On Sep 9th 2009 at 9am PST Apple invited selected journalists to a special event in San Francisco. Apple did not bring up the Rolling Stones with Mick Jagger on stage of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater … but their song “It’s only Rock’n Roll (But I like it)” from 1974 was the intro of the event
Steve Jobs showed up on stage the first time since his liver transplantation and got a very warm welcome. Great to see, that he is doing better, now. He and Phil Schiller shared a lot of news and innovations:

Video-on-demand Quicktime-Stream of the Apple Special Event September 2009

Here are the facts of the 75min event:

Sales figures:

• Apple sold 30 million iPhones over the last 2 years
• In total they sold 220 million iPods since now. 20 million of these are iPod touch and 100 million are iPod Nano devices
• This means of over 50 million customers have access to the AppStore and can buy apps.
• 1.8 billion AppStore app-downloads (without updates)
• iTunes is #1 music retailer in the world
• iTunes has more than 100 million accounts

iTunes & iPhone OS update:

• iTunes 9 and iPhone OS update 3.1
• Genius-recommendations for apps in the AppStore
• 30.000 ringtones
• Genius Mixes … automatic mixes of songs in your library
• Improved synchronization
• Management of the iPhone / iPod touch apps within iTunes
• Home Sharing of songs
• Improved interface and optimized navigation within iTunes
• iTunes LP for music albums – the interactive replacement for LP-booklets
• iTunes Extras for Movies – Extras and chapter-selection for movies
• iTunes wish list

Sneak previews of new games:

• Ubisoft – Ben Mattens: Assasins Creed II Discovery
• Tapulous – Bart Decrem: Riddim Ribbon
• Gameloft – Mark Hickey: Nova
• EA Electronic Arts – Travis Boatman: Madden NFL 10

Update of the iPod product line:

• iPod touch – new price tags for iPod touch: $199 8GB – $299 – 32GB – $399 64GB. The two bigger models also have a faster processor and are up to 50% faster and they also support OpenGL ES 2.0 – like the iPhone 3GS.
• iPod classic – now comes with 160GB at the same price
• iPod shuffle – new colors and better prices as well as a new polished stainless steel special edition.
• iPod Nano – comes with a video camera, an fm-radio, audio recording, a pedometer and in many different colors.

Today, at March 17 2009 at 10 am PST the invitation only event starts at the Apple headquater in Cupertino. Here a list of blogs who report live from the event:

• Jason Snell & Dan Moren for MacWorld
• Jason Chen for Gizmodo
• Tom Krazit for cnet news
• Joshua Topolsky for engadget
• John Paczkowski for All Things Digital
• Harry McCracken for Technologizer
• David Chartier for Ars Technica
• Greg Kumparak from MobileCrunch for TechCrunch

There is only one last thing … have fun … and let’s hope that our feature dreams will come true

Apple will host an invite-only “iPhone OS 3.0 Software” on Tuesday, March 17. There are a lot of speculations around these days what Apple will present on that day.
Before we go into detail what we might see on Tuesday, let’s talk about some widespread but weird rumors of what iPhone OS 3.0 is all about:

• Tethering – we all love to have it – but I think we won’t see this in iPhone OS 3.0: Operators most fear this option – and even the “open” T-Mobile G1 does not have that as a standard feature. So this probably will not be one of the groundbreaking new features for Apple to come along with iPhone OS 3.0.
• Copy-and-Paste – a missing feature from the first day of the iPhone. Apple may include this feature into the iPhone – but this only may be a marginal note within the presentation. BTW Apple solved the “copy and paste” challenge many years ago with the fabulous Message Newton Pad
• MMS – maybe Apple finally included MMS into the iPhone. But let’s be honest: MMS was one of the big flops in the mobile industry: Nearly nobody needs them, they are expensive and you often don’t know if the other one can receive them. So, MMS is nothing special and we probably won’t really miss it.

So let’s take a closer look on the invitation itself. What does it show: Blueprints of iPhone OS 3.0 Software. And there is probably only one reason why Apple will share “blueprints” of the upcoming OS to the media: Major changes to the OS and the SDK and this implies mayor changes to the underlying hardware. There will be new hardware this summer as the first 2 year contracts for the iPhone 2G are ending – and those users of the first hour need something new they’ll be thrilled about. But the reason for Apple to talk about an “advanced preview on what we’re building” must be something else: They need all iPhone developers to join forces for the new things to come:

• Background tasks or push notifications – Apple promised to introduce the Apple Push Notification Service for 3rd parties in June 2008 – so we probably will hear more on push notification or even background processes on the iPhone in general. This also would open up a lot of new possibilities to enrich existing apps and create new app and game concepts from the ground up.
• Springboard – handling lot’s of applications on the “homescreen” of the iPhone is a mess these days. When the iPhone was launched nobody dreamed of users who want to have hundreds of (paid) apps on their iPhone. But the iPhone is the first mobile platform where users really do download and buy apps like crazy. So Apple might come with an innovation in this field which also opens up some new opportunities for developers – especially if Apple combines it with notification or background features.
• Video – One mayor step would be the smooth integration of video into the OS and the SDK. Video recording is a convenience on platforms like Symbian, android or even Windows Mobile.
• Direct camera access for augmented reality apps – If Apple also improves the SDK so applications can access the camera directly, this would also open up the possibilities for absolutely new application and game concepts: augmented reality. There have been a few augmented reality games on the Symbian platform – and they are gorgeous!
• Gyro compass – as the first android-phone has one – so Apple may integrate this into the iPhone, too. This feature would be very interesting for implementing new ways of interaction – especially for navigation and gaming apps.
• Shared information between apps – every iPhone app is sandboxed these days. So there is no (legal) way to transfer information from one application to an other besides pictures. This also would be a great opportunity for iPhone developers.
• Variable screen sizes – introducing different screen sizes into the iPhone OS would make it much more flexible in the direction of rumors like the iPhone tablet with a 10″ display or iPhones with an HD-display. And it would be a lot of work for all developers to polish the app interfaces to look great on different screen sizes. But I’m not sure whether Apple will open the pandora’s box of different screen sizes for the iPhone OS. Maybe they stay with one screen resolution and realize other gadgets like the rumored MacBook touch with the upcoming Mac OS Snow Leopard.

My2cents for tomorrow

In the last days, there is a lot of whispering: Here a Chinese iPod skin manufacturer publishes a small iPhone skin on his website, an analyst wishes for an iPhone for the mass marked … and bang, everybody is expecting an iPhone nano to be announced. Then the news is spreaded, that Steve Wozniak – second founder of Apple – will join the presentation of the newest modbook at the Axiotron booth at MacWorldExpo … it’s a MacBook transformed into a tablet Mac. That increases the desire and spins the rumor mill even faster for an iPod tablet or MacBook touch. However, the market positioning of such a multitouch-gadget will be tricky:

• If Apple stays with the walled garden iPhone version of Mac OS X they would have the existing and vital iPhone developer community committed to multitouch and gesture control … and by the way an exclusive distribution channel for applications with the AppStore. The main focus probably would be gaming and entertainment. But the gadget will loose the “pants pocket factor”.
• If Apple uses a full Mac OS X version they could use the experiences of Axiotron and have to count on the Mac OS X developers, that they implement the benefits and potentials of multitouch and gesture control within their (existing) applications. The gadget would be more like a “MacBook Air Touch” than an iPod tablet and would more likely suite and target the business customers. En passent this would explain why there is so little spectacular information about the new Mac OS X Snow Leopard features leaked out.

What ever Phil Schiller will present on his Keynote at the Moscow-Center at MacWorldExpo in San Francisco on January 6th … and what is hidden behind the concealed exhibition banners … I’m thrilled and I’m really looking forward to it

Jason Chen, android-Developer-Advocate at Google, just blogged the good news: One day before the first T-Mobile-G1 android-smartphones ship in the US, the Open Handset Alliance released the sourcecode of the android operating system as open source. Quite logical and necessary step … but don’t under estimate this: This step may change the mobile industry like LINUX changed the computer industry.