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Apple iWalk: Mac OS-X based PDA?
Per Wigren noted that SpyMac claims to have pictures of the iWalk, the mysterious secret project scheduled to be announced any time now. It is apparently something between a subnotebook and a PDA running a scaled down OSX. Supposedly it can be a portable MP3 player, and it has apple's airport stuff built in. CT Nope. They announced the iPod instead, a lame MP3 player.
Yeah, just like the cube.
Oh, wait . . .
-Peter
they have realy nice hardware and the box is layed out like a piece of artwork. that is why.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
...but these look fake to me. Almost definitely 3D-rendered. Maybe useful as an "artists' conception" pic, but that's not what this was touted as.
And besides, Apple already said "it's not a Mac." This looks a lot like a Mac to me, albeit a reeeeeeeeally small one.
Why are people so obsessed with the idea of Apple releasing a PDA, anyway?
I can't quite tell from the somewhat over-compressed image whether it's been doctored or not, but if this isn't the real deal, it's one of the better hoaxes I've ever seen.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Perhaps thay don't actually USE the Macs -- notice the DELL parts bag under the pack of smokes? Maybe they actually use PCs whenever Jobs isn't looking!
load "windows7"
No matter how much you want to believe this (and believe me, I want to), you have to notice two very important things: One, that the Apple rumor world isn't mearly as accurate as it was before the reign of heir Jobs, and the most important one is that Apple has said publicly on two occasions (that come to mind) that there will be no Apple Portables aside from laptops.
I want this to be true as I still hold a candle for the lost Newton division, but I've seen these rumours before, and they've never come to fruition then either.
But then again, we never thought we'd have a Mac OS with protected memory, either, so there is a (very) slim chance, I guess. But don't hold youir breath.
Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
Reporting on rumors is fine, they're even entertaining. However when the real device is going to be unveiled in a few hours its a bit pointless. Besides, everybody knows its going to be the iBrator!
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
Not to mention that I doubt Apple would make anything with buttons that tiny so close together.
Cheers.
"Whadda'ya watchin'?"
"Angry Monkey."
"That HORRIBLE monkey."
and if last time's g4 cube is any indication, we're gonna be wrong
does anybody remember the seemingly percieving comments made about the g4 cube leaked pictures last time around?
modified picture of a washing machine?
power switch pops up instead of in and vice versa?
impossibility of no fan?
obviously retouched with blur?
the slashdot community is amusing...i think it never learns
Do a search on iWalk on Google and you'll find an existing product with that name. The product is one that Wired covered a while back about some kind of artificial leg. It seems unlikely that Apple would use the name of an existing product. http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,39262,00.ht ml
There were earlier pictures that have been removed now, but were easier to spot as fakes. Here is some discussion on MacNN about the "iWalk". Also note that "iWalk" is not a registered trademark of Apple.
What is an Apple trademark, though, is the "iPod" (NOTE: if you can't get the page to display, just start a new search for "iPod"). From the description, though, it does sound like a PDA...
Nice of Slashdot to finally put a story of this up... The original invitations went out last Friday!
---------The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
Apple's rabid lawyers haven't forced them to take it down yet, therefore it can't be real
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
Why not call it the eWalk instead?
Imagine an Apple ad campaign with little furry creatures running around the forest carrying colorful translucent PDAs.
The MacNN forums (www.macnn.com ahem the most reliable) have debunked this as a doctored up Harmon Kardon amplifier and a Microsoft remote control.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
The 'icing on the fake' is the box of marbs middle right and the Rorschach Ink Blot middle left.
Krispy Cream is people
with handwriting recognition (using former newton-technology so it's a lot better than current palm os recognition)
LOL! First of all, the Newton sucked when it came to handwriting recognition. Second of all, the guy doesn't even seem to realize that Palm OS doesn't do handwriting recognition, it does gesture recognition with Graffiti, which is why it was successful. Palm was smart enough to know that handwriting recognition sucks and will always suck like voice recognition until we get better AI-based pattern recognition and language context theories (no, it won't be solved solely by processor speed).
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
...I'd be all over it. If not, it's cute, but, well, cute.
Attention all PDA and phone manufacturers: we are sick and tired of carrying around a PDA and a phone. Got it? Put them together, preferably in a form smaller and lighter than a small boulder, and priced not too much higher than the two things separately. You'll be rich.
If Apple could stick a phone into a sexy Apple OSX-based PDA that I could plug into my mac, they'd have another pile of my money double-quick, that's for sure. The more M$ scares me with their Big Brother plans, the more I'm dying to lock into something else. C'mon Apple, give me some hope.
-- http://frobnosticate.com
The handwriting recognition was absolutely SUPERB. At least on the one I used.
Sure.. it made mistakes at first. But you have to tell it about the mistakes... and pretty soon the little newton can regocnize my handwriting even when I couldn't!
I was absolutely amazed at how well the handwriting recognition on it worked.
And look at the shadows coming from the cigarette box. They don't match up, do they? :)
:)
There seems to be two light sources. One immediately above and behind the photographer, like a florescent ceiling light, which is evidenced by the reflection on the keyboard. The other source appears to be an regular incandescent also behind the viewer, casting shadows on the cigarettes that goes up. The shadow from the iWalk device is going to the upper left. They just don't seem consistent. There's also a *very* faint shadow leaning *towards* the photographer. Also notice the wrinkles on the sheet of paper beneath the iWalk. The shadows cast by them are also going "up", like from the cigarette box. Funny how it's the only object in the scene that casts light in its own unique direction. Light also does not seem to fall naturally on the device itself.
A few other observations I noticed... Zoom in close on the image. Other objects in the scene are slightly more crisp than the device itself.
Maybe I'm wrong, but the scene just looks very unnatural, but this may only be become I'm looking at it so intently. But if you ask me, that is definitely a mock up.
Why bother.
Yes you can tell it's fake by the picture....But the biggest givaway is the statement that says it will be available by Christmas. When was the last time something from a major tech company went from prototype leakage to the street in 3 months time. Get real people.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
I'm sure a few of you are running OSX, how is it? What is your opinion on how successful a scale-down would be? Would it be better to try and scale down the whole thing, or maybe just the key parts of it, like the kernel, and build the rest from scratch maybe using the OSX GUI as a guideline? And is it really worthwile for Apple to throw resources at something like this?
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
before US robotics / palm ever made a palm-pilot,
they made grafitti FOR the newton. that's where
it started.
Notice that this is the ONLY thing on their site? The paint is still drying on this site, and with no prior content, they are offering to sell ad space already?
Perhaps they anticipated the Slashdotting, so they'd cash in on the deal by offering to sell ad space in conjunction with said fake product(notice the shadow lines on the lower 1/5th of the image) to give the illusion of a big tech gossip site.
Nope, not buying it.
Quick tidbits:
This product has had the mac world biting their nails for the past week or so.
Two of the most popular mac news sources, MacSlash and MacOS Rumors, are currently down, and MacNN has been slowed to a crawl.
The official announcement from apple is expected to happen at 10:00AM PST.
MacNN/MacSlash/MOSR are down, but we still have MacMinute.
"MacMinute is in attendance at the media event and will bring the news as we learn of it."
And it looks like in the time it took me to type this post, the action has already started:
Apple CEO Steve Jobs is currently recapping Apple's digital hub products, including iTunes, iMovie 2, iDVD, and Mac OS X's Image Capture application. [October 23 - 13:10-13:20]
Hell yeah! It was just announced! (from MacMinute):
Apple introduces iPod, a digital audio player (MP3, MP2) with a 5GB hard drive (1000 songs). 20 minute skip protection. [13:25]
The new is in. Apple introduces iPod, an MP3 player with a hard drive. Big freaking deal, I already have one, its called an Archos jukebox 6000.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Looks like some kind of MP3 player called the "iPod." FireWire equipped, a 5-gig hard drive, etc, etc, etc.
To be honest, thus far I'm disappointed. This is what Apple calls "breakthrough"?
Live coverage of the conference is at MacMinute (but they'll get swamped soon enough...)
It's insulting that someone, anyone would release a crappy fake picture like that and try to insist that it's a real device.
It's an annoying picture, because the objects in the foreground, the supposed object of interest is in soft focus, while the stuff in the background is crisp and clean. Tell me, is this person's digital camera so bad that it can't take a picture of three objects in close proximity without all three of them in focus? Please.
Another thing that makes this stand out on the bullshit alarm is that it is NOTHING like the real leaked pictures that people release of new products. Usually, when people take pictures of new products, they're as technical as possible, lining up the device like they were in a studio showing the device open, closed, any neat features, and most importantly, what the screen and OS look like.
This crappy fake looks as though it was from the background of that crappy Hackers Movie with Angelina Jolie. You don't expect us to believe for a second that this picture was an accident, taken by someone who didn't even realize what they were taking a picture of, do you? What an insult.
The third, most damning piece of evidence I enter into the fold is the crappy lighting and texture effects the moron who made this used. What the hell kind of surface is that on the device? Granite? Some space-aged material? It doesn't reflect light, like the laptop in the background. It's obviously textured. Is it Olsonite, or some other space age material? I think its Fakelite.
My final point: look at the shadow on the pack of cigarettes. It casts a faint shadow away from the camera, what you'd expect from flash photography. Now, look at the shadow of the fake device. It casts a harsher shadow to the left, as though there was a strong light source to the right of the person taking the picture. Where's the shadow from that light source for the pack of cigarettes? It's got to be a powerful light source, because it was bright enough that the flash wasn't able to drown out its shadows.
This picture is a total fake and an insult to our collective intelligence.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
The Apple Store
The Apple Home Page
The iPod Product Page
iPod is the size of a deck of cards. 2.4" wide by 4" tall by
* One hour recharge, 10 hour battery capacity charges over FireWire -- no charging cable needed
* 20 minute skip protection FireWire built-in. fast -- entire CD download in under 10 seconds
* "To have your whole music library with you at all times is a quantum leap when it comes to music. And iPod fits in your pocket. Never before possible."
3 breakthroughs in iPod: 1. Ultra-portable. Ultra-thin hard drive. 1.8 inch hard drive is
* MP3 (incl. VBR), WAV, and AIFF playback. Holds 1000 songs.
* Music players: flash (MP3) player, hard disk player, CD player, MP3 CD player
Apple's new device is a hard drive-based music player: iPod.
* It's a part of everyone's life. It's a large target market. It knows now boundaries. And there is no market leader.
No one has really found the recipe yet for digital music. And not only will we find the recipe, we think the Apple brand is great for this.
* We are executing on this stuff today. Nine months from having a strategy, and we're basically shipping all of it -- iDVD will ship early next month.
iApps know all about the devices. But a thought occurred to us late last year -- the devices don't know anything about the iApps. There's never been a device built to take advantage... what if there was?
And we decided to do it.
The field we chose was music.
Why music? Well, we love music. and it's always good to do something you love.
* Jobs demos iMovie -- showed clips of baby videos
* iDVD2 shipping early November
* Jobs then showed a four-piece pie chart: video (iMovie 2), Music (iTunes), DVD (iDVD), and Photo
* Let's start with the digital hub. This is a strategy we announced in January 2001. We believe Mac can become the center of your digital lifestyle. In other words, we're being surrounded by these amazing digital devices these days.
* We have something really stunning for you today -- we have a lot of things going on.
* Steve Jobs comes onstage:
Don'tcha just know I gotta add this to my collection!
Curious George
***General Consultant to the Human Race*** My opinions are free. You get what you pay for.
MacMinute is at the event, covering it live. It's called the iPod, and it's an MP3 player.
Several news (not rumor) sites are claiming that Apple has announced the "iPod", a sort of mp3 player with HD...
-- Still waiting for the Nike endorsement
MacCentral coverage of the iPod. It is basically an ultrathin mp3 player. Here are the specs...
.78" thick 6.5 ounces
.2 inches thick. 5 Gigabytes. 1000 songs at 160K bit rate.
* Apple design -- stainless steel also a FireWire hard drive
* iPod is the size of a deck of cards. 2.4" wide by 4" tall by
* One hour recharge, 10 hour battery capacity charges over FireWire -- no charging cable needed
* 20 minute skip protection FireWire built-in. fast -- entire CD download in under 10 seconds
* "To have your whole music library with you at all times is a quantum leap when it comes to music. And iPod fits in your pocket. Never before possible."
* 3 breakthroughs in iPod: 1. Ultra-portable. Ultra-thin hard drive. 1.8 inch hard drive is
I can't get through to just about any Mac info site right now, but here's what I managed to sneak off MacNN before it got hosed again:
Apple's special event began slightly after its 10:00 am anticipated start time with Steve Jobs recapping Apple's digital hub vision. Jobs then introduced the iPod, a digital audio player with a 5GB drive, 20-minute skip protection, a FireWire port, and an advanced Lithium-polymer battery with up to 10 hours (and fully charges in just over an hour). The portable device is the about the "size of a deck of cards," with a backlit LCD display, and offers support for playlists, ID3 tags, and iTunes. The portable device fits in the palm of your hand (about the size of a credit card and less than an inch high), has a backlit LCD display, and offers support for playlists, ID3 tags, and iTunes.
No price info, though. I'm sure we'll see more later.
(apologies if someone else has already gotten this info into the discussion...)
Kycera 6035. It's a PalmOS 3.5 based dude. The sweet part is that it can function as a full wireless modem for itself standing alone or for another computer connected via serial cable to it's palm cradle. Verison let's you use CDMA calling at not extra fee (your minuets are used like it's a normal call). Plus, since it's a PalmOS based device, you don't have to deal with watered down, propriatarily controlled HDML sites..you have a full HTML browser (well, as full as it is on the Palm V) with an independent modem link to whatever dialup ISP you have.
a q.htm
Cons are that you now have a cell phone that is prone to crashes and it's a tad bulky (yet smaller than a full-sized Palm Pilot).
http://www.kyocera-wireless.com/kysmart/kysmart_f
- Sig
It's up now.
Have a look
***General Consultant to the Human Race*** My opinions are free. You get what you pay for.
Just released: .78 in.)
. php
The size of a deck of cards (2.4 x 4 x
* 5gB HDD
* 10 hour bttery life
* 20 min skip protection
* COOL ASS intigration with iTunes2
* crossfader: automatically fades between songs. new equalizer button next to burn and eject buttons, with presets, 10 sliders plus a preamp slider
* built-in. fast -- entire CD download in under 10 seconds
* If you add songs or re-arrange playlists, iPod automatically updates
see: http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0110/23.event
see: http://www.macnn.com/news.php?id=10182
http://kered.org
iPod:
- Holds over 1000 songs
- Weights just 6.5 ounces -- fits in your pocket
- Plays up to 10 hours with 20 minutes skip protection
- Auto synchronize all your music with iTunes
- Transfer a whole CD is less than 10 seconds
- Charge with the included power adapter or over FireWire
- Breakthrough UI with an innovative scroll wheel
- 60 mWatt amp powers high-fidelity sound earbuds
- Ultra-slim 5-gigabyte hard drive doubles as a FireWire disk
Price $399
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
I've found one little feature of this device that might actually convince me to get one. It's got a rather fast read and write speed, and it can hold things other than mp3s... which means it's a really, really small portable 5GB firewire HD, and I actually need one of those for transfering large software projects from mac to mac without dying over the DSL line... broadband is OK, but it's not fast networking. Given how long and tedious it is to burn three CDs with the latest version of the project, or to do reliable diffing across the whole thing, and the fact that this is more portable than the CDs... and add the bonus of having the music, and I might go for it.
-- Still waiting for the Nike endorsement
I remember that one! I thought it was kind of cute to have a PC in the palm of your hand. People even got Windows working on later models.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
Yeah, marketeers of the industry. No substance to any of their products. There was no substance at all in the first card expandable desktop PC (Apple 2), the first portable pc, the first windowing laptop, the first internet appliance, the first PDA, the first machine with Firewire, the first PC that could burn DVDs or in the first computer with a 16x9 aspect ratio.
You PC enthusiasts sure come up with a lot of useful ideas. Subscription operating systems? Pop up ads for "free" internet? You guys are fucking geniuses
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Wow. Poster must be wholly unable to think different. No HD because it (if it exists) is a PDA and needs a low power solution. No NIC because it (again, if it exists) has airport and doesn't need wires. MacOSX has no NIC and I mount NFS.
Get your head out of your 486 and welcome to the 21st century. And if you want a portable UNIX machine, buy a small PC.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
They're doing exactly what you want, and it's much cooler than PalmOS.
It's only a model.
"They announced the iPod instead, a lame MP3 player."
The iPod is not a PDA, but it probably is the best all-around MP3 player on the market, and certainly the best size/storage space ratio.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
(Okay... little strangeness there with /. -- let's try this again.)
Those talking about shadows not matching up are very stupid and ignoring the fact that a normal room contains a varied mix of ambient, omni, and spot lighting.
Apple may have a PDA in the labs, but this photo portrays an object that has nothing in common with the Apple design ethic other than it is silver. And even then, only one other Apple product is silver.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas