I would say 90% chance of a iTablet Mac being released if these photos have anything to say. Zoom in on the Macbook Air on the wall and what’s in front of it? That’s not a iPhone folks it’s too big. At first I said “Cool a black Apple TV”. Then I zoomed in on it and noticed the dimensions were completely off even for a blown up iPhone.
I would hope there’d be some sort of way for the iPhone to work inside the iTablet, but if they’re separate that’s cool too.
I’ve just had an epiphany! What better use for the ATOM processor than a larger version of the iPhone that the iPhone docks into. The new iPhone could boast a 32-64G SSD itself and Apple sells a tablet version iTablet that like the mockups for a Tablet Mac docking into an iMac, it’s a iPhone docking into a larger Tablet mac.
If there was a succubus for Mac breathing nerds this would be it.
Imagine it would provide more robust processor power, battery life, expansion options, graphics for when you need a little more computing and then the phone goes back on the hip as your portable mule for information and other digital goodness.
Thought of it first Steve!
While I do not seriously think we’ll see this next week. I can imagine no other thing that would ever top that. It would also give the global smack down to any “iPhone Killers” out there. They’d never have the know how and foresight to come up with something like this.
With WWDC only days away the rumor mill is in full swing. One of the more interesting tidbits out there is the CEO of Telestra the dominant phone company in Australia speaking out on their advanced 3g networks and how the iPhone will be able to take advantage of newer speeds.
I work in the industry and this is theoretically possible. However, the only way to tell is to wait until one of the tech sites to crack open a new phone and identify the chips. Several other carriers have upgraded devices through a software patch to take advantage of new speeds when the hardware on the towers is ready. EVDO is one example where radios from basic EVDO can be upgraded to Rev A through a software upgrade. Nothing is changing on the RF side, but the software is part of the speed equation.
So like any rumor take it with your requisite grain of NaCl, but know that it is possible to put this feature into the iPhones through a compatible chip and a software upgrade. The sick thing is that the iPhone is a well entrenched GSM device and CDMA users will most not likely see the phone until the LTE version of the iPhone is out which will be at least another 12-18 months away.
Talking to several people in the industry I have uncovered a pattern of thought. One is that iPhone 2.0 does not qualify under AT&T’s original iPhone contract and the rumors of the 200 dollar subsidy hint strongly that AT&T is doing this to still attract sales when the iPhone is opened to other carriers. AT&T will still be the primary carrier of the iPhone, but other carriers such as T-Mobile and if some of the stories are to be believed that Apple will use one board rather than two which will be able to switch between the two dominant technologies in use today. This shows the potential that Verizon and other CDMA carriers may be able to obtain iPhone users on their own networks.
The other big thing is that Apple would save money by building a phone that would technically be a “Global Phone” which blackberry and a handful of other phone makers have built in the past. This links up with the challenge that Apple is facing to get the phone more widely accepted in the market and will appeal to users who want freedom of carrier and globe trotting business users as well. The price difference will far outweigh the price of making two different phones to sell in different markets.
If the plan goes the way I believe it will be AT&T and other contractual launch partners will be allowed to subsidize the iPhone while additional carriers will not sell the phone. Customers will have to purchase the phone directly from Apple. This serves two beneficial purposes with Apple and AT&T. The first being that Apple would still collect revenues from original iPhone contracts until they expire, and that they keep their presence in approximately 50% of the cell phone stores. This makes up for the lack of Apple stores in rural areas. Customers will be able to buy the phone from AT&T or an Apple retailer and if you activate the phone you get a discount and if not you pay full price. For AT&T many users who are trying to save money will go for the deal with AT&T. Those willing to shell out the cash can take the phone and pick a carrier of their choice.
While iPhone users will likely diversify between carriers I feel that this will be a net win for AT&T and other long term original carriers since they have had the iPhone for long enough that a majority of a given population in those areas will be thought as the iPhone carrier. Verizon for example would have a hard time advertising themselves as an “iPhone Carrier” unless things are radically different from the scenarios discussed above.
And considering the meager attempts to bring out iPhone comparable phones over the last year I think Apple is in for a bumper sale of new phones if they are able to keep up with demand.
Decided to take a tour of what’s available to rent on iTunes today and I was shocked at how the studios are completely missing the point.
Some movies you can only rent. Can you guess which ones? Yep, new releases. Superbad(Rent), Transformers(Rent), and many other new releases are rent only. Each of those movies the #1 comment is why can I not buy. The studios just missed their opportunity to make 10-15 dollars on the sale of a movie for a portable device. What happens now is that the customer posts bad feedback and then hits Wal-mart for the discounted movie and brings it home and takes it home to encode for his personal media player. Maybe he does not buy it from Wal-mart and just borrows it from a friend. The studios completely do not get their own market. People want to buy and not worry about limits. Nobody is going to rent a low res version of a movie and have it sitting on their iPod Touches waiting to be viewed one time. They want to own it and play it whenever.
I have 400 dvd’s of various movies. I’d love nothing more than to reclaim the shelves and be able to view whatever I owned where and when I want. Ripping movies still takes forever, and for some strange reason nobody has ever bothered to make network ready DVD changers that can scan the library, download the artwork and present a menu of movies in the changer.
Once again old world content producers fail to engage their consumers and provide easy and universal access to their content. Until they get a clue people will invest their money elsewhere.
Hopefully someone will have an intervention with Steve about his latest advance in the Apple laptop line. The MacBookAir is a great device and I’m sure many will benefit from such a small computer on the road. I would if my company allowed us to use Apple laptops. With the smallest of everything and a few corners cut, it’s plainly obvious that to buy the device is to also throw away some money.
First off is that the memory is soldered to the motherboard. That’s fine for CE devices, but were talking about a $1,700.00 laptop computer. I have not touched anything like that since I bought a 486SX25 back in the 90′s only to find out my processor was in the same situation. For the price Apple could have found a way to handle this. Thin is good, but when you sacrifice the ability to upgrade and lose expansion slots you lose functionality.
The Air comes with 802.11n. That’s great in a world where 98% of access points are still 802.11b/g setups. There are not many places you would find these newer speeds except maybe updated starbucks to increase download speeds of iPhone/Touch owners. The Air lacks the ability to add a cellular modem card. This probably damned many companies to outright shun the device since their “Road Warriors” need a sword. Wifi is not going to cut it. And considering the price those who would plop down the cash would just as well get something that helps them stay connected.
Also for 1700 dollars not being able to replace the battery sounds asinine. Batteries in general for any laptop have been un-reliable to say the least. Apple has not been immune to this problem and while I’m sure the battery can be replaced (Hoping it’s not hard wired into the motherboard) users are not going to like turning over their laptops to anyone for the few days I’m guessing it will take to replace the battery.
So in the end we end up with a really thin CE status symbol. It’s not the “Road Warriors” laptop by any means.
Many Mac Pro users are now bombarding Apple with fustrated emails after learning that the graphics cards shipping as upgrade options on the newer Mac Pros are not able to be used on older Mac Pros despite no actual incompatibility. Many users see it as a slap in the face when they were sold on the idea of being able to upgrade the graphics cards only to find out Apple purposely made the cards incompatible with older models. These cards however work if you dual boot into XP or Vista just fine. Does Apple care that users are now being driven back to Windows after they made the switch?
If you happen to live under a rock or in a old nuclear silo you may have not heard that Apple released OS X Leopard. It’s a great upgrade and for those who use it it’s a wonderful step forward and I look forward to promised features someday being enabled.
Prior to Leopard’s release there was much talk about Time Machine as a great backup solution and for some it was a great excuse to go out and get a new Apple Airport Express and a USB hard drive so they could have central backups of their systems. Yet it seems despite Apple’s claimed support for such a way for backups many have found out that only directly connected devices are working.
Those who had access to developer previews prior to the release also report that this feature was working beforehand. Why Apple removed support for the feature at this time is unknown. However, we have seen the usual scrub of Apple’s web pages to remove any reference to this feature working. Unfortunately for Apple the internet never forgets and many of us would like to know why it was removed. Perhaps Apple in the next week will enlighten us why they told people they would have a product supported and now do not support the product.
For those who did purchase this solution a workaround exists.
Today we’ll get those fresh copies of Leopard on our doorsteps, and some will wait in line at their local Apple store and pray they do not run out!
You wait, I’ll be posting lick pics!
Until then here’s a good little trick to watch movies at home without having to load them up on your iPhone or iPod Touch.
Both of these devices can play back quicktime movies. So did a NFS mount of my itunes directory where I keep the movies and linked that directory under my web server. Loaded it up and saw a list of movies. It plays them!
So say your itunes are at
/mnt/movies/iTunes Music/Movies
and your webserver root is at
/var/www
then
ln -s /mnt/movies/iTunes Music/Movies /var/www/movies
Then point your browser over to your webserver http://192.168.100.50/movies/
You’ll get a text list of your movies. Click on them and they play back. Working great on 54g so far.
Update: Some movies do not play back. It seems some older encodes that work happily on my AppleTV are not liked by the player on my iPod Touch. I’ve since discovered that it seems to be movies I experimented with rather than went with default handbrake settings.
