Apple WWDC Announcements: New iPhone, SDK Features, MobileMe, Snow Leopard

In case you’ve been under a rock for the past few hours, you’ll probably be somewhat excited to know that Apple announced a few exciting products and the company’s 2008 Developer’s Conference. First up (well, technically last), the company lifted the veil off of the new phone, which sports 3G data, GPS, a lower pricetag ($199 and $299 for the 8GB and 16GB versions respectively), a new white model, better battery life, a flush headphone jack, and as one would expect, all of the features of the 2.0 upgrade which is due out in early July for existing owners.

The main draw here is really the inclusion of two things: the lower price and availability. Apple expects the phone to be available in 70 countries by the year’s end, and the phone shouldn’t exceed the $199 price in most cases. This obviously opens up the potential market a great deal, adding 65 new countries to the list. Even if you have no interest in the phone, the new discounted price will surely attract eyeballs from both customers and competitors.

Two things that weren’t mentioned during the keynote are the end of iTunes activations and data plan pricing, which has been increased from $20 to $30 with the inclusion of 3G. AT&T has since stated that they removed this option because people wanted the ability to activate the phone in store and walk out with it (which, oddly enough, was already possible), but I believe this is a blatant effort to combat the unlocking scene because of the new subsidized price.

Along with the new phone, Apple also told developers that they would offer a solution for the inability to run processes in the background by implementing a sort of server-side notification system that would run through Apple’s servers, free of charge for developers. The company claimed the upside would be increased stability and performance.

There was a demonstration of a new service, called MobileMe, which replaces .Mac, that the company calls "Exchange for the rest of us." The idea is that information (email, photos, calendar, address information, files) could be accessed from any "computer" and synced through the "cloud" wirelessly. This will undoubtably be an attractive feature for new users with more than one computer, or an iPhone, for instance, but I’m sure the $99 price tag will put some potential customers off.

Lastly (whew), Steve Jobs mentioned the new 10.6 release of OS X would be called "Snow Leoperd", as the rumors suggested, but…. didn’t go into any details. Developers were offered a preview "after lunch", but no details have been released.