I'm bored with it already... :D
Fanbois Apple-gasm as iPhone giant finally reveals WWDC lineup
Apple's most innovative minds seem to have been on a go-slow recently, with no properly exciting new products announced since Steve Jobs shuffled off this mortal coil. But at least the fruity firm can be relied upon to update its software on an annual-ish basis, which generally happens at the Worldwide Developers' Conference …
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Wednesday 21st May 2014 18:38 GMT Shagbert
No tablets before 2008?
I was supporting/managing a whole bunch of tablets in 2005; This one, for instance. The Acer C310 was another example, off the top of my head.
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Thursday 22nd May 2014 01:20 GMT Frumious Bandersnatch
Re: You too can copywrite like a wanker...
Six years ago ...
Damn it! You beat me to it:
An excellence-oriented '80s male does not wear a regular watch. He wears a Rolex watch, because it weighs nearly six pounds and is advertised only in excellence-oriented publications such as Fortune and Rich Protestant Golfer Magazine. The advertisements are written in incomplete sentences, which is how advertising copywriters denote excellence.
(Dave Barry, In Search of Excellence)
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Wednesday 21st May 2014 20:46 GMT JDX
Not sure we NEED a new device
There doesn't appear to be a gap to fill, unless wearables are going to take off - but I get the impression that isn't quite ready to happen yet (if ever). Both an iWatch and an iGlass could be upcoming but I don't think just yet.
iPhone and iPad might not be amazingly exciting now tablets are commonplace but they are still premium devices in phone/tablet categories and selling hand over fist. Apple is with iOS devices where MS was with Windows and Office in 2007... people were unhappy with Vista and the Ribbon but the revenue stream was as healthy as ever. I reckon Apple have easily 2-3 years before they NEED a new Big Thing, as long as they don't screw up the existing product lines but continue to refine them. Boring, but profitable.
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Thursday 22nd May 2014 15:04 GMT jai
Re: Not sure we NEED a new device
Apple may have a few years before the need a big new thing, but the tech news websites can't wait that long! If they don't have some clickbait Apple-related headlines to publish, they might loose out on advertising revenue to the entertainment websites revealing what f**ktapes-star "celebrity" has had to eat this week.
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Thursday 22nd May 2014 15:09 GMT jai
Re: Tuesday 0900-1000 "This One Is Sealed" - Marina
More interesting is the No Comment one at the same time, but in the big room that the keynote was in. Surely that's for further details on something that will only be revealed during the Keynote itself.
Or perhaps it's Tim Cook, blatantly wearing the unannounced iWatch, standing in front of a 100" TV with an Apple logo on the case, wearing a pair of Ray-bans that you can just make out the inverted image of an iOS screen displayed on the inside of the lenses, but just spending an hour replying "No comment" to every question...
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Wednesday 21st May 2014 21:20 GMT Anonymous Coward
This is where a delay strategy pays off ..
Tbe only viable reason for me to be possibly interested in their new stuff is a need to validate user experiences with our service, but in general I apply a 3..6 month delay before new kit is considered.
This has a number of advantages:
- we don't end up debugging new hardware
- we can see if there really IS a business benefit to the new kit for us
- we can ignore all the "must have it now" queues and the vast amount of marketing surrounding a launch. Yeah, yeah, we heard you already. Sell a few and we may take a look. Or buy the previous model a lot cheaper...
It's actually quite a nice way to spend IT funds wisely - we know why we buy stuff :)
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Thursday 22nd May 2014 01:34 GMT Andrew Hodgkinson
Now. With even longer. Pauses.
Much as I'm interested in WWDC as a developer, I'm not particularly looking forward to the Tim Cook keynote. Over time he's developed inter- and intra-sentence pauses that are getting so long, he's risking heat death of the universe before he finishes the speech.
Hopefully someone at Apple has noticed.
...It's getting ridiculous.
...Asked him to speed up, but somehow...
...I doubt it.
<Thunderous, slightly relieved applause>
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Thursday 22nd May 2014 20:47 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: 2007, not 2008
Like it or not, the iPhone brought smartphones to the mainstream, instead of a niche of geeks and PHBs that used them previously.
World changing isn't the same as inventing. And handwriting recognition is irrelevant to compares with the iPhone, since they don't support it or sell a stylus (though I imagine there are third party apps for those who care)
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Friday 23rd May 2014 21:21 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: 2007, not 2008
I was using a Sony Ericsson P800 followed by it's update P900 almost in the last century, 2002 ish, both Touch screen, both with a degree of handwiting recognition.
P1i here - even came with a business card scanner app as part of the default load set. But the iPhone still kicked the crap out of it because it made all this goodness actually *accessible*. Be honest, how many of you know you can set up a conference call on your phone? That's totally trivial on an iPhone - just as an example.
Apple fixed the single most ignored thing in IT: the user interface. THAT's why the thing took off like a rocket. Not that it didn't get a decent boost from the whole cult designery thing, but that by itself had been tried before.
Having said that, Apple does piss me off by arbitrarily deciding they don't like something so they just leave it out. SMS message confirmation: still a missing feature. Email read flags: ditto. I don't care if they don't always work - it's existing functionality to please leave it be.
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Thursday 22nd May 2014 13:51 GMT Justice
Wants list!
"For five days, one thousand Apple engineers and five thousand developers will gather together. And life will be different as a result."
Good! I have an iPhone want list. Y'know, the REALLY simple stuff that most Smartphones can do by default without the need for Jailbreaking.
1 - Ability to change the voicemail number.
2 - Carrier customization or at least update to include GiffGaff and other services that operate on the back of another network.
3 - Saving animated GIFs to the photo roll - With the animation intact!!!
4 - Change the default browser from Safari to ANYTHING!
5 - Flash. Get over yourselves and bloody include it.
Now GET BACK TO WORK!!!
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Thursday 22nd May 2014 20:07 GMT Levente Szileszky
"because tablets didn't exist" - huh?
Drinking too much Kool-Aid recently...?
Current tablets are straight descendants of laptops/notebooks with convertible touchscreens or at least on-screen handwriting-recognition, per Microsoft's 2001 (or was it 2002?) spec requirements for "Tablet PC" - essentially the very name of this devic e class was coined by Microsoft originally.