Lots of useful stuff in these, like confirmation of what I thought we already knew : The iPhone 4 will have 512MB of RAM.
For reasons still debated, Apple has prohibited the use of an “intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool”, effectively seeming to ban technologies such as Adobe’s Flash to iPhone, and middleware such as the Unity games engine.
Actually, Apple have amended this clause, as I reported last week. Apple, in my opinion, don’t seem to be against Unity or similar systems being part of the App Store eco-system.
“Do you think Apple is going to allow iFart apps to use iAd?” one developer questioned.
I certainly hope not. Do people really think premium advertisers will want to be associated with that kind of crap?
Though Game Center wasn’t specifically mentioned in the keynote, WWDC included sessions covering the technology, and although nothing official has been announced, several developers have confirmed off the record that the service is planning to launch as a Xbox Live-style platform with peer-to-peer real-time multiplayer modes, including voice chat, as a focus. Presumably the just announced FaceTime video chat technology will eventually become an option too.
Sounds cool. Let’s just remember how long it took both Microsoft and Sony to get this kind of functionality to work properly.
It’s also known there will be some features Game Center won’t support. For example, one developer, speaking anonymous, told us that his requirement for more than 30 leaderboards for the various levels in his game won’t be supported by Game Center within the timeframe he requires.
This will either force developers to create such tools internally, or continue to partially use thirdparty solutions such as OpenFeint, Plus+ and Scoreloop.
Similarly, these companies find themselves in a very difficult position. All have pledged they will support and integrate with Game Center – they have to to continue in business on iPhone – but with few details available concerning how Apple’s platform will work, even simple problems such as how to migrate their existing user base of tens of millions of players into Game Center’s user registration and log-in system leave them baffled and bemused.
“All I can say is, “No comment”,” one CEO said to us, rather tersely.
When I last spoke to Scoreloop, who have ex-Apple engineers on board, they seemed fairly upbeat about working with Apple moving forward. Although, I haven’t spoken to them since WWDC.
I have to admit to also still being a little confused about how Game Center will work for us all exactly. But there doesn’t seem to be a problem using more than one system for iPhone games. I will be keeping my existing Social Networking code in place as I look at Game Center as an option.
I am sure, though, that if developers talk to Apple they will be willing to grow the service to suit our needs, and they have already said they want to work with other Social Networking providers…
Thanks to sources within Apple, I have some details:
- iMovie for iPhone will require the iPhone 4, and not be available for the iPhone 3GS. Handling video and creating real-time transitions needs the power of the iPhone 4′s A4 processor.
- Projects edited on the phone cannot “currently” be transferred to iMovie on the Mac for further editing; projects stay on the phone. (The edited movies can be exported or synced to iTunes, however.)
- Video clips can be recorded directly within iMovie for iPhone or come from the Camera Roll (clips previously shot using the phone’s built-in camera). Based on how the Camera Roll works, I suspect it may also be possible to work with clips you’ve shot elsewhere by emailing them from your computer to the phone, then saving the attachment to the Camera Roll. The clips would need to be properly formatted as H.264 videos (and without having the software or an iPhone 4 to test, I don’t know which specifications that entails).
- iMovie for iPhone is scheduled to ship June 24th to coincide with the launch of the iPhone 4.
- The app is currently for the iPhone 4 only, and won’t run on the iPad. I suspect the app is tailored to the iPhone 4′s higher-density screen, and therefore wouldn’t work within the iPad’s pixel-doubled compatibility mode. (I’d be very surprised if an iMovie for iPad version doesn’t appear at some point, possibly with the release of iOS 4 for the iPad in a few months.)
As previously announced, the app will cost $4.99 and be available in the App Store.
From TidBits.com.
No surprises there.
So here we are drawing to the end of WWDC week, and the word Groundhog keeps popping into my head…
Apple iPhone Developer clause 3.3.9 is back in the news again. Apple have amended their wording once more. AdMob are upset, and apparently Google and Apple are set to go to war again.
Admob’s CEO, Omar Hamoui slammed Apple’s deal as harming developers, saying,
“In the history of technology and innovation, it’s clear that competition delivers the best outcome. Artificial barriers to competition hurt users and developers and, in the long run, stall technological progress.”
Google will be “speaking to Apple to express our concerns about the impact of these terms,” Hamoui said.
Some even believe Google may take its toys away from Apple in a fit of pique.
Shares in ARM Holdings PLC are on a roller coaster ride up and down, as the sheep who inhabit the stock exchanges around the globe are running rampant on whiffs of repeated rumours of Apple manoeuvring to snap up ARM. Apparently Apple had the ARM logo on a picture at WWDC! That obviously confirms it then…
Analyst Nick James at Panmure Gordon said the likelihood of ARM getting a bid from Apple or anyone else was very low in his view, as the company’s business model was based on licensing its technology to a large community of chip makers.
And the FTC and DOJ are “considering” yet another antitrust investigation into Apple.
On Monday, Apple (AAPL ) changed the rules that govern its new iAd mobile advertising platform to exclude competitors like Google (GOOG ) and Microsoft (MSFT).
On Wednesday, Google took the matter public, blasting Apple for setting “artificial barriers to competition [that] hurt users and developers and, in the long run, stall technological progress.”
On Thursday, the Financial Times, citing two unnamed sources “close to the situation,” reported that U.S. antitrust regulators plan to investigate whether Apple is unfairly restricting its smartphone rivals from syphoning off some of what is expected to be a torrent of revenue from ads that run on iPhones, iPads and iPod touches.
Yawn. Those “unnamed sources ‘close to the situation’” certainly get about a bit!
Dan Lyons is bemoaning the death of the Mac, requiring soothing emails from his Steve-ness…
“Completely wrong. Just wait.”
Did I miss some Adobe Flash news? Because if I could find anything on that then my feeling of Dejavu from last week, and the week before then, and… would be complete.
I can see a lot of wacky videos being made with this!
The winners for the 2010 Apple Design awards were (with iTunes links):
Congratulations to all.
This hyperwall is powered by 30 Mac Pro towers with Mac OS X Snow Leopard and EVGA NVIDIA GTX 285 graphics cards. As apps are downloaded from the App Store, their data is coalesced via an XML feed every five minutes. Apps are sorted and scheduled using Cocoa and Objective-C. The data is then passed to an OpenCL [kernel], which drives the animation. Quartz Composer brings all the technologies together and renders the final synchronized output using Quartz Composer Visualizer.
As expected, Xcode 4 had been officially announced at WWDC.
If you are a registered WWDC attendee you can read the Xcode 4 release notes and comment in the forum here.
Watch Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduce the new iPhone 4. See the video-on-demand event in QuickTime and MPEG-4, by clicking on Steve!
macgeneration : Google Translation
