Yesterday Apple announced new iPhones, to be released later this month. On that same day the new OS for all iPhones will be released.
At the moment I’m looking forward to the OS upgrade, and I don’t find the hardware upgrade to be compelling for exisiting iPhone 3g owners.
As I posted on last year, the iPhone is more about software than about hardware. With the new hardware you get more RAM, a faster processor, a better camera (with video) and a compass. Let’s go through these one by one:
More RAM is always good, but will the applications use it? Will Mobile Safari keep more pages in memory on the new phones? Even if optimizations such as that are implemented, it still just results in a speed bump.
A faster processor is good for… well I guess it will make games run smoother.  App switching will be faster. But for 90% of what I do with my phone it won’t matter.
The video camera might be useful or at least fun. But what will the quality of the video be? Improved photos are a nice to have, but the new OS will improve photo quality on the old phones too. Right now photo quality in anything short of blinding noon-day sun conditions is atrocious. Will the new camera be a huge leap forward?
Finally, the compass. This is mainly interesting (for now) in GPS turn by turn direction apps. Some have speculated that it will eventually enable the iPhone to be a universal pointer, allowing you to gesture toward any object on earth with it and get info. We’ll see.
And yes, it has built-in Nike+. If you love Nike+, this might be the phone for you.
The really cool thing is that everybody is getting copy and paste, search, and undo. These are the things that you’ll use on your iPhone everyday that will improve the experience. Plus the ability to locate your iPhone from mobileMe and remotely wipe it if needed, while not an everyday feature, is essential when you need it. I guess if you’re using your phone as a tracking device (hide it in your significant other’s car?) then it could be an everyday feature. Certainly making it ring remotely would be used once a week in my house.
What sucks in all of this? AT&T. No tethering, no MMS. I bet there have been some tense meetings in the lead up to yesterday. Hopefully they’ll get this figured out eventually.
So yeah, on June 19th, I’ll have a fancy new iPhone. But only because I’m upgrading my OS.
Kulturblog 
While the new hardware features are pretty cool, they are not enough to get me to upgrade from the 3G I currently have. Particularly because I can’t see how I could justify paying an additional $200-300 for just those new features. If I didn’t have an iPhone already, I would most definitely jump on the new 3G-S. No doubt. I guess Apple is not targeting someone like me though; they’ve already got me hook, line and sinker.
However, I am very interested in the new laptop. My G5 is almost five years old and freezing on occasion (no idea why, and not worth the money to go get a Genius to figure it out).
Apple continues to impress me with how they stay ahead of the game in terms of innovation and quality. If I only had the money, I would have bought their stock when it dropped down to $80 a share! There’s no way that Apple’s stock was worth that, and I’m glad to see it back up in the $140s (though it should be over $200).
I’ll be getting the new phone. I’ve been on a first generation iPhone for almost two years now (Edge network sucks) so it is time. And Dan, I sold at $85. This is why I’m not a stockbroker. I think I would have better luck at a craps table.
Rusty,
I’d upgrade in a heartbeat from the first gen phone, especially given that you get the fully subsidized price.
Dan,
Have you tried reinstalling the OS on your G5? Might not be worth the trouble… I have a nearly 3 year old MacBook Pro. That is a long time for me to own a notebook, but I’ve upgraded the RAM and the hard drive and I’m completely satisfied with it. The new uni-body machines are very pretty and look like they’ll last forever (I’m a big believer in case strength) but I am going to wait until I’m actually unhappy with it to upgrade. If you’re unhappy, now looks like a pretty good time. Second generation hardware usually has the bugs worked out…
Me, I’m geting a Palm Pre.
More RAM should make a huge difference in Safari. That’s the biggest bottleneck. That said I’m waiting to see how fast in practice it is. I don’t really need video and the voice dialing and control of itunes is cool, but I can live without it.
The coolest thing is the Tom Tom for the iPhone. Although I bet with the GPS antenna extender it costs at least $100.
What’s nice is most of the best features are part of the 3.0 software and will apply to all iPhones.
BTW – you can tether right now if you jailbreak your phone. I use it a lot on the road. Plus you get a pretty nice command line system if you jailbreak. (I installed iPython which is my calculator on the iPhone)
I have a copy of netshare, which I have just in case I want to tether. I’ve never bothered to do so though.
I might be willing to jailbreak for Python though…
Rose, be aware that the Pre only has cut and paste in text fields, eliminating 90% of the time you’d use it. It’s also slower than the iPhone due to using interpreted rather than compiled code. It has relatively few applications. It also appears, to me, to be much poorer as a phone. (No favorites, for instance, which is a huge issue)
The Snow Leopard announcement was much more meh for me. (I notice you didn’t mention it John – I nearly wrote a post Monday) Yes it’s nice it’s only $29. And it should be much faster for Core 2 Dual based machines or better. I was hoping for more. And I really, really wish Apple would improve some of the security features – like adding sandboxing to Safari.
Rose Tyler,
The Pre is a compelling device, especially if you already have and are happy with Sprint’s service. I loved Sprint’s low prices but the coverage was a dealbreaker for me. Things have probably changed since I used them. Frankly Verizon has the best coverage in my experience, but tended to have the worst phones since they insist on installing their own terrible firmware on them.
John, python comes with it. iPython is a little more of a pain to install although it’s not bad. Other than Python and tethering I don’t really use Cydia (the jailbreak program) terribly much. Had AT&T announced cheap tethering I’d probably get rid of jailbreaking entirely.
Dan, regarding your G5. Open it up and see how dirty it is. I cleaned mine and that resolved most of the freezing problems. I think it was just shorting from dust.
Clark,
I was focusing the post on the iPhone. I didn’t mention the new notebooks in the post either, and I think they’re nifty.
I think that at this point the big news about Snow Leopard is the pricing. $29 is a big jab at Microsoft.
Given that Apple just hired Ivan Kirstc I’m guessing that that we are going to start seeing some interesting security innovations. Frankly, I’m not that concerned about security for reasons that I outlined in a post on my nerd blog a while back. In fact, I’m more excited about the crash protection features in Safari than I would be about security improvements.
Have you seen a listing of security changes for Snow Leopard? My understanding was that it was going to have ASLR and NX bit implementation, but I haven’t seen anything this week to confirm that.
The big disappointment with Snow Leopard that I am aware of is that they’ve silently dropped ZFS support yet again. I wonder if that has something to do with Oracle buying Sun or if it is simply really hard to get right, and nobody cares since we’re all buying laptops for the time being anyhow.
Really? I was pretty disappointed in replacing the ExpressCard with an SD card of all things. (I use an eSATA ExpressCard) Although iSCSCI is doable via the ethernet port.
Other than that it is a nice speed bump but nothing much else.
I am hoping Kirstc does a lot. But then I thought we’d see some file system innovations after Dominic Giampaolo joined Apple years ago. But I note that the closest to innovation has been ZFS in Snow Leopard and that was taken out of builds several months ago and isn’t on the Apple web pages any more. (Note this was before the Oracle purchase)
The problem is that the API for sandboxing was in Leopard but Apple hasn’t done anything with it that I can see. Given Chrome and the web browser as prime attack vector I’m really surprised Safari 4 appears to offer nothing new in security. I really, really thought we’d see Safari 4 under SL have advanced security features.
And what I’d like to see is sandboxing for any and all applications. (Especially Acrobat, Preview, Firefox, Mail and Safari)
I don’t think $29 is a jab at MS. (Which is rumored to have Win7 upgrade set at $49) The fact is that unlike Win7 which adds a lot over Vista most of the changes in SL are all under the hood. You won’t see much until you run an application that takes advantage of the new features. (And a lot of the features are more to make things easier for programmers)
There are a few things – especially if you run Exchange. (I don’t) But while it fixes a few annoying UI bugs and improves Services SL really gives little to the typical user. So there’s little compelling reason to upgrade. Thus low pricing to encourage adoption. The biggest advantage is that if you have a recent Intel machine it’ll run noticeably faster.
ASLR is in Snow Leopard for 64 bit stuff. So there are some improvements. But most of those things were things Vista had.
Edit: Ars says that under SL that Safari will Sandbox all plugins (i.e. Flash). That’s how it’s crash resistance works. That clearly will improve security. That helps with Flash exploits although it’ll be interesting to see the details. If they do that though maybe my hope for more robust sandboxing under SL is being worked on and they just don’t want to announce it.
Rusty,
Aw, dude, I’m sorry to hear that. On Facebook, you should try KaChing, the fantasy stock exchange. It’s fascinating how much I’ve learned there about the value of stocks. I’ll send you an invite and if you accept I get an additional $10 million to play with. 🙂
arj,
I had a hard drive issue last November and reinstalled the OS software in December. It’s a rather odd instance of freezing, occurring when using tabbed browsing on Safari or Firefox with iTunes playing in the background. I think it has to do with the flash based ads on websites like New York Times and Washington Post (usually the two culprit sites that freeze my computer). As I read the news a lot and blog a lot, thus going to these two sites a lot, the freezing happens far too often, and I fear it will damage the new hard drive.
Clark,
I’ll do that. I do think it needs a good dusting.
Dan,
I suggest using an ad blocker in that case and/or turning off Flash. If nothing else that mighthelp you diagnose it.
Clark,
My impression is that almost nobody uses ExpressCard. I think we can all agree that for many users a eSATA port would have been better than an SD slot. Maybe they see that as redundant due to the FW800 port?
My primary beef with the SD slot is that it is something that is easily done with USB. The same is not true for eSATA.
Yeah, part of the problem is that a lot that used to go in ExpressCard or the like now is done via USB. Just across the board. So there are few ExpressCard cards. The problem is that FW800 is significantly slower than eSATA. Plus you have more low level control via eSATA. Newer devices like Drobo are moving to iSCSI which uses your gigabit ethernet as a hard drive connector and is faster than FW800. However you then lose your ethernet connectivity since you don’t have an ExpressCard to add a second one…
It has been a long, long time since I’ve plugged in to an ethernet cable…
It is much, much faster even with wireless-N. I constantly wish my AppleTV was on ethernet rather than wireless-N. If you have a separate server then that really makes a huge difference. I personally like having both.
The coolest app I’ve heard of for the iPhone is one that uses GPS and tells you what skate spots are nearby–both public skate parks and just plain old public places where skaters skate.
One I actually use while I’m on the road a lot lists all the free wireless access points within a few miles of your current location.
I have Sprint already and I’m ready to make the jump to a smart phone. I’m not really impressed with most Blackberry’s hardware though their OS is impresive. I’ve been researching the Pre and it does everything I need it to do and more. I’m aware of it’s few flaws but the keyboard and it’s impresive clarity make it tops for me. Not to mention that new apps are apearing everyday and the OS wil be beyond easy to update. My husband is super loyal to his Blackberry but is also thinking of jumping over to the Pre.
Rose Tyler,
If you are really stuck with Sprint for some reason then grab yourself a Pre. Otherwise I would seriously consider an iPhone 3GS for the same price. If you do get a Pre let us know what you think of it.
Rose I’d try using it’s keyboard a while before purchasing. Some of the Blackberry’s are very good. I’d check out the Bold which most people really like. The keyboard of the Pre has been slammed by almost everyone. It’s battery life is also supposed to suck worse than the G-1.
As others said though, if you get a Pre tell us how you like it. I think it’s the first phone to really give Apple competition. But it reminds me of the first gen iPhone. Nice but with some huge flaws that keep it from being usable.
We have Sprint because we get a discount through the huby’s work but we’ve also ben very happy with it. Around here the coverage is pretty great. The phone I have is 3G and the blackberries Sprint has curently are not. I would not want to give up 3G. I tried the Pre and I likes the keyboard. Others have complained about it being cramped but I didn’t have a problem with it. My husband has a Pearl which he likes but I don’t and I find the Curve bulky. I’ll let you know how the Pre is. We plan on switching in a month or so. My favorite feature it has is certainly the calender. It sync up with al your email acounts, facebok ans so on. With 4 kids schedules to kep track of I realy like that. Of course we might be moving to Mineapolis in a few months and if Sprint’s coverage there isn’t what it is here we may find a different carier. We looked at other carriers a while back but couldn’t find one that a plan like Sprint’s Everything Data. Especially not at the price we get. Battery life is a consideration. My phone now doesn’t have the greatest life. Also the Pre’s camera was pretty nice. It has a flash which I don’t have now. Does the new iPhone have a flash? Also the Pre is only going to run us $199. Hard to beat that.
Sorry about all the typos. This phone hates to type double letters. I wil say since switching to a fancier phone earlier this year I am hooked. I use it in place of a computer most all the time. Having my email and internet in my pocket is a life saver. We also don’t use a land line anymore because seriously why bother?
ARJ:
If you want tethering on your iPhone, just jailbreak it and get PdaNet–works great!
Truthfully, though, I don’t have much need to use my laptop outside of areas with WiFi or HotSpots, so I have not purchased the https enabled PdaNet.
I’m waiting for the jailbreak for 3.0 before I upgrade. Too many neat tools for my jailbroken iPhone to pass up…even for 3.0.
Really? Outside of tethering and python there’s nothing in Cydia I use.
Just a few years ago I would have jailbroken my iPhone simply to jailbreak it. Now I care less. I just want the thing to work. It works pretty well at the moment, so hacking it doesn’t hold that much appeal.
I do like having Python on it, as I said. However I do notice that jailbreaking affects you stability slightly. If you theme then it does a lot.
It sounds like there are already hacks for 3.0 to enable tethering on AT&T so it might be moot. I’m sorely tempted to install the 3.0 gold master that is floating around. But I guess I can wait until next week. I’m really, really looking forward to synced notes and to-dos along with cut and paste. I’m frankly shocked it’s taken this long to add. It’s really the only point about the phone I grumble about. (Well I wish I could turn coverflow off which I never use) I’m looking forward to mail in wide mode as well.
So today at 1PM ET, 11AM MST, 10AM PT we get the 3.0 software update. Go here if iTunes doesn’t autoupdate for you.
BTW – for those interested. If you “downgrade” to iTunes 8.2 beta you can install tethering on your 3G iPhone. See here.
Some are saying the following command allows the final iTunes 8.2 to do the same thing.
defaults write com.apple.iTunes carrier-testing -bool TRUE
Not having iPhone 3.0 yet I’ve not tested this.
What? No love for the iPhone update? I just installed. I have to go run a bunch more errands but I’ll do a writeup on it.