Apple WWDC 09 iPhone 3, OS X Snow Leopard, Macbook Roundup

Update
- iPhone 3G S confirmed to run on an ARM 600MHz processor (double from before)
- Apple is offering a $30 MobileMe discount with the purchase of a new iPhone 3G S

Apple WWDC 2009 was filled with new announcements, and we’ve got everything you need to know right here. Everything you need to know about the new iPhone 3G S, OS X Snow Leopard, and the upgrades to the MacBook Air and Pro lines. We’ve got it all. Let’s start with the new iPhone 3G S.

We previously reported on the credible rumors of the new expected features (see our round up), but now, we got confirmation and a look at previously announced features such as:

Movie Purchase and Rentals from iTunes
Users will now be able to create a new iTunes account directly from their iPhone or touch, and can purchase or rent various TV shows, audiobooks, among other media content via iTunes U. However, it seems that files that are larger than 10MB will be restricted to WiFi downloading only.

Spotlight
Just like your mac, you can search documents, folders, images, emails, contracts, calendar, music, applications on your iPhone.

MobileMe Features
If you have a MobileMe account, you could find the new features very useful. You can now essentially ping your iPhone to play a sound (ideal if you misplaced it around your home and have it on vibrate mode), you can even locate your phone via GPS on MobileME on your PC browser if you loose it. You can also send an SMS directly from MobileMe to your iPhone, and probably most importantly, remotely swipe local data on the device should you lose it.

MMS
You can now send videos, pictures, and vCards, share your location straight from the message screen.

Thethering
Apple has made tethering your iPhone with your computer a seamless task. However, AT&T has the feature disabled due to excessive bandwidth strain and cost concerns. Other iPhone carriers that will allow the feature include: Orange, Vodafone, Telefonica, O2, among others.

Parental App Store controls

Copy/Paste including with Images

Peer-to-Peer
You will be able to connect your iPhone with another iPhone so you can play multiplayer games, among support for other tasks.

YouTube
You can log into your YouTube account and sync your favorites and even rate videos from your iPhone.

Voice Control
Voice guided prompts to play, stop, pause, music (among other prompts) in iTunes, including voice prompted dialing.

3MP Camera
The new 3MP auto-focus camera is a significant upgrade from the previous iPhone version. New settings include a rapid shutter, exposure settings, macro and auto-focus capture, and the ability to manually tell the camera which object to focus on via a moveable on-screen square. The camera also supports video capture (30 fps VGA) and some basic editing features. You can also upload your videos and pictures directly to YouTube and MobileMe effortlessly.

Electronic Compass
The electronic compass can be used to easily tell you the direction you are facing, and can also re-orient Google Maps based on where your facing. (Previous coverage)

TomTom GPS Navigation
During WWDC, we also got confirmation that TomTom would release an iPhone version of its popular turn-by-turn GPS navigation suite. Pricing/availability information was not released. However, these type of GPS programs are usually aggressively priced, and we can likely expect the same here. The TomTom app will truly bring a premium voice prompted turn-by-turn GPS direction service to the iPhone. Currently, users are restricted to text-based directions via Google Maps. The move also questions if Garmin will also release an iPhone app, and what it will do with its Nuvifone (see video)?  Via cnet

Safari 4 Released
Safari 4 has been released and is being dubbed by Apple as the fastest browser currently available. New features include HTML 5 support, a new JavaScript engine, CCS 3, CSS effects, Speculative Loading, Top Sites (with pinning), Cover Flow History, among other features. Safari 4 is the only browser to score 100/100 in an Acid3 test. Features | Performance Benchmarks | Download

Safari Mobile has also been updated. It is now up to 3-times faster and includes new features such as streaming media support, support to auto-fill forms, copy/paste.

Other Features:

- Voice Memo Recording, with sync
- Microsoft Exchange Support
- Battery Remaining Percentage Indicator
- Shake-to-shuffle iTunes
- New Language support
- Landscape Mode

First iPhone 3GS TV Commercial

iPhone 3GS Pricing/Availability
iPhone 3G S to launch June 19, 2009 in U.S. for $199 for the 16GB, $299 for the 32GB. Will be available for purchase at any Apple Store, BestBuy, Wal-Mart, with a new 2-year contract.

iPhone OS 3.0 to be available June 17, 2009 via an iTunes (requires iTunes 8.2+) free software install for all iPhone customers. $9.95 for touch customers.

iPhone 3G to cost only $99 for the 8GB.

MobileMe costs $99 annually.

Macbook Air Gets Upgraded

The updated MacBook Air offers upgraded specs all for a substantially cheaper price. The base model Macbook Air now starts at $1499 (1.86GB Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, 120GB SATA drive), while the upper end model now costs only $1,799, down from $2,499. The new Air models are now also bundled with a USB Ethernet Adapter. There are no design changes.

The entire Macbook line also got an update, including upgraded specs and lowered prices. The 13” MacBook Pro now costs $1,199 ($100 price drop), and includes a 2.26GHz processor, 2GB RAM, 160GB drive, among other features. You can find complete information about the Macbook line here.

OS X Snow Leopard Unveiled

Apple unveiled the new OS X Snow Leopard, which includes many new smart features. We’ll just let the video do the work for us below – must see. Other features not discussed in the video include a new higher 640×480 resolution in iChat, Quicktime 10 which includes YouTube and MobileMe integration, among countless other enhancements. Snow Leopard will cost $29 to upgrade from Leopard.

You can see the full 2 hour WWDC presentation here.