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Startup Meme would be blogging live about the WWDC 2008. Our commentary about Job’s keynote and product releases would be posted here right on this very post live. So watch this post swell as the event unfolds.
The live coverage would also be available in Startup Meme’s Friendfeed room. So stay tuned and stay agile, for this year’s “One Last Thing…”
You can also join us at:
Ok guys, so we are live on the web. But the latest news is that even before the conference could kick start, Twitter has gone down or at least its showing its dead whale to us. Twitter had made several arrangements, but the pre-conference flock was a little too much for it to handle. Don’t know what would have happened to its servers once the conference would have been in full flow. May be it should really shut down.
Other bloggers doing the live coverage are:
I will be updating the list as I will be coming up with more names from Techmeme. But you should follow each and everyone of these, if you are an Apple addict just to be sure that you didn’t left out on anything. Venture Beat also promised to do the live show but their post isn’t up by now. Will update the link as soon as they are live on the block
Covered Signboard: (9:40 AM)
Did Apple forgot to uncover it or is it a secret? So much hype has been created even before the start of the conference that everyone is observing each and every aspect of it (even the arena in this case). Lets see how many surprises we come across through out the day.
Picture via aarontait
9:48 AM
Just to tell all those who don’t know about it, already that this is the first WWDC in Apple’s history has been sold out days before the actual event. Apple is hot on the heals of iPod and iPhone, its definitely one stock to have in your portfolio even in this recession hit economy.
10:19 AM
The iPhone SDK has three parts, but Jobs is starting with the Enterprise version
10:22 AM
iPhone Enterprise has Microsoft Exchange, Cisco VPN and various other security options built into it. 35% Fortune 500 companies have taken part in the program.
10:23 AM
Next in line is the iPhone SDK, Scott Forestall from Apple will show off the apps to us.
10:25 AM
The iPhone’s OS X ships with stuff like Bonjour and SQLite (the very light DBMS), hardware accelerated Open GL and positional audio and the Cocoa Touch API that lets people access all these features
10:27 AM
The debugging and testing tools in the SDK include Xcode, Interface Builder and iPhone Simulator. You can use them to code, debug and test the apps you want to run on the iPhone.
10:28 AM
Scott is demoing the import of the API’s using Xcode.
10:30 AM
Scott’s sample app is a contact searching service. He is using location based services to filter the contacts of people who are within a mile of his location (pretty slick). Will they be including a GPS with the device or what.
10:32 AM
Developer survey of the SDK managed to get the following quotes from the developers “breath of fresh air? and “blows them away?. It blows everything away that they had worked with from RIM (Why is Apple bent upon destroying RIM).
10:33 AM
“you’re witnessing the birth of a third major computer platform, Windows, Mac OS X and iPhone.?
10:34 AM
Next up is SEGA with Super Monkey Ball.
10:36 AM
Ethan Einhorn from SEGA is onstage. They have built 110 stages of the game in 95 days. He demo’s the “pin-point acceleration and turning and the tilt control?. The game will ship for $9.99
10:37 AM
Ken Sun from eBay is next in line to demo their app. Its called “Auctions?. They think that the phone is already a hot way for users to access eBay auctions, so they have come up with a cool app for this purpose. You can search for and bid for auctions, add stuff to your watch list and do almost everything that you can do on your standard web browser.
10:40 AM
Sam Altman the Loopt co-founder is next in line. Loopt is a social networking site, funded by YCombinator (for those who didnt knew already). I guess he’ll demo some social networking stuff.
10:42 AM
Sam Altman has come up with a map showing pins that in reality are your friends near by. Pretty slick isn’t it (Thanks to Google Maps 
). Using the app you can sms, call or just leave a Loopt service message. Pretty handy dating app what you think guys.
10:44 AM
Than we have TypePad, they have come up with a iPhone version of their TypePad service, that lets you post to your blogs using the iPhone. Wonder when Wordpress will come up with something similar.
10:46 AM
Now we have Associated Press. My God, how come such a Goliath so quick to respond to iPhone. They have also come up with an app for the iPhone. You can fetch stories to your iPhone. Its a feed reader thingie + some sort of outlook, which allows you to save stories offline to be read later. Its not just stories but videos could also be fetched and viewed.
10:48 AM
Pangea Software is now demoing there physics based puzzle game which they are calling Enigmo. I guess the main reason for presenting these things is to let us know that the iPhone can handle lots of computations fast. They also are launching a second game called Cromag Ralley, its a 3D caveman racing game. Both games ship for $9.99.
10:50 AM
Jeremy Schoenherr of MLB is now displaying “AtBat?, which shows the latest game stats of the day and that too in real time. The service can show realtime video high lights as well.
10:58 AM
Now we have Modality,a software for medical science students, by a company called Epocrates. Students can use the software to view body parts. Study Anatomy and Physiology I guess (What do I know man). Looks like Apple has asked each and every market segmet to come up and present a demo app. I guess next in line would be a financial app.
– Apple stock is now 5% down since the start of the event. Man what are the investors thinking they are upto. Why has so much panic struck the wall street. Were they expecting something other than this. I for one will wait till the “One Last Thing…”
11:04 AM
MIMvista another medical company has also come up with an app. The app can allow medical students to do CT and PET scan. What the hell is this device. Is there anything in this world that cant be done with an iPhone.
Doctors can even share the the imagery with other doctors from iPhone to iPhone. What if the other doctor doesnt have an iPhone ? No answers.
11:05 AM
Digital Legends Entertainment a Spanish company has also come up with a game. Its a 3D game ported in just 4 days. Shit man the game wont be available till Sep. Than why the hell did they come up to demo it!!
11:06 AM
Apple has also come up with a notification service that lets developers get notified of the apps that are not running. There are a lot of wrong solutions to it like keep it running as a background process. But in a phone thats wastage of battery life and performance. Both of which you cant afford in a phone.
11:07 AM
Apple’s answer to the problem. Push notification service. When you are running an IM app, you are continuously connected to the server that pushes your updates as it gets it to various apps. Devs could push badges, sounds and custom textual alerts.
There is only one persistent connection so it really scales well. Works over the air on WiFi, aaah but will be available in Sep.
11:14 AM
Steve’s back on stage, here’s the man. He is demoing the Contact Search and full iWork document support. The new iPhone has iWorks which has support for MS office, bulk update/delete, image saving from email to your photo library, a scientific calculator.
11:18 AM
The new iPhone 2.0 (does this has something to do with Web 2.0) software will be released in July. It will be free for all iPhone owners but $9.95 for the iPod touch owners.
11:20 AM
Apple store icon is now intelligent. It will automatically tell you when there’s an update for an app and you could then just download it. Developers get 705 of their apps, and Apple wont charge anything on free apps.
11:24 AM
Enterprise could also distribute apps on their own intranet by first authorizing the phones on the network and then distributing the apps via iTunes. Another way to do this is Ad Hoc. Developers can be certified and then register 100 iPhones. After this. apps can be sent around and install it on their iPhones as long as that iPhone is part of the 100 phone lot.
11:27 AM
Phil Shiller is now demoing Mobile Me. He is calling it “exchange for the rest of us?. Active sync will sync your information from the cloud with your device (Has Apple also started to work on the cloud). It will push the information up and down keeping your apps and docs updated round the clock. The service has direct integration with email, calendar and other native Mac and PC apps.
11:28 AM
Photos could also be send over the air, could be updated and could be uploaded in the mobile me albums.
11:30 AM
Now the demo begins. The Address Book shows real time search and contacts are listed on Google Maps. The calendar is detto as iCal. There is iPhoto and drag and drop. You could also rotate and resize photos and thumbnails.
11:31 AM
iDisk is also totally online now and could be used to share files with your friends and family and colleagues.
11:34 AM
Jobs is back. In a couple of weeks it will be iPhone’s first birthday. “This is the phone that has changed phones forever?. And you are the guy that has changed Keynotes for ever, else I wouldn’t have been here sitting on my lousy chair typing this fast.
11:39 AM
The iPhone has phenomenal stats – 90% customer satisfaction, 98% people browsing, 94% using email, 90% text messaging, and 80% using 10 features or more.
11:41 AM
In the first year Apple sold 6 million iPhones. Now we want to take all this to the next level, and today we are introducing iPhone 3G (Man it has come out just as expected).
11:44 AM
iPhone 3G is thinner at the edges, has a full plastic back, solid metal buttons, 3.5 inch display, camera, Flush Headphone Jack and improved audio. 3G is many times faster than EDGE. That was a demand that Apple had since its initial launch of iPhone.
11:46 AM
Jobs is comparing the EDGE and 3G phones. The 3G phone is amazingly faster than the EDGE one.
11:48 AM
The 3G is also no dumbo when it comes to battery life. It has 300 hours of standby battery life. 3G talk time of 5 hours. Browsing of 5-6 hours. Video of 7 hours and audio of 24 hours.
11:51 AM
OK it has GPS built in just as expected. Jobs thinks that location services would be really big deal. We now have location data from cell towers, WiFi and GPS. Jobs is demoing location tracking in a street in SF.
11:53 AM
Apple will be expanding the launch of the phone to more countries. Current count stands at 6. Mexico and Canada are covered, as well as most countries in South America. Japan is in too, but China and Russia are out (Yes Apple hates the communist block).
11:55 AM
The new iPhone’s 8GB model will now cost $199, 16GB $ 299 against the $399 of the previous 8GB model. There will also be a WHITE model.
11:56 AM
The new iPhone’s 8GB model will now cost $199, 16GB $ 299 against the $399 of the previous 8GB model. There will also be a WHITE model.
11:58 AM
iPhone will be rolling out worldwide on 11 July.
12:00 PM
Jobs has left the stage and the Keynote is over.
