Ed Hewitt

WWDC 08 came to close on Friday, so I thought its about time I gave you my thoughts from this year’s event. The big news from the event was of course, iPhone 2nd Gen. Called iPhone 3G, it now has 3G and GPS built in to the iPhone. It also comes in two colours, black & white. Although, what I was very surprised about the new iPhone was the price. $199 for the 8GB model and $299 for the 16GB model. This is very cheap for what you are getting, and plus the iPhone is going to be offered on a pays-you-go tariff. I’m not a huge Apple fan, but with that price I may consider purchasing the new iPhone.

Mobile Me is a new service announced at WWDC 08. It is to replace .Mac, which I believe is an excellent service. However, I think Mobile Me will do a far better job. Mobile Me will still offer the same services as .Mac, such as online storage, email address and calender. However, the great feature with Mobile Me is that you can access all these services on your Mac and now your iPhone and iPod Touch. To can make it extremely useful for business for their employees to be able to access their calender and keep it up-to-date, as well as check email. Not only that, but it also works with Windows! I believe Mobile Me is a great service for Apple to attract businesses, although I do believe that it is abit pricey.

The final big announcement from WWDC08, was a new Mac OS. It had been predicted that Mac OS 10.6 would be announced at WWDC. Snow Leopard will be the 6th version of Mac OS X to released. However, as the name suggests, it is not an entirely new OS. Mac OS 10.6 is mainly an upgrade to core version of Mac OS 10.5, Leopard. However, these upgrades are very impressive. The Mac OS X kernal is now entirely 64bit, which has improved the way the operating system handles the latest hardware. 64bit has allowed Mac OS 10.6 to use as much as 16TB of memory! Apple have also optimized the use of multicore processors. OpenCL is a new feature which makes it possible for developers to use all the power in the GPUs. QuickTime X will come with Mac OS 10.6, which will handle the latest in media and internet standards. Finally, Microsoft Exchange Support is included in Mac OS 10.6, allowing you to sync your Mac with your PC. Personally I think 10.6 will be a great upgrade to an already superb OS. Although, I wonder if Mac OS 10.6 will be a free upgrade like 10.1 was.

These were more thoughts on WWDC08, I was very impressed with what Apple have announced. Although no announcements on new iPod designs and features or new Macs. Please leave your comments on what you thought to WWDC08.

Tags: Apple by Ed
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Apple have come along way with their Mac Operating System. Mac OS X is now at a point where it could topple Microsoft. Mac OS X has the amazing features, a great UI, stable, secure and great applications for all needs. However, I believe there is one thing holding it back, Gaming!

Windows is at forefront of gaming, it has managed to keep 100000s of gamers using Windows because of the massive library of games. This is an area Apple are lacking in. Yes, I know Mac do have great games, such as The Sims, Call of Duty 2 & 4 and Battlefield 2142. But there are not enough of these titles and they can be hard to find. I believe there are two things, Apple have to do to match Microsoft in the gaming market.

First thing is implement a proper gaming plan. Apple need to make relationships with game developers and see if their willing to make games for Mac. These games can be easily ported from PC titles, thanks to Mac using Intel processors. Once they have managed this, how will Apple sell the games. I don’t believe Apple should be selling the games at a games store. Most games stores are unlikely to stock Games for Mac since PC games don’t sell terrible well games stores anyway. Digital Distribution is the way for Apple. They have already created a great store for iTunes, it shouldn’t be too hard for Apple to use the same concept with Games. iGames (a possible a name) will be a store where you can purchase Games for Mac, old and new titles, and download them. Each game page will have information, screenshots, videos and demo. It maybe a good idea for the client to tell the user how well the game will run on their system. This client could also use the functionality of iChat for a friends list (and see what game their on) and chat to them in game. The client could be a free download from Apple. Yes, I know, Windows already has all this, but look how successful it is.

The second idea is the hardware. Macs look amazing and are super quick, all the things PC gamers want. However, Macs are expensive, even for hardcore gamers. I believe it would be a good idea to launch a new PC, which is fast but cheap. Mac ProGamer (another possible name) would look cool and be as quick as a Mac Pro, but use cheaper hardware. A possible setup could be Mid-end Dual Core processor, 2Gb RAM, 8800GT or 9800GT and 250GB HDD or 150GB 10000rpm HDD. Still very quick, but slightly cheaper hardware. Possible the computer could come with a game on it.

This is my idea for the Mac Gaming plan (if one exists). Please comment and tell me what you would do. Steve Jobs, email me if you would like to use my ideas

Tags: Apple, Gaming by Ed
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A few weeks ago I took over an open source project with another guy called Laurent. Hes Belgium and we got on well from the start (always a good when working on a project together). The project is called Gfire. It is a plugin for the Pidgin IM client which allows you to connect to the Xfire network.The great thing about this project is that it allows Mac and Linux users to connect to the Xfire network, the Xfire client is only for Windows users.

The Gfire project had stopped since September 2006, but now the project was handed over to the new dev team. Myself and Laurent are now going to further the development of Gfire. We are planning to improve on the current Gfire version, offer support and keep the xfire games list up-to-date. Each time there is a new games list, I will format it for Gfire and post on the Gfire website for everyone to download, this was something which the previous Gfire team didn’t do.

We are currently beta testing the first Gfire version since September 2006, version 0.7.0. This new version will have many bugs fixed and have better support for working on the newer version of Pidgin. You can check out this project at edhewitt.co.uk/gfire

EDIT, I have changed the Gfire link, it now works!

Tags: Apple, General, Linux, Windows by Ed
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Last week, Apple launched the SDK for the iPhone. This allows third-party groups to create applications for the iPhone. Today, we finally see the importance of the SDK.

Its called G-Fi it is a GPS receiver which can also work on your PC, but the main use is for the iPhone. G-Fi will wireless communicate with the iPhone and work with the G-Fi software to allow the iPhone to be used as Satellite Navigation.

This shows a great example of the importance of the SDK, allowing companies to do things which were thought not possible with the current iPhone. We are still waiting for the iPhone gen2 to be released which hopefully will come with 3G and GPS.

Tags: Apple, News by Ed
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