The interview takes place in London, and among some of the most interesting responses given by Jue are in direct comparison to the way Microsoft (among others) is handling their business model. When asked whether Apple was planning Xbox Live, Jue responded.

“I don’t think we look at it in quite the same way [as Microsoft],” says Jue. “Xbox is a system that they’re creating certain capabilities with, but we have a very open platform, with technologies built into it that are free to developers through the SDK and the APIs.

“So if somebody wanted to develop that then they certainly could, but… we’re not championing that type of experience per se. It’s open to the developer community and wherever they want to take the platform.”

“You could take that the next step further and combine it with Facebook or MySpace and a gaming experience, but I haven’t seen anyone pull those things together yet. There’s been a lot of talk about it though.”

Additionally, PocketGamer explains that Jue “seems enthusiastic” about connected gaming on the iPhone, and the potential that this brings. “…whether local – he says his team has “killed hours in the office” with wi-fi multiplayer on ngmoco’s upcoming WordFu – or online.” Delving into the social aspect of connected games, he sees significant potential here as well. “There’s a whole lot of activity around the social networking side, including location-based social networking applications like Loopt and Whrrl,” he says.

App Store

When asked what Apple is doing in regards to making the App Store a better experience for everyone involved, developers and end users alike, Jue explains that everyone (including Apple), is learning together as the app store grow. “We’re hearing the same thing,” says Jue. “We’re all learning as we march down this road together, but you’re right: with 15,000 apps out there, it is a little bit harder to find applications.”

Jue explains that Apple is employing two particular ways in reducing the burden of developers and making it easier to “cut through the noise” of seemingly third-rate applications. “He cites two ways Apple is trying to combat the problem. There’s the editorial content within the App Store itself – the featured applications – which he says are being changed daily to ensure users always see fresh apps when they return to the store,” Stuart Dredge explains for PocketGamer. “Then there’s the iPhone Your Life section of the Apple website, which Jue says is an example of the company ‘being much more pro-active about highlighting certain applications’.”

Jue explains, “There’s a lot of websites like yourselves doing reviews and top ten lists and trying to get a bit more visibility for some of the better apps.” – “It’s all starting to happen, but we’re looking at more ways too. It’s going to be an evolving story.”

When asked whether Apple would utilize the same technology that drives its iTunes Recommendation Genius feature, only for apps in the app store, Jue replied, “Certainly it’s possible, yeah,” – “I can’t comment on anything that we may or may not be doing in the future, but it’s a good idea. We already do it for music, so it’s certainly possible to do.”

Pricing iPhone Games and Location

Jue continues to show how confident he is with Apple’s success and the business model they’ve deployed around the iPhone’s app store. Being a game changer is an understatement for the app store, especially given that nearly all of Apple’s main competition is now directly copying the idea.

When asked about the rumored $19.99+ premium game category in the app store, Jue responds, “Are we creating a new category? People can charge those prices now – they can charge whatever they want to charge. We haven’t publicly talked about any new format to the store or creating a new category though.” – “We’re much more open – we didn’t really have a pre-defined idea for how iPhone would play in the games space,” he says, stressing that the platform is powerful for a lot of things besides gaming.

“Medicine is coming on board, business too. Lots of other people are exploring the power and utilisation of technologies in the iPhone. So where it goes with developers and the gaming world is fine by us, but we’re not trying to steer it down one particular path.”

Rounding out the interview, Jue touches upon his excitement for the iPhone’s potential with GPS functions. “Gaming is going to be one of the areas that takes advantage of location,” he says. –
“You can do virtual scavenger hunt type experiences, and you’ve got the camera and networking in there besides GPS. You could do a Dungeons & Dragons type thing on the city streets… There are so many cool things. It’s just a matter of time before these games get developed.”

“Better graphics, better levels and worlds, better interaction, better sound… Everything is marching down the path where we’re getting more innovative stuff, more creative stuff and more sophisticated stuff. And then we have multiplayer coming in, so we have a lot going on.”

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iPhoneBuzz posts a video and images of the new functionality which is split into three categories. First, a web-page or web application can implement a local database which can store data directly on the device. Second, App Cache allows that same application to store its executable state directly on the device, which means that form processes being sent from a user’s “touch” can still be performed. Third, GeoLocation allows that particular application (while running in a browser) to securely access location based features while respecting privacy.

If after the video, the concept still seems blurry, just imagine being able to access data from Gmail while your iPhone is in airplane mode. With the implementation of these emerging standards, a developer can build and deploy an application that spans multiple devices and platforms. Just as long as they support these W3C open-web standards.

As we’ve explained, Apple’s intentions lie at the forefront of web technology and open-standards. They have long made it apparent that Adobe’s Flash is not needed, and have continued to invest in open technologies.

Back in January, we reported some information being relayed to us from sources inside AT&T. The term “wireless network caching” was being used to explain a potential way for iPhone users, and AT&T especially to open up a better solution for MMS. Not to be confused with local caching, which stores data on a particular device, AT&T’s potential “network caching” would utilize a cellular network to store data.

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Images courtesy of The iPhone Blog

Making its debut at this year’s Mobile World Congress, this turn-by-turn GPS application comes complete with voice prompts, points of interest, support for multiple countries, and memory stored maps. The iPhone Blog notes that the the Sygic application uses TeleAtlas maps as a base and appears to function with relative ease and speed.

Sygic claims that they are planning to submit the application to Apple’s App Store, as they do not intend to release it solely as only a jailbreak app. Yet we may have to cross our fingers and hope that it gets accepted as Apple’s SDK prohibits such useful functionality. As we’ve previously reported, Apple’s iPhone SDK terms have strictly blocked turn-by-turn GPS. “While Apple may be developing their own solution, Apple’s vice president of Hardware Product Marketing Greg Joswiak described voice-based, turn-by-turn navigation apps as “complicated.” – Although he did explain that the hardware inside the device was “very capable.”

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3. Copy-and-paste, turn by turn GPS? Lets hope so

Last year’s event provided manufacturers with the opportunity to display their touch capable smartphones in efforts to come within a competing stride of Apple’s iPhone. While numerous gadgets will debut at the expo this year, the iPhone remains the looming force with heavy attention being focused on the iTunes App Store that now boasts over 20,000 applications. Such success brings envy as the other top mobile manufacturers are using the Mobile World Congress to unveil applications marketplaces of their own.

Fortune notes that this year’s highlights will include the following:

• Nokia’s Ovi Store: An online app and media portal that comes “pre-integrated” on Nokia’s (NOK) new N97, but will be available for download on a slew of existing Nokia phones come May.
• Windows Marketplace: Along with a new version of Windows Mobile, Microsoft (MSFT) announced Monday that it will open a new Windows Marketplace offering — you guessed it — 20,000 apps, some of which actually run on mobile devices.
• App Store for Symbian: PocketGear, which had previously built its own Palm App Store and an App Store for Windows Mobile, unveiled an App Store for Symbian, the operating system that runs Nokia’s smartphones. How it will compete with the Ovi Store remains to be seen.
• Android Market: Google (GOOG) opened an application marketplace for the Android platform last October, but so far it has only accepted free apps. Look for an announcement from Google this week about how that’s going to change.
• BlackBerry Applications Center: Research in Motion (RIMM) invited developers to submit programs to its forthcoming Applications Center in October. We may be hearing more this week about when that will open for business.
• Palm Software Store: This one went live in December with 2,000 apps and 1,000 free games available for download to both Palm (PALM) OS devices and Windows Mobile.

One other major headline that is making waves in Barcelona is Adobe’s announcement that it expects to ship a fully operational version of their flash player that will be set to run on Windows Mobile, Google’s Android, Nokia’s Symbian and Palm’s OS in 2010. Apple’s iPhone remains off of the list as CEO Steve Jobs has been known to oppose Adobe’s flash player, noting that it was simply not good enough to run on his device.

The Official GSMA Mobile World Congress website has live streaming video of the event that can be viewed here.

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MyAppleGuide originally found the file (though we first saw it over at MacRumors), which we opened up in Interface Builder to snap the screenshot below.

While none of these new features have been discovered in developer builds of Apple’s upcoming Snow Leopard operating system, readers have previously discovered that Snow Leopard may be bringing four-finger gestures to older Macbooks through software updates. The notion that Snow Leopard might ship with the ability to customize your own gestures is not far fetched.

To find the file navigate as shown: /System/Library/PreferencePanes/Trackpad.prefPane/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/FourFingerSwipeGesture.nib

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At the Thomas Weisel Technology & Telecom Conference, Palm chief Ed Colligan explained that they have “no issues with Apple” surrounding multi-touch patents and the seemingly conflicting technology between them. As electronista notes, Colligan continued to explain that Palm has around 1,500 patents he feels confident about, and that Palm in general is very respective of other company’s intellectual property.

Still, the notion that Apple would allow Palm to blow the doors open on multi-touch is a bit strange. Apple COO Tim Cook has explicitly stated Apple’s stance on protecting its patents. “We approach this business as a software platform business. We are watching the landscape. We like competition as long as they don’t rip off our IP (Intellectual Propert). And if they do, we will go after anyone who does.” Although Cook made it clear these “threats” weren’t directed at Palm, one can’t help but wonder. “I don’t want to talk about any specific company. We are ready to suit up and go against anyone. However, we will not stand for having our IP ripped off.”

A well-sourced story over at VentureBeat explains why T-Mobile’s G1 with Google, which runs Android, does not incorporate the use of multi-touch. In a nutshell, Apple strong-armed Google and Google felt too much would be at risk given the two company’s deep and fruitful relationship.

Interestingly, Apple was recently awarded a potentially crucial patent application revolving around multi-touch technology. While it has been referred to as “the iPhone patent” in the past, reports explain that if Apple and Palm indeed went to court, the battle would call upon the oldest patents available referring to the way these devices function.

Either way the situation plays out, legal battles such as these hinder innovation and generally give consumers less of a choice in the marketplace. For the benefit of the mobile market, we hope Apple and Palm can resolve their differences and innovate against each other through technology, not the talent of their legal teams.

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The massive patent is titled Touch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics, and can be found here. Of note, some of the applications within this patent date back to September 2006, before the original iPhone was even announced.

The patent reads: A computer-implemented method for use in conjunction with a computing device with a touch screen display comprises: detecting one or more finger contacts with the touch screen display, applying one or more heuristics to the one or more finger contacts to determine a command for the device, and processing the command. The one or more heuristics comprise: a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a one-dimensional vertical screen scrolling command, a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a two-dimensional screen translation command, and a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a command to transition from displaying a respective item in a set of items to displaying a next item in the set of items.

Interestingly, as of late Apple and Palm have made statements that seem directed towards the other company. Apple COO Tim Cook said that Apple would vigorously defend its multi-touch patents, and Palm snapped back explaining that they would defend their proprietary technology as well.

“We approach this business as a software platform business. We are watching the landscape. We like competition as long as they don’t rip off our IP. And if they do, we will go after anyone who does,” Cook has explained. “I don’t want to talk about any specific company. We are ready to suit up and go against anyone. However, we will not stand for having our IP ripped off.” This of course has led many to believe that we may see a mammoth lawsuit filed over the use of multi-touch input methods. Which in turn may negatively affect competitive innovation, which is never good for the industry.

As MacRumors and WorldofApple both note, Apple CEO is Steve Jobs is listed as the primary inventor along with Scott Forstall and a slew of Apple engineers.

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We already know that Apple doesn’t like to dabble in cheap products. Whether it be a sub-$500 netbook (cheap ultra portable PC), or the rather silly idea of an iPhone nano, Apple is not here to make cheap products. They are here to innovate, push technology forward and deliver the best user experiences, as COO Tim Cook says himself.

Even though Apple has been known for dismissing product categories altogether before stepping in and “re-inventing” them, this doesn’t seem to be the case with either of the products Apple fans seem to be lusting over. In regards to the iPhone nano and a cheap netbook, Apple is opting to stay away. They have reiterated their stance on the netbook market, and find no value in offering cheaper mobile devices like an iPhone nano. In our book, this is good.

As we’ve explained before, a netbook or tablet-like device would be aimed at a niche group of people who are lusting over it, or want something similar. As far as a smaller notebook with cramped innards and lower than optimal input methods (small screens, tiny keyboards), Apple has never been too keen on developing a poor user experience. Spend 15 minutes looking at someone trying to get some work done on a netbook and you’ll see what Apple is referring to.

While some may argue that there is a grey area between the Macbook Air and the iPhone where an ultra portable device may be presented, how would the device appeal to the masses? Reiterating what seems to be misunderstood throughout the industry by many. Until multi-touch technology matures, don’t expect to see it on a bigger device, a tablet or anything directly from Apple. There are still global inconsistencies with Apple’s UI, most notably being copy-and-paste, and until that is addressed, the idea of a bigger device using the same operating system (sans copy-and-paste) is outlandish.

However, regardless of whether or not Apple offers us copy-and-paste, expect the iPhone product lineup to grow in diversification. The 8GB iPhone will become less expensive and reside at the bottom end of the lineup, while they expand the top line into more expensive models. Higher end iPhones would have bigger screens, more memory, larger capacity batteries and make for an even better user experience than what’s out there today.

In conjunction with expanding its iPhone lineup, aggressively positioning the iPhone across global markets should remain at the top of Apple’s priority list. This is where Apple’s initiatives should remain with innovation. 2009 will be a tough year for the economy and we shouldn’t necessarily expect a new product category out of Apple. Instead, the company should remain focused on its fundamentals and getting those iPhone sales back up. Inevitably, the iPhone won’t sell this rapidly forever, but having a product family that consumers can’t avoid may help fill that gap.

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After reiterating Apple’s stance on the netbook category, COO Tim Cook shifted positions to talk about iPhone competitors and how Apple will react to those seemingly “ripping off” Apple’s IP. As TechCrunch notes, some of Cook’s comments sound particularly aggressive.

We approach this business as a software platform business. We are watching the landscape. We like competition as long as they don’t rip off our IP. And if they do, we will go after anyone who does.

This definitely seems directed squarely at Palm. Seeing as how former Apple engineer Jon Rubinstein is spearheading the Pre project over at Palm, there definitely seems to be conflicting issues here. We’ve already stated that Apple should take notice of the Pre, as we’re sure they have. But a heavyweight lawsuit between Apple and Palm over the use of multi-touch technology could be substantial.

Even though the messages seem to be directed at Palm, when asked about a specific company, Cook didn’t name names, which is to be expected. However, Google’s Android phone is developed with a completely open source platform, and with respect to the device, multi-touch technology is in question here, which the G1 lacks.

I don’t want to talk about any specific company. We are ready to suit up and go against anyone. However, we will not stand for having our IP ripped off.

On one hand, suing Palm and wrestling control away from competition would favor Apple, but in turn it may hinder global innovation. We were rather surprised and relieved to see the Pre, even though we knew deep down a lawsuit may brew. But the give and go with this level of innovation between two companies like Apple and Palm would only make for better results for the end users and consumers.

Instead of lawsuits, we’d like to see this settled with the separation of proprietary technology. But for that to happen, Palm needs to reveal how its multi-touch interface and operating system function. If that technology impedes on Apple’s patents, Palm might need a plan B.

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We first started hearing about something similar about a week ago, however remained hesitant to report it until we learned anything substantial. After a few emails back and forth and some genuinely curious phone calls, we’ve been able to get a grasp of how AT&T may offer true MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) for iPhone users. “It would involve sending each other links, instead of images. Person A sends a link of an image that has been compressed and “cached” (for lack of a better word), to Person B, who can then view the image in a browser.” Given the current functionality in Apple’s Mobile Safari browser, this definitely seems plausible. Currently, it is possible to save images in Mobile Safari by simply holding a particular image down for about two seconds and selecting “Save Image.” So we know the functionality is there.

The problem with sending full images from iPhone to iPhone is the lack of native support to viewing images. Users have to visit external web pages and write down lengthy passwords to view simple images that were sent by others. Without copy-and-paste, this is nearly impossible, and has become a rather large burden iPhone owners try and avoid.

With “network caching”, it seems that AT&T would just be automating what is happening now, only without passwords and all the nonsense in between. Essentially, after you take a photo with your iPhone, you will be able to send it through to another user as simply as sending an SMS message. They will receive a link, instead of a picture, and they can then view and save that image.

After doing some research and corroborating with a few people on what this could potentially mean, from a core usability and computer science efficiency standpoint, a proposition dated back to 2005, titled “Network Cache Model for Wireless Proxy Caching” may be applicable.

We propose a wireless network cache model to facilitate the cooperative proxy caching in wireless base stations A self-configured and adaptive virtual proxy graph (VPG) is used to achieve efficient data search, data cache and date replication Based on demand, the aggregate effect of data caching, searching and replicating actions by individual proxies automatically distributes cached web documents closer to the interested mobile clients Our performance study demonstrates that the proposed individual-based wireless proxy caching scheme outperforms existing caching schemes in terms of different performance metrics

The image would expire after 48 hours or so from the network’s “cache”, and thus would only remain on the original iPhone’s hard drive (the one that took the photo). Expiration and deleting of the cached images on AT&T’s servers, which may reside on their wireless network, would free up unnecessary stress through the entire process.

Why this functionality is still lacking from the iPhone is undoubtedly aggravating. Along with other fundamental features like copy-and-paste, it seems like Apple and AT&T may be trying to reinvent the wheel over and over again. Even though this does leave us rather frustrated while waiting for simple features, if the user experience ends up being as fluid as we’d like to imagine, it may be worth it.

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