Well folks, it’s official - The iPhone will be available in Australia on July 11th!
I am writing this post as I’m watching the WWDC keynote.
iPhone
Well, WWDC - firstly, iPhone 2.0 software is out! 3 Parts to it.
- Enterprise Support - Microsoft Exchange Support!
Push Email, Push Contacts, Push Calendars, GAL Lookup, and Remote Wipe! Cisco VPN built in! Some great new features!
- The second big thing with the iPhone launched at WWDC is the 2.0 SDK (Software Development Kit). This is HUGE! Now you as a developer will have access to the source and coding tools to develop a content rich application platform for your iPhones! WOW, this is big!
- And last but no least, MobileMe
Now going off WWDC for a sec - Looking at the Australian iPhone Website shows that you can only get the iPhone from Optus & Vodafone at this stage. Will Telstra get the phone? Well speaking to an un-named source…. the answer is yes, but they are just playing the cards close to their chest right now.
OK - so the features…..
- Phone
- iPod
- Enterprise Email Support for Microsoft Exchange
- 3G
- GPS
- Web Browsing
- Added Security with two factor authentication and the list goes on…. see here!
Now, back to the iPhone. Pricing here in Australia hasn’t been released. But… going by the WWDC US Pricing…. 16GB $299USD, 8GB $199USD so I would expect to see it here for +$50-$100 there abouts.
The hot word with all the Developers that they had on stage was FREE FREE FREE! So it looks like there will be some cool free apps available for the iPhone. That, and the SDK will be available and very very cool for all!
Ok, so now, out of the box, you’ve got the Exchange Support, so also, Word, Excel and Powerpoint as well as Pages, Numbers etc. A Scientific calculator, Parental Control and heaps of language support.
On the dev front, the app store will be great! Download applications straight to your iPhone. Developers can share their apps, set their own price, and Apple don’t charge hosting of Credit Card fees, but, they do only pass on 70% of the total to the developer, so essentially there is a 30% fee for using the Application Store.
So the next biggest announcement is Push email for those without their own Exchange server - Apple call it MobileMe. All very self explanitory, simply push email, calendar and contacts without an Exchange Server.
So there you have it, 70 Countries, and launched in 22 on July 11th!
Happy iPhoning!
G
To watch the keynote - click here!
