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WWDC iOS Predictions

It’s the eve of WWDC and what would it be without a few predictions? Here are the things that I expect to see for iOS at WWDC this year:

Just over 24 hours away and we’ll find out if I got anything right on this list. I’m certainly hoping for a few off this list.

[EDIT: I realized that I forgot my “one-more-thing” prediction — App development for the Apple TV. This is clearly a device intended for much more than Apple currently allows it to do. An Apple TV app store is almost a given at some point. Perhaps this year’s WWDC is that point.]

iOS Audio Queue Tip of the Day™

I just spent a few hours tracking this one down and I figured I would share for anyone who might come across this on Google.

If you are using Audio Queues under iOS to stream audio and you want the queues to continue playing when the screen is locked, your buffer size must be at least 4096 samples. Apple has documented this in QA1606 for Audio Units, but it wasn’t immediately clear that this also applies to Audio Queues.

In retrospect, it should’ve been obvious because Audio Queues are built on top of Audio Units, but Apple never explicitly says anything about Audio Queues and the screen being locked in their documentation.

Hope this helps at least one other person out there. I certainly could’ve used this info a few hours ago.

iPhone 4

I haven’t said much on here lately, but I figured that I would add to the stream of reviews, criticism and praise for the iPhone 4. I picked mine up last Thursday at one of the local Apple stores, and despite a few problems with iTunes (error 13019) and that my new 32GB iPhone 4 can’t hold as much content as my old 32GB iPhone 3GS, it’s been an overall pleasant experience. Apple really does have the migrating between iOS devices down at this point — I have content that I created on my 16GB 1st gen iPod touch back in 2007 on my iPhone 4 still. I have text messages that I sent when I first got an iPhone in 2008. Apple has made it so easy to upgrade the devices that at times it doesn’t feel like you got a new phone — everything is exactly where you left it.

My experience with picking up the phone was interesting. Like probably thousands of others, I naively thought that with Apple allowing pre-orders this year that picking it up at the store would be cake. In addition to that mistaken thought, I had actually never bought an iPhone on launch day — I bought my original iPhone almost 6 months after launch, skipped the 3G and picked up the 3GS a few days after launch. Which means that I had very little idea of just how many people would be showing up for the 4th iteration of the iPhone.

Making the experience even more interesting, I had a tight time schedule — I had to be back at my house by 10 AM for a prior appointment. After not moving for about 2 hours and still not being able to even see the Apple store, I was able to get to the front of the line and complete my iPhone purchase just over 5 minutes later.

Complicating my upgrade was the fact that I used one of other lines on our family talk plan to get the discounted (i.e, subsidized) price. That meant that I had to play games with my SIM cards at home. Trimming down a SIM card to micro SIM size sounds tricky when you first hear about it, but since AT&T will give you a new SIM card anytime you request it for free, it’s not really that risky. On top of it, SIM cards are mostly plastic. All of the critical parts are located underneath the pads.

After all of that, though, I finally had a working iPhone 4 in my hands. I knew that coming from a 3GS that the speed increases wouldn’t be as dramatic as my upgrade from an original iPhone to the 3GS last year. And sure enough, it wasn’t. But that doesn’t tell the full story — while the iPhone 4 doesn’t seem that much faster, it’s the little changes that make it feel like a more refined machine. Animations are smoother, transitioning between apps is faster, web browsing feels a lot more responsive. This is the iPhone tightened up all around the edges.

Of course, it would be irresponsible for me not to mention the display. The best way that I can describe the display is that it’s basically like looking at a high end glossy print magazine and then realizing that you can interact with it. I still find myself looking at it in disbelief after I’ve been using lower PPI displays like my desktop machine and laptop. But even more amazing to me isn’t the display itself but the way Apple made existing apps and websites work with it. On normal PCs and Macs, adding a higher PPI display means smaller text. The OS doesn’t have resolution independence support. This means that it would be silly for us to go out an buy a 300+ PPI display for our desktops because we would be squinting at the text and tiny photos on the screen.

But Apple built resolution independence into iOS (presumably building on the work they’ve put into MacOS X dating back to 10.4 days), which means that we can benefit from the higher PPI immediately in all of our apps. Obviously apps that have been updated for the new display look the best, but even apps dating all the way back to when 2.0 came out can take advantage of the new support. Text, controls, images (if they are higher res) all benefit from the new display on old and new apps.

Going forward, I would be shocked if this functionality doesn’t turn up on the iPad when it gets updated to iOS 4.x. And Apple is almost surely going to finish up the implementation under MacOS X and use that to allow the iMac, MacBook and MacBook Pro to have 300+ PPI displays as well at some point. This is an area where Apple excels — by controlling both the OS and the hardware, they can introduce a technology like this without having to try to convince their OEMs why this would be great.

As for the iPhone 4, I am so far very happy with this update. And I didn’t even talk about the other major additions and changes — camera improvements, FaceTime support and faster networking support. Despite some of the problems so far (3G touch of death and proximity sensor issues), this device will be the one people will talk about years down the road as being one of the best iPhones ever.

Screw You, Gizmodo

I wasn’t planning on saying anything here about the recent iPhone leak and Gizmodo’s handling of it. In my opinion, Gizmodo reporting on the iPhone was something that was well within their rights.

But last night, Gizmodo (I’m not linking to it as I don’t want to reward their behavior) posted an article on the Apple engineer who allegedly left the phone at a bar. In the article, they revealed his name, his photo and even parts of a conversation that they had with him. And then earlier today, they posted another article with portions of his Twitter stream and more details, including that it was his birthday when the phone was lost. At this point, it appears that Gizmodo just doesn’t care that we are talking about an actual human being here and has instead decided to go for pageviews at all costs.

I’m am very disappointed to see Gizmodo stoop to this level — I would expect this from a supermarket tabloid when talking about a celebrity or a politician. But this is very different — we are talking about a man who made a serious mistake in his career, but also hasn’t stepped onto the public stage. I don’t think anybody wants to have Gizmodo following them around paparazzi style, reporting on everything they do to the world. Politicians and celebrities also don’t want this constant attention, but they willingly stepped into the public eye.

Ask anyone who’s ever worked in an industry where you are creating something new — software, hardware, designer, entertainment, it goes on and on — if they’ve ever made a mistake and accidentally screwed up somewhere along the line and inadvertently released some detail about what they were working on. I’m betting that most people have. And those that say no are either lying or haven’t been doing it long enough. Mistakes happen. Most won’t be at the level this man made, but that doesn’t excuse Gizmodo for publicly attacking him via their website.

That’s just wrong and Gizmodo needs to come out and apologize for this behavior.

Adobe

I’m fairly agnostic about the whole Adobe-Apple scuffle. But I can certainly see why Apple wants to keep Adobe from controlling the user experience for their product. Adobe sees their user’s machines as something that belongs to Adobe, not the user. The user is just a way for Adobe to make money and you can just about see the contempt Adobe has for them.

Case in point - I just got a notification under Windows that Adobe Reader had an update. As part of the installation, it placed a shortcut for Reader on my desktop. I noticed this while the installation was going, so I removed it right away. As the installer was exiting, it noticed this and placed another shortcut on my desktop.

Someone had to code it this way - this wasn’t an innocent oversight. They actively put in a check for that desktop shortcut and went against the wishes of the user in this case.

And you wonder why Apple might not want Adobe exerting their influence over the iPhone and iPad?

iPhone OS 4.0

Good set of announcements yesterday from Apple. Nothing earth shattering, but overall it’s good progress for the iPhone OS. I was a bit disappointed that the iPad isn’t getting 4.0 at the same time as the iPhone, but given the circumstances, it’s not really surprising.

As for my predictions, I really only got the multitasking right - though some of the implementation details are off as well. I will be very interested in seeing how the new OS alongside any new hardware that comes out this year will perform with multitasking. On paper, it looks really good. But just like all new technologies that Apple has introduced into the iPhone OS, I expect there to be a couple of iterations before they get the right balance of battery life and performance.

As for printing, since that is more of an iPad feature, I would bet on seeing that when Apple puts 4.0 on the iPad in the fall - perhaps a 4.1 release.

Overall, there is a lot of stuff in the 4.0 SDK that can’t be talked about at this time that is going to make a positive impact on the platform for years to come. This version is very much like Snow Leopard in that it lays a lot of groundwork that won’t be immediately obvious to the end user. Expect to see some really cool things on the various iPhone devices over the next few years.

My Own iPhone OS 4.0 Predictions

Since we have a couple of days before the big iPhone OS 4.0 announcement, I’ve decided to follow in the grand tradition of making a fool out of myself on the Internet.  Yes, that’s right, I’m going to make a few “predictions” about iPhone OS 4.0 here.  For those of you playing at home, come back in a few days to either laugh at me or wonder just how I had this wonderful insight. (I’m expecting laughs myself…)

Most people on the web seem to think that multitasking will be a feature of 4.0.  I think it’s due at this point, but I suspect it won’t be like what we’ve seen on other platforms.  I’m thinking that they will limit it’s availability to certain kinds of apps, audio playback being the biggest category.  I also think that they will require developers to split their apps into two parts — a front end GUI app that will run the same way 3rd party apps do now and a back end app that can run in the background.  This will serve a few purposes.  One is that the memory impact of the back end app should be much lower since it will not have all of the GUI components to worry about.  The other is that Apple can apply additional scrutiny to the back end to make sure that it’s doing what it’s supposed to.  I wouldn’t be shocked to find out that they end up using launchd to control the running of the backends in some way.

With the introduction of the iPad, some of the limitations of the iPhone OS really start to show.  I expect to see some printing support of some sort — perhaps a way to print using a Mac or a PC over wireless for example.  I don’t have any special insight here, but now that we have a very viable office suite on the iPad, it makes sense to be able to print from it as well.

The iPad interface is very much orientation agnostic now — I fully expect to see this make it’s way over to the iPhone and iPods as well.  

Other things I would like to see — Text-To-Speech APIs.  Beginning with the 3GS, Apple made the iPhone devices support text to speech as an accessibility feature.  Now would be a great time for Apple to expose that functionality to all iPhone apps in 4.0.  

Better sharing of data between apps would be very welcome.  Right now, each app has their own sandbox that they can store data into.  Apps can only share data via the clipboard or via app-specific URL schemes.  But there is nothing right now that would allow me, for example, to take a file I have in my Dropbox and send it to Pages to edit it.  

Those are just a few of the things I’m looking forward to in iPhone OS 4.0 — come back in a few days to see if I was right or to mock me.