One has to believe everyone in the Palm building in Sunnyvale, California will be holding their breath today as Apple discusses iPhone 3.0 software. The Pre was unveiled in January and looks to be the company’s great hope, if not their last great hope. The Pre is aimed to beat the iPhone and versus the 3G iPhone they had accomplished that mission on paper and in prototype form. Now, before they can rush the Pre out the door, Apple orchestrated a quick event to put a lid on iPhone owners thinking of jumping ship.
Cut and Paste? Ha!
So what does Palm not want to see from Apple? Copy and Paste? MMS? Video? Ha! All those things should have been givens. Addressing them now is more of an embarrassment than anything. Can you imagine the tagline of a Pre vs iPhone commercial: “what took them two years to figure out, we include on our first generation Pre.” Embarrassing!
It’s all about the background
The big ticket item is background notification. I’ve read a couple of places that Apple also thought of a “card” like system that the Pre showed and is very similar to how Safari navigates to open browser windows on the iPhone. We could be looking at years of legal wrangling over competing card systems if Apple ponies up. As it stands today, background processes and notification is a huge separator that makes the Pre so darn attractive.
Contacts
Another is the contact integration from social networking. Your contacts don’t live in single program on a card, they are vibrant people that are into everything, Facebook, Twitter, Outlook, GMail, and gosh knows what else. The Pre brings these all together and keeps tabs on your contacts for you. This is impressive work that if Apple has something similar, blurs the line between phones.
Flash? Verizon?
Flash is still a bit of a mystery. I don’t expect any announcement today from Apple, but being first is probably on the minds of both. Likewise, I don’t suspect we’ll hear anything about a Verizon iPhone.
Will Apple just pull even with the Pre spec (and it is important to call it spec here as we’ve not seen a production device)? Or will they “pull an Apple” and surprise us all by surpassing our expectations? They’ve built a good reputation doing just that. We’ll see. Stay tuned to Gadgetell and Appletell for the latest on today’s announcement.
cute gadget… its better for lady…
@Green world, "better for a lady" How so?
Do the women in Indonesia have all the awesome phones while the men are stuck with hard-wired carphones? Please dish.
Apple orchestrated a quick event..
Yeah, last week Apple just threw together over 1000 APIs and a slew of features we wanted for almost 2 years real quick so they would have an answer for the incredible new vaporware Pre that will be coming out any second now (if that dying company is still in business next month).
@ R. Lloyd
Yep, some of the desperate Palm fans are making some really silly comments on the net. The 1000 API alone will kick features into high gear and really move the bar higher for competitors to reach.
@R the event was quickly orchestrated, not the tech presented at it. We were not given much notice and Apple held it purely to screw with Palm. Fair game.
@slappy – Apple fanboy site is one click to Appletell.com