It's here. It's finally here. An official announcement from Apple that an iPhone-related press conference will be held on Apple's main campus in Cupertino, October 4th, 2001. I realize I'm not the first one to notice this, but my take on the poster is that, as usual, Apple has hidden some clues inside. First, the tagline, "Let's talk iPhone", is almost certainly an indicator that we will see Assistant in iOS 5. This is the technology that will allow us to use our phone as a true personal assistant and perform even highly complex actions with voice commands. As someone who drives a lot for my work, I can't wait to be able to send text messages and get directions by voice rather than having to constantly risk my life by looking down and typing.

Also of note, is the singular badge on the phone icon. There has been lots of speculation that Apple would be releasing two phones, the iPhone 5, and a lower-cose iPhone "4S" to enter the lower-end market and possibly serve as a prepaid option. It looks like that's not the case, and we'll only be seeing one phone, at least, if we're reading Apple's thinly veiled hints correctly.

The iPhone 4 will probably continue to be sold and meet this market, and we will only see one new phone from Apple. I may not be a radical departure from the iPhone 4 in physical format, but with the new software, plus a rumoured 1GB of RAM and the dual-core A5 processor from the iPad 2, this phone is sure to be amazing. I just can't wait until the 4th to find out!

iWork, Apple's productivity suite aimed squarely at Microsoft Office users has been available on iPad since the hardware debuted, and Apple has now made those existing applications universal iOS apps to support iPod Touch and iPhone users. Because this is a universal app update, existing owners of those apps will receive full iOS support at no additional cost, and will simply need to update the app in order to install it on their iPhone.

This is really interesting, not only because it marks the further encroachment into MS Office territory by the more beautiful and affordable iWork suite, but also because this is clearly a response to MS Office integration on WP7 devices. Apple knows that as long as Microsoft can dangle Outlook and Excel support in front of business-class users, they will hold a competitive advantage. Realistically, I can't imagine ever needing to update a spreadsheet so desperately that I needed it on my phone, but, at least psychologically, that need is there for many businesses in America. Hopefully, this new update and extension to small-format mobile devices will allow Apple to gain further traction inside businesses and with professional users as a whole.

Now it's a waiting game until we see MS Office for iOS. The latest update of Office for the Mac has brought Outlook to Mac users, and while it's still chock full of bugs, Microsoft is clearly trying to win back the hearts of some of its lost users to Exchange support and at the very least, an integrated lifestyle using both Windows and OS X.

Apple, by contrast, will *never* ship iWork for Windows.

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An app that I designed the icon for is in the App Store! This represents my first entry in the App Store to date, and makes me just want to do more. Any comments on the icon are appreciate, including negative ones. I may tackle some of the internal design next as we publish updates and revisions. For more information, visit the site of the developer I worked with (@a2) and the release announcement on his blog here.