Astonishing, really, when you think about it. The App Store isn’t even two years old yet. Nor is the iPhone software development kit. Before the SDK was released March 6, 2008, the only developers working with it were the handful of outfits Apple (AAPL) had partnered with while it was in beta.

So Apple is entitled to a bit of gloating. And gloat it did, in a press release celebrating the 100,000-app milestone this morning:

Apple Announces Over 100,000 Apps Now Available on the App Store

CUPERTINO, Calif., Nov. 4 — Apple® today announced that developers have created over 100,000 apps for the revolutionary App Store, the largest applications store in the world. iPhone® and iPod touch® customers in 77 countries can choose from an incredible range of apps in 20 categories, including games, business, news, sports, health, reference and travel. App Store users have downloaded well over two billion apps, continuing to make it the world’s most popular applications store.

“The App Store, now with over 100,000 applications available, is clearly a major differentiator for millions of iPhone and iPod touch customers around the world,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “The iPhone SDK created the first great platform for mobile applications and our customers are loving all of the amazing apps our developers are creating.”

“The App Store has forever changed the mobile gaming industry and continues to improve,” said Travis Boatman, vice president of Worldwide Studios, EA Mobile. “With a global reach of over 50 million iPhone and iPod touch users, the App Store has allowed us to develop high quality EA games that have been a huge success with customers.”

“With 10,000 downloads a day, worldwide customer response to our I Am T-Pain App has exceeded our wildest expectations,” said Jeff Smith, CEO of Smule. “The App Store has given us a unique opportunity to create and grow a very successful business, and we’re looking forward to an exciting future.”

Apple continues to improve search and discovery with new features including Genius for Apps, App Store Essentials selections, sub category listings and more valuable customer reviews. With the recently introduced iTunes® 9, it’s also now easier than ever to organize and sync your apps right in iTunes and they will automatically appear on your iPhone or iPod touch with the same layout.

The release of iPhone OS 3.0 this summer made over 100 new features available to iPhone and iPod touch users including Cut, Copy and Paste; MMS; landscape view for Mail, Text and Notes; stereo Bluetooth; shake to shuffle; parental controls; automatic login at Wi-Fi hot spots and Push Notifications. These new features have been incredibly popular with customers and there have already been more than two billion Push Notifications sent to apps available from the App Store. Additionally, the recently introduced In App Purchase feature for free apps means leading developers will now be able to offer customers the choice of buying content, subscriptions and digital services from directly inside their apps.

[Image Credit:148apps.biz]

Never mind that it faces some particularly long, historic odds. That it has launched a new bet-the-company product in the worst economy we’ve seen in 50 years, for example. That with the Pre, it is challenging Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone, one of the most successful mobile phones in history. That it’s competing in a market crowded by the likes of Research in Motion (RIMM) and Nokia (NOK), which shipped an astonishing 468 million phones in calendar 2008.

Never mind all that. Because, according to RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky, Palm (PALM) has the “special sauce”–the means of orchestrating a second act, perhaps even one of Jobsian proportions.

“Following a period of decline and facing oblivion, we believe Palm has the potential for a remarkable smartphone turnaround,” Abramsky writes in a lengthy research note on the wireless industry that I mentioned here yesterday as well. “With its new strategy, WebOS product line and under the direction of a new management team headed by ex-Apple executive Jon Rubinstein, Palm (like RIM and Apple) is, in our opinion, well-positioned for smartphone leadership.”

Abramsky sees a promising future: “Our outlook calls for Palm to quickly recover, growing from an estimated 1.3 percent data-centric smartphone shipment market share (0.2 percent TAM) or 2.2 million units in calendar 2009 to 3.6 percent share (1.3 percent of TAM) or 18.2 million units in calendar 2012. Targeting the PIM-centric segment of the Palm legacy, Palm in our view faces near-term risks, but has the ’special sauce.’” (Click on table below to enlarge.)

And what, exactly, is that? The stuff that goes between the two all-beef patties and the lettuce and cheese?

Not quite. Abramsky’s idea of special sauce includes vertical integration, “controlling the end-to-end smartphone software and hardware platform, a ground-up developed smartphone OS platform with unique innovations like multitasking, Synergy (user data integration), developer-friendly SDK, and compelling and clever hardware/software designs [that] all combine to offer a unique, iconic smartphone experience, differentiated from incumbent vendors.”

A hell of an ingredient list. But it’s one that the Pre and Palm’s webOS largely deliver on–despite some drawbacks. And if Palm can improve on that list, the company should have little trouble wooing back disenfranchised users and winning new ones.

Abramsky, again: “The huge positive reception to the launch of Palm’s Pre, its first WebOS device–despite the already broad awareness of iPhone–illustrates pent-up demand for innovative, non-intimidating smartphone user experiences. The accolades for Pre also show Palm has the potential to provide that rare iconic smartphone experience, above competitors, some incumbents and in the company of RIM and Apple.”

Which is pretty much what Palm has set out to do, as CEO Jon Rubinstein noted in the company’s last earnings call. “There is room for three to five players in this space,” he said. “We don’t have to beat one another to prosper.”

You do have to execute, though. And execution hasn’t historically been one of Palm’s strong suits. Perhaps it will improve with the addition of that special sauce Abramsky’s talking about.

PREVIOUSLY:

• Palm: The Turnaround Story of the Year
• Pre Makes Palm a New Man in Only Minutes a Day
• Palm: Execution Is Everything

About time, too.

“The initial response to Palm webOS apps–from both developers and customers–has been enthusiastic,” said Jon Zilber, Palm director of online communications, in a blog entry on Thursday. “Even in its initial beta stage, over 1.8 million apps have been downloaded from the beta App Catalog since Palm Pre was released less than six weeks ago. Thousands of developers have participated in the Mojo SDK early access program since it began in early April. New applications are in the pipeline for the Palm App Catalog, and the App Catalog submission process will be opened to all developers beginning this fall.”

The fall, huh? Well, that’s a bit of a disappointment. It doesn’t seem wise to delay the submissions process when the lack of SDK-access has already hampered development of applications for the device. After all, Palm (PALM) has a lot of catching up to do if it hopes to offer even a decent alternative to Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes App Store, which currently boasts around 65,000 applications, the work of some 100,000 developers.

FURTHER READING: Pre and Web OS: Longtime Palm Developers Sound Off

“We think the Palm Pre is by far the best product we’ve ever shipped and I am very happy with how we are managing the launch,” CEO Jon Rubinstein said on an earnings call Thursday, though he refused to disclose actual sales numbers. “We are successfully ramping supply to meet demand that is strong and growing.”

Rubinstein gave strong emphasis to Palm’s new operating system. “The most important indicator of our success is that customer response has been simply great, especially to Palm webOS. Just as Palm pioneered PDAs in the 90s, we believe it has now pioneered the mobile operating platform for the next 10 years and beyond. WebOS integrates information and services from the cloud and offers a true multi-tasking environment. We feel it takes better advantage of the benefits of Web 3.0 than any other mobile platform available today.”

Quite a claim, especially given the incumbents in the market and Palm’s history. The company has never been strong on execution, and while it’s done a great job of bringing the Pre and webOS to market, it has clearly stumbled a bit. Thanks to supply constraints, Palm may be leaving some sales on the table. And it hasn’t done itself any favors by delaying the release of the webOS software development kit.

WebOS won’t be the “the mobile operating platform for the next 10 years and beyond” unless developers are actually, you know, writing applications for it. And there are far too few of them doing that right now because Palm has, so far, restricted access to the SDK.

Rubinstein says that will soon change, though. “We are eager to expand access to our SDK but we need to do so in a measured and methodical fashion, so we can be sure we are providing a great development experience,” he said Thursday. “Over the next few weeks, we expect the program to grow from hundreds to thousands of developers and our goal from there is to make our SDK available to everyone by the end of this summer.”

OK. So Palm would rather do things right than too quickly. That’s understandable–especially if it has more products in the pipeline, as it most certainly does. Given the rivals against which it must compete, the company cannot afford even a single misstep. If it is to truly to revitalize its brand, it must execute, as Rubinstein well knows.

“My highest priority is execution,” he said. “That means delivering world-class products and customer support. Operational excellence in our supply chain management. Strong carrier relationships. Great sales and marketing. Strong back-office functions….Palm already has a foundation in all of these areas. We’ve been in this business for years. We have long-established industry relationships and we’ve successfully brought mobile products to market for over a decade. This footing can create a real advantage.”

But only if it’s managed well. So far, so good. We’ll find out how Palm’s really doing next quarter, which will more fully reflect the impact of the Pre.

You’ll find more notes from yesterday’s call here.

Not bad for an app store that launched with just 18 applications and currently boasts only 30. Think of how many more downloads there might have been, if the company wasn’t so maniacally selective in its distribution of the WebOS SDK.

“Just 18 days after the launch of the Palm Pre, their App Catalog has hit its first major milestone, 1 million downloads,” reports mobile analytics outfit Medialets. “On launch day, Palm sold 50k devices and their App Catalog experienced 100k downloads–that’s an average of 2 apps downloaded per device and 5,500 downloads per app (with a low of 600 and a high of 20k). 18 days later and they’ve tripled the user base to 150k units, averaging 6+ apps downloaded per device and 33.3k downloads per app (with a low of 2.4k and a high of 114k).”

Now, granted, Palm’s (PALM) one million downloads in 18 days doesn’t even begin to approach the performance of Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes App Store, which reached a similar milestone in about a day. But as Medialets notes, it’s not really fair to compare the two. “The App Store hit the 1 million download point about 17 days earlier than the App Catalog, housing more than 16x the amount of apps and was accessible by more than 26x the number of devices than the App Catalog,” the firm says. “Still comparing at the 1 million mark, the average Palm Pre user had downloaded 26x the number of apps that iPhone users had, and the average app in the App Catalog experienced 16x the number of downloads that apps in the App Store had experienced.”

The first: Palm, as was rumored, is expanding its early-access program for Mojo, the WebOS SDK. The second: The company is introducing a new set of integrated cloud services, called Mojo Messaging Service, for developers. From the official announcement:

“The Mojo Messaging Service is an elegant, standards-based way to exchange information over the Internet. When new information is available, it is ‘published’ to the cloud and all interested parties who are subscribers are notified that new information is available. This will allow developers to push live content to their applications or services. The Mojo Messaging Service initially will have a limited feature set and service level that will evolve over time.”

And the third, as was also rumored: Developer MotionApps has written an emulator called Classic for the Pre that will allow users to run more than 30,000 PalmOS apps on the device. Also from the official announcement:

“Palm also announced that MotionApps (www.motionapps.com) is creating an emulator application that will allow most Palm OS applications to run on webOS devices. The application, called ‘Classic,’ will be available for purchase when the Palm Pre phone becomes available from Sprint in the first half of 2009, and gives users peace of mind as they transition to Palm’s new webOS.

Since Palm OS applications running in Classic won’t be able to leverage core webOS functionality, Palm is working with partners to ensure that popular Palm OS applications are made available on the webOS platform and are optimized to take advantage of everything it has to offer. In the meantime, the MotionApps Classic application will allow customers who have invested in the Palm OS platform to use Palm OS applications they’ve grown to love and depend upon on their new webOS devices.”

Mildly interesting announcements, I suppose. Still, frustrating for those waiting for news that really should have been provided by now. What of pricing and availability information for the Pre? When will we be given that?

The announcement of an impending update to the iPhone OS will doubtless cause tremors of fear over at Palm (PALM), which now may end up launching its new Pre smartphone in the shadow of an even more formidable rival. Just breathe into the paper bag and count to ten, Ed …

Unless you simply kept it in beta for a few years like some of your other products. …

“We had invested heavily to add a huge amount of additional capacity, 250 times its normal rate, and backup systems,” O2 said in a statement. “We tested this carefully in advance. The massive simultaneous crush exceeded even our worst-case assumptions. Demand was at 13,000 orders per second. Frankly, we have to admit we just weren’t prepared for this unprecedented level of demand. No website is.”

O2 Sees Unprecedented Demand for iPhone 3G

O2 today announced that Apple’s highly anticipated iPhone 3G will go on general sale from 8.02 a.m. Friday in O2, Apple and Carphone Warehouse retail stores. To ensure fairness, O2 will sell the device on a strictly first-come, first-served basis to both new and upgrading customers in all retail outlets.

Demand for the revolutionary device is already at unprecedented levels, far in excess of the original iPhone. ‘We’ve never seen any mobile device create the excitement and demand of the iPhone 3G,’ said Ronan Dunne, CEO of O2 in the UK. ‘We want to ensure that everyone who wants an iPhone 3G can get one, so we’ll be working with Apple to continually replenish our supplies throughout the summer.’

This morning, customers who had pre-registered their interest in iPhone 3G were given the opportunity to purchase via O2’s online shop (http://shop.o2.co.uk) a limited stock of devices that had been set aside. The response was so great that the online store completely sold out of iPhone 3Gs within just a few hours. Though O2 had invested several million pounds to increase the order capacity of the site (with order processing capacity increased by over 250 times its normal rate), at times the site still couldn’t process the sheer weight of demand.

Details of when new supplies of iPhone 3Gs will be available via the O2 online shop will be updated regularly via the website.

Business customers can, from today, also start placing orders for iPhone 3G through O2 business channels. Delivery timings will be communicated when an order is placed.

iPhone 3G combines all the revolutionary features of iPhone with 3G networking that is significantly faster than the first-generation iPhone. The device has built-in GPS for expanded location-based mobile services, iPhone 2.0 software (which includes support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync) and runs the hundreds of third-party applications already built with the recently released iPhone SDK. These can be accessed via iTunes.

The 8GB iPhone 3G will be available for free to customers opting for the £45 or £75 tariffs and £99 on the £30 and £35 per-month tariffs. The 16GB model will cost £159 on the £30 and £35 tariffs, £59 on the £45 tariff and it will be free on the £75 tariff. All customers will continue to receive unlimited UK data browsing over O2’s mobile network and unlimited access to over 9,000 Wi-Fi hotspots through both The Cloud and BT Openzone.

Existing iPhone customers can upgrade early to the iPhone 3G through O2 channels by re-signing a new 18-month contract, taking advantage of the same great offer as new customers. They will then be able to give their existing 2G iPhone to a friend, family member or colleague, who can transfer onto an iPhone tariff if they are an existing O2 Pay Monthly or business customer, stick in their existing O2 SIM and buy the appropriate Bolt Ons for unlimited data, or buy an iPhone Pay & Go SIM card from 11 July offering unlimited data and unlimited Wi-Fi access to The Cloud and BT Openzone hotspots for £10 per month. Full information is available on o2.co.uk/iPhone.

The iPhone 3G will launch on O2 Pay and Go (Prepay) in time for the Christmas shopping period, with pricing details to be confirmed closer to launch.”

And for Apple’s (AAPL) sake, I hope he does. Because with expectations running this high, I’d hate to see what happens if he doesn’t. Although the new Apple Store housed in a life-size replica of the Golden Gate Bridge pictured in the invite would certainly take some of the heat off …

Anyway, I’ll be live-blogging from inside Moscone West in San Francisco starting at 10 a.m. PDT. Here’s something to read while you wait …

• From Moscone West: This is crazy. They just opened a single door to let cameras in and the media rushed the gate. Its like that 1979 Who concert in Cincinnati.



• The hall in Moscone West is filling quickly to the sounds of Jerry Lee Lewis. From the looks of it media and developers are here in equal numbers.
• Jobs takes the stage. I’m sitting about 20 rows back, but even I can see he’s looking pretty thin from here. He gets right into it, pulls up a slide of a stool and describes Apple as a three-legged company. Macs, music and the iPhone.
• Jobs will spend the morning talking about the iPhone. This afternoon Apple will discuss OS X “Snow Leopard.”
• Talking about iPhone SDK: In the past 96 days, 25,000 people have applied to Apple’s paid developer program. It’s had 250,000 downloads of the iPhone 2.0 software SDK.
• Three parts to iPhone 2.0: enterprise, SDK, “new features.”
• Apple has built exchange support into iPhone 2.0: push email, push contacts, push calendar, auto-discovery, global address lookup, remote wipe. Also supports Cisco VPN security.
• Everything enterprise has told us they’ve wanted in the iPhone, we’ve built into it right out of the box, he says.
• 35% of Fortune 500 companies have participated in iPhone 2.0 beta: top five banks, securities firms, 8 of 10 top pharma companies, 6 of 7 leading airlines. Lots of support from higher-ed market as well.
• Cutting to video now: Execs from Disney (DIS), Genentech, U.S. Army discussing iPhone 2.0 beta: all of them talking about the extraordinary demand for the iPhone among their employees.
• “iPhone 2.0 is extraordinarily well-integrated with Microsoft (MSFT) Exchange.”
• Video goes on: Talking about security now. Army rep talking about how important remote wipe is. Disney exec describes iPhone as “an enterprise-level device that packs the power of a laptop into a device the size of a phone.” Video ends.
• Moving on to iPhone SDK. Jobs welcomes Scott Forstall to the stage to discuss the SDK. “We’re opening up the same developer tools we use internally,” he says. “Developers will create applications in exactly the same way we do.”
• Core OS: Core operating system of iPhone uses the same elements as OS X. Offers a quick overview of Cocoa Touch, Xcode, Interface Builder, Tethered Debugging, Instruments and other developer tools, before moving on to a quick demo of Interface Builder.
• Launches Xcode and creates a new project in Xcode. App will use built-in address APIs as well as core location APIs to locate contacts within a 10-mile radius of the iPhone.
• He opens Interface Builder and drags and drops some buttons and fields onto an iPhone test screen on his desktop.
• The UI finished, he opens the iPhone simulator to test it out. It works.
• He links the UI features up to the code he’s written and bang, it’s linked up and ready to go. That’s it.
• Forstall says developer response to the iPhone SDK has been enormously positive. He refers to a number of developer quotes that really lionize the platform: “It blows away anything we’ve seen from RIM” says one.
• Forstall invites a Sega rep up to the stage to demo some of their work for the iPhone. Sega’s Ethan Einhorn offers a bit of background on their Super Monkey Ball project. He notes that the company was able to demo an early version of the game after just a few weeks of work at the iPhone SDK launch announcement. Now, after a few more months of work, they’ve managed to create a full-featured version of the game.
• Super Monkey Ball will be available at the launch of the App Store for $9.99.
• Up next: eBay’s Ken Sun. The iPhone has become the No. 1 mobile device for accessing eBay, Sun says.
• Six weeks ago, eBay began developing a new interface for the iPhone and was able to quickly pull one together.
• The application supports auction watching and bidding. Bids placed on an iPhone are instantly registered in eBay’s system. The eBay app will be available for free when the App Store launches.
• Loopt’s Sam Altman takes the stage to talk about the company’s location-based social-networking app: “We make serendipity happen.” Pffft. He pulls up the app and uses it to locate a friend and a list of the thing’s she’s done today. He notes that the friend is close by at a cafe and sends her a quick message asking if she’s available for lunch.
• Next up: TypePad and its mobile blogging application. Michael Sippey takes the stage and after talking up TypePad as a blogging platform, he moves on to the company’s new iPhone app.
• Demo will focus on photoblogging. He browses the photos on his iPhone, selects a picture, crops it, adds it to a blog post, publishes it to his blog, taps view and Safari launches and displays his new post. Very fast, very slick. Oddly, no mention of a cut-and-paste feature.
• This app will also be available at the launch of the App Store for free.
• Associated Press follows TypePad. AP’s Benjamin Mosse describes AP’s Mobile News Network, which uses the device’s location API to provide location-based local news, photos and video.
• The app also supports citizen journalism and permits AP readers to send the news agency their own photos and news reports. This app will also be available for free at the launch of the App Store.
• Next up: Brian Greenstone from Pangea software. The company has ported two of its games from OS X to the iPhone.
• The first is Enigmo. The second is Cromag Rally–a 3D caveman racing game. The graphics in both games look great. Greenstone notes that in this particular game, the iPhone itself is the controller–in this case, the steering wheel.
• Greenstone really talking up the SDK, says porting the game was almost a no-brainer.
• Forstall welcomes Moo-Cow-Music’s Mark Terry to the stage to demo Band. It’s a collection of virtual instruments that allows users to create music on the iPhone. He pulls up a keyboard and plays the first few bars of John Lennon’s “Imagine.”
• He moves on to a drum kit, and then to a “blues interface” that includes all the instruments you need to play the blues. And now the bass; he plays a few bars of Pink Floyd’s “Money.” He notes that tracks can be recorded and mixed together to create songs individually or collaboratively.
• Onstage now is Jeremy Schoenherr from MLB.com to demo an app developed exclusively for the iPhone. The app offers real-time updates of game info and also nearly real-time video highlights. Videos will reportedly be uploaded minutes after a play is made.
• Next: Modality, which will demo the first of two apps designed for the medical industry. S. Mark Williams takes the stage to talk about a learning application for med students. Looks like they’ve created an iPhone version of “Netter’s Anatomy.” All the graphics have been ported to the iPhone, and you can zoom in and out, and use touch to locate different areas of the body, the same way you use the Google maps application. Modality says that within weeks of the App Store launching, it will be offering this application as well as others for different education markets.
• Mark Cain from MIMvista onstage now. Looks like we’ve got a medical imaging application. Onscreen now is a CT scan and a PET scan overlaid on an iPhone screen. (My god, this is really cool.)
• The application relies on the iPhone’s pinch, slide, touch and drag to navigate images. You can also toggle to a planar view as well. Whoa–it supports movies as well. Cain stresses that this is a highly complex and computing-intensive application that’s been ported to the iPhone. And his company was able to do it with relative ease.
• Up now: Digital Legends to demo another game. They’ve developed Krull, a fantasy action game, on the iPhone. Accelerometer is used to move the character, to jump, swing weapons, etc. The graphics are very impressive.
• The person demoing notes that in some cases they’re better than those of handheld gaming platforms. The app will be available later this year. What we were just shown–which was damn impressive–was pulled together in just two weeks.
• Forstall back onstage. He’s talking about one feature that developers have requested that wasn’t included in the SDK: The ability to run applications in the background as well as the foreground.
• He pulls up a Windows Mobile task manager to demonstrate the wrong way to address that request. “This is nuts,” he says. Apple has come up with a far better solution: We’ve developed a push notification service.
• Apple will maintain a persistent IP connection to the iPhone through which third-party applications can push notifications to the device. These can be badges, text notifications and audio notifications. There is also a unified push notification service for all developers that preserves battery life, maintains performance and works over the air. This will be available in September, but Apple will begin seeding it soon.
• Jobs strolls back onstage to discuss some new features.
• The first: Contact Search. Your standard contact search.
• Second: Full iWork document support: pages, keynote. MS office support as well: Word, PowerPoint. (Cut-and-paste support?)
• Third: Bulk delete and move.
• Fourth: Save images from email.
• Fifth: A landscape view of the calculator.
• Sixth: Parental controls.
• Seventh: Languages: there are two forms for Japanese, two forms for Chinese (simplified and traditional) including one that allows you to draw the characters with your finger. “One of the great advantages of not having a bunch of plastic keys on your keyboard,” says Jobs.
• What about 8, 9 and 10? Cut-and-paste, chat and a better camera? No? Damn.
• “iPhone 2.0 raises us to a whole new level,” says Jobs. “We’ll release it in July. It will be free to all iPhone owners, and $9.95 for iPod Touch users.
• Moving on to the App Store. It will be on every iPhone, and it supports wireless downloads, automatic installs and automatic updates. Developers can set the price of their apps. Developers take 70%. No credit card or hosting fees. Apps will be DRM’d for FairPlay.
• If a developer chooses to offer their app for free, Apple won’t charge them anything. Apps under 10 MG can be downloaded over the air. Apps above that size can be downloaded over iTunes or via Wi-Fi.
• Apple has also developed an enterprise version of the apps store that will allow companies to distribute their custom applications only to their employees on their phones.
  There’s another distribution method as well: Ad Hoc. Developers can mail apps to up to 100 users.
• Now we’ve got something entirely new: It’s called MobileMe. Phil Schiller takes the stage to talk about it. What’s MobileMe? “It’s like Exchange for the rest of us.”
  (Haha.) He just slipped up and called active sync “active stink.”
• With MobileMe, iPhone users can have mail, calendar, etc. pushed to their phones. Information is stored in the cloud and then pushed to all a user’s Apple devices. Change a meeting on your phone, the update is pushed to MobileMe, which then pushes that update to your laptop and the machines of the people who are scheduled to attend it.
• All this is done over the air. MobileMe works directly with Apple apps. It also works with Outlook for PC users. Apple has also built a suite of Web-based applications. You’ll find them at me.com. The applications look pretty robust. More like those you’d see on the desktop than on the Web.
• Mail, contacts, calendar, photos–which can be sent directly to MobileMe from the phone–iDisk for storage.
• He’s demoing it now: supports drag and drop. Also supports real-time contact search with links to Google (GOOG) maps for directions.
• Calendar supports drag and drop as well. Want to reschedule a meeting? Drag it to another date and time.
• Moves on to iDisk, which has a new interface. All this is tightly integrated with the iPhone. He checks a push email on his phone, saves the sender as a contact. Now he checks his MobileMe account online. The email and new contact are already there.
• Now he creates a new calendar entry on his laptop. He check his phone and there it is. Now he leaves the iPhone view up on the screen behind him, walks back over to the laptop and adds another meeting to his calendar. A few seconds later, the iPhone screen updates with that new meeting. He demonstrates the same thing with a photo.
• MobileMe will be available for $99 a year, with 20 gigabytes of storage. It will be available in July. And yes, MobileMe does replace .mac. Mac users will be automatically upgraded.
• And what about that cut-and-paste support? No? Anyone? Bueller?
• Jobs back onstage. In a few weeks, it will be the iPhone’s first birthday, he says.
  He shows some photos of the crowds outside the Manhattan Apple store.
• Jobs: “This is the phone that has changed phones forever.” He says the iPhone has 90% customer satisfaction; 98% of iPhone users are mobile browsing; 94% are using email; 90% are text messaging; 80% are using 10 features or more. “You can’t even find 10 features on other phones,” he adds.
• Apple has sold 6 million phones so far, Jobs says. Now we need to address our next challenges:
• 1. 3G
• 2. enterprise support
• 3. Third party applications
• 4. more countries
• 5. more affordable.
• Jobs notes that everyone wants one, but 56% of consumers Apple surveyed said it was too expensive.
• iPhone 3G announced to roar of applause, camera flashes.
• iPhone 3g is thinner, full plastic back, solid metal buttons, but same display, camera, a flush headphone jack, dramatically improved audio. “Feels even better in your hand, if you can believe that,” Jobs says.
• How does the iPhone 3G tackle the challenges I just mentioned?
• Video of EDGE vs. 3G pageload on Safari: 3G takes 21 seconds, EDGE still grinding away. Web site is National Geographic, very image heavy. EDGE still grinding; audience begins laughing. EDGE takes 59 seconds; 3G is 2.8 times faster than EDGE.
• Jobs notes that 3G speeds approach those of Wi-Fi. Apple compared the iPhone 3G to two other state-of-the-art 3g phones, and the iPhone is 36% faster than Nokia N95 and Treo 750.
• Video of same comparison with an email attachment: 3G downloads it in five seconds; EDGE takes 18 seconds. 3G is 3.6 times faster.
• Talking about battery life now: iPhone 3G has 300 hours standby. 2G talk time: 10 hours; 3G talk time: five hours–that’s an industry-leading metric.
• Five to six hours of browsing. Seven hours of video. Twenty-four hours of audio.
  One other thing that benefits from fast data is GPS, and we’ve built that into the iPhone 3G, Jobs notes
• Jobs talking about how location based services for the iPhone are about to explode. He’s demoing GPS tracking now. Jobs tracks a car driving down San Francisco’s Lombard Street.
• Now, he circles back to enterprise support, third-party apps, and international distribution. Apple hoped to put the iPhone in 25 countries. World map appears on screen. Theme from “It’s a Small World” plays as countries in which the iPhone is distributed are quickly colored in. Half-hearted “Small World” sing-along fades after a few verses.
• Lots of applause for this: “We’ll be rolling out the iPhone 3G in 70 countries over the next few months.” The next time you’re in Malta and you need an iPhone, it’ll be there.
  Deals for all these countries are signed, sealed and delivered, according to Jobs.
• Moving on to price: iPhone 3G will sell for $199 for 8GB version. Huge applause.
  “With think at that price point it will be affordable for everyone,” Jobs says. The 16GB model will be $299 and will be available in black and white. Apple will start rolling the iPhone out in 22 of the largest countries on July 11.
• on to a new ad: “It’s finally here. The new phone that beats the iPhone–it’s the iPhone 3G.”
• The ad’s tagline: “Twice as fast. Half the price.” You can almost feel the early adopters in the audience wincing.
• Jobs after ad ends: “Isn’t that nice? Would you like to see it again?” Audience roars; Jobs plays the ad again. “Just like the first iPhone, this new iPhone is one of the most amazing products I’ve ever had the pleasure of being associated with.” Jobs asks iPhone team to stand. Lots of audience applause.
• Looks like that’s it. “Take advantage of the great sessions and go make some great products,” says Jobs. And the keynote ends. Sadly, there’s no “one more thing” moment today — no video-chat support, no chat support, no cut-and-paste.
  ]]> http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20080609/wwdc/feed/ 5 http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20080520/oh-one-more-thing-its-available-right-now/ http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20080520/oh-one-more-thing-its-available-right-now/#comments Tue, 20 May 2008 13:06:27 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20080520/oh-one-more-thing-its-available-right-now/ Dust off your sleeping bags and Therm-a-Rest and get in line, Apple’s 3G iPhone will reportedly arrive at market in just a few weeks.

  “Someone very, very close to the 3G iPhone launch” tells Gizmodo that the device will debut as expected at Apple’s (AAPL) Worldwide Developers Conference 2008 on June 9 with immediate availability.

  A plausible rumor, and one that jibes with other similar ones we’ve been hearing for some time now–specifically the one about AT&T (T) employees being asked not to schedule any vacation between June 15 and July 12 to ensure sufficient staffing for “an exciting summer promotional launch.”

  Normally a consumer product announcement at WWDC would seem unlikely. That said, it would make sense for Apple to uncrate a next-gen iPhone at the event this year, given its recent software roadmap and SDK announcement. Wouldn’t it?

  ]]> http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20080520/oh-one-more-thing-its-available-right-now/feed/ 0 http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20080425/iphone3g/ http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20080425/iphone3g/#comments Fri, 25 Apr 2008 07:53:17 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20080425/iphone3g/ Try as they might, financial analysts attending Apple’s (AAPL) Q2 earnings call yesterday were unable to goad company execs into giving up a launch date for the 3G iPhone. Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO, and Tim Cook, the company’s COO, refused to confirm rumors that the company plans to announce the device this summer, though they did–as they always do–claim Apple has a number of exciting products in the pipeline.

  And that was confirmation enough for analysts. Citigroup’s (C) Richard Gardner promptly issued a research note pitching June 9, the kickoff of the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference, as the likely date of the 3G iPhones’ debut. Wrote Gardner, “We expect a steady stream of new products beginning on 9 June with a 3G iPhone and iPhone/iPod touch SDK, continuing with a refresh of the complete laptop line in July/August and concluding with a complete refresh of the iPod line in August/September.”

  June 9 seems a plausible, if not bleedingly obvious launch date. Announce the 3G iPhone at WWDC, with an eye toward an official release on June 29, the first anniversary of its predecessor’s debut? That gives Apple plenty of time to reach its goal of shipping 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008. The company has so far sold 1.7 million iPhones worldwide, leaving 8.3 million more to go if it wants to hit the 10 million mark. Uncrating the 3G version of the device in early summer, perhaps in concert with a move into the massive Japanese and Chinese markets, would make reaching 10 million iPhones shipped an easy matter.

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