AllThingsD » Sega

Smithsonian Brings Classic Arcade Games to Life (Video)

Ina Fried — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 16:00:21 +0000

In one corner of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, a preteen boy was throwing balls at aliens, bringing Space Invaders to life. In another, families were posing with flowers, clouds and stars, and doing their best impressions of Mario from Super Mario Brothers, as a professional photographer snapped away.

It was all part of last weekend’s kickoff for an exhibit celebrating the art of the videogame. The three-day GameFest also featured speakers, music performances and movie screenings.

The GameFest part was just for the opening weekend, but “The Art of Video Games” exhibit itself runs through Sept. 30 in Washington, D.C.

Each generation of gaming gets its moment in the spotlight — from the early Atari, Coleco and Intellivision consoles, through Nintendo, Sega Genesis and Dreamcast, to today’s Xbox 360, Wii and PlayStation 3.

The exhibit is interactive, allowing visitors to not only view the evolution of the graphics in videogames, but also to try their hand at some classics. Lines formed as kids and adults alike queued up to play Super Mario and Pac-Man on a giant screen.

For more on the exhibit and the accompanying GameFest, check out our photo gallery:

Sega Confirms Cyberattack

Daisuke Wakabayashi — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 11:15:08 +0000

In the latest cyberattack to hit the videogame industry, Sega Corp. said an intruder stole the personal information of nearly 1.3 million users of its online service from a company database.

Sega said the names, birthdays, e-mail addresses and encrypted passwords registered with users of SegaPass, a newsletter and online game service operated by its European subsidiary, were accessed without permission. Sega, known for its Sonic the Hedgehog game character, issued a statement on its Japanese Web site.

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Risks of Children Viewing 3-D Fading Into The Background In Time for Nintendo's Handheld Launch

Tricia Duryee — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 13:00:32 +0000

With less than a week to go before Nintendo launches the 3DS in the U.S., safety concerns about whether children should view the three-dimensional images have largely disappeared–right before our eyes.

As recently as January, safety warnings about the new handheld gaming device were dominating headlines after the company issued warnings that the 3-D screens shouldn’t be viewed by children six or younger because it may harm their vision.

Now, U.S. eye specialists are even welcoming the technology, saying it could help catch vision problems that are hard to detect.

“The 3DS could be a godsend for identifying kids under 6 who need vision therapy,” Dr. Michael Duenas, associate director for health sciences and policy for the American Optometric Association told the AP.

Nintendo has a lot riding on the new handheld gaming device since it is the only new hardware it has coming in the near term. The device has already launched in Japan, and will go on sale in the U.S. on Sunday for $250.

The clamshell device is similar to the original 3DS that has been a long-term hit among children. In the new version, it has two screens with the top one having the ability to display 3-D images without the need for special glasses. The 3-D images can be turned off with the flip of a switch. When on, they look somewhat like a hologram.

Many of the device’s capabilities are similar to features found on the iPhone and other smartphones.

For example, the new 3DS has an online store, called the eShop, where users will be able to download games. It also has three cameras and a built-in gyro, so the device can be tilted and turned to affect game play. It will also have location-based features, where users can elect to receive new content from Nintendo or other 3DS users as they travel around.

The device can connect to Wi-Fi hotspots, even when in sleep mode, to collect this content or to function as a pedometer, which counts a user’s steps.

Some features won’t be available at launch, but will be released later through a software update.

At one point, the warnings that Nintendo issued about concerns over children viewing 3-D images seemed like a major impediment for the device.

Now, it’s being viewed as a potential way to identify early signs in kids who may have a vision disorder such as amblyopia, or “lazy eye,” which can cause problems with reading.

In an interview with CNBC in January, Nintendo’s President and COO of North America Reggie Fils-Aime downplayed the concerns: “The fact that the younger consumers are not to view 3-D images is not a big deal for us, and you can manipulate the device to only have 2-D visuals shown, so it will cater to all consumers. The 2-D screen is dramatically better than our current DS.”

Last week, Amazon.com said preorders of the 3DS have been robust. It said the best-selling game titles are Capcom’s Super Street Fighter IV, followed by Nintendo’s Pilotwings Resort and Sega’s Super Monkey Ball.

However, even with the upcoming launch on deck, the top handheld game releasing next week with the most preorders is not for the 3DS, but for Sony’s PlayStation Portable (PSP). The game is Dissidia duodecim Final Fantasy by Square Enix.

English-Learning Game Co. Moonshot Seeks "Sonic" Success

Ty McMahan — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 08:00:43 +0000

How’s this for a start-up pitch to venture investors: The executive team helped introduce the world to a blue, anthropomorphic hedgehog with the ability to run faster than the speed of sound. And that hedgehog has sold more than 70 million video games.

That’s the story behind Moonshoot Inc., a newly funded start-up that plans to teach English to children through an online video game. The Moonshoot team is headed by former Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) executives and is full of alums from Sega Corp., the gaming company behind the popular “Sonic the Hedgehog” title.

With the hope that Moonshoot can have Sonic-like success, the start-up recently attracted a $5 million injection of capital from Alsop Louie Partners and TL Ventures, and return investor Presidio Ventures.The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company previously raised a $1.5 million Series A round from Presidio.

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Playing With a More Sensitive Wii

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 22:18:02 +0000

Nintendo’s Wii gaming system motivates first-graders, senior citizens and everyone in between to get off their couches and play video games by swinging a motion-sensing remote control. These motions are similar enough to those used in real-life games that people find the Wii less intimidating than other video games with confusing controls.

After almost three years of Wii success, Nintendo recently reported it sold in its first quarter less than half the Wii consoles it sold a year earlier. The Wii needs a shot in the arm, and Nintendo thinks it has just the solution: the Wii MotionPlus remote accessory.

[ See post to watch video ]

This small piece plugs into the bottom of Wii remotes and costs $20 by itself or $50 when bundled with the Wii Sports Resort game, which includes 12 sports that take advantage of Wii MotionPlus. The Wii console costs $250 and comes with a remote and a Nunchuk. The Wii MotionPlus has a gyroscope that helps the remote detect slight twists or rotations made by one’s wrist and/or arm and reflects these movements on the screen. It adds more precision to games like bowling and golf, so you don’t feel like you accidentally made a good—or bad—shot. And it lets you add spin to a ball while swinging a golf club or ping-pong racket or while bowling.

I’ve been playing games with the Wii MotionPlus, and this small accessory adds a much more satisfying, realistic element to Wii games. In some cases, this meant that I played a game with less success than with the original Wii remote because the MotionPlus add-on is more responsive and sensitive. But I eventually got used to it and liked it more than the plain remote.

However enjoyable, the Wii MotionPlus is more of an evolutionary change than a revolutionary change. If you’ve never played video games on a Wii before, you wouldn’t know what you were missing if you used the remote without MotionPlus.

The real excitement in video gaming and general broadcast TV controlling will come when we don’t need any remote controls at all and cameras will sense our movements, reflecting them on-screen. In June, Microsoft (MSFT) announced its Project Natal, which would potentially work with all Xbox 360 consoles to directly sense movements and sounds, and to recognize faces. This would encourage users to swing, throw, run and jump in a completely natural way without the need to learn anything about how to hold a remote control or operate its buttons.

On a similar note, Sunnyvale-Calif.-based Canesta Inc. wants you to use your hands as remote controls for your TV. The idea with Canesta is that users could, for example, walk into a family room and wave at the TV to turn it on, move a hand in a rightward circle to turn up the volume and flip through channels using motions like those used to page through a large book. I tried Canesta in a demonstration and can testify that doing things like turning the channel with your hands is a powerful and somewhat magical experience. But of these, Nintendo currently has the only product on the market to use technology that echoes natural movements, albeit with a remote control. Project Natal is still just a research project that isn’t used in any products, and it won’t be coming out any time this year.

[ See post to watch video ]

Canesta has a partnership with Hitachi (HIT) so that it will be used in the company’s TV sets, though Hitachi says these TVs won’t be available until 2010 at the earliest and would likely show up in Japan first. Canesta is also building other partnerships, or it could work as a standalone product for TVs, computers, set-top boxes or other devices.

Wii MotionPlus makes the remote smart enough not to require as much button pressing. For example, shooting basketballs in a three-point shootout only required holding the remote in my right hand so it followed my shooting motion. Bowling no longer requires letting go of a button just in time to release the ball, a former menace to Wii’s beginner bowlers. And I threw a Frisbee by moving the remote with the same motion as if I were tossing one in real life. At first, my friend and I found ourselves trying to make stiff motions that seemed more video-game-like, but when the on-screen instructions encouraged us to move naturally, we did so and had much more success.

Wii Sports Resort includes 12 different sports but omits some of the old favorites from the original Wii Sports. Tennis has been replaced with table tennis, boxing has been replaced by sword fighting, and though bowling and golf remain, baseball is gone. New sports include wakeboarding, Frisbee, archery, basketball, power cruising (jet skis), canoeing, cycling and air sports like parachuting.

I bowled and put a little extra spin on the ball by twisting my wrist just before letting go. The ball was surprisingly reactive, so much so that I had to tone down my spin before I got the hang of it. Wakeboarding works by holding the remote horizontally like it’s the cross bar you hold onto and use for steering in the water. The Wii MotionPlus works with the Nunchuk attachment, and my friend and I attached this piece to the remote to compete against one another in several rounds of archery (he won by seven points). With the Nunchuk attached to the remote, we held the remote like it was the bow and slowly pulled the Nunchuk attachment back as if it were the arrow—stretching sound-effects and all.

The MotionPlus can stay attached to the remote while playing games that aren’t made specifically for its use; those games won’t be affected. However, a regular remote can’t be used with games made for the MotionPlus. Along with Wii Sports Resort, three other games are made to use the Wii MotionPlus: Sega’s Virtua Tennis 2009, EA Sports’ (ERTS) Grand Slam Tennis and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10.

If you’re hoping to give your tired Wii a boost, you’ll like what the relatively inexpensive Wii MotionPlus accessory brings to your game—though you’ll also need to buy new games that work with it. Generally speaking, it’s exciting to know that technology is almost advanced enough that we could very soon stop letting our remotes have all the control and take some of it back with just the wave of a hand.

Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Newer, Faster, Cheaper iPhone 3G

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:10:34 +0000

Apple Inc.’s iPhone has been the world’s most influential smart phone since its debut a year ago, widely hailed for its beauty and functionality. It was a true hand-held computer that raised the bar for all its competitors. But that first iPhone had two big drawbacks: It was expensive, and it couldn’t access the fastest cellular-phone networks.

[ See post to watch video ]

On Friday, Apple (AAPL) is launching a second-generation iPhone, called the iPhone 3G, which addresses both of those problems, while retaining the look and feel of the first model’s hardware and software.

The base version of the new iPhone costs $199 — half the $399 price of its predecessor; the higher-capacity version is now $299, down from $499. Yet, this new iPhone is much, much faster at fetching data over cellphone networks because it uses a speedy cellular technology called 3G. And it now sports a GPS chip for better location sensing.

The company also is rolling out the second generation of its iPhone operating system, with some nice new features, including wireless synchronization with corporate email, calendars and address books. And there’s a new online store for third-party iPhone programs that Apple hopes will make the device usable for a wider variety of tasks, including gaming and productivity applications. This new software and store will also be available on older iPhones, through a free upgrade.

I’ve been testing the iPhone 3G for a couple of weeks, and have found that it mostly keeps its promises. In particular, I found that doing email and surfing the Internet typically was between three and five times as fast using AT&T’s 3G network as it was with the older AT&T network to which the first iPhone was limited.

Apple’s new iPhone operating system includes an ‘App store,’ where you can browse for, and download, third-party software.

The iPhone 3G is hardly the first phone to run on 3G networks, and it still costs more than some of its competitors. But overall, I found it to be a more capable version of an already excellent device. And now that it’s open to third-party programs, the iPhone has a chance to become a true computing platform with wide versatility.

There are two big hidden costs to the new iPhone’s faster speed and lower price tag. First, in my tests, the iPhone 3G’s battery was drained much more quickly in a typical day of use than the battery on the original iPhone, due to the higher power demands of 3G networks. This is an especially significant problem because, unlike most other smart phones, the iPhone has a sealed battery that can’t be replaced with a spare.

Second, Apple’s exclusive carrier in the U.S., AT&T Inc. (T), has effectively negated the iPhone’s up-front price cut by jacking up its monthly fee for unlimited data use by $10. Over the course of the two-year contract you must sign to get the lower hardware prices, that adds $240, overwhelming the $200 savings on the phone itself. If you want text messaging, the cost rises further. With the first iPhone, 200 text messages a month came free. Now, 200 messages will cost $5 a month, or another $120 over the two-year contract.

The iPhone 3G still has a couple of features that made the first version unpalatable to some potential buyers. It uses a virtual on-screen keyboard instead of a physical one. While I find the virtual keyboard easy and accurate, not everyone does. Also, in the U.S. and in many other countries, the iPhone is still tied to a single exclusive carrier, whose coverage or rate plans may be unacceptable to some.

Here is a rundown of the changes in the new model.

Design: The new iPhone looks almost exactly like the old one. It is the same length and width, has the same big, vivid screen, and has the same number and layout of buttons. The main difference is the back, which is now plastic instead of mostly metal and curved instead of flat. It’s very slightly thicker in the middle, with tapered edges, and weighs a tiny bit less.

The new iPhone 3G (left) delivers much higher Internet download speeds over cellular networks than the original iPhone (right).

Like its predecessor, the iPhone 3G comes in two models distinguished only by storage capacity: 8 gigabytes and 16 gigabytes. The top model is available in black or white.

Apple has greatly improved the audio on the new iPhone. I found the speaker was much louder, for music and for the speakerphone. But the new phone produced an echo when used with the built-in Bluetooth system in my car. Also, the headphone jack is now flush with the case instead of recessed as on the first model, so it can accept any standard stereo earphones.

The camera, however, is still bare-bones. It can’t record video and has a resolution of just two megapixels. The power adapter is now tiny, at least in the U.S., but Apple no longer includes a dock for charging, just a cable.

Software: The basic software is similar. The biggest addition for some users will be full compatibility with Microsoft’s (MSFT) widely used Exchange ActiveSync service, which many corporations use. In my tests, I was able to connect the iPhone 3G to my company’s Exchange servers in a few minutes, and my corporate email, calendar and contacts were replicated on the phone. Any changes I made on the iPhone were reflected almost instantly in Microsoft Outlook on my company PC, and vice versa. Email was pushed to the phone as soon as it was received on the company’s servers.

One drawback: While you can have both personal and Exchange email accounts on the new iPhone, if you synchronize with Exchange calendars and contacts, your personal calendar and contacts are erased.

The new iPhone and upgraded older iPhones also will be able to use a new Apple consumer service, MobileMe, which offers synchronized push email, calendars, photos and contacts.

There are other improvements. You can now delete multiple emails at once, set parental controls and search your contacts. You can also save photos in emails or from Web sites. You can also now open Microsoft PowerPoint files sent as attachments, though I found in my tests that opening larger PowerPoint files crashed the phone.

Some software features missing from the first iPhone are still AWOL on the new one. There’s no copy and paste function, no universal search, no instant messaging and no MMS for sending photos quickly between phones.

Network: Like the old iPhone, the new one can perform Internet tasks using either Wi-Fi wireless networking or the cellphone networks. But the addition of 3G cellular capability makes the new model more useful for Web surfing, email and other data tasks when you’re not in Wi-Fi range. In my tests, in Washington and New York, I got data speeds mostly ranging between 200 and 500 kilobits per second. By comparison, the original iPhone, tested in the same spots at the same time, mostly got cellular data speeds between 70 and 150 kbps on AT&T’s old EDGE network. The new iPhone typically was between three and five times as fast as the old one.

While AT&T now has 3G networks in 280 U.S. cities, and aims to be in 350 by year end, it is converting its cellphone towers gradually, so not all areas of included cities have 3G coverage. The new iPhone falls back to EDGE speeds when 3G isn’t present.

One side benefit to 3G is that in some areas, voice coverage improves. At my neighborhood shopping center, where the first iPhone got little or no AT&T service, the iPhone 3G registered strong coverage. But I still found that calls regularly broke up on some major streets. In New York City, riding in a taxi along the Hudson, one important call was dropped three times on the new iPhone. Finally, I borrowed a cheap Verizon (VZ) phone and got perfect reception.

Battery life: Apple claims that over 3G, the new iPhone can get five hours of talk time, or five hours of Internet use. Talk time is twice as long on the older EDGE network, and Internet time is an hour better with Wi-Fi.

I ran my own battery tests using the phone’s 3G capability. Although I left the Wi-Fi function on, I didn’t connect it to a network, so the phone had to rely on 3G. In my test of voice calling, I got 4 hours and 27 minutes, short of Apple’s maximum claim and nearly three hours less than what I recorded in the same test last year on the original iPhone. In my test of Internet use over 3G, I got 5 hours and 49 minutes, better than Apple’s claim, but far short of the nine hours I got using Wi-Fi in last year’s tests.

More important, in daily use, I found the battery indicator on the new 3G model slipping below 20% by early afternoon or midafternoon on some days, and it entirely ran out of juice on one day. I overcame this problem by learning to use Wi-Fi instead of 3G whenever possible, turning down the screen brightness and even turning off 3G altogether, which the phone permits.

The iPhone 3G’s battery life is comparable to, or better than, that of some other 3G competitors. But they have replaceable batteries. The iPhone doesn’t.

Third-party software: If things go as Apple hopes, third-party software could be the biggest attraction to the new iPhone 3G, and to upgraded older iPhones. By some estimates, there will be hundreds of these programs, some free and some paid, almost immediately.

Apple didn’t supply me with programs for testing, but I managed to try several on older devices upgraded to the new operating system. I tested a game that used the phone’s motion sensors to control the action, and I tested several programs from America Online (TWX), including AOL Instant Messenger; AOL Radio, which streams music from the Internet; and AOL’s Truveo video search engine. All worked very well.

Among the programs Apple has publicly previewed were a sales automation program from Salesforce.com, a game called Super Monkey Ball from Sega and a program for bidding on eBay (EBAY). Also made public were a news reader from the Associated Press, a program for following live games from Major League Baseball and several programs for doctors, including the Epocrates drug reference.

Bottom line: If you’ve been waiting to buy an iPhone until it dropped in price, or ran on faster cell networks, you might want to take the plunge, if you can live with the higher service costs and the weaker battery life. The same goes for those with existing iPhones who love the device but crave faster cellular data speeds. But if you already own an iPhone, and can usually use Wi-Fi for data, you probably should hold off and get the free software upgrade before deciding whether it’s worth getting the new hardware.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

Steve Jobs at WWDC 2008: iPhone 3G for $199, on Sale July 11

John Paczkowski — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 16:59:39 +0000

Apple’s much lauded iPhone captured 28 percent of the smart-phone market in the States by the fourth quarter of 2007–just six months into its launch. Today it holds something less than that–about 19.2 percent. But to look at the headlines, you’d think it controlled the market in its entirety. A quick search on Google returns 19,035 results for “iPhone”– from Jun. 2, 2008 to today. Why? Because in a few hours, Apple CEO Steve Jobs will address the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, at which he is expected to unveil the next version of the company’s iPhone.

And for Apple’s (AAPL) sake, I hope he does. Because with expectations running this high, I’d hate to see what happens if he doesn’t. Although the new Apple Store housed in a life-size replica of the Golden Gate Bridge pictured in the invite would certainly take some of the heat off …

Anyway, I’ll be live-blogging from inside Moscone West in San Francisco starting at 10 a.m. PDT. Here’s something to read while you wait …

From Moscone West: This is crazy. They just opened a single door to let cameras in and the media rushed the gate. Its like that 1979 Who concert in Cincinnati.

The hall in Moscone West is filling quickly to the sounds of Jerry Lee Lewis. From the looks of it media and developers are here in equal numbers.
Jobs takes the stage. I’m sitting about 20 rows back, but even I can see he’s looking pretty thin from here. He gets right into it, pulls up a slide of a stool and describes Apple as a three-legged company. Macs, music and the iPhone.
Jobs will spend the morning talking about the iPhone. This afternoon Apple will discuss OS X “Snow Leopard.”

Talking about iPhone SDK: In the past 96 days, 25,000 people have applied to Apple’s paid developer program. It’s had 250,000 downloads of the iPhone 2.0 software SDK.
Three parts to iPhone 2.0: enterprise, SDK, “new features.”
Apple has built exchange support into iPhone 2.0: push email, push contacts, push calendar, auto-discovery, global address lookup, remote wipe. Also supports Cisco VPN security.
Everything enterprise has told us they’ve wanted in the iPhone, we’ve built into it right out of the box, he says.
35% of Fortune 500 companies have participated in iPhone 2.0 beta: top five banks, securities firms, 8 of 10 top pharma companies, 6 of 7 leading airlines. Lots of support from higher-ed market as well.
Cutting to video now: Execs from Disney (DIS), Genentech, U.S. Army discussing iPhone 2.0 beta: all of them talking about the extraordinary demand for the iPhone among their employees.
“iPhone 2.0 is extraordinarily well-integrated with Microsoft (MSFT) Exchange.”
Video goes on: Talking about security now. Army rep talking about how important remote wipe is. Disney exec describes iPhone as “an enterprise-level device that packs the power of a laptop into a device the size of a phone.” Video ends.
Moving on to iPhone SDK. Jobs welcomes Scott Forstall to the stage to discuss the SDK. “We’re opening up the same developer tools we use internally,” he says. “Developers will create applications in exactly the same way we do.”
Core OS: Core operating system of iPhone uses the same elements as OS X. Offers a quick overview of Cocoa Touch, Xcode, Interface Builder, Tethered Debugging, Instruments and other developer tools, before moving on to a quick demo of Interface Builder.
Launches Xcode and creates a new project in Xcode. App will use built-in address APIs as well as core location APIs to locate contacts within a 10-mile radius of the iPhone.
He opens Interface Builder and drags and drops some buttons and fields onto an iPhone test screen on his desktop.
The UI finished, he opens the iPhone simulator to test it out. It works.
He links the UI features up to the code he’s written and bang, it’s linked up and ready to go. That’s it.
Forstall says developer response to the iPhone SDK has been enormously positive. He refers to a number of developer quotes that really lionize the platform: “It blows away anything we’ve seen from RIM” says one.
Forstall invites a Sega rep up to the stage to demo some of their work for the iPhone. Sega’s Ethan Einhorn offers a bit of background on their Super Monkey Ball project. He notes that the company was able to demo an early version of the game after just a few weeks of work at the iPhone SDK launch announcement. Now, after a few more months of work, they’ve managed to create a full-featured version of the game.
Super Monkey Ball will be available at the launch of the App Store for $9.99.
Up next: eBay’s Ken Sun. The iPhone has become the No. 1 mobile device for accessing eBay, Sun says.
Six weeks ago, eBay began developing a new interface for the iPhone and was able to quickly pull one together.
The application supports auction watching and bidding. Bids placed on an iPhone are instantly registered in eBay’s system. The eBay app will be available for free when the App Store launches.
Loopt’s Sam Altman takes the stage to talk about the company’s location-based social-networking app: “We make serendipity happen.” Pffft. He pulls up the app and uses it to locate a friend and a list of the thing’s she’s done today. He notes that the friend is close by at a cafe and sends her a quick message asking if she’s available for lunch.
Next up: TypePad and its mobile blogging application. Michael Sippey takes the stage and after talking up TypePad as a blogging platform, he moves on to the company’s new iPhone app.
Demo will focus on photoblogging. He browses the photos on his iPhone, selects a picture, crops it, adds it to a blog post, publishes it to his blog, taps view and Safari launches and displays his new post. Very fast, very slick. Oddly, no mention of a cut-and-paste feature.
This app will also be available at the launch of the App Store for free.
Associated Press follows TypePad. AP’s Benjamin Mosse describes AP’s Mobile News Network, which uses the device’s location API to provide location-based local news, photos and video.
The app also supports citizen journalism and permits AP readers to send the news agency their own photos and news reports. This app will also be available for free at the launch of the App Store.
Next up: Brian Greenstone from Pangea software. The company has ported two of its games from OS X to the iPhone.
The first is Enigmo. The second is Cromag Rally–a 3D caveman racing game. The graphics in both games look great. Greenstone notes that in this particular game, the iPhone itself is the controller–in this case, the steering wheel.
Greenstone really talking up the SDK, says porting the game was almost a no-brainer.
Forstall welcomes Moo-Cow-Music’s Mark Terry to the stage to demo Band. It’s a collection of virtual instruments that allows users to create music on the iPhone. He pulls up a keyboard and plays the first few bars of John Lennon’s “Imagine.”
He moves on to a drum kit, and then to a “blues interface” that includes all the instruments you need to play the blues. And now the bass; he plays a few bars of Pink Floyd’s “Money.” He notes that tracks can be recorded and mixed together to create songs individually or collaboratively.
Onstage now is Jeremy Schoenherr from MLB.com to demo an app developed exclusively for the iPhone. The app offers real-time updates of game info and also nearly real-time video highlights. Videos will reportedly be uploaded minutes after a play is made.
Next: Modality, which will demo the first of two apps designed for the medical industry. S. Mark Williams takes the stage to talk about a learning application for med students. Looks like they’ve created an iPhone version of “Netter’s Anatomy.” All the graphics have been ported to the iPhone, and you can zoom in and out, and use touch to locate different areas of the body, the same way you use the Google maps application. Modality says that within weeks of the App Store launching, it will be offering this application as well as others for different education markets.
Mark Cain from MIMvista onstage now. Looks like we’ve got a medical imaging application. Onscreen now is a CT scan and a PET scan overlaid on an iPhone screen. (My god, this is really cool.)
The application relies on the iPhone’s pinch, slide, touch and drag to navigate images. You can also toggle to a planar view as well. Whoa–it supports movies as well. Cain stresses that this is a highly complex and computing-intensive application that’s been ported to the iPhone. And his company was able to do it with relative ease.
Up now: Digital Legends to demo another game. They’ve developed Krull, a fantasy action game, on the iPhone. Accelerometer is used to move the character, to jump, swing weapons, etc. The graphics are very impressive.
The person demoing notes that in some cases they’re better than those of handheld gaming platforms. The app will be available later this year. What we were just shown–which was damn impressive–was pulled together in just two weeks.
Forstall back onstage. He’s talking about one feature that developers have requested that wasn’t included in the SDK: The ability to run applications in the background as well as the foreground.
He pulls up a Windows Mobile task manager to demonstrate the wrong way to address that request. “This is nuts,” he says. Apple has come up with a far better solution: We’ve developed a push notification service.
Apple will maintain a persistent IP connection to the iPhone through which third-party applications can push notifications to the device. These can be badges, text notifications and audio notifications. There is also a unified push notification service for all developers that preserves battery life, maintains performance and works over the air. This will be available in September, but Apple will begin seeding it soon.
Jobs strolls back onstage to discuss some new features.
The first: Contact Search. Your standard contact search.
Second: Full iWork document support: pages, keynote. MS office support as well: Word, PowerPoint. (Cut-and-paste support?)
Third: Bulk delete and move.
Fourth: Save images from email.
Fifth: A landscape view of the calculator.
Sixth: Parental controls.
Seventh: Languages: there are two forms for Japanese, two forms for Chinese (simplified and traditional) including one that allows you to draw the characters with your finger. “One of the great advantages of not having a bunch of plastic keys on your keyboard,” says Jobs.
What about 8, 9 and 10? Cut-and-paste, chat and a better camera? No? Damn.
“iPhone 2.0 raises us to a whole new level,” says Jobs. “We’ll release it in July. It will be free to all iPhone owners, and $9.95 for iPod Touch users.
Moving on to the App Store. It will be on every iPhone, and it supports wireless downloads, automatic installs and automatic updates. Developers can set the price of their apps. Developers take 70%. No credit card or hosting fees. Apps will be DRM’d for FairPlay.
If a developer chooses to offer their app for free, Apple won’t charge them anything. Apps under 10 MG can be downloaded over the air. Apps above that size can be downloaded over iTunes or via Wi-Fi.
Apple has also developed an enterprise version of the apps store that will allow companies to distribute their custom applications only to their employees on their phones.
There’s another distribution method as well: Ad Hoc. Developers can mail apps to up to 100 users.
Now we’ve got something entirely new: It’s called MobileMe. Phil Schiller takes the stage to talk about it. What’s MobileMe? “It’s like Exchange for the rest of us.”
(Haha.) He just slipped up and called active sync “active stink.”
With MobileMe, iPhone users can have mail, calendar, etc. pushed to their phones. Information is stored in the cloud and then pushed to all a user’s Apple devices. Change a meeting on your phone, the update is pushed to MobileMe, which then pushes that update to your laptop and the machines of the people who are scheduled to attend it.
All this is done over the air. MobileMe works directly with Apple apps. It also works with Outlook for PC users. Apple has also built a suite of Web-based applications. You’ll find them at me.com. The applications look pretty robust. More like those you’d see on the desktop than on the Web.
Mail, contacts, calendar, photos–which can be sent directly to MobileMe from the phone–iDisk for storage.
He’s demoing it now: supports drag and drop. Also supports real-time contact search with links to Google (GOOG) maps for directions.
Calendar supports drag and drop as well. Want to reschedule a meeting? Drag it to another date and time.
Moves on to iDisk, which has a new interface. All this is tightly integrated with the iPhone. He checks a push email on his phone, saves the sender as a contact. Now he checks his MobileMe account online. The email and new contact are already there.
Now he creates a new calendar entry on his laptop. He check his phone and there it is. Now he leaves the iPhone view up on the screen behind him, walks back over to the laptop and adds another meeting to his calendar. A few seconds later, the iPhone screen updates with that new meeting. He demonstrates the same thing with a photo.
MobileMe will be available for $99 a year, with 20 gigabytes of storage. It will be available in July. And yes, MobileMe does replace .mac. Mac users will be automatically upgraded.
And what about that cut-and-paste support? No? Anyone? Bueller?
Jobs back onstage. In a few weeks, it will be the iPhone’s first birthday, he says.
He shows some photos of the crowds outside the Manhattan Apple store.
Jobs: “This is the phone that has changed phones forever.” He says the iPhone has 90% customer satisfaction; 98% of iPhone users are mobile browsing; 94% are using email; 90% are text messaging; 80% are using 10 features or more. “You can’t even find 10 features on other phones,” he adds.
Apple has sold 6 million phones so far, Jobs says. Now we need to address our next challenges:
1. 3G
2. enterprise support
3. Third party applications
4. more countries
5. more affordable.
Jobs notes that everyone wants one, but 56% of consumers Apple surveyed said it was too expensive.
iPhone 3G announced to roar of applause, camera flashes.
iPhone 3g is thinner, full plastic back, solid metal buttons, but same display, camera, a flush headphone jack, dramatically improved audio. “Feels even better in your hand, if you can believe that,” Jobs says.
How does the iPhone 3G tackle the challenges I just mentioned?
Video of EDGE vs. 3G pageload on Safari: 3G takes 21 seconds, EDGE still grinding away. Web site is National Geographic, very image heavy. EDGE still grinding; audience begins laughing. EDGE takes 59 seconds; 3G is 2.8 times faster than EDGE.
Jobs notes that 3G speeds approach those of Wi-Fi. Apple compared the iPhone 3G to two other state-of-the-art 3g phones, and the iPhone is 36% faster than Nokia N95 and Treo 750.
Video of same comparison with an email attachment: 3G downloads it in five seconds; EDGE takes 18 seconds. 3G is 3.6 times faster.
Talking about battery life now: iPhone 3G has 300 hours standby. 2G talk time: 10 hours; 3G talk time: five hours–that’s an industry-leading metric.
Five to six hours of browsing. Seven hours of video. Twenty-four hours of audio.
One other thing that benefits from fast data is GPS, and we’ve built that into the iPhone 3G, Jobs notes
Jobs talking about how location based services for the iPhone are about to explode. He’s demoing GPS tracking now. Jobs tracks a car driving down San Francisco’s Lombard Street.
Now, he circles back to enterprise support, third-party apps, and international distribution. Apple hoped to put the iPhone in 25 countries. World map appears on screen. Theme from “It’s a Small World” plays as countries in which the iPhone is distributed are quickly colored in. Half-hearted “Small World” sing-along fades after a few verses.
Lots of applause for this: “We’ll be rolling out the iPhone 3G in 70 countries over the next few months.” The next time you’re in Malta and you need an iPhone, it’ll be there.
Deals for all these countries are signed, sealed and delivered, according to Jobs.
Moving on to price: iPhone 3G will sell for $199 for 8GB version. Huge applause.
“With think at that price point it will be affordable for everyone,” Jobs says. The 16GB model will be $299 and will be available in black and white. Apple will start rolling the iPhone out in 22 of the largest countries on July 11.
on to a new ad: “It’s finally here. The new phone that beats the iPhone–it’s the iPhone 3G.”
The ad’s tagline: “Twice as fast. Half the price.” You can almost feel the early adopters in the audience wincing.
Jobs after ad ends: “Isn’t that nice? Would you like to see it again?” Audience roars; Jobs plays the ad again. “Just like the first iPhone, this new iPhone is one of the most amazing products I’ve ever had the pleasure of being associated with.” Jobs asks iPhone team to stand. Lots of audience applause.
Looks like that’s it. “Take advantage of the great sessions and go make some great products,” says Jobs. And the keynote ends. Sadly, there’s no “one more thing” moment today — no video-chat support, no chat support, no cut-and-paste.