Wanna know the No. 1 sign that we’re less than 12 hours from major product announcements by Apple? People are throwing up completely weak rumors that wouldn’t even get mocked normally. Chief among these at this very moment is an alleged rundown of The Stevenote address, which includes some errors so obvious that it even harms the credibility of the rest of the list.
The Google translation from the original German at Apfelkueche is quite interesting, but take a look at the detail. The new iMacs are alleged to have LED displays at 20 and 24″. Really? I’d be pretty surprised. After all, Apple just rolled out MacBook Pros last week, and only managed to go LED for the 15.4″ models, not the 17″ SKUs. Could Apple pull together a machine built around a display a full 7″ bigger than a model they haven’t even shipped? I doubt it.
The wackiest rumor of all is, of course, the iPhone@Home, an alleged 10″ multitouch tablet mainly for movie-watching and Internet surfer. People have been throwing around rumors for years that Apple would release a tabletMac, and this is the same old rumor, repackaged as a pretend big brother for the iPhone. Who knows? Apple might be ready. But I can tell you this much: NO WAY ON EARTH is Apple releasing a machine called the iPhone@Home that isn’t actually a phone and can be used anywhere, not just at home. The company is way too smart to use such a stupid name. Keep your heads up, kids, the FUD is flying right now.
Via Digg.

Technorati Tags: keynote, rumor, steve jobs

I predict Steve Jobs will introduce a multitouch mousepad at WWDC tomorrow morning — and that finger input will be one of the “top secret” features of Leopard.

The multitouch pad will look like a standard mousepad, but it’ll be finger sensitive, like the touchpads on most notebooks. But instead of one finger, it’ll be sensitive to multi-finger gestures and commands, like the iPhone.

The pad will completely replace the mouse, allowing users to control the Mac with their fingers — moving the cursor, selecting files and double clicking with a quick double tap of the index finger.

The pad will also respond to a whole new vocabulary of gestures, like Mouse Gestures in Firefox, which execute common commands (backwards, forwards, reload) with a sweep of the mouse. Using your fingers, you’ll open files by twisting to the left, as though turning an imaginary dial. Twist your fingers to the right to close the file.

The pad will be USB powered, and will have “soft buttons” for common commands like cut and paste, and delete.

Jobs will unveil multitouch at WWDC to give Mac programmers time to incorporate gesture commands into their software before Leopard’s release in October.

Of course, this is pure speculation. I’ve no evidence whatsoever this is going to happen. I’ve no idea if it’s even realistic. Can developers incorporate an entirely new UI into their software in a few months? Will people even want it? Don’t forget, the QWERTY keyboard is still around. People don’t like whacky new interfaces.

Still, Jobs made a big deal of the multitouch finger interface of the iPhone, proclaiming it the third great “revolutionary” interface after the mouse and the scroll wheel. It seems natural we should be using our fingers to interact with computers.

Others are doing it. Microsoft has it’s Surface table, and I saw a new HP TouchSmart PC at the weekend, which is controlled by a large touch screen. A woman was playing Solitaire on the screen with her fingers, and it worked really well. I was quite impressed.

Apple is already making moves towards gesture interfaces. The touchpads on MacBooks support two finger scrolling. And there’s the iPhone.

Part of the iPhone’s multitouch interface is based on the work of two University of Delaware professors, John Elias and Wayne Westerman. Elias and Westerman owned a company called FingerWorks that sold a multitouch Touchstream keyboard and an iGesture Numeric Keypad, which worked like the multitouch mousepad described above.

Apple bought FingerWorks in early 2005, along with the professors’ patents, which look like an entire platform for finger-based interfaces.
For one thing, using your finger seems to help with RSI, according to FingerWorks’ testimonials:

“I’ve been a LP user for about 8 months. It’s been the best thing that’s ever happened to me in the world of computers. I’m a mechanical engineer and I use it for 2D and 3D CAD drafting, as well as ‘normal’ office type use. Also, I’m a Linux and Windows user, and I love how it works easily in both environments.

I have RSI in both my left and right forearms and wrists. Since using the Touchstream, I’ve reduced pain considerably, and I am able to do work with much less pain.”

Remember that totally awesome touchscreen demo at huge scale that had broad applications such as natural photo sorting and editing and fingerpaints? Well, in advance of the D Conference today, Microsoft decided it would be a good idea to launch a product line that is…exactly that demo. They call it Surface, and if it lives up to the demo videos on the official site, it will be spectacular in use.
T-Mobile, Harrah’s Entertainment and others plan to roll them out very quickly. You might be playing with one in a few days. So what’s the problem? Why isn’t Apple panicking? Because this is as far from a consumer application as you can get. A 30″ touchscreen display built on a coffee table in the living room is years away from being something people will buy.
Granted, Apple’s multi-touch product, the iPhone, is also very high-end, but a $600 phone is closer to reality than the Future Table 6000. Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure that Microsoft will make money from this selling to stores and casinos. There are many people looking for an interactive table for what I would assume is at least $10,000, if not more. But this is like a new pinball machine, not a technology that will make an impact at home for years to come.
It is an amazing demo, but it’s far from ready for prime-time. This is for an exciting display in a store. The fact that MS isn’t talking about rolling this technology to other platforms yet indicates that they’re not playing for those markets. And I will pit the iPhone or a touch-enabled iPod against a to-be-announced Surface Zune any day. If anything, launching this way is a sign that Microsoft knows it doesn’t have a product to compete with the iPhone ready to go. So they brought out the circus edition of the technology.
I’m sure the clowns and the elephants are psyched.
Microsoft Surface: multi-user touch table [MacNN]

Technorati Tags: iphone, microsoft, surface

I’m genuinely puzzled by AppleInsider’s melodramatic post pronouncing the death of the Mac mini. The article recounts Apple’s many slights of its lowest-end platform and then proceeds to show know evidence that the line will soon be killed off.

It has seen just four updates since inception, one of which was so insignificant in Apple’s own eyes that the company didn’t even bother to draft a press release. Even now, the current minis’ 1.66GHz and 1.83GHz Core Duo processors are a far cry from the silicon offered in the rest of Apple’s PC offerings.

Well, that’s actually to be expected. And I would say that hardware is significantly better than a lot of low-end PCs from other manufacturers. But that’s neither here nor there. Apple needs the Mac mini just to get people looking for a cheap Mac in the door. The AppleTV might be incredibly popular as a hackable Mac substitute, but that’s not what it is out of the box. Apple still needs a low-end entry, and the Mac mini costs very little to develop and revise. I don’t see Apple just walking away.

And this quote says it all:

Whether Apple will squeeze another revision from the mini, and how long it plans to allow existing models to linger, are both unclear.

Oh, so at some point in the future, possibly after Apple releases new Mac minis, Apple will stop selling the Mac mini. Yep, dead as a doornail. What?

AppleInsider | Closing the book on Apple’s Mac mini

Technorati Tags: mac mini, puppy, puppy

Remember that video years ago of the “transparent” Powerbook screen? Someone has compiled a gallery of photos demonstrating the same principle. There’s an odd beauty here. Check it out.
Fun 4 Amdavadi Gujarati

Via Digg.

Technorati Tags: powerbook

Analyst Gene Munster (not to be confused with Herman) today predicted that Apple will roll out new MacBook Pros and iMacs at the Worldwide Developer Conference in June. That’s not the world’s edgiest guess, given that it’s been almost nine months since either product line was updated. What is rather shocking is Munster’s baffling logic for the update:

Munster added that he “expects” new MacBook Pros (1, 2) to make a
showing at the developer conference and that it’s “also possible” that
Apple will introduce a redesigned iMac. He notes that on average, the
Cupertino-based company has updated its professional notebooks every
182 days, with the most recent generation having launched 209 days ago
(data presumably gathered via help from the MacRumors buyer’s guide).
Similarly, he said, iMacs have traditionally seen updates every 168
days but the current generation is now a whopping 257 days old.

Wow, and I thought it was just that Intel had new processors on the market and Apple’s just about last to roll out hardware sporting the chips. I am mildly interested in the rumor that the iMac would actually be redesigned and not just refreshed. Looking back at it, the timing might be right. The iMac G4 was on the market for about 30 months, and we’re now at 33 months for the iMac G5 enclosure. I think Apple is more than due for a real new design statement on its computers, so this will be one to watch.

Image via Wikipedia
Via Engadget

If you’ve ever wondered exactly what I mean when I talk about innovation, feel free to take a gander at my other two blogs, both of which pertain to the subject. This stuff has a huge influence on my thinking about Apple, so it might help you understand where I’m coming from a bit more.

The first blog, Better than New, is one I run with a friend. It’s basically like what we do here, but as it pertains to design, innovation, cultural needs, stuff like that. It’s newer but way more frequently updated.

The second, Pattern Linguist, is a misguided attempt to blog the complete history of the field of innovation as we know it today. It takes a long time to research, and I tend to be thoughtful instead of snarky here. Still, there’s ample fodder at both. Check ’em out!

About 95 percent of quality in a computer is subjective When a machine runs well, people aren’t likely to become concerned about the specification of its memory controllers or the speed of its hard disk. But when things are bad, it doesn’t matter if the machine is tricked out with the best components in the entire world — it’s a pile of junk.

This is all relevant to the current tempest in a teapot that goes by day as a lawsuit against Apple for “deceptively” using 6-bit LCD screens instead of 8-bit color on its MacBooks and MacBooks Pro. What this essentially means is that Apple advertises its computers as displaying millions of colors (presumably a full 16,777,216) but that they instead show only several hundred thousand (262,244). I am outraged! OUTRAGED!*

Never one to pull a punch, Steve Jobs recently told Time Magazine that Al Gore can win the 2008 presidential election if the pro-environmental Apple board member wants to:

“If he ran, there’s no question in my mind
that he would be elected,” said Jobs, referring to Gore. “But I think
there’s a question in his mind, perhaps because the pain of the last
election runs a lot deeper than he lets most of us see.”

I have to assume that last sentence is humor. No one has ever seen Al Gore express emotion about the election, ever. Any pain at all would be the first anyone has seen. What do you think — is the world ready for America’s first iPresident?

Via MacNN.

Confirming long-standing rumors from…earlier this week, Paul McCartney has confirmed to Billboard that his new solo album “Memory Almost Full,” will be distributed via the ITunes Store through Starbucks’s Hear Music label. Of much greater interest to everyone but five of Paul’s most loyal fans is that the Beatles might soon be ready to pull the trigger on a deal for digital distribution.

McCartney also has told Billboard that a deal to finally make the Beatles catalog available for sale online is “virtually settled.”

McCartney added, “I don’t want to pre-empt anything, but we’re well on the way to something happening there, which is very exciting.”

Keep your fingers crossed. If all goes well, there will finally be a way to find the music of the Beatles on the Internet! You’ll be able to visit “Penny Lane,” and “Strawberry Fie…” What’s that? Unauthorized copying? Never heard of it.

McCartney’s “Memory” goes digital – Yahoo! News
Via Digg.

Technorati Tags: beatles, paul mccartney