WWDC announcements

Lots of announcements at Apple WWDC 2007. They showed off Leopard. That was cool… Here are the parts that stood out to me.

4) Time Machine – Looks like this backup application may work magic for Apple users. Especially the non-geeky type that don’t back up but really should. Making it simple to find stuff is key. I can think of a few million academic users who will be ecstatic this exists. Does Time Machine save files in a proprietary compression scheme like other backup software?

3) iPhone Ships on June 29th at 6pm – We already knew Apple and AT&T were going to wait until the very end of the month to release the iPhone. Now we know when iPhone nerds have to camp out. Sometime 24 to 48 hours before 6pm on June 29. How much is the unlimited data and voice plan going to be for the iPhone?

2) Safari 3 Public Beta for Windows – This is a big deal. As a web developer I’m concerned that we’re headed for another browser war. This time with three real fronts instead of two. But its possible that Safari will still be marginalized and not pickup a big Windows user base. But if the number of iTunes for Windows installs is any indicator we’re in for some serious change. Maybe real web standards will win the day and developing for them will cause your sites to work on all browsers. Argggg… I am not looking forward to a return of the early Nineties when every browser responded to different code…. If Safari 3 isn’t strictly compliant to web standards then Flash/ActionScript *could* kick html/JavaScript in the ass!

1) iPhone Applications are really Web Standard Applications – Seems that developing for the iPhone may be as simple as writing AJAX and HTML. Will we be able to quickly port our web based apps to the iPhone? Will we be able to cut and paste apps like we can for Dashboard on leopard? This news seems to confirm my speculation about making iPhone application app development like Dashboard widget dev. Its so amazing to see the blurring of the lines between web app and desktop app. When will we realize that line is really gone? I think it’ll happen when anyone using the web can make a powerfull application for the planet in ten minutes.