Let’s take an example to help illustrate this. Once Google Cloud Print is deployed and Google has built support for it into their Google Docs suite, I could open up a Word document my fiancee sent to my Gmail account in Google Docs on my iPhone and say Print. Then, with Google Cloud Print the print job will get sent from my iPhone (which is really in the cloud on Google Docs) to my home printer or whichever one I have setup to print the document, and once it’s finished printing I’ll get a status back on my iPhone saying whether the printing was successful or not.

Pretty awesome and this definitely addresses all the iPad printing critics.

Hammond’s research has led to conclusions that as the new developers come in and replace the old, dynamic languages such as Ruby and PHP will also replace Java and .Net. I completely disagree with this. To their credit, they contend that it would be a slow process to replace Java and other legacy languages and that they do have a decent shelf life, but I don’t think they’re seeing the big picture. Some of these legacy languages like Java have continued to be enhanced to stay relevant and are now incorporated into new computing methods which are only now in their infancy such as cloud computing. With Java now providing a lot of the muscle in many cloud computing solutions it’s certainly going to be around for a while in this respect.

Another reason I disagree with this is from a business perspective. A developer is generally told what language they need to develop in based on business need (existing or new requirements). It’s not the developer who tells the business what the requirements are.

Sling Media has already developed SlingPlayer for platforms like Windows Mobile and Blackberry, and there has been a lot of anticipation around an iPhone offering. That said, there was also some that were worried about developing SlingPlayer for the iPhone, given Apple’s notoriously strict App Store acceptance policies, often without rhyme or reason.

A few days ago Sling Media submitted their SlingPlayer for iPhone application to Apple for review and acceptance in the App Store. This again stirred up the debate about whether or not the device would be approved by Apple, and alas the hour of reckoning has come and SlingPlayer for iPhone has been rejected (for now). According to Sling Media PR, the program was developed to specifically adhere to every Apple guideline for applications, user interfaces, etc. This leads to the obligatory WTF?

According to sources at BGR, SlingPlayer for iPhone was rejected entry into the App Store due to an executive decision made by Apple. Word circulating the Internets is that AT&T petitioned Apple to reject the app due to worries about bandwidth consumption . If true — and BGR is notorious for having accurate inside information — I have bugs to pick with both AT&T and Apple regarding this action taken by AT&T.

For one, there are already a number of other AT&T Windows Mobile and Blackberry devices on which users are able to use the SlingPlayer application. So their argument about bandwidth is pitiful, they’re already letting users of other devices use it. Granted, the number of iPhones in comparison to those other devices is astronomical, but there’s got to be some law or regulation against restricting the bandwidth of the same program on different platforms when both utilize the same network — at a minimum it’s horribly unethical.

Secondly, Apple. When did you start letting telco’s dictate what software can and can’t be allowed on the iPhone. Apart from allowing VOIP apps to run on cell networks (which is a legitimate excuse) and other apps that may interfere with AT&T’s revenue model, there is no excuse for this. AT&T says it’s gonna use too much bandwidth? Puh-lease! There are a number of streaming video apps already on the iPhone that AT&T didn’t bark about: Joost and UStream to name a few. Also, what is the point of offering users unlimited data plans if you’re going to restrict how much data they can use – and not just restrict it by capping it, but even going so far as to not allowing software that may use a lot of bandwidth. It’s total crap and my affection for AT&T continues to dwindle, they probably have a competing product in the works and the bandwidth complaints are just a cover. And Apple, shame on you as well for allowing a telecommunications provider to control innovation on the iPhone. Continued behavior like this will allow platforms like the Palm Pre and Android to catch up to you.

</rant>, users…thoughts on this?

As someone who is just beginning to poke my nose into Objective-C and iPhone development this is a godsend. Sure, the books from Borders or Amazon are great, but for me personally nothing beats having an instructor, and I am very eager to start watching the videos.

The first video and PDF was posted to iTunes last Friday (April 3rd) and as mentioned above is available as a free download. Here is the direct link to Stanford’s iTunes U page (link opens in iTunes).

Currently, the iPhone OS ships with built-in read-only capabilities for Microsoft Office documents. Users attempting to make changes to Word, Excel, etc. files have had little options.

I’m curious to know exactly what types of updates these users are looking to make? In my experience, most of the users who access Office documents on the go simply view them quickly to get the information they need then later open the files on a computer to edit them and do the real work. I simply can’t imagine doing a vlookup() or countif() on my iPhone — don’t even get me started on pivot tables.

The point is it’s simply not practical for getting any real work done. Sure Microsoft will sell plenty of copies because of the novelty generated if they’re actually able to deliver on this. But as someone who spends most of my time in Microsoft Office from Monday to Friday, I can’t see how Office on the iPhone will realistically make me better equipped to do my job.

The install went fine after two crashes/restores (note to iPhone owners: make sure to upgrade to iTunes 7.7 before upgrading to iPhone 2.0). The App Store is lovely and there are a little over 500 applications to start — some free, some not so much.

I’m sure everyone and their mother knows the details so I will spare you, but in the meantime here are some screen shots of the new 2.0 iPhone firmware :

(Note: the 2.0 specific icons are App Store, AIM, Remote, and Facebook)

Naturally, someone (Sascha Segan from PC Mag) asked Mr. Vega if this included the uber-popular iPhone. Vega’s response:

“Let me repeat what I said: I think that you’re going to see our integrated devices be 3G devices in the not-too-distant future, and I mean months. That should be clear enough.”

You can take that for what it’s worth, but it should be clearly evident that those calling for the May-June time frame are pretty much on the mark. One expects — and has expected — Steve Jobs to announce a 3G iPhone at Apple’s annual WWDC in June, and Vega’s projected time frame would coincide nicely with that.

So we still sit and wait, but now a bit more optimistically…

As soon as I started listening to music on my iPhone today at work the same type of activity occurred, even when the iPhone was laying still and flat on my desk. Tracks were jumping around spontaneously and pausing and playing at will. I swapped out the headphones in favor of a brand new pair and as Steve would say, boom! Everything worked like a charm.

To be fair, my old set of headphones had been slowly falling apart and I’d ordered a new pair for when they finally gave out. I just didn’t expect the headphones to cause the iPhone music player to act so erractically.

Here is a pic of my old iPhone headphones (notice the jack falling apart):

And here are the new iPhone headphones:

Update 3/19/2008: While running today at the gym the track skipping and play/pausing occurred again, despite me using the brand new iPhone headphones. Will have to bring this up with the geniuses at the Apple store next time I visit…

Let’s start with the iPhone enterprise features because I’ve been eagerly awaiting these since last June. The new enterprise features include the following:

• Push email
• Push calendar
• Push contacts
• Global address list
• Cisco IPsec VPN
• Certificates and Identities
• Support for WPA2 / 802.1x
• Enforced security policies
• Device configuration
• Remote wipe
• Active Sync and Microsoft Exchange Support

Can we pause briefly to say: YES! Since June I’ve been carrying around two phones, one for personal use (iPhone), and one for business (Windows Mobile), and it will be awesome to be able to consolidate down to a single device. Additionally, the iPhone will support multiple calendaring systems so those of you like me who sync to a Mac but will use corporate email will be to sync both iCal and Outlook. Nifty.

The bad news, unfortunately, is that this functionality is currently limited to a beta program of five users per company, and full roll-out won’t be coming until some time in June (why must Jobs continue to torture us?).

As mentioned above, Apple also released a beta version of the much anticipated SDK (software development kit). The iPhone SDK is essentially a comprehensive set of developer tools based on existing Mac OS X technologies that will allow for development of native iPhone applications. The SDK is broken down as follows:

Cocoa Touch – Multi-touch events, Multi-touch controls, Acceleromter, View Hierarchy, Localization, Alerts, Web View, People Picker, Image Picker, Camera
Media – Core Audio, OpenAL, Audio Mixing, Audio Recording, Video Playback, JPG, PNG, TIFF, PDS Quartz, Core Animation, Embedded OpenGL
Core Services – Collections, Address Book, Networking, File access, SQLite, Core Location, Net Services Threading, Preferences, URL utilities
Core OS – OS X Kernel, BSD TCP/IP, Sockets, Power Management, Keychain, Certificates, File System, Lib System, Security, Bonjour

Additionally, there is an iPhone emulator for Leopard 10.5.2+ to assist with development.

At the press event today Apple demoed a few native iPhone applications built by companies that received an early copy of the SDK. The following apps got demoed:

• Epocrates
• Salesforce.com
• AIM
• Super Monkey Ball (game from SEGA)

iPhone apps — as speculated — will be distributed through iTunes, however they can also be downloaded wirelessly (EDGE or WiFi) directly from the iPhone. The App Store will feature both paid and free software, depending on the wishes of the developer. For paid software, there will be a one-time $99 digital certificate fee to get your software listed in the iTunes App Store, but again this is a one-time fee and does not apply to each submission to the store.

The beta version of the SDK can be downloaded here.

Now for some screen shots.

Enterprise features:

SDK:

AIM:

Again, as I alluded to earlier, don’t get your hopes up, because these features aren’t going to be fully rolled-out until some time in June. In the meantime, however, developers are free to start working on some apps. I fully intend to download the SDK and play around a bit, so expect some more posts on this if anything comes to fruition.

A final note, Apple said today that it will NOT restrict VoIP applications that utilize WiFi, so there’s some serious promise in that space. Also, iPod Touch users will have access to these same new additions, however they — unlike iPhone owners — will be forced to pay a “nominal” fee.

Any questions feel free to hit me up in the comments. (A big thank you to Engadget for the pics)

Hopefully we’ll get some more information about this next week at the iPhone SDK event on March 6th, but it’s likely we might not hear anything until Apple’s annual WWDC (Worldwide Developer’s Conference) in early June. One thing’s for sure, the hype around an upcoming 3G iPhone is likely to fire up excitement around the iPhone as much as the initial launch did last summer.