hi folks, let me tell u the truth .

Thanks for reveal the spec of 3Gs, perhaps you guys may think about that , how come 3Gs just a little bit speed upgrade ? sorry , it totally wrong ! the above article reveal that how powerful that 3Gs is. 3Gs with 3.0 is just like Intel i7 + ATI crossfire running with WINDOWS 95 . 3Gs shouldn't be like this! why Apple trying to "seal" 3Gs power with this stupid 3.0 ? TWO reason !

1. try to make "closer" to 3G/2G version , let people buy the old stock .
2. leave a hand to anroid and palm pre .

i pretty sure apple will make a real os to 3Gs soon , it is totally different from 3.0 , native mutiltasking , a 3D effect GUI.. etc . feel like using a Mac OS/X .

the next iphone will be the same hardware config but add in a 3G video front camera , fingerprint scanner for the enterprise customer.

iPhone OS 3.0 allows developers to support dock connector hardware. This means Belkin, or Logitech, or someone, can make a D pad/buttons cradle for the iPhone 3G(S) with a big internal battery, and all that is required is a particular game support it. If they make the code for supporting the pad free (should be, would be basic) then most games will support it. I don't think devs can make OS level drivers, it would have to be supported by each app, but it's not a big deal.

In other words, it no longer needs to be Apple sanctioned.

I hear what you're saying, and still speaking as a developer, their iPhone Simulator is a really, really shoddy piece of work.

This is what we'd be developing for if what you suggested happened, and it's just not doable. You can't debug properly (throws error codes to a higher level than your code base, even in 'debug' mode), you can't access accelerometer, and you can't do multitouch. You don't see what the actual color fidelity looks like, and everything is *much* larger onscreen, so you can't build game UIs. OpenGLES 1.1 even is actually slower on the simulator than the device, and file access is almost 100x faster, and general processing is at about an 800-1000mhz level.

It's just useless for OpenGL development, in other words, even for the current 1.1 devices.

Releasing hardware that developers can use is necessary, and it has to be at a price point that the existing community can buy.

That's my major point.. developers with hardware & software = more (really awesome) apps in the future.

I do agree with you about confusing the general marketplace, but as you said before, it's all about their developer support.

Consider if the palm pre opened up low-level access to their filesystem and processors w/ C based libraries.. all the sudden you'd have people able to develop for a much more powerful platform than the iPhone. Apple needs to stay one step ahead of this type of competition, and it's doing so in the way that it has already proven, works.

By this time next year there will be around 6 million devices with OpenGLES 2.0 (new iPod 3rd generation lines, people upgrading finally to the new iPhone 3GS as their contracts expire) we'll be seeing the developers working from the hardware that they get next week just *beginning* to hit their stride with OpenGLES 2.0 code.

The architecture is SO much more advanced than the current one is, it's pretty silly.. since it's not just the graphics hardware, it's the new NEON instructions in the main cpu that will affect physics, ai, and sound.

But, yes, the end-user is sorta confused. Read all the engadget/gizmodo posts on WWDC keynote day.. they totally skip by this type of improvement, and gave many people the idea that there was a digital compass and a linear speed increase. Now they're actually looking into this, but using sensationalist news tactics ("Will your iPhone 3g run the new software", etc) that overlook the fact that there's still so much development time to actually utilize the hardware and the fact that no-ones going to release serious projects for an installed base of *phone* users that number less than 3 million, at least for the next 7 months.

Chris.

While everything you've stated might be true from a developer's standpoint, in terms of marketing and product placement (business) it's not that cut and dry.

But, again, let me go over to the side from which you're arguing:

You state that Apple should release this because the jump to OpenGL 2.0 is substantial, and it'll take almost a year before developers come to grips with the new hardware.

I propose this:

Apple still could've waited to release the actual hardware to retail for about a year or two (and maybe in that time increased the specs a bit, like changing the Cortex A8 to an A9, possibly even the multicore variant A9 MP) but during that year pre-release an SDK to the new hardware. This is what the game hardware companies do all the time, btw. Microsoft didn't release XBox 360 and THEN let devs work on it. Oh no. They gave devs an idea of what it would be, released an early SDK, and when the system was launched the consumer market was ready to move on AND developers had games ready for launch.

Again, I'm not arguing that a hardware upgrade, a next gen upgrade, is bad…it's just bad timing to do it now. Why launch a true next gen if the current gen hasn't reached its saturation point (and when I stated "next gen" I'm referring to how the game industry uses that term, not Apple's erroneous usage which they use to label their redesigns)?

The 1st problem is the hardware upgrades. Yes, they are awesome…and indeed will be a gigantic boom for making cooler games on the device. But with this new upgrade things suddenly get MUCH more complicated for the end users. Apple isn't even advertising the new "hardware" aspects of the 3GS. You're regular user just thinks it's a new model with more room for "stuff" and has a compass with video camera support. They will have NO idea that this new model is much more powerful on the gaming side of things (especially the 3D capabilities). So now we have a situation EXACTLY like the PC gaming world. Here's two machines who are both the same "platform" so-to-speak, except one can blow the other way in pure performance. How will this effect iPhone gaming? All new titles will need graphics options to scale things down to work on the old 3G phone. People won't even understand WHY they can't turn them up to run smoothly. Suddenly it's like having multiple Nvidia chipsets on video-cards. Actually, that's exactly what it's like!

I'm glad they did it….but it's about to make things very very complicated for gamers (and developers trying to sell games to everyone).

The second problem is the controls. Apple is in a position to seriously cripple Nintendo in the states….but they dropped the ball. They didn't stick a tiny little d-pad on the device with a couple of buttons. That's all they had to do to win. Obviously Steve and most of the iPhone dev team aren't really gamers. It's 2009 and we STILL don't have a way to play a perfect version of Ms.Pacman or Galaga on our state-of-art phones. Why? Because Apple insists we all use touch controls. Gamers know they don't work for twitch-response games where super tight controls are necessary. Somebody at Apple should know this as well. Due to this insight, the iPhone will never be a superior gaming platform over the DS or the PSP.

As far as AT&T goes, I have 5 bars of 3G ALL the time, so I have no complaints with them, and my rollover minutes are LEGION.