The iPhone’s second major release was oft hyped and many waited with baited breath for its release a few short weeks ago here in the summer of 2008.

So here are some random thoughts and opinions on the current state of the iPhone 2.0 software and the applications that came with it – most of which have already been said before:

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It was only a matter of time. When the iPhone app store launched just a few short weeks ago, another one of the big blog publishing software had an iPhone app.

You knew it was only a matter of time till the others followed. Now, WordPress, the software Keefer Madness runs on has an iPhone app – which I’m typing this entry on currently.

It’s pretty basic, but is definitely nice for making an occasional post on the road.

The app will also work with wordpress.com hosted blogs.

WordPress iPhone App

Do I need Apple’s new MobileMe service? That’s the question that’s been in the back of my mind since Apple announced MobileMe as the replacement and facelift for their aging .Mac service.

I used to use .Mac. I first started using it when I was working for Apple and we were given free accounts to it as one of the many perks of working for the Cupertino, CA (albeit I was in Durham, NC at their retail store). .Mac at the time broke down as being advantageous as it gave a free backup utility, free (though not really needed) virus protection, 100MB of online storage via their iDisk setup, a way to sync Safari bookmarks and other data between multiple machines, an email address, and a way to host photos and web pages. After leaving Apple, when my account came up for renewal, I renewed it for a year at the $99 price, but never renewed it the following year.

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Alright fellow iPhone and iPod Touch owners – today is our day. iTunes 7.7 has been released early this morning and with it, access to the Applications Store which has 500+ apps, 25% of them are completely free! I’ve already downloaded four of the freebies at home, and am sifting through the deeper areas to look for more.

As of the writing of this post, the other half of making the apps work has yet to be released – the 2.0 firmware/software for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The assumption is that is it will be released later today. My prediction is around 9am PST when Apple employees have all rolled into the office.

Anyway, this gives us a single day’s jump on iPhone 3G owners who can start buying their phones tomorrow morning. Since the 2.0 software wasn’t released by the time I left the house this morning, I’ll have to wait till tonight for the software upgrade and application installation. I’m really looking forward to playing with the iTunes Remote later on tonight. I’m also interested to see how apps like AOL’s IM client compare to web-based clients already out.

I am super psyched about this – a legitimate application and solution for something we’ve struggled with in our home audio setup. Recently, we upgraded our home theater system and now have the living room Airport Express’s audio out streaming to our living room home theater. Well, I’ve got iPhone Remote running, which works wonderfully for skipping tracks forward and backwards, as well as pausing, but there’s no indicator of playlist, currently playing track. *Plus* to initiate, I have to go upstairs and switch iTunes to stream its audio to that given Airport Express. We overcame that last part by getting a VNC client running on the laptop downstairs, but even that’s a pain.

My hope is this iTunes Remote will have a nice amount of polish and be full-featured. It should fit right into our home music streaming wants and needs. So far, this will definitely be my first download when the Application Store goes live.

iTunes 7.7 reveals iTunes Remote app for iPhone and iPod

This is just a followup from an old post I made way back when regarding Mac users having their very own optimized versions of Firefox. It looks like that will continue with Firefox 3. There are Intel and G5 versions currently, with a G4 optimized version in the works.

Firefox 3 Optimized Builds for G5 / Intel

So to no one’s surprise, the WWDC keynote hosted by Apple’s Mr. Steve Jobs this morning announced the new iPhone, complete with GPS and 3G high speed network access, some minor cosmetic tweaks and a price drop. Paint me underwhelmed. It’s super cool that Apple is adding on to the iPhone, making it probably what they had wanted with the initial iPhone release to be had the technology and pricing of the components been there last year.

I applaud Apple for continuing to improve one of their greatest products, but I guess I’m a bit of a spoiled fanboy. As a very happy original iPhone user, I’m completely satisfied with the phone that’s currently in my pocket and my wallet is thankful that this was just an incremental improvement.

The 2.0 software a month away is what I think is the real exciting thing. All of a sudden, developers worldwide will be creating useful (and probably a lot of not-so-useful) applications. That’s where the real promise will be – more applications, games, and iPhone-specific apps for those web sites we already use. July 11th can’t get here soon enough to start sifting through the new apps.

Edit: Here’s the best way to get the skinny on the latest keynote in 60 seconds thanks to Mahalo Daily.

We’re just days away from WWDC, whose keynote address is always a hotbed of Apple announcements by Apple’s number one – Steve Jobs. This year will be no different, with rumors swirling around mainly about the iPhone, the by far best phone I’ve ever owned.

If half the rumors popping up about the second version of the iPhone are true, plus the fact that we’ll be seeing new applications for all iPhones, things are about to get a lot better.

The article below at Lifehacker gives a glimpse at how the hotbed of new software is going to make the iPhone that much more useful in daily usage.

How Your Location-Aware iPhone Will Change Your Life

Sitting in the airport, and the beyond in our trip to D.C. this past weekend, I realized how much I use my iPhone – sure, it’s my phone, but it’s amazing how much and how often I utilize my iPhone. Any type of smart phone will increase your phone’s utility and for me, that happened with me initially with the Samsung Blackjack. You have all your contacts – more than just names and phone numbers, but email addresses, mailing addresses, etc. The other big thing was the ability to surf the web.

But with the Blackjack, it wasn’t as seemless and smooth and didn’t have the same utility as the iPhone. I am an Apple fanboy, so take all this with a grain of salt, but Apple added a lot of polish to the smart phone concept. The addition of wifi and a real web browser was huge. I lose count of the number of times I use my phone. Daily, I use it as a phone, as a music player, sometimes as a video player (watched a whole movie on my trip up to D.C.), an Internet browser, etc. I love being able to do that anywhere that there’s either cell phone service or a wifi connection. In the areas we frequent, odds are good that both will be present.

The iPhone’s not perfect, but it’s pretty damn good and I’m thankful I was able to luck into the iPhone early on. I think next month (June 2008) will make it that much better as software developers start releasing software for the iPhone. We’re likely to see some cool expansions of the iPhone’s utility and I can’t wait – native Twitter support, instant messaging, games, and who knows what else. It’s going to make an already great micro computer that more useful, fun and enjoyable.

So we all finally got a much-needed hardware upgrade at work. I went from a PowerMac G5 single 1.8 Ghz (read: the original G5 machine) to a souped up, dual quad-core (8 freaking processors) 3.0 Ghz Mac Pro with 8GB of RAM. It was absolutely phenomenal how much faster it was! We’re talking night and day. A Photoshop document that before took me 10 minutes to open (literally – I’d go to the bathroom, get a drink, come back and it still would have a progress bar up), now opens without a hiccup or progress bar at all!

I had a hell of a time slowing this machine down. The only thing that seemed to tax it was Parallels. I didn’t play around with that much at all.

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