside and outside of Apple that Steve Jobs is one of the most talented and effective CEOs in the world.

As we have said before, if there ever comes a day when Steve wants to retire or for other reasons cannot continue to fulfill his duties as Apple’s CEO, you will know it.

Apple is very lucky to have Steve as its leader and CEO, and he deserves our complete and unwavering support during his recuperation. He most certainly has that from Apple and its Board.

Steve Dowling Apple

I know that it sucks that Steve is required to lay out his personal information to the world like that, but unfortunately that is the price of greatness, and I for one, am happy that he is “ok”.

If you read this blog at all, you know that we heavily favor Apple over Windows, but that doesn’t necessarily make us “fanboys”, and the recent news that Apple will no longer be a MacWorld participant has us disappointed, but even more then that, the last minute announcement that Steve Jobs will not even bother with the Keynote this year is a just a big slap in the face.

MacWorld is, historically, the place that all the mac lovers show up to to find out what latest and greatest products Apple will be giving us for the year.  The buzz that MacWorld generates for Apple has been huge in the past, but Apple now feels that they have a no need to make an appearance.

Why? In its own release apple said:

Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, so like many companies, trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers. The increasing popularity of Apple’s Retail Stores, which more than 3.5 million people visit every week, and the Apple.com website enable Apple to directly reach more than a hundred million customers around the world in innovative new ways.

All of this makes sense, and as a mac fan, I can completely understand the decision.  In fact, I myself wasn’t even planning to attend this year, even though I have faithfully attended over the years.  Last years MacWorld was a severe dissapointment, being nothing more then a collection of small time application developers and iPhone accessories.  What made it worse was that several of the accessory dealers weren’t even selling.  The general feel from most of the exhibitors was “You can look, touch, and love, but you can’t buy it, at least not here.”

The biggest problem I have with this announcement is that Steve Jobs is pulling out even this year.  The keynote has been a high point of the MacWorld event since day one, and the opportunity to “interface” with Steve Jobs, and find out from the man, what is in store for the year.  This year we get Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing.  Who? Exactly.

Even more frustrating is that this announcement was made on December 16.  Less then a month from MacWorld.  Will MacWorld expo be refunding the cost of the Keynote passes to people who have no interest in a jobless keynote?  Doubtful.

In the end, I don’t disagree with the decision to ditch the expo scenes, but c’mon Steve, give us one last hoorah and a last “one more thing”.

It has been 18 days since the release of the long hailed, hyped, and over marketed iPhone 3G.  Has it lived up to the hype?

I have heard it said that “if you don’t have a love hate relationship with Apple, then you are just a fanboy.”  This is a very true statement.   I am an apple believer.  I see Steve Jobs as a visionary who, barring health problems, will be pivotal in taking consumer electronics into the future.  However, I also know enough to avoid the fanboy filled lines for newly released apple products.  Why?  Because straight out of the gate, Apple generally FAILS.  They get it right fairly quick after the release, but the initial release is not usually a pleasant experience.

So, was it different for the iPhone?  NO.  We all remember the abysmmal launch that saw outages both in the at&t activation servers, and also the iTunes activation process.  Lines that should have taken an hour took most of the day because the purchase time wasn’t a swift 5 minute process, like the previous iPhone, but an excruciating 30 minutes to an hour.  Even after all that time spent, many were walking out with unactivated iPhones.

After nearly 3 weeks, if you want an iPhone you still get to stand in line.

What about the lucky ones who got their phones and were able to activate them?  A friend of mine is on his fifth iPhone 3G and is convinced that the black iPhones are cursed and has switched to the white iPhone.  I am sure there is no difference, but he has had battery problems, overheating problems, antenna problems, and apparently one of the iPhone’s got ghetto and cut him…

What about the app store?  This, I believe, has been the saving grace for the iPhone.  The app store is awesome.  Providing needed functions and add-ons to a phone that, unfortunately, should have had them in the first place.  Personally, I have downloaded about 30 different apps, and all of them are pretty cool.  Even apps that serve no purpose at all just have a flair of awesome that is hard to escape.  The best example of that is the iPhone saber app. It literally does nothing except show you a light saber and let you swing your phone around to make the light saber cracking noises, and yet it is so much fun.  Another fun time killing app is the iPint.  Using the accleramator on the iPhone you slide a brew down to the waiting hands of your customer avoiding all the obstacles on the bar.  As a reward the phone pours you a pint you can “drink” and it looks pretty realistic.

Other apps do provide much need productivity and functionality to the phone.  For instance, the Wordpress blogging app is a fantastic tool to allow bloggers to report on events, or edit mistakes on the go.  Another great app would be the Speed Dial app.  Yep, I know you have speed dial on your phone already. This app though creates a block of nine square images of your friends that you can touch to dial, it just looks cool, and it is easily my most used app on the phone.

Also heavily used is Pandora.  Pandora is an internet radio application, you create your account and plug in a few of your favorite artists and songs and it creates custom radio stations that you can listen too on the go.  The selections can sometimes be a little out there, for example it paired up Journey on my RUSH station, but overall it makes pretty selections.

Lastly I will talk about the “remote” app.  This one allows you to control your iTunes from anywhere on your network with your iPhone.  While that is a great feature, this app really shines if you are also an Apple TV owner.  I love my Apple TV, but one major issue I have with it is that the remote that comes with SUCKS.

It looks cool, but it can be a pain in the rear to use.  Enter Remote on the iPhone.  Now instead of having to navigate back and forth with the menu button, I can go directly the movie, or song, or picture that I want on the screen.  Plus it drives my wife crazy when she has the small remote and “thinks” she is control of the TV. Muwahahahah . sorry .

As an first gen iPhone user, I am extremely happy with the App Store, and it has satiated my desire for an upgrade for the time being, so while an iPhone 3G is in my future, I am content to avoid the lines and the fully expected initial Apple FAIL for now.

So, in the end, no, the iPhone is not living up to the hype.  It will, in the end, but as with all things Apple there is a painful early adopter process.   In the coming weeks with the release of MagicPad giving us copy/paste ability and continuing upgrade of at&t’s 3G network, the iPhone will be the dominant phone on the market, but if you are currently in a contract with another provider, don’t break it for this phone.

Superman is faster then a speeding bullet, can leap tall buildings in a single bound and is the man of steel, but give him some kryptonite and he gets a little whiny and all the bad guys take over.

Today is the long awaited day that we finally get the iPhone 3G in hand, and currently it has been available for a total of 3 .5 hours on the east coast, and not even an hour on the west coast, and what has at&t done.  They have killed the buzz.  They have handed the iPhone a big block of kryptonite in the form of activation servers that can not handle the load… SHOCKING.

Remember this post [ Buy your iPhone3G online? Apple and at&t say no way! ].  In that post I reminisced back to last year when the at&t activation servers went down, because they couldn’t handle the load.  I don’t want to say I told you so, especially since everyone told you so.  No one should be surprised that at&t is too inept to have learned its lesson last year.  No one should be shocked that iPhone sales will ONCE AGAIN be halted due to a carrier that can’t seem to pull its activation servers out of their corporates asses.

What we should be shocked by is that Steve Jobs allowed this to happen… again.  Do you think that Superman would continue to partner up with Lex Luther after he had given him a big block of kryptonite?  NO!  So, Steve, what the hell are you doing?

You have created a worldwide race of lemmings willing to stand in line for days for a PHONE… that in itself is a masterpiece of marketing.  You have proven that your company is the leader in creating fan boys.  Yet, for some reason (money) you insist on forcing us to use a carrier that is so useless and so inept that it may single-handedly be the death of the iPhone.

The next big dissapointment for the lucky few that did get the 3G iPhone activated, will be the limited and frustratingly bad 3G network that at&t has, that will likely crumble under the weight of the new iPhone users.

When the initial rumors that 10.6 would be released at the WWDC, which is tomorrow, they came full of speculation that 10.6 would not support the PowerPC chip set.  This made sense since Jobs has been pulling away from that ever since the deal was made with Intel …

Now, though, Gizmodo (and others) are reporting that they have a source, who claimed to get ahold of the 10.6 seed, who indicated that work has been done on PowerPC drivers which indicates to them that support for the architecture is unlikely to be dropped this time around.

While this rumor may inspire a bit of hope to those who have late-model PowerPC Macs, it should be noted that it runs contrary to running consensus that OS 10.6 “Snow Leopard” would only support Intel chips, and the current direction that Apple has been moving for some time.

Apple is expected to introduce 10.6 at WWDC, along with a shiny new red iPhone….

[ TUAW ] is reporting that they’ve gotten some insider information that Apple will unveil OS 10.6 next Monday at the WWDC keynote. There is no reason to believe that this will be the leap that leopard took, but it will leave PPC behind in a sad, but long time in coming farewell.

According to the report, Apple’s upcoming OS will focus solely on “stability and security”, and it will be the first Apple OS that is not PowerPC compatible. The new OS is supposedly slated for a Jan 2009 release, and some rumors are calling it “Lynx” based on trademarks going back as far as 2003, so while Apple may be dropping PPC, they seem to be sticking to the cat naming thing.

Apple has also trademarked “Cougar”, but given the recent popularity of calling older, sexually agressive women cougars, one would hope they would stay from that name…

Personally, I would go with [ Liger ], except it seems that Jobs wants to wait for 10.8 for that one…

Many will likely mourn the passing of Power PCs, but given that many smaller developers are ignoring the intel-based platform, this will likely be the kick in the pants needed to get them moving in the proper directions.

Will you miss the PowerPC, or have you already moved on?

With just a week to go before WWDC, the 3G iPhone rumor mill is pretty much on fire.  Some rumors are just crazy, but most seem likely, so here is your roundup to get you excited.

• It’ll be announced during the WWDC keynote

I buy this one.  I don’t think at this point Apple could delay the announcement, even if they hadn’t initially planned on it.  Apple would suffer seriously if they don’t announce it.

• It’ll ship on the same day as the announcement

I am not sure about this one.  If this were the case, images of the phone would have leaked out, since once the Apple store employees, and more likely the at&t employees open the boxes pictures will appear in about 32 seconds.

• Battery life will be improved

I think this is a must.. I get great battery life off my current iPhone, but I know with all the added features, 3G and GPS being the biggest battery suckers, they will have to increase the life.

• Twice the current memory - 16GB and 32GB

Again, I think this will be an obvious, Apple never releases anything without beefing it up..

• It’ll have GPS

I am not too sure about this. I haven’t seen anything conclusive on whether it will have the hardware inside to support GPS, and while I think it would be nice, the WiFi option has worked well for me so far.

• Front-facing Camera

meh… I don’t care one way or the other on this one.  I can see the obvious video calling aspect of it, but it is doubtful that I would ever use it.  I think I have used the built i-sight camera on my MacBook Pro once and that was just because my nephew was playing with Photo Booth.

• Stereo Bluetooth support.

The fact that stereo bluetooth (A2DP) support hasn’t been on the iPhone from day one is crazy.  Music and wireless are Apple’s thing, now. They go together well, so even though the ruomrs on this have been quieter, this is one of my top 5 most anticipated features and since Leopard comes out of the box with A2DP support, Apple’s at least has proven it is a feature they are interested in.

• 3 megapixel Camera

It should be at least 3 mega pixels. The current iPhone rocks a 2 megapixel camera. The SGOLD3 chipset rumored to be in use on the 3G iPhone supports up to 5. Any thing less than a full megapixel bump would be an under utilization of the current hardware.

• It’ll be 22% slimmer

Steve Jobs is more obsessed with thin then a cracker fed super model blowing in the wind, so I completely believe this. 22% sounds like a whole lot, but it only shaves it down to around 9.1 mm - still a bit thicker than the iPod touch.

Like any good rumor, apply salt liberally, but these are all just a collection of what I think are the most reasonable rumors.

Think I’ve hit them all? Did I miss something? Drop a comment!

After months and months of rumor, speculation, and rampant guessing, we finally have a launch date for the 3g iPhone.

Gizmodo, and others, are reporting that a June 9th launch date has been confirmed.  The new device will be announced at the keynote address at WWDC 2008 in San Francisco.  It will also be made available worldwide immediately following the launch, rather then at the end of the year, as was previously assumed.

There is speculation now, that the 3G iPhone will no longer have a fixed price point, at least in some countries, and that there will be new policies surrounding the sale of the iPhone.  Some countries will get variable pricing on new iPhones based on enticements to switch carriers. There’s no word on which countries will be subject to this pricing structure.