UPDATE: Ryan Block returns to Engadget to smash this rumor.

At no point did Gary even remotely imply that Apple would be present at a future CES — let alone state flatly that Apple “will be there” in 2010.

Oh, WSJ…

ORIGINAL. The Wall Street Journal is reporting, almost off-handedly, that Apple is planning to attend CES 2010, a trade show it has avoided up until now, and arguably eclipsed in 2007 when it announced the original iPhone at the then similarly timed Macworld Expo.

Apple pulled out of future Macworlds, causing the expo to change focus and time slots for 2010, but the idea of Apple actually showing up at CES instead? To quoth Dieter: Cats and dogs — living together!

The meat of the WSJ’s story is actually that Steve Jobs has been invited to Keynote at CES but isn’t returning their phone calls. While Jobs owned the spotlight at Macworld before handing the final show over to Phil Schiller in 2009, Jobs would be one of several Keynotes at CES, including lovable competitor Steve Ballmer of Microsoft.

Would Jobs settle for “one of”? Would Apple, after leaving Macworld and saying they prefer to set their own schedule for special events, and that they reach more people via the Apple Stores every week anyway, really want to return to almost exactly the same formula with CES?

We doubted it, and still don’t believe what our eyes are reading.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

RUMOR SMASHED: Apple Going to CES 2010, Steve Jobs Asked to Keynote?

With Apple announcing that Macworld 2009 would be its last, rumors began to fly that maybe CES 2010 would get Steve Jobs’ attention instead. TiPb still isn’t buying that — given Apple’s stated reasons, it makes no more sense for them than Macworld.

However, now word comes that iLounge has begun working with the CEA (the organization behind CES) to create an iPhone (and iPod) “iLounge Pavilion” at CES as a rallying and gathering point for exhibitors — perhaps in lieu of Macworld 2010.

iLounge seems to feel this is necessary to help proactively preserve and project forward the iPhone and iPod community given the perhaps uncertain future of Macworld.

Macworld (the magazine, not expo, though they share the same parent company) editor Jason Snell, however, on Twitter expressed concern that iLounge might have crossed a line beyond merely being proactive.

Hearts and souls are likely still hoping for a strong and vibrant Macworld next year, but are pragmatic minds and wallets turning more towards CES? And what lines should — or shouldn’t — be crossed when it comes to media (new or old) covering events, or each other, while having or making alliances with competitive events?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPhone at CES 2010 Update — What About Macworld?

As I’ve said many times before on TiPb, I’m a Palm guy going back to the Palm V, and Treo guy going back to the Treo 600. When Palm essentially abandoned that user-base (see my Palm Treo Pro Round Robin video and review) a few years back, I abandoned them and dove headlong into the iPhone (and now the iPhone 3G).

I still have a very warm spot in my heart for Palm, however, their innovation in the smartphone space, and their focus on zen-like user experience. So, when Palm announced their new WebOS platform and premiered their new Pre handset at CES (see our new baby sibling site PreCentral.net for all the details and a massive hands-on video), I was more than just a little ecstatic. I won’t lie, it’s the first post-iPhone device that’s caught my attention.

Don’t get me wrong, I still fear for Palm — the market is much more crowded than it was when they helped create it, and for all the problems WebOS and the Pre solve, they bring their own set to the table. However, watching the Palm Keynote fro CES I, presented by former Apple iPod father Jon Rubinstein and Palm founder Ed Colligan, two things stood really stood out for me:

• What Palm outright stole from the iPhone and put in the Pre
• And what Apple should immediate steal from Palm and put into the next iPhone OS.

We’ll get into both, after the break.

What the Palm Pre Stole From the iPhone

First, stole is exactly the right word. No, I’m not talking about Rubinstein’s verbiage (you can copy a Jobs script, but not the delivery, b’okay?) Feature for feature — gesture for gesture — the former Apple team headed now by Rubenstein as Palm straight up jacked whole swathes of iPhone functionality to a degree that I’m pretty much certain Apple’s lawyers are drafting up whole heaps of infringement claims against them for all those patents Steve Jobs mentioned during his first iPhone introduction back at Macworld. Let’s take a look…

Form Factor

Okay, an iClone is an iClone, and many would argue Apple didn’t invent the singular black slab that is the iPhone’s now iconic shape. Many would also argue there are only so many ways to make a full-screen, touch-screen device. Fair enough. But from that full, touch screen to the singular center button at the bottom, degree of rounded-ness not withstanding, we’ll call an iClone an iClone when we see it.

Specs

Not only does the Pre look like the iPhone, it’s built like the iPhone. It’s almost like the iPhone feature set was lined up and checked off one by one: 320×480 capacitive touch screen — check. Accelerometer, ambient light, and proximity sensors — check. While the package is smaller in its closed state, and has been amped up (hello A2DP stereo Blue Tooth!), the mold from which it was cast is still patently obvious.

The Dock

The original Palm PDA platform had a static, lower tier application launcher space, if anyone remembers that platform anymore, but it was interrupted by the stylus input bad, and later hard-buttons took its place. With the Pre, however, Palm has taken a step sideways into the iPhone launcher paradigm. You get five buttons instead of four, and they focus on Palm’s nouveau Pillars of PIM — Phone, Contacts, Email, Calendar, and… up arrow (I’m guess a way to launch more options).

Real-World UI Interactions

It was amazing, back at Macworld 2007, to watch Steve Jobs effortlessly flick through a list of contacts and see them bounce with virtual elasticity when they reached their end. This kind of intuitive visual cuing is invaluable to the user experience. No wonder Palm copied it almost exactly. Flick through the Pre contacts, same capacitive acceleration, same elastic bounce back.

Likewise panels zoom in and zoom out, and slide over each other, just like with the iPhone, to give a sense of stacking and information depth.

Turn the Palm Pre and not only does the accelerometer rotate the screen, it does so with the same animation as the iPhone. No smash cuts like other handsets here.

Multi-touch

This is the big one, and the one I think have Cupertino’s lawyers revving up their engines. Rumor has it that other post-iPhone capacitive handsets were supposed to ship with multi-touch, but fear of Apple’s patents ultimately made them reconsider that functionality. The Palm Pre looks to have done no such reconsideration. Witness: pinch to zoom, double tap to focus, flick to scroll.

It’s not just that they used multi-touch, they used the exact same gestures the iPhone already used to do it.

WebKit

Apple’s open source web rendering engine, WebKit (based on the Linux Konquerer technology) doesn’t have a huge desktop browser share outside of the Mac, but it’s positively pwning the mobile space. Nokia uses it, Google’s Android uses it, (some think Microsoft should dump Internet Explorer 6(!) for Mobile and use it!), and now the Palm Pre uses it as well.

What the iPhone Should Immediately Steal from the Palm Pre

What’s more important than dwelling on what the Palm Pre stole from the iPhone is what Palm did to extend, and yes, improve upon it. Several of these improvements are so compelling, Apple immediately needs to take a little vengeance on Palm and steal them right back! Which ones?

Multitasking “Cards”

One of the most impressive features shown off in the Palm Pre demo was the concept of stacked cards, where the center button could “zoom out” and give a real-time, updated view of what was happening on other open applications. The iPhone needs this badly. Not multitasking third party apps will increasingly be seen as a limitation on the iPhone, but RIM or Windows Mobile style Task management is likewise a non-starter.

Luckily, the iPhone already has 2 existing metaphors for this. First and most closely resembling the Palm Pre cards are the Mobile Safari “tabs”. Tap the tab button and the current web page zooms out and you see all open tabs. Pick the tab you want, it zooms in full screen. This could easily be adapted to multi-tasking applications.

Frankly, however, I’m not sure its good enough for the iPhone. The second metaphor, CoverFlow, might just be. We don’t know what’s driving the Palm Pre under the hood, but we know the iPhone has awesome OpenGL and PowerVR graphics that just beg for a drool-inducing task-switching implementation. Flick to change between your apps as easily as you do your albums in iTunes.

To close an app, as the Pre does with an upward throw-away flick, Mobile Safari Tab “X” buttons could be a solution, as could the flick-away, but I’m not sure how necessary that is. In an ideal world, iPhone OS X would transparently handle memory in the background, “sleeping” (saving state) what hasn’t been used or isn’t prioritized as needed.

As to the reorganization ability of the Pre task manager, I’m not convinced you need it in a switching system as fast as capacitive flicking.

Short of a Mac-inspired Expose for the iPhone, CoverFlow app switching would be killer.

And what better, easier, and more elegant way to implement it than just hitting the Home button in Landscape mode?

Merging the Cloud

Palm made a big deal about the Pre being built from the web up, and it sort of (and it no doubt increasingly is) a big deal. Since we’re not sure what kind of media capabilities the Pre will have, the need to cloud-manage 1GB+ movie files may not be a worry to them the way it certainly is to the iPhone, but for PIM data did what they’ve always done — nailed it.

Pre hooks into popular cloud data stores, Exchange, Gmail, and Facebook (and perhaps others) and merges all your data behind the scenes to present you with a single handheld gateway — a unified view. Exchange contacts seamlessly integrated with the matching picture from your Facebook friend was the example given, and it’s a game-changing one. Likewise, Pre combines together IM and SMS into a single, person-centric threaded conversation.

Tying in IM, Twitter, and people’s own email address cards create something close to what I’ve always been asking for — an application that unifies and HIDES all the various pipes away from the user.

Chad has mentioned several times that Apple has all sorts of Mobile iChat patents floating around. Can we get those put to use?

This is the type of flawless user experience both Palm and Apple are famous for. Palm is giving it to us first on the mobile platform. Fine. Apple, give it to us next.

(And we won’t even get into what might happen if Apple leverages their new iPhoto ‘09 Faces (facial recognition) and Places (geotagging) technology into this paradigm!)

Status

On the Mac, if you have iChat open and you receive an email from someone who’s also an iChat buddy, their availability status is shown to you. Palm’s Pre works in a similar manner, showing you IM status in the email app. Sadly, the iPhone currently doesn’t do this. It should. Dieter has asked for it repeatedly and he’s right. Even though iPhone apps like Pinger do a great job aggregating status, there’s no reason it shouldn’t become ubiquitous throughout a mobile experience. And there’s every reason it should.

As mentioned before, the user interface lines between SMS, Twitter, IM, etc., and even email are and should be blurring, and a way to not only manage all those communication pipes, but seamlessly leverage them as well, is increasingly becoming a necessity for connected users.

Auto-Save

Palm has always “just worked” when it came to saving state of data. Add a contact and no matter how complete or incomplete, Palm has just saved that state of the data on the device and for sync. With the Pre they’ve taken it a step further and saved state right back to the cloud as well.

The iPhone, by contrast, wants you to confirm the save with a button tap. This is okay to prevent fragmentary entries from polluting your pristine data store, but in the real world it’s just annoying. If you start entering a calendar event, and you suddenly and urgently need to go into a different app (something that happens in the real world), you shouldn’t have to worry about losing whatever data you’ve entered, or having to start over.

Just like Palm, and like Apple already does in Apps like iMovie, data should just be saved on exit as-is, and synced back to the cloud or local machine, also as is. It’s simply a better, more robust user experience.

Keyboard Launcher

Familiar not only to everyone who’s ever used a Treo, Vista Search, or Mac Spotlight, but truly understood by anyone who’s become a QuickSilver (or similar application launcher) user, sometimes typing is just the fastest way to reach the data you want. The Pre does a great, Spotlight-esque job of quickly parsing keystrokes into local and cloud search results, and the iPhone should be able to leverage Apple’s Spotlight just as powerfully.

Sure, the Pre has a hard keyboard, which is the last thing I want on an iPhone (remember — at least for me — the era of hard keyboards is over!). So what to do?

Stick a Spotlight icon on the Home Screen, what else? Okay, sure, make up something fun… Let me shake on the Home Screen to bring up a Spotlight optimized keyboard. Shake is used in other apps to do neat things, leverage it to let me do killer search as well. Shake, type, boom! (I kid, a little, see quickie mock-up pick).

Either way give me rapid search access into contacts, events, files (yes, give me a single, multi-app accessible file storage bin so I can get some Office action going — but more on that in a future article), and the option to shoot off into CalDAV, CardDAV, WebDAV (iDisk), or general Web searches.

Conclusion

We didn’t touch on everything, including the swiped App Store come App Catalog, or the innovative non-modal notification system, but hopefully this gives some idea of our ideas on where the iPhone brought the smartphone space, where the Pre has taken killer features from that, and what Apple could do to take some killer features of the Pre right back.

But what are your ideas? Anything from the Pre (or other post-iPhone smartphones) YOU think Apples needs to immediately integrate into iPhone OS 3.0?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

What the Palm Pre Stole from the iPhone… and What the iPhone Should Steal From the Pre

No sooner to rumors sprout that Apple may have abandoned Macworld only to show up at CES next year, than the CEA decides to pour some miracle grow on them. Says CNet:

Jason Oxman of the CEA confirmed Saturday that the group “dedicated a special area at the 2010 CES to Apple-related CE manufacturers.” That immediately sets up an alternative for companies thinking about exhibiting at Macworld 2010, which will not have Apple present for the first time in 12 years.

No word on Apple itself actually attending of course (Dieter thinks it will never happen), but with Macworld sending out free early-bird registration offers already, this could be a way to try and lure in Mac- and iPhone-centric third parties very much on the fence about 2010.

Who would still go to Macworld if CES gets its Apple on next year?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

CES 2010 Says Apple Zone Definite, Apple Itself… Dunno.

Apple Insider is reporting that Apple is packing up the graceful booths and elegant displays, and taking Steve’s winnebago to CES next year:

Sources close to the company have indicated to AppleInsider that the move is a done deal, a remarkable turn of events given that CES has long been dominated by Microsoft’s product announcements issued in keynotes delivered by Bill Gates and now by CEO Steve Ballmer.

TiPb has long felt that Apple has long felt it was too aloof for the tacky lights and hollow glitz of Vegan and CES, but could the times really be a changing that much? And if Apple does go to CES 2010, which Steve will give the Keynote, Ballmer or… Jobs?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Apple 2010: Buh-Bye Macworld, Hello CES?!

Confession: I’m just leaving Macworld and haven’t had a chance to form much of an opinion about the Palm Pre yet (see pics). TreoCentral (and our new baby sibling site, PreCentral.net) absolutely KILLED it on the first impressions, and make sure you check out the live blog (and congrats to Dieter on the trifecta of Schiller, Balmer, and Colligan all in one week! Superstar!).

The Treo 600 was my first smartphone, the 680 my last before the iPhone, so I have great fondness for Palm despite them leaving me “out in the desert” (TM, TreoCentral TreoCast) for years and years. I want them to succeed, I want them to force the entire industry to keep up the innovation and revolution the iPhone started. I want Steve Jobs and Apple to run back to the drawing board and feel compelled to make the iPhone HD 3.0 even better than they intended.

First blush: I love the organics of the device (the egg-shape does throw me, but that’s the only exception and the overall look brings it home) and think cloud-focus and their WebOS platform (which I think is based on Apple’s open-source WebKit, same as Safari on iPhone and Chrome on Android) are gutsy moves. Apple uses a hybrid of rich clients and web connectivity and smashes it out the park with Google Maps-style iPhone apps. Palm is running WebOS apps like native WebApps (which should avoid the outcry Apple faced with the original, pre-App Store and SDK iPhone dev solution). If it works Palm could have brilliantly out-maneuvered the whole “they’ll never get developers”. However, one look at Apple’s focus on gaming shows the power of the rich local client — is AJAX enough to run iPhone caliber gaming and other really hard hitting applications? I guess we’ll see. We’ll also see how they nail multitasking better than any previous OS, according to Dieter, when part 2 of TreoCentral’s first impressions go online later.

On the negative side, for me (the anti-Dieter in some ways), I still think the era of hard keyboards is over, and dislike the moving parts of a slider all the more after the round robin (even portrait ones). That’s just personal taste. The capacitive touch screen with gesture area looks solid, though I have to wonder if Apple’s lawyers will rev up the multitouch patent files?

Apple’s rivalry with the new Palm will be telling for political reasons as well. Those who remember the history know that the new guru behind Palm’s new hotness is the old Guru behind Apple’s old hotness, the iPod. He reportedly really wanted a hard keyboard on the iPhone, and Jobs skidoosh’ed it. (Which is why I jokingly called it the “iPhone Slider”. I guess we’ll see, however, over the next few months if Rubinstein remains but the learner, or if he is now the master.

Enough of my thoughts, iPhone lovers — especially former Palm faithful — what do you think?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TreoCentral at CES: Palm Announces Pre, the “iPhone Slider”

TiPb isn’t the only Smartphone Experts site working our tails off this week. Our editor-in-chief, Dieter Bohn is pulling the live-blogging trifecta, going straight from Macworld to cover Steve Ballmer’s CES kickoff tonight at 6pm PST for WMExperts AND for the (very much anticipated) debut of Palm’s next generation NOVA hardware and OS for TreoCentral — not to mention everything AndroidCentral. Never to be out done, CrackBerry Kevin (with a full on CrackBerry Crew!) will push any and all BlackBerry news they get their cracky hands on. Check out all our sites throughout the day for the latest, greatest, most Smartphone-geeky coverage.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Smartphone Experts at CES 2009! WMExperts, TreoCentral, Android Central, and CrackBerry.com Coverage