Now, I am aware that you will be able to develop your own programs for the iPad, the same way you can develop for the iPhone today. Anyone can develop! All you need is a Mac, XCode, an iPhone “simulator,” and $99 for an auto-expiring developer certificate. The “developer certificate” is really a cryptographic key that (temporarily) allows you (slightly) elevated access to… your own computer. And that’s fine — or at least workable — for the developers of today, because they already know that they’re developers. But the developers of tomorrow don’t know it yet. And without the freedom to tinker, some of them never will.

I’m not sure how we got here, but it does now cost $99 to tinker with your iPhone and soon iPad. While your computer is still pretty open, it’s only a matter of time before the iPad can be used for development via Xcode and a new UI builder. Want to share your creation with someone? You need Apple’s permission (App Store) or you can’t easily do so. Back in my day you took a copy of Stuffit (you can use the 30 day demo) and put it on a server with a web page explaining it to the rest of the world.

However the web is still open. This is exactly why HTML5 and the open web is so important. The web is playing catchup to desktop computing and is accelerating. Browsers like Gecko and WebKit are making it more compelling than ever. The iPad like the iPhone is an awesome way to browse the web. Making the web powerful enough to take advantage of the hardware is the near future of personal computing.

The most interesting thing is they bumped the OS version to 3.2. I suspect this summer we’ll see a 4.0 for a much more radically changed iPhone than we’ve seen in the past 2 revisions. Otherwise I think they would have called this 4.0.

Some semi-random thoughts:

• It’s an oversized iPhone/iPod touch. It’s software really isn’t revolutionary, at least so far.
• It will be hard to compete with the Kindle. The Kindle’s screen isn’t back-lit hence it’s easier on the eyes. Don’t underestimate this.
• Typing on a solid surface can’t be that comfortable, especially if you touch type. It works on the iPhone since you use your more padded thumbs. It’s not a laptop replacement.
• It may be thin and light, but it’s not as mobile as phone. It’s not a mobile replacement.
• It has the potential to be a GREAT gaming device.
• It has the potential to hurt netbook sales by serving as a handy “around the house” internet device.
• It’s wireless pricing and iTunes are combined to make it feel cheap to own/operate but will still get expensive quickly.
• It’s sold unlocked. They are catching up with Google in that regard. I wouldn’t be shocked if the iPhone is soon sold on similar terms this summer. UMTS/HSDPA.
• That black bezel will likely disappear once they can shrink the internals in future revisions. It will eventually become closer to the iPhone.
• Still a mostly closed platform. The justification on the iPhone was security since it’s a safety device as well. Why the iPad?

Terry McGraw, CEO of McGraw-Hill decided to announce it a day early. Newsweek jumped the gun in 2004 with an iPod update. I’m sure their legal team is working late tonight.

With it presumably comes iPhone OS 4.0 preview for developers.

Either tomorrow or next month Apple will announce an update to the MacBook Pro lineup. It’s now 232 days since the last update (avg 200) and will likely get Core i5 and Core i7’s and slight hardware tweaks. I think Blu-Ray is still 50/50. Apple might hold this until early or mid February so it’s not overshadowed by the tablet announcement.

Likely a few other tweaks to the lineups, perhaps a CPU bump on the Mac Pro’s and perhaps a small tweak to the iPod lineup (more storage, new colors nothing major) though I expect the iPod/iPhone focus to be in June not now.

It’s interesting that many who hate the iPhone’s virtual keyboard are fascinated with the Apple tablet. Like it or not, the Internet is still a text-based medium and will be for some time. I’m skeptical the “minority report interface” will be ready by the end of the month.

So we’ll see what happens. I’ll likely make my usual “predictions” post a day or two before hand.

I had heard about the ongoing NetApp vs. Sun patent war where NetApp feels that ZFS is too close to WAFL. It seems likely that Apple doesn’t want to get involved in that. Apple even has a fear of that potential with OGG Theora. Once the transition was made to ZFS it would be a costly and time-consuming effort to swap with something else since Mac OS has never been very file system neutral.

A new theory is that the Oracle/Sun deal leaves the company developing two filesystems: ZFS and Btfs. It sounds like Oracle’s Btfs is the more likely future. If Apple switched to ZFS they would have been left as the only platform using it. Linux can’t fully switch since the CDDL license isn’t fully compatible with GPL meaning it would need to be implemented through FUSE. Btfs is coming along for Linux.

Reading through Btfs, it seems like a lot of the big advantages of ZFS are already in Btfs though it lacks full disk encryption. It does however add online resizing. It’s also GPL and has support from RedHat, Novell, IBM and was accepted into the Linux mainline kernel as of 2.6.29rc1. That means it already has a much more robust community and seems likely to be widely accepted in UNIX land.

So will Apple switch to Btfs for Mac OS X 10.7 or 10.8? I think the two possibilities are that it will either build something in-house, or switch to Btfs. I think Btfs offers a compelling set of features and would allow Apple to brag about more compatibility with other OS’s and potentially adopt features as the file system matures at a low-cost. It’s possible we’ll hear something as soon as WWDC 2010.

Edit [10/25/2009 @ 6:30 PM EST]: Confirmed via Daring Fireball

Apple today launched several product refreshes, but the one that really catches my eye is the Mac mini server. It’s pretty much just a Mac mini with the optical drive replaced with a second SATA 2.5″ hard drive and a copy of Snow Leopard server in place of the standard Mac OS X.

The hardware is pretty uneventful. People have been swapping drives in the Mac mini for years to add more storage as well as external drives. Software wise people have been using server products on the mini for some time. Nothing here is revolutionary. But marketing the product as a server is for a few reasons:

Home/Small Business Servers

Like I said, I’ve had a home server for years. It’s great for backing up and sharing files and printers. It can also be purposed for a myriad of other tasks. While you can set this all up on stock Mac OS X, tweaking it all is a little daunting as the Mac OS X UI only exposes the very basics. Mac OS X server has much deeper integration making it easier for people who don’t know what they are doing. I expect we’ll see some third party products that further expand the use of this in the home and small business market. I wouldn’t be surprised to even see some Home theater PC (HTPC) backend solutions. (MythTV anyone?)

Efficient Servers

The Mac Mini only consumes 16 watts when idle. It’s still a Core 2 Duo 2.53GHz CPU, and ships with 4 GB RAM. The place it suffers is disk I/O thanks to using 5400 RPM drives (It’s cost per GB isn’t that great either thanks to the 2.5″ drives). In previous models it wasn’t too difficult to swap the drive with 7200 RPM drives though I don’t know how the thermals will play out with dual HD’s. It may be possible to use software RAID, I’m not sure what sort of improvement in performance you could get since I don’t know the details of the motherboard. However, if you have a task that’s not IO bound, or you use a NAS via Gigabit Ethernet (or a Firewire/USB drive) it may not matter. That’s a pretty affordable low powered node in your grid. Even better if it could handle higher density RAM to get 8 GB into there via 2 x 4GB SO-DIMMs.

I presume Apple’s Xgrid will work too.

It’s an interesting move, and one that I think could be successful.

Hardware Analysis

As expected the announcements did bore me, but the teardown iFixit did of the iPod touch 3rd Generation however fascinates me, especially page 2 of their teardown:

iPod touch Broadcom chip via iFixit.com

There’s actually two fascinating things in this picture.

BCM4329 – 802.11n with Bluetooth® 2.1 + EDR and FM (Tx and Rx)

The first notable thing is the use of a Broadcom BCM4329[pdf]. This is an upgrade from the BCM4325[pdf] in the iPhone 3GS and iPod touch 2G or the Marvell 88W8686 in the iPhone 3G.

Feature wise, here’s how it breaks down:

First of all it supports 802.11n, while even the iPhone 3GS supports only 802.11g. It’s even capable of dual-band operation (2.4GHz and 5 GHz). Apple might enable this at some point in the future, though I suspect not until the iPhone 3GS either receives a silent upgrade to use this new chipset (unlikely but possible) or the iPhone is updated next summer.

This isn’t unprecedented for Apple. Thy shipped 802.11n capable Airport cards for a while before they offered the ability to unlock the feature. Considering iPod touch users pay for every major software release, and Apple charged to enable 802.11n on desktops and laptops, I’d expect the same treatment.

Secondly it supports both FM radio reception and transmission. Yes, it’s true that the iPhone 3GS and iPod touch 2G have an FM receiver, and it likely could be enabled by software. However there is no software to enable it. Apple already supports FM radio on the iPod nano.

FM transmission could be useful for allowing iPods to stream to car stereo’s wirelessly, without the need for a car adapter like currently needed.

So why would Apple include this stuff but not enable it? My guess would be for two reasons. The first is to take advantage of economy of scale, that is buy tons of these chips rather than lesser amounts of several specific variations. Secondly it makes development for firmware upgrades easier (and cheaper) when you only have a few closely related chipsets to worry about. A bonus is that Apple could enable these features in the future (likely when the flagship iPhone supports them) making the products more sticky.

The Missing Camera

The missing camera is the second fascinating thing. To the left of the Broadcom chip is an interesting spot that’s just the right size for the video camera Apple is including in the iPod nano according to iFixit. This could corroborate reports of problems putting a camera on an iPod.

This also isn’t that unusual. Apple sometimes has vestigial hardware artifacts in their products. For example Apple in the past likely toyed with the idea of putting an iPod dock on the Mac mini.

Price Analysis

Considering these are primarily music devices though one can argue the iPod touch is more a gaming device than a music device. Here’s the cost per GB:

So what’s the moral of the story? If it’s primarily a music device, you get way more bang for your buck with an iPod classic (not to mention slightly better battery life for audio). If your really fussy about size, want a video camera, or have a limited budget the nano is your iPod. If you’ve got money, or want an iPod more for apps, the iPod touch is your device.

Of course buying something more expensive just to get a lower cost per GB is silly, but that doesn’t make it an interesting way of looking at the cost. Obviously hard drives are still have a lower cost per GB than flash memory making the cost of the classic much lower. I suspect this is why the line still exists and likely will for at least another year or two.

Photo from iFixit

I personally doubt Apple will just ditch the 30 pin dock connector in favor of Micro USB. I suspect Apple will either bundle a Dock to Micro USB adapter instead or add a Micro USB port next to the Dock connector. Among the many reasons:

• The dock is essentially “USB+ Firewire + Audio + Video + other”. Take a look at the pinout. It’s much more complicated to get USB audio working than to read line out. For the intents and purposes the dock is as good if not better interface.
• The dock connector has an extensive list of implementations including many accessories and car audio systems. “Designed for iPod/iPhone” is preferred by Apple over “Designed for mp3 players”.
• The dock is a proprietary interface, Apple collects a licensing fee for its use in accessories.

Since the dock connector is really “USB+ Firewire + Audio + Video + Other”, a USB adapter is obviously cheap and easy to produce (they already ship a USB cable with all products). Hence I suspect there will be either a Micro USB adapter, or Apple will add the port to the bottom of the iPod/iPhone since Micro USB is very small.

There is still an advantage to having Micro USB. For one charging will become more universal across cellphones. This means car manufacturers, and even airplanes can offer Micro USB to let people charge phones easily via a single ubiquitous low powered interface.

It’s also more environmentally friendly since you’ll be able to buy your own separate higher quality power adapter. No more cheap bundled power bricks known for their phantom loads. Or just charge off your computer. You’ll also be able to use the same charger and accessories with more phones.

I’m glad to see this finally happening.

Edit [6/29/2009 @ 10:00 PM EST]: Pocket-lint says Apple stated to them it will be an adapter.

MacBook/MacBook Pro/MacBook Air

So the big news in the MacBook world is that they are getting rid of the removable battery in the 15″ model in favor of the 17″ style non-removable battery. A little faster, SD card slot (I guess some people really care about this), and finally going to officially support 8GB RAM across the board. In my opinion supporting 8GB RAM is the biggest improvement. RAM limitations seem to be more problematic than CPU limitations. With Snow Leopard (see below) heavily taking advantage of multiple cores and 64 bit computing, extra RAM won’t just be a luxury, it will be a requirement. There is a reason 4GB is the minimum RAM across the board now. I said months ago they needed to do this.

The MacBooks are also “green”, energy star compliant, etc. etc.

The one downside I see is that the MacBook and MacBook pro line is being blurred quite a bit. The real difference at this point is the graphics chipset. For average users the MacBook will be more than enough. If you’re a power user, the MacBook Pro will be your laptop. With Snow Leopard taking advantage of the GPU for computational purposes, having a good GPU is just another performance boost.

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

Mac OS X 10.6 as John Grubber aid might be a tough sell to consumers. It’s not very feature packed, at least as far as users are concerned. Most of the changes are under the hood geared towards taking advantage of modern hardware, removing cruft from years of API and design iterations. That’s not going to easily convince consumers to spend $129. As a result for Leopard users it’s $29 (family pack for $49) . That’s a good decision as explaining the advantages of rewriting the Finder in Cocca to an average user won’t be easy. I think the biggest actual feature it has going for it so far is Exchange support, which I don’t think will do too well outside the business world, which was never Apple’s strong point.

On the technology side, I welcome our 64 bit overlords. GrandCentral and OpenCL should really help make software faster, and take advantage of the hardware. This will hopefully spur some innovation. The downside of course it that working the GPU for basic application performance will compromise battery life. Right now it’s easy to conserve battery life by avoiding games which tax the GPU to save battery life. I don’t really know if having lots of apps tax the GPU is really going to help or hurt in that regard, or if there will be a level of user control (turbo mode). My only concern is if the GPU is doing extra work, and isn’t well optimized for power savings, this could get troublesome.

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is also Intel only. The PowerPC is officially dead now. Kinda stinks for PowerMac G5 users whose computers are still pretty speedy and were expensive, but it’s essential to keeping development sane and forward moving.

Apple’s pricing of Snow Leopard is also going to speed adoption and let developers focus on developing software for 1 OS on one architecture as opposed to multiple OS versions on 2 hardware architectures.

iPhone OS 3.0

Lots of new features, developers have lots of ideas in the works, ships June 17th. Free for iPhone users, $9.99 for iPod touch users. No surprises.

The only interesting software notes are that TomTom will be releasing a turn-by-turn directions app. I expect this to be rather popular as long as it’s not too expensive. There’s also a “Find My Phone” feature for MobileMe customers that is pretty much the “locator” button on your cordless phone and emits sound regardless of your iPhones settings. Kinda handy, useful if you frequently misplace your phone.

Also interesting is AT&T won’t be supporting MMS next week when iPhone OS 3.0 launches. They will start supporting it later this summer. Tethering is also still in the works. This is sure to upset many people. According to Boy Genius Report the MMS delays are due to administrative issues, while the tethering issues are due to the plan still being in development, though I’m guessing they also have concerns about network capacity in NY and SF.

iPhone 3GS

The iPhone 3GS is the new hardware. New insides, same classic exterior. Faster (though no exact specs on hardware) OpenGL|ES 2.0, 7.2Mbps HSPDA, 3 MP auto-focus camera. The camera supports 30 FPS VGA video with audio. There’s also a digital compass, voice control, improved battery life, and data encryption. $199 for 16GB, $299 for 32GB. $99 for original 8GB model.

This is pretty much what was expected. I think the biggest feature is the camera. The digital compass will be handy for a few people, but for most it will be a pretty meaningless thing.

Until a significant market share is using the 3GS, I question how much developers can take advantage of the extra performance without making their apps useless to the 3G and original iPhone users. This might be a limiting factor.

The bigger news is Apple is keeping the 8GB iPhone 3G as a lower cost option. Apple had to keep the original 3G iPhone on the market to keep growing users during the current economic recession. This is good for growing users… but bad for those who want to keep the user base on the bleeding edge. Those new 3G users will be locked into contracts for 2 years. That means at least 2 more years before the iPhone 3G starts to fade out, not 1 more like most were expecting. I think for many people, the 8GB iPhone 3G is actually the better buy.

Scorecard

• √ iPhone OS 3.0 Announced (100%) – I was right. Announced, release is next week, GM seed released today.
• √ iPhone v3 Announced (100%) – I was pretty close here too. Faster, 32GB capacity, better graphics, video support, no radio as many suggested. I said 50% chance of dual cores. Looks like still single core.
• √ Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Announcement (85%) – Right again. September release.
• √ Lots of demos (99%) – Right, wish I wasn’t. These just get in the way.
• X Steve Jobs Appearance (65%) or mention (90%) – I’m surprised of no mention at the end. Not really surprised he didn’t appear.
• X iLife / some other software upgrade 60% – Didn’t happen.
• √ MacBook Update – I thought this was more likely for July/August in time for the “back to school” season. I didn’t think they would use WWDC for this announcement. It makes sense for Apple to start now given Snow Leopard being released in a few months. More people on faster laptops with more RAM the better.

Overall not bad. More accurate than previous years.

• iPhone OS 3.0 Announced (100%) – Notice I said “announced” not released. Apple last released iPhone OS 3.0 beta 5 on May 25th. I’m suspicious that they won’t just go from beta to final on developers over the course of 2 weeks. I’d expect some sort of release candidate to sit in between. I think we’ll get a solid date. I’d put the odds of a 3.0 official release being available at about 50%. “Public Beta”? It just seems odd for Apple to go from beta to release like that. Apple did release an iTunes upgrade featuring 3.0 compatibility. Mixed messages? Yea. But a GM release seems a little unlikely.
• iPhone v3 Announced (100%) – Apple will announce the iPhone 3rd Generation. Faster CPU, 50% chance of dual core or larger architectural change, better graphic capabilities, video support, more memory, more storage, same form factor. I think we can realistically see up to 32 GB capacity. Better (3MP+) camera. Battery life improvements will be minimal at best. The iPhone 3G sold well enough with its battery life making the pressing factor CPU performance. I’m also skeptical about radio as audio can be delivered somewhat low-bandwidth over EDGE or 3rd party FM adapter. Also radio/CD combos never really sold that well, and rarely were offered on mp3 players (notably never the iPhone).
• Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Announcement (85%) – Apple will announce the expected release date down to 1-2 month target for Snow Leopard, solid feature set, preview the latest version and provide new builds.
• Lots of demos (99%) – Apple seems to love to parade developers on stage to show off their apps. Expect to see tons of iPhone 3.0 apps, perhaps even some “look how much faster/better my app is on Snow Leopard” presentations.
• Steve Jobs Appearance (65%) or mention (90%) – Legend has it Steve is expected to return to Apple at the end of the month in full capacity. I fully expect him to appear in person before the media to prove he’s looking healthy. There is a decent shot he’ll make some sort of cameo appearance at WWDC 2009. It’s also possible he’ll demo something at a soon to be announced event for a hardware refresh in July/August. I think he’ll at least get a mention and official confirmation he’s coming back at the end of the month.
• iLife / some other software upgrade 60% – Apple likes to bundle upgrades to any of it’s less notable software products into larger announcements so that they get some media attention “also announced was…”, even if it’s a footnote. Because of that, I think there’s a notable chance they will announce some upgrade.

It’s mainly a software event, so I don’t expect any more hardware than iPhone 3.0. I think overall it won’t be as explosive as last year when App Store launched. Then again… Apple may have a trick or two up its sleeves. We’ll know Monday.