Macgasm

Today at the WWDC keynote, Apple announced the release of the 13-inch MacBook Pro model. This new model features a Firewire 800 port, a SD card slot, and it can take up to 8 GB of RAM. The 13-incher starts at $1199 USD. That is less costly than the old unibody MacBook this is replacing.

WWDC is upon us and we’re pretty stoked. On of the best things about being Apple bloggers is that we get to pretend like we know what’s coming in Apple’s development cycle. So, that being said, we decided to put together some predictions from the various writers and contributors to this site. You can find our best guesses below. You can catch us on IRC for a live chat during the keynote as well by connecting here:

Server: irc.mibbit.com
Channel: #macgasm

 

We’ll also be doing a quick podcast once the event is done, so get yourself ready for that. It should be a doozy.

Joshua Schnell

• Video Capture iPhone.  It’s the next logical step.
• Greater differentiation between the touch and the iPhone. They want to give us a reason to “need” both.

Grant Brunner

• Official Blu-Ray support in Snow Leopard?
• iPhone OS 3.0 and Snow Leopard release dates?

Wayne Dixon

• OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Release date announcement.
• Revealing previous unreleased iPhone OS 3.0 features, won’t ship until Late July

Jason Hamilton

• The iPhone will see a significant hardware speed increase.
• I expect there will be some more focus on background apps for the iPhone. Either an Apple created Twitter or IM app, or a third party one that they talk a lot about.

Corey Harris

• We will see iChat for the iPhone finally.
• Users will have the ability to change their background from black to any image or color they want.

Christine Chan

• Surprise! Multitasking on the iPhone! I mean, with the Pre out, maybe it’ll be a surprise to stay competitive?
• And iChat! I mean, the camera on the front…I have a feeling that is going to be real and it’s for iChat. Or maybe just an easier way to do self portraits?

Simon Wicks

• Can i just predict i’ll more than likely be parting with some money?

So on Monday, June 8, 2009, it is once again time for Apple’s World Wide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) at 10:00AM PT at Moscone West in San Francisco. With that there will be a Keynote and I’ve been hearing some rumors of what might come out of said keynote.

Some of these predictions include:

• iPhone OS 3.0 being released.
• New iPhone Hardware.
• Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard release date
• Steve Jobs making an appearance.
• Mac Tablet.

Let’s go through these and I’ll let you know what I think.

iPhone OS 3.0 being released

I do not see this happening on June 8th. Will they talk about iPhone OS 3.0? Yes, definitely. From what I’ve read about the iPhone OS 3.0 betas, I do not think the software is fully ready to ship. There are still some rather major bugs that need to be fixed. Additionally, from other blogs who have gotten tips, the last iPhone OS 3.0 beta was just over a month ago, yet the one before that was only about a week prior.

To many it seems as though such a long time without an update would be an indicator that it’s nearly finished, but that doesn’t seem to be the case with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. The builds with that seemed to be coming faster.

My thought with iPhone OS 3.0 is that it is not done, and that Apple has something up it’s sleeve with regards to releasing a new beta. It seems to me that they are planning on introducing new features and have been pushing off releasing a new beta until WWDC to be able to announce the features so developers can implement them into their applications.

What does Apple have up its sleeve? I don’t know. It could be video recording, could be iChat (although Adium would be much better), could be any number of applications.

New iPhone Hardware

Rumors have been swirling about new iPhone hardware being released at WWDC, again I just cannot see this happening. Perhaps an announcement, sure why not. If there is an announcement it probably wont’ ship until Late July. I say late July based solely on the fact that the original iPhone was released on Friday, June 29th, iPhone 3G was Friday, July 11th (13 days later). So, I would assume they are going to stick with the tradition of 13 days after that, which leads us to July 24th;

I do not have any evidence of this, just seeing a pattern. My guess is that I will be wrong, but it’s my thought.

The second aspect of the new iPhone Hardware rumors is the 3.2 megapixel camera, front facing video camera, magnometer, and 32 gigabyte model. All of these seem plausible except for the front facing video camera. I do not see this happening, unless they announce iChat for video conferencing. Although, then it would most likely only be over Wi-Fi since AT&T’s network in the US sucks, particularly 3G coverage.

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard release date

We all know that WWDC will focus on software — it is a developer conference afterall. Last year, Steve Jobs covered Snow Leopard and had said that it will be available in ‘about a year’. Well, it is now a year later and we’re still waiting. I do expect them to announce a release date, at which point I might end up buying my Apple Server Maintenance for my copy of OS X 10.5, or maybe I’ll just buy a new copy of OS X Server so I can then have two copies.

The rumor mill has been quiet about OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard as of late, possibly pointing to the product essentially being finished. I do hope that they show off quite a bit of Snow Leopard. I definitely do see a release date for Snow Leopard being announced.

Steve Jobs making an appearance

When Apple announced that Steve Jobs would be taking a medical leave of absence they have always maintained that he would not be back at Apple until the end of June. I do not see why they would change that date.

I do not see Steve Jobs making an appearance, at least not in public. He might be backstage at the keynote just for support for his management team.

Mac Tablet.

The Mac Tablet rumors have been swirling for quite some time. I’m going to use the term mac tablet, although we do not know the exact form factor.

I do not see them announcing this at WWDC, this would be it’s very own special event. If the form factor is that of a larger iPod Touch, then it would make more sense to me that they announce this with new iPods not at WWDC. They could just do the same thing that did with the Apple TV, just give a preview.

Although, my own thoughts would be that the so called ‘Mac Tablet’ would be able to dual-boot both Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and iPhone OS. Therefore, if you needed to get some longer term work done you could do so with Snow Leopard, yet if you want to watch video content, play games, surf the web, etc you could do so with the iPhone OS software. Just my own thoughts I guess. Maybe it is just what I want to see in a Mac Tablet.

Final thoughts

These are just some of the rumors that have surfaced about Apple’s WWDC 2009 Keynote event. It won’t be too much longer until our anticipation is quelled and we can all go back to speculating on rumors for the next event. That is, of course, after the reality distortion field has been lifted and we digest the keynote for about a week.

It’s a word game, and there’s nothing more fun then racking your brain for all those possible word combinations that you have stored away (well, maybe aside from killing zombies). The ES Group Mobile guys explain it classifies it as:<

A traditional timed word search with the skill of a slider puzzle.

As far as word games go, this one has all the appeal that a word game should have. It’s challenging and fun at the same time. The concept is pretty simple: Tap a letter and drag your finger to adjacent letters to spell out words. The longer the word the more points you get. You can go left to right, top to bottom, around in a circle, backwards, from a corner to another, or a combination of all of them to spell anything. I was a little disappointed when “Pron” didn’t work, but I can live with that.

In the future?

I tend to play all my games in landscape mode. It’s not a deal breaker by any means, but having the option would add to the appeal for me. There is also a pause button. I’m that hardcore! I need to pause it, especially if I’m on an epic run. Adding some tilt functions to fill the empty space would be pretty damn cool as well.

Video of some game play action below.

[download in HD]

First, if you have an iPhone and don’t use AirSharing, then you need to start. AirSharing is an iPhone app that turns your iPhone into a jump drive. Well, more than just a jump drive. It is considered a document viewer app, but I think of it as a whole lot more. You can connect with AirSharing from your computer and it acts as a server. This gives you the feel of using the app as a jump drive. The ability to drag several different file types onto your device and the ability to read them make this app indispensable. If you have a resume that you want to keep with you, or certain documents you need to always have handy, you are set. It holds Word, Excel, Pages, Numbers, PDF’s and more.

History:

Avatron Software was founded by Dave Howell in 2008 after the iPhone SDK was announced. By June 2008, Avatron had 3 employees, all very experienced Mac developers. Then the brainstorming began by sifting through ideas to fill a need in the market, AirSharing was born. Originally, there was nothing like it in the app store. By the time of release, there were already a couple in the app store though. One of the apps had to work with Desktop Software and the other was only made for the Mac platform. This is where AirSharing had the advantage. With AirSharing you didn’t need anything but the app and to have wifi on. That’s it.

For the first two weeks of its release, AirSharing was free in the app store. It quickly became the #1 downloaded app. Even after they started charging $4.99 they still continued to sell. That says a lot for an app. Eight months later, AirSharing Pro came to life.

AirSharing Pro:

The Pro Version retails for $9.99 and it is worth every penny. With the Pro version, you have the ability to connect to your MobileMe iDisk, FilesAnywhere account, Box.net account, MyDisk.se and other WebDAV servers you may have. Also you don’t have to be on wifi to access these accounts. You also have the ability to print to a network printer and even email a file. Now when you email AirSharing uploads what you want to email to Drop.io and then launches mail app and emails a link. But this feature works great. You can even view Zipped Documents.

Like most people, I wondered about DropBox support. DropBox is not currently supported. This is because of the current lack of API for DropBox. Avatron plans on DropBox support very soon.

All in all, I recommend buying this app. Either regular AirSharing or the Pro version. Both are worth every penny. I have both. If you are debating on the ability to use the features in the Pro version, you can get a MyDisk.se account for free. So check them out.

More info:

Avatron Software

AirSharing [iTunes Link]

AirSharing Pro [iTunes Link]

[Download This Episode]

In this episode, Grant talks about keeping your Mac awake with Caffeine.app.

[00.8 MB] [0:01:30] [Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner]

[Download This Episode]

In this episode, Josh talks about the possibility of an Apple Tablet.

[01.8 MB] [0:03:50] [Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner]

A few months ago I talked about Eventbox, but now I want to take a look at their competitor. Nambu offers about the same basic feel of Eventbox. It has a mailbox feel, and best off all it is free. Since Nambu is still in beta some of their features are turned off like Friendfeed and Ping. Nambu also produces pic.im (photo posting service) and tr.im (URL shortening Service). Nambu is also available for free on the iPhone and may actually replace my current iPhone twitter client. Their iPhone app also supports FriendFeed.

[download in HD]