The Fate of Tyrlon and other Dubious Things

I’ve been following the Apple Keynote today and Steve announced some exciting stuff so far!

Being an iPhone owner, several things have bothered me about it in the past but I am hopeful that the upcoming SDK will really help let other programmers address those issues.

Some new features announced for the firmware update set to hit today for the iPhone: Google Maps with location (the cell-phone tower triangulation bit AND something using wi-fi to locate you via SkyHook), Webclips (fancy way of saying bookmark that goes on your home screen but also keeps track of where you had zoomed and panned to),  you can customize the home screen icon arrangement and have 9 screens worth of icons, and you can send SMS to multiple addresses (yay, now if they could figure out picture messaging like nearly every other phone on the market can do!).

iPod Touch is also getting what I like to call the “duh” upgrade.  Their users will now get the Maps, Mail, Stocks, Weather and Notes applications for a $20 upgrade price.  I’m really perplexed why Apple is going to charge their users for a firmware update though.  Maybe they have to pay Google a licensing fee?

The other big announcement so far was Apple TV and iTunes getting HD and Standard Movie Rentals.  The prices seem pretty good ($2.99 old movies, $3.99 new releases for standard def, $1 higher for HD on both).  Apple TV is also now $229 instead of $299 so that should help move more of those units.  Now that they are like an on-demand rental service it’ll be like having Blockbuster stocked with HD movies in your house!

That’s all for now.  I can’t wait for the new firmware updates to hit and I may actually get an Apple TV eventually now that they seem useful.

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