Some Quick WWDC ’09 Highlights

This morning marked the start of Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers’ Conference (or WWDC). At the start of this weeklong event there is a keynote that Phil Schiller gave that has some useful tidbits of information on Apple products (hardware and software). In the extended body of this post I’ll tell you the key highlights. Enjoy, Alex.

iPhone OS 3.0 on June 17th: As well as going over the new features one last time the release date for the new iPhone OS was announced. So a week from Wednesday, cool!! AT&T is the one carrier that doesn’t support tethering. The pricing is as follows: free for all iPhone owners and $9.95 for all Pod Touch owners.

Snow Leopard for just $50.00 in September: For $29.00 for a single upgrade, and the $50.00 for a family pack upgrade. The new OS should show up sometime in September with all the previously mentioned cool new features (including taking up 6 GB less than Leopard). But sorry, if you don’t own Leopard then it’ll cost you $169.00 to get it as part of the Mac Box Set for a single license and $229.00 for a family pack. As also mentioned previously in the array of Snow Leopard announcements, the new OS will be Intel only.

Safari 4 Final Release: At the keynote the immediate availability of the final release of Safari 4 was announced. The update will require a reboot as it changes the core Webkit system software. For those that were using the Safari 4 betas, you will see some interesting interface changes in this final release. Tabs are back under the address bar, and the loading interface elements have turned blue among other things.

iPhone 3GS: Faster processor speed, built-in video capture and editing, voice dialing and voice command, and built-in compass. The 16 GB model will be $199.99 and the 32 GB model will be $299.99. It will be available in either black or white.

No more unibody MacBook, just 13 inch MacBook Pro: Refreshed 15 inch MacBook Pro, new 13 inch MacBook Pro, and updated MacBook Air. The ExpressCard slot is replaced by an SD card slot, FireWire is back on the 13 inch model, and the 17 inch’s battery (the one with 1,000 cycles and 7 hours of battery life) will be found on the 15 inch and 13 inch. The pricing is from $1,199.00 up to $2,499.00.