Lonnie Lazar is a writer-musician-web designer-attorney. He writes about Apple for Cult of Mac and Mac|Life, and about VoIP and telecommunications for Voxilla. Follow Lonnie on Twitter @LonnieLazar, join the Cult of Mac on Facebook, and find Lonnie's photos on Flickr.
Apple has cut the price on previous-generation notebook computers buy hundreds of dollars, looking to get rid of end-of-life stock before the arrival of new machines for retail distribution later this month.
13-inch MacBook prices have been slashed by $100 to $300, previous-generation MacBook Airs by $400 to $800, and previous-generation MacBook Pros by $400 to $500, though not all Apple Stores may have all models in stock at the discounted prices.
In all, nine previous Mac notebook configurations are being offered with end-of-life pricing.
If you don’t happen to live near an Apple retail store, see this handy online price guide (scroll down to see end-of-life pricing on discontinued models).
Reports indicate that even the new notebooks may be had at significant discounts to Apple’s announced pricing at resellers such as ClubMac, which is offering online retailer’s rebates with special coupons that knock an additional 3% off the cost of the just-announced machines.
Trust Apple to deliver scintillating graphic evidence of just how revolutionary and amazing its impact is at events such as the Worldwide Developers Conference taking place this week at San Francisco’s Moscone Center West.
The company is drawing raves for the massive ‘hyperwall’ it has erected in the conference hall, made from twenty 30″ Cinema Displays showcasing the icons of 20,000 of the most popular applications on the iTunes App Store. The icons pulse and send a light wave rippling outward every time an app is downloaded from the store, creating a stunning visual depiction of just how in-demand are the services of developers attending the show.
Apple has said 3.000 apps are downloaded every minute and is giving conference attendees quite an eyeful of what that can look like this week.
Sebastiaan de With, a Dutch artist from Groningen, The Netherlands goes by the username Icon Designer on Flickr. He’s in San Francisco this week for WWDC and has promised to do a give away on his blog while he’s in town for Apple’s hit developer’s conference.
Definitely a distinctive entry in the ever-popular ‘exploded’ graphic design style.
If there’s any reason for a business to shun Macs and the iPhone after Monday’s upgrade announcements at WWDC, it’s got to be because the IT department is on the take or it simply doesn’t want its employees to use the best computers and smartphone on the market.
Perhaps flying under the radar among major announcements of upgrades to the company’s notebook computer line, Apple offers with OS X Snow Leopard — and the new iPhone OS 3.0 — significant improvements to a few areas of special interest to business customers that should enable Apple’s devices to make greater inroads to acceptance in the enterprise market.
Chief among them, of course is new seamless integration with Exchange, the Microsoft mail/contacts/calendar service used by the vast preponderance of enterprise customers today.
The WWDC demo by Craig Federighi, VP of Mac OS Engineering Monday showed how easy it is to add an Exchange account using Snow Leopard, with the OS supporting auto-discovery of Exchange servers, with all email/folders/to-do lists being automatically populated and Spotlight immediately able to search all data. Quicklook even lets users preview MS Office documents through Mail, even when Office isn’t installed on the Mac.
Event invitations can be accepted or denied right through Mail. iCal and Address Book automatically have all appropriate data once Mail is setup. One or more contacts can be dragged & dropped into iCal to automatically create a meeting and Calendar events support resource allocation, including people’s schedules and room availability.
What more does the IT department want?
How about data encryption for the iPhone, the ability to locate a user’s mobile device on a Google map using the new Find My iPhone service on MobileMe and remote secure data wipe for phones that are truly lost?
Apple has always been looked upon by enterprise interests as a maker of things for creatives and other ‘unserious’ users, but Monday’s announcements surely throw down a gauntlet in the matter of those who are serious about their computing and communications going forward.
It may not be everything many people were hoping for, but Apple announced a new iPhone Monday at WWDC, the iPhone 3GS.
“The S stands for speed,” said Phil Schiller, Apple CIO, telling the keynote crowd, “It’s the fastest, most powerful iPhone yet. What’s inside is entirely new. It’s a REALLY fast iPhone. Everything you do will have incredible speedups.”
The new hardware looks very similar to the current 3G model, but sports a 3 megapixel autofocus camera with video capability.
The new camera is not forward-facing as many hoped it might be, but its autofocus features a cool tap-to-focus functionality. Tap on the part of the photo you want to focus on, and it automatically focuses to that point of the image. It also automatically handles exposure and white balance. It’s got better low-light sensitivity and an auto-macro feature, with the ability to focus on things as close as 10cm away.
The phone’s camera application has a switch that swaps between still photo and video mode, supporting 30FPS, VGA with audio, auto-focus, auto-white balance and auto-exposure.
Other performance upgrades include:
voice control: “Call Scott Forstall” — if there is more than one entry, it will ask which one you want (i.e. home, office, etc) — or for the iPod function: “play The Killers”
digital compass: the compass app shows your orientation, has integration with Maps — if you double click, the map will reorientate itself
new accessibility options — VoiceOver for content and controls, zooming, color inversion, mono audio, etc.
instant remote wipe
encrypted iTunes backups
business friendly data encryption
promised improved battery life. The iPhone will now get up to 9 hours of internet surfing, 10 hours of video, 30 hours of audio, 12 hours of 2g talk-time, 5 hours of 3g talk-time, which, if true, is a major upgrade.
The iPhone 3GS will be available June 19th in two models: $199 for 16GB, $299 for 32GB. The existing 8GB 3G model will remain available and sell for $99 beginning today.
No company does product release hype and tease like Apple.
First Scott Forstall, Apple’s iPhone VP ran through the numbers: 1,000,000 SDK downloads, 50,000 Apps on the App Store, 40M iPhones/iPod Touches sold, 1B+ apps downloaded.
Cue to the inspirational video of iPhone developers telling their stories. Not a dry eye in the house. Finish with quick cuts of customers naming their favorite apps…
All of setting the stage for announcement of the update to iPhone’s operating system, 3.0. It’s got 100 new features including the long-awaited cut, copy and paste functionality, which works across applications, landscape mode for Mail, Notes and Messages, and shake to undo.
Another much anticipated feature, MMS, will be supported in 76 countries by 29 cellular service providers at launch, though iPhone’s US carrier, AT&T won’t be quite ready for it until ‘the end of summer.’ It’s a really sad thing how US technology behemoths can’t seem to get in step, isn’t it?
Further adding to AT&T’s impression as an albatross around Apple’s neck, Forstall had to admit the US carrier is not among the 22 worldwide that will support tethering in iPhone 3.0, which will allow users to share a network connection with Macs and PCs, wired over USB, or wireless with Bluetooth. It’s a seamless experience, with no need to run any software once it’s turned on. And it won’t be available to customers in Apple’s largest market.
Apple’s first big product announcement at Monday’s WWDC Keynote was an all-new 15″ MacBook with an all-new display and built-in battery.
Starting at $1699, the new notebook computer is the fastest notebook Apple has ever made. With up to 3.06 Dual Core CPU, up to 8GB of RAM, and up to 500GB 7200RPM Hard Drive, the device also comes with an optional 256GB Solid State Drive.
The audience at WWDC could hardly contain itself as Apple CIO Phil Schiller continued to detail upgrades to the company’s entire notebook line: The 17″ MacBook Pro has also been updated — 2.8GHz CPU, 500GB HD; it retains the ExpressCard Slot.
The biggest news, however could be the new 13″ notebook. The 13″ MacBook is now called a MacBook Pro. It starts at $1,199. Cheaper than the MacBook it replaces, it gets the new display specs, an SD card slot and Firewire is back! Ranges from $1,199 to $1,499 in standard configurations.
Sprint and the Palm Pre got all the ink and media attention, but a far more dazzling technological breakthrough also made its debut this past Saturday: the world’s first ‘Digital Superbike,’ the MotoCzysz E1pc.
Among the astonishing things about Michael Czysz’s invention — it’s a zero emissions racing bike with no gas, no oil, no clutch, no need to even warm up the engine (there is none) — it uses an Apple iPhone for its in-dash instrumentation.
MotoCzysz has made public no details exactly how the iPhone operates with the bike, but it is set to race in the world’s oldest motorcycle race, the Isle of Man TT, on June 12, after which we’ll hopefully learn more about it.
For now, we can just gaze in wonder at this American-made beauty and simply guess at the reasons why it doesn’t sport a Blackberry Storm or an Android G1.
Spatial View, the company that launched the Wazabee 3Dee shell, a cool protective case with removable lens for viewing 3D content on Apple’s iPhone, has announced the release of an SDK and interlacing software to enable third party developers to create and view applications for Apple’s mobile devices in vivid 3D.
The Wazabee 3DeeInterlacing SDK contains tools for developers to create 3D content for the iPhone, including a runtime component that allows games and applications to run in 3D when using the 3DeeShell. The 3DeeInterlacer enables content creators, licensees and production houses to interlace existing content and distribute it for display on 3DeeShell-enabled iPhones. Both run on Mac OS X and are available to download for free at the Wazabee site.
Many are predicting that 3D, long a source of curiosity but plagued by the need for special glasses to view it, will be the next big thing in multimedia. With more and more applications and hardware being developed to support 3D viewing, it should be interesting to see the mobile games and content developers will produce with the Spatial View SDK.
Taking Steve Jobs at his original word – that web apps would make the best use of iPhone and iPod Touch capabilities – iPorn launched Monday a new web app developed using Apple’s iPhone specifications and applying its unique accelerometer and touch navigation.
As Apple prepares to open the doors on WWDC in San Francisco on Monday and possibly announce a new video-capable iPhone, few may be as excited about the possibilities to come as the adult entertainment industry.
The iPorn app is loaded with social networking features such as high-res video streaming, the ability to post and share photos and videos, create member profiles, exchange private messages and more. Registered users can personally interact with amateur and professional adult performers via live video webcams, chat and mobile texting. Members can send adult videos from the website to their iPhone or iPod Touch-equipped friends. Versions optimized for other mobile phones, such as the Blackberry, Android and Palm Pre, are expected to follow later this summer.
To help celebrate iPhone 3.0 firmware and the possibility of video-capable mobile devices from Apple, iPorn is sending the iPorn Bikini Girls to Moscone Center in a high-tech iPorn-equipped vehicle for free photo ops with conference attendees. Later in the evening the company will host an (unofficial) 9-hour launch party at San Francisco’s famed Gold Club, just a block away from the conference site at Moscone Center West.
The party, which will go from 5:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m., is open to WWDC attendees, investors, and media.
It’s no secret the adult entertainment industry has often been at the forefront of technology, producing some of the Internet’s most sophisticated websites and multimedia-rich user user experiences well ahead of many more mainstream and socially acceptable industries.
It’s therefore no surprise the porn industry will among the first fully equipped to let users get the most out of Apple’s innovations in mobile device technology.
Smartphone users are spending more time using native applications on their mobile devices to the detriment of other technology and media, but the mere availability of applications is not the primary driver of buying decisions, according to a report by Gravity Tank.
The Chicago-based consulting firm surveyed more than 1,000 iPhone and Android G1 users during April and May and found those users had downloaded an average of nearly 24 apps to their mobile devices, among which they use an average of almost 7 per day.
Nearly half (48 percent) of phone owners report shopping for apps more than once a week, while slightly more (49 percent) report using apps on their phone for more than 30 minutes a day.
Other technologies and media, such as gaming devices, GPS devices, newspapers and TV, all suffer in the light of app-enabled smartphones, as people reported the ability to consolidate multiple devices into one as one of the top two reasons they decided to buy a smartphone in the first place.
Leading the pack of reasons people buy a smartphone is the ability to check email and calendars (74 percent cited this). The availability of new games and applications figured into the buying decision for 67 percent of the survey respondents.
The survey results cast an interesting take on all the pre-launch hoopla and positive reviews garnered for the Palm Pre, which will be available to the public starting tomorrow.
Palm’s highly regarded smartphone entry is coming to market with a decided dearth of 3rd party apps available for it and Palm executives have been somewhat cagey regarding the timeline for development of apps for the Pre.
With Apple gearing up its own hype machine for plenty of noise beginning Monday at WWDC it may be some time before Palm is likely to catch up to iPhone’s lead in both the smartphone device and applications markets.
Edge, a way-cool game for iPhone and iPod Touch by Mobigame, has been removed from the iTunes App Store pending resolution of a trademark dispute being pressed by a guy named Tim Langdell, who claims to own worldwide rights to the use of the word ‘edge,’ at least in the realm of video gaming.
Langdell, whose company Edge Games last developed a video game in 1994, has a reputation in the gaming community as a ‘trademark troll’ and has gained the enmity of a number of gaming aficionados with his latest ploy against Mobigame.
The popular Edge title won the prestigious Milthon Award for Best Mobile Game in 2008 and is designated a Gold level game by Pocket Gamer.
The dispute, and Apple’s apparent policy of removing titles from the App Store at the whiff of legal action, make for a sad commentary on the revenue generated by app developers and what some are willing to do to exercise control over it.
Truphone, arguably the most persistent VoIP developer for Apple’s mobile products iPhone and iPod Touch, released the 3.0 iteration of its app for the iPod Touch Monday, making a very strong case for the portable gadget as an effective communication device.
Among the improvements in Truphone 3.0 are a faster, slicker UI, improved voice quality, and native support for IM communications using Skype, MSN Messenger, AIM, Yahoo! Messenger and Google Talk.
Users with a stable WiFi connection will assuredly enjoy being able to IM using any of those clients from within a single app, as well as make free phone calls to other Truphone users, Skype and Google Talk users. Truphone also offers excellent rates on calls to landlines and worldwide mobile phones.
The upgrade offers improvements to in-app account management that now allow users to:
See rates before initiating a call
Display recent call history, showing the exact cost of a just-ended call, how long it lasted, with the ability to see a summary of calls made month by month
Top up an account balance without the need to access a browser window separately
Top up an account balance in variety of ways, including credit card or PayPal
Change calling tariffs within the application.
When Apple introduced the iPod Touch few considered the possibility it might become a communication device, but with the addition of a microphone adapter and the evolution of 3rd party applications developed for the iTunes App Store over the past year, Truphone has done a great job of employing its WiFi connectivity to give iPod Touch owners the added value that comes with being able to make VoIP calls.
Receiving calls through the Truphone app still requires a user to have it open and running, but when Apple introduces a new version of the device’s operating software next week at WWDC, the push notification it will support could change even that limitation.
Hulu’s newly released Desktop application may or may not put Boxee on the ropes, but it could end up being the best thing that ever happened to the Mac mini.
Released Thursday by the popular television content aggregator whose major partners also happen to be some of the biggest Hollywood content producers, Hulu Desktop signals a major move away from the “online only” model that once served as a thin veneer of protection against the ire of cable companies that pay good money to get content from Hulu’s partners.
Still trying to have it both ways, Hulu issued comical Terms of Service with the desktop product that purport to prevent users from using the software on “Prohibited Devices,” to whit:
“You may not download, install or use the Hulu Software on any device other than a Personal Computer including without limitation digital media receiver devices (such as Apple TV), mobile devices (such as a cell phone device, mobile handheld device or a PDA), network devices or CE devices (collectively “Prohibited Devices”).”
In the real world, however, don’t be surprised to see news of an AppleTV hack by this weekend (if not before); and Mac mini users who employ that device’s excellent media server capabilities with a connection to plasma screens in their living rooms should be sitting pretty, too.
Will you use Hulu Desktop or stick with your web browser? Will you keep the content on your computer screen or take it into the living room? Let us know in comments below.
Web conferencing provider Fuze Meeting is sponsoring a SlideShare contest in which the Grand Prize winner will walk away with $5,000.
All entrants in the “Tell a Story in 30 Slides or Less” contest will get a free Fuze Meeting account for a year — a $270 value – and 4 runners-up will get an iPhone + $100 iTunes Gift Card.
The contest will be judged in 4 Categories:
1. Best Design
2. Best Story Telling Ability
3. Most Popular
4. Best Use of Multimedia
Closing date for entries is Monday, June 15 and winners will be announced June 29.
Apple’s Retail division has no plans to scale back its ambitions, according to a report Thursday in USA Today, and in fact sees opportunity in the recent economic contraction.
“We’re investing in the downturn,” said Ron Johnson, Apple’s senior vice president of retail. Apple plans to remodel 100 of its existing stores this year, adding space for customer training and room for displaying more product. The company also plans to open 25 new stores, including a fourth location in New York City, and new ones in Paris, Italy and Germany.
Stores will soon display “twice the amount” of Mac computers and other products, according to Johnson, and Genius Bars will get 50% more room to serve up free tech support for Apple products.
Beginning June 2, Apple’s One to One product training program will limit sign-ups to purchasers of new Mac computers at Apple Stores or via the company’s website, although any of the half million current One to One subscribers will be able to renew their $99 one year subscriptions .
“We originally set up One to One to get people to switch to the Mac,” Johnson said. “Now we want to expand it to make it even more relevant to people who have bought their Mac.”
Still priced at $99, the annual subscription includes personal setup, transferring of files from an older computer (Windows or Mac) and help with projects.
Previously, sessions timed out at one hour; new policy will extend the limit to three hours, but sessions could also include up to three participants.
Even in the light of his division’s expansion plans, Johnson conceded the recession has affected in-store traffic. Apple reported a 3% decline in sales during the most recently reported quarter. Traffic remains strong, he said, but has cooled off since last summer, when long lines greeted the introduction of the second-generation iPhone.
With many expecting an update to the iPhone to be announced at next week’s WWDC in San Francisco, Apple stores could well see the return of long lines and a need for all that extra space.
Flickr user jumbledpile (nichole) offers pics of a unique iPod meatloaf ‘birthday cake’ made by her friends Amanda and Carlos, which has to be as notable for floating the idea of a birthday cake made from meat as it is for its homage to Apple’s iconic MP3 player.
With creamy mashed potato ‘frosting’ layered over a tasty center of seasoned ground beef, the meatcake comes with cheesy earbuds and pea decorations arranged to suggest the iPod control wheel and personalized data screen.
Easily serves a party of 6 – 8 Apple fans like peas in a pod. Sorta.
CrossLoop, the Monterey, CA-based developer of a popular screen-sharing application for PCs announced this month a version compatible with Intel Macs, extending the company’s innovative on-line technical support model to the Apple community.
Having racked up over 100 million minutes of tech-support served by nearly 5 million downloads of its PC client since 2006, CrossLoop is now seriously targeting the universe of Mac users and even pitching the product as a perfect vehicle for helping PC users switch to Mac.
While a great percentage of the peer-to-peer help sessions done with CrossLoop are free (downloading the software is free and there is no charge for users to share their computer screen with other CrossLoop members), the company’s platform supports a community of nearly 15,000 registered “helpers” whose freelance technical support can be had using the service for between $50 – $60 per hour.
CrossLoop competes in a field with larger (Citrix) and better known (Geek Squad) names, but is currently logging a quarter million screen-sharing minutes a day and looks to be in the game for the long haul. If you are looking to help a friend remotely with a software install or considering freelancing your tech support skills on the side, CrossLoop could be well worth a look.
Can you think of another company whose outdated and obsolete products get repurposed as art pieces even a fraction as often as do those from Apple?
How about a late 20th century PowerMac G4, which, as a 10 year-old desktop might possibly still be good enough to run your elementary school children’s games and learning software, but for all practical purposes is probably better suited as the inspiration for a wall clock to remind you, time after time, how gear Apple cool is.
At a mere $60, these may not last long and you should look into turning your own dusty G4 into a DIY project.
iPhone applications and the increasing popularity of smartphones, driven especially by growth in the developing world, pose the greatest threats to the long-term relevance of mobile search engines such as Google and Yahoo, according to a report Monday at TechRepublic.
Jason Hiner, Editor in Chief of the widely read technology web portal, argues that a personal experiment he’s undertaken using his Apple iPhone leads to the inescapable conclusion that “trends [in mobile computing] add up to bad news for Google in mobile search because it translates into fewer people needing its search engine,” offering several pertinent examples of his own behavior in addition to statistics about the growth in smartphone use over the past year that bolster his thesis.
There’s little argument that iPhone changed the mobile phone game entirely with its arrival on the scene two years ago, as all the major mobile handset makers have since come to market with their versions of touchscreen smartphones to compete with Apple.
In addition, Apple revolutionized the environment for mobile software development by creating the App Store, which both provided a brand-new arena for software developers to work in and suggested a model for distribution that had previously been limited to the distribution of entertainment titles through the iTunes music store. Apple’s competitors Blackberry, Google (Android) and Microsoft (Windows Mobile) launched App Store-like marketplaces in response.
But does all of this development, do all of these trends in mobile computing spell the eventual end for search as a relevant tool on mobile platforms?
Certainly Google’s voice search functionality adds to its relevance and appeal on a mobile device, but as Hiner argues convincingly, limitations of mobile device screen sizes and challenges related to typing on small handsets do make traditional desktop search functionality far less appealing in the mobile environment.
What do you think? Do you use Google less on your iPhone? Should Google be worried about the trends in mobile computing as a great threat to its core search product? Let us know in comments below.
The cover of the June 1, 2009 edition of the New Yorker magazine will feature art composed completely on an iPhone for the 1st time, according to multiple reports Monday.
Artist Jorge Columbo used the iPhone app Brushes to “fingerpaint” a street scene of people gathered by one of the city’s iconic hot dog & pretzel carts, elevating art on the iPhone to yet one more level of acceptance few could have imagined when Apple’s mobile device first came to market less than two years ago.
Hit the jump for a video made with the Brushes companion app Brushes Viewer showing just how Columbo used Brushes to create his work.
Solar power has been an obvious answer to many of the world’s daunting energy challenges for a long time, but the expense and relative bulk of solar panels have largely kept solar out of the running when it comes to solutions for mobile power.
Suntrica, a nordic eco-tech company, seems to have found a solution, though, with a line of charging solutions that are small, light, and flexible and could be just the thing energy conscious consumers are looking for to power their gadgets to go.
Suntrica’s SolarStrap™, SolarBadge™ and SolarBadgePRO™ use a flexible, high-efficiency solar panel connected to internal, lightweight batteries for instant or later use. Battery capacities range from 3.7Wh to 7.3Wh and the output of all the chargers is 5.5V DC at 800mA, which makes them perfect for all your portable electronic gear.
Current models are compatible with Apple iPod and Nano, though the company plans to release iPhone compatible chargers in the next couple of months.
With WWDC09 now just weeks away, rumors and predictions regarding what Apple may reveal at the highly-anticipated, sold-out developers conference in San Francisco are sure to spread like a California wildfire.
Anyone interested in being on the right side of such talk would do well to consider the logic and analysis out Thursday from John Gruber, the well-placed author of the blog Daring Fireball, who isn’t prone to talking about things he doesn’t know a little something about.
Citing “information from informed sources,” Gruber believes the processor in the next-generation iPhone is going to be the kind of upgrade to make people crowd around and go, “ooooh!” He looks for Apple’s processing secret-sauce to better the speed of current iPhones by 1.5 times, similar to the bump in performance experienced when Mac users got hands on machines with the first batch of PowerPCs, or PC users moved from 486 to Pentium machines.
Follow after the jump for more of what Gruber expects and how likely his expectations are to be met.
iPhone game developers must contend with an arguably small but extremely dedicated and fast-moving population of app pirates on the voyage to the Land of iPhone App riches, according to iCombat developer Miguel Sanchez-Grice, who suggests giving away free “lite” versions of an app could be the most effective strategy for the smaller developer.
Sanchez-Grice ‘s shooting tank game was immediately popular on the App Store thanks to coverage in gaming and gadgetry venues, which came about because of its resemblance to Combat for Atari and Wii Tanks games. The developer said he considered the nature of the pirate challenge prior to launching his 99¢ app. and while he chose a path very civilly inviting pirates to support his work by buying a legit copy of the app after reaching level 5 of the 20 level game, he understood he could only hope to “maybe convert a tiny fraction of those users into sales.”
His experience with the pirate community showed hacked versions of his game in use at an astounding ratio of more than 5:1 over paid apps in the first week of release, with cracked apps being posted to Twitter within 30 minutes of the official game going live on the App Store.
“The goal behind launching an app isn’t thwarting pirates, it is getting users and generating sales,” Sanchez-Grice wrote, suggesting game developers “leave the ‘making a point’ anti-piracy measures to the big guys.” With competition so fierce for getting noticed in the App store, he concluded “any attention is good attention.”
In the end, the first-time developer concluded the best strategy for dealing with pirates may be creating a free “Lite” version to give away alongside a more fully functional and fulfilling paid version.
“I think the best solution is to create a version akin to a lite version of the app for pirates. It is no good to shut off access to your app completely, but it also doesn’t get you very far to give away the core value you are offering to the paying user.”
Apple is indeed working on a version of OS X to power a tablet device more robust than an iPod Touch yet still more limited than the operating system that powers the company’s line of notebook and desktop computer systems, according to Gene Munster, the widely followed Piper Jaffray analyst.
“We expect the development of such an OS to be underway currently, but its complexity, along with our conversations with a key company in the mobile space, leads us to believe it will not launch until CY10,” Munster said (meaning 2010) in a note released to clients Thursday.
Many in the Apple universe have long predicted a tablet device to compete in the growing market for netbooks, smaller, less-powerful – and less expensive – mobile devices designed for surfing the Internet, watching movies, reading and composing email and other “computer-lite” activities.
Not a few people will be disappointed if Apple fails to launch such an offering in the current year, but Munster implies that such a market, while growing fast, remains relatively small and believes Apple has plenty of time to get its entry right before joining the fray.
