Here is Steve announcing iPhone OS 4.0. Enjoy !

Just signed up for iPad Dev Camp LA,looks like its gonna be a small but cozy event. If you are a LA based iPhone/iPad developer, make sure you attend. Please keep in mind that this is NOT a formal training event but a “Unconference” or “hackathon”.
It’s gonna be a blast !

Apple announced the developer release of iPhone OS 4.0 with 7 major features and over a 100 other updates.
The biggest news is that the iPhone finally has multi-tasking ! So for the nay-sayers here is proof that Apple does care about the user.

The 7 major ‘tentpole’ features are:

• 1. Multi-tasking
• 2. Folders – organize apps into folders
• 3. Unified Mail Inbox
• 4. iBooks
• 5. Advanced Enterprise Support
• 6. Live Network Gaming
• 7. Mobile Advertising

Dozens of other features:
Other minor features highlighted in a slide of iPhone 4.0 enhancements include:

• File & delete
• Mail search results
• Search SMS/MMS messages
• Web search suggestions
• Choose image size in Mail messages
• Bluetooth keyboards
• CalDav invitations
• Larger fonts for Mail, SMS & alerts
• Cell data only setting
• Spell check
• Persistent Wi-Fi
• Gift Apps
• Birthday calendar
• Recent Web searches
• Create Playlists
• Top Hit in search5x digital zoom
• Nested Playlists
• CardDav
• Tap to focus videoUpload workouts to Nike+Places in Photos
• iPod OutHome screen wallpaper
• Search SMS/MMS messages
• Wake on wireless

If you are carrying a lot of USB key drives and running out of space on them, here is a handy tip if you also own an iPhone. The iPhone has a disk too! You can use your iPhone to store documents on the go and view those documents too.

Here is a great review from Macworld of 3 apps that allow you to store documents on your iPhone. These apps are all less than $8 each – so you can’t go wrong trying all of them .

They are:

• Files
• DataCase
• FileMagnet

My favorite is Files, since its a WebDAV server and accessible from Windows/Mac and other iPhones…

Apple has announced the availability of Leopard on Oct 26 at 6 pm local time. If you are thinking of getting Leopard here are 316 reasons to help you decide: http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/300.html

Once in a while I come across a piece of software so unique and outstanding that I have to immediately share it with everyone I know. In my search for easy to use and feature rich photo publishing software I came across JetPhoto from www.jetphotosoft.com.

The software primarily is a Mac OSX and a Windows client. I installed the Mac OSX client and it integrates really well with iPhoto. You can import photos/albums from iPhoto and do any of the following:
1. Create a Flash movie of all the pictures.
2. Make a Lightbox gallery
3. Copy a picture to a cellphone via WAP or Bluetooth
4. Make a slide show
5. Sync the picture gallery to a web server running the other part of JetPhoto software called JetPhoto Server
6. Prepare pictures for web publication in batch mode
7. Upload to your Flickr account
8. Manage all your albums on your JetPhoto Server

It’s pretty comprehensive. What’s more, when you publish your gallery to the web you can choose it’s appearance from 5 templates provided. You can also author your own templates or download them from other developers. All in all a great piece of work ! I give it 5 stars !!

Steve announced 10 features for Leopard today – only 4 of which are new:

1. New look for Desktop

2. New Finder (cover-flow for app/file/page browsing)

3. Quick Look (preview files on desktop including multi media)

4. 64 – Bit Leopard – everything is huge (address space and file size)

5. Core Animation – Animate everything easily..

6. Boot Camp – integrated into OSX allows Macs to run OSX OR Windows (not simultaneously like Parallels)

7. Spaces – Compartmentalize every app

8. Dashboard – new Movie and WebClip widget

9. iChat – share docs/videos and browse together..

10. Time Machine – back up and restore for mom and dad !

Of these only the Desktop/Finder/iChat features are new.. Everything else was already known since last year.
Cmon Steve, you can do better than this.. We need to know the other 290 features of Leopard that you did not disclose..

The most important thing that came out of the WWDC keynote speech by Steve Jobs today was the announcement of Safari for the PC. Yes. Now Safari runs on Windows XP/Vista. This is the most sneaky attack yet from Apple to get to the Windows users. With Safari and iTunes they have the user experience all tied up to OS X and the users tied up to Apple products (movies/songs/services).

This is the best news of all. Watch the AAPL zoom ! Download Safari here…

Ever since Apple introduce iWeb I have been enjoying the simplicity and ease of use in creating elegant and beautiful web pages for my photo albums and my site. The assorted templates included with the application are really great and reflect Apple’s dominance in the area of great design.

What seems to be lacking in iWeb is the ability to fine tune and control the HTML code that it produces. There is no easy way to edit the HTML code within iWeb and you have to export the web pages and edit them in TextPad or your favorite text editor. This kinda sucks…

Enter RapidWeaver. This is a great little program for $40 that mimics iWeb (somewhat). but allows you to edit the HTML code and add HTML code within the application. It has great templates for Blogs, Photo Albums, Contact Forms, Movie pages, simple HTML pages and Business sites. Their template designs are quite nice (though not quite Apple yet . I like the way you can link together pages within a site quite simple. It also integrates quite nicely with your iLife apps and you can drag and drop picture, songs and movies from iPhoto, iTunes and iMovie through the iMedia browser palette.

I have been quite happy purchasing it (and I got 20% off becuase i used a MacSanta coupon) and I highly recommend it to basic and advanced users for creating their websites. I will put up some websites created in RapidWeaver sometime soon for you to view…

You have always imagined Windows programs running seamlessley on your Mac desktop ever since the Classic Mac. Well, dream no more. Now with Parallels Desktop for Mac you can have MS Windows applications run side by side on with your Mac applications. They will even show up in your Dock as individual applications. You have to see it to believe it.

Here are some snapshots of my Mac secondary desktop that is running Windows XP under Parallels in Coherence mode:

As you can see I have Windows Control Panel open over the Mac OS X System Preferences. The Window XP Start Bar is at the bottom. (Click on the thumbnail for a larger picture).

What this means is that you dont have to worry about running Windows inside a window and all the limitations that come with it. You can drag and drop files onto Windows applications and things will work just fine.

Here is a snapshot of my Dock with the Windows Control Panel showing up (with a Parallels logo overlaid on top of the icon):

So to switch to the Windows app you can just click on the Doc icon or Cmd-Tab through the application list.

Windows users throw away your PC’s and get a Mac!