This. There are a lot of devs who are upset with the craptacular state of the app store.
Google voice, google lattitude, my own personal apps ( without paying 100 bucks a year ), plus the list of stuff people jailbreak for on a daily basis. The app store is my biggest complaint. It's full of mostly garbage, hard to search and the most useful things are banned. If this doesn't change, I'm not buying another iPhone or any other walled garden apple product.
I should note that I own at least 5 grand in apple gear. I love apple desktops. Their attitude to developer and users on the phone just straight up sucks.
I like the idea of selective background tasks.. check out the Jailbreak app "Kirikae" as an example. Basically makes a little task switcher that will background as you go, but doesn't just keep them running in the background. I think it's a nice compromise and makes the phone SO much more useful.
This. There are a lot of devs who are upset with the craptacular state of the app store.
And there are a lot of devs that are in love with the App store. You can't please everybody.
Actually you can.
Have an app store, but allow users to install apps from their computers that are not on the app store (with a huge warning).
I'm a big boy. I know the risks. I want to write free, open source software for my iphone. I can't because it costs me money to just develop the software, then to distribute it I have to hope apple likes it and that I didn't break any of their rules (that are ill described).
I've had 4 apps I bought from the app store get pulled because apple suddenly decided they violated their 'rules'.
Have a closed app store, but let me install my own apps. I shouldn't need to jailbreak to get this kind of BASIC functionality.
* The tablet will come with a virtual keyboard -- kind of a no-brainer if it's gonna be a keyboard-less tablet and not, say, another laptop.
* Apple's been talking with The New York Times, Conde Nast, and HarperCollins / News Corp. over how they could collaborate. When asked, NYT Chairman Arthur Sulzberger would only say "stay tuned."
* Electronic Arts has been working closely to prep games for the tablet. We know of a number of gaming journalists who've gotten invites to next week's event, and given Apple's heavy games push over the past year or so, this wouldn't surprise us in the least.
* A reaffirmation of earlier murmurings about potentially swapping Google for Bing as the default search engine. Maps, too!
* Those TV subscription rumors? Apparently the gang in Cupertino have been pitching a "best of TV" service that would package the best four to six shows per channel.
* A web-based version of iTunes, tentatively called iTunes.com and potentially launching in June, for buying music outside of the dedicated app. Additionally, there'd be a new initiative "to populate as many webs ites as possible with 'buy' buttons, integrating iTunes transactions into activities like listening to internet radio and surfing review web sites." No mention if music will be downloaded or streamed from the cloud, but we can definitely see how Apple's recent Lala acquisition would play into this in the future -- in fact, we've already seen it start to bear fruit.
* Here's a weird one: Apple has supposedly designed the tablet "so that it is intuitive to share." One such experiment is virtual sticky notes that launch for the intended recipient by facial recognition via built-in camera.
Really hoping for Core i5 Macbook Pro refresh.
Going to be let down when the tablet is just apples take on e-book readers.
You should read the "waiting for arrandale" thread on Macrumors. It's good for a laugh...
"WE NEED 24,000x16,000 RESOLUTION!!"
"HOW CAN A LAPTOP CALLED 'PRO' NOT COME WITH A CUPHOLDER!?!!?"
"I DON'T CARE HOW HEAVY IT IS, GIVE ME DUAL QUAD CORE i7'S IN THE 13 INCH MODEL!"
"THE HP ENVY IS SO MUCH BETTER YOU MORONS! THAT'S WHY I'M WAITING TO BUY AN APPLE!"
"YOU GUYS ARE SO STUPID! EVERYONE KNOWS STEVE JOBS IS GOING TO SKIP ARRANDALE AND WAIT UNTIL HE CAN POWER A MACBOOK WITH A JELLYFISH!"
Seriously....It's epic.
That being said...um, new laptops plox. =]