Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Apple to Sony, Nintendo: Game Over, Man
“It’s clear that the quality of iPhone games is eclipsing its console counterparts, and that’s even more acute when you compare it against the prior generation.” That’s what ngmoco co-founder and Electronic Arts alum Neil Young said of Apple’s iconic handset at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco earlier this year, and it’s worth reflecting on a bit in light of a new report from Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi that claims the iPhone OS will soon create pricing and customer migration pressure for traditional gaming platforms.
Well this is uncomfortable: Asked by the Federal Communications Commission in August if it had rejected Google’s Voice app from its iTunes App Store, Apple claimed it had not and that the app was still under review. But according to a newly unredacted document from Google, Apple did reject the app.
Leave it to Steve Jobs to upstage his own products. Rumored by some analysts to be a nonevent, Apple’s invitation-only music gathering today is already proving quite eventful. Audience members expecting Apple exec Phil Schiller to quarterback today’s proceedings were given a welcome surprise when CEO Steve Jobs took the stage in his first public appearance since his liver transplant surgery. 
Looks like Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster’s second estimate of Apple’s weekend iPhone sales underestimated demand just as badly as his first. Apple didn’t sell 500,000 units of the iPhone 3GS over the weekend, as Munster first predicted. Nor did the company sell 750,000 as he said in a research note this morning. It sold over one million. Moreover, downloads of Apple’s new iPhone 3.0 software, launched last Wednesday, have already reached six million.
Schiller announces iPhone 3Gs. S is for speed. “This is a really fast iPhone.” Loads apps and Web sites very, very quickly. NYTimes.com loads more than 3x as fast. Schiller says its about 2x faster than the iPhone 3G. As expected, the device features a brand new 3 megapixel autofocus camera. Auto-focus. Auto-white balance. Auto-exposure. Tap-to-focus. Improved low-light sensitivity. Auto-macro. “The best thing about this camera is it also captures video.” 30 FPS VGA with audio. Auto-focus, etc. Quick demo of video shows that quality is impressive. Videos are stored alongside pix in the picture application. Edit and share videos with the tap of a finger. “And if my carrier supports it, I can even send these things via MMS,” Schiller quips in a poke at AT&T.
Apple (AAPL) is also updating the MacBook air. Two new configurations starting at 1.8 GHZ. “Great hardware deservers great software,” says Schiller. And with that he welcomes Bertrand Serlet to the stage to talk about OS X. Serlet immediately begins talking smack about Vista and Windows 7. “No end user should ever have to know about disc defragmentation,” he quips. Windows 7 is “fundamentally another version of Vista. “It’s the same old technology. This is so very different from OS X.”
10:01, and lights dim to reveal a movie screen. Onscreen: John Hodgman, as PC, welcoming attendees to WWDC and encouraging developers to slow down iPhone App development. Increasingly frustrated Hodgman finally fires off a raspberry. Replaced by Mac guy, who welcomes everyone to WWDC. Phil Schiller takes the stage now. “Can’t you feel the love in this room.” 25 million active OS X users in the past two years, he says, talking up Leopard. Installed base has tripled in the past two years.
This morning we learned that Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference does not herald the return of CEO Steve Jobs. Now comes word that it may not herald the announcement of company’s next-generation iPhone, either. 
Macworld 2009 is over, but the rumors that prefaced it and were then left unaddressed, remain. Two in particular: an updated iMac and a redesigned Mac mini–both of which failed to make an appearance during Phil Schiller’s Macworld keynote, though it was widely believed they would. The refresh may happen yet, however. Apple has on many occasions uncrated new products on the heels of Macworld.
There’s got to be a joke somewhere in the fact that Macworld, the Consumer Electronics Show and the AVN Awards (the “Pornies”) all happen during the same week. Maybe even one that hasn’t been played out 10 times over. All Things Digital was too busy covering two out of three this week to think of one.
Analysts expecting Apple’s Macworld 2009 keynote to be light on revolutionary products or otherwise “modest” or “neutral” were not disappointed. Well, they were disappointed, but they knew they were going to be disappointed going in, so it shouldn’t have come as a shock, right?
