All Articles in Rumors

According to Daring Fireball, Apple is set to introduce new products tomorrow morning, including:

Redesigned Plastic MacBooks, Redesigned (‘Impressive’) iMacs, Updated Minis (Including One That Ships With Mac OS X Server), the Multi-Touch Magic Mouse, and, as the Wildcard I’m-Not-Sure-I-Really-Believe-It-Myself Out-There Rumor, Maybe Even Some Sort of Mentioned-Nowhere-Else-But-in-This-Very-Headline Multi-Touch Trackpad Gadget for Desktop Macs

Last year, Apple held a special event, Spotlight Turns to Notebooks, to debut their last before-the-holidays offerings. Would they just dump so much new, and frankly interesting, products tomorrow morning without benefit of stage or keynote? Sure, but we’d be lying if we said we wouldn’t prefer the song and dance to go with them.

TiPb will cover whatever does get released, however it gets released, mainly as it pertains to anything that looks to have cross-over with iPhone technology like the “multi-touch trackpad” (why not just make an official Apple Mac trackpad app for the iPhone and iPod touch?)

Keep your eyes peeled for the Apple Online Store going down…

9to5Mac is reporting they’ve received a tip that Apple is developing an FM Radio app for the iPhone and iPod touch that will have background multi-tasking (like Apple’s Phone and iPod apps), and may be able to pause live programming like the new iPod nano radio feature.

It will either be provided as a stand alone app, or integrated into the iPod app, but it’s still a work in progress:

The holdup on this app is that Apple is trying to integrate the Mobile iTunes Store purchases into the functionality of the program. For instance, if you like a song you are listening to on the radio (and that station supports tagging and you are in the US), you will be able to push a button and see the song (and all of the information around it) in the iTunes Mobile store. With another click, you’ll be able to make a purchase. This is an extension of the Song Tagging feature used in the iPod Nanos. Perhaps they could even add some Shazam technology to help with those stations that don’t support tagging.

9to5Mac further claims that existing iPhones and iPod touches have been technically able, though not yet enabled, to receive FM Radio for a while now, and that the iPhone 3GS and iPod touch G3 can even broadcast FM Radio as part of the Nike+.

While rumors of FM Radio functionality, and radio tagging surfaced before the iPhone 3GS shipped, and the chipsets may have such technology as part of their overall package, it’s unknown how easily Apple could “flip the switch” on full FM Radio — the way they did for Bluetooth Stereo A2DP on the iPod touch G2.

Still, given the iPod nano’s radio feature, and under the cliche of better late than never, if Apple does indeed add Radio.app or just build in a Radio tab to iPod.app, were’ sure some users would be happy. Right?

[Small-print disclaimer: Image above represents iPod nano radio app composited onto the iPhone 3GS]

Foxconn is rumored to be producing 300,000 – 400,000 of the much hyped, still fabled Apple iTablet for introduction sometime in Q1 of 2010 says DigiTimes. This, of course, is the next stage of any good Apple rumor evolution, after specs and before random case leaks…

10.6 inch screen from Innolux Display, focus on digital print like e-books, good battery life, killer UI, etc. are all mentioned as well.

Now we just need Steve Jobs to say something dismissive like “people don’t read”… Oh, wait…

iPhone 4.0 SDK Sneak Preview event should be held March 2010. Might we have an earlier event to look forward to now as well, the iTablet Introduction?

ZDnet is reporting that Microsoft has plans to port their Zune software over to other platforms… and that means rumors of Zune on iPhone.

“Zune is a music and video service from Microsoft. Period, Our next step is mobile phones, but we haven’t talked about a timeline for when that will happen.”

Just more proof that Microsoft is treating the Zune platform as software rather than hardware. Now, we don’t know about any of you, but we are highly doubtful you will ever see Zune content on any iPod or iPhone. But for all of you who are Mac owners and Zune faithful, this may be a good sign of things to come as sometime in the near future you may be able to sync your Zune with your Mac.

Then again how many of you actually own a Zune?

[Via ZDnet]

The Washington Post is rumormongering that AT&T might just officially announce support for Skype and Google Voice on their 3G network at this week’s CTIA show, and that they will run on Apple’s iPhone.

Normally Apple and Apple alone tends to speak about what’s coming to the iPhone, so we’d dismiss this outright except for the fact that Google Voice has been an increasing thorn in Apple’s otherwise incredibly successful iPhone side as of late, especially among industry watchers, tech pundits, and… the FCC. So, getting AT&T to slide it into a CTIA announcement might just let Apple get everyone off their lawn, without having to publicly eat any crow.

AT&T has declined comment, but Smartphone Experts has editor-in-chief Dieter Bohn and fearless CrackBerry.com leader Kevin Michaluk live at CTIA this week, and TiPb has asked them to keep their ears peeled, and fingers at the ready, should anything come of this.

Rumor has it Microsoft is on the verge of axing the Pink Project. Come on, you remember those Pure Turtle phones we’ve been hearing about for months? The ones built by the former Danger/Sidekick team that might run Zune software and compete for the hearts and minds of tweens (TM PalmCast) everywhere? Yeah, those. Axed. Finished. Ballmered.

Seems like since their dear leader Andy Rubin left to father Android for Google, things have been on something of a downward spiral:

Amongst remaining employees, dissent is high. Much of the team uses iPhones around the office, or their old Sidekick handsets. Employees “hate the product” internally, many feeling that the division exists only to “challenge [the Windows Mobile 7 team] and upset them into competing.” Our source outright indicated that they felt the product was never intended to ship.

Malatesta from WMExperts.com is hearing conflicting stories, so take the above with a FUD-sized grain of salt. Still, even if Pink isn’t dead, given what’s left of the Danger team, the designs we’ve seen leaked so far, and the fact that Windows Mobile needs all the help it can get right now, maybe it ought to be?

[MobileCrunch via WMExperts]

Yes, the iTablet rumors just keep on coming, with the latest from Gizmodo being that Apple is in talks with traditional print publishers — text books, newspapers, and magazines, to redefine their industry they way they have music (and are trying to do with video).

Two people related to the NYTimes have separately told me that in June, paper was approached by Apple to talk about putting the paper on a “new device.” [...] A person close to a VP in textbook publishing mentioned to me in July that McGraw Hill and Oberlin Press are working with Apple to move textbooks to iTunes.[...] Apple also recently had several executives from one of the largest magazine groups at their Cupertino’s campus, where they were asked to present their ideas on the future of publishing.

Why?

The eventual goal is to have publishers create hybridized content that draws from audio, video, interactive graphics in books, magazines and newspapers, where paper layouts would be static. And with release dates for Microsoft’s Courier set to be quite far away and Kindle stuck with relatively static e-ink, it appears that Apple is moving towards a pole position in distribution of this next-generation print content. First, it’ll get its feet wet with more basic repurposing of the stuff found on dead trees today.

Gizmodo is also backing the rumored January announce date. What remains uncertain is, of course, the market for next generation print media. The Kindle was recently, and very publicly, panned by Princeton students as being unusable. Apple will have the benefit of the existing iTunes and iPhone ecosystem to fall back on, and buy them time — people can browse the web, listen to music, watch videos on the iTablet — but they’ll have to present a much more usable solution to get that print dinosaur cyberized for the next millennium.

Apple might be preparing a 10.7″ multi-touch iTablet with 720p resolution, running the iPhone OS, for announcement in January and release in May/June 2010. That’s just one of the rumors dropped by iLounge this morning, from a source they say was accurate about the most recent iPod nano, iPhone, and Chinese iPhone stories.

Like the iPhone and the iPod touch, iLounge’s source claims both a 3G and non-3G version will be available, so users can weigh always-on connectivity vs. another monthly telco bill.

Apple is no stranger to big product announcements in January, but since exiting Macworld, they’re also now free to set their own schedule. Possible delays? Odds of it receiving the official “b’okay” from Steve Jobs in its current form are said to be 80% (after it already being nixed at 7″ for being “too small”). That’s good, but far from certain.

Also far from certain, but certainly interesting is Microsoft’s equal and opposite tablet concept — the Courier, which focuses not on media but on journaling. Gizmodo has another video up. It reminds us of those awesome, future-filled Bill Gates keynotes from CES. Most of what Gates demoed hasn’t made it to market, however. Hopefully the Courier will fare better.

People are used to phones, they’re used to MP3 players, laptops, desktops, even set top boxes. A decade later, there’s no indication of tablets breaking through into the mainstream, so Apple, Microsoft, and everyone else has their work cut out for them.

We’ll see if the iTablet can tell a compelling enough story, and offer a feature set that sells.

Is Apple planning a larger, touch-screen enabled remote control to go along with a next generation Apple TV? Boy Genius‘ tipster, the same one who leaked iTunes 9 app organization and social integration, says yes indeed. And if the image above is accurate, one of the updates will be — Safari. (No sign of Apps yet, though…)

Would this really be a lower-cost option to something like the Remote App for iPhone and iPod touch, which could conceivably do anything a dedicated remote could do and more? (Actually, adding Bluetooth to an Apple TV for more persistent, don’t have to wait for WiFi to reconnect, iPhone remote would be even better!)

Along those lines, we don’t see Apple investing this much in a single-purpose remote control, even if it can control Macs, docked iPods, etc. as well, given what they’re doing with the iPhone platforms, but stranger things have happened.

You want?

Could we see a combination CDMA/HSPA iPhone hit Verizon before the holidays? No, we don’t think so either, but that’s the rumor we’re hearing again.

Of course, we’re no stranger to iPhone on Verizon rumors, whether they be wishful thinking or the result of ongoing, longterm Apple/carrier negotiations that may or may not ever amount to anything, it’s ironic that rumors about America’s most reliable network are almost always anything but…

Given the limited remaining lifespan on CDMA (Verizon’s going LTE for 4G) and market (primarily the US — even Bell and Telus in Canada are going HSPA), it just seems like such an un-Apple-like thing to do. Then again, Verizon’s customer base is no doubt a huge temptation for Apple. Given how many iPhones they sell on AT&T, if they hit Verizon, we can only imagine the market share shift. (Not to mention the load balancing of network traffic that would hopefully follow).

Again, we’re not getting our hopes up. We don’t think we’ll see an iPhone on Verizon any time soon, especially not before the holidays. Let’s face it, it’s almost October already and the window to effectively launch and market the iPhone on a new US network by then is rapidly diminishing from slim to none.

But, if you want to sound off anyway about how much you want a an iPhone world-phone on Verizon, hit the comments.

[Thanks tipster!]