Apple iPhone: Light-Years Ahead

As shown in one of the banners at the Moscone West during WWDC 09: one year later, light-years ahead:

It could not be more true. Many things have changed during the last two years, and in the last year in particular.

I truly believe there is still no competitor for the iPhone. I have tested many different phones. I have owned, both Blackberry and Palm branded phones, and I have had several Nokia phones in the past. Being a mobile device fan, I have the tendency to ask people to show me their phones. I have seen many, and there is still no competition, not even in those new touch screen phones that keep popping up.

It is also my believe that the key to is not in the hardware, which is definitely good, but not unique. The key difference is in the software. Apple created a software base that is extremely responsive to user input, and that made it easy and intuitive. Then, with the SDK and the App Store, opened the door to rest of us.

Many things have changed. From the initial 550 applications that were available on July 11th, 2008, the App Store has now surpassed the 50,000 mark. That is almost 100 times more applications, and still growing fast. Another change is the introduction of firmware 3.0. Technologies like MapKit or Core Data, are amazing. Finally, new hardware. Faster, with more memory and more powerful.

In my opinion, 2 years after the introduction of the iPhone, Apple clearly dominates the smartphone market and it is clear that its intention is to keep doing it. But what it is most impressive is, that Apple is listening to both customers and developers. Took a while, and there are still things Apple do not want to change, but they are doing it. Almost all my requests for new iPhone SDK APIs have been made available in firmware 3.0, and almost most of the common requested features are now there (like copy & paste). Even most of the changes I wanted on the App Store are there.

So, I want to take this opportunity to say: thanks, Apple! Thanks for the iPhone, for the SDK, for the App Store, for your updates, and most of all, for listening. Keep doing it, and you shall keep light-years ahead of the competition.

LateNiteSoft Acquires Snapshot

As a consequence of our last visit to San Francisco for WWDC, we are happy to announce that we have acquired Snapshot from Stunt Software. We sat down with Dan Messing and reached an agreement that we have now made operational.



We are excited about this opportunity. We believe Snapshot is a nice product that makes a great addition to our portfolio, and that will become a nice complement for Sketches in the future.

To all current Snapshot customers, welcome! We'll try to live up to your expectations.

WWDC 2008

If I had to summarize this year's WWDC in one word, it would be "Awesome". A year ago, we went to WWDC with no clear goals. We attended a lot of sessions, and met a few people. Overall, it was a good experience, in which we gained a lot of technical knowledge.

This year, it was different. Our primary goal was not to spend all of our time in sessions. We wanted to make our visit business oriented, meeting people, and getting feedback about different aspects of our applications.


After 2 years of working with him, we finally met Louie Mantia, our graphic designer. Currently, he works mostly for our friends at Tapulous, but, fortunately, he still does some work for LateNiteSoft.

We also met Chuck Soper, Cabel Sasser, Daniel Jalkut, Mike Lee, Kenichi Yoshida, Steve Scott, Tristan O'Tierney, Colin Wheeler, Kevin Hoctor, and some others in the SF Mac Indie Soiree.

During the week, we met with many Apple employees, as well as other entrepreneurs, developers, designers and journalists. We participated in a few labs and different consultancy sessions. We were present at the parties and events, but overall we probably did not make it to more than 5-6 sessions each.

The overall result has been very good, and we are very satisfied. Within the next few weeks we hope to start showing you the outcome of our visit.

During and After WWDC

We are back from San Francisco. Wow! What an experience.

We started be finding the Moscone building and getting our badges for next day. Then we went to visit Cupertino. This is me in 1 Infinite Loop:



Next day we saw Steve's keynote and learned about how Mac OS X was evolving. During the next few days we learned about different topics. Everything was very well organized and presentations were generally very good. In addition, the opportunity to talk to the Apple engineers was very interesting.

But not everything was nerdy during those days. We met a lot of people, some of whom we only knew virtually (basically through IM). This is both of us with Brian Ball (MacZOT):



These are Sophie Teutschler (Coversutra), Stuff MC (Pomcast) and Pedro, with John Casasanta in the background:



Juan Alvarez and Mathew (Cha-ching):



Austin Sarner and friends:



Skitch's presentation at the Delicious Generation party:



Apple's party:



And we even had some time for touristing around:



Certainly a nice trip. We hope to repeat it next year!

LateNiteSoft at WWDC '07

I have started WWDC preparation. I have downloaded some of the headstarts, based on the sessions that interest me. Now, I have to install the latest Leopard preview in my laptop. For that, I need to go back to the repartition the hard drive once again. Lucky I did documented the first time!

I believe there are some very interesting technologies in Leopard. Core Animation being one of them. As I have been always interested in Special FX, game development and movie creation, it seems like a natural choice. So, once I get Leopard installed, along with the latest Xcode 3, I will take the material for Core Animation and try to grasp the basics before getting to San Francisco. I do have some ideas of things that would be nice to implement in Xslimmer, and even some ideas about possible new apps that we could create using Core Animation and other Leopard technologies. If I just had a more time...

Anyhow, I hope next week will be a fun one. I am really looking forward to meeting other Mac developers, whatever exciting news Steve Jobs provides us with, and all the possible learnings I can get.

If you are around, and would like to meet, let us know!