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WWDC 2009 Rumor Smash: Some Were Right, Most Were SUCK!

Though Jesus debunked a number of the more fun WWDC rumors—what's a "unibody" iPhone?—in his sober-light-of-day roundup last Friday, it's nice to run through them all, to see how many rumors were true, and how many were smashable.

iPhone Rumors
The biggest batch of rumors had to do with the phone, and man were some of them off base:

• "iPhone Video" name? NOPE

• "iPhone 3GS" name? YEP

• Video shooting? YEP

• iPhone matte black finish? NOPE

• iPhone front camera and videoconferencing? NOPE

• $99 iPhone? YEP

• Glowing Apple logo? NOPE

• Autofocus 3-megapixel camera? YEP

• Magnetometer/compass? YEP

• OLED screen? NOPE

• iPhone Speed and Memory Boost? YEP

• Aluminum "unibody" iPhone? NOPE

• Verizon iPhone or some other Apple phone? NOPE

• iPhone Nano, whatever that is? NOPE

Other Apple Rumors:
It was easy to dismiss the tablet rumor early on, but there were other speculations that were a little easier to swallow:

• Apple tablet? NOPE

• 13-Inch MacBook Pro? YEP

• Marble look-and-feel for Snow Leopard? NOPE

• 64GB iPod Touch? NOPE

• Steve Jobs appearance? NOPE

(Note: If I left any out, go ahead and throw them into comments. There's no way I can verify that I got 'em all above.)

So, did we get took? Or did we take home quite a bit? From this tally, out of 19, only 7 came true, but when you factor that in with some unexpected fun, like the Find My Phone remote MobileMe feature, or the voice controls, or the MacBook Pro's new SD card slot (which is nice, though not an HDMI port), it was a decent haul despite any disappointment. In case you haven't had enough, here's the full coverage from WWDC. [WWDC 2009 on Gizmodo]

Related stories

  • The US Patent and Trademark Office has published today a 372-page document detailing every known and unknown aspect of the iPhone. As you can imagine, the most interesting bits of patent 20080122796 are the features never detailed before—like video conference, GPS, widget creator, multimedia messaging, and video recording. Apple secrecy often pushes USPTO patent publication to just mere days before the release of the actual product, to avoid the disclosure of new products or features. Could this mean that we will see some—if not all—of these new listed features in the upcoming iPhone 2.0? We don't know for sure, but here's the complete list for you to judge.

    • Communication Module

    Contact/Motion Module

    • Graphics Module

    • Text Input Module

    GPS Module

    Applications

    • Contacts Module

    • Telephone Module

    Video conference Module

    • E-mail Client Module

    • Instant messaging Module

    Blogging Module

    • Camera Module

    • Image Management Module

    • Video Player Module

    • Music Player Module

    • Browsing Module

    Widgets

    Weather

    Stocks

    Calculator

    Alarm Clock

    Dictionary

    User-created widget

    Widget Creator Module (Web clip?)

    Search Module

    What feature would you like to see in the next generation iPhone, apart from bloody copy and paste? [Cellpassion—thanks Jon]

  • And now, I will continue the fine tradition of bitching and moaning for the features we want to see in America's Next iPhone Software Rev. We will open with our usual salvo: CUUUUUUUUUUT AND PASSSSSSSSSSSTEEEEEEEE!!!

    Beyond that, here's our magical unicorn-fantasy list:

    • Multitasking gestures, like the Palm Pre
    • Background app running, like the Palm Pre
    • App store submission fees, or some way to limit app store spam, like Microsoft's planned app store
    • MMS - I don't care about this, really, but you might
    • Video recording
    • Voice dialing and text-to-speech caller ID
    • Better software support for phone-related stuff, like optionally adding "Favorites" or "Recents" to home screen (and improved voice quality if possible)
    • Bluetooth stereo streaming, like the Palm Pre
    • Bluetooth file transfer and storage
    • Bluetooth/Wi-fi sync, like the Zune
    • iLife and iWork Mobile for editing docs and multimedia on the phone itself
    • SPEED - The OS gets really sluggish after using it for awhile
    • A completely new or refreshed UI - There's something to be said for meaningless but thoughtful design refreshes
    • Big keyboard support and bulk delete in every app
    • Flash support in browser
    iTunes app management
    • Popups and notifications that don't interrupt your current activity, like the Palm Pre

  • iPhone 3.0 is NICE. We've got a huge gallery below, as well as impressions of how it runs. Spoiler: it runs well, even if it's a beta development build.

    galleryPost('iphone3impressions', 25, '');

    Some notes:

    • Note syncing is pretty great, even if it is almost two years late
    • You can sync notes through MobileMe as well as through iTunes
    • Your call list now shows the location the call came from (was hidden inside each call screen before)
    • Spotlight is great and speedy unless you have nine pages of apps, then it's SLOW
    • MMS is currently broken (Could be because of AT&T plan, not because of the software - Thanks commenter!)
    • There's a new MobileMe locator option to locate your phone from MobileMe. This is possibly so you can see where you left your phone, or maybe even where the thief who stole your phone is? Not sure.

    More notes to come - Thanks to everyone who helped out!

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