Look at the subtle and clever way the Apple Remote Control is opened to allow the user to replace the battery. A little indent at the bottom is actually a button, and pressing it pops open a battery carrier. On a new remote you can barely see any seams or anything at all. I'm betting (a very, very small bet) that there will be some similar way to pop open the iPhone to at the least, replace the SIM.
You simply can't have a GSM phone without a replaceable SIM. I, for example, already have an AT&T phone with a good data plan and a phone number I don't want to change. I'm assuming that the guy in the store is going to pop out the SIM from my current phone and into the iPhone while I'm there. They might be doing some kind of weird and Internationally unwelcome data load thing I suppose, but this is the way they do it on every other GSM phone in the world, so... it's got to be openable.
The reasons they didn't go with 3G are: It eats battery power; it's only in the cities at the moment; it uses WiFi when near a hotspot and hotspots are at most homes and many public places these days.
That said, I really wanted 3G because I get coverage here, I already have 3G included in my rate plan, and Cingular's 3G is pretty good and fast. I also want GPS. I expect both in the followup model, and I will probably get a nice price when I sell the original to get the new. So no worries. -Mike from http://www.myallo.com/
I think Apple learned a lesson, and it is that they can't let another company have control over their phones. So they must become an MNVO. They need to become a cellular provider themselves. This isn't too hard, you contract with a company like Cingular for the connectivity, but other than that you are your own company. This would let them be the proper cell provider, no bitching about being able to transfer songs into the phones, and they could do what they do best - integration. Proper syncing, proper Internet, proper Email, all the Apple way. This is the route I'm sure they will take. A GSM phone that can work with any GSM provider, but if you use Apple as your cell company you get all the excellent integration stuff.
Darn I forgot an important feature - Apple Remote Access. The iPhone could easily include it. That will be a wonderful remote for any Mac it is near OR a great gate or controller for your home Mac over the Internet via high speed phone link. Your Mac right on the video screen. Great for traveling, presentations, all sorts of stuff. A second remote screen for any Mac, anywhere you've got a cell signal. Wowsers! I predict it.
I think if Apple has a phone it will be a phone, iPod, PDA, Remote Access Device, *nix box, and 'the' video iPod. Why not? Look at what we think 'the' video iPod will be - nothing but a screen on the front, touch sensitive with controls appearing when you touch it, probably wireless, probably Bluetooth. You've got two thirds of a phone's hardware right there.. Add GSM and a few other things. Some smart phones are *nix based - just like OSX.
But the big thing would of course be integration. For that, Apple MUST become a virtual provider, subbing under, let's say, Cingular, like Disney did. Then they can let you buy tunes over the phone, sync properly, have high speed Internet connections that work, EMail that works,.mac integration, and no unreasonable cell providers to deal with. Sell it all in their retail stores. Your Apple GSM phone could use any GSM provider, but use Apple as your provider to get all the good integration stuff.
Hmm, I wonder why Apple just bought a ginormous data center? I wonder why the video iPod and iPhone has been delayed along with some other stuff like iTV? Cause 802.11n has been delayed! The second 802.11n hardware can be cut that is sure not to need changes when the final standard is ready, I think we will see sone way cool stuff flooding out from Apple...
BTW take a peek at http://www.myallo.com/, it's my new website that does learning to find interesting web stuff without you having to look for it.
Why this speculation? Because the parts have all been there for a while. And Apple has issued nothing big for a long time, and this takes a LOT of work to pull together software-wise. Note we already have voice control input and output on our Macs. We already have tablet control. We already have Apple Remote Access. We already have Bluetooth. Note I didn't put in Wi-Fi - it sucks power and BT is going to be revved soon to have much faster transfer and much longer range and higher-sound fidelity.
And let's recall Apple bought a huge data center recently. Huge. Very high capacity. Sure this will be used to ship movies around but also to handle the MNVO phone service. Apple would never ever brook the bull current phone carriers throw. So they will contract with Cingular and make their own service. Note Disney already DID this. Now Apple will have full control of the carrier. They can allow transfer of data freely, unlike the current carriers, and they can allow easier and more tightly integrated sync between phone and computer. The Apple phone will work with any carrier and Apple phone service will work with any GSM phone but Apple phone service will have tons of features no other carrier will, when used with Apple phones. And its all sold in the many Apple retail stores.
No new iPods all year, what happened? This. Is. Big. Better iPod. Video iPod. iPhone. Remote Mac control. Consumer device remote control. Very tight integration. Video AirPort Express plus BT range extender. I'm tellin ya. Soon! It's hard to get all these ducks in a row. I have no indide info. Just a brain.
The new device will be 4" by 6" by 0.75. The unit will be white plastic. All sides will be flat except all corners are rounded. There are no controls on the device except a hold switch. There will be an iPod dock port and a headphone jack and an infrared port. The entire front will be a touch sensitive 16:9 color screen. The front is touch sensitive. The device will have a rechargable battery and a hard disk. The battery is user replacable and the unit can be opened relatively easily by the user.
The device will work in multiple modes. As an iPod you hold it vertically. The entire screen shows the list of artists, menus and so forth. Touch anywhere on the screen and a translucent image of a click wheel appears. The location of the wheel varies a bit according to unit orientation and touch position. You use it as usual. Drag around the circle to scroll, tap or press to click in the five positions. The unit senses strength of touch by pressure on the case and/or variation in area of contact. Bluetooth allows loading stuff on the device albeit slowly, and using BT headphones.
The unit also works as a video player. The click wheel appears on top of the video as you touch. BT allows slow file transfers. Of course the port is high speed.
The unit also works as a learning remote control. A set of remote buttons appears on touch. It is an IR remote for CE devices, and a Bluetooth remote for your Mac. Your Mac shows a second screen on the screen of the device. Your touch controls the cursor and you can use guestures, and type if necessary on an onscreen keyboard. Fully control your Mac through this, ala Apple Remote Desktop. Audio output from Mac transmits to device so you can hear it. Using a bluetooth headset you can both hear the other Mac and transmit your voice to it, to control ot via Apple Speech recognition.
The unit also is a GSM quad band phone. You open the unit and put in your SIM card. Phone controls appear on the touch screen. Use BT headset and voice control.
This is all speculation. But it is perfectly logical and CAN BE DONE NOW. Well worth $500. I don't know if it comes out next week but you can bet the farm it will come out.
You could do that... Or you could reboot while holding down Option to get a choice of OS to boot (and then use Startup Disk in the System Preferences to change the default.) Or, you could use the Startup Disk control panel that Boot Camp installs on Windows (with the drivers) to switch the default startup OS!
Apple should use a two-finger-tap to do a right click. They already detect and ignore that gesture.. Using two fingers on the trackpad to scroll is implemented and works great. A one-finger tap does a left click.. Two-finger-tap is a natural extension.
"Under our Constitution, anonymous pamphleteering is not a pernicious, fraudulent practice, but an honorable tradition of advocacy and of dissent. Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority.... It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: TO PROTECT UNPOPULAR INDIVIDUALS FROM RETALIATION-AND THEIR IDEAS FROM SUPRESSION-at the hand of an intolerant society. The right to remain anonymous may be abused when it shields fraudulent conduct. But political speech by its nature will sometimes have unpalatable consequences, and, in general, our society accords greater weight to the value of free speech than to the dangers of its misuse."
United States Supreme Court decision No. 93-986 April 19, 1995 (caps added)
Video podcast support has been there from the beginning. Tiki Bar TV was there on day one, I believe. For another good one, try Rocketboom. For a tech one, try Systm (videos). Try Insane Films as well.
The 680 runs a fast Intel CPU, is Linux based, has stereo speakers, stereo Bluetooth, FM radio, GSM phone, SMS, MMS, EMail, WAP, Opera, Samba, telnet, Java, 3D graphics, camera that records video, MPEG4, 320x240 screen that plays video in landscape mode, mini USB, 2GB memory, decent battery, smaller than the SE P910, simple iPod-ian sort of controls, headphone jack on top, already out in other countries, well under $400 without subsidy, and has a cute multicolor light up logo.
The nice thing for Apple (and us geeks) is the phone is modular, a great blank slate for putting in your own software. Apple could just drop an iTunes player in there, or strip it to the kernel and redo the whole OS, or just the UI, or anything else. You can even start slow and push firmware updates to it as you write new stuff.
This is the phone I expected. A good start with tested hardware, but able to be fully customized. I suppose it could still happen.
Technology changes fast. The new Samsung 1.8" mini flash drives (same/similar chips Apple will use I assume) use five percent of the power of a magnetic hard disk. The new 70nm technology Samsung chips in question are fast - 57MB/s read, 16MB/s write. And they expect to double the density of these chips every 12 months. Current generation Samsung chips last 100K write cycles minimum. Some chips claim to go as high as 5 million cycles. I didn't see a spec for the specific new Samsung chips.
But let's say it is just 100,000 cycles minimum. Once you wrote the same sector 100K times, it's gone. Yikes! If you completely rewrite your iPod twice a day, it will only last for 130 years.
How do you know that? I'll guess that if fingers are on both sides of the top, then it does a left click. So, to do a right click you only have to lift the left finger. That would work fine.
You click the mouse same as the old one, by pushing down on the whole mouse until it clicks - tactile. The mouse senses what side of the top your finger is on, giving you a left and right click. You can also click the scroll ball on top of the mouse for a third button - tactile. And you can squeeze the sides for a fourth button - tactile. All these are programmable, and the ball scrolls 360 degrees.
Thinking people won't watch video on a small screen is just wrong. We watch video on small screens all the time right now, on camcorders, portable DVD players, pocket TVs, game devices, and web pages.
And don't just think in terms of feature films. Most things we see on small screens are short form. Movie trailers, music videos, demonstrations, news, video podcasts. It's videos of a couple of minutes that are best suited to watching on the commuter bus or train. But even feature films can work. Try watching Spider Man 2 on the Sony PSP's bright, wide 4" screen. It's really not bad!
No, Apple's vPod won't be the current iPod playing video on its two inch screen. Think different!
Take a PSP and chop off the game controls on the two ends, leaving just the screen. That's about the right form factor. Remove the UMB drive and put in a hard drive. Leave WiFi and the replacable battery in, replace USB with FireWire video I/O. Perhaps use touchscreen, or take the iPod control wheel and put it on the back of the unit. Don't look at me funny like that, think about it!
For functionality, let it play music and video. Let video go out thru FireWire for playback on other devices. Sync and stream in/out thru FireWire or WiFi. And add two more chunks of software: A Web browser so it can connect to the Web over WiFi when you're in the airport or Starbucks. And _Apple Remote Access_ so it can serve as a portable remote screen on any Mac it can see via WiFi. This lets it be a remote control for (or be controled by) any Mac (or VNC PC) in WiFi range or across the Internet world wide. This is big!
Now THAT's a cool, useful, elegant device, and it can be done with decent form factor, cost, and battery life right now. And the iTMS/iSync/ARA infrastructure is already in place. One more thing - use a good OLED screen for it. Those are thinner, brighter, lighter, and use less power than a backlit LCD. The one remaining problem of that technology - limited screen lifetime - is just about solved at this point.
1) It installs it but doesn't start it. You have to open Dashboard, find it in the Wigit catalog, and start it yourself. 2) Widgets run in a sandbox. 3) It's easy to close any Widget. Hold down the Option key, mouse over the Wiget, and the "X" appears allowing you to close it.
A full review of the phone used in the demo is at http://www.mobileburn.com/review.jsp?Id=903. Stereo and much other good stuff. Imagine it white instead of black, and major Apple help with the UI, and you might have something very, very nice.
I'm thinking voice interface. And not just a voice saying "Play" "Pause" "Song 14". Think Mac's voice synthesis speaking the song and artist names. [Backoff prediction: Play microsnippets of the songs as you scroll through them. Flash can be fast enough to do that.]
Apple should (and will, I think) add software and support to the Ericsson P800 mobile phone. This is already a good phone, a good PDA, an MP3 player, a video player, a Java machine, and has enough CPU power to run iPhoto, probably play QuickTime video, and lots of other stuff. Remember the Ericsson chief on stage with Jobs last year? I think they had a lot more than just iSync support for the T68 phone in mind. This a a great chunk of hardware Apple could integrate fully, maybe even make an Apple branded version.
Slashdot Mirror
Look at the subtle and clever way the Apple Remote Control is opened to allow the user to replace the battery. A little indent at the bottom is actually a button, and pressing it pops open a battery carrier. On a new remote you can barely see any seams or anything at all. I'm betting (a very, very small bet) that there will be some similar way to pop open the iPhone to at the least, replace the SIM.
You simply can't have a GSM phone without a replaceable SIM. I, for example, already have an AT&T phone with a good data plan and a phone number I don't want to change. I'm assuming that the guy in the store is going to pop out the SIM from my current phone and into the iPhone while I'm there. They might be doing some kind of weird and Internationally unwelcome data load thing I suppose, but this is the way they do it on every other GSM phone in the world, so... it's got to be openable.
The reasons they didn't go with 3G are: It eats battery power; it's only in the cities at the moment; it uses WiFi when near a hotspot and hotspots are at most homes and many public places these days.
That said, I really wanted 3G because I get coverage here, I already have 3G included in my rate plan, and Cingular's 3G is pretty good and fast. I also want GPS. I expect both in the followup model, and I will probably get a nice price when I sell the original to get the new. So no worries. -Mike from http://www.myallo.com/
I think Apple learned a lesson, and it is that they can't let another company have control over their phones. So they must become an MNVO. They need to become a cellular provider themselves. This isn't too hard, you contract with a company like Cingular for the connectivity, but other than that you are your own company. This would let them be the proper cell provider, no bitching about being able to transfer songs into the phones, and they could do what they do best - integration. Proper syncing, proper Internet, proper Email, all the Apple way. This is the route I'm sure they will take. A GSM phone that can work with any GSM provider, but if you use Apple as your cell company you get all the excellent integration stuff.
Darn I forgot an important feature - Apple Remote Access. The iPhone could easily include it. That will be a wonderful remote for any Mac it is near OR a great gate or controller for your home Mac over the Internet via high speed phone link. Your Mac right on the video screen. Great for traveling, presentations, all sorts of stuff. A second remote screen for any Mac, anywhere you've got a cell signal. Wowsers! I predict it.
I think if Apple has a phone it will be a phone, iPod, PDA, Remote Access Device, *nix box, and 'the' video iPod. Why not? Look at what we think 'the' video iPod will be - nothing but a screen on the front, touch sensitive with controls appearing when you touch it, probably wireless, probably Bluetooth. You've got two thirds of a phone's hardware right there.. Add GSM and a few other things. Some smart phones are *nix based - just like OSX.
.mac integration, and no unreasonable cell providers to deal with. Sell it all in their retail stores. Your Apple GSM phone could use any GSM provider, but use Apple as your provider to get all the good integration stuff.
But the big thing would of course be integration. For that, Apple MUST become a virtual provider, subbing under, let's say, Cingular, like Disney did. Then they can let you buy tunes over the phone, sync properly, have high speed Internet connections that work, EMail that works,
Hmm, I wonder why Apple just bought a ginormous data center? I wonder why the video iPod and iPhone has been delayed along with some other stuff like iTV? Cause 802.11n has been delayed! The second 802.11n hardware can be cut that is sure not to need changes when the final standard is ready, I think we will see sone way cool stuff flooding out from Apple...
BTW take a peek at http://www.myallo.com/, it's my new website that does learning to find interesting web stuff without you having to look for it.
Why this speculation? Because the parts have all been there for a while. And Apple has issued nothing big for a long time, and this takes a LOT of work to pull together software-wise. Note we already have voice control input and output on our Macs. We already have tablet control. We already have Apple Remote Access. We already have Bluetooth. Note I didn't put in Wi-Fi - it sucks power and BT is going to be revved soon to have much faster transfer and much longer range and higher-sound fidelity.
And let's recall Apple bought a huge data center recently. Huge. Very high capacity. Sure this will be used to ship movies around but also to handle the MNVO phone service. Apple would never ever brook the bull current phone carriers throw. So they will contract with Cingular and make their own service. Note Disney already DID this. Now Apple will have full control of the carrier. They can allow transfer of data freely, unlike the current carriers, and they can allow easier and more tightly integrated sync between phone and computer. The Apple phone will work with any carrier and Apple phone service will work with any GSM phone but Apple phone service will have tons of features no other carrier will, when used with Apple phones. And its all sold in the many Apple retail stores.
No new iPods all year, what happened? This. Is. Big. Better iPod. Video iPod. iPhone. Remote Mac control. Consumer device remote control. Very tight integration. Video AirPort Express plus BT range extender. I'm tellin ya. Soon! It's hard to get all these ducks in a row. I have no indide info. Just a brain.
The new device will be 4" by 6" by 0.75. The unit will be white plastic. All sides will be flat except all corners are rounded. There are no controls on the device except a hold switch. There will be an iPod dock port and a headphone jack and an infrared port. The entire front will be a touch sensitive 16:9 color screen. The front is touch sensitive. The device will have a rechargable battery and a hard disk. The battery is user replacable and the unit can be opened relatively easily by the user.
The device will work in multiple modes. As an iPod you hold it vertically. The entire screen shows the list of artists, menus and so forth. Touch anywhere on the screen and a translucent image of a click wheel appears. The location of the wheel varies a bit according to unit orientation and touch position. You use it as usual. Drag around the circle to scroll, tap or press to click in the five positions. The unit senses strength of touch by pressure on the case and/or variation in area of contact. Bluetooth allows loading stuff on the device albeit slowly, and using BT headphones.
The unit also works as a video player. The click wheel appears on top of the video as you touch. BT allows slow file transfers. Of course the port is high speed.
The unit also works as a learning remote control. A set of remote buttons appears on touch. It is an IR remote for CE devices, and a Bluetooth remote for your Mac. Your Mac shows a second screen on the screen of the device. Your touch controls the cursor and you can use guestures, and type if necessary on an onscreen keyboard. Fully control your Mac through this, ala Apple Remote Desktop. Audio output from Mac transmits to device so you can hear it. Using a bluetooth headset you can both hear the other Mac and transmit your voice to it, to control ot via Apple Speech recognition.
The unit also is a GSM quad band phone. You open the unit and put in your SIM card. Phone controls appear on the touch screen. Use BT headset and voice control.
This is all speculation. But it is perfectly logical and CAN BE DONE NOW. Well worth $500. I don't know if it comes out next week but you can bet the farm it will come out.
To just type the path into a file dialog box, type Shift-Command-G and a diaog will drop down for typing it.
Dosn't run on OSX.
You could do that... Or you could reboot while holding down Option to get a choice of OS to boot (and then use Startup Disk in the System Preferences to change the default.) Or, you could use the Startup Disk control panel that Boot Camp installs on Windows (with the drivers) to switch the default startup OS!
Apple should use a two-finger-tap to do a right click. They already detect and ignore that gesture.. Using two fingers on the trackpad to scroll is implemented and works great. A one-finger tap does a left click.. Two-finger-tap is a natural extension.
"Under our Constitution, anonymous pamphleteering is not a pernicious, fraudulent practice, but an honorable
tradition of advocacy and of dissent. Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority....
It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: TO PROTECT UNPOPULAR INDIVIDUALS FROM RETALIATION-AND THEIR IDEAS FROM SUPRESSION-at the hand of an intolerant society. The right to remain anonymous may be abused when it shields fraudulent conduct. But political speech by its nature will sometimes have unpalatable consequences, and, in general, our society accords greater weight to the value of free speech than to the dangers of its misuse."
United States Supreme Court decision No. 93-986 April 19, 1995 (caps added)
Video podcast support has been there from the beginning. Tiki Bar TV was there on day one, I believe. For another good one, try Rocketboom. For a tech one, try Systm (videos). Try Insane Films as well.
I'm very disappointed in the phone. I'm astonished Apple didn't use the Moto 680 as the hardware base for the phone. It is a decent phone, a decent music player AND a decent pocket video device. A review is at http://www.howardchui.com/modules.php?name=Section s&op=viewarticle&artid=186.
The 680 runs a fast Intel CPU, is Linux based, has stereo speakers, stereo Bluetooth, FM radio, GSM phone, SMS, MMS, EMail, WAP, Opera, Samba, telnet, Java, 3D graphics, camera that records video, MPEG4, 320x240 screen that plays video in landscape mode, mini USB, 2GB memory, decent battery, smaller than the SE P910, simple iPod-ian sort of controls, headphone jack on top, already out in other countries, well under $400 without subsidy, and has a cute multicolor light up logo.
The nice thing for Apple (and us geeks) is the phone is modular, a great blank slate for putting in your own software. Apple could just drop an iTunes player in there, or strip it to the kernel and redo the whole OS, or just the UI, or anything else. You can even start slow and push firmware updates to it as you write new stuff.
This is the phone I expected. A good start with tested hardware, but able to be fully customized. I suppose it could still happen.
But let's say it is just 100,000 cycles minimum. Once you wrote the same sector 100K times, it's gone. Yikes! If you completely rewrite your iPod twice a day, it will only last for 130 years.
How do you know that? I'll guess that if fingers are on both sides of the top, then it does a left click. So, to do a right click you only have to lift the left finger. That would work fine.
So BUY it. Plug it in. It will work just fine. No drivers, no hassle, it will just work, and always has on OSX. Have fun!
You click the mouse same as the old one, by pushing down on the whole mouse until it clicks - tactile. The mouse senses what side of the top your finger is on, giving you a left and right click. You can also click the scroll ball on top of the mouse for a third button - tactile. And you can squeeze the sides for a fourth button - tactile. All these are programmable, and the ball scrolls 360 degrees.
Thinking people won't watch video on a small screen is just wrong. We watch video on small screens all the time right now, on camcorders, portable DVD players, pocket TVs, game devices, and web pages.
And don't just think in terms of feature films. Most things we see on small screens are short form. Movie trailers, music videos, demonstrations, news, video podcasts. It's videos of a couple of minutes that are best suited to watching on the commuter bus or train. But even feature films can work. Try watching Spider Man 2 on the Sony PSP's bright, wide 4" screen. It's really not bad!
No, Apple's vPod won't be the current iPod playing video on its two inch screen. Think different!
Take a PSP and chop off the game controls on the two ends, leaving just the screen. That's about the right form factor. Remove the UMB drive and put in a hard drive. Leave WiFi and the replacable battery in, replace USB with FireWire video I/O. Perhaps use touchscreen, or take the iPod control wheel and put it on the back of the unit. Don't look at me funny like that, think about it!
For functionality, let it play music and video. Let video go out thru FireWire for playback on other devices. Sync and stream in/out thru FireWire or WiFi. And add two more chunks of software: A Web browser so it can connect to the Web over WiFi when you're in the airport or Starbucks. And _Apple Remote Access_ so it can serve as a portable remote screen on any Mac it can see via WiFi. This lets it be a remote control for (or be controled by) any Mac (or VNC PC) in WiFi range or across the Internet world wide. This is big!
Now THAT's a cool, useful, elegant device, and it can be done with decent form factor, cost, and battery life right now. And the iTMS/iSync/ARA infrastructure is already in place. One more thing - use a good OLED screen for it. Those are thinner, brighter, lighter, and use less power than a backlit LCD. The one remaining problem of that technology - limited screen lifetime - is just about solved at this point.
I see it happening next year.
1) It installs it but doesn't start it. You have to open Dashboard, find it in the Wigit catalog, and start it yourself.
2) Widgets run in a sandbox.
3) It's easy to close any Widget. Hold down the Option key, mouse over the Wiget, and the "X" appears allowing you to close it.
A full review of the phone used in the demo is at http://www.mobileburn.com/review.jsp?Id=903. Stereo and much other good stuff. Imagine it white instead of black, and major Apple help with the UI, and you might have something very, very nice.
I'm thinking voice interface. And not just a voice saying "Play" "Pause" "Song 14". Think Mac's voice synthesis speaking the song and artist names. [Backoff prediction: Play microsnippets of the songs as you scroll through them. Flash can be fast enough to do that.]
Apple should (and will, I think) add software and support to the Ericsson P800 mobile phone. This is already a good phone, a good PDA, an MP3 player, a video player, a Java machine, and has enough CPU power to run iPhoto, probably play QuickTime video, and lots of other stuff. Remember the Ericsson chief on stage with Jobs last year? I think they had a lot more than just iSync support for the T68 phone in mind. This a a great chunk of hardware Apple could integrate fully, maybe even make an Apple branded version.