The new iPhone 3G S, new Macbooks, Snow Leopard – all the WWDC news in one handy list

Written on 8th June 2009                                                                                                              8 COMMENTS
Martin Bryant, Co-founder, Social Media Café Manchester

So it’s all over – the WWDC keynote is complete. Apple over-delivered in some areas, under-delivered in others and even gave us a complete surprise or two.

Here’s everything you need to know in one handy list.

A completely refreshed, cheaper laptop lineup. Available immediately.

• There’s now just one Macbook costing $999 / £749. 2GB RAM, 160GB, 2.13GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 802.11n wi-fi
• 3 MacBook Pros: a new 13″ version starting from £899, a 15″ from £1299 and a 17″ for £1849 – all MacBook Pros now have SD Card slots and built-in, non-removable long-life batteries.
• The Macbook Air is cheaper now, costing £1149 for the SATA drive version and the SSD version is down to £1349

OSX Snow Leopard is available from September with an upgrade price of a mere $29.

• -Despite claiming it would have “No New Features” last year, Apple has decided under-the-hood tweaks aren’t enough and are rolling out some sexy new ideas in the new OS.
• Support for Exchange servers in Mail, Calendar and Address Book
• Exposé built into the dock (making switching between apps easier).
• The OS now takes up much less space, freeing up 6GB once you install.

A new version of Quicktime caled Quicktime X.

• It’s got a much improved interface.
• Videos can be edited with a new visual timeline and uploaded via email or to MobileMe or Youtube straight from the app.

Safari 4 is out of Beta.

• It’s reportedly much faster than even Chrome
• You can download it now here.

iPhone 3.0 software

• They covered the already known improvements again (MMS, cut and paste, push notifications etc) but added….
• A brilliant Find My iPhone service for MobileMe subscribers. It’ll show your iPhone on a map, you can make it put out a sound (even in Silent mode) to help find it, you can send a message to display on its screen (e.g., “Give it back, thief!”) and even wipe the phone completely if you think it’s lost for good.
• MMS won’t be available on AT&T straight away. Americans will have to wait til late Summer for that. Everyone else should be fine from release.
• 3.0 software will be available from June 17th – free on the iPhone, $9.99 for the iPod Touch.

Turn-by-Navigation is coming

• Including Tom Tom, with dashmounted kit to charge your iPhone and use the iPod app while you drive and take directions.

The new iPhone is called the iPhone 3G S

• S stands for ‘Speed’. It has 7.2mbps HSDPA data
• It looks the same as the iPhone 3G, available in Black and White versions.
• It has a 3MP camera with 30 FPS video recording and editing capabilities. Upload by Email or to Youtube or MobileMe from the device.
• Voice commands are available, from “Call John Smith” to “Play a song by Fiery Furnaces”.
• It’s got a digital compass built in.
• It’s available for $199 (16GB version) and $299 (32GB version) from 19th June.

The original iPhone 3G is down to $99

• The 8GB version only, mind.

Apple, iphone, keynote, macbook, mobileme, osx, safari, wwdc

8 Comments »

Apple to Fruux: When I look at you, I see myself

Written on 16th December 2008                                                                                                              5 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur

Fruux, the free alternative to MobileMe, has been deemed too similar to Apple’s own MobileMe solution. The developers behind Fruux submitted their desktop App to Apple months ago to be featured in Apples’ Software Download Page. Yesterday they received this short but clear message:

Hi,

fruux’s feature-set is too similar to Apple’s MobileMe (http://www.me.com).

Regards,

Apple Downloads

Duh. That IS the whole point!
Fruux is similar to MobileMe except for one notable difference: it is free!

Fruux was planning on offering an iPhone version of its software too but is seriously reconsidering that now. If they can’t even get a link from Apple’s Downloads page they can be pretty sure they won’t be accepted in the iPhone store either. Why spend money, time and sleepless nights on a product you know won’t ever be officially accepted?

Apple thinks competition is good. Except when you are competing with Apple’s own products.

Apple, competition, denied, fruux, mobileme

5 Comments »

Fruux – MobileMe sync without MobileMe

Written on 22nd September 2008                                                                                                              2 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur

MobileMe just works for me. But if you take a look at the blogosphere sometimes I seem to be the only on in the world who has a positive experience. Either way, some companies are using MobileMe’s bad rep to launch their own and competing products.

You could use Gmail, Soocial, Plaxo and, since last week, give fruux a try if you are fed up with MobielMe.

fruux is the latest entry into this market. It is a small and convenient system preference pane, that syncs your AddressBook between different macs. fruux supports sync conflict resolution which will help you when you changed a contact on more than one machine.

fruux is a Germany based student start-up. They launched their public beta before the weekend and it is currently localized to German and English. Calendar and bookmark syncing will be added in one of the next updates.

It’s still beta software, so (although nobody managed to kill his AddressBook with fruux yet) we strongly recommend having an AddressBook backup. On the other hand we strongly recommend having a backup even if people don’t try fruux! When was the last time YOU back-up your AddressBook?

Their Road map looks pretty interesting too:

- Bookmark Syncing
- Calendar Syncing
- Preferences Syncing
- “Social Syncing”
- iPhone Sync Client
- fruux Webapp (Addressbook/Calendar/Bookmarks on the go from any internetconnected device)

Download the App for free at the fruux blog or check out this gallery with a few screenshots:

AddressBook, Apple, fruux, mobileme, plaxo, soocial

2 Comments »

Soocial will “totally obliterate” Plaxo and MobileMe

Written on 8th August 2008                                                                                                              4 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Every week we publish an interview with a start-up. We ask five questions, hoping the answers will give you inspiration and new views.

This time we’re interviewing Stefan Fountain from Dutch start-up Soocial. You might remember the David Hasselhof incident at The Next Web Conference. He was the guy behind it. They’re infamous for their own style, and if you’re not familiar with it yet, you’ll be after reading this article. So what does Soocial actually do? Simple, it’s syncing your contacts between web services, your computer, and your mobile phone.

The guys from Soocial, Stefan is in the one with his arms in the air.

How did you come up with the idea of Soocial?

“SEX! Well not really but we figured you’d read on if I start my answers with sex. I’ll throw random words in my answers to see if we can retain readers attention. HORSES! FIRE! FOES! So how _did_ Soocial start? It was actually when we needed a bunch of new computers and migrating the address book was such a hassle. Then we thought, wait a minute, in order to really solve this problem we need to solve it for our phones too. SWEDISH CHEF! Then after a while we abstracted the base-line idea that you need an address-book solution everywhere you use contacts. In a “nutcase” that is the essence of what Soocial is aiming: to be the de-facto standard contact platform, that enables you to finally have one connected unified address book. Or simpler: we want to supply your address book on the Internet as OS.” (more…)

contacts, five questions for start-ups, mobileme, plaxo, syncing

4 Comments »