Time to jump on the rumour mill and predict, with scary accuracy what Apple’s event due to take place at the end of January (’10), will hold.

Update: Looks like once again I have been spot on with my Apple predictions. I have linked to stories confirming my assertions where appropriate.

Mac OS X Touch

The new name for iPhone OS. Currently the iPhone OS runs on iPhone’s, iPod’s and inside developers Mac Pro’s.

It’s time for a name change — Mac OS X Touch 1.0. It will effectively be iPhone OS 4.0, we might get a few 3.x updates to smooth the transition but by the end of 2010 iPhone OS will be dead — Long live Mac OS X Touch.

Features

These features all taken form my musings on Twitter.

Naming

• UPDATE: Touch OS 4.0
• UPDATE: Mac Touch OS 4.0

API

• Voice Control API
• Low level camera API
• Bluetooth API
• launchd API (instead of multi-process support)
• Data detectors API
• Advanced gesture API
• Advanced iSync API (for 3rd parties)

Updates

• USB support (for iSlate)
• Extra non-standard WebKit extentions
• Definitely no Flash support
• Multi-camera support (see Apps below)
• Video output
• Handwriting recognition

Interface Updates

• Animated springboard icons
• Advanced App management
• Lock App positions in springboard

Apps

• RELEASED: iWork App (instead of file system) [MacRumours.com] [AppleInsider]
• iChat [Orange Exec Confirms Apple Tablet Is On The Way]
• UPDATE: Remote Desktop App (iPad Only)
• UPDATE: Apple TV App (iPad Only)

I love the prediction season, mainly because you can generate 1000s of page loads without thinking about it.

First the scores for some of last years predictions form The Guardian and myself.

Let’s start with a banker. No self-replicating worm for Mac OSX or the iPhone’s OSX by the end of the year.

FAIL. Too bad. We’ve had 2! There is an argument that it’s not a real worm because; a, It only attacks Jail-broken iPhones and b, It only effected Australians.

ZFS won’t be built into the kernel for Snow Leopard; it’ll be an optional install, for server honchos.

Well, half right, half wrong. I’ll give it a C-.

The iPhone software will be updated to 3.x, which will bring copy-and-paste and photo messaging. About time.

B+, only because these were such easy predictions.

Please read Charles Arthur’s full article as I have only cherry picked a few quotes.

$99 get you quite a lot as an Apple iPhone developer; invites to Tech Talks, an Apple employee spending hours reviewing you Apps and of course the ability to list your App on iTunes.

Despite all this, developers have been moaning since day one. I’m not going to re-hash all the arguments about review processes etc, etc. But I do have a wish list, and if I’ve been a good developer this year maybe Steve Jobs will deliver some of them.

1. UK Promo Codes — our apps are mainly for the UK market and how can I get Jemima Kiss to review it if I can’t send her a free copy.
2. Aggregate Ratings and Reviews — Having to search for new reviews in iTunes is a nightmare and responding to them is impossible. What if my game is loved in New Zealand? I’ll never know. What if people in India are demanding a localised version? I’ll never know. Ratings and reviews from around the would should be accessible form iTunes Connect.
3. Discounted Development Devices — The current developer discounts leave a lot to be desired. I want 3 cost price iPhones or iPods each year.
4. Paid-for App Updates — Remember all the fuss with Tweetie 2? That could of all been solved if Apple made provisions for Paid-for App Updates. You could do it with In App Purchase, but it’s messy, and doesn’t allow for downgrades etc.
5. Relaxing of the App Store contract — An App we developed was rejected because it had recordings of swear words. Does Apple censor all the Rap music and Movies it sells?

Over the last year this blog has argued the case for Apple’s mobile device strategy, I think this post sums it up nicely.

However, while I and every other tech journalist and blogger have been concentrating on the hardware, Apple has been secretly (duh!) plotting its most audacious product to-date.

NB: This is simply speculation, if anyone at Apple is reading this please don’t blacklist me I have Apps to sell.

Remember what everyone said about the iPod? Overpriced, under powered. Remember what everyone said about the iPhone? Overpriced, underpowered, crappy network. What will they say about the Tablet/Slate? Overpriced! underpowered! Can you seen the pattern?

But what made people buy these slow and expensive gadgets — especially when there were obviously superior competitors? iTunes. You heard me, iTunes, I’m no fan — believe me. Even on the Mac is a painful, bloated experience and I’ve heard on Windows is enough to dive you insane. But the infrastructure is what matters.

The humble iPod (later the iPod Classic) had one competitive advantage; a simple, (relatively) cheap and legal way to buy music. The iPhone now has 100,000+ Apps many free (FREE!) and many pointless. But it has an eco-system, and Apple own the infrastructure.

How will this help the iDevice/SteveSlate/WebBook? Applications. Not Apps. Not Widgets. Applications, fully functioning multi-featured Applications. Like Tweetie for Mac or any of the excellent games form Ambrosia.

Apple is going to do for regular software what it’s done for mobile Apps. The same walled garden, with the same terrible approval process and the same $99/year fee.

And as a software developer, I can’t wait. Being listed on the iTunes App Store for Mac will be a sign of quality and a guarantee to users of no viruses or Trojans.

Developers will be able to sell more applications and make more money. Users will have access to 1000s of Apps all with a ‘guarantee’ of quality and all in one place, rated and reviewed. Apple will be happy because it will totally own the device.

The process for developers will be easy, download a provisioning profile form ADC, recompile your application, submit to Apple (wait 4 weeks) and bingo, your application is in front of 20 million people.

So, while we have all been arguing about hardware specs, Apple have been building data centres and working on iTunes X (10).

This will change the way software is sold (certainly on the Mac) and hand Apple a massive piece of the pie. Microsoft have been trying to do this for years, but Apple have almost stumbled upon it. But I can’t help wondering if Steve had this in-mind back in 2001?

Recently Phil Schiller has defended the current App Store:

“We’ve built a store for the most part that people can trust,” he says. “You and your family and friends can download applications from the store, and for the most part they do what you’d expect, and they get onto your phone, and you get billed appropriately, and it all just works.”

I think this adds weight to my argument, Apple want to build a closed, secure eco-system.

It would be very nice to see these in my stocking come the 25th of December, but I don’t hold out much hope.

1. Virtualized Snow Leopard — developers would love the ability to run multiple copies of Snow Leopard on there 8-core Mac Pro. And all it would take is a change to the licence agreement.
2. FireFox on the iPhone — I can honestly see this happening, but with one caveat, it’ll cost you. A change in SDK terms might allow paid-for-apps to replace existing functionality.
3. Family Pack of iTablets — 3 devices for $999.99, runs the iPhone OS but with keyboard and mouse support. A Kindle/Netbook killer!
4. iPhone discounts for developers — we sold 2 billion f**king Apps! How about some love, 2 per year at 80% off?
5. UK App Store Promo Codes — all I can say to this is AHHHHHHHHHHH! How can I get Jemima Kiss to review my amazing App if she has to buy it!
6. Apple TV that works — it’s easy; Blue Ray player, Hulu, iPlayer and 4OD support. Job done. Drop the price by £50 / $100 and you have instant living room domination.
7. WWDC Europe — I love San Francisco but a London or Paris event would make a lot of people happy
8. Playing nice with Google Voice — Apple and Google do some much better against Microsoft when they’re not fighting
9. Buy Adobe — you’ve got the cash, you could kill Flash (or make it better), 64 bit Photoshop, …, etc, etc
10. End the exclusivity, sell more iPhone — iPhones account for more than 40% of smartphone sales in countries with out exclusivity (i.e. France). How many more of my amazing Apps would I sell if iPhone got a 2-5x market increase? Enough to stop plugging it every 5 minutes.
11. Buy Dell and install Snow Leopard on every computer, just for fun

This weekend I decided to solve a problem that only existed in my head, namely that of no official (or unofficial) Stackoverflow iPhone App.

There have been some questions raised about the possibilities of an API to allow such an App but, alas no noticeable development effort.

Stack Overflow is a programming Q & A site that’s free. Free to ask questions, free to answer questions, free to read, free to index, built with plain old HTML, no fake rot13 text on the home page, no scammy google-cloaking tactics, no salespeople, no JavaScript windows dropping down in front of the answer asking for $12.95 to go away. You can register if you want to collect karma and win valuable flair that will appear next to your name, but otherwise, it’s just free. And fast. Very, very fast. — Stackoverflow

Alpha Launch

This is simply a heads-up on what I achieved in about 6 hours of design, programming and testing. I’d like top get some feedback from the community before I launch head-long into a project that’ll make me no money.

My questions are:

1. Is there a demand for this?
2. Is anyone willing to help with testing?

Testing

If you want to help with the testing, send me your iPhone/iPod Touch UDID using the form below.

Open Source? App Store?

I’ll be blogging more in the coming weeks about how (and why) I solved some of the problems with the lack of API. If the initial feedback is positive I’ll submit to the App Store early next week fore a (hopefully) early November availability – it’ll be a FREE App — ALWAYS and I’ll probably open source it at some point.

Logo Help

As you can see the logo is not great.

If anyone has a better idea of can produce a better version of this logo please contact me.

Feedback

Please post questions and feedback in the comments section — good or bad. Also feature requests will be seriously considered.

If you want to help fund this and other projects you could always buy my 59p ($0.99) Profanity App (iTunes link).

Video

Here is a short video showing the use of the Stackoverflow iPhone App.

The rumour mill has been swirling – Apple Tablet they cry. “Doom to fail” they sneer. I’m not so stupid as to predict an Apple device to fail, if we’ve learnt anything since SJ’s return it’s that, Apple learns from it’s mistakes!

I shall enumerate these “mistakes” and point out the silver lining:

1. Apple Cube… Mac Mini and Apple TV
2. Newton (and killing it)… iPhone/iPod Touch
3. Mac Clones… Intel processors
4. No iPhone SDK (at launch)… The App Store
5. Apple TV… Apple TV 2
6. Apple TV 2… TBA

Recently I wrote a post called iDevice, the one paragraph that keeps popping into my head is this:

Back in the late 90’s when Steve came back to Apple he gave a Keynote (I have it on VHS somewhere), where he talked about the similarities of digital watches and computers (bare with me). He pointed out that in the 80’s the average American household had 1 digital watch and today (late 90’s) it’s 8 (NB: I’m writing form memory but the point stands). — iDevice

I now believe this to been even more relevant. Any new iDevice from Apple will try and fill the gap between laptop and iPhone. Just as we all now own 8 digital watches we’ll all have 3 or 4 iPads/iDevices/What-ever by the dawn of the next decade.

Apple has no interest in Netbooks, it has MacBooks to fill that gap. It is however, very interested in selling a few billion more Apps and defining an entirely new market segment.

The killer App here is an eBook reader, but not necessarily for novels. The iPhone SDK 3.0 has in App purchase, and the ability for subscriptions. My guess is; newspapers and magazines.

Download the OK Magazine App or New York Times App, the publishers finally get a revenue from online content, Apple gets 30% (or more like 10% form big publishers) and you get the daily papers downloaded to your iDevice before you leave the house in the morning — ready to read on the train.

Add to the mix; games, web access, external keyboard and mouse and you get a Netbook killer not iPhone sales eroding.

Don’t expect an Office type suite, Google Docs or what ever Microsoft are calling Office online today, (Office Live.Net XP SP 3?) will do just fine thanks (oh and Apple’s own Mobile Me).

The best guess for price will be $100 more that the most expensive iPod Touch. But, a subscription to a mobile data plan at $10 / month might half that price. Apple want you to buy 2 or more of these; office, lounge, bed room and one for the kids. So a 3 pack — as bizarre as it sounds — is a real option, maybe for as little as $899 (with a data plan). You can’t get a MacBook for that, the family pack; 3 iDevices for under $1000 would be very attractive.

*Pricing: I’ve used $ and not £ values because Apple seem to price every thing in $ and then use their own exchange rate to convert to £. I love to see 3 devices for £500 but it’ll be more like £800.

Appy Go Lucky today released their first iPhone App. It was a long hard slog, involving calls form Apple HQ in Cupertino and bizarre conversations about the meaning of, Gypo.

On the whole our experience with Apple was very positive, they showed a genuine interest in expanding the boundaries of the often restrictive App Policies.

With over 150,000 profane phrases available, the Profanity App for the iPhone and iPod Touch is essential for anyone looking to correctly label their friends and enemies. Just give the app a quick shake and you’ll be provided with insults ranging from the almost innocent ‘You vacant clumsy boob!’ right up to the sort of blue language that would take a seasoned dockside worker by surprise.

Profanity is the first in a long line of experimental iPhone Apps and Appy Go Lucky are looking to expand the languages and scope of “the sweariest available”.

Here is a quick rundown of what an Apple iDevice will (might) be like. I’ve been an Apple watcher for years and never been surprised by what they do and don’t release.

First off release date, its quite obvious that the release of any iDevice won’t be at this years WWDC. We haven’t seen the rash of rumours (or chatter) that accompany any new Apple release. A September/October time-frame is more likely, ready for the holidays.

The look ‘n feel, is almost more important to Fanboys then price, battery or even if it exists at all. CNET are suggesting a 7-8 inch screen, thats just wrong. 10-12 inches is the sweet spot.

Full disclosure time, I’m an Apple developer and it means I’m bound by NDA about discussing specifics of the iPhone OS 3.0, however it’s quite obvious that more work has gone on behind-the-scenes than we might be lead to believe. Independent resolution, a file-system (ZFS?), external storage, multiple processes are all things we can expect in an iPhone OS deployed on any new iDevice.

Apple has (some what unwittingly) created an immense ecosystem with the App Store, it not about to hamstring this by releasing low-cost, low-powered devices. Expect any new device to be at least as powerful (and feature equivalent) as the current 2nd Generation iPod Touch. Any talk of no wireless or smaller screens is laughable.

One thing to keep in mind, Apple has been here before. It invented the Netbook with the eMate in the late 90’s. Don’t think it’s forgotten this, expect this to be pushed in schools as e-readers, teaching aids etc.

The processor will be the most innovative feature of the iDevice, possible multi-processors and GPU’s all utilised by Grand Central. It won’t allow you to run Photoshop but it will allow HD movies and OpenGL ES games to sing!

The battery, I always feel sorry for Apple when they release a new product. They always get slammed for the battery life, it’s not like they do it on purpose. If there was a 20 hour battery that weighed less than a ton and didn’t cost 1 million pounds they’d use it. Right? The other bone of contention is removable-vs-fixed. It is nearly always portrayed as a negative to have a fixed battery, never mind the increased battery life etc. Why is this, well it’s simple, Technology is written about by Tech Journalists. Tech Journalists travel a lot with their laptops and need 10’s of hours of battery life, so for the last decade they have all been carrying 3, 4 or 5(!) extra batteries. They think this is normal. It’s not. Batteries cost £40-£60 (well Apple batteries do), normal people can’t claim them on expenses, so we make do.

Expect decent battery life, but not amazing.

Back in the late 90’s when Steve came back to Apple he gave a Keynote (I have it on VHS somewhere), where he talked about the similarities of digital watches and computers (bare with me). He pointed out that in the 80’s the average American household had 1 digital watch and today (late 90’s) it’s 8 (NB: I’m writing form memory but the point stands). This is the overriding aim for Apple; 2 x Desktop or Laptop, 4 x iDevices (including iPhones and iPods).

What does this last paragraph mean? The price will be such that you can buy multiple iDevices for your home and family. They might even sell them is packs of 3 or 4! And if you’ve got a Time Capsule (or other compatible NAS) your ‘profile’ will follow you.

“Pick up the iDevice in the kitchen and search for a recipe, move to the lounge and use the iDevice there to read a book downloaded from Amazon. Each of the kids will have their own for IM, Twitter, Facebook etc. You iPhone will wirelessly sync all new contacts, photos etc. After dinner you can all sit around the AppleTV and view the photos you all took on you iPhones and camera equipped iPods. Then watch a movie downloaded form iTunes.”

There are going to be a lot of out of work developers in 2009, all these idle man-months could be put to good use if companies opened up a little. Some of these developments could help drive the economy out of the downturn.

Apple, overall grade B+

Look what happened when Apple listened to developers and opened up the iPhone, the App Store. It has made quite a few developers rich and provided Apple with a valuable ecosystem for its products. 

iPhone/iPod Touch, grade A-

The second release of the iPhone software was a huge step forward, but there is still much room for improvement. All the ‘hidden’ APIs if properly documented will provide developers the tools to create some amazing applications.  

AppleTV, grade F

There were high hopes for AppleTV when it was first released. But it has largely failed to live up to expectations. This would all change if an API were created, imagine if you could play all your iPhone games on your Apple TV with your iPhone acting as the controller.

A hint at the viability of an AppleTV API is Boxee. But this maybe short lived if these predictions come true.

Un-announced tablet Mac

If in 2009 Apple finally release a tablet Mac or netbook, the iPhone APIs could provide new and innovative methods of interactions as-well-as providing next generation power saving facilities and processing with OpenCL.

Sony, overall grade E

Sony could of ruled the living-room in 2008, and all they needed was a FireFox port instead of the god-offal browser implementation they cooked up at Sony HQ. And why haven’t Facebook released a FREE download for the PS3? Profile integration anyone? People will still buy a PS3 and a laptop, “for the internet”. When all they need is a decent browser to check their Hotmail and place a bet or two.

Home (beta), grade D

Home beta will boast 3rd party features but not on the grand scale of the Apple App Store. And that a shame. We’ll get some nice game add-ons. spaces and eye candy. Demos will appear in the arcade but nothing independent, I can’t sell my Twitter app for 59p and make £10,000. They have to get a D for lack of vision. 

Twitter, grade A-

Twitter are the golden boys, no business model but a rapidly increasing user base and all fueled by their simple and open API (take note Sony). 

REST

Not much to say, simply send and receive XML, simple and well documented. top of the class.

Search

Search in Twitter is a powerful tool and is already the backbone of some notable web apps.

Google Friend Connect / Facebook Connect, grade C+

Although new (just out of private beta), GFC and FC are shaping up to simplify your social networking experience. It is beyond the scope of this post to debate the pros and cons of each but one thing is for sure, they need to work together! Must try harder!