All Articles Tagged Rumors

Once again Canada’s Rogers looks to be the source of a leak surrounding an upcoming 8GB iPhone 3GS, which — if true — would bring Apple’s latest hardware down to the budget smartphone price point of $99.

MacRumors caught the story, though their take is that the price point is uncertain, and whether or not Apple will release the low-storage iPhone 3GS option in all geographies (i.e. in the US) is unknown.

True leak or cascading data error? We’ll find out soon enough.

BGR reports a source saying Apple is readying iTunes 9, which will include support for visually organizing apps on the iPhone, and for playing back Blu-Ray media.

iPhone 1.1.3 introduced the ability to add icons (limited to WebClips at the time, expanded to native apps with iPhone 2.0), and to move them around by tapping and holding until they began to jiggle. While this works well enough for a few icons once and a while, it makes totally re-arranging the 11 home screens made available in iPhone 3.0 a tad laborious. Suggestions for, even concept videos of, adding a more robust solution via iTunes have been floating around the web for a while now and would be a welcome addition indeed.

Steve Jobs had famously called Blu-Ray a “bag of hurt” due to licensing, but changes in those licenses and perhaps Apple’s priorities — which previously seemed to want to promote their own download service over physical media — could make it happen. Unless there’s more expansive and integrated support for the “digital copy” feature as well — where an iPhone/iPod version of the movie is included on the disk — it’s not really an iPhone friendly addition.

Also rumored were some kind of Twitter/Facebook/Last.fm social features.

Last year Apple debuted iTunes 8 at their annual iTunes and iPod music event in September (after it was heavily leaked by Kevin Rose). If there is an iTunes 9 on the roadmap, makes sense we’d see it this September along with the rumored iPod touch 3,1.

Anyone more interested in it now?

Crazy rumor of the day, courtesy of Silicon Alley Insider, has Apple considering turning iTunes accounts into a Paypal competitor. Though they’re careful to classify it as gossip and not confirmed news (heh), it’s not beyond imagination that someone, somewhere, wanted to gauge a little public reaction to this idea.

Now, TiPb has given Microsoft a lot of negative feedback for losing focus and getting into areas they have no business getting into (pun intended). So, we have to do the same for Apple.

Does iTunes need to become a Paypal competitor? No doubt someone has to, given the more onerous sides of Paypal and the lack of Google Check Out, and still vaporish Pay with Facebook making eBay sweat enough to straighten up and behave properly, but Apple?

The link above suggests maybe Apple is interested in using the iPhone platform itself as a real-world payment system (they’ve only been doing that outside North America for years, after all), or they wish to diversify a la General Electric and this may be an easy and logical way to do it.

If it’s the former, and it works with typical Apple magic, then yes please and now. If it’s the latter then Apple should likely remember that focus, not diversification, has led them to tremendous success so far, even as their competition has floundered.

What do you think?

Multichannel News (via Apple Insider) is reporting that an industry source claims Netflix “Watch Instantly” is coming to the iPhone.

Netflix currently uses Microsoft’s proprietary DRM, however, so unless they’re planning on switching to something more iPhone friendly — namely H.264 like YouTube did — we’re not quite sure how they’ll manage it with anything approaching decent results.

That’s if Apple even allows an iTunes competitor onto the iPhone (and before people howl “unfair!”, it’s not like you can load up PlayStation or Wii games on an Xbox 360 — consoles control their media). And, of course, if AT&T allows streaming over 3G, which they wouldn’t do for SlingPlayer Mobile…

(We’ll also point out that Netflix is a US-only service, unlike iTunes which is available in many countries internationally).

Barrons (via MacRumors) claims an unnamed analyst has seen the near-legendary Apple iTablet and thinks:

The machine impresses with its display of hi-def video content, says the veteran analyst, who asked not to be identified. “It’s better than the average movie experience, when you hold this thing in your hands.”

And what’s more, competitors know that we know that they know that it’s coming soon:

“It’s close enough now to a final design that in Asia, there’s no other product in the waiting room or in the bullpen,” said the analyst. “There are dozens of ODMs [original device makers] making products for Lenovo and other PC makers that are all waiting to see what the Apple product is.”

So does this mean just as the iCloned iPhones are waning, the iReplicated iTablets are just waiting to launch? We’ll know come September. Or October. Or… January to March 2010!

(And yes, we still have polls open on both when it will ship, and what OS is will run, and whether or not it will succeed – get voting!)

Turns out that leaked black bezel that made the internet rounds prior to the iPhone 3GS’ rounds was… actually for a Creative Zii Egg. Says CNET Asia provides the picture, and MacRumors the short version:

The Zii Egg is a multi-touch iPod touch-like device that runs Google’s Android operating system. The device, though, bears a strong resemblance to the leaked bezel images, suggesting that it had simply been mislabeled all along.

[Insert Price is Right fail music]

Hey, at least now we know. Though, admittedly, the nearly intoxicating swarm of pre-release rumors are much more fun than the cold, headachy, post-release rumor smashing that followers…

Rumors about the iTablet, the still mythical Apple media/web pad, are just growing stronger and yes, it does remind us of the heady days before the iPhone announcement. But just like the iPhone wasn’t a click wheel iPod with a phone dialer bolted on, the iTablet — if and when it ever ships — may not just be an iPod touch on hulk serum.

TiPb takes a look, and runs some polls, after the break!

Read the rest of this entry »

The Street (via MacRumors) is rumoring about the iTablet on Verizon:

An initial version of the long-anticipated Apple tablet will be subsidized by Verizon (VZ Quote), but Apple and Verizon “won’t be as tightly integrated” as Apple’s iPhone exclusivity deal with AT&T (T Quote), says one source familiar with the companies, who asked not to be named.

iTablet, or MediaPad, rumors for Verizon are nothing new of course. The Verizon subsidy would help reduce the initial sticker price of an $800 iTablet down to something more competitive with low cost netbooks, though with only a data plan and no voice, the subsidy wouldn’t be a large as the one AT&T provides to iPhone customers who promptly return ~$100 a month in service fees.

Since Verizon is CDMA and Apple is an international company, it’s hard to believe a GSM version of the iTablet — if such a beatie is really near release — isn’t in the works, or wasn’t completed first. So, hopefully, those not on Verizon, not eager for a CDMA data plan, or not in the US will have iTablet options as well.

Oft rumored, is Sony ready to leverage both the struggling Sony Ericsson partnership and the still fairly solid Sony Playstation brand to produce a Playstation Phone? (PSP Phone? PSPhone? PSP Go-Call-Someone?).

Makes sense from a competitive point of view, and something we certainly thought we’d see sooner. If Sony can get passed their historic intra-company integration problems, and avoid doing anything silly like ATRAC DRM or root kits — if they could get a product manager who could cut through the quagmire and drive everything that’s good about Sony into the product — it could be an interesting contender.

For the iPhone, of course:

Nikkei says it will directly compete with the iPhone, and that a project team was set up last July to start working on the console/phone hybrid. So basically, it’s the same rumor we’ve been hearing for years, except this time from a reliable source. Whether it’s got any truth to it remains to be seen. Note: The above image is a mockup. Seems obvious but sometimes you gotta say it out loud.

[Gizmodo via Reuters]

TGRBlog (via iSpazio) has put together a graphical representations (above) of all the major third generation iPhone (iPhone 2,1) rumors, color-ranked by likelihood. Very nice!

Could WWDC be any closer…?