With Macworld fast approaching, the rumor rate should begin increasing exponential. iTablets will be hot once again, of course, as will the iPhone Nano. Says MacRumors:
[iDealsChina] claims the product will be announced at Macworld San Francisco 2009. iDealsChina, however, has a very mixed track record. In August, it passed off renderings of knock-off iPod clones as the real thing and also claimed that the new iPod Touch would have GPS (it did not). The site, however, did previously have access to Griffin case moldings that appeared to be real. The sizes could correlate with smaller touch screen photographs that iLounge published in June.
MacRumors thinks such an iPhone Nano may break App compatibility with the existing iPhone and iPod Touch due to screen size and resolution. Shrinking the screen down using a higher DPI, like the iPod Nano would lessen part of the problem (though hitting tinier capacitive touch targets would no doubt be an interesting exercise in frustration).
What do you think? iPhone Nano for Macworld? And is it a Good Thing?
MacRumors is passing on… well… rumors from MacBlogz of a 32GB iPhone! Says MacRumors:
The reason the largest iPhone (16GB) currently has 1/2 the memory of the largest iPod touch (32GB) is that the iPhone can only house a single NAND Flash chip while the iPod touch can accommodate two. The additional space in the iPhone is taken up by its communication hardware. In August, Toshiba announced that they would begin mass production of higher density 32GB chips in the 4th quarter of 2008.
Intel, they go on to say, may well bump the capacity even further — to a startling 64GB — by early next year. Sound crazy? Heh. With Macworld coming in just over a month, we ain’t seen nothing yet on the rumor front.
Still, 32GB is drool worthy, and something we here at TiPb are predicting for next year as part of a third generation iPhone HD, so you know we wants it.
How about you? Is 16GB enough, or is it always going to be a case of the more, the better?
Daring Fireball links to a translation of a Swedish MacWorld rumor (Google translation) that quotes Telia as saying as MMS app would soon be available for the iPhone. Phew! Broken telephone much? Tries to clarify Gruber:
Not sure if this means Telia is writing their own MMS iPhone app, or if they’re suggesting that Apple is adding MMS support to the system software. I haven’t seen any reports of MMS support in the iPhone OS 2.2 betas.
Could this be a surprise feature? Personally, I never use it. I prefer device independent protocols like email and IM to handle my communications, but I know many of my fellow TiPbsters are still dying to get their multi-touch on this baby, so what do you think?
Apple bringing it? Telia? And if so, would other carriers like AT&T follow suit with MMS apps of their own? Do we want that kind of fragmentation, after it’s taken so long to get even the little interoperability that currently exists?
The Phone different Podcast is back, baby! We had a long, unplanned hiatus due to technical and spiritual difficulties. Maybe not so much with the spiritual, but you get my point.
In this episode, Mike and I talk about the Macworld experience and the new products that were announced there. We also spend a bit of time on the 1.1.3 iPhone update and some other industry news. Listen in!
I spend a healthy portion of my time at Macworld doing the following:
Thinking about Google’s fixation on the iPhone and
Looking for a really good iPhone dock / Alarm clock.
…Keeping the iPhone in a dock by your bed seems like a no-brainer – charges it up, lets you play a song from your library to wake you up, maybe even lets you catch a quick movie before you fall asleep. Right? Apparently it does all of those things except the last part – the falling asleep part:
A study in Sweden and the United States finds that using a cell phone just before bedtime interferes with sleep patterns. – study
The deal is that the radiation from cell phone radios gets into your head and prevents you from getting into a deep sleep pattern. If it ain’t deep sleep, it don’t count. So maybe leaving that dock on the desk, next to your computer, and far from your sensitive squishy brain is the right idea after all.
Besides Google (much more on that tomorrow, stay tuned!), there weren’t a lot of “iPhone Web Apps” booths. Actually, none that I can remember. What there are a ton of at Macworld are accessories booths. Clearly the accessory market for the iPhone is ramping up quickly and may even near iPod accessory market status sometime soon.
…But it’s not there yet. Case in point, I saw probably a dozen different iPod speaker docks — all of which were “compatible” with the iPhone in flight mode only. Apple is requiring (and rightfully so, I suppose) that accessory makers submit their accessories for their seal of approval, iPhone-wise, so that the dreaded GSM-interference issue is taken care of. I personally wish Apple had managed to handle that on the device rather than forcing companies trying to interact with the Dock connector to re-make their products, but c’est la vie.
Otherwise, the thing to see, iPhone-wise, is cases. There are more skin cases here than you could shake a stick at, but there are some other gems as well. After the break, our three favorite cases at Macworld 2008.
Macally just announced the FlexTune, which is one of the very few iPod docks available right now that is also fully compatible with the iPhone. That’s to say, it doesn’t suggest you go into Flight Mode to protect the speakers from GSM interference. Otherwise it’s a fairly standard set of iPod speakers – charges and is compatible with all iPods, medium-to-medium-low quality sound and volume, has a line-in on the back.
The FlexTune’s trick is that its speakers slide out – meaning you can mount the iPhone vertically or horizontally. It’s a little wonky to slide the speakers out and insert the iPhone, but not too bad. That wonkiness might be that Macally had a pre-production unit on the show floor — the real deal will be available in February for the fairly low price of $59.99
The new 1.1.3 update to the iPhone’s software is pretty incredible. As we just mentioned in the Liveblog of the Steve Jobs Keynote, there are several new features that were announced:
Maps with Location
Webclips on your homescreen
Customization of your homescreen
…and more, including lyrics, support for iTunes movie rentals, and the ability to SMS multiple people at once.
We got the jump on the iPod Touches on the show floor to get a firsthand look at the new features. After the break, our hands-on video with the new iPhone software (as seen on the iPod Touch).
We grabbed a quick look at the ultrathin MacBook Air, just released during Steve Jobs’ 2008 Macworld Keynote. The MacBook Air is a pretty sweet little guy – it’s ridiculously thin yet full-powered. Our only regret is that it has only 1(!) USB port. Oh, and the little fact that you can’t replace the battery. Isn’t that kind of a must for a laptop? We smell an accessory opportunity.
Otherwise – the hotness, even at $1799. A quick video of the gigantic crowd fondling the device above.
The MacBook Air is “the world’s thinnest notebook.” It’s ridiculously thin – .76 inches on the back and .16 inches at the front. It fits inside a manilla envelope – Jobs has one in an envelope now! It is INSANELY thin. UNNATURALLY thin. It has a full sized keyboard and display.
it has a 13.3, LED-backlit display. There is, of course, a built-in iSight camera. There is also a full-sized keyboard, “perhaps the best notebook keyboard we’ve ever shipped.” And yes, it’s also backlit.
The “very generous trackpad” now supports multitouch. There are even short videos explaining how the multitouch trackpad works on the MacBook Air.
It does indeed sport a hard disk – a 1.8″ hard drive, same as in the iPod. It has an 80gig as standard, you can also get a 64gb Solid State drive. The electronics, “a complete mac on a board” are tiny. The processor is an Intel Core 2 Duo, 1.6GHz is standard, you can go 1.8 GHz as well. The chip is 60% smaller than a standard 1.6GHz chip, and so Jobs has invited Intel CEO Paul Otellini to thank him for that incredible chip.
New feature: Remote Disk — allows you to use another computer’s optical drive to install software over the network. It’s an incredibly neat idea. Otherwise you can buy a USB superdrive for $99.
Apple claims that under medium to heavy usage you can get five hours of battery life.
3 pounts
.16 – 0.76 inches
13.3 LED display
full sized, backlit keyboard
Multi-touch trackpad
iSight
1.6GHz Core 2 Duo standard
2 Gigs memory standard
80 Gig Hard Drive
Bluetooth 2.1 EDR
…..$1799, available in 2 weeks.
..That’s it folks, Randy Newman is coming on stage to perform for us now!
It is INSANELY thin. UNNATURALLY thin. It has a full sized keyboard and display.
