Alex Shenoy

WWDC was today. And a lot of big announcements got handed down from the sweet Newtonian fruit. Among them were the New MacBook Pro updates, OS X Snow Leopard, and new iPhone firmware and hardware. I gotta say, I’m not particularly wowed by the conference. Although, I didn’t expect to be.

I knew the iPhone wouldn’t be radically new and would probably only contain the minor adjustments from the rumor mill. I was not surprised at all to see no mention of a Verizon iPhone, a front facing camera, or a tablet. But I was sitting on the edge of my seat as they went over the features for iPhone OS 3.0. Not because I wanted to see what they were going to do, but because I figured that Phil would say goodbye to everybody, walk off stage and right as everybody gets up to leave, Steve Jobs would come out carrying the 3GS and say, “And just one more thing.”

I think everything that happened at WWDC was an evolution of earlier products. There was no real “Wow” factor at the conference. But then, there isn’t meant to be. It’s a developer conference, meant to showcase new tools for developers. But I liked the price cuts to the MacBook line. I will probably buy one before I head off to grad school. And I will definitely buy an iPhone 3GS by the end of the summer. How about you guys?

And here’s why: I am slowly moving away from Facebook. Over the last few weeks, my update frequency has dropped down significantly. I also stopped keeping it open in a tab in Firefox. I miss Pownce. Those of you that follow this blog know that I was really into Pownce. The only features from Facebook that I use are the ones to share a link and images. If Twitter offered a paid plan where I could use payloading features I would be ecstatic. Payloading is the ability to attach files, links, and pictures to a post. It’s what made the now deceased Pownce amazing. I would definitely be willing to pay for the features that I used Pownce for. I never knew how much I missed them till they were gone.

Also, Twitter has a problem with spam. I generally don’t care who follows me, but when I get a random RV store following me just to promote their site, it’s a little ridiculous. But I don’t want to make my tweets protected b/c then I close the window on new people finding me. This is also why I am looking forward to having verified twitter accounts this summer. Especially since it is becoming my social network of choice.

Finally, I am thinking of making a client to organize tweets from those I follow based on topic to help weed out unecessary information and allow me to find news more quickly.

A lot of people are talking about a possible iPhone for Verizon Wireless. With less than a week to go until WWDC 2009, I thought I should chime with what this could mean to Apple, AT&T, and Verizon. First things first, a source from within Verizon wireless has stated that they are getting their own iPhone to be announced this month. This source is said to be high up in Verizon’s food chain. The big problem with this rumor is that AT&T is supposed to have a five year contract with Apple to sell the iPhone. The one thing lending credence to the Verizon iPhone rumors is the fact that Verizon was Apple’s first choice, but got turned down.

If Verizon gets an iPhone, it will have to be a completely separate product from AT&T’s iPhone. Otherwise, there will be plenty of legal issues for Apple to hash out with AT&T. And I think AT&T will fight a Verizon iPhone with the full power of their legal team. If Verizon gets the iPhone, AT&T could stand to lose customers that would prefer Verizon higher bandwidth speeds. Especially with similar price points for a data plan, who wouldn’t switch to get the most out of their money. I guess we will just have to see what happens next week. I don’t know if I would switch before buying an iPhone, but it might be a possibility as I look to get my own plan after graduation.

Google announced their upcoming Wave platform at their Annual IO Conference this past week. I spent an hour and a half last night watching the developer preview event and I have to say, I am really excited. Wave promises to redefine the way humans communicate with each other. Instead of using email and instant messenger type communication, where most of the user’s time is spent either reading or typing, Wave allows users to have active concurrent conversations over the web just like they would in real life.

Google has also gone to tremendous trouble to make Wave completely open source with support for extensions and third party applications. The purpose of this product is to change the communication model on the Internet. Wave can be used by any third party community just like email servers. It can communicate to anybody who has a Wave system just like email. Wave even has extensions to use popular social networking sites like Twitter and blogs to allow seemless editing of Waves. This amazing product is set to debut later this year for those of us not fortunate enough to be able to go to Google IO. Below is the link to the preview website.

http://wave.google.com/

The HTC Lancaster looks pretty slick. A lot like the Touch Pro. And the good news is it’s coming to AT&T(if you believe the rumors.) I gotta say, that at first I was extremely excited about the prospect of an Android phone on AT&T’s network. It’s something I have been waiting for since Android was first released. However, the fact that, as of yet, HTC has not put sufficient internal memory on the devices makes me highly suspect. Plus a resolution on the Lancaster of just 240 X 320 pixels is pretty poor. I am probably going to just have to wait till after I graduate to move into the smartphone space. And then I might have to consider going over to the dark side and using an iPhone.