Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2009 > June > 08 > Entry
Apple’s new iPhone 3G S, price drops, tweaked hardware and Snow Leopard news
Update, 4:15 p.m.: A bit of confusion as to how much the new iPhone version will cost for existing iPhone 3G owners. See new blog post here.
Increasingly, rumors about Apple’s hardware moves are getting to be right on the money. It goes to show how desperate Mac fans (and, over time, many others) are for any bit of information; these days, with so many people in the chain working on Apple products, it’s inevitable there’ll be information leaks.
So it is that today, at the keynote at the Worldwide Developers Conference 2009, the rumors about Apple’s new version of its iPhone were almost all true.
The new iPhone did indeed get a speed bump, with speedier hardware, as well as a memory upgrade: its new iPhone 3G S (the “S” is for “speed”) now comes in 16- and 32-gigabyte models for $199 and $299, respectively.
The standard iPhone 3G drops to $99, the sweet spot for cell phones; expect it to sell like digital hotcakes.
What’s in the new 3G S? A better camera, 3 megapixels, with auto focus, auto white balance and the ability to record 30-frames-per-second video. It will also load applications more quickly and has a digital compass and voice controls (to navigate to applications and control music).
It will be out June 19, two days after Apple will debut its iPhone OS 3.0, which will introduce features across all iPhones including cut and paste, universal search, “Find My Phone” to locate even a silenced phone (but only for Mobile Me users) and phone tethering, though not for AT&T users, at least not according to the presentation. Landscape typing will be introduced into more applications and more features will be made available to the developers who’ve made Apps on the iPhone such an enormous success.
It was a strange omission since 22 other carriers in other countries will support the ability to use the iPhone’s high-speed connection to get online with a laptop. The new OS will also support MMS (multimedia messages), but not until later this summer. AT&T will be late on this as other carriers will have MMS sooner.
The iPhone was the last morsel in a very long meal (the presentation lasted more than two hours), but it wasn’t the only news. Here’s some of the rest:
- The 15-inch Macbook Pro got an unexpected hardware upgrade. It now includes an SD card slot, sports the same long-lasting battery as the giant 17-inch MBP. It starts at a cheaper $1,699.
- In another pleasing surprise, the 13-inch aluminum Macbook earned its wings to become officially known as a Macbook Pro. It also gets the SD slot, a standard illuminated keyboard and the better battery. Best of all, it stays the same price, starting at $1,199. Apple’s regular white Macbook recently got a bump in its specs, but stays pretty much the same, for $999.
- The Macbook Air got a hefty price cut, bringing it in line with the ailing economy. It is priced $1,499-$1,799, one of the most dramatic price cuts in the entire presentation.
- Apple’s Snow Leopard, an upgrade to its current Leopard operating system, will be out in September for $29, or $49 for a family pack.
Those were the highlights. You can read a full blow-by-blow from one of my favorite news sources Engadget, or read NPR’s All Tech Considered take on it from Laura Sydell.
And in case you’re wondering: what would Omar do?
I’ve held on to my first-generation iPhone in hopes of a memory bump and this was it. I plan to get the $299 iPhone 3G S. It’ll replace my 30-gigabyte iPod (finally!) and I’ll join the 3G network, probably handing off my iPhone to my wife, who says she doesn’t need access to high-speed Internet outside the house.
Similarly, I’ll probably upgrade to an aluminum 13-inch Macbook (excuse me, Macbook Pro now) in a few months and hand off my older white Macbook to my wife as well. Her old iBook G4 is aging rapidly and its battery is dead and gone.
$29 seems like a very good price for Snow Leopard, which Apple says will be leaner and meaner than the current OS, but is not the major transition that Leopard was from OS X Tiger. I’ll probably wait until it’s out and get it pre-installed on a new Macbook and buy the upgrade for my current Macbook, then hand off to my wife.
Everybody wins! At least in my house, I hope.
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By maczter
June 8, 2009 3:10 PM | Link to this
I'll be doing the same. My wife will be inheriting my gently-used iPhone 3G to replace her current EDGE-only slider phone. I've been growing increasingly nervous about using my company MacBook for personal stuff now that I've been through 8+ rounds of layoffs, but don't need one of the larger ones as I have a Mac Pro that's still perfectly capable of handling the heavy tasks.