Apple's WWDC announcements--the 60,000-foot view

At Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference keynote today, the company completely refreshed its notebook computers and introduced an important new model, got OS X Mountain Lion ready for release next month, and previewed iOS 6. Rather that dig deep into all the new products' features and functions, I'm going to focus on a high-level view:

• The future of Apple's notebooks: Apple announced its MacBook Pro with Retina Display, which represents the future direction for all of Apple's notebooks. It's slightly thicker than a MacBook Air, yet it has as much or more processing and graphics power than the top-of-the-line "classic" MacBook Pro, which remains in the product line. It also has a 15.4" Retina Display with 2880 x 1800 resolution, four times as much as the "classic" 15" MacBook Pro.
• Hard drives are dead: Every MacBook model now comes with flash memory rather than a hard disk, with a minimum of 256GB on most models to a maximum of 768GB on the new Retina Display model.
• USB 3 is in, Thunderbolt is still around, and FireWire is on the way out: All MacBooks now have USB 3 interfaces, which are backward-compatible with USB 2. There are far more USB 3-compatible peripherals on the market than Thunderbolt-compatible models, and they're less expensive. On the other hand, the handwriting is definitely on the wall for FireWire: The MacBook Pro with Retina Display drops both FireWire 800 and Gigabit Ethernet interfaces. Instead, Apple is offering Thunderbolt to FireWire 800 and Gigabit Ethernet adapters. 
• OS X is looking more and more like iOS: Mountain Lion includes integration with iCloud, a notifications center, and Messages, Reminders and Notes apps, all of which were first implemented in iOS. Dictation is built into Mountain Lion and works in all apps, much like dictation in the new iPad. Links, images and video can be shared with a new share button in every window, much like Android. The updated Safari browser has a unified "smart search" field, like Chrome, and a Tabview feature, taken from Mobile Safari.
• "Fix Siri, integrate Facebook, replace Google Maps, and clean up everything else": From today's presentations, those seem to be the central goals that Apple has for iOS 6. Siri is going to be more tightly integrated into iOS 6 and will become a key component of integration with automobile telematics systems, so it has to work much better than it currently does. Facebook is going to be integrated as completely into iOS 6 as Twitter is. Google Maps will be replaced with Apple's own Maps application, including real-time traffic, turn-by-turn navigation, Siri integration and Flyover mode, with 3D renderings of cities around the world. Other features, such as FaceTime and phone calling, will be improved.
• With today's announcements, Apple is sanding off the remaining rough edges of its operating systems, and keeping its hardware at the leading edge. The true innovations, if they arrive, will come later this year, not at WWDC.

US Government considering antitrust action against Apple?

The New York Post reported this morning that the US Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission are deciding which agency should launch an antitrust investigation against Apple. The cause would be the now-infamous Section 3.3.1 of Apple's iPhone Developer Program License Agreement, which banned the use of any cross-platform development tools or programming languages other than those specified by Apple.

The charge against Apple would most likely be that the changes in its license are an illegal restraint of trade. Given that Apple isn't either the dominant supplier of smartphones (that's RIM) or the largest supplier of mobile phones (Apple isn't even in the top five), whichever agency goes after Apple will have to show that the company monopolizes something, and monopolizing its own platform probably won't fly in court.

My suspicion is that the argument will be that Apple has become so important to software developers that its actions have a disproportionate effect on the software industry, even if it doesn't have a conventional monopoly in any market. The goal of any investigation will most likely be to get Apple to open up its development ecosystem and allow alternate languages and cross-development platforms to be used. This investigation could also open the door on how Apple actually evaluates applications, which would be a "peek behind the curtain" that Apple would prefer we not see.

The timing of this leak, during the Gizmodo investigation and weeks before Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, where the new iPhone is likely to be announced, may be intended by the Government to put pressure on the conpany to reel in its activities or face some potentially embarrassing announcements and disclosures. At the very least, it's likely to stop or slow down Steve Jobs' public missives.

Why I Bought an iPhone 3G S Instead of a Palm Pre

The day after the iPhone 3G S was announced at Apple's Worldwide Developers' Conference, I ordered one from AT&T. The Palm Pre was released a few days earlier, and it has a number of features that I frankly prefer to the iPhone, including true multitasking, a very simple way of intelligently integrating (not just merging) contacts and managing email accounts. Most importantly, the Palm Pre has a hardware keyboard, while the iPhone's keyboard is on-screen.

The new iPhone 3G S does video, which the Palm Pre doesn't yet do, but what really clinched the deal for me was the 50,000 applications available for the iPhone, compared to the 20 or so that were available for the Pre at launch. I certainly didn't expect the Pre to have anywhere near the iPhone's application count at launch, but by severely limiting developer access to the Pre's WebOS SDK, Palm virtually guaranteed that its opening-day assortment of applications would be paltry.

The Palm Pre and WebOS are a very impressive platform, and I'm not going to speculate about how successful Palm will be long-term. However, Apple is well on its way to building the same kind of overwhelming network effects lead in the smartphone business that Microsoft has built in personal computers. No matter how good the Pre and subsequent models are, they probably won't be able to overcome Apple's lead in applications and installed base.

Palm needed to put a full-court press on developers from the day that the Pre was originally announced. Instead, it assumed that the functional superiority of the Pre/WebOS combination would overcome a lack of applications at launch. That was true for some customers, but as in the PC business, it looks like applications are driving purchase decisions.