By now you’ve probably taken in plenty of info on the new iPhone 4. John Moe at Future Tense got into some of the juicier details in his latest blog:
You may have heard a bit about this yesterday, considering the news replaced oxygen as the most common thing in the air. Ars Technica has a good run down. A few top level points: much higher resolution, built in HD video camera, video editing software iMovie now on the iPhone, iBookstore now present on iPhone, more aggressive push into mobile advertising with iAds program, and a video conferencing feature called Face Time that lets you have on camera conversations with someone else (provided they’re on an iPhone 4 as well and you’re both on a Wifi network and not a 3g data network).
A few surprises I had yesterday:
- Where were the computers? As near as I can figure, Apple still does make home computers. I bought one recently myself. But they weren’t mentioned at all yesterday. No new laptops, no updates to MacBook Air as rumored. Even the iPod got a mention in passing.
- Google remains the default browser, Bing also brought on. Apple is going to play this as giving the user the most options, and that’s a fair point. But Apple is very much at war with Google and its increasingly popular Android mobile device platform right now. Jobs praised Bing and Microsoft but did not kick Google off the iPhone or even move it out of number one position. As a result, a handful of MSFT loyalists may switch settings but it’s mostly a Google experience.
- Nothing on home entertainment. I get that it was iPhone’s day but I was wondering if we’d hear about a cloud-based iTunes option or a rebrand/relaunch of Apple TV. Nope.
- Netflix and the data plans. Jobs announced a free Netflix app (Android’s getting one soon too) which means tons of streaming movies and TV on your iPhone. This is interesting in light of AT&T’s new restricted data plans. You do a lot of Netflixing, that low use plan doesn’t seem to cover you quite as well. Follow the money, my friends. Follow the money.
CNET put together some footage of Apple CEO Steve Jobs struggling with the Wi-Fi during the iPhone 4G demo:
And here’s our recap of the iPhone 4 unveiling at yesterday’s WWDC.
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