Second, my MBP is my development computer. Development computers get the snot kicked out of them. They are constantly in flux. Install the new Ruby; install the new Xcode; install the new iPhone SDK beta and the new Drizzle and CouchDB and LLVM. Update the new MacPorts and Homebrew and OpenPKG. Upgrade my git, hg, and svn. Try Erlang, and Haskel, and Hadoop. Then uninstall and reinstall some or all as needed. Eventually, I cross the beams and it’s time for a fresh start¹.

On the one hand, I crave stability. On the other, I’m pushing constant change. On the one hand, I have simple requirements that can be met with a simple, 1.5 pound portable device. On the other, I’m a power user demanding the biggest, the fastest, the most of everything in a 17” form factor.

I’ve tried various schemes to manage the conflicting requirements of these two modes of interaction with my computer. On occasion, I’ve completely lost my mind and try outlandish solutions such as dual booting or running my personal computer as a VM inside my development computer (hey, at least it was easy to backup). These solutions never worked because I often wanted to jump between both worlds quickly and effortlessly.

Then the iPhone came along. It was nearly perfect, allowing me to separate my personal computing from my development — in a package that was eminently more portable than my 17” MBP. However, the iPhone has certain constraints that require me to maintain a personal computing presence on my laptop. I don’t like writing long emails on my iPhone. Certain web sites are so poorly designed they must be viewed on a full computer². I can’t create content (documents, spreadsheets, presentations, diagrams) on my iPhone. Ultimately, the iPhone is a satellite device.

The iPad promises to be my dedicated personal computer. It promises to email, chat, tweet, browse, write, edit, and watch — all while just working. (And, might I add, from anywhere.) That frees-up my laptop to be a dedicated development platform that I can use and abuse without consequence.

I want an iPad to keep my simple personal computing needs separate from my developer computing needs.

¹ I subscribe to the Ripley school of developer workstation maintenance: nuke the entire site from orbit — it’s the only way to be sure.

² I’m not even talking about Flash — I’m talking about sites that screw up HTML that badly.

UPDATE: With the NDA lifted, Brad has generously released the source code for Molecules!

I suspect the figures are pretty offsetting, leaving any future gain in iPhone revenue as a percentage of total revenue really subject to iPhone sales growth v. other sales growth at Apple… and not the new revenue model which is probably pretty neutral.

I didn’t see a way to leave a comment, so I’ll post my comment here. If the only components to this deal were subsidies and contract revenue, then it would be a nearly complete win for AT&T. But this analysis fails to account for the additional revenue that Apple will gain through the App Store selling applications to iPhone (and iPod Touch) owners.

The service contract revenue lost by the new deal is not offset against increased hardware sales—it is offset against App Store revenues. The more people who own iPhones, the more revenue the App Store can be expected to generate. Apple gave up contract revenue primarily in exchange for permission to run its own store selling software over-the-air directly to the iPhone device. In the traditional mobile marketplace, it is the carrier who sells applications and keeps a generous percentage of the application price. Apple negotiated with AT&T (and, apparently, dozens of other carriers internationally) to allow iPhones to purchase and download applications from Apple’s App Store. To secure this, Apple agreed to no longer take a cut of the iPhone service contracts. Additionally, Apple will allow AT&T to subsidize the iPhone, which is now good for both parties. (This new arrangement is apparently much more pleasing to carriers internationally as well, giving Apple more markets in which to sell its product.)

It’s a win for AT&T because they can attract (or retain) many more customers and they no longer split those contract revenues with Apple. Additionally, I suspect that AT&T even gets a small cut of the 30% Apple keeps for applications sold over-the-air through the App Store to AT&T customers.

Apple wins by dramatically increased hardware sales and the right to sell apps over-the-air to iPhones. And the App Store benefits from networking effects. The more people who own iPhones, the more developers will be attracted to build and sell applications in that marketplace. The more applications there are in that marketplace, the more people will want iPhones. The iPhone’s killer app will no longer be it’s revolutionary interface and ease of use, but rather be the applications that run on it. Finally, Apple wins by attracting huge numbers of new developers to its operating system, libraries, and development tools. John Gruber reports that “two engineers from Apple told me that [interest] wasn’t just for the iPhone — that they were seeing plenty of new-to-Cocoa developers in the Mac-specific sessions and labs, too”.

Everyone benefits.

Outcome: 13 correct, 3 incorrect, and 4 unknowns. So my prediction accuracy is 65%-85%, depending on how the unknowns turn out. Not bad, given that 10% of my predictions were complete guesses.

¹ The original iPhone was 11.6mm thick, according to Apple’s support site and the new iPhone is 12.3mm according to the new iPhone site.

² No discussion of a DashCode for iPhone or HTML+JavaScript+CSS application development solution was stated during the keynote. If it comes to my attention that widget iPhone development is possible, I will toggle my answer’s correctness.

Preamble

To understand my predictions for WWDC 2008, you need to understand where I think Apple is going in the next 24 months. To view the iPhone as a stand-alone product is to miss the point. The point of the iPhone is to create a development ecosystem around Objective-C and Cocoa. This ecosystem will have spill-over benefits for the Mac, since more developers will be familiar with the platform’s development technologies, but the real point is to create a large population of developers already familiar with application development for Apple’s next device: a touch tablet. This is why Apple is suddenly pushing “OSX” instead of “Mac OSX” and “iPhone OS”—Apple wants to impress upon developers that the skills for developing on any OSX device carry over to the other Apple devices as well.

With that out of the way, on to my predictions!

Next-Generation iPhone

3G: Yes

This seems like a given.

GPS: Yes

With all of the concentration on 3G capabilities, discussion about GPS seems to have died down a bit. While GPS technology takes away space and power from other solutions apple could provide in the iPhone’s form factor (such as video conferencing), I think that improved positional capabilities will create many 3rd party developer opportunities.

Faster Processor: No

I think there are so many other bells and whistles going into this revision that Apple will be happy to use a processor with the same speed and power consumption as the current model.

Video Conferencing: No

With 3G network speeds, this becomes possible and it is an intriguing possibility. But supporting (1) video capture, (2) video encoding before sending, (3) bi-directional communication over 3G (or WiFi), (4) video decoding what you’re friend is sending you, and (5) continual screen updates to display the video—all at the same time—will simply kill the battery life.

Thicker (face-to-back): Yes

Since the current iPhone is a 1.0 product, I’m willing to believe that Apple learned a lot during its development and—knowing what they know now—could redesign the current iPhone to be smaller with lower power consumption. Starting from that assumption and adding 3G, GPS, and a larger battery to the mix, I believe that the new iPhone will have to be more voluminous. It can’t get much wider without becoming uncomfortable to hold, and it’s current height seems about right, so I believe that the phone will grow a little thicker.

iPhone mini: Yes

Take the current 8GB iPhone, make it a little smaller, and offer it in a variety of colors for $350. Offer a 4GB model for $250. Pesto! You have a device that may attract the interest of my wife. Since I didn’t understand the point of the iPod mini until I witnessed my wife’s reaction, I’ve come to trust her judgement over mine for products Apple targets at non-technophiles.

Higher pricing: Yes

Components: there are more of them and they are more expensive. With the addition of the iPhone mini at a lower price point, Apple will have a little breathing room on the high end. I expect the 8GB model to retain its current pricing and the addition of a 16GB model for $100 more.

SquirrelFish: Yes

Squirrelfish helps the iPhone in two ways. First, Squirrelfish is fast, provides users with an improved Web browsing experience. Second, it is more efficient—getting the same end result accomplished in fewer clock cycles, so it requires less power to run JavaScript.

iPhone widgets: No

In the latest episode of The Talk Show, Dan and John kick around the idea that iPhone widget applications may make a comeback: applications for the iPhone written entirely in HTML+JavaScript+CSS, facilitated by a DashCode development tool specific to the iPhone. There is a lot of sense to this from the perspective that it would invite everyone skilled in Web design to be an iPhone developer. However, as I stated in my preamble, I believe Apple can use the popularity of the iPhone as a means to push Objective-C and Cocoa, thus building a larger community of developers skilled in the technologies that underlie all of Apple’s “software-expandable” offerings.

Apple Software

OSX 10.6 Will Be Announced: Yes

Steve is quoted (somewhere—sorry, no link) as stating that he wanted to be releasing updates to Leopard on a more frequent schedule than was indicated by the delay between 10.4 and 10.5. Announcing 10.6 at WWDC with it’s release due at MacWorld seems about right to me.

10.6 Named Snow Leopard: Yes

Sure, why not?

10.6 Will Specifically be for Atom Devices: No

This was posited by Josh Bancroft and I think he’s generally right that OSX is being pushed as its own brand to allow for OSX on a new device, but I don’t think it will be announced at WWDC.

OSX 10.6 Will Drop PPC Support: Yes

This completely sucks for PowerMac G5 owners. You’re the losers of an unexpectedly rapid and successful migration to Intel. As a life-long loser myself, I sympathize.

OSX 10.6 Will Drop Carbon Support: Yes

Apple wanted to drop Carbon support long ago, but the old-time Apple developers complained and—probably more importantly—Microsoft and Adobe were unable (and perhaps unwilling) to migrate off their Carbon code bases. Reading the tea leaves, Carbon’s now a goner. Apple used the Intel migration as leverage to push developers toward Cocoa, then Leopard didn’t include support for 64-bit Carbon. If the rumors that 10.6 will be 100% 64-bit are true, that rules out Carbon. Good bye.

New / Improved / Revamped .Mac Services: Yes

Please! I’ve had .Mac service since I purchased my first Mac and it was fine for a while—I didn’t mind the premium price at first because it “just worked” and that’s what I wanted. But each of the last three years I’ve been really close to canceling my membership and Apple would announce something that would make .Mac just barely worthwhile enough to continue holding onto. This year, though, if I’m not blown away, I’m canceling it. Or whatever they will call it.

.Mac Rebranding: Yes

It’s hard to sell something called ”.Mac” to a person whose only Apple product is an iPhone. Explaining that .Mac doesn’t require a Mac must be a nightmare.

Apple Hardware

New Apple Device: No

I believe that 2009 will be the year of the tablet, so no new devices this year.

New MBP Designs: Yes

I’m just guessing here.

New Displays: No

I think that the displays will be revamped when the Mac Pro is redesigned.

Pie-In-The-Sky Prediction

Every good WWDC prognosticator needs to go out on a limb and make an off-the-wall or out-of-left-field prediction.

OSX 10.6 Adds Resolution Independence

Despite the rumors that 10.6 will be focused on stability and performance instead of features, I think that this will be on the short list of enhancements.

Then the iPhone SDK was released. As it happens, I have several itches to scratch on the iPhone. And the iPhone is a fun platform, too—I mean, there’s got to be some way for stodgy business applications to make use of the iPhone’s 3D motion sensors, right?

So this weekend I joined the iPhone developer program, downloaded the iPhone SDK, dusted off my copy of Cocoa Programming for Mac OSX, and got down to business. Since I have a strong object-oriented programming background due to my time with Java and I’m comfortable with weakly typed languages due to my time with PERL and Ruby (I’m thinking of mix-ins), the single chapter on Objective-C was sufficient for me to grasp the major components of the language. I assume when I’m done with the book I’ll be comfortable with Obj-C’s idioms and familiar with Cocoa. However, my advice to people interested in learning Obj-C or Cocoa is to wait for the 3rd Edition of the Hillegass book.

First, there are several places where the page layout is off. For example, between pages 69-70 several paragraphs are lost. But don’t worry, between pages 71-72 you get a whole paragraph repeated! It’s not a huge deal, but it is annoying.

More importantly, the 2nd Edition is written for Xcode 2. Unfortunately, Xcode 3 is very different from Xcode 2, so many of Hillegass’ screenshots and instructions for using Interface Builder aren’t even close to accurate. The “Hello World” application from the first chapter can’t be constructed. I was more than happy to try slogging my way through anyway, attempting to convert the book’s instructions into Xcode 3 operations, but it was all too new to me. Fortunately, Matt Long has an excellent tutorial filled in the gaps sufficiently for me to progress further. However Matt Long’s solution involved writing the necessary Obj-C class by hand, so I had to read Hillegass’ introduction to Obj-C before things clicked.

I’m now a quarter of the way through the book and I’m really enjoying Obj-C and Cocoa. Writing applications for the iPhone is going to be a lot of fun.

Now, I use the iPhone every day and it handles my the majority of personal computing needs. It’s convenient and (generally) a joy to use. I don’t appreciate being sent to my secondary computer for tasks I should be able to accomplish on my primary device. I don’t like opening my MacBookPro to surf the Web. Or to read email, record appointments, update contact information, or even to tweet. In fact, I only look forward to using my MBP for coding, blogging, writing documents, and image manipulation. For my everyday online activities, I far prefer using my iPhone. When I have to use my MBP for an “iPhone activity”, I get irritated.

The irritation has been increasing over the last couple of months. Mostly, my irritation is incited by Web sites that don’t lend themselves to ease of use on the iPhone (for example, my beloved Highrise)—or worse, completely disrespect the fact that I’m on a low-bandwidth EDGE connection (for example, Grub Hub, which I saw advertised on the CTA but had to dismiss because the home page took more than three minutes to load).

With the release of the SDK, the iPhone is graduating to become a full computing platform. It will move beyond email and Web sites². I anticipate that the coming year will see the release of all the applications I need to avoid cracking open my MBP for any of the mundane stuff. Finally, I’ll get to use my iPhone for instant messaging, enjoyable Twittering, Highrise, and WordPress.com administration.

Even if I have to build those applications myself.

¹ Of course, looking back on it, I note that my first mobile phone was purchased “for emergencies”, but very quickly became my primary phone service. Perhaps this is a general pattern for adoption of new technologies.

² To be honest, Web applications have really carried the iPhone farther than I expected. There are some very talented and dedicated people out there who pushed the Web on MobileSafari far beyond what I imagined possible.

So I subscribed to everything. If I read a couple of articles from the same source that were interesting to me, I would subscribe to that source’s feed. Over the course of a year, this lead to me be the proud subscriber to over 400 feeds. Many of the feeds published content daily or even more frequently. I grouped the feeds into categories like “Must Read”, “Should Read”, and “Read If I Have Time”. I quickly fell behind and after two years, I had over 3000 unread articles.

Feeds were a fire hose and I couldn’t take it. I needed to reassess my relationship with feeds. Instead of subscribing to everything of interest, I cut back — way back. I unsubscribed from everything and waited to see what I would miss the most.

Turns out, the two feeds I missed the most were John Gruber’s Daring Fireball and 37signal’s Signal vs. Noise. Both of these feeds publish up to several times a day, but Gruber’s posts tend to be extremely short and I didn’t have any concerns about being able to keep up.

After a while, I found (or rediscovered) other feeds that were interesting. Should I subscribe? I needed a heuristic. Only subscribe to feeds that post less than once a day. Actually, about once a week is ideal. I found that feeds posting more frequently are trying to cover news in realtime. My Twitter community fills that need nicely, so I don’t need to overwhelm myself with feeds that repeat what I already know.

It’s been three months since I’ve adopted the heuristic and I’m up to 15 feeds. I’m always up-to-date and I feel in control of my experience. I look forward to reading my feeds again.

You suck. I switched from you to TMobile six years ago because you didn’t provide reception in my condo. I was happy with TMobile. They had exceptional coverage in my condo—and everywhere else I went, too¹! They had good prices and excellent customer service every time I called them. (Their in-store service left something to be desired, but sadly that’s parity for the industry.)

I had to switch back to you, AT&T, because you are the exclusive carrier of the iPhone. I had hoped that your network coverage would have improved in the last six years, but as soon as I powered on my iPhone in my condo I saw that it hadn’t changed at all. I love my iPhone, but your disgraceful coverage limits it’s utility and hampers my ability to recommend it to non-enthusiasts.

I was reminded of this again on Sunday while attending a pre-event for Adobe MAX in the McCormick Center west building. As soon as I stepped inside, I was down to one bar, and a half dozen paces further I had no service at all. I saw other iPhone users struggling with the same problem. People with other carriers, however, had no problems at all.

So, I simply have this to tell you: I completely empathize with those who are unlocking their iPhones to use them on other networks. The moment I’m out from under my contract with you, I’m unlocking my phone and returning to TMobile.

Good luck,
David

¹ TMobile’s data services in Chicago are pathetic, but I use Sprint for mobile broadband and couldn’t be happier with their coverage and speed.

My wife and I had a nice dinner near Oak Brook last night, so I took the opportunity to swing by the Apple Store after the crowds died down. I played with an iPhone in the store for about ten minutes. Initial impression: it appears to be a well-implemented, high-end convergent device. The keyboard does take some time to learn. When my current mobile phone contract runs out next month, the iPhone will be on my short list of new devices to investigate.