Apple

The App Store won't be arriving in June, despite reports to the contrary based on Apple's Australian Web site.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET News.com)

Apple has moved to squash rumors that the iPhone's App Store could be coming sooner rather than later.

Earlier Wednesday, Apple's Australian Web site had a little note at the bottom of its page about the iPod Touch that said "Shop for hundreds of applications made for iPod Touch. Available June 27." On Monday, Apple announced that the App Store, which is part of the iPhone 2.0 software release, would arrive on July 11.

An Apple representative confirmed that July is still the plan, and the Aussies have since updated their page to point to a link to the iPhone's SDK page. It's not clear where the June 27 date came from, but there seems to have been some confusion this month about the App Store: a source told us last week that applications would be "launching" on Monday, and in this context, "launching" appears to have meant "showing off quick snippets of the application's capability."

The second chapter of Apple's iPhone era is almost ready to begin, and it's already clear that things will be a little different this time around.

Few people who pay even scant attention to the technology industry could claim to be shocked by the introduction of a faster iPhone earlier on Monday by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Apple has sold 6 million iPhones since June 2007, Jobs said, and will likely sell a few more once the new model arrives on July 11 with a faster networking chip, GPS capabilities, and a software upgrade that's an IT manager's dream for a mobile device.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveils the 3G iPhone. For more photos from the event, click on the image.

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From a features point of view, the new model delivers on what iPhone customers want and need. Yes, you still can't do mobile messaging, and I still don't think you can do cut-and-paste, which is just bizarre. But Apple has added just about everything else people have asked for or complained about in iPhone 1.0: faster networks, secure access to corporate e-mail, precise location-based services, and third-party applications.

What's perhaps more interesting is what Apple has learned about the mobile phone business. It's not all that surprising that Apple, which has a proud legacy of product design and software development, would have created an excellent product that has the rest of the industry scrambling to overtake.

But several developments later on Monday indicate that Apple has had to learn just as many lessons about playing in the mobile phone market over the past year as it has taught the mobile phone industry about product development.

About 90 minutes after Jobs concluded his keynote, AT&T held its own press conference to announce some major changes in the way iPhones are sold. You now must immediately agree to a two-year contract with AT&T whether you buy the iPhone in one of Apple's stores or one of AT&T's stores, and there will be no online ordering. AT&T and Apple have ended their revenue-sharing agreement, and Apple also said that the "vast majority" of its new carrier agreements overseas do not involve revenue sharing. To top it off, iPhone data plans are now $10 more expensive.

This just might be the aftereffect of the unlocked iPhones. Apple executives downplayed the actual number of unlocked iPhones several times this year, claiming they couldn't estimate how many iPhones had actually been unlocked and that in any event, it just demonstrates demand for the product.

But Apple's carrier partners sure cared about that number. Apple negotiated extremely favorable deals for iPhone 1.0, getting a piece of AT&T and other carriers' revenue for data services while retaining complete control over what applications would appear on the device.

Apple held up its end of the bargain in one sense--delivering a solid product that enticed people to switch networks and drove data usage--but failed to secure its product against those who wished to unlock it from its designated networks, forcing some carriers to watch their rivals reap the benefits of iPhone data usage. Wireless carriers may be opening up their networks in new and interesting ways, but their influence on the mobile market isn't waning just yet.

It's not clear whether Apple will introduce technology changes into the new iPhone that makes it harder to jailbreak, then unlock, but it will at least require U.S. iPhone buyers to sign a two-year contract and activate the iPhone on AT&T's network before they can take it home. This won't eliminate unlocking, but could discourage it to some degree.

The faster speeds, additional countries--and a tweak to Apple's business model--should help the company hit its goal of shipping 10 million iPhones in 2008.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET News.com)

Of course, compromise is part of any good partnership. In exchange for giving up revenue sharing and its novel at-home activation service, Apple is getting a subsidized iPhone. That will lower the price of entry into the iPhone world and should accelerate sales without dinging Apple's product margins to the degree that would be result if Apple absorbed the cost decrease itself. The increased sales should also offset the loss of the shared revenue.

So the big question: will the iPhone 3G--and new business model--enable Apple to meet its sales target for 2008 of 10 million units? If Apple has sold 6 million units to date, as Jobs said in his keynote, that means the company has a long way to go, having sold just 2.3 million iPhones so far in 2008.

The fact that the new iPhone won't be available until July 11 was one of the most surprising things to emerge from this morning's keynote. Apple, of course, never put a finer grain on when it expected to ship iPhone 3G beyond "next year," which Jobs quoted a few times in response to questions about the issue in 2007. But few expected the company to miss the one-year anniversary of the iPhone's debut with the new model, and at the very least, Apple itself had promised the iPhone 2.0 software by the end of June.

That means Apple will have shipped almost no iPhones from roughly the middle of May to July 11: about two whole months, although AT&T stores took longer to run out of their supply. We'll get a more precise number for iPhone shipments during Apple's third fiscal quarter, which ends in June, during the company's earnings call in July. But no matter how you slice it, that's a large gap that points to a bit of a supply chain snafu at some stage along the way.

Apple's Greg Joswiak, vice president of worldwide iPod and iPhone marketing, reiterated Apple's 10 million shipment goal in an interview after Jobs' keynote, so it's not like Apple is backing down. There are two main reasons why the company can still be confident: the combination of 3G and the cheaper price will spur potential customers who have been sitting on the sidelines in countries where the iPhone already exists, and a total of 70 countries will get official access to the iPhone, including major new destinations like Canada and Australia. In addition, Jobs hinted to CNBC later in the day that the big prize--China--could be coming sooner rather than later.

It's always interesting to watch a company try to make its way into an entirely new business; those who fail far outnumber those who succeed. The most common reason why many fail is because they forget to learn from their initial experiences, or assume they know better based on their past successes.

Apple may not proclaim it from on high in the Stevenote, but today the company showed that it's willing to learn from its mistakes, and to adjust its business model when prudent. So far in its iPhone era, Apple has wisely tackled the hard problem first--making a great product, and continuing to improve it--and is now making the kinds of changes to its business model to make sure the iPhone really does turn into the third leg of the company's business some day.

Updated 3:44 p.m. PDT: Apple PR formally issued the press release in question that went out inadvertently earlier Monday.

Apple quickly retracted a few Mac OS X 10.6 tidbits leaked out by its Canadian subsidiary following the Worldwide Developers Conference keynote, but the Internet misses nothing.

Bertrand Serlet, Apple's senior VP of software engineering, told WWDC 2008 attendees about Snow Leopard Monday afternoon.

(Credit: Apple)

Scores of sites picked up on a press release that went out from Apple Canada and was pulled at some point after it went live. According to the release, Snow Leopard--which Apple CEO Steve Jobs confirmed is the code name for 10.6--will focus more on improving the basic plumbing of the operating system than adding any catchy new features, as The Unofficial Apple Weblog reported last week.

Apple's Bertrand Serlet was scheduled to address Apple's developers in a session closed to the press Monday afternoon to go over 10.6, and now we have some idea of what he's telling them; much to the chagrin of Apple PR, I suspect. Snow Leopard will improve support for multicore processors and allow developers to exploit powerful graphics processors, as we reported last week.

The release will also come with a new version of Quicktime that improves video playback, and a faster version of Safari. According to the reports, Apple expects to ship 10.6 "in about a year."

Steve Jobs unveils the new 3G iPhone at Apple's WWDC.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET News.com)

SAN FRANCISCO--At Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference here, CEO Steve Jobs took the stage just after 10 a.m. PDT. This is a live blog of news from his keynote speech as it happened. For a summary of highlights written after the fact, go here.

9:53 a.m.: Welcome once again to Moscone West, site of so many Apple events over the past few years. The members of the press are mostly seated, and all seem to have managed to make it to the stage without being trampled, although I guarantee that's the fastest some of them have moved in 20 years. Warm-up music so far is skewing old-school, with a Bo Diddley song to kick things off.

10:06 a.m.: We've been revisiting the '50s and '60s this morning with the warm-up music, running through Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, and the like. No Green Day or U2 yet, which either means something totally profound, or it doesn't. Spotted up front: Apple board member Al Gore; Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook; marketing chief Phil Schiller; and Greg Joswiak, head of iPhone and iPod marketing. Lights are dimming on "Great Ball of Fire," and WWDC 2008 is under way.

A bustling crowd waits for Steve Jobs' keynote to start.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET News.com)

10:07 a.m.: Apple CEO Steve Jobs takes the stage to widespread applause. Standard outfit. "We've been working real hard on some great stuff that we can't wait to share with you." A record 5,200 attendees are attending the conference this year. 147 sessions are planned for developers, 85 or so for the Mac, and 61 or so for the iPhone. The numbers flew by quickly.

10:09 a.m.: "So, let's get started." Jobs revisits the three parts of Apple: the Mac, the music business, and the iPhone. "I'm going to take this morning to talk about the iPhone." Recently promoted executive Scott Forstall and Phil Schiller will help Jobs out. He confirms that 10.6 will be on the agenda for the week, and Snow Leopard is confirmed as the new code name.

10:10 a.m.: But first, the iPhone. In the first 95 days, 250,000 people downloaded the iPhone SDK. 25,000 developers applied, and 4,000 were admitted. He goes into the various parts of the iPhone 2.0 software, including the enterprise features, the SDK, and some other new features.

10:12 a.m.: Customers told Apple they wanted to hook the iPhone up to Exchange, and they did that with 2.0, Jobs says. The new software uses Cisco's VPN software. Thirty-five percent of the Fortune 500 participated in the beta program, including the top 5 commercial banks and securities firms. Higher education has also jumped on board, such as Duke, Stanford, and the University of Texas. A demo video is being shown about some of those enterprise customers, such as Disney, where Jobs resides on the board, and an international law firm.

10:15 a.m.: Apple doesn't usually do these kinds of enterprise-oriented videos at its events, with marketing and IT folks from large organizations singing the praises of the iPhone over a pleasing generic elevator-music-style backdrop. These things are a staple of most IT industry events, though.

10:17 a.m.: The video ends, and Jobs retakes the stage to talk about the SDK, before deferring to Scott Forstall. Forstall goes into a discussion of the APIs in the SDK, which are the same APIs that Apple uses internally to develop applications. Some of this is a repeat from March, where Forstall explained the similarities between the iPhone's operating system and Mac OS X. The bottom layers of the OS are essentially the same, but the Cocoa programming environment has been tweaked for a touchscreen.

10:19 a.m.: He goes into the development tools that those in attendance will be using to build applications, such as Xcode and Interface Builder. He also discusses a tool called Instruments, which is a performance optimization tool. Forstall moves into a demo of how to build a user interface for the iPhone using Interface Builder.

iPhone developer tools

(Credit: James Martin/CNET News.com)

10:23 a.m.: His mock application is going to merge the contacts databases and location-aware services. He's taking us through the actual development experience, dragging and dropping icons that represent things like the iPhone's search bar around the development environment. Once the application is done, the developer can test it right on a Mac for bugs or to make different aesthetic choices, such as whether to put things in the toolbar or within the regular fields.

10:26 a.m.: The application finds your friends within a certain radius, but Forstall says nothing about whether the application was designed for the current iPhone, which uses a Wi-Fi/cell tower type of location-aware application, or the new iPhone, which is expected to have GPS. Forstall reads off a few quotes from corporate developer partners like Disney--once again--and Fox Interactive.

10:29 a.m.: Forstall is bringing third-party developers onstage to talk about their application, and Sega revisits the stage. They demoed a game called Super Monkey Ball in March, and they've refined it. Ethan Einhorn of Sega comes up onstage to talk about the app. The initial game had four stages developed in two weeks, now they've got 110 stages, with all four classic monkeys.

10:30 a.m.: This demo is showing off the capabilities of the accelerometer, where the iPhone can be tilted back and forth to accelerate or brake. The tester gets a nice hand from the audience for hurling Baby Monkey through the goal. Super Monkey Ball will be available at the launch of the App Store for $9.99.

Showing tilt control on Sega games.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET News.com)

10:33 a.m.: eBay is the next developer to show off an application, and Ken Sun of eBay comes onstage to show off Auctions on the iPhone. The iPhone is already the primary mobile device used on eBay's Web site, he says. The app has a basic front door with options to track auctions you've bid on, see whether you've been outbid, and to place new bids. You can also pick up the photos from the auction listings, and blow them up to full screen. eBay is making this app available for free.

eBay application on iPhone.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET News.com)

10:36 a.m.: Loopt is the third company to demo, and it's talking about a location-based application. Again, no distinction is made whether this is an application using GPS or the current location-based service on the iPhone. Loopt blends your social networks with the Maps application, so you can see where your friends are. You can also go to their journal to see what they've been doing today, what pictures they've added, and so on. This app will also be free.

10:39 a.m.: TypePad is next up, for the mobile bloggers in the audience. Michael Sippey of TypePad shows off what they've put together, with a simple interface that lets you create a post, take a photo, or add a photo. You can take photos with the iPhone's camera and add them to a post, as well as add photos from your library on your iPhone. This will be yet another free application.

10:41 a.m.: Our good friends at the Associated Press also have an application to show off. Benjamin Mosse of the AP is showing off the application, which is essentially a reader-style app that focuses on local news. This is another location-aware application that sends you local news based on where you are. You can customize the feeds for your favorite sports teams, and browse AP photos and video. Those stores can be shared via text or e-mail, and civilians can upload their own stories and pictures to the AP from the iPhone, and continuing with the trend, it will be free.

10:45 a.m.: More applications! Brian Greenstone of Pangea Software comes up to show off two games the company ported from Mac OS X to the iPhone, Enigmo, a 3D puzzle game, is very CPU-intensive, says Greenstone, and it doesn't miss a beat in the demo. Cro-Mag Rally, which is apparently a caveman racing game, is the other game shown off. Driving looks hard, but he is racing on snow, and people from California don't know how to drive in the snow. Both games will cost $9.99.

10:48 a.m.: It's a parade of developers. An app called Band was made by a solo developer named Mark Terry, whereas all the other apps so far have been corporate-developed. Band lets you create music on the iPhone, with a touch-screen piano, and the demo guy cranks out a passable version of John Lennon's "Imagine." There are also drums and a 12-bar blues creation app, which lays down a bass line while you play guitar over the track, and a bass guitar, which is used to play the slinky bass line from Pink Floyd's "Money." There's other stuff, but time is limited. Terry says Band will appear on the App Store in a few weeks' time.

Developer shows off music application on the iPhone.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET News.com)

10:50 a.m.: MLB.com is getting in on the action, so we can watch the tortured season of the New York Mets on our iPhones. Jeremy Schoenherr shows off At-Bat, as we check out the Royals-Yankees game. You can see who's at bat, who's pitching, the count, and the score: Mussina's off to a decent start this morning. You can get real-time video highlights of the Yankees turning a double play. They aren't really "real-time" since the highlights arrive after the fact, but still.

MLB on the iPhone

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10:53 a.m.: Modality is the next company that Apple is showing off. These folks, represented by Dr. S. Mark Williams, have developed an application that helps medical students ditch their flash cards and use an iPhone to view anatomical images of the body that are very detailed, down to the arteries and veins, and can quiz students on the various parts of the heart, for example. Within weeks of the App Store launching, the company will have about a dozen applications available for various health-care needs.

10:57 a.m.: Mimvista has another medical application that builds on their niche, medical-imaging software. Mark Cain is representing Mimvista, and he says developing one of their types of applications before the iPhone wasn't going to work. The idea is to connect doctors with their workstations, so they can evaluate medical imaging from the golf course. The application, like Modality's, can show extremely detailed pictures of the human system, as well as moving images. "The iPhone has created a new direction for our company."

11:00 a.m.: Forstall promises that Digital Legends Entertainment is the last demo for this morning. These guys built a game in two weeks, and Xavier Carrillo Costa shows off his game. Their game is called Kroll, and it's another caveman adventure game where you battle enemies, swing across rope bridges, and solve problems. They expect to have the game ready by September.

Push notification service on the iPhone.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET News.com)

11:02 a.m.: Forstall's back. He thanks all the developers who demonstrated their applications. He mentions one feature request from developers: instant-messaging developers want to deliver notifications even when the application isn't running. This is the background-running issue that arrived after the March event. Forstall says background processes are bad for a number of reasons, such as battery life and performance. He uses the opportunity to ding Windows Mobile's task manager for handling background processes the way desktop Windows does, to widespread laughter and applause.

11:04 a.m.: "We have come up with a far better solution." Apple is going to provide a push notification service to all developers, which doesn't quite go as far as background processes. When users quit an application, they disconnect from the server, but Apple is going have its own application server that maintains a connection to the iPhone. You can push badges such as "how many e-mail messages do I have," custom alert sounds, and custom text alerts. Forstall claims the design scales, but this puts an awful lot of dependence on Apple's own Web services.

E-mail messages can be deleted in bulk, and you can save e-mailed photos to your photo library. The calculator now works in landscape mode, adding scientific calculator buttons. Parental controls and language support have also been added, including two forms of Japanese and Chinese entry. The Chinese language characters can be drawn with your finger.

Jobs shows off iPhone's scientific calculator.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET News.com)

11:07 a.m.: This will be available in September, but developers will get a chance to start playing with it soon. Forstall leaves the stage saying Apple has updated the SDK, but doesn't say much else about it. Jobs retakes the stage to talk about a few new features in the software: contact search, full support for iWork documents, and support for Microsoft documents, adding PowerPoint to the already supported Word and Excel.

11:09 a.m.: The software will be released in early July, a slip from March's expectations. iPod Touch users will have to pay $9.99 for the iPhone 2.0 software, which is a price reduction.

11:10 a.m.: Jobs runs through the capabilities of the App Store, which is the only way to get third-party applications onto the iPhone. The App Store has been expanded to 63 countries that will have access, up from 20-something countries. A 10MB app or less can be downloaded over the air, but you can only use Wi-Fi or iTunes for applications larger than that.

11:11 a.m.: Enterprises, however, wanted their own App Stores unique to their phones. Enterprises can authorize iPhones in their company and create apps that only run on those phones, Jobs says. Those applications can be distributed through a corporate intranet, and synced through iTunes.

11:12 a.m.: However, there will now be a third way: Ad Hoc. The example Jobs uses is a professor who wants to use iPhone applications within a classroom. The developer certification program can now be expanded to 100 iPhones, so apps can be shared within a development house or university environment.

11:13 a.m.: "Now, we've got something entirely new, and we're very excited about this. It's called MobileMe."

11:15 a.m.: Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, takes the stage to discuss MobileMe. He says it's "Exchange for the rest of us." Schiller "slips," referring to ActiveSync as ActiveStink. MobileMe delivers push e-mail, contacts, and calendars to iPhones. This sounds very much like the revamp of .Mac that has been discussed for months, where information is stored in the "cloud" from Macs, iPhones, or Windows PC. E-mail automatically gets pushed all devices that you register with the service, and pulls calendar updates from one device to another.

11:18 a.m.: Schiller shows how e-mail and calendar info can go back and forth from the device to the Internet. Apple has also built AJAX applications as part of the service. The Web e-mail application looks like iTunes in a way, sorting your e-mail where your songs would normally be. The idea is you can access contacts and calendars from any Mac, PC, or iPhone. There will be an option in the 2.0 software that lets you send photos right to the MobileMe service, in addition.

11:20 a.m.: It's time for the formal demo. Schiller fires up the service, logs in, and arrives at his e-mail inbox. There are icons at the top that let you scroll between e-mail, contacts, and calendars. You can drag and drop e-mails in the Web interface, send off quick replies to e-mails without opening the entire message, and move through your contacts and calendars.

E-mail in MobileMe.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET News.com)

11:24 a.m.: The application, like .Mac, ties into your iLife applications, where you can share photo galleries with others. iDisk is still around, allowing you to store files online. Schiller shows how the iPhone accesses the same MobileMe account, where you can check your e-mail, and save a new contact to your contacts database.

11:28 a.m.: Schiller's now showing how you can access your photo galleries stored in MobileMe through the iPhone, switching back and forth between the iPhone and the Mac to show how quickly photos can be uploaded and accessed from either device. Apple's keeping the price the same as .Mac: $99 a year, but upping the storage to 20GB. It will be available with the iPhone 2.0 software, and Schiller confirms that MobileMe will replace .Mac. All the .Mac stuff will still work, but .Mac users will be automatically upgraded to the new service.

11:28 a.m.: Jobs retakes the stage. "Now I'd like to talk about something that's near and dear to my heart, the iPhone."

11:30 a.m.: They're showing pictures of the iPhone launch day, almost one year ago. "It's widely believed that this is the phone that has changed phones forever." But the thing Jobs really likes is that users love their iPhones, quoting 90 percent customer satisfaction numbers. Ninety-eight percent of iPhone users are browsing, and 80 percent are using 10 or more features. Steve says they have sold 6 million iPhones to date, since they ran out a few weeks ago.

11:31 a.m.: "We did figure out what our next challenges are." 3G networking, as you might have heard, is that first challenge. Enterprise support is the second, third is third-party application support, fourth is international support--as Jobs jokes about the unlocked iPhones all over the world--and fifth, everybody wants an iPhone, but we need to make it more affordable.

11:32 a.m.: "Today we're introducing the iPhone 3G."

The new 3G iPhone, which is thinner at the edges, has a black plastic back and metal buttons on the side, has a flush-headphone jack, and comes in white.

(Credit: Apple)

11:33 a.m.: "We've learned so much with the first iPhone." Jobs shows off the pictures; it's thinner at the edges, and has a black plastic back and metal buttons on the side. It's the same screen, with a camera, a flush-headphone jack (which gets wild applause), and improved audio.

3G iPhone speed test.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET News.com)

11:35 a.m.: Jobs goes over the 3G support first. Faster downloads are a no-brainer, he says. He does a side-by-side comparison of a Web page loading on EDGE vs. one on 3G. The National Geographic's home page downloads in 21 seconds on the 3G network, and the EDGE one is taking forever. Twenty-one seconds is a lot, but this is a pretty photo-heavy Web page. It took 59 seconds on EDGE. The 3G speeds are close to Wi-Fi, Jobs said.

11:38 a.m.: Jobs compares the 3G iPhone to the Nokia N95 and Treo 750, two other 3G phones, and says the 3G iPhone is 36 percent faster to download the same Web page. In an iPhone 1.0 to iPhone 2.0 comparison, an e-mail attachment downloads in 5 seconds on the 3G model, and 18 seconds on EDGE. Jobs says the 3G iPhone will allow 300 hours of standby time, improved from 8 to 10 hours of talk time on the 2G iPhone, and he's quoting 5 hours of 3G talk time. Browsing should give you 5-6 hours, video 7 hours, and audio 24 hours of continuous operation.

Jobs confirms the new iPhone will have GPS.

Jobs announced the new iPhone will offer GPS.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET News.com)

11:39 a.m.: "Location services is going to be a really big deal on the iPhone." GPS data allows you to do tracking. Apple recorded an iPhone traveling in a car going down San Francisco's famously crooked Lombard Street, showing how precisely the iPhone can be tracked as it navigates the curves.

11:43 a.m.: Jobs moves into enterprise support, which was covered in detail earlier today, as well as third-party applications. When it comes to more countries, the 3G iPhone will be available in dozens of them, as a video with "A Small World After All" plays with the iPhone working its way through South America and Europe. No love for Venezuela or China, but India and Australia are added for a total of 70 countries. It will roll out to those places over the next several months.

11:44 a.m.: On to the price. The first iPhone was $599 and now sells for $399. The new, 3G iPhone will sell for $199 for 8GB of storage.

11:45 a.m.: The 16GB model will cost $299, and that model will also be available in white.

The 8G iPhone will go for $199, Jobs says.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET News.com)

11:46 a.m.: Twenty-two countries will get the 3G iPhone first, and they'll all get it at the same time. And it's not coming until July 11. The "late" rumors win.

11:48 a.m.: Jobs moves into the new ad for the 3G iPhone, which pokes fun at Apple's secretive nature. The demo gods finally make their presence felt as the audio skips on the replay of the video.

11:50 a.m.: Jobs asks Tony Fadell, Scott Forstall, and their employees to stand up and take a bow, which they do to thunderous applause. It appears we're winding down here, as Steve revisits the sessions that are planned for the week's worth of conference events. And we close, to Chuck Berry's "Maybelline."

11:52 a.m.: A quick recap: the 3G iPhone is here, but it's late. It's not clear the slip will mean too much to Apple's goal of shipping 10 million phones in 2008, but the price cuts will probably more than offset any two-week delay in iPhone sales. Still, this means there will have been no iPhones available for about six weeks, from the middle/end of May to early July.

That's going to be it from the show floor, but stay with us all day as we take a look at iPhone applications, ponder the 3G model, and post tons of pictures and videos. Thanks for letting us bring you WWDC 2008.

Wearing his standard attire, Steve Jobs takes the stage to kick off Apple's 2008 Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET News.com)

This is an iPhone. Tomorrow, there's probably going to be a new iPhone.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

I guess the thinking is if you toss enough possibilities in the air, at least one of them will come down right.

For example this Sunday morning, the Internet suggests that Apple's new iPhone might be cheaper. That it might be thinner. That it might have video chat. That it might have GPS. That it might come with a four-core chip. That it might be late. That it might be here already.

Hopefully, that clears everything up. Come back tomorrow for live coverage of Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, when the company is expected to reveal actual details about its next-generation iPhone 2.0.

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference is expected to cover the parallel tracks of Mac and iPhone software development, but the company may have another aspect of parallelism to discuss next week.

Nvidia's CUDA technology could make it easier to transcode home movies--or hits like Ratatouille--into a format suitable for an iPhone.

(Credit: Apple)

Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, in an interview earlier this week, suggested that Apple might have plans for Nvidia's CUDA technology as part of the WWDC festivities next week. CUDA is a programming technology that allows software developers to take advantage of the unique parallel processing characteristics of graphics processors such as Nvidia's GeForce 8600M, found in the MacBook Pro. Nvidia released a beta version of CUDA for Mac OS X back in February.

"Apple knows a lot about CUDA," Huang said, implying the company might be ready to formally embrace Nvidia's technology to make it easier to exploit graphics chips inside Macs. Apple's implementation "won't be called CUDA, but it will be called something else," Huang said in an interview here at Nvidia's headquarters on Wednesday.

Software developers are interested in the potential of graphics chips because of their ability to embrace parallelism, or the simultaneous execution of different types of problems. CPUs from Intel and AMD are designed as general-purpose processors, able to handle any kind of code a programmer can throw at the chip. But until multicore chips became all the rage, those CPUs were basically designed to tackle one problem, and then move onto the next problem: and software for those chips has been designed accordingly.

GPUs, on the other hand, break up a problem into much smaller bits and process it in parallel with other problems at a very high rate of speed. To this point, however, only specialized applications such as graphics software or high-performance computing applications have been able to take advantage of that raw horsepower. Nvidia, AMD, and Intel are all working on ways to allow everyday programmers to exploit the unique characteristics of graphics processors.

For example, during my visit on Wednesday, Nvidia engineers demonstrated how a CUDA-enabled version of a program similar to QuickTime running on a desktop or laptop could dramatically speed up the processor of transcoding a movie or television show into a format suitable for the iPhone.

The GeForce 8600M GT is one of the Nvidia graphics processors that are listed as CUDA-enabled on Nvidia's site. Huang declined to share specifics regarding Apple's intentions, but a conference of Mac developers would be a likely place to discuss any plans Apple might have for CUDA.

We'll be covering Apple's annual WWDC conference live on Monday, starting at 10 a.m. PDT.

(Credit: Apple)

If you want blow-by-blow coverage of Apple CEO Steve Jobs' keynote address on Monday, make sure to pay us a visit before 10 a.m. PDT for our live report.

I'll be inside Moscone West on Monday morning, where we expect Apple to unveil a new iPhone and talk more about the next version of Mac OS X at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference. We'll be posting live updates every few minutes from the conference hall, and will have photos of the new iPhone and anything else that gets introduced Monday morning as soon as humanly (or networkly) possible.

After the keynote, make sure to come back to CNET later in the day for complete coverage of WWDC, including initial impressions of any new products and video of the keynote address.

Workers hang Apple's logo outside Moscone Center, where the Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off Monday.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET News.com)

Expect to hear new details about the future of Apple's Mac OS X and Web business next week at the Worldwide Developers Conference--and we think there might be a new iPhone, too.

On Monday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs will take the stage at the Moscone West Convention Center in San Francisco to address a gathering of Apple's developers and the media. This year's WWDC is sold out to the development community, who will be hearing formal presentations by Apple on both Mac and iPhone development during the week's sessions and meetings.

Anyone with even a passing interest in consumer electronics is probably aware that Apple is expected to unveil the next generation of the iPhone in the near future. The older version has been sold out for weeks as we approach the anniversary of the first model's debut, and anticipation of a model that can connect to 3G cellular networks has been building almost since that date last year.

One of the primary drawbacks of the first iteration of the iPhone has been its reliance on the slower EDGE network outside of Wi-Fi hot spots, which can make downloading a Web page an exercise in patience. Upgrading to a faster connection should encourage people to do more Web browsing outside of Wi-Fi connections and could open up a whole new class of applications that need a faster pipe to work effectively.

Apple is also expected to include GPS technology inside the latest version, another development that could pique the software development community's interest in the iPhone. Location-aware services are available on several phones that use GPS technology, and the iPhone developers could soon be ready to join the party.

Will the new iPhone be available immediately following Jobs' keynote? It's not clear. There have been conflicting reports, but Brian Tong of CNET TV is hearing from his sources that Apple Retail employees have not yet been told whether they'll need to report early on Monday for a special training session, which the company has done in the past before major announcements.

Next Monday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs could announce a new iPhone and a new operating system.

(Credit: Apple)

While the iPhone gets all the attention as the new kid on the block, WWDC is always, in large part, about the Mac. Apple chose a picture of two Golden Gate bridges branching off in different directions to illustrate its WWDC invitation, and while the iPhone branch might account for the sold-out conference, the Mac branch is the bread and butter of this conference.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog reported on Wednesday that Apple would be providing developers with an early version of Mac OS X 10.6 during the conference. It's unclear whether that means Apple is ready to start demonstrating features from that release, but the report said the new version is expected to focus on "stability and security."

Apple released Leopard, Mac OS X 10.5, last October after a delay needed to make sure the iPhone arrived on time. At the time, Jobs told The New York Times that he wants Apple to stick to an operating-system deployment cycle of 12 to 18 months.

TUAW's report says Apple could be eyeing a Macworld 2009 release for Mac OS X 10.6, which would certainly nestle within that time frame. Microsoft recently said it wants to get the next version of Windows out by the end of 2009.

Another interesting part of that report is the notion that 10.6 will be an Intel-only release. Users of older Macs running PowerPC chips were able to upgrade to Leopard, but the report suggests that Apple will drop PowerPC support with the next release.

Apple will likely spend a healthy portion of Jobs' keynote discussing Mac OS X, but it remains to be seen how much of a peek we'll get at the next version. One question on the minds of many Apple users: after which big cat will Apple choose to name the next release?

Ars Technica's Infinite Loop reported Wednesday that "Snow Leopard" was the name slated for the next version, which sounds like it could be somewhat confusing, given the fact that the current version is called Leopard. In a poll on TUAW's site, "Cougar" was in the lead, trailed by "Lynx" and "LOLcat," the last of which we can probably eliminate.

The third leg of the WWDC presentation could involve Apple's .Mac service. There have been a number of recent signs that Apple is rethinking its presence on the Internet, with new domain names being snapped up by the company and code strings in the iPhone SDK suggesting that a new name is on tap.

One interesting thing to watch for concerning any new version of .Mac is how much of the service Apple keeps in-house, as opposed to bringing a Web-savvy partner like Google into the mix. The .Mac service is a good idea, but it isn't widely used among Mac users due to issues with its stability, feature list, and price tag.

Any or all of those objections could change, if Apple transfers the back end of the service to a huge Internet services provider like Google, and uses the service to bring Macs and iPhones together in interesting ways.

As usual, Apple is very tight-lipped about what may or may not be arriving during this year's WWDC. The latest iPhone may or may not be ready for an actual release on the first day of the show, but expect the topic to be the highlight of the day's announcements.

We'll have a live blog up and running during the keynote, which is expected to run from about 10 a.m. PT on Monday to about 11:30 a.m., so make sure to come back and read about what's actually rolled out, as it happens.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the App Store in March, and third-party applications delivered through the store should arrive Monday.

(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

The era of officially sanctioned iPhone applications should kick off on Monday.

That's the same day Apple CEO Steve Jobs is expected to take the stage at the Moscone Center to unveil the next-generation iPhone at the company's annual Worldwide Developers' Conference. A source at a software company that has been working on a native iPhone application tells us the company is getting ready to launch that application on Monday, which could also imply that Apple's App Store will be up and running that day.

The App Store is going to be the only way to get official third-party iPhone applications onto your device. Developers have been submitting their applications to Apple for testing and verification since the iPhone SDK became available, and in exchange for hosting and distributing the applications Apple is taking 30 percent of the revenue generated by sales of that application.

Gizmodo has reported that the newest iPhone--which is expected to connect to 3G cellular networks--will be immediately available on Monday. Based on this latest information, the iPhone 2.0 software--which enables the delivery of official applications through the App Store as well as several other business-friendly features--should also be available for download on Monday.

That software is supposed to work with both the current version of the iPhone and the widely expected 3G version that should make its debut this month, so you won't have to buy a new iPhone to start using iPhone applications.

But you might want to buy a new one if you get lost on a regular basis. The same source was able to confirm reports from earlier this week from GigaOm and Wired that the newest iPhone will have support for GPS technology, enabling the iPhone to get a precise fix on your location. The combination of GPS and faster networking speeds should allow for a whole range of location-aware applications to proliferate on the iPhone, as they have on other competing phones.