Apples to Apples

The Future at Apple part 1

For the past 6 months, Apple has continually been hitting its stride. First with the iPad launch which was a runaway success, and now iPhone 4 which has been their most successful product launch in history. And of course their is iOS 4, iAds, new Mac Minis, new Macbook Pros (i7, high res screens), the list goes on. But no one can argue that Apple has been executing extremely well. Their market cap is higher than MS (!!), and their is no end in sight. Here are a couple of my takes on what the future from Apple will look like. The first two are short term predictions. The second are more general long term predictions. I have more to say, but that will have to wait until part 2.

iPod Nano Touch

Ok, so ive heard some rumors from unnamed sources in the past, but now that the display has leaked for this device I think its safe to come out and talk about it. Apple is FOR SURE launching a touch version of the iPod Nano. It will run iOS, and it will have 4 icons on its homescreen. This move makes alot of sense and should not really come as a surprise given the success of the iOS platform over the past few years. 

The great thing about this new Nano is that the entire thing is a screen, so the entire experience - videos, photos, apps (yes apps) - will benefit from the larger screen size. The touchscreen allows apple to ditch the outdated click wheel, and put that space to better use. 

For Apple this move is great, it will bring one more iPod into the iOS family, this streamlines their development process because they no longer have to iterate the old Nano/Classic OS, and it means that new features will hit the nano in sync with other iOS devices (for the most part).

At launch I would only expect first party apps, but at some point they will definitely roll out a SDK/Simulator for the Nano. Its not gonna be as big of a market, and the human interface guidelines will need to be drastically different from what devs are used to on iPhone/iPad, for example it would be very difficult to type on. But having a weather app, or a ESPN type app would be useful, and for Apple having devs make these apps adds so much functionality to their device at almost zero extra cost to themselves. The Nano sells for less than 200$, and in the near future you could be reading your email and checking the weather on one.

iMac Touch

This one is basically a gimme, im that sure that its coming down the pipe. Apple has been the champion of the computer industries most recent evolution - Touch. No one thought the iPhone would work because it didnt have a keyboard, well we all know how that turned out. 3 years later they have integrated touch into their iPod line, and of course the iPad which is an entirely new category of device. But, its easy to forget about their current Macintosh products with iPhones and iPads gaining so much attention lately, but their Macintosh laptops and magic mouse incorporate a wide array of gestures. Mac OSX is light years ahead of anyone else when it comes to touch.

The iMac is a perfect device for iOS, the screens they put inside of those computers are absolutely gorgeous the entire front of the screen is glass edge-to-edge, and the picture quality is out of this world, if you have not seen one goto your apple store it is truly a sight to behold. The glass is already a perfect surface for touching, all they need to do is add the digitizer. Ohh and the 27" iMac, try finding a screen in that size with that resolution, they do not exist anywhere period. The all-in-one construction of the iMac is a perfect ideological fit for the iOS platform. So Its coming, and yes there will be apps.

Retina Displays in every Apple product

This is one of those things that might take a few years to finally materialize, but their justification (marketing) for retina displays does double duty. First, it is a gorgeous display that makes everything on it pop out from the device giving the images a lifelike quality. Second, and more importantly, it establishes a bright-line for where display resolution can stop growing. Think about it, science will allow us to make displays with double the PPI of a retina display in a few years, but it wont matter because our eyes will not be able to tell the difference. That means that if you were to bet on the longterm future of what displays will be like in 5 years you could safely say retina, and that can hold true for another 10 years after that. Cleary Apple wont sit on their hands and will introduce Retina+ 'With better color reproduction' 'Even more PPI' etc... but for the most part the concepts and the dev tools will remain the same.

Ok so Retina displays are the future, and eventually they will be in Macbook Pro's, iMac's, and Apple Cinema Displays. As for the iPad, probably in its next iteration. Considering the state of current display technology I wouldnt hold your breathe for these guys but some day. Next to the technological challenges of getting the actual display, what about the software to support it ? 

Apple is the only company that could pull off, Windows is stuck supporting 90% of computers in the world which vary on so many different levels, you gotta give MS credit for this, but unfortunately it slows them down when it comes to innovate on a software/hardware concept - i.e. little touch integration. Apple on the other hand only has to deal with a small subset of hardware, and all the hardware they do support is high end. Mac OS X has always been visually stunning and since they already have experience doing retina on the iPhone their time to market for a version of OS X that works with retina displays will be alot shorter than MS ever could, not to mention how long it would take for OEMs to integrate Retina like displays in PC's. If your a PC fan dont worry, you will get the same treatment but probably a year or two after the mac crowd.

If I had to guess as to when we would start to see this, maybe 3 years down the road ? Apple already introduced a new higher resolution screen for the Macbook Pro, and their ties with display manufacturers run deep given their exclusive iPhone 4 Retina display, and their exclusive 27" iMac display.

Touch Screens in every Apple product

So I already touched ... on this with the section about the iMac touch, but in an all encompassing way, we will see touch integrated into every Apple product. There will always be the option of a keyboard and a mouse, and adding a touch sensor to a computer monitor is a small cost, but the software is all ready to go, and people are getting used to using touch as the primary input device. This one is also a no-brainer, but it will take some time atleast a couple years before we see it in their laptops. I think iMac will be first and that should be soon, and then in the Apple Cinema Displays, then laptops last.

Cloud Integration

Stay tuned, this will be my next post.

Fields vs Content Controls

The latest release of Autotag, version 9, has switched to a new way of tagging in Office. The tags are still the same, but instead of using a 'Field', we have switched to 'Content Controls'. The main reason we did this is because with a content control you can insert charts and images directly into the control, so for certain tags instead of seeing text, you get to see the actual object that will be in the final report.

Another benefit of switching to content controls was that with fields it was possible to delete some of the field text, the nickname of the tag, which in turn would delete some of the tag causing errors on report generation.

I have worked extensively with both types of tags, and personally I like the field tags more. Here are a few reasons why.

1. If you are in a content control it can be hard to exit and get back to editing regular text. I often find myself clicking outside of the content control, only to have the tag builder window open because word counts my clicks as a double click on the content control. This is because to exit a content control you have to click the mouse into an area that has regular text, if you click off to the side of the page it will not exit. The only surefire way around this is to use the arrow keys.

2. No intuitive way to delete tags. If you try to delete the content control it just deletes the nickname text, to fully delete the tag you have to hit the delete button.

3. Fields are easier to copy paste since they are easier to select.

4. Content controls are harder to select and move around

In a perfect world I would have chart tags, and import tags, still be content controls, but out tags and all the other ones should be fields.

Any feedback that you have going either way would be greatly appreciated because the company will be looking at the comments of this post to make a decision as to whether or not we will change the way tags work in autotag. But if you like the way they are now, then also please tell us that in the comments section.

Thanks. 

White iPhone 4 - will be available at launch

Yes I know that you cannot pre-order white iPhones, but that does not mean they wont have them at launch. I went to my local apple store today and the guy told me that just because you cant pre-order doesn't mean they wont be available at launch *wink*, he also told me that if i pre-order a black one and they have white ones in stock at they can give me a white one instead. Now lets talk about why apple would decide not to do pre-orders on the white iPhone 4.

Why Apple isnt allowing pre-orders on white iphone 4's

1. Apple sells like 4x as many black iPhones as white ones. So even under normal conditions they aren't going to have as many white ones as black ones.

2. For some reason this year either demand for white iPhones is unexpectingly high or the supply is low. Apple doesn't want people to pre-order something, and then find out that they are not available when they get to the store, it just leaves a bad taste in people mouth.

3. The pre-order site cannot link into real-time stock numbers from local stores (since the local stores don't even know how many they have) which means the pre-order menu cannot turn off/on the ability to order a white iPhone as availability changes. So instead of just hoping the number of pre-orders is less than availability, they are just disabling the feature all together to avoid getting peoples hopes up.

Why Apple WILL HAVE white iPhone 4's at launch

1. They had a gazillion demo units at WWDC that were white !

2. Steve Jobs specifically said that they will be available in two colors, not that you can get black now, white later. He wouldnt have announced it the way he did if this was the case.

3. The ability to pre-order is not the same as the ability to buy on launch day, these are two totally separate purchasing events. A pre-order is the ability to have exactly what you wanted on launch day, and it lets die-hard fans avoid the uncertainty of having the phone they want day 1. The direct link between launch day availability and pre-order availability has yet to be solidified.

4. We have already seen all the spare parts for the white phone surface from china, so they definitely have the parts to make the white ones.

5. Unlike the iPad WiFi vs 3G model, the iPhone 4 White and Black are the same freeking hardware, and if chinese spare parts companies are already selling them, then there is certainly no shortage of white iPhone parts.

6.  We know white iPhones exist, we saw them at WWDC. They might as well sell what they've got because the demand is probably going to outstrip supply and there is no point in sitting on a stash of white iPhones just because they dont have enough for everyone, that doesnt make any sense. They will sell every last iPhone they can.

How to get a white iPhone 4 at launch 

Step 1: Download the new 'Apple Store' app from the app store. 

This is by far the fastest easiest way to preorder, within 3 minutes of downloading it, I already had mine pre-ordered with a confirmation email with my appointment time (7:00 am, Boulder CO).

Step 2: Be in the front of the pre-order line. 

So the way launch day works is there will be two lines, one for people with pre-orders and one for ppl without. The one for pre-order will usually be pretty long, but apple employees told me that it moves alot faster. So what I plan on doing is scoping out the line wednesday evening to see if it will be neccessary for me to camp out or not. If its not too bad I plan on just rolling up a couple hours early and waiting till my appointment (7:00am). Note that my appointment time is a good 3 hours before they open the doors to 'regular' customers, which ensures that someone without a pre-order cant just come in a swoop up my darned white iPhone 4 !

Step 3: Pray to your god of choice that white will be available

Worst Case Scenario - They actually do not have white iPhones

I have already decided I want a White 32gb, but there is no way in hell im going to be alive on launch day without a new iPhone 4 no matter what color I have to buy. So, I talked to the Apple employee, he said that there is a 14 day return window for the new iPhone, so worst case scenario you buy the black one, and then in the next few days or week you return it for a white one.

I will make a new post on launch day about the iPhone 4 no matter what color I get, although I will be a little bummed if I do not get white.

WWDC Predictions

Im gonna put together a quick list of stuff I think/hope we will see.

iPhone HD 

There has already been so much leaked about this, I wont go into too much detail, but 5mp camera w/ flash, 960x640 resolution, front-facing camera, A4 processor, video chat, multitasking, record HD video. Thats most of the known, well substantiated rumors, but im sure that Steve will have a few more tricks up his sleeve, cant wait to see what those are.

iPad OS 4.0

This was not part of the OS 4.0 press conference a few months ago, so its times that it gets some press here at WWDC.

xCode 4.0

This one seems to fall right inline with the new iPhone release. If the new iPhone is truly 960x640 then there will be 3 device resolutions developers will have to deal with. I suspect that some tools for resolution independence will be included so devs dont have to make the same app 3 times. If you throw in a Apple TV to the mix, that alone could add 2-3 more resolutions that devs need to worry about. 

Could Apple add some support for HTML5 in xCode, or in some other tool. If they are serious about HTML5 they dont just want everyone using Adobe's Dreamweaver.

Safari 5

There are alot of rumors on this already, most of which seem pretty reasonable. I dont really have much to add, except that I think its pretty plausible to atleast demo an update to Safari at the WWDC. The browser is more and more becoming the platform of the future. Google clearly believes this to be true, since they doubled down on the browser as a platform at Google IO.

Bing

Bing will be a search option on the iPhone, but not the default.

Apple TV

Lots of big rumors were flying around, but It they have seemed to die down, mostly in part due to the answers Steve Jobs gave at the D8 conference. When asked about Apple TV he mainly talked about how hard it is to sell set top boxes to consumers, when cable companies give them away for free. If Steve truly believes this than why would he try to sell a set top box ? Good question, so this one is probably unlikely. But, it is still possible, and it seems a necessary move to compete with google.

iLife 2010

They are gonna atleast talk about this, they do every year. It would be nice to see some more cloud integration, maybe tie it in more with mobile me ? We'll see

Apple Magic Trackpad

these rumors just leaked today, but it seems Apple is set to announce a giant trackpad with handwriting recognition. Its bluetooth which means it would be usable by desktops, laptops, iPads, and even iPhones. This is something ive been hoping for, and im glad that i waited on getting a magic mouse because a trackpad is really what i would rather have.

Streaming iTunes

this one seems pretty likely, all of the iTunes store has recently gone online for preview/purchase, but not streaming. I think apple will close the gap on that today. Expect integration into existing first party apps from apple (iPod, iTunes).

Free MobileMe

Apple needs to do this, even if its just a stripped down version of premium. Apple just needs to have a presence on the cloud with some free services. MSFT and google both have extensive online offerings all available free. We all know about google, but MSFT has some very serious offerings as well - online office, sky drive 25gb storage, free email, calender, etc...

Mac Pro Upgrade

this one is due for an upgrade. It might not be a 'major announcement' but the conference is for devs, and the Mac Pro is really meant for devs and high end technical people so it would make sense to announce it in the keynote just to get a huge round of applause from all the attendees.

Macbook Air Upgrade

Put a 3g sim in there, lower the price, maybe upgrade the specs, and then you've got a computer that moves from a niche marketplace, to one that is a little more mainstream.

Apple TV vs. Google TV

TV is clearly the next battlefield where Apple and Google are gonna fight for advertising space, and dominance. 

I watched the Google IO talk where they launched Google TV. Overall looks pretty good, kinda reminds me of Xbox live. Google TV will be a great product, but from a consumer perspective, its still gonna resemble android, which is complex, hard to understand, and for geeks. Apples solution on the other hand will be far easier to use, its gonna be cheaper, and from a consumer's perspective much more attractive. 

At the moment Apple has got the consumer market wrapped around its finger, it knows exactly what they need, and they know exactly how to market it to them. 

Apple doesnt care about what you think you need, they will gladly dictate that for you, and in many ways this is the best approach for consumers, who on average have no idea how to use a computer, and dont really want to learn.  For example its rumored the new Apple TV will have no ethernet, many geeks well say 'how dare they ! I need ethernet because it is more reliable and faster' but this is exactly the reason apple is so successful, they make these desicions for the user. Take for example the iPhone, it has one home button, compare to androids 4.

Even if the Apple TV is not as good feature wise as Google TV, at this point in the game it wont matter why ?

1. Apple has a pristine reputation in the hardware arena, Google for the most part has none, and the only experience they have, G1 - Nexus One, were both failures. 

2. Apple has been making operating systems for decades and knows how users want to interact with things, googles best effort so far - Android - is a great operating system but compared to the iPhone is very complex.

3. Apple generates magnitudes more press coverage on product launches than google. They have also mastered TV ad spots, something we havent really seen from google. Also, when Apple launches a product, it launches very soon after, none of this "Look at how awesome this is ... but you have to wait 6 months .. and by then the specs will change ... and by then all the momentum we had launching the product will be gone"

4. So many people are already plugged into the Apple ecosystem, for them Apple TV will just be another part of the lifestyle.

5. Apple TV will be easier to use than Google TV, and just that alone will cause the older generation of people to get onboard. I totally see my parents getting an Apple TV for browsing the web and checking email, it will have the appeal of WebTV.

Lets not also forget that Apple will make alot more money than google on the hardware, since they are producing it, and since it will plug into the App Store, Apple will keep racking up users on their ultra-profitable iphone os app store. Right now its at about 90 million devices.

I'd also bet that Apple TV will come out before Google TV, i mean how hard is it gonna be for apple to take the guts of an iPad and add Video out ?

I guess we will have to wait and see at the wwdc.

Live Leak iPhone app

Just finished playing around with the new Live Leak iPhone app. Its a collaboration between Touch Mobile Design and  androidzteam.com. I didnt know what liveleak.com was before I got the app so I dont know how it stacks up to the web experience. But from what ive seen so far the iPhone app works great, videos loaded fast over 3g and Wifi. The quality was above average and the overall experience was smooth. I could not discern any difference in quality between 3g and Wifi, but the 3g connection in my area is always fast.

To me the part of the app that stood out the most was the homepage UI element. It takes a bunch of videos and lays them out as tiles with preview image and a small description for each. Its an effective screen to show the user upon startup because all the hot videos are one click away. 

Other featurers include push notifications and a categories list for finding more videos.

The app is FREE right now so go get it before it becomes paid. Or just wait for the paid version since it wont have the ad banners.

Here is a link to the LiveLeak.com iPhone App in the itunes store.

iPhone 0S 4.0

Ok so 4.0 is going to be announced in less than an hour. And i wanted to throw together a quick list of predictions, and stuff that I hope will be included.

Predictions:

Multitasking

Widgets on the Lockscreen

Resolution Independence

Wallpapers

Springboard Expose  (to show all the currently running apps)

File managment on the iPhone

Email Inbox improvements

iBooks for the iPhone ?

Support for front facing camera 

Let the iPhone sync from an iPad

Stuff I hope is included

Make the voice control API public (pleeeease)

Let voice control switch through open applications 

Ok thats it, 40 minutes till it starts

iPhone Predictions - Updated (02/23/10)

New Developments (iPad, Rumors):

Ok, So my last update came before the launch of the iPad, and that in part pushed me towards downgrading the likelyhood of a front facing camera, because I thought they would put one in the iPad. Well they didnt, and after seeing what they did do, im not suprised. My take on the iPad is that its getting alot of hate from silly nerds on the internet, and when it actually launches and people start using it and seeing its potential harnessed by 2nd tier apps, everyone will do an about face.

Front Facing Camera, Its for sure now:

With that being said I am going to post my updated list. The big change here is im moving the front facing camera upto "for sure". WHY ? you ask ? well there was a leaked image of a 'prototype' iphone next to a prototype iPad:

 

 and if you look very closely you can see that there is an extra pin hole on the front of the iphone. Which is probably for a camera.

 Also another rumor came out the other day from some developers who ripped open the SDK and found resources that would directly indicate the presence of Video Calls on the iPhone.

 

Both of these rumors combined plus my original reasoning that I had in my first post, make this almost 100% for sure. It can be hard to say something like this is 100% but I am convinced that they will launch the new iPhone with a front facing camera.

Like I said in my original post, it may be for phones on Wifi only, but it will probably be for phones on 3G as well. My bet is that ATT's towers will have a way to tell the iPhone it is safe to use video conferencing, so youll get some indicator on the phone, or it may just be if your in 3g it will work. All of this is speculative of course.

One thing to consider is, if verizon does get the iPhone, like alot of people have been hinting at, then there will be the inevitable exodus of ATT users to verizon, this will likely free up some of their network capacity.

But honestly I think ATT has the best network, yaa verizon has better 'coverage', but the majority of people live in the coverage area that ATT has, thats probably why they dont care about those stupid map comparisons, and frankly I dont either. I dont travel much and when I do travel I have never been to a place where I dont get service. I would rather have faster 3g than slower 3g, and more coverage.

Changes From my Last Post:

So Heres a quick summary of the other changes from the last post I made to list and why.

1. Bigger screen, and flash support are going into a new category 'NOT HAPPENING'

  Weve seen what a iPhone with a bigger screen looks like, its an iPad. And honestly I hardly ever hear complaints about the iPhones form factor. So they arent gonna change the screen size. Maybe it will be a smidgen wider taller fatter skinnier, but the base resolution of the screen is going to remain the same, because if they were to make it 10% bigger, it would add marginal benefit and it would totally screw over developers.

2. Front facing camera - FOR SURE

3. File Management, doc generation.

Ok we will probably get file management, because now that the iPad can make docs in iWork, your gonna need to be able to store and view them on your iPhone, it just makes sense to integrate everything, as for doc generation, thats pprobably wont happen since all of that stuff is being pushed to the iPad. so that is going away.

4. Quick note about flash on the iphone:

Apple doubled down on their anti-flash stance with the launch of the iPad, if there were gonna do it on any device besides the iPhone it would be the iPad with its larger battery and better processing power. So frankly if its not there, they wont put it on the new iPhone. Plus, its just a software update, so if they do cave, its not gonna be on launch day. Plus the problem with flash is the experience sucks on mobile phones, just look at this video:

Besides, Apple makes a boatload of money on the app store, so allowing flash would see a huge migration of apps to flash, since you dont have to get them approved, and you dont have to go through itunes to make money. Plus alot of this comes back to the fact that Flash kinda just SUCKS, its slow, buggy, crash prone, and a CPU HOG. And honestly what do you really miss with flash that couldnt be done in an application ? Flash ads, thats fine with me they are incredibly annoying anyways. Hulu and video, ok hulu there is an SDK you can make an application, and its not like its a waste of time there are almost 60million iPhone OS devices on the market, and the users have shown to be some of the most active out of all the smartphone market. What else then, ohh sites that are only made in flash, well thats stupid because its not just the iphone that doesnt do flash its EVERY smartphone on the market, so whoever made that site without having a mobile version is totally missing out on the oppurtunity to have people access it from their mobile phones. Also flash sites arent searchable or indexable.

Ok so that was more of a anti-flash rant than a "quick note" but it gets my point accross. Now for my updated list:

Ok so here is the updated list:

For Sure:

• 64/32 gb of Memory
• New case design, less rounded w/ sharper corners
• Better Lock screen (home screen), like the jailbreak app 
• Multi-tasking, maybe with some restrictions 
• File Management, its time. 
• Springboard Expose/Spaces  
• Camera 5mp 
• Front facing Camera 

 Likely:

• Overhaul the Email App (Unified Inbox) 

Maybe:

• Application Sharing
• Themes and Wallpapers for Springboard

  NOT HAPPENING:

• Bigger Screen
• Flash Support  

Previous posts on this subject

iPhone Predictions - Updated (1/25/10)

iPhone OS 4.0 & iPhone 4G - Rumors / Wishlist (12/03/09)

Accessing resources on sharepoint using WebClient and DefaultNetworkCredentials gives a - "System.Net.WebException The remote server returned an error: (401) Unauthorized"

Ok thats a long title but I want to make sure that everyone looking for a solution to this problem can find it easily

Basically it occurs on systems with .NET 3.5 SP1 and sharepoint sites that have Alternate Access Mappings setup. 

I actually found the solution to this problem at another blog: http://blogs.iis.net/webtopics/archive/2009/06/10/why-system-net-webexception-comes-up-post-net-framework-3-5-sp1.aspx?CommentPosted=true#commentmessage

This post saved me so much time. Me and the other developers could not figure out what was going on, and the posted solutions is one of the last things I would've thought to do. So please go visit that link and readup on the solution

One thing to note is that if you need to specify more than one AAM in the registry entry, seperate them using a new line (carriage return)

so it would look like this

aamone.com

aamtwo.com

Best way to get an SPWeb Object

Getting an SPWeb object can be done in a bunch of different ways, and it depends on whether or not your code is running in a sharepoint context. If you are in a sharepoint context, you dont need to use the 'using' statements, in my experience you only need to use those if you are not in a sharepoint context.

Here is some code we use to get SPWeb objects. At first we were doing it a different way, but after exhaustive testing and running into multiple bugs that stemmed from the way we got spwebs in the past, we think weve got a solution that should work for most configurations.

Inside a sharepoint context:

        /// <summary>

        /// Gets a SharePoint web site object from its Guid

        /// </summary>

        /// <param name="guid"></param>

        /// <returns></returns>

        public static SPWeb getSPWeb(Guid guid)

        {

            SPWeb web = GetSPWebCollectionFromCurrentSite()[guid]; // don't want to return this spweb since it has admin privileges

            return getRootSPSite().OpenWeb(web.ID);

        }

        public static SPSite getRootSPSite()

        {

            return SPContext.Current.Site;

        }

        /// <summary>

        /// Gets the collection of all the sites in the site collection.

        /// </summary>

        /// <param name="site">A SharePoint site collection</param>

        /// <returns>The collection of all the sites in the site collection</returns>

        public static SPWebCollection GetSPWebCollectionFromSite(SPSite site)

        {

            SPUserToken token = site.SystemAccount.UserToken;

            SPSite elevatedSiteCollection = new SPSite(site.ID, token);

            return elevatedSiteCollection.AllWebs;

        }

        /// <summary>

        /// Gets the collection of all the sites in the current site collection (so this is context specific).

        /// </summary>

        /// <returns> Collection of all the sites in the current site collection</returns>

        public static SPWebCollection GetSPWebCollectionFromCurrentSite()

        {

            return GetSPWebCollectionFromSite(SPContext.Current.Site);

        }

Im now just noticing that we dont check against current user permissions, but so far from our testing this hasnt been a problem.

If you are outside of the SPContext then use this stuff instead. This assumes that you can get the URL for the site, or whatever resource you are trying to access. In our case we are trying to get at a file, so if you pass in the full url of the file, it will pick the correct spsite for you.

Outside a sharepoint context:

    String fullURL = "http://mysharepointsite.com/someDocLib/somefile.docx";

            using (SPSite templateSiteCol = new SPSite(fullURL)){

                using (SPWeb templateWeb = templateSiteCol.OpenWeb()){

                
}

    }

Both of these solutions are used internally for accessing files, but it should apply to other stuff that you need access.

We have tested both pieces of code with alternate access mappings, and all classes of users from visitor on up to site owner.