7:16pm EDT, Thu Sep 2

Apple’s Got a Brand New Bag

By: The Online Reporter
Publish Date: June 12, 2009

Complete articles are posted three weeks after they have been sent to subscribers. To request a copy of the current edition, e-mail paperboy@riderresearch.com .

- Getting the Upper Hand on Palm - Better Phone, Better OS; US Prices Could Be Better - Lighter, Faster, Cheaper PCs, Software There was plenty of buzz going into Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference, with this year’s theme something along the lines of “An Apple a day keeps the Pre away.” With the market focusing so heavily on the new iPhone and its operating system, Apple was forced to evolve or die, and it has pulled out some new tricks that are pretty impressive. How well the new iPhone will stack up against Palm’s Pre and RIM’s Blackberry, whether the new prices will drive or hinder adoption and whether Apple will pick up some of the PC market won’t be known until later this year, but for now signs are looking good. Can’t Judge a Phone by Its Cover While rumors touted an iPhone Nano, Apple went the other way and introduced a beefed-up version of its mobile, the new iPhone 3G S. It looks almost exactly like the iPhone 3G, but it’s what’s inside that counts. The improvements for this new model are: - It’s faster — the S is for Speed. Apple said most applications and Web pages will load and work twice as fast as the previous model. Visuals and 3D graphics have also been improved in rendering and speed for games. - The 3-megapixel camera is all new. It comes with autofocus and a user can also focus it by tapping on the screen. It has a variety of recording settings, the best of which is the VGA-quality 30 frames per second video recording with basic video editing and sharing built in. - The voice control isn’t just for calls anymore. Users can now talk to play music, ask the mobile what song is playing, request specific songs by a variety of options and even ask their phone to play songs related to the current track. - There’s a built-in digital compass that works with Maps and has some improved GPS usage. - There’s a gesture-based screen reader setting on the device called Voiceover. - Battery life also got better; it’s capable of surfing for nine hours on Wi-Fi, giving 10 hours of video playback, sending out 30 hours of audio playback or letting users talk for five hours on 3G networks. While these updates are nice and make the model a significant improvement over the previous version, the really impressive updates come on the iPhone OS 3.0. Older iPhones will be able to get the OS 3.0 update for free on June 17, when the iPhone 3G S launches. When all is said and done, Apple is promising to bring about 100 new features by launch. The highlights so far for the new OS include: - App functionality has been improved. Some features can now run somewhat in the background and in-app activity has been made available. The one likely to be most used will be in-app commerce. - Cut and paste have finally arrived. This one took a little too long. - Messaging has been improved. There are more options for text messages and the iPhone now supports multimedia messaging, but it’ll be a while before the iPhone’s network supports this. - The iPhone’s iTunes store has been improved. Users can now rent and purchase movies, download TV shows and access audiobooks and textbooks. ITunes gift cards are now redeemable from the handset as well. Hopefully there will be some Apple TV integration and eventually the ability to pick up where you left off when moving from one device to another. - Tethering is an option finally, but it is carrier-dependent. It’ll begin on 17 or so networks the day the new handset launches, but the US will lack support for an undefined amount of time. - Peer-to-peer access has been granted. With the peer-to-peer network users can find other nearby users to play games and use social applications with. The $99 Game Changer When Apple introduced its new iPhone 3G S, the Internet exploded. While the news raged and thousands compared the features to other smartphones — even we do, take a look below — Apple had an impressive champion sitting on the sidelines waiting for a fight. Apple’s greatest strength in all of this is the multitude of designers and developers who are beating down its door to make the next cool and practical app, and this strength makes the old iPhone 3G the most important of all the phones up on the auction block. The iPhone 3G will continue to be sold alongside the new 3G S but will cost $99 — sorry you recent buyers who got stuck with the $199 price — making it an extremely popular smartphone with perhaps the most reasonable price out there during a still-struggling economy. The older iPhone won’t be able to keep up with some newer apps because it has a slightly slower processor, but this won’t become a real problem for quite some time. With the huge installed-user base, some new apps will immediately leverage the new options available to them — especially the in-app commerce — but the majority of new apps will be designed to run on the 3G, albeit a little slower. Glenn Derene over at Popular Mechanics said the older iPhone is going to remain a big deal because: “Americans have time and again demonstrated that they look for value over horsepower in personal electronics. Consider netbooks, which are equipped with slow processors and meager storage, yet sell like hotcakes. Or the graphics-light but fun Wii, which trounced the far more powerful and more expensive PlayStation 3.” While price could hit Apple hard in terms of the new iPhone 3G S and some of its personal computers, the company knows that success comes with a cheaper model. Look at the iPod Classic; it sold very well, but the biggest sellers in the family have been the iPod Nanos and Minis. When the majority of apps start to become too much for the iPhone 3G to handle, it’ll be about time for the iPhone 3G S to drop in price and make room for another, stronger model. Until then, Apple has perhaps the most popular smartphone on the market at one of the best prices around. The Pre Game Palm’s Pre has been getting great reviews since its first day on the scene, but it’s going to have some rough competition from both the iPhone 3G and 3G S. The Pre’s the best there is when it comes to multitasking, and its notification system is hard to match. The display is great looking with good multitouch interaction, a solid browser and strong audio and video options. The Pre’s physical keyboard is a little cramped for big fingers and is on par with the iPhone’s touchscreen keyboard. It has a nice flash on its camera, but it currently lacks the Flash that really matters. The big problems the Pre will face right out of the gate come from its app store. There are around 18 active apps for the Pre, though the device is likely compatible with an emulator for other Palm apps — but this will likely drain the battery quickly and be a too- technical process for most users. Palm built a solid operating system whose multifunction abilities and background app abilities make it a solid contender against the iPhone’s new OS 3.0. The Pre itself is a strong entry and good middle ground between the iPhone 3G and 3G S, but Apple has stepped up its ante significantly this week. The Pre will be the most closely scrutinized rival and most denounced handset if either iPhone model does better. Here’s how they match up: Good, Bad, Ugly: Apple, AT&T, Pricing Apple made big news with price cuts this week, but there should have been some fine print passed around when it came to the iPhone price plans with AT&T. For users with a new two-year contract, prices are: 8GB iPhone 3G $99 16GB iPhone 3G S $199 32GB iPhone 3G S $299 For users already on a new two-year contract — which would be a fair chunk of iPhone users — but want an iPhone and those who want it without a contract, prices will look something like this: 8GB iPhone 3G $499 16GB iPhone 3G S $599 32GB iPhone 3G S $699 If users have been in a contract for at least a year, AT&T will provide an “early upgrade” discount which will look like this: 16GB iPhone 3G S $399 32GB iPhone 3G S $499 So, it looks like the new 16GB iPhone 3G S will cost a user $199, $399 or up to $599. There was also no price drop from AT&T’s side on data services or packages that include messaging. Oh, and native multimedia messaging (MMS) is supported by the iPhone finally but won’t be available to US consumers just yet because AT&T’s network can’t support it right now. Waiting on that network also means that US users won’t be able to use the new tethering abilities on their iPhone 3G S. These were two big things people had been looking forward to from the new iPhone. This looks to be something on AT&T’s end since 22 countries will be supporting MMS and 17 will be supporting tethering on day one of the international launch. AT&T has promised MMS later this summer; no word yet on tethering. Updating the MacBooks Believe it or not, Apple did talk about something besides the iPhone. Apple has updated its MacBook Pro lineup, featuring better processors, an aluminum unibody, longer battery life and lower prices. Battery life is now being pushed up to seven hours on a single charge and the new lithium-polymer batteries can be charged up to 1,000 times. The displays and glass multitouch trackpads now are now backlit by LEDs. The 13-inch version will range from $1,200 to $1,500; the 15-inch goes for $1,700 up to $2,300; and the 17-inch will sell for $2,500, a $300 price cut. The MacBook Air got a bit of the action with a price cut for the entry-level version and a new, beefier version with a better processor and storage. The MacBook Air will cost $1,499 to $1,799 — the high-end price coming with a nice $700 price cut. The Software Redux Bernard Serlet, a top Mac OS executive, took the stage at WWDC to announce a new, faster version of the Safari Web browser. The new Safari version 4 is said to be 7.8 times faster than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8.0, but no comparison to the new Bing was offered. QuickTime X was also announced, coming with better Web streaming options and hardware acceleration. Apple is taking a big swing at editing and watching videos, and has integrated some quick sharing both with the iPhone and iPhone contacts. The Snow Leopard operating system had a few tweaks here and there, but its price was the real shocker. The new OS will cost $29, more than $100 less than the previous version. A family pack for Snow Leopard will cost $49, another big savings. Lessons in Making Applesauce Apple has a handset that’s in demand and an app store that’s huge. Unfortunately for Palm, the current offering for its Pre is meager at best and it will continually be compared to the iPhone’s vast offering. From almost day one, companies have sought to bring an iPhone slayer to the market with little to no success. Now the market has two dragons to contend with. The only thing missing in all of this was Adobe’s Flash, but with the success of previous iPhone models, the market is only missing Adobe a little bit. While the iPhone 3G S might not take off as quickly as previous models, no one has been able to best Apple at the smartphone game. With two nice price points for the 3G iPhones, it looks like there won’t be any dethroning anytime soon.