Over the weekend popular tech sites got themselves engulfed in iPhone 2.0-related stores. Numerous live reporters/bloggers were present, yet they all had a different take on Apple’s presentation related to the soon-to-come 2.0 Software Update and SDK. In search of a neutral stance on things, I found Paul Thurrott’s rather lengthy write-up on the matter.

In case you’ve got an hour and a half to spare and are in for some Apple-bragging, the whole event is up on Apple’s website in both Standard and High Def (QuickTime) video. I wonder why anyone would like to see Jobs’ face up close in HD, though.

A concise version of the event

As always, Jobs starts his presentation with the regular bragging about how fantastic things are going. The iPhone is now n°2 (right after RIM>BlackBerry) in the US smartphone market with a 28% share and accounts for 71 percent of mobile browsing.

Enterprise support

The iPhone is finally going to natively accomodate corporate functionality, in hopes of winning over businesses to acknowledge the iPhone as a true smartphone. When Apple ships the 2.0 software update, the iPhone and iPod Touch will support the following enterprise technologies.

• Full support for Microsoft Exchange
• Push e-mail/calendaring/contacts
• Global address list support
• Cisco IPSec VPN
• Two-factor authentication by means of certificates and identities
• WPA 2 Enterprise, 802.1x
• Remote wipe (over the air)
• Mandatory usage of a PIN

To make this all happen, Apple licensed the ActiveSync protocol from Microsoft.

The software update will be offered to iPhone users for free. iPod Touch users will need to pay a nominal fee, probably (hopefully) similar to the $20 fee for the 1.1.3 update.

Software Development Kit

The SDK is out already and can be downloaded for free*. Apps will be distributed through iTunes via a developer program. Developers can join this program for $99 a year. Companies will pay more ($299, also yearly). Though this looks like a great deal, you must note that the SDK will only work on Macs. Developing for the iPhone/Touch will require more funds than you thought, since you’ll need to purchase a whole new computer, too.

As an introductory to the SDK, Scott Forstall (vice president of iPhone software) outlined the iPhone’s architecture, which borrows heavily from Mac OS X. In fact, it’s comprised of 4 main layers:

• Core OS
• Core Services
• Media
• Cocoa Touch

The most impressive thing about this all is that Apple ported the first three layers from OS X without a lot of modification. The media layer provides several interesting API’s including an embedded version of OpenGL. Electronic Arts has developed a demo version of Spore, which uses the accelerometer for navigation.

Developing for the iPhone will give you all the tools Apple uses for OS X and the native iPhone apps:

• XCode + iPhone emulator: Apple’s Mac OS X-based development environment
• Remote debugger: hook up an iPhone/Touch and debug live
• Interface Builder: toolset for creating the GUI for the app (by dragging around controls, like Visual .NET)
• Instruments: statistics on the debugging app (CPU, File System, Memory Usage)

All APIs are written in Objective-C, a language that resembles C++, C# and Java to a certain degree, but is substantially different from what most programmers are used to.

App Store & iTunes

Every iPhone and iPod Touch that applies the 2.0 update will get a new icon on the home screen. This will initiate the App Store, the portable version of the iTunes Application Store. A user would be able to view the inventory and download/install the desired application without ado. It looks and acts much like the iTunes WiFi Store, but will also work over EDGE. Every application you install will also be automatically updated, too.

Rev Split

Developers get 70 percent of the revenues. The other 30 for Apple will render the hosting and distribution. If a developer decides to provide its application for free, there won’t be any hosting costs either. Credit card fees and marketing costs will also be taken care of by Apple.

The iPhone 2.0 update will become available in late June this year.

*: The SDK has indeed already been finalized. I initially stated that it was still in beta, like the 2.0 software update. Thanks for the feedback, Clak.

Amber and Leo featured this video on their audio podcast net@nite. This music video is based on the original iPhone instruction video and has been lip-synced wonderfully. It’s not my kind of music, but still, a brilliant production and a must-watch.

I wasn’t around to follow the Jobs’ 90 minute keynote, but luckily there were other people present to shrink it all down into a 60-second rundown. It’s a marketing-diluted version to bring you up to speed without all the unnecessary superlatives. A few examples used by Steve himself: extra-ordinary, incredible, tremendous, amazing, unprecedented, great, revolutionary, unbelievable, most successful ever.

There have been rumors about this thing for a while now. I’m not big on rumors, but somehow the ones on the Dell XPS One excited me quite a bit. I purchased a Dell XPS M1710 laptop in September for my studies in Computer Science at college (and also for my own little old pleasure) and I haven’t had a hitch since. I’m happily running Vista and Ubuntu 7.10 on it, too.

The XPS One is an all-in-one machine à la Apple’s iMac. At first glance, the ‘One’ looks classy, but in retrospect maybe a bit over-styled. A bit over priced, too. The low-end model starts at 1499 USD, whilst the high-end rig retails at a whopping 2399 USD (!). We’re all pretty accustomed to Dell’s (too expensive) pricing scheme, I guess, so it won’t surprise too many folks. It’s one sexy device that’s meant for den-usage; that is (not TOO heavy gaming and) media center applications. It comes as a 20″ widescreen and includes a built-in TV-tuner.

Full specs can be found at Dell’s US-based website.

If I’m completely honest, thought, I’d have to admit to the fact that the the iMac is just much more elegant. Expensive as well, it seems to be more justified. Maybe I just like the idea of a cute white’n’silver integrated machine sitting on the desk in the living room. Black is a bit obtrusive for my liking, but hey, tastes differ.

(Apple iMac running Leopard)

Paul Thurrott has just published his review on the new series of Microsoft’s iPod competitors, the Zune 2. The first-generation has been augmented with a new hard-drive based player and two flash-based players, the Zune 4GB and 8GB. The new Zune’s have been completely rebuilt from scratch, hardware as well as software. I’m an iPod-guy, myself, but the way the Zune’s evolving, they’re looking more and more appealing. The Zune 2 is now a feasible alternative to the Apple iPod (at least from what I’ve seen).

Read Paul Thurrott’s extensive and honest review at WinSuperSite.com

They got the basics right. No more hour-long tedious setup-times and horrible Windows Media Player-esque PC software. The devices’ firmware has been upgraded to version 2.0 (2.1 by now I think) and adds podcasting, amongst other minor improvements. The PC-software has also been revamped and is admittedly gorgeous-looking. Kudos to Microsoft for making the software upgrades interchangeable with the 1st generation Zune as well. This way early adopters won’t feel cheated and are improved for their loyalty.

The copy-cat feeling everyone had with version 1 should fade away now, as MS is trying to innovate in a space that’s ruled solely by Apple. No matter how evil Microsoft may look, they entered the market and a year in, they’ve become number two and surpassed all other competition. Quite and achievement, if you’re honest.

This morning, as I peeked onto the Digg Homepage, I noticed a post to PCMag.com’s review of OS X Leopard. At first, I wasn’t tempted to actually read the article. This feeling was mainly caused by the barren quality of comments (one would have to be a heretic Apple devotee to risk stating an opinion in there), but after some thoughtful seconds, I dove into it anyway.
Apart from the fact that the write-up is preceded by a “Buy here”-box, it’s a biased review and pretty Apple-centric. It just contains too many superlatives to be objectively credible.

Besides, why isn’t anyone bashing Apple for delivering their OS late, integrating too much eye candy, leaving the “secret feature” out (not sure there ever was one) and releasing a product in beta-like state. No-one? Y’all blamed Microsoft for the same things, didn’t you..?

The bottom line is Leopard isn’t good enough for any habituous Windows user to make the switch. If anything, the sleek looking hardware would be the only thing that could convince me. OS X is solid, but so is Vista. Do the math:

1 billion Windows users vs. 25 million Mac users

To me the 4.5 rating is ‘over-rated’.

clipped from www.simplebits.com Webkit now supports the @font-face CSS property, enabling the designer to specify downloadable fonts in their web pages. The worry that all web pages will be suddently ruined with crappy free fonts everywhere overshadows the fact that some good can come out of the ability to at least have a choice to use those crappy (and/or potential useful) fonts. Give us all a chance, eh? imagine using a downloadble dingbat font for displaying icons instead of GIF or JPEG images. Suddenly text and icons become truly scalable together. Finally a way to make MySpace look even worse (-;

WebKit is the open source browser engine driving many Mac OS X applications like Safari (the browser), Dashboard, Mail, etc., and is a derivative of KDE (familiar to some geeks) technology.

Without wanting to sound ignorant, but I haven’t really kept up with Apple software, so if I’m completely honest, I must admit I wasn’t aware of WebKit and looked it up. That put aside, as the folks at SimpleBits suggest, this property raises excitement amongst the web design addicts. It’s so enticing because as a web designer, you want your creation to strike the users in all glory, fonts-galore included. The latter has always been a problem due to the variety of systems and browsers roaming the Internet and inherently, because of this variety, one webpage can look 10 times different in 10 different setups. To aid this, the @font-face property allows the designer to designate a single font which will automatically be downloaded in case the visitor doesn’t come equipped with it.

While this may sound like utter web developer ecstasy, the Internet could (and more like will) become (even more, if at all possible) contaminated with sickening free fonts/dingbats. Amateur wannabe designers will indeed, as stated in the last remark, be given the opportunity to make MySpace look even worse.