So, two and a half years ago Microsoft released what was basically their version of the 2005 video iPod. Now, some two years after Apple released the iPod touch, WMExperts (via Engagdet and CNET) tells us Microsoft has confirmed… the Zune HD, a wide screen, capacitive, solid-state media player.
At 272×480, it’s not quite as wide as the iPhone’s 320×480, much less the high-end Windows Mobile handsets like the Touch HD’s 480×800. But like we said, it is capacitive (which is strangely still unsupported by WinPho) and what pixels it has are OLED, which will hopefully motivate Apple to give the next generation iPhone the same treatment.
Other features include HD radio support and something nobody can believe they didn’t do from the outset: integrate it with the Xbox product line.
We’re still left wondering, however, is this really a business Microsoft needs to be in? Wouldn’t Zune resources have been better used to get Windows Mobile 7 out last year instead of next when it could be, you know, competitive?!
iLounge reports that they’ve been told the next generation iPhone will come in two storage capacities (we’d guess 16GB and 32GB) and three radio flavors, 3G, 3.5/3.75G, and China CDMA. Consumers won’t be able to choose which radio model they buy, each carrier in each local region will simply offer the one that best suits their network. Some choice in color — black or white? — should remain.
The design is said to be roughly the same with the exception of a new, more scratch-resistant matte finish for the back plate, which has been rumored for a while now.
And no, unfortunately, Chinese CDMA won’t run on Sprint or Verizon in the US. Different frequencies.
Yeah, provocative headline, but we’ve lamented in that past that the Palm Pre was too iPhone-like for us — based on the involvement of transplanted Apple brain trust — and how we’d have loved to have seen a truly next generation Palm device. Could it be, however, that the former have saved us from being tragically wrong about the latter?
We’d heard before how the previous Apple iPod-lead Jon Rubinstein argued and lost with Steve Jobs over a hardware keyboard on the iPhone (much as Tony Fadell, “father of the iPod” and another former Apple exec, argued and lost over using Linux rather than OS X on the iPhone). Flash forward and Rubenstein is recruited by new Palm backers, Elevation Partners, to help oversee the development of Palm’s next generation handset — and potential company-saving gadget — the Palm Pre. (And Rubinstein brought over iPhone engineers and Apple PR people to help).
So what’s new? According to Fortune (via PreCentral.net) it turns out Rubenstein first had to save the Palm Pre from Palm:
Rubinstein started, in his words, “hanging out” with Palm people in late June. He didn’t like what he saw. The hardware for the Pre needed to be scrapped and rebooted. For one thing, prototypes were using old “resistive” touchscreen technology that responds to a user physically pushing the screen, not the newer “capacitive” technology manipulated by the electricity in the user’s body. Rubinstein tossed out the old phone’s hardware and built a new one in about 15 months. “We were basically running a marathon and doing a heart transplant in the middle of it,” says Rubinstein.
We’ve joked before that the device we all know and love is Steve Jobs’ vision of the iPhone, and that the Palm Pre is Jon Rubinstein’s vision of the iPhone, and guess what? We might have been exactly right.
(And does that mean if Rubinstein and Fadell had won their arguments, maybe the iPhone would have been the Palm Pre fully two years ago? We’re ecstatic they didn’t and it wasn’t because now we get to have both visionary products to choose from — and to compete for our choice.)
Only question is, where can we see that Palm-like Pre prototype?
I was hoping Apple’s third generation iPhone — widely expected to be announced at WWDC 2009 — would have a huge screen and lend itself perfectly to the name iPhone HD. After all, Apple has been promoting HD a lot lately with their iTunes offerings.
Absent that huge screen, however, the last Phone different podcast had Dieter and I wondering what else Apple could have up their black, turtle-necked sleeves when it comes to branding?
- iPhone 4G would require 4G LTE wireless networks, which haven’t even begun to be rolled out yet, so last year’s scheme is out.
- iPhone 3.5/3.9G is likewise a non-starter. HSPA+ radio or not, that’s just too inelegant for Apple,
- iPhone 32GB is what the telco leaks have been splashing all over the internet. This too seems unlikely, as it paints Apple into every bit as much of a techno-corner as the radio-based names.
- iPhone Pro fits with Mac Pro and MacBook Pro (and even Final Cut Pro), but Dieter points out that beyond my little Apple-verse, that terms is already used and abused by Palm Treo Pro, HTC Touch Pro, and a variety of other stylus-wielding Windows Phones. That alone might sour Apple.
- iPhone, sans descriptor is always a possibility. After all, it’s not iMac X, Y, or Z, it’s just iMac. Whether internal documents say iPhone 2,1 or iPhone 3rd Generation, Apple could be ballsy enough at this point to just stick with the unadorned moniker.
What do you think, one of the above or something else entirely? Come WWDC, when Schiller or Joz or whomever whips out that new iPhone, what are they going to call it?
Zen Jar looks like an interesting experiment in social networking. You write something, send it off into the iPhone inter-ether, and see what karma — good or bad — other users ascribe to it. Personally, I prefer the direct bludgeoning I take for ill-conceived comments on Twitter, but for those tiring of the same-old micro-blogging, status-updating experience, Zen Jar is certainly an alternative. It comes in Lite (Free – iTunes link) and Paid ($0.99 – iTunes link), and you can check out Bela’s review in our iPhone Apps & Games forum for more.
If you give it a whirl, let us know how your karma turns out — mellow harshened, or child-like sense of wonder restored?
Namaste!
The New Yorker (via Engadget Mobile) has an amazing cover for their June issue that was painted… on an iPhone!
Jorge Colombo used the app, Brushes ($4.99 – iTunes link) to create the work. He told the New York Times that the iPhone:
“made it easy for me to sketch without having to carry all my pens and brushes and notepads with me, and I like the fact that I am drawing with a set of tools that anybody can have easily in their pocket,” he said. There is one other advantage of the phone, too: no one notices he is drawing. Mr. Colombo said he stood on 42nd Street for about an hour with no interruptions.
The editors liked the more organic, dream-like quality of the iPhone image, not as sharp or technical as typical electronic renderings.
We like it too. Video after the break!
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(100 Sounds Forum Review by cjvitek For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum Review Index!)
This is going to be a fairly short review. 100 sounds is just what you would think it is: hundreds of various sounds effects to play on your iPhone (more than 100!). They are organized alphabetically by name, and to hear a sound, you simply tap the name of the sound.
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Mac and iPhone icon designer Sebastiaan de With of Cocoia takes app designers to task for not making their icons better match the quality and look of Apple’s built-in apps. Says de With:
A lot of professional designers get it wrong as well, and I can understand; it’s truly very hard to make an icon that looks as great as one from Apple’s bunch and blends in with the rest. I don’t mean to be an icon snob; I like diversity in my icons, and especially creative freedom. It’s more than just annoying, however, when creative and diverse motifs look extremely alien to their environment.
Part of the blame is placed on Apple who’s iPhone HIG (human interface guidelines) provide a mere 378 words on icon design, with examples that are sub-par. But de With isn’t just complaining — he’s doing something about it. Enter: Composition:
Sean Patrick O‘Brien and I are working on the very first Mac application that will be released under the Cocoia ‘brand’: Composition. Composition allows you to take any image and get a pixel-perfect preview of iPhone’s default effects at regular home screen size and Settings/Spotlight small icon size. It also lets you look at your icon in a virtual home screen to achieve a native look (and yes, both iPhone and iPod touch home screens will be represented), and export it for further usage on websites and other materials.
Best of all, it’s going to be free.
Check out the pre-announcement for details.
With WWDC 2009 only two weeks away, the many rumors and leaks and informed guesses seem to have coalesced into a somewhat unified view of what we probably will — and probably won’t — see if/when the next generation iPhone 2,1 is announced. Given the full version upgrade number (the original iPhone 2G is 1,1, the iPhone 3G is 1,2) we’d expect there to be more in the way of hardware changes than we saw last year with the addition of “just” 3G and GPS. Will those expectations be met? We have a pretty good handle on the iPhone 3.0 software, but what about the hardware?
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A user on MacTalk Forums (via MacRumors) may have just stumbled upon Apple’s icon for the next generation iPhone, buried inside the iPhone 3.0 SDK. And the big surprise?
It looks pretty much the same as the icon for the iPhone 3G.
iPhone 2,1 is Apple’s internal number for the next gen iPhone, expected to be announced at WWDC. The original iPhone 2G is iPhone 1,1, while the iPhone 3G is iPhone 1,2. The numbers show that even Apple doesn’t consider there to be much more than a point difference between the first two iPhone generations (as opposed to the iPod touch, which went to 2,1 last fall).
The use of iPhone 2,1 led many to believe the next gen iPhone would have more differences than the addition of 3G and GPS last time around. And while it still might, including processor bumps, digital compass, a better camera, etc. if this icon is accurate it looks like few if anything will change on the outside.
