WWDC 09 = New Products (=D)!

The long awaited WWDC has arrived and this year Apple is really bringing it to the masses once again with a new round of hardware and software releases within this year.

The most notable revision is the new iPhone 3G S. Although it may seem like just the same iPhone, it really is a completely overhauled iPhone with a new video camera functionality. Yes, Apple has FINALLY added video recording support into their hot new product. Second thing that has been anticipated during this WWDC is for the release of iPhone OS 3.0 which made its debut today as well and will be released alongside of the iPhone 3G S. More on the iPhone 3G S here.

However, the iPhone wasn't the thing that really caught my attention in this WWDC. It's actually for the longtime Apple flagship product, their Mac division and specifically their new laptops. One shocker at this WWDC is the fact that Apple has decided to move their entire aluminium Macbook line as Macbook Pro and only the old school polycarbonate white Macbook as a Macbook. What annoyed me was the fact that Apple finally decided to add SD card slots ... yes, you've heard me right ... Apple after all these years finally added an SD card reader ... which was something that should've been done at least since the Intel transition. Another thing that may piss off current aluminium Macbook owners can be the fact that Apple returned Firewire back to the aluminium Macbooks after a generational absence on the first generation Macbooks.

Apple is also being nice to their customers this time around too with the release of the upcoming MacOS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. Instead of their regular OS upgrade price of $129, they're doing it for $29. For people who buy their Macs today through end of this year who don't have MacOS X 10.6 Snow Leopard installed can get it for $9.99.

MacOS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is one of the hotly anticipated Mac releases with Apple finally pushing their whole MacOS platform 64-bit with full 64-bit kernel and having all the system applications in 64-bit. The only drawback to the new MacOS X is the fact that PowerPC support has been completely dropped which can be a problem for those who still have their G5 rigs. MacOS X 10.6 Snow Leopard comes with complete system refinements including the base system to be 6GB smaller than MacOS X 10.5 Leopard. Snow Leopard also comes with the hotly anticipated OpenCL and Grand Central integrations. Furthermore, MacOS X 10.6 also comes with Quicktime X, the first overhaul of Quicktime since Quicktime arrived on MacOS X. There have also been further refinements to core applications like iChat as well. Instead of using a 900 kbps connection, Apple has made it more bandwidth efficient by only using a 300 kbps connection in order to provide smooth full standard definition video. With all these new features, it's amazing that Apple is only selling the operating system for $29. Which is absolutely phenomenal, but we also have to note that this OS release doesn't come with a lot more functionality that a lot of people would come to expect when it comes to Apple releasing new operating systems.

One piece of software that many people seem to completely forget during the WWDC launch is the fact that Apple just launched its latest revision of Safari, the browser that contains the basis for Google Chrome and many smartphone browsers. Safari 4 is built on top of the added functionality that came with Google Chrome and improves on top of it by adding the Apple signature Cover Flow on top to make organization even easier. Safari 4 is significantly faster than its Safari 3 predecessor but it doesn't seem to be faster than Google Chrome. I'm actually using Safari 4 to type this blog entry. It's a great browser, but Google Chrome is still my favourite especially with the process sandboxing and the fact that Google Chrome is just more responsive.

With all of these great new products flowing from WWDC 2009, Apple is getting their customers and fans excited for this year. Especially with the new iPhone and Macbooks, it'll be an interesting year for the Apple community.