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I cuddled up to the Leopard and once you install an OS you kinda think “erm, ok. now what?”.

There are a few small features that are good to see though. One of them is the Wifi drop down. In the past you had no idea if a network required a password a not which was really painful. Now you finally get told:

Finally we can stop talking about if it is coming or not… and second guessing Apple.

It’s coming. Things just take time. I can’t wait to see the applications that people come up with for the phone now. I have been amazed at what creative hackers have been able to do without an SDK…. so WITH it….

Third Party Applications on the iPhone

Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users. With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we have created the best mobile platform ever for developers.

It will take until February to release an SDK because we’re trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once—provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc. This is no easy task. Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones—this is simply not true. There have been serious viruses on other mobile phones already, including some that silently spread from phone to phone over the cell network. As our phones become more powerful, these malicious programs will become more dangerous. And since the iPhone is the most advanced phone ever, it will be a highly visible target.

Some companies are already taking action. Nokia, for example, is not allowing any applications to be loaded onto some of their newest phones unless they have a digital signature that can be traced back to a known developer. While this makes such a phone less than “totally open,” we believe it is a step in the right direction. We are working on an advanced system which will offer developers broad access to natively program the iPhone’s amazing software platform while at the same time protecting users from malicious programs.

We think a few months of patience now will be rewarded by many years of great third party applications running on safe and reliable iPhones.

Steve

Leopard is coming. Will there be any cool secret features? I have said before that I am not that excited about the OS itself…. but finally we will get to see all of the new apps that people have been holding back because they rely on Leopard.

For example, this list isn’t exactly exciting:

• Google Maps integration with Address Book.
• Tricked out AppleScript.
• Automator UI recording / playback.
• Japanese dictionary support.
• New, easily-printable font books.
• Front Row now looks more like “Back Row” (the Apple TV interface) — too bad it’s still not more like Media Center.
• New AirPort menus that show WiFi encryption.
• Disk encryption now supports 256 bit AES.
• Built-in grammar checker. Lord knows we need it ’round these parts.
• Tabbed terminal.

I finally got around to Tapping some Apps on the iPhone. I am amazed at how good these guys are, and how they reverse engineered things so well. Imagine what they could do if Apple HELPED them, or hired them!

The apps themselves are fine… nothing “must have”. Being able to run ls and some ruby phone is cool to do, but what do I need?

I did enjoy the ants tool though. We had a bunch of ants at our house this week in Palo Alto (the bad side of fruit trees). I used this as a way to trick the family. I got the ants running on the phone and told them that they got on the phone, and then IN the phone. Everyone totally believed that there were ants in there!!!!

Seeing Joe’s Facebook app at an Apple keynote was very cool.

I talked about ipodtouch.ajaxian.com over on that other blog, and how we will be seeing a lot of Mobile Safari browsers hitting us come Christmas.

What about the other news?

• iPod nano: Eh. I am not in the market for that kind of device
• iPod classic: ditto
• iPod Touch: Nicely done. It was obvious to go ahead and do this, and they are executing
• Starbucks: Seems so niche that I hardly care at all. Now, if it starts to work at Peet’s ;)
• iPhone: The price drop is great. Bitter? actually not really. This is what you get for being an early adopter. Steve is being generous in my opinion. Don’t tell me that when you bought v1 right away you didn’t think it would a) go down in price and b) v2 would be a lot better. I quickly came up with a plan:

  v2.onrelease = function() {
  v1.send_to_wife();
  v2.buy();
  };
  

All in all, nothing amazing to see here, but nice incremental execution. I still want 3G. I still want over the wire syncing for everything. And, I still rich app dev platform option. That will be v2.

Nicholas Jitkoff normally hides in the shadows a little, as alcor. They finally persuaded him to come out and speak about Quicksilver.

Quicksilver is the FIRST application that I will install on a new Mac, and it was great to here about it from the horses mouth:

Quicksilver hides almost unbounded power beneath the interface of a keyboard-driven … all

As time has gone on, I have gotten less and less excited about Leopard the operating system. A 3D dock and more transparency doesn’t do that much for me. Having “Spaces” instead of Virtue will be nice to have.

As a developer, having Objective C 2.0, and new APIs such as Core Animation is going to be good.

This is where my excitement peaks. It’s all about the apps. Most of my favourite apps haven’t seen a release for a bloody year! All of the developers are working on wicked cool Leapard stuff, and they can’t get it out of the door until Leopard ships. I have recently seen a few sneak peaks, and WOW, we are in for some great updates, and new applications all coming out on Leopard day.

So, a bit of a “eh” for the OS, but an “Oh yeah” for the new apps!

I have proclaimed several times that I miss my Gmail for Mobile experience on the iPhone.

Ed Burnette then points out that Apple sneaks Java support onto the iPhone.

They didn’t really sneak it on though, it is just on the ARM chip (although not available):

Despite public comments by Steve Jobs that

The iPhone has the fancy new Safari browser (which Nokia has had for awhile, but still) and the un-fancy painful EDGE network is going to kill it.

The internet piece will seem so painful as you will get used to using it via WiFi (which is great) and then when you use it on EDGE you will be crying. Minutes to download a page???? really?

At least on a Blackberry with a minimal system (although it drives me nuts that the browser is painful wrt CSS.. display:none. please!) the latency and download speed is painful, but the data is so small that it comes down in short order.

I am really torn on the iPhone. I do want one. It looks like they are changing their tune on an SDK (sounds like Flash) so we will see cool third party applications.

My main issue is when to bite the bullet.

Ben bought the Apple TV right away. Now the poor guy is looking at a 40GB beast, when he would definitely have spent a few more bugs to get a 160GB upgrade. Apple should really do something to help him in fact. It isn’t like this is 2 years later… it is a matter or months!

Will the same thing happen with the iPhone? If I pretend to be cool and get one on day one, will someone laugh at me in 3 months as a version with 4 times the hd space, and other new features kick in? The pressure to release this thing is so huge that you KNOW that a bunch of corners had to be cut. The date was firm, so they had to do anything to make that date…. and when it is over they can finish up what they really wanted in v1.

So, it may be wise for me to wait on this puppy. Too much $ and the 2 yr contract piece kicks in too.