Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
Promising to launch it this Friday (which means the iPhone Dev Team will immediately be hard at work to hack it), Jobs says it promises “great new performance”, lots of “bug fixes”, big improvements to battery life, no app crashes, fewer dropped calls – and joy of joys – faster backup!
I’ll be keen to see how true these claims are, but hey, let’s darned well hope so. The 2.1 update will be free to all iPhone owners.
Jobs ended by saying these were the best iPods ever, and that Jack Johnson is the number 1 male artist on iTunes. Johnson then proceeded to sing two songs, commenting that his audience was normally 20-something girls.
There was no “one more thing”, and sadly, no 32GB iPhone 3G. Whether the 2.1 firmware truly makes any difference to GPS accuracy is yet to be seen.
There was also no mention whatsoever of copy-and-paste, Flash and Java support, notes synchronisation or other desired features, so we’ll have to wait until Friday to find out if there really are any unannounced “one more things” with the new firmware after all.
So, despite no 64GB iPod Touch and no 32GB iPhone, the rest of Apple’s announcements are still what most had expected, with a few little surprises thrown in here and there to keep us all on guard.
It’s easy to see Apple selling millions upon millions of iPods this Christmas/holiday season and keeping its 70%+ market share fully intact, if not even raising it a little despite all the competition.
And it’s certainly nice to see the iPod Touch get some much needed improvements, from longer battery life for audio, to volume control buttons and speakers.
It’ll also be interesting to see if those US $29 headset with the remote control also work with the iPod Touch – if they do, a world of VoIP apps and voice recording could instantly open up on the iPod Touch.
Update: Yes, the $29 headset with mic works with the iPod Touch 2nd-gen, the iPod nano 4th gen and the iPod Classic 120GB. Whether it will work with VoIP on the iPod Touch is yet to be seen, while it's interesting to note that the US $29 / AUD $48 microphone headset won't work with older iPods or the iPod Touch 1st-gen, which is a great shame, but an Apple ploy to get you to upgrade!
So, the fact the new headset with microphone will indeed work with the 2nd-gen Touch is something that will make a lot of new Touch owners very happy, especially if it works with VoIP apps. If so, Apple will sell zillions of ‘em!
All up, an impressive crop from Apple’s orchard.
Still, I wonder what Steve has in store for Macworld 2009 - it's but three months away!
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
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