Apple has a ridiculously good run over the past ten years. But in true Apple fashion, I’m not here to rest on the laurels of the past but to look into the future. So sit back, relax, and take a daring look all the way into the year 2010. Here are the five things that Apple must do to thrive in 2010.
Apple has updated its patent for Wii-like “Wand” remote control, providing a magnetic compass and accelerometer for better control and precision. Apple TV is one potential beneficiary, reports suggested Thursday.
The Cupertino, Calif. company initially filed the “Wand” application in mod-2009, including an accelerometer like the Wii. The update, filed on the last day of 2009, describes the wand’s operations:
We’ve all learned to live with the iPhone’s woeful reception, but with more and more phones following Apple’s lead and circumcising any and all protuberant nubs from their streamlined smartphones, it’s easy to forget that the iPhone’s reception issues could be fixed with a protruding antenna.
Apple’s own thinking seems to be leaning towards the re-integration of an external antenna into future versions of the iPhone or iPod Touch. According to a patent recently granted to Apple by the US Patent and Trademark Office, Apple may be considering adding a push button style antenna to future devices, in order to ensure “high-quality wireless transmission and reception.”
Don’t worry: we’re not looking at a slide-out set of bunny ears. The antenna design is elegant: the iPhone would retain its streamlined design until the antenna was called for, at which point it would pop out a tiny little antenna nub. If your reception is good enough, you just push it back in.
However, as Patently Apple notes, the most interesting patent detail is that it may utilize a coaxial cable. That implies the ability to pipe in cable television.
Personally, I doubt we’ll see this patent in action any time soon: elegant or not, a pop-out antenna strikes me as too much of a kludge for Apple to take seriously. Still, the prospect of a cable ready iPhone or Apple Tablet is too tantalizing not to report.
Many — if not most — people await the future, some with great anticipation, others with more anxiety. But designers are a breed apart. Designers create the future today.
Yanko Design’s brilliant 2009 design retrospective showcases the web magazine’s passion for modern industrial design and original ideas. The feature highlights a number of talented, undiscovered designers, a few of whom chose Apple products and other computer technology ideas as jumping off points for products we’d not be surprised to see in production one day soon.
Check out our gallery selection of Yanko Design’s best thought provoking tech and transportation ideas for 2009, along with a couple creepy borg-like innovations we’d just as soon see remain on the drawing board.
“Apple has something big up its sleeve for next month,” says the venerable Financial Times of London.
The company has rented a stage at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco for several days in late January, according to people familiar with the plans.
Apple is expected to use the venue to make a major product announcement on Tuesday, January 26th.
The prospect of a three-day event is tantalizing, but why would Apple need three days to announce a new product — like the long-rumored the tablet, say? My guess is the company needs a day to set up and another to break down. The 26th is a Tuesday: Apple’s favorite day for new product announcements.
Note, neither Apple nor YBCA would comment to the FT, but the center’s online calendar says the venue is free on January 25, 26 and 27. IE. there are no artsy events scheduled for those three days on a calendar that is otherwise full.
Having pulled out of Macworld, these days the YBCA stage is Apple’s favorite venue for product announcements. With CES in January, and the Apple-less Macworld in February, a January 26 event would be sandwiched right between.
The rumor comes on the back of reports that Apple is wooing TV studios for a new online TV service, which conjures the Apple TV to mind, but perhaps a new TV service would be tablet-centric? In addition, the company is reportedly talking to magazine publishers about repurposing content for the upcoming tablet. Earlier this year, iLounge predicted the tablet would be announced in mid-January with a May or June sell date to build iPhone-like hype.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YkKmuQRayQ
Apple’s latest iPhone ad revisits that old holiday chestnut “The 12 Days of Christmas” with a lucky smartphone owner breezing through the rigors of the season with a few effortless finger scrolls.
The coolest one, the last, turns on your Christmas tree. Though Apple has added a page on iTunes of apps featured in ads, this one’s not on it. We have it on good authority that it’s Schlage LiNK, a free app (requires extra hardware, though) designed as a remote control for home door locks.
Here’s the complete holiday app line up from the ad:
– 12 cookies cooking: The Betty Crocker Mobile Cookbook [gratis]
– 11 cards a’ sending: Postman [ $2.99]
– 10 gifts for giving: My Christmas Gift List [ $0.99]
– 9 songs for singing: TabToolkit [$9.99]
– 8 bells for ringing: Holiday Bells [ $0.99]
– 7 slopes a’ skiing: Snow Reports $1.99]
– 6 games for playing: Christmas Fever [ $0.99]
– 5 gold rings: Anna Sheffield Jewelry [ gratis]
– 4 hot lattes: myStarbucks [gratis]
– 3 flights home: Flight Search [gratis]
– 2 feet of snow: Weather Pro [$3.99]
– Tree-lighting app : Schlage LiNK [gratis]
Apple UK Friday announced ‘iTunes 12 Days of Christmas,’ a promo offering Europeans daily free music, videos, apps and TV episodes between Dec. 26 and Jan. 6, 2010.
A free download will be available for 24 hours at the itunes12daysofchristmas.co.uk site.
The promotion also includes a contest with a chance to win an engraved yellow iPod nano.
Last year’s promotion features free music from Katy Perry, Lily Allen and The Ting Ting Tings. The pro is sponsored by O2, Ticketmaster, Capital FM, Heart FM and The Times, reports said.
It’s Cyber Monday, so there’s a lot of good deals out there today. But these three deals in particular caught our eye:
Are you looking for an Apple bargain, slashed prices on iPhone or iPod gear, or a refurbished 16GB or 32GB iPhones from AT&T? Well, catch your breath from all of the Black Friday scrambling and check out our latest daily deals. Also on tap: new App Store freebies to fill up that iPhone or iPod touch, a new deal on 160GB AppleTVs and a travel charger for your device.
As always, get details on these and many more Apple-related bargains at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.
Apple Australia has gone live with the company’s Black Friday savings — and the same deals are likely to be offered in the U.S.
