Apple sent out invitations to the press yesterday for an event to be held on March 17 to preview the 3.0 firmware for the iPhone. (No, I did not get this press invite for my day job, unfortunately. Even if I had, I wouldn’t get to fly to the west coast to attend.) I am quite excited about this event, though I do worry it will essentially be another massive teaser where they’ll show all this cool stuff and nothing will be available for months. I hope I’m wrong about that.
The internets have been aflame with rumors and guesses about what 3.0 will include. Like many others, I’m still hoping Apple will finally implement copy & paste, MMS capability, and the push notifications promised months ago. I also hope they’ll throw in video capture capability and will start to allow voice-guided navigation apps into the App Store, but I think these are unlikely at this time.
I do think that Apple will surprise us with something we either haven’t thought about in a while or just really don’t expect. What if they add the ability to sync the iPhone with your computer completely by WiFi? Once your iPhone is on your home WiFi network, it will search for your computer and start a sync automatically (though you have the option of turning off automatic syncing as you do now). This is the kind of smart behavior that increases ease of use that Apple likes to throw at you.
Or, what if they add the ability for the iPhone to be more like an intermediary between multiple computers between home and work by allowing the iPhone to act like a portable drive, as most iPods models can already do, with the ability to manipulate files directly on the iPhone. I know there are already 3rd-party apps that allow you to store files on the iPhone and even edit some file types, but what if Apple built that all in so that documents would be saved/synced during the sync process and they provided Apple-made apps to do the editing and whatnot? I think they could come up with a really slick way of doing this seamlessly on both ends.
You get the gist – I think Apple will come up with something we’re not focused on to do that “surprise and delight” thing they love so much. I only hope it’s truly useful and not fluff that just sounds cool, whatever it is.
On my “I really want this but really don’t expect Apple to do this soon” list are things like additional Bluetooth profiles to allow file exchange and internet sharing, the ability to create folders to better manage multiple pages of apps, and profiles that will automatically manage sounds based on the time and/or location. How cool would it be if my iPhone would automatically switch to silent mode as soon as I got to work based on my GPS coordinates or upon connection to the WiFi network there? Also on this list are lock screen upgrades that would show my upcoming appointments, missed calls, waiting emails and messages, and more without requiring me to hack my iPhone, much like IntelliScreen for jailbroken iPhones, but more stable and free. đ
Okay, enough iPhone daydreaming and on to other news. Palm held a webcast for the press yesterday and I was really hoping for more new information on the Pre. Instead, they pretty much repeated information already provided at CES when the Pre was announced. I think they knew this event was going to be a let-down for the press since the very first announcement out of the MC’s mouth at the start of the event was to say that they had no information on the pricing or availability of the Pre to announce. Why the hell would you bother with a press event when you have precisely nothing new to announce about a product? I’m sure it was intended to keep up the hype about the Pre, but I don’t think this is a good tactic when you have nothing to add at all beyond what you already said 3 months ago. Seriously. Don’t jerk us around like that and waste our time for absolutely nothing.
If I hadn’t had to cover the event for work, I wouldn’t have even bothered with a news announcement for my work site since I don’t think Palm nor Sprint deserved any coverage at all for that useless event. Though I’m talking it here on my blog, I’m going to make it clear that it was a pathetic event by including a few choice keywords for search purposes: Palm, Pre, webcast, pointless, poor, fail, suckage, waste of time, repetitive, iPhone, iPhone, iPhone.
There. Palm and Sprint: please don’t freaking bother me again until you have something new and truly newsworthy about the Pre to announce. And it better be soon – you don’t have nearly the cachet or style of Apple to keep me patient enough to wait several more months for your version of the Jesus phone. Got it?
For the record, it took a fair amount on my part to not drop the f-bomb a few times in this post given how irritated I am with the whole Palm thing. However, I’m trying to stay calm and professional here. It’s working so far, but I don’t know if it’ll last if Palm does something asinine like this again. You have been warned.
