We all knew the 3G iPhone was coming. No surprises there. The rumor mill had added video conferencing to the mix, and unfortunately that ended up not being true. I found a few tidbits to be very interesting when listening to the keynote:
- As much as Apple tries to keep live streaming of the conference out, they can't. I saw no fewer than 3 video streams on different social media networks. Like it or not social media is changing how we view the world, everything is real time and Apple needs to get on board. Apple's attitude towards bloggers and new media innovators is far worse than that of even Microsoft, and I think it is time they stop fighting it and just accept it.
- Location services were HUGE. The innovation around the location awareness was amazing to watch. Almost all of the developers they brought on stage had something location based built in to their app. By adding the GPS chipset this will get even better. Once again it comes back to social networking being a big player here. Knowing what is nearby will be key to new location aware apps.
-I didn't hear anything about video recording. While I can take photos on an iPhone I am still surprised that I can't record any video. It might be an internal Apple decision for some future upgrade they want me to pay for, or it could go back to their complete lack of understanding how social media works, or maybe Steve Jobs just hates social video. No idea, but I hope that there is video recording on the 3G iPhone and I just missed it in the announcement.
Mobile computing is just getting started. It is clear that we're at the very beginning of something extremely exciting. Microsoft, RIM and Palm had all better wake up and start competing as Apple seems to be stealing your thunder and soon your business.
1. Posted by: MH on June 9, 2008 2:36 PM:
With all eyes in the mobile world on Apple this week I thought the time was right to talk about what we believe is the best way to conduct a mobile web search on a device like the iPhone…a device with a rich, full screen, touchscreen only. Namely: Voice search. You say it, our speech recognition (running on a server) produces text, the text automatically dumps into the search engine that’s the subscriber’s choice (Google, AOL, MSN, etc.), the search engine returns results. Or via voice, search for any content from your local iTunes playlists.
Using the Apple developer kit, we’ve been hard at work developing impressive technology that make the iPhones capabilities even more powerful. Voice search. Song search and selection. At the touch of a button and simply by saying the word. Over the next few days – as the excitement mounts for the WWDC – we’ll be sharing more and more details here on our blog. For now though, I think all of us should sit back, relax and enjoy the show.
Of course, we believe the most powerful use of speech would be running on the iPhone itself (vs a remote server) and made available to the developer community via iPhone’s SDK APIs.
-Nuance (www.nuance.com)