Citing tips passed on from one of its sources, Hardmac, the English-language version of France's MacBidouille, says that when Apple refreshes its iPod touch and iPod nano players later this September, both will feature a camera like the iPhone.
Despite some inaccuracies in Hardmac's earlier batch of rumors, adding a camera to the iPod touch may be a logical step for Apple, in that it would nearly double the market for camera-related applications on the App Store set to explode following the release of next-generation iPhones, which will include video recording capabilities as one of their biggest features.
The assertion that the more affordable and compact iPod nanos will also gain camera functionality is a bit more dubious but shouldn't be ruled out entirely. Although there's no developer platform surrounding the nano to help leverage such a feature, the players do include a built-in photo viewer.
Adding a camera to the nano may be a simple but material enough measure that could help drive upgrade cycles on the part of consumers, some of which may be turned on to the novelty of having rudimentary point-and-shoot capabilities built into a device they carry regularly, doing away for the need to tote a separate device more frequently.
Separately, the report cites the same sources as saying that this year's iPhones will feature "exactly the same shape and size than the current iPhone 3G, despite fakes and rumors circulating." This prediction is fairly consistent with one waged by a self-alleged insider in China, who outlined several specifications rumored for the new handsets in an overseas forum post first discovered by AppleInsider earlier this week.
| Related AppleInsider articles:* Rumor has AT lowering prices; growing geographically; or segmenting the market with different models." Uncertain whether these assertions where those of the analyst or derived from specific comments by Apple, AppleInsider contacted Reiner for clarification. Surprisingly, the remarks came from management. "[T]hey are not saying they will necessarily do all of these," the analyst said. "This is basically the menu of options." Still, the revelation is noteworthy given that it's the first time members of the company's leadership have expressed openly that they may be interested in catering to a broader demographic by fragmenting the iPhone line into a family of phones with materially distinct features and price points. These comments may support the discovery of references to multiple new iPhone models in the company's pre-release builds of iPhone Software 3.0. The remarks on lower pricing are similarly interesting, though they've been made previously during earlier sit-downs with other analysts. For his part, Reiner says he expects "some combination of all these" options to materialize over the next six months. In speaking to AppleInsider, he added that when it comes to segmentation of models, "Apple said that one thing would be a constant: iPhone will remain a software centric device." Oppenheimer's visit to Apple's campus was the second in as many weeks by an equity research firm that provides ongoing coverage of the company. Last week, Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu made the trip in conjunction with a pack of investors that tagged alone for the ride down from San Francisco.. In his write-up of the face-to-face encounter with Apple chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer and Tom Boger, a senior manager in the company's Mac division, Wu similarly noted that no new product information was shed. However, he said he walked away from the sit-down with higher conviction in his "Buy" thesis on the company and a belief that Apple shares can support a higher trading multiple going forward. "Apple seemed particularly excited about the China market but wouldn't comment on timing," he said, referring to the iPhone maker's prospects for capitalizing on the world's largest cell phone market, and suggesting a move into the region could come as early as this summer alongside new iPhones. Government statistics indicate that there are more than 600 million wireless subscribers spread across the country, with market research firm iSuppli estimating that another 90 million are likely to sign up with a wireless provider this year. So the stakes are high and share ripe for the picking. Both China Mobile, the world's largest wireless provider, and China Unicom, its smaller rival ranking second in the country, have both confirmed ongoing negotiations with Apple. However, recent reports indicate that momentum may have recently shifted in China Unicom's direction after talks between Apple and China Mobile, believed to be its first choice of partner with 415 million subscribers, reportedly broke down. At the root of the issue were reported demands on the part of China Mobile that it be able control the local version of the App Store. The carrier was also at one point said to be asking that Apple ship it iPhones with both Wi-Fi and 3G technology disabled for competitive reasons. And while there's no concrete information to suggest Apple would agree to make such concessions, references to "ChinaBrick" discovered in betas of iPhone Software 3.0 leave room for debate. Apple could also approach China with a multi-carrier strategy, which turned out to be a healthy move in the land of Oz given that it led to increase competition, and ultimately more options consumers, company officials told Wu during their meeting. "In regards to new carriers beyond AT&T in the U.S., management commented that it remains happy with AT&T but that competition has been good and cited Australia as an example where there are three carriers carrying iPhone," Wu wrote. |
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The most direct answer is "Elimination." Faced with deciding between Justin Long's Mac and several PCs, a shopper named Megan watches the PCs walk away as fewer and fewer of them meet her criteria of a big screen, a fast processor, and -- the dealbreaker -- a system that "just works" without crashes or viruses. In the end, Megan is left alone with the Mac as her only real choice.
"PC Choice Chat" echoes the theme with John Hodgman's PC character trying to advise radio show callers on what PC to choose only to find that he doesn't have an answer to requests for a PC free of viruses and with good customer support. Supporting this, the "Customer Care" spot has PC hiding the frustrations he's had getting help as he's bounced between hardware, software and sales staff while on the phone.
Each of the ads appears a gentle, if exaggerated, response but is a mirror of Apple's first official stance against Microsoft's campaign. The Mac maker argued that many Windows PCs aren't bargains at all as they won't do what their users want from them. Macs are better regardless of cost, Apple maintains.
Not to be outdone, Microsoft the very same week has issued a fifth ad of its own, and what's probably its most head-on challenge to Apple's pricing yet. Lauren (not the actress of the first ad) looks for a system with "speed, portability and battery life" under $1,700 and briefly looks at Macs, eventually settling on a Dell Studio XPS 13 on sale for $899. The system is arguably the 13-inch MacBook's closest competitor and has a similar screen, dimensions and even the same GeForce 9400M graphics that Apple briefly touted as an exclusive edge over the frequently lethargic Intel integrated video in many Windows portables.
In some regards, the Studio XPS 13 supports Microsoft's case. For its $1,099 official price, and especially the sale price shown in the ad, the system is unambiguously faster than Apple's MacBook at that level: it has a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo Apple reserves for its $1,499 model, 4GB of stock memory that isn't available on any MacBook below the 15-inch Pro, and a 320GB, 7,200RPM hard drive that Apple only supplies as a build-to-order option. It has only slightly less real-world battery life in reviews and weighs only a bit more.
Once again, however, the ad relies on conscious misdirection to make the PC seem more appealing. Although the ad shows Lauren trying a 13-inch MacBook, it quotes her and her mother Sue complaining about the $2,000 price of the 15-inch MacBook Pro -- not only falling out of the size category the two had been considering but falsely portraying Macs as twice as expensive when Apple already offers a $999, if somewhat slower, MacBook. Even Apple's fastest aluminum MacBook would have fallen within Lauren's budget and saved her $500 over the price quoted in the ad.
Apple isn't content to depend solely on marketing to correct this perceived distortion of its value. As learned last month, the it plans to produce less expensive Macs in the near future that the Cupertino firm hopes will cancel out Microsoft's few remaining arguments against switching to a Mac.
More specifically, Apple is said to have informed recipients of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard build 10A354 that it has simplified the application programming interfaces (APIs) for working with Grand Central, a new architecture that makes it easier for developers to take advantage of Macs with multiple processing cores.
This technology works by breaking complex tasks into smaller blocks, which are then routed -- or dispatched -- efficiently to a Mac's available cores for faster processing. This allows third-party developers to leverage more of a Mac's hardware resources without having to be well-versed in multithreaded programming.
People familiar with the latest Snow Leopard build say it was these Grand Central "dispatch" methods that were tweaked, or simplified, alongside build 10A354. Going forward, Apple reportedly told developers that "no further API changes are planned for Snow Leopard."
This means developers can now press forward with Snow Leopard versions of their applications with confidence that further Apple-instated changes won't force them to make significant alterations to their code between now and the time the software hits the market. It can also be seen as a sign that the the operating system upgrade is one step closer to reaching a final developmental stretch that will focus on stability and optimization.
With the private release of build 10A354, Apple also reportedly informed developers about a couple of other recent changes to the software, namely the addition of Chinese handwriting recognition support for Macs that include a multi-touch trackpad. Similar software was added to iPhone Software 2.0 a year ago, allowing users to draw Chinese symbols on their handset's touchscreen and then select matching symbols suggested by the iPhone Software.
In support of the handwriting recognition software in Snow Leopard, Apple also reportedly tweaked the system's Language & Text Preference Pane to include support for bidirectional text.
Also drawn to developers attention in build 10A354 is a new codec due to debut with Snow Leopard called MPEG-4 High Efficiency AAC (or HE-AAC). Apple said the codec is an extension of the Low Complexity AAC (or AAC-LC) codec that's optimized for low-bitrate steaming of audio and podcasts.
Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is expected to hit the market sometime this summer with a near finalized version likely to make a public appearance at Apple's annual developers conference in about a month.
Meanwhile, Apple this weekend also equipped developers with Mac OS X 10.5.7 build 9J61, which corrected one more minor issue with the impending Leopard update.
The deal for $2.35 billion in cash will see the exclusive US iPhone carrier take control of 18 of the 24 markets that Verizon is divesting as part of its recent acquisition of Alltel Wireless, which helped the telecommunications firm snatch the title of the largest US wireless carrier away from AT&T.
More specifically, Friday's agreement will see AT&T acquire wireless properties, including licenses, network assets and 1.5 million current subscribers in 79 service areas, primarily in rural areas of Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming.
"Wireless continues to be AT&T�s greatest growth driver, and this transaction will complement our existing network coverage, particularly in rural areas," said AT&T chief executive Ralph de la Vega. "The acquisition will add network assets, distribution channels and 850 MHz spectrum in a significant portion of the U.S., enabling even better coverage for AT&T�s subscribers in those areas."
Converting those markets from Verizon�s CDMA network to GSM technology and transitioning operations to AT&T is expected to take about 12 months and cost about $400 million. Once the transition is complete, subscribers in those areas will be able to take advantage of AT&T's 3G network and supporting devices like the iPhone and BlackBerry Bold.
AT&T told investors the deal is expected to deliver substantial long-term stockholder value. It's the latest move on the part of the Dallas-based company to build out its mobile data services, which represent its key area of growth. In 2008, AT&T pumped more than $15 billion into building out its wireless network.
This optimized Kindle store offers both iPhone and iPod touch users easier access to browse and download from Amazon's library of more than 280,000 Kindle formatted books.
"Now when users of the Kindle for iPhone app click on 'Get Books,' the new Kindle Store tailored for the size and shape of the iPhone and iPod touch screens automatically opens in Safari," the retailer said.
Released March 4th, the Kindle for iPhone application quickly became the most popular books application on Apple's App Store. It ties into Amazon's 3G Whispersync technology, which saves and synchronizes Kindle customers� bookmarks across Kindles, iPhones and iPod touches, so users never lose their place. For instance, users can read a few pages on their iPhone or iPod touch and pick up right where they left off on their Kindle device, or vise versa.
"The response to Kindle for iPhone has been tremendous," said Ian Freed, vice president, Amazon Kindle. "The most common feedback we heard from customers was that they wanted a better experience for purchasing new Kindle books from their iPhones."
The iPhone optimized Kindle store is the latest in a string of Kindle-related announcements from Amazon geared towards building electronic books into a more material piece of its business. Last week, the retailer introduced the latest member of its Kindle family of devices: a big-screen DX model suited for more natural display of textbooks, magazines and newspapers.
Amazon in recent weeks also scooped up the developer of Stanza, a popular iPhone application that provides users with 24-hour access to a catalog of over 100,000 eBooks in the open ePub format, an eBook container not supported by its Kindle devices.
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The commenter, who goes by the name patapon200, describes the next iPhone as a "repeat" in physical design with many of the changes relating to speed and other less overt upgrades.
Supposedly, the largest changes are increases in clock speed and memory: the roughly 400MHz Samsung ARM processor used in the present-day iPhone 3G will be upgraded to a 600MHz part, he says, while system RAM will be doubled to 256MB. After testing, the tipster maintains that the speed of using the phone has "really improved" versus current models.
The commenter, who posted to one of China's largest iPhone fan sites, also claims that the handset will ship in 16GB and 32GB configurations while echoing earlier rumors of a 3.2-megapixel camera. He adds, however, that the new camera will autofocus. Other claims include an electronic compass to get the phone's heading independent of GPS, per recent rumors.
In his series of posts, the commenter provides an alleged internal model number of the new iPhone, N88, while noting the M68 and N82 model numbers used for earlier iPhones. He also posted a screen capture supposedly taken on the device, showing the 32GB of storage (29.3GB after formatting), iPhone 3.0 firmware, and Apple model number, MB717LL, that doesn't yet exist on the public record. The latest iPhone 3G revisions range only up to MB705LL. No evidence is given of the external model number that drew attention in February.
The commenter expresses disappointment when claiming the screen will still be the familiar 3.5-inch, 480x320 model used in the past. He doesn't provide a timeframe for this alleged new iPhone but claims the hardware was thought to be in a Process Validation Test, or PVT, as of late April; it's unclear what this means, but it may refer to testing assembly shortly before production.
Some aspects of the rumor are dubious enough to call into question at least some of the story. It suggests that the next iPhone will have FM, for example -- a technology Apple has left out of all iPhones and iPods to date. The screen capture also makes reference to connecting to an AT&T network as the carrier, though it's not the same revision number seen by most US iPhones, which usually connect to ATT3.1 and not the ATT3.5 mentioned in the screenshot.
The poster makes brief mention of Apple's long-in-development tablet and even gives it an internal model number, K48, but provides few other details besides mentioning a 9.7-inch touchscreen that has surfaced in previous rumors.
AppleInsider isn't sure what to make of these two week-old claims but republishes them for interest's sake.