News - page 2277

The New York Times is working at Apple headqaurters to tailor a version of its iPhone app for the much-expected tablet, according to a Monday report. The new version would highlight the product’s larger screen and video capabilities.

“A team from the New York Times has been working in Apple’s Cupertino, Calif. headquarters in recent weeks, developing a large-screen version of the newspaper’s iPhone application that incorporates video for the yet-to-be-unveiled device, according to one person with knowledge of the matter,” The Los Angeles Times reports.

Analysts are predicting another record quarter from Apple, amid a week jammed with expectations about the Cupertino, Calif. company’s next move. In notes to investors, analysts believe Apple could announce record profit, followed by record sales, all buoyed by talk of a tablet device.

Analyst Shaw Wu of Kaufman Bros., expects Apple will report later today $12.4 billion in revenue for the three-month period ended in late December. Additionally, Wu believes the company has sold 9.5 million iPhones, 2.9 million Macs and 22 million iPods.

Lena Bryce spent four years trying to have a baby.

Then she and her husband downloaded the Free Menstrual Calendar app, timed their couplings strategically and voilà: now they now are the proud parents of a 6 pound-12 ounce bundle of joy named Lola.

“Doctors couldn’t find any reason why we hadn’t been able to get pregnant,” the 30-year-old woman from Glasgow told tabloid The Sun. “It began to weigh heavily on us. We were considering IVF and adoption when Dudley gave me the iPhone for my 30th. I typed in ‘get pregnant’ and downloaded five apps.”

Bryce found the Free Menstrual Calendar the easiest of the five apps to use — it tracks cycles and intercourse data —  and after two months she was in a family way.

The fascinating thing about these apps is that for every couple who wants to have a baby there are probably just as many relieved couples who use them to figuring out when avoid sex, too. We’re waiting for the “I avoided getting knocked up from a regrettable one-night stand thanks to an app” story to hit the tabs.

Via MacWorld

Taking a page from the old fairy tale, an analyst said Apple’s tablet could hit it out of the park if it picks a price that is just right – say $600. If Apple comes up with a price neither too high nor a niche product, Apple could sell 5 million tablets, bringing in $2.8 billion its first year.

“Pricing is key,” according to RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky. The analyst told investors the best case scenario is the tablet threads the middle, avoiding both the crunch of record demand (like the iPhone), and being labeled a niche product (like the MacBook Air).

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObN9wSLSI_k

Mac aficionado Matt, who made a retro-awesome video of the Apple website over the years, also concocted this video of an iPhone running on Mac System 1.0.

This old school MacPhone does everything you’d expect from an iPhone.

It simultaneously runs apps, widgets, has an accelerometer and makes calls — the phone dial pad graphic is an excellent touch —  though you won’t be able to play Desert Trek on an iPhone any time soon since he recreated that 1984 look with video effects.

The MacPhone mock-up took him about a day to make it using Keynote and iMovie plus some photoshopped screenshots from his 128kMac.  

Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer is a curious man ape: loud, purple-faced, drenched in sweat, and hirsute but for his head. But at least the man’s got a good sense of humor: upon being handed a MacBook by a student at Trevecca Nazarene University, Ballmer happily autographed it with the message “Need a new one?”

Presumably, Ballmer was making a tongue-in-cheek jab at his rival, but he possibly also knew exactly how much an ironically autographed MacBook signed by Microsoft’s CEO would get on eBay.

We criticize Microsoft and Ballmer a lot here at CoM, but this was a cute and classy gesture, especially considering it’s almost impossible to imagine Steve Jobs doing the same thing without hurling the Windows laptop to the ground and apoplectically smashing it to atoms with his feet.

According to mobile analytics company Flurry, the Apple Tablet isn’t just a very real product, but they’ve detected up to fifty of them floating through Cupertino, running a new version of the iPhone OS numbered 3.2.

The ever vibrating Tablet hype machine has finally attained the emotional timbre of giddy, bladder-evacuating hysteria.

How else to characterize this Techcrunch post, in which Michael Arrington, citing “senior Apple execs and friends,” says that Steve Jobs is saying that the forthcoming Apple Tablet “will be the most important thing I’ve ever done.”

Hearsay? Sure. But Techcrunch’s post has already garnered nearly 200 breathless comments from Giddy Apple fans expecting the Tablet, at the very least, to be a flawless amalgam of iPhone technology with Dr. Durand Durand’s Excessive Machine.

I think we’re officially at the point in the hype cycle that whatever Apple pulls out on stage on Wednesday is going to be a disappointment. The Apple Tablet’s OLED display could function as a Stargate-like dimensional portal to the lanugo-soft inner crevices of Elysium’s ethereal constabulary of virgin angels, and people would still be disappointed that the P.A. Semi chip inside was only sentient, and not — as anticipated — psychokinetic.

Apple’s shown some commitment to Haitian Earthquake Relief Efforts by making it easy for iTunes users to donate to the Red Cross, but according to one Genius Bar employee, this commitment doesn’t extend to letting its employees rush off to Santiagio to help facilitate relief efforts: he was fired for his troubles.

Although it’s amusing to think of a scenario in which the Internet threw a hype party for the a device that never came, it would be a sucker bet indeed to gamble that Apple won’tl announce a tablet-like device on January 27th. That said, the Tablet can’t be the only thing Apple has up its sleeves for Wednesday, and Hot Hardware is claiming that the media event will herald another much anticipated announcement from Apple: the end of AT&T iPhone exclusivity in the United States.

The rumor comes by way of an anonymous source within AT&T. They don’t have any details about what carriers we can expect to see the iPhone on if carrier exclusivity does indeed end, but according to Hot Hardware’s source, this might actually be a welcome development for AT&T, since having iPhone exclusivity has essentially crippled AT&T’s underdeveloped 3G network, with no end in sight. Although the iPhone has made AT&T incredibly profitable, it’s also generated such extreme bad press that their recent advertising efforts have been almost solely dedicated to fighting off network attacks.

Utter folly for a silicon company to rest on its laurels after the success of their last operating system, lest the competition pass you by. That goes doubly for Apple in the wake of Snow Leopard: although the latest version of OS X saw the highest upgrade rates yet for an Apple OS, 10.6 didn’t really add any new features into the mix, but was instead focused on tightening the engine bolts and preparing OS X for the future of multicore processors. That was an admirable, even revolutionary goal, but people are going to expect a lot more flash from 10.7.

It’s not surprising, then, that new reports are circulating, indicating that OS X 10.7 has been under development at Cupertino for the last couple of months. The first comes by way of the change database of the open source launchd framework, which specifically references the text astring “11A47” and seems to be the build number for the next version of OS X.

Here’s some sensible tablet speculation from UK app developer Dave Hornsby of Chilli X.

A levelheaded Englishman, Hornsby reckons the tablet will be a big iPod touch running iPhone OS 4.0, which is basically the iPhone OS with support for larger screen sizes.

Hornsby doesn’t have any special knowledge of what Steve Jobs will release next week. He’s just thinking aloud. Here’s his reasoning:

“It won’t be running Snow Leopard – there’s no point putting the same operating system that people use to do high end rendering and print ready artwork on a small, less powerful device. If it was to run Snow Leopard then Apple would have to figure out a way of stopping you installing certain types of application and that’s just messy.

It won’t run the current iPhone operating system either, although it will run most existing iPhone apps in smaller windows (almost like OS X dashboard widgets). My guess is that they’ll use the event to announce iPhone OS 4.0 with lots of cool new features including support for larger screen sizes. It makes perfect sense – everyone loves the iPhone OS. Users because it’s slick, fun and easy to use and Apple because of all the money they make from the App Store – why would they want to use Snow Leopard and not be able to control what software goes on there (and get a cut of it).”

Hornsby figured it would be fun to imagine what his iPhone apps would look like blown up to tablet size. See the fantastic mockups above.

“Imagine what we could do with all these extra pixels,” says Hornsby. “So we’ve used some of our existing apps as a starting point and mocked up these images showing the type of app we’d like to build. Imagine a combination of PhotoFrame, DeskClock and PlaySafe – what do you think?”

Apple doesn’t seem likely to introduce Flash to the iPhone or iPod Touch anytime soon, and you can take it pretty much as read that the Apple Tablet will have the same limitation. That’s a pain for those who want to play Flash games (and, in fact, its the possible dilution of App Store sales numbers that is making Apple so reticent to incorporate Flash), but it also means that sites that use Flash to serve up video are inaccessible.

Given how strongly focused on video media the Tablet looks like it’s going to be, the majority of online video sites may simply not be ready for Apple’s newest product. But a solution is in sight: the HTML5 standard will actually serve streaming video without installing Adobe Flash on compatible browsers, including good old Safari.

Even better? Both YouTube and Vimeo have rolled out opt in, beta versions of their HTML5 video players, and they work excellently on Safari in the iPhone or iPod Touch.

There’s small enough smut worth bothering about on the App Store, but if you’re the type who worries that exposure to, say, the hypnotic iBoobz app could your child into a sex-crazed Onanist for life, you probably have sympathy for the problem facing the Cedars School of Excellence in Greenock, Scotland.

The Cedars School wants to give iPod Touches to every one of their 100 students next fall. The only problem? Even though the iPhone OS has parental controls preventing kids from downloading apps rated 17+, you can still browse potentially illicit screenshots of these apps in iTunes.

In fact, the school is so alarmed by the fact that their students might be exposed to apps like Amateur Swimsuit , Movie of Sexy Japanese Girl and A Hidden Cam Thong that they are ready to disable Internet access to iTunes’ App Store schoolwide.

It all seems prudish, but silly or no, the school has an obligation to parents to filter their minor charges’ access for objectionable content, and it seems a strange oversight that Apple wouldn’t allow parental controls to be set across all sections of the iPhone app ecosystem.

Next week, crazed-eyed bloggers with their fingers a-blur will collectively tweet each and every minute of Steve Jobs’ keynote, regurgitating in small micro-blogging belches each and every detail of the unveiled Apple Tablet.

But imagine if Jobs himself could easily send out automated Twitter updates as he walked us through the Tablet’s specs, features, availability and price. Keynote Tweet is an open source Applescript that does just that, automatically tweeting the user-customizable summary of a slide as it is displayed.

It’s a fantastic idea. In fact, Apple should incorporate this sort of functionality into Keynote as standard: there’s more companies than just Apple who could raise awareness of their new products and services by automatically micro-blogging about them as they are unveiled.

[image, via TUAW]

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pje8AQg8y3M

The Toronto District School Board decided to phase out Apple computers — about 8% of the 63,000 machines used by some 250,000 kids — in mid-November.

It seems board members bought in to the idea that Macs are more expensive than PCs:

“The Apple computer in a large-scale network―their capabilities for automatically managing that many machines really pales to what’s available in the PC world,” Lee Stem, general manager of Information and Technology Services for the Board, told Torontoist.

“At the end of the day, it really comes down to getting as many devices in the hands of as many people as possible,” added Stem. “Every penny that we save…all that money is going to bring more technology into the hands of kids.”

Teachers in the district are using those last Apple computers to plead with the bureaucrats to keep Macs in the mix.  (No more Apple computers will be bought for general use, though they may still be purchased for “special use” classes, like art, video editing or music composition.)

If visions of 3G networks tied in a knot by a deluge of frenzied tablet owners keeps you awake at night, fear not – at least not immediately after Apple’s rumored device makes its first appearance. Why so much calm? Experts predict a high price coupled with low initial adoption could give networks breathing space to prepare for the eventual onslaught.

Although Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu said earlier this week he expects a 3G cellular connection not be included to prevent further clogging “already strained” high-speed networks, others don’t agree. “I can’t imagine it not having it,” Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster told All Thing Digital.

Although there is a frenzy of hype and curiosity surrounding Apple’s as-yet unseen tablet, it appears many consumers have a limit on how much they’ll pay to own the near-mythical device: $700. Seven in 10 people surveyed said they would not spend more than that amount for a tablet, according to a consumer research firm.

The amount seems to fall midway between $600 to $800, a figure that Piper Jaffray predicts could be the tablet’s selling point. Wall Street wisdom appears to peg the device at below $1,000. The eventual price tag could be lower if carriers agree to subsidize the cost. Reportedly, Apple is in discussions with AT&T and Verizon on a deal to offer the tablet.

Apple’s iPhone is gaining strides in both North America and Western Europe, quickly turning Nokia into a marginalized player leading only in Africa and Asia, a new survey of smartphone usage indicates.

The iPhone, with 40 percent of the market, represented 54 percent of smart phone usage in North America during the fourth quarter of 2009, according to AdMob, the mobile advertising firm Google acquired in last year. In Western Europe, the iPhone and the iPod touch comprised more than half of smart phone usage, the company said Thursday. The gains were at the expense of Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson, the researchers said.

John Gruber’s favorite iPhone notepad app, Simplenote, got an updated earlier this week. From now on, it’s free and supported by advertising.

Gaines Kergosien filmed this amusing little interlude at Trevecca Nazarene University the other day.

A student politely asked Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to sign his Mac – and Ballmer genially played along.

Next week, Sergey and Larry will be doing guest slots in a “Get a Mac” ad, with Sergey as Mac and Larry as PC.

(Via The Guardian.)

Behold! The OfficePOD!

The OfficePOD gives you just over 4 square metres of space to swivel your chair and tap on your Mac keyboard. It comes with LED lighting, secure locks, and an electrical connection to your home. All you need to do is move yourself and your Mac inside, and you’re ready to work!

But what else does it have going for it?

Our friend Seth Weintraub at 9to5Mac has written a great curtain raiser on the upcoming tablet. His lengthy posts covers everything you ever wanted to know about the tablet, including the likely surprises.

We especially like the way he starts by recalling the way Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone:

At the introduction of the iPhone, Steve Jobs touted that new device as a “Widescreen iPod”, “Revolutionary Mobile Phone” and “Breakthrough Internet Communications Device”.

I believe the same type of convergence thinking is going into the tablet. It can’t just be a “Kindle-killer” eBook reader. It can’t just be a “Media Pad”. It can’t be only a Nintendo DS or PSP competitor. It can’t just be a small NetBook-sized MacBook either. It has to be all of these things. At the same time. Say it together:

“The best eBook reader. The best Netbook. And the best portable media player and gaming device.”

Repeat.

Well worth reading the entire thing.

Good news, not-so-good news on the tablet, according to a “double-sourced” story from iLounge:

Good News: The tablet will have two dock connectors, one on the bottom edge, the other on the side for charging/docking in both portrait and landscape mode. “… accessory companies have struggled for the past three years to figure out ways to accommodate Cover Flow and the like in their speakers and docks,” says iLounge EIC Jeremy Horwitz. “Two Dock Connectors fixes this, and depending on how Apple handles multiple accessory connections, could have some other nice benefits, as well.”

Horwitz also notes the tablet with an aluminum backplate with a wide plastic strip to enable clear radio reception for the device’s wireless antennae. The size of the strip “suggests room for nice-sized antennas, and 802.11n compatibility,” says Horwitz.

Not So Good News: The tablet will be offered with optional cell service, iLounge reckons, with data plans in the $30-$60 per month range. Curiously, iLounge thinks AT&T might offer a combined iPhone and tablet plan to attract  users already paying monthly iPhone data fees.

We start off with a new batch of App Store freebies from Apple, including the game Brain Balance Pro. You can never have too much spare juice when your iPhone’s battery is on its last legs. For such an occasion is Cable Unlimited’s Battery Boost. Finally, Apple’s iLife ’09 productivity suite on sale.

For details on these and many other items, check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.