WWDC Keynote Notes and Thoughts

June 8th, 2009

They’re all MacBook Pros. The 15″ MacBook Pro get a better battery and a price drop (they now start at $1699 with integrated graphics rather than discrete), and the MacBook now has a better LCD screen (which was sorely needed), and an illuminated keyboard.

But more interesting, the aluminum MacBook is now designated as a MacBook Pro. It’s a smart move. After moving the MacBooks to aluminum, the difference between the pro and consumer lines were minimal, and the naming served to confuse people rather than help them understand the notebook lineup.

Snow Leopard will be released in September for $29. As promised, there isn’t many new features in Snow Leopard, but Apple claims Snow Leopard will liberate 6 GB of hard drive space when installed, and is generally quite a bit faster than Leopard.

iPhone 3G S will be released June 19th. The “S” stands for speed, and Apple claims it is up to 2 times faster than the iPhone 3G. The iPhone 3G S also has a new 3 megapixel camera with autofocus and video support.

Most exciting is the new voice control feature. Hold down the home button, say a name, and the iPhone will call the person. It works the same way for music — you can change tracks using it, too.

This is also the most infuriating feature. Rather than include voice control in OS 3.0, it is exclusive to the iPhone 3G S. I am sure it’s not included in OS 3.0 because it requires the 3G S’s faster processor, but it’s disappointing nonetheless.

A Small Note on Snow Leopard, OS 3.0, and iPhone 3G S

The common theme for Apple this year is making things more solid. Snow Leopard has little new end-user features, but is faster, more stable, and introduces incredible tools for developers that should make their applications much faster. iPhone OS 3.0 has a lot of new features, but none of them are giant steps — they are evolutionary rather than revolutionary. The iPhone 3G S looks exactly the same as the old iPhone 3G, but is much faster.

This looks to me like Apple is taking their time to prepare for big things in the future. 10.6 is a solid foundation for 10.7′s radical new features; similarly, iPhone OS 3.0 is a solid foundation for huge changes in 4.0.

It is not quite as exciting a year, because we are not seeing sexy new features yet — but a strong groundwork is being constructed for them.