Rumor: iPhone 3G Launch on June 9th

Filed under: Rumors, WWDC, Steve Jobs, iPhone Gizmodo is reporting that "sources close to the 3G launch" have provided confirmation that the iPhone 3G will be announced at the WWDC 2008 Keynote on June 9th. While this does sound a lot like a rumor, other factors such as nonexistent stocks of first-generation iPhones, the flurry of non-US iPhone launch announcements last week, and the all-but-confirmed Steve Jobs keynote all point to something big.Gizmodo also speculates that European launch...

Filed under: Rumors, WWDC, Steve Jobs, iPhone Gizmodo is reporting that "sources close to the 3G launch" have provided confirmation that the iPhone 3G will be announced at the WWDC 2008 Keynote on June 9th. While this does sound a lot like a rumor, other factors such as nonexistent stocks of first-generation iPhones, the flurry of non-US iPhone launch announcements last week, and the all-but-confirmed Steve Jobs keynote all point to something big.Gizmodo also speculates that European launch dates are scheduled to follow close on the heels of the US announcement, with iPhone 3G availability in Spain at the grand opening of the Telefonica megastore in Madrid on June 18th.June 9th sounds good to me, since I can buy my wife an iPhone 3G for our 29th anniversary on that day! What's your take on the iPhone 3G rumor du jour? Give it a reality check by taking our poll:View PollTip 'o the TUAW Stetson to Sharvil for pointing this out!Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

  • ★ Regarding the WSJ’s Report That Steve Jobs Had a Liver Transplant

    [This piece combines into a single narrative and expands upon three shorter pieces I posted immediately after this news broke Friday night.] Friday night around midnight, The Wall Street Journal published a report headlined “Jobs Had Liver Transplant”1 by Yukari Iwatani Kane and Joann S. Lublin. It stated: Steve Jobs, who has been on medical leave from Apple Inc. since January to treat an undisclosed medical condition, received a liver transplant in Tennessee about two months ago. The chief executive has been recovering well and is expected to return to work on schedule later this month, though he may work part-time initially. What’s intriguing about this story is not the question of whether Jobs actually had a liver transplant. I do not doubt that (although I’d like to see better sources for it). What is intriguing is the question of who leaked this information to the Journal and why. The WSJ’s Unusual Lack of Sourcing There are several highly unusual aspects to the Journal’s story. First is that they offer no source for the information — not even an “according to sources familiar the matter”. But yet they state it flatly as certain fact that Steve Jobs had a secret liver transplant in Tennessee. Blockbuster news with no sourcing whatsoever. To call that curious is an understatement. And, coming in the opening paragraph of a page one story, it could not be a careless omission. The basic tenets of journalism are simple. One reports facts and how one knows them. The principal is much like that of publishing scientific papers, where one describes not just the results, but also exactly how the results were obtained, so that others can reproduce them. This is why named sources are so much more valuable than anonymous sources; with a named source, other reporters can contact the source to verify the information. But there’s an apt journalism adage from Lord Northcliffe: “News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising.” And so sometimes the only sources for certain information are those who cannot or will not allow their names to be used. Most publications, and certainly all publications of the stature of The Wall Street Journal, have strict guidelines covering the use of anonymous sources. My friend Matt Deatherage (publisher of the estimable MacJournals) quoted the following from the Journal’s own Wall Street Journal Guide to Business Style and Usage in a post to the MacJournals-Talk mailing list: ANONYMOUS SOURCES: Accepting a source’s request for anonymity sometimes is the only practical way to obtain important information, but we must be circumspect. On-the-record sources are always preferable because they may be held personally accountable for what they say and are therefore generally more certain to be scrupulously accurate. Also, readers are able to made judgments about the reliability of those whose identities are provided. In cases where the person’s identity is to be protected, take pains to indicate where his or her biases might lie: “an executive working for a competitor … an executive who left the company in a management shakeup … a laid-off employee …” or “a close relative of the plaintiff.” Their story on Jobs’s purported liver transplant offers no sourcing for the reader to judge. It entirely hinges on the (admittedly significant) credibility of The Wall Street Journal itself. Again, I point all this out not to say that I don’t believe their report. I’m as big a cynic regarding anonymous sourcing as anyone, but I believe that Jobs indeed had a liver transplant in Tennessee simply because The Wall Street Journal has placed its credibility behind the story. There is no hedging or fudging in their report. If it’s not true, it would amount to one of the biggest mistakes in their esteemed history. But reputable news publications do not ordinarily report utterly unsourced news. (I cannot find another example of the Journal reporting completely unsourced page one news.) So: Why? Most major news publications have picked up the story, but only by sourcing the information to Journal itself. For example: Bloomberg, The San Jose Mercury News, ABC News, and The BBC. Bloomberg’s report is indicative of this second-hand reporting: Steve Jobs, co-founder and chief executive officer of Apple Inc., underwent a liver transplant two months ago, the Wall Street Journal reported, without disclosing the source of the information. Even The New York Times has published a piece (“Apple Chief Reportedly Had Liver Transplant”) but they too have no source for the news other than the report in the Journal. (Surely the Times has reporters digging into this story; the aforelinked piece crediting only the Journal ran almost 24 hours after the Journal’s story, and as of this writing, four hours later, has not hit the front page of nytimes.com.) The only publication claiming independent verification is CNBC, late Saturday night: Two sources confirmed to CNBC that Jobs had the surgery and another confirmed that his plane flew from San Jose to Memphis in late March. Further curiosity: whoever the Journal’s source, they didn’t give the WSJ any publishable information regarding why Jobs needed a new liver — that part of the article is pure speculation, quoting doctors who have never treated Jobs personally. Is it because the Journal’s source doesn’t know, or because the source wouldn’t tell? There’s a big difference. Why Tennessee? There have been rumors circulating for months that Steve Jobs had moved to Tennessee for some sort of medical treatment. Here’s a rumor Barron’s Tech Trader Daily published on April 15, which in turn cites a report by Alexander Haislip of the PEHub Blog (which does not have publicly available archives). Haislip wrote: I spoke with a well-connected business person in Memphis this morning who says that there is a house in a swank neighborhood there that has been bought for a princely sum and is undergoing minor renovations in preparation for its new resident. He says he has reason to believe Apple CEO Steve Jobs is moving to the city to treat his pancreatic cancer. Several readers sent me this Barron’s link back when it was new, but I decided against linking to it because it was just so sketchily sourced. (And even now, if the WSJ report turns out to be completely accurate, the Barron’s rumor was wrong with regard to the treatment for which Jobs went to Tennessee.) I’ve ignored a slew of Jobs-related rumors over the past year because of the sourcing. One thing that struck me as wrong at the outset regarding these “Jobs-in-Tennessee” rumors is the question of why he’d bother going to Tennessee in the first place. Tennessee may be a lovely state, but, well, it doesn’t sound like Steve Jobs country. You don’t need to leave the Bay area to get world-class medical treatment. The Journal’s report has a good answer:2 The specifics of Mr. Jobs’s surgery couldn’t be established, but according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which manages the transplant network in the U.S., there are no residency requirements for transplants. Having the procedure done in Tennessee makes sense because its list of patients waiting for transplants is shorter than in many other states. According to data provided by UNOS, in 2006, the median number of days from joining the liver waiting list to transplant was 306 nationally. In Tennessee, it was 48 days. But if the Journal knows that Jobs had a transplant, and knows that it was performed in Tennessee, why don’t they know which hospital? Again from their report: Three hospitals in Tennessee — Le Bonheur Children’s Medical Center in Memphis, Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville and Methodist University Hospital in Memphis — are designated as liver-transplant centers, according to UNOS. A spokeswoman for Le Bonheur said the hospital doesn’t perform liver transplants in adults. A Vanderbilt spokesman said it didn’t treat Mr. Jobs. A spokeswoman for Methodist University said Mr. Jobs isn’t listed as a patient there. Reading between the lines, if Jobs had a liver transplant in Tennessee, it must have been at one of these three hospitals. Two flatly deny it, but the third, Methodist University, simply stated Jobs “isn’t listed as a patient” — present tense, not past tense. So it must have been performed there. But why can’t the Journal state that as fact as well? Regarding the Timing and Source of the Leak That this news broke months after the purported transplant, at midnight on the Friday of what appears to be the most successful new product launch in Apple history, strikes me as beyond coincidence. My first thought was that it must be a deliberate, timed leak from Apple. Assuming the story is true and that Apple felt the need to eventually release the news, when better to release it than on the very day when it most appears that Apple has continued to thrive while Jobs was on medical leave? MG Siegler at TechCrunch speculates similarly: We’d be remiss if we didn’t note that the timing of this story appears favorable for Apple. This news breaks late on a Friday, after Apple has just held a successful launch of a very high profile new product, the iPhone 3G S, that sent the stock soaring today. Obviously, the market won’t be open again until Monday. I don’t see how the leak could have came from someone with a competitive interest against Apple. The timing is completely favorable to Apple; if the leak had came from someone wishing ill against Apple, it would have come at some time, any time, other than in the wake of the extremely successful iPhone 3G S launch. Plus, other than the surprise that Jobs had a liver transplant in the first place, the gist of the article is largely favorable to Apple. It emphasizes that Jobs is recovering, is still set to return to work this month, and has already been seen on Apple’s campus recently. It is also the case that it would be unconscionable for the information to come from someone with a position against Apple and for the Journal not to describe the source as such. Thus I see only three possible sources for the leak. Theory 1: That the information came without Jobs’s permission or knowledge, from a healthcare provider with knowledge of Jobs’s medical situation. Presumably, given the Journal’s report, from someone at Methodist University Hospital in Memphis. Such a leak would clearly be a violation of HIPAA privacy laws. This might explain the utter lack of sourcing and the certainty as to the veracity of the information, but it would not explain the perfect-for-Apple timing of the leak, which timing I firmly believe is simply too convenient to be coincidence. It would also raise serious questions regarding the ethics of the Wall Street Journal. I therefore discount this possibility. Theory 2: That the leak was authorized by Jobs himself. I doubt Jobs personally spoke to the Journal reporters (see below), but it could have been someone close to him (if so, I’d guess Katie Cotton or someone else high up in Apple Communications) doing it with his permission. The thinking behind this theory would be that if the information was going to become public eventually, why not control it and have it come out at the most advantageous time possible. This scenario would explain the certainty of the information, but not the odd lack of sourcing. My thoughts then ran to the possibility that perhaps Jobs himself is the source — he has occasionally called reporters personally. And if he offered the information only on the condition that it not be sourced to him by name, perhaps the Journal couldn’t bring themselves to describe Jobs himself as merely “a source familiar with the situation” or somesuch. But the second paragraph in the Journal story seems to preclude Jobs personally as the source: Mr. Jobs didn’t respond to an email requesting comment. “Steve continues to look forward to returning at the end of June, and there’s nothing further to say,” said Apple spokeswoman Katie Cotton. That language leaves the clear impression that Jobs did not personally contribute to the report, and it implies that Katie Cotton did not either. It’s one thing for reporters to omit information; it is something else entirely to purposefully mislead readers. There are also certain implications in the Journal’s story that cast Jobs in an unflattering light. William Hawkins, a doctor specializing in pancreatic and gastrointestinal surgery at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., said that the type of slow-growing pancreatic tumor Mr. Jobs had will commonly metastasize in another organ during a patient’s lifetime, and that the organ is usually the liver. “All total, 75% of patients are going to have the disease spread over the course of their life,” said Dr. Hawkins, who has not treated Mr. Jobs. Getting a liver transplant to treat a metastasized neuroendocrine tumor is controversial because livers are scarce and the surgery’s efficacy as a cure hasn’t been proved, Dr. Hawkins added. He said that patients whose tumors have metastasized can live for as many as 10 years without any treatment so it is hard to determine how successful a transplant has been in curing the disease. This is ugly business. They’re quoting a doctor who specializes in pancreatic and gastrointestinal surgery as saying (1) that it’s common for someone who had the cancer Jobs had to subsequently get cancer in their liver; (2) that liver transplants are not proven to help in such cases; and (3) obtaining a liver transplant in such cases is therefore controversial because it’s taking a liver that could otherwise have been put to better use by someone with some other type of liver ailment. There is no other way to read this than as an implication that Steve Jobs may have gotten a liver that should have gone to someone else. Keep in mind that this entire ugly implication is not stated as fact and is attributed as speculation from a doctor who admittedly has not treated Steve Jobs. But the fact that it is in the story at all makes me question whether any of the information in the story came with Steve Jobs’s permission, tacit or otherwise. Theory 3: That a member of Apple’s board of directors leaked the information to the Journal without Jobs’s permission or knowledge, or perhaps, if the matter of public disclosure had been posed to and dismissed by Jobs at a board meeting, expressly against Jobs’s wishes. The scenario I am imagining here is that Jobs does not wish to reveal anything regarding his medical situation, but that a member (or contingent) of Apple’s board believes it is in the company’s interest to release the basic gist of the story, regardless of Jobs’s wishes. This scenario would explain the timing, the certainty, and perhaps even the lack of sourcing. (Although if this scenario is the case, certainly Jobs himself must suspect the source of the leak is from the board.) Note also that some portions of Kane and Lublin’s WSJ report must have been sourced from someone on, or very close to, Apple’s board of directors: When he does return, Mr. Jobs may be encouraged by his physicians to initially “work part-time for a month or two,” a person familiar with the thinking at Apple said. That may lead Tim Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer, to take “a more encompassing role,” this person said. The person added that Mr. Cook may be appointed to Apple’s board in the not-too-distant future. […] At least some Apple directors were aware of the CEO’s surgery. As part of an agreement with Mr. Jobs in place before he went on leave, some board members have been briefed weekly on the CEO’s condition by his physician. Who else other than a source on Apple’s board would know that Tim Cook may soon join the board, or that some board members were briefed weekly?3 This third scenario is my best guess as to the Journal’s source. It sounds sensational to speculate that there is conflict in this regard between Jobs and at least some contingent of Apple’s board of directors, but sensational or not, it makes more sense to me than any other scenario. It also fits with my belief that Steve Jobs does not want to disclose anything about his health whatsoever. As usual, I’m linking to a Google redirection to the WSJ story. If I link directly to the WSJ web site, only paid WSJ subscribers will be able to read the story. The WSJ allows referrals from Google to see full article content. ↩ Apple board member and Jobs confidant Al Gore is from Tennessee. But his home is in Nashville, not Memphis, so I can’t think of any reason Gore would have played a role in Jobs’s decision to go there. ↩ In theory the Journal’s source could be Tim Cook, but that goes against everything I have ever heard about Cook. I believe him to be loyal, honest, and to have deservedly earned Steve Jobs’s full trust. I truly believe that Cook would much prefer to continue in his current role in an Apple with Jobs as CEO than to be CEO of a Jobs-less Apple. Plus, Cook doesn’t need to angle through the press for anything. If Jobs steps down as CEO any time in the foreseeable future, the CEO job goes to Cook. No one whose opinion I value doubts this. It’s simply a question of whether Cook runs operations as “COO” with Steve Jobs overseeing product development, or as “CEO” without Steve Jobs overseeing product development. ↩

  • 15 Things We Might See at WWDC 2010

     After search giant Google hurled a barrage of not-so-subtle spears in Apple’s direction at the Google I/O developer conference, all eyes are now on the World Wide Developer Conference that Cupertino will be launching June 7 with a keynote from CEO Steve Jobs.While a fourth-generation iPhone is a given at this point after an absurd number of leaks in recent weeks, Apple CEO Steve Jobs himself promised an inquisitive e-mailer only a few days ago: “You won’t be disappointed.” So we put our thinking cap on and came up with this list of cool stuff we might see when WWDC 2010 kicks off June 7 and wraps up on June 11.Safari 5 (or maybe 4.5)We think Safari is still pretty great, even against more recent challengs from Google Chrome and Firefox 3.6. But with the Chrome browser finally out of beta this week, Apple may have to work harder to pound out Safari’s remaining limitations.Among them: No API for extensions, as noted this week by Daring Fireball’s own John Gruber after Google’s announcement that Chrome is now officially “stable.” That means that great third-party software like 1Password and Evernote has to resort to kludgy hacks to work intimately with Safari. Heck, even good ol’ Adobe Flash might work better with an API (stranger things have happened). Gruber also calls out Apple for not empowering Safari with a true ability to automatically reopen pages left open when the app was closed. Yes, please.New Mac Pros -- Finally!The poor Mac Pro has certainly gone neglected, with its last update more than a year ago. Worse yet, the desktop behemoth still carries a form factor borrowed from the Power Mac G5 before it -- and in computer years, that makes it a veritable dinosaur.Although we’ve heard plenty of rumors about Intel’s new six-core Core i7-980X processor landing in a refreshed Mac Pro as far back as January and February of this year, the summer has arrived and there’s still nothing official on the radar. Creative professionals are likely worried about Apple’s silence with regard to such new hardware, but that could all change with one presentation.Mac OS X 10.7Many developers are also rightfully worried that this year’s WWDC is too focused on iPhone OS, and many questions remain as to when Apple might shed some light on their intentions for Mac OS X 10.7. Granted, Snow Leopard 10.6 was released only last September, but that update was more about optimizing Leopard 10.5 than adding hot new features to the Mac (unless you count getting back a bunch of hard drive space as a “hot” new feature).Our prediction is that Mac OS X 10.7 will get at least a cursory mention at WWDC 2010, and we won’t get a real preview of a new desktop operating system until WWDC 2011. Thankfully, Snow Leopard 10.6 runs like smooth, creamy butter most of the time -- and Apple keeps the updates coming regular enough to squash anything that comes up, with a 10.6.4 patch already in beta testing.iPhone OS 4.0 for iPadWe’ve already seen all of the cool stuff that’s presumably coming next month with iPhone OS 4.0, such as Folders, multitasking and threaded e-mail. But we were bummed to hear that the fresh new iPad won’t get the 4.0 love until sometime this fall, by which time Apple will likely be on 4.1 or so.Here’s hoping that Apple will give us at least a peek at iPhone OS 4.x for the iPad at WWDC -- after all, developers will certainly appreciate a longer lead time to rework their apps for the tablet device after having to rush them together between late January and early April for the U.S. iPad launch. The rest of us will just have to wait… and weep.The Real Apple TV Take 2Remember back in January, 2008 when Apple took the wraps off “Take 2” of its “still a hobby” Apple TV? Despite a price drop, closer ties with iTunes and the ability to purchase content directly from the box itself, the Apple TV has continued to bore most everyone who sees it, except for the die-hard hackers who continue to squeeze as much as possible out of the device’s anemic processor and (gasp!) Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger operating system by way of unsanctioned apps like nitoTV and Boxee.We figure the time has come for a truly revolutionary overhaul of Apple TV, especially now that arch-nemesis Google is breathing down Apple’s neck with Google TV, slated for release this fall. Rumors abound that Apple TV may get iPhone OS-ified and will adopt the tiny A4 architecture that will come standard in the next iPhone. Additionally, the new Apple TV will have 1080p HD and 16GB of storage, as well as be a part of Apple's rumored new cloud storage network. The best part about these rumors is that the device is slated to sell for only $99, which will make die hard Apple fans with a tight budget extremely happy. MobileMe: Now With More Free!Recent rumors have speculated that Apple may take a cue from Google and start offering their cloud-based MobileMe service absolutely free to all users. While that would no doubt raise the ire of longtime .Mac users who have paid good money each year to stay with the often-questionable service, it’s really the only recourse Apple may have to keep up with Google now.MobileMe itself isn’t spectacular as it exists now, save for its awesome push e-mail, Find My iPhone, contacts and calendars. The recent web-based Mail beta shows that Apple is taking baby steps toward improving the service, but they’ve got a long ways to go yet. Let’s see that acquisition of Lala start moving iTunes into the cloud, for instance, and speaking of that...iTunes in the CloudSince Apple purchased Lala.com, pundits have been short-circuiting their craniums trying to guess exactly what Cupertino plans to do with the technology -- and equally as important, when that fateful day might arrive. We’re not so sold on the idea of having iTunes “in the cloud” -- call us old fashioned, but it’s kind of nice to actually feel like you own your music, especially now that it’s finally DRM-free.Be that as it may, Apple now appears late to the cloud-based music game, with Google stepping up to the plate to make Android such a cloud-centric experience. We’re not sure that WWDC is the right forum to finally reveal what the company is doing with Lala’s brains, but surely Apple will have to play their hand soon enough.NEXT: iPhones, iTunes and the MacBook Air>>  A Fourth-Generation iPhone No One is ExpectingWhat if Steve Jobs got on stage for his keynote on June 7 and presented an iPhone that was totally different from what Gizmodo and others have leaked? A new report this week from Digitimes has posed just such a possibility, and proposes that the project, codenamed “N91” -- the leaked iPhone we’ve already seen is “N90” -- may exist as “a parallel product to back up the N90 in case there are major delays due to significant modifications in casing, display resolution, digital camera support and so forth.” The report goes on to describe the backup product as more similar in style and form to the existing iPhone 3GS. At this point, everyone is expecting the leaked iPhone (which has been dubbed “iPhone HD” by pundits) to allow some kind of video chatting thanks to the widely exposed leaks of the device with a front-facing camera. Would you be disappointed to see the equivalent of an “iPhone 3GS Plus” at this point? We would...Final Cut Studio 4Sure, we know that the third generation of Final Cut Studio was only released last year, but the update offered little in the way of new features and seemed to take away more than it gave (especially for PowerPC owners, who are now permanently relegated to Final Cut Studio 2, as the newest version requires an Intel processor). The biggest problem with Apple’s pro video suite is that, despite the big 64-bit push with Snow Leopard 10.6, none of Final Cut Studio is 64-bit native -- and those applications could use it.It might be out of character for Apple to unveil a new Final Cut Studio at WWDC, but given the recent hysteria among video professionals upon hearing rumors that the high-end software might be “dumbed down” to make it more consumer-centric, any news on its future would be good news.iTunes 10Speaking of apps that could use a 64-bit kick in the pants -- Apple, what’s going on with iTunes? Despite being the center of the known universe for all iDevices, iTunes continues to be upgraded on top of molasses-like legacy code. It’s like living in a parallel universe, knowing that the Windows version of iTunes is actually faster than it is on the Mac -- that speaks volumes.While cool new features would be welcome also, the reality is that iTunes hasn’t grown all that much over the last few major releases -- does anyone really use the Genius feature, for instance? Where is the built-in lyrics feature for music? (Apple added a section for such metadata several versions back, but you have to do the footwork yourself.) Or how about better media management capabilities, now that we’ve got ever-bigger video files to sync to our iPad but are running out of space on our internal hard drives?iTunes 9.x feels pretty kludgy by this point, so anything is welcome here -- but keep in mind that most big iTunes updates tend to come later in the year, often coupled with the release of new iPods.iLife ’11Maybe we’re starting to sound like a broken record here, but iLife ’09 is another Apple package that’s getting long in the tooth, and could also use a much-needed 64-bit transfusion. We can’t be the only ones who notice that iPhoto, for example, starts to bog down the more we throw pictures at it, so… there’s that. And don’t get us started about iMovie, which for all of its simplicity is an absolute speed dog when you actually have to use it.Hey, perhaps we’re just impatient -- but it seems to us that for all the advancements in the processor and graphics speed of our Macs, it doesn’t take long before all this great software starts to bog down. iLife ’11 might be a few more months in the oven, but it’s never too early to request that Apple slow down on the new features and pull a Snow Leopard here: Let’s see some performance tweaks!iPhone OS + Jailbreak = LoveIf Apple really wanted to make heads spin at WWDC, they’d put down their swords and start playing nice with the jailbreak community. You know, those guys (and gals?) who tirelessly work to free iPhone OS from Apple’s shackles so we can install stuff that Cupertino wishes didn’t exist in the first place, including a GSM unlock for our iPhone (which also frees us from AT&T’s heavy ball and chain at the same time).Frankly, the “cat and mouse game” (as Steve Jobs himself has referred to it) has kind of landed in favor of the jailbreak community anyway of late, with even the latest iPhone OS 4.0 beta build being easy prey for the jailbreak geniuses. Maybe it’s time for Apple to stop worrying and love the jailbreak, officially opening up the device to other apps beyond their gated App Store walls. We can dream, can’t we…?MacBook Air, ReduxNow that the MacBook and MacBook Pro lines have gotten a souped-up refresh and the iPad is on the scene, the MacBook Air is beginning to look a little more overpriced and underpowered than usual. Even though the device is barely two and a half years old, it may be time for Apple to either put it out of its misery or rework it as a touchscreen-enabled, lust-worthy member of Cupertino’s notebook lineup.It’s not hard to imagine that one day soon, the MacBook Air might very well become the “iPad Extreme” -- think of an iPad with attached hardware keyboard, maybe even capable of dual-booting both Mac OS X and iPhone OS so you can get the best of both worlds. We might line up for that one!iPhone Goes CDMAWill they or won’t they? An iPhone compatible with the CDMA networks used by Verizon Wireless and Sprint here in the U.S. has been rumored and desired since the device took center stage at the Macworld 2007 keynote, and here we are more than three years later and AT&T continues to have an exclusive clamp on the GSM-only device.Of course, rumors have run rampant in recent months that AT&T’s exclusive contract is about to end, and that possibly both Verizon and Sprint will finally get in the iPhone game -- to the detriment of AT&T, who is reported to lose possibly as much as 40 percent of its customer base as they defect to one of the CDMA carriers. No better time to announce such a device than at WWDC, where an annual refresh of the iPhone hardware is expected to be a lock.All we ask is that Apple make it an “all in one” device -- meaning both GSM and CDMA, so we can sign in blood with Verizon, Sprint or AT&T here and then have the freedom to buy local GSM-based SIM cards for international travel. Is that asking too much?Presenting… Something Totally New?Apple has had a busy year refreshing its Mac hardware, announcing and subsequently launching the iPad and prepping for the rumored fourth-generation iPhone expected in June, but what if we’ve all overlooked something totally new? Cupertino would seem to have all of the bases covered, from laptop and desktop computers, portable media devices, mobile phones and peripherals -- but that doesn’t mean they can’t still sneak in a curve ball to “shock and awe” us.The question is, what might that be? Only Steve Jobs and maybe a handful of others in Cupertino presumably know the answer to that question, but Apple has a way of dazzling us by reinventing something we’ve always taken for granted, such as the cell phone (with the original iPhone in 2007) or even our very definition of “portable” music (the original iPod in 2001).Whatever it might be, you’re almost certainly guaranteed to have never needed it before, but you’ll surely have to have it once Steve Jobs whips it out. That’s just how Apple rolls.*****Of course, WWDC isn’t simply about hot new Apple products -- it’s about the company intimately working with third-party developers to create the next generation of software that we’ll all swoon over. One thing that the iPhone OS-based devices have shown us: The future is less about hardware and more about the software that runs it.Viewed in that light, the developer conference isn’t simply a “gee-whiz” keynote with fancy new toys from Apple, but rather a plentiful seeding of developer talent that will grow over time and continue to harvest wonders for years to come. We can’t wait to see what Apple helps them create next!

  • TUAW predicts tomorrow's event

    Filed under: Apple Corporate, Odds and endsAs we count down the final tablet-free hours, we've gathered our writers together to predict what we think will be announced tomorrow at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Feel free to add your own predictions in the comments below. Sang Tang 9.6 inch LED-backlit display Wireless HDMI support (to output to TV) Front facing camera Erica Sadun Tomorrow, we expect to see Apple finally launch the long awaited tablet. It will likely feature a 10.5-inch diagonal capacitive touch display and look and function much like a large iPod touch. Running iPhone OS, it may feature an enhanced vocabulary of user-interaction gestures, suitable for the larger screen size. The new tablet should offer a variety of augmented reality applications, allowing users to interact with and annotate many kinds of media including TV and movies, maps, newspapers, and more. Although I'd like to see a front-facing camera on the unit, I can easily see why Apple might omit one, so I'll take a pass on voting for or against. Looking towards the netbook market for competition, the tablet may provide optional nationwide wireless for a monthly fee. I'm keeping my prediction on the conservative side -- so I'm guessing no mind blowing new tech on-board, at least at the start with product launch. A larger iPod with good connectivity options and excellent media provider deals is enough to get the tablet going without any special OMG One More Thing items needed. It will help if the new tablet better integrate with Apple's emerging cloud services, namely Mobile Me and iWork.com. The rainbowunicornpuppies will be an optional extra for a small fee, and Uncle Steve will be giving candy to all the good little children. David Winograd The most amazing thing to me is that with thousands of rumor stories fueling the blogs, we really know nothing that's completely official. The controlled leak to the Wall Street Journal was brilliant since it gave not one detail outside of the fact that the thing is real. So, my random guesses are: 10" LED screen Cameras on both the front and back, both for pictures and iChat. Running iPhone OS 4.0 which should be announced tomorrow. Allow tethering to an iphone, maybe not for data but for the ability to use a keyboard. Hopefully no additional data plan, since I really can't see people wanting to pay another monthly bill. If there is a plan, I hope it to be optional. Lots of new gestures available. I see Verizon coming on board but not now. My guess is that it'll be announced later in the year with Phone OS 4.0. Steve Sande I'm predicting that the tablet, after all of the hype and alleged "forecasting" by every Apple fanboy, will make absolutely nobody completely happy. I also predict that many of our commenters will say that it's the stupidest thing they've ever seen, it's too expensive, and too limited in what it can do. Then we'll all go out and buy them anyway! In terms of the display, I'm thinking it's going to be something new for Apple and the industry -- they'll use a 10.5" version of the Pixel Qi hybrid screen, which will give us insanely great battery life (especially when using the tablet as an e-reader), and readability in bright sunlight. Nobody seems to talk about storage, but at the price I think we'll see at least 64 GB and probably 128 GB. It's going to be running a PA Semi-designed chip set. I can't see 3G / 4G wireless being forced upon the masses. There are too many of us who already have one or two expensive wireless plans, and the additional cost of yet another plan would be a deal-killer for many. 802.11/n connectivity will be built-in, of course, with an option for 3G / 4G wireless. The built-in apps? Mainly for media, including a Zinio-like magazine / newspaper reader with built-in browsing for books and other printed media, which will of course be located in the App Store. I think it will also have the next generation of iWork built in for light productivity. I'd love to see a way to use the device with a built-in universal remote app to control all of my other devices -- think of it as a Logitech Harmony on steroids. We're also going to hear about iLife 2010, the newest and greatest version of the iLife suite, now with a new member of the suite in the form of a painting program! I also predict that most of our predictions will be totally off-base. Dave Caolo Apple will introduce and demo the new tablet, with a shipping date in June or July. It'll have a 10.5" touch display, it's own store in the the revamped iTunes, and work in a way that none of us have guessed. The device's emphasis will be on fun, not work. Yes, you'll be able to access a more web-based version of the iWork apps (tablet-friendly iLife '10 will also be introduced), but just as Apple has been promoting the iPod touch as a gaming platform, they'll really amp it up with the tablet. I also expect ereader capabilities with Apple style and flair. Gorgeous, full-color books will appear from a select group of publishers and newspapers, with lots of interaction. Finally, the new web-based version of iTunes will allow for steaming of TV shows at $0.99/pop. That will have been a concession on Apple's part, as they wanted a subscription model. Expect that to change by year's end. The iPhone will not get a mention, as this isn't its show. Mike Schramm The Tablet will appear with a 10" display, full App Store compatibility, and some groundbreaking media partnerships with lots and lots of paid content flowing through Apple's gates. No camera at all. I'd really love to see that dynamic touch keyboard, but I don't think it's going to happen, unfortunately -- this is a larger iPod touch. All kinds of connectivity though, including possibly a 3G or 4G connection on a plan set up through Apple with whatever provider you want. $1000 price tag, in stores in March. One more thing, if there is one, is a Verizon iPhone. But they may save that until later this year. Mel Martin Tablet will have a major focus on publishing, with interactive, colorful books and magazines. It may be a death blow to the Kindle if it is priced right. Clearly it will have the option of 3G access and Wi-Fi. I personally would not be enthusiastic about another monthly data plan, especially with AT&T unless it is VERY reasonable. Expect lots of games, probably scaled up from the iPhone. BT keyboard and mouse would be a good option. Expect it will be integrated with iTunes for music, movies, and probably publications. There aren't really difficult predictions to make, but I think they are close to the target. High price will kill it. Apple, are you listening? Megan Lavey I'm throwing my money in with Chris on this one. Everyone pretty much has said what I was thinking. But, I also think that Steve makes a wonderful point about everyone not being happy at all. So, I'm going to do a prediction completely out of left field. That despite the leaked specs and the speculation, "Tablet" isn't its own device at all, but a piece of software integrated with OSX and the iPhone that is like a hyper-iTunes bringing you whatever content that you desire and can be synced on any Mac you own, including the iPhone - designed to stream books, magazines, TV shows, music, etc. The 10-inch device is slated to be part of the MacBook line, replacing the current white plastic models, but is essentially a cross between a current MacBook and a really big Nintendo DS. Aron Trimble I would like to go on record saying that if Apple releases an appropriately-priced tablet, their stock price will not go down. Chris Rawson Tomorrow's event: Steve crows about Mac sales Mac portables get updated with Intel i7 processors Steve crows about iPhone sales iPhone OS 4.0 available today with "over 100 new features" Spends 10 minutes highlighting new features. Biggest new feature: app multitasking (not available for first-gen iPhone) Flashback to 2007 when Jobs said "You're lucky to make even one revolutionary product in your career: Mac, iPod, and now a third one," - "Well, three years and a lot of work later, we've got a fourth product that's going to change the industry forever." Talks about scaling iPhone OS - the most intuitive OS ever, even a one-year-old baby knows how to use it - to a full-fledged computing device. "This is really the direction computing is going to move in the future." iSlate: 10" capacitive screen. Looks like a first-gen iPhone got steamrolled. No thicker than an iPhone. Runs a modified iPhone OS. Runs iPhone apps out of the box, can be scaled to fullscreen or run in "windowed mode" for multitasking. Battery life better than iPhone. Spends a good 20 minutes showing off features. Has optional 3G wireless. Cost: 599 for model without 3G. 699 for model with 3G if you sign a contract with wireless provider, 999 without. Available in April. "One more thing" -- in order to grow both iPhone and iSlate business, expanding to additional carriers. (crowd goes crazy). Announcing partnership with Verizon wireless. iSlate will be available with AT&T or Verizon on launch day. iPhone available with Verizon starting in April. Musical guest. Apple stock goes down. AT&T stock tanks. Verizon stock goes way up. PC World publishes a snarky article about all the things the iSlate can't do and why no one should buy one Lauren Hirsch A lot of the tech specs seem to already have been leaked, so I'm going to go out on a limb and talk about some of what I think they're going to show off that it does for you: First and foremost, I strongly suspect that a good portion of the announcement speech will describe some sort of newspaper subscription service, starting with New York Times. I know it's supposed to be a "Kindle Killer," and I'm sure part of the announcement will be that there are already publishing houses on board for eBook delivery through iTunes, but I think Apple wants to ease it into your hands as a daily media device, where users can enjoy the morning paper in its full, graphic glory, just like things used to be. This would dovetail nicely with the fact that newspaper media companies have been wringing their hands for a few years on how to stem the revenue hemorrhage from loss of traditional paper subscribers, and this will be a nice way to recapture some of that market from folks who long ago stopped subscribing to a physical paper service, but will pay for cohesive, graphic content if it's delivered effortlessly and cleanly through a bright, easy media device. It also offers a bit of the nostalgia of getting "the paper" and could bring back a viable subscription model to an industry that needs revenue for the kind of investigative, research-based journalism that's starting to wane in recent years. I think its an innovative idea, and throws newspaper companies a much-needed rope. Expect some kind of overhead picture of the device displaying the New York Times in its full, print glory. I think we'll hear of the beginnings of some sort of monthly TV subscription service, also delivered through iTunes, as Apple ramps up for some kind of assault on traditional cable service. I don't think all the content is quite there yet, but I think we'll see some sort of trajectory laid out. I think Apple TV is gone, and this device will interface with your TV in some meaningful way, with subscription access to content streaming rather than local storage. Lastly, I think in terms of how the device will fit into Apple's product line, I'm starting to think that Apple might be poising it to replace the lowest end MacBook, as it'll have all the web/email/entertainment features that most people use those laptops for. Share your own predictions below, and look for a scorecard after the event. Stay tuned for our liveblog as well!TUAWTUAW predicts tomorrow's event originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 26 Jan 2010 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments iPhone - App Store - Apple - IPod Touch - iTunes

  • Why Dan Frommer and Scott Moritz Are Wrong on iPhone Sales

    Daniel Eran DilgerSilicon Alley Insider's Dan Frommer says Apple's announcement of reaching its million mark goal in iPhone sales three weeks early is actually bad news for Apple and is convolutedly "below plan." He also says the announcement only props up the speculative conjecture by Scott Moritz of the Street that Apple's iPhones sales are somehow woefully below expectations. They're wrong, here's why.The PremiseFrommer wrote that Apple isn't selling iPhones as fast as planned and is set to only sell around half of its 2008 goal.His premise revolves around the idea that if Apple were selling iPhones at "a constant rate," a million phones in 74 days would be five million per year. However, because it sold over a quarter of those in the opening day and a half at the end of June, Frommer calculates that sales of the remainder in the 72 days since the first of July mean that Apple is only hitting a "3.6 million annual run rate."By the end of 2008, that would only result in 5.8 million units instead of the ten million goal Apple. [Silicon Alley Insider: Apple's iPhone: 1 Million Is Below Plan]Strike One: The Run Rate Myth.The most obvious problem with that idea is the fact that devices don't sell at a constant “run rate." Apple's iPhone sales took off at launch much faster than the original iPod due to the fact that a swell of early adopters were ready to buy it after being convinced over six months of anticipation. At the same time, many potential buyers held off on plans to buy the iPhone until they could read reviews and get a real sense of how it worked. Many were also locked into contracts with Verizon or Sprint. With only six months of advanced notice, it will still be a few more months before the majority of buyers who want an iPhone even get the chance to buy one without having to pay outrageous fees to cancel their existing mobile contract. iPhone sales are also now taking on the network effect of the iPod, as early adopters show their friends. All these factors have difficult to estimate impacts upon sales that make trying to figure a static “run rateâ€? a very simplistic and pointless exercise.However, there is another factor that simply blows the entire idea of a static “run rateâ€? out of the water. Last November, I predicted that sales of the Zune would bomb that winter because Microsoft had failed to critically examine Apple's historical sales patterns. Sure enough, the Zune was thrown against the rocks by Apple's riptide. Frommer's idea ignores that same reality by imagining that iPhone sales will schlep along at a linear pace. Had Frommer tried to calculate an "annual run rate" for the iPod based on a portion of third quarter sales at any point over the last half decade, he would never have been close to accurate. That’s because Apple’s iPod sales roughly triple every winter quarter.In 2002, it sold nearly as many iPods in its winter quarter as it did the first three quarters combined: 219,000In 2003, it actually sold more iPods in its winter quarter than in the first three combined: 733,000In 2004, it again sold more iPods in its winter quarter than in the first three: 4,580,000In 2005, it sold more than 4 million units every quarter, but still sold nearly three times as many in the winter: 14,480,000.In 2006, it sold more than 8 million units every quarter, and then sold over 21 million in the winter quarter.In 2007, it has maintained quarterly sales between 10.5 and 9.8 million per quarter.[Strike 3: Why Zune will Bomb this Winter]Strike Two: The Have it Both Ways Myth.One particularly annoying bit of analysts' talk about Apple's expectations is that they can't seem to decide if Apple's projections are bad because they are conservative lowballs, or if they are bad for being overly enthusiastic figures the company won't be able to reach. They often try to describe them as both, loading contempt on both sides of the scale. This makes them look very foolish. Do they think we have no memory, or are they just changing their stories back and forth in sheer desperation?Frommer tried to argue both sides at once in the same article. Recall that Apple only ever gave two iPhone sales goals: one million by the end of the first quarter of sales, and ten million by the end of 2008. In his piece, Frommer suggests Apple will only be able to sell 5.8 million iPhones by the end of 2008, based on that fallacious "run rate." That would be just over half of Apple's ten million goal. However, he then says that Apple's immediate short term goal was an unimpressive low ball, no doubt because Apple reached it three weeks early.Apple's stated goals must be a greatly frustrating logical conundrum for Frommer, because even at a “run rate" of one million in a quarter, Apple could only ever hope to sell six million iPhones by the end of 2008, another five quarters later. No wonder he's faced with trying to say that the immediate goal was too low and the longer term one is too high! Frommer needs to stop trying to pound round facts into square holes just so they can be stacked up like bricks the way he would like them to be.Strike Three: The Market Bearing Price Myth.While Frommer and Moritz are enamored with the idea that iPhone prices could only be cut if sales were in crisis, a variety of obvious market realities don't support that simpleton idea. Between now and the end of 2008, Apple has just two holiday seasons. If it wants to dramatically exploit its historical potential for selling roughly three times as many gadgets during the winter season, it makes sense to trade off unit pricing for volume sales, even if it could perhaps sell fewer at a higher price and make more short term profits doing so.Such a strategy isn't unique. Microsoft and Sony currently lose money on their new game consoles in desperate bids to establish their gaming and HD video playing platforms. Even so, this year they both cut prices again to accelerate volume demand. Nintendo purposely aimed low to capture volume sales using a more attractive price point. Given high demand for the Wii and extremely constrained availability, Nintendo "should" seemingly raise its console price and profiteer. It hasn't. While prices are clearly linked to demand, it is a common fallacy to think that the "right price" is always the highest the market will bear. Jobs' 99 cent pricing in the iTunes store is clearly not the top price consumers will pay for downloads. Music labels are fuming that other licensees such as Verizon will collect $2.50 or more for portions of a song sold as a ringtone. Jobs wants media prices low to induce volume sales and attract buyers to the legitimate market for music and movie downloads. Labels and studios want "market pricing," in part so they can jack up the price of popular music to exploit consumers, and in part so they can exploit artists by threatening to release their work at lower tiered prices and signal to the market that their careers are over.[Universal vs Apple in the iTunes Store Contracts][Nintendo Wii vs Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PS3]This All Happened Before.Dial back the clock twenty years, and you'll discover that Steve Jobs also fought with Apple CEO John Sculley over the price of the original Macintosh. The desire to use an expensive but pioneering amount of RAM and a futuristic new processor had inflated the price of the Mac, but the design team was still able to deliver it at a fairly attractive price point of $1,995. Scully determined that the Mac would still sell at $2495, delivering high profits to fund splashy advertising. Nothing on the market was really similar to the Mac apart from Apple's $9,995 Lisa. VisiOn for the PC similarly cost nearly $10,000 and did far less. Sculley thought that the market would bear anything Apple might charge. Andy Hertzfeld recalled on Folklore.org that in October 1983, "Steve Jobs strode into the software area one evening, looking angry. 'You're not going to like this,' he told us, 'but Sculley is insisting that we charge $2495 for the Mac instead of $1995, and use the extra money for a bigger marketing budget. He figures that the early adopters will buy it no matter what the price. He also wants more of a cushion to protect Apple II sales. But don't worry, I'm not going to let him get away with it!'"Jobs fought Sculley over the price increase, but Sculley prevailed. Sure enough, Macs did sell well out of the gate to early adopters at the higher price, but sales then began to stall. While Jobs couldn't cut the price for the original Mac to induce wider adoption in the mid 80s, he could choose to cut the price of the iPhone early and use interest in the iPod Touch to ramp users toward the iPhone. That price cut will dramatically boost sales this winter, just as iPod price cuts and feature refreshes do every year.Apple will earn less profit on individual hardware sales of the iPhone, and may even earn slightly less money overall this quarter than it might have selling the iPhone at $599. However, a $399 iPhone will dramatically boost the company's sustainable subscriber revenues and devastatingly cut into stationary rivals like Palm and the Windows Mobile licensees, giving them little opportunity retool and strike back with copycat products.  [Price Fight - Folklore.org][Office Wars 3 - How Microsoft Got Its Office Monopoly]Strike Four: The Myth of Unlimited Availability.Another problem with idea that iPhone sales were in crisis--and that a price cut is a conspiracy to hide the truth--is that Apple sold out of iPhones in many of its retail stores throughout the first three weeks on sale.Carl Howe of Blackfriar's Communications tracked iPhone availability every day through July, and then animated the results in a movie that depicts just how constrained iPhone inventories in Apple's retail stores were. So not only did Apple meet its 94 day goal 20 days early, but it did so despite having no or few iPhones to sell in many of its stores during the first 21 days. Price isn't just related to demand, but also to supply.That also demonstrates the fallacy of Scott Moritz' assertion that Apple secretly planned to sell a million iPhones in a day and a half, and was sorely disappointed after failing to do so. How could Apple have planned on selling a million units in one day when it didn't even have a million units on the shelves of its stores during the first month? Remember, Moritz wasn't saying Apple had a delivery problem in getting enough units to stores as Nintendo is experiencing with its constrained supplies of the Wii. Instead, he tried to suggest that interest in the iPhone was far below Apple's estimates, and buyers were leaving it on the shelf like Windows Vista. The result, he claimed, was that "rivals were rejoicing."The only real rejoicing by rivals was that Moritz was volunteering to repeat the talking points handed to him by Verizon shill Roger Entner of IAG Research. Just hours before Apple announced it had sold a million units, Moritz tried to get some traction out of the idea that Apple had dropped the price in desperation to find another half million or so customers over the next three weeks. Apple isn't the typical tech company being run by visionless bean counters. It it were, it would have continued selling $600 iPhones at least through the end of September and then announced that it had sold its million. Apple had to push out new iPods in early September and fit the iPhone into the price range because next month it will be rolling out Leopard and a series of new software updates. Apple feeds the press in small, consistent, and regular feedings so reporters know what to write. If Apple were a big stupid company such as, say HP, it would parade out a mix of dozens of consumer and business products all together in one big event, and nobody would ever hear about any of it. HP did.[Why a million iPhones in 74 days is better than you think- Blackfriars][HP's marketing this week: fashionable but ineffective - Blackfriars][Unraveling Anti-Apple Panic: the iPhone Launch Success] [More on Scott Moritz and the Jim Cramer Misinformation Engine]Strike Five: It's Too Late to Deny the iPhone.The most comical part of Frommers’ analysis is that he’s trying to stuff a cat back into a bag and explain that there was never really any cat, long after everyone in the room heard the purr and pet the thing. Sorry, but the windows of opportunity to doubt the iPhone have long since closed.Real Windows Enthusiasts were aware of the need to deny the iPhone well before its release. They all chimed in with reasons why the iPhone wouldn't work, wouldn't offer what consumers want, and wouldn't sell well, all hoping that their non-stop misinformation campaigns would act as a self-fulfilling prophesy. They failed miserably.John Dvorak began his smear campaign immediately, appearing on CNBC to say that the iPhone was "trending against what people are really liking in phones nowadays, which are those little keypads.â€? He explained, “The BlackJack, the Samsung, the BlackBerry obviously pushes this kind of thing. The Palm, all of these. I guess some of these stocks went down on the Apple announcement, thinking that Apple could do no wrong. But I think Apple can do wrong, and I think this is it." Reader Jim Barrow sent in a link to a MarketWatch article from March, where Dvorak scribed a rambling diatribe entitled "Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone." He offered no factual basis for worrying that the iPhone might not work out apart from the offhanded comment that "there is no likelihood that Apple can be successful in a business this competitive," words which echoed Dvorak's 1984 observation that "the Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a 'mouse.' There is no evidence that people want to use these things."In April, Dvorak inflamed his 'pull the plug' rhetoric further in a TWiT podcast, where he reported to an audience of hundreds of thousands that the iPhone only delivered "40 minutes of talk time" and "the interface fouls up constantly.â€? Dvorak said that his inside information on the iPhone came from a "guy at Cingular who’s testing the product," adding, "he’s telling me confidentially and I shouldn’t be telling anybody."[John Dvorak: How Wrong Can One Guy Be?][Readers Write: Don't Write About John Dvorak Anymore]It'll Be the Death of You.Dvorak was joined by Rob Enderle, who called the iPhone “damnedâ€? and “not a very good phoneâ€? at every opportunity in the months before its launch, despite not really knowing anything about it, or even ever offering any rational criticism. Instead, Enderle appealed to fantasy fears of sexual assault, murder, and the violent death of children, all of which he suggested might somehow be related to the iPhone. Unaware that a password protected iPhone--or even a unauthorized unit without a configured service plan--can still be used to make emergency phone calls, Enderle wrote about, "an emergency situation where, say, a woman was being raped and couldn’t call for help because she didn’t remember her iPhone password." As I understand, with a Windows Mobile phone, even if the unit crashed while trying to place the call, at least the victim could use it like a brick as a blunt weapon. Enderle also feared that being unable to take out the battery would somehow making recharging it impossible, resulting an a scenario where one might end up on “the wrong side of townâ€? with a dead iPhone and be murdered because of it. Being on the wrong side of town was apparently the source of most murders prior to the arrival of the cell phone, which somehow made it safe to be in bad neighborhoods. For those who unfazed by the prospect of one's own own grizzly death in relation to the iPhone, Enderle appealed to his readers to please think of the children, particularly the potential for their brutal decapitation in an iPhone-related collision. "If you are buying this phone for a child or another member of your family," Enderle warned, "please emphasize that entering data on this phone while driving is dangerous." In contrast, operating the slide out keyboards of an HTC brick phone, or using both hands to thumb type on a BlackBerry may or may not save your children as they drive off an embankment, but at least you'll know they didn't die at the hands of Apple's "damned" iPhone.[SCO, Linux, and Microsoft in the History of OS: 1970s][Mac OS X vs Linux: Third Party Software and Security]Pure Concentrated Evil with a Multitouch Screen.Brian Lam of Gizmodo published an impassioned plea to boycott the iPhone shortly before its launch, due to the fact that Cingular had purchased the AT&T name, a brand Gizmodo's writer correlated with "monopoly tactics" in the late 70s. Gizmodo hasn't ever called for the boycotting of Verizon Wireless, which is well known for its anti-consumer tactics and which shares just as much blood with the old AT&T as its Baby Bell sibling Cingular, nor has it ever urged the boycott Microsoft products due to "monopoly tactics." Gizmodo also failed to boycott any other GSM phones that are tied to AT&T.Gizmodo's Lam and Enderle then teamed up with Slate's David Sessions in an article purporting to expose Apple's rated battery life for the iPhone. Sessions complained about the attention the iPhone was getting, and tried to dismiss Apple's announcement of a two fold increase in battery life over what was originally advertised. Unbelievably, Sessions and friends could only explain away the iPhone's jump in talk time by crediting its glass screen, saying that "glass transmits light more efficiently than plastic." That and some witchcraft.However, all of these individuals sharply reduced their squirt rate of false information after the iPhone's successful launch. In day and a half, Apple sold 270,000 iPhones compared to the 500,000 Palm OS Treos, 1.03 million RIM BlackBerrys, and 1.51 million Windows Mobile phones that were sold worldwide in the first 90 days of 2007.Apple has since nearly matched highflying RIM in sales during July, despite being limited to a single carrier and only offered for sale in the US. At this point, denying the iPhone is like saying the Earth is flat. It might be fun to do at a Renaissance Faire, but pretending to seriously doubt reality is not a good career move unless you work for the Street--or perhaps Rupert Murdoch, as Dvorak does.[Secret iPhone Details Lost in a Sea of Hype and Hate][iPhone Sales vs Zune, Palm, RIM, Symbian, Windows Mobile]And Now: a Warning.Let it be known that anyone who publishes further misinformation or blows out similar inanity will risk being instantly awarded a Zoon on the spot. No complicated voting, no tedious application process. New Zoon nominees will be rubber stamped with the same effortless fast tracking as the ECMA declaring Microsoft technology as an international standard.In fact, I’m going to totally Zoon Dan Frommer and Scott Moritz right now, as well as John Dvorak, Rob Enderle, Brian Lam, David Sessions, and even Roger Entner. And John Sculley. And while I’m handing out an intellectual property construct that costs me nothing to distribute, I will also award Steve Jobs with a Zoon for the whole two month “just kiddingâ€? iPhone pricing situation, although I might take half of it back if I get a $100 coupon that doesn’t force me to spend $500 to actually use it. So let that be a warning to you out there on the Tubes thinking about how to linkbait an article at the expense of the progress of technology. I have a rapid firing gun full of Zoons and I’m not shy about cranking them out. Be sure to post any nominees.What do you think? I really like to hear from readers. Comment in the Forum or email me with your ideas. Like reading RoughlyDrafted? Share articles with your friends, link from your blog, and subscribe to my podcast! Submit to Reddit or Slashdot, or consider making a small donation supporting this site. Thanks!

  • Anticipating WWDC

    Filed under: WWDCIt's March. It's the month where beer turns green, where the road repair crews start taking over the midwest of the United States, and when Apple usually announces its Worldwide Developers' Conference dates. With the hotly anticipated iPad introduction this year, more devs than ever are looking forward to seeing what WWDC will have on offer. Will WWDC bring the iPhone OS 4.0 announcement and the hardware refresh that we've speculated about? Or will the iPhone OS family remain in the 3.x generation for the foreseeable future? (The current release for the iPhone and iPod touch are at 3.1.3. The iPad will ship with firmware 3.2.) That's the question that has a lot of devs scratching their head. In the past two years, March has been the time when new iPhone SDKs were provided to developers, with the actual firmware released a few months later, somewhat in sync with WWDC. This year, with the iPad release due for the first week of April, the iPhone refresh seems to have been pushed out, or even to the side. Will Apple's WWDC announcement help clarify where we stand in the iPhone lifecycle? That's hard to say. I know a lot of devs are hoping that a new beta SDK will debut sometime in April, once the iPad has been released; with the new version focusing on the iPhone, WWDC sessions would follow up on that build. It would make sense to bring the iPhone up to at least 3.2, so that firmware releases remain in sync across all iPhone OS devices; however, by Jim Dalrymple's estimation we won't see a unified firmware version for both families until the autumn. What about iPhone OS 4.0? With the WWDC keynote being the only remaining scheduled event keynote in the Apple yearly cycle, it would make sense for Apple to use that platform to announce major a iPhone OS update, or a major Mac OS update for that matter. However, the bottom line is this: Apple keeps its secrets. We'll know when they tell us. That can make third-party planning challenging -- whether you want to schedule flights to California for WWDC, or prepare your applications for major firmware updates. We've emailed Apple for clarification on WWDC timing, and have yet to hear back. Here's a quick run-down of past TUAW WWDC announcement posts for your reference. WWDC '09 Details Posted Spring is in the air, although we're in the midst of a blizzard here in the Denver area. That means one thing -- the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) is coming soon!Eric over at... Apple announces WWDC 08 dates With the iPhone SDK announcement last week, some of us here at TUAW were expecting a Worldwide Developer Conference date to be announced. Thankfully, the world has been put to rights, as Apple has... AppleInsider: WWDC to take place June 11th - 15th Take this with a grain of sodium chloride, but AI is reporting that "people familiar with conference planning" have tipped them off to the dates of this year's World Wide Developers Conference.... Also of interest: Apple's WWDC dates announced Rumor: Moscone schedule + "corporate event" = Verizon iPhone? TUAWAnticipating WWDC originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments iPhone - Unofficial Apple Weblog - Apple - AppleInsider - IPad

  • WSJ: Steve Jobs return is on track for end of June

    Filed under: Apple Corporate, Cult of Mac, Steve Jobs, Apple, One More ThingIn its sometime role as a broadsheet hybrid of Us magazine and the New England Journal of Medicine, we have an update tonight from The Wall Street Journal on the condition of everyone's favorite iCEO. Steve Jobs, according to the story (subscription required on the web, free to read on your iPhone), is recovered from his health crisis and on track to return by the end of June. While some speculate that he might choose to surprise the audience at WWDC with a One More Thing moment, two sources for the WSJ story say that the plan is to wait a bit longer.Steve's return is likely to be coordinated with a product launch or other public event later in June, say the sources. That event probably won't be the announcement of the next-gen iPhone, which the paper pinpoints for the keynote address on Monday with availability close to the two-year anniversary date for the original iPhone purchasers (pretty sensible; anyone who bought a first-gen for the premium price is a likely candidate to shell out for a replacement). The WSJ cites someone who has seen the new phone in person, reporting a faster processor and the expected video editing capabilities.Equally importantly, the story points out that the long Steveless months with Tim Cook at the helm have shown investors and customers that the Apple train is still on track. AAPL is up 68% since Steve announced his leave of absence in January, vs. a 24% uptick for the NASDAQ index. Granted, Apple stock took a bit of a hit around the announcement of the leave, dipping to a low of 78.20 on 1/20, but it's up at 143.74 as of today's close.[via Macrumors]TUAWWSJ: Steve Jobs return is on track for end of June originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 05 Jun 2009 00:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

  • ★ Regarding the Verizon and ‘iPhone Lite’ Rumors

    There’s been much speculation this week regarding reports in BusinessWeek and The Wall Street Journal of talks between Apple and Verizon. To wit: that Apple is considering Verizon for a future iPhone and/or its mythical forthcoming tablet. This is not too complicated. Let’s just play “What’s in it for them?” Verizon — Would they want to sell some sort of iPhone model? Yes, of course. The iPhone has undeniably turned into a big deal. Verizon has nothing to do with it, and it is the single best competitive advantage held by AT&T, Verizon’s biggest rival. None of the iPhone rival devices Verizon has offered so far is any good or very popular (cf. the BlackBerry Storm), and the Palm Pre is exclusive to Sprint. AT&T — The iPhone means more to AT&T than any other phone it carries. Most people decide which carrier to buy a phone from, go there, then pick a phone. With the iPhone, people decide they want to buy one, and then they go to AT&T. Some number of iPhone owners switched to AT&T specifically and only because of the iPhone. In fact, there are some who switched to AT&T to get the iPhone despite the fact that, all things considered, they’d prefer to buy a phone from another carrier — often Verizon, which is widely regarded as having the best overall U.S. network coverage. It is very much in AT&T’s interests to keep the iPhone as an exclusive AT&T device for as long as it can. Apple — The iPhone matters to AT&T, but AT&T doesn’t really matter much to Apple. The U.S. is Apple’s (and the iPhone’s) biggest market, but it’s still just one country in a big world. In the just reported quarter, AT&T reported activating 1.6 million iPhones. But Apple reported selling just under 3.8 million total iPhones — so 58 percent were sold outside the U.S. AT&T isn’t Apple’s iPhone partner. They’re just Apple’s iPhone partner in the U.S. I think the U.S. tech press often overlooks this, hence some of knee-jerk skepticism that Apple would even talk to Verizon. Apple wants profit and they want market share. The trick is balancing the two. Surely Apple makes more money per iPhone with an exclusive deal, but they would sell more total devices if iPhones were available on both AT&T and Verizon. Yes, Verizon’s network is CDMA, not GSM, and so it would require Apple to produce different hardware. But there are some number of Verizon customers who won’t switch to AT&T but who would buy an iPhone from Verizon, and my guess is that that number is high enough for Apple to at least consider producing Verizon-compatible hardware. So, even if Apple would prefer to stick with AT&T exclusively, at least for another year, I’d find it surprising if they didn’t at least talk to Verizon just to hear an offer, and perhaps more importantly, to leak the flirtation to the press so as to keep the pressure on AT&T to offer Apple the best possible terms. But as for whether I think an iPhone on Verizon is actually imminent — as in “coming in the next few months” imminent — I doubt it. During Apple’s quarterly finance call last week, analyst Gene Munster asked why Apple has maintained its exclusive agreement with AT&T. COO Tim Cook said: On AT&T, Gene, we view AT&T as a very good partner. We believe that they’re the best wireless provider in the U.S. and we are very happy to be doing business with them. They have done a very good job with iPhone, they’ve put the full force and weight of their company behind it, it’s a major strategic thrust for them and so we’re very happy with the relationship that we have and do not have a plan to change it. And then Cook again, responding to a follow-up question regarding any “technical hurdles”: Well from a technology point of view as you know, Verizon is on CDMA and we’ve shown from the beginning of the iPhone to focus on one phone for the whole of the world and when you do that, you really go down the GSM route, because CDMA doesn’t really have a life to it after a point in time. Steve Jobs, famously, is known for pooh-poohing ideas or features only to turn around months or years later and declare them to be the best ideas or features ever, now that Apple has embraced them. Apple doesn’t announce big changes until it is ready to announce them, direct questions be damned. And so I wouldn’t count on Apple’s “not having a plan to change” the AT&T exclusivity lasting forever.1 But the CDMA comment does not sound like misdirection from a company planning to unveil CDMA phones this summer. That comment was specific, and it wasn’t something along the lines of we’re not going to do CDMA, but rather more along the lines of CDMA is on its way out industry-wide. That’s just not something Cook would say if Apple were planning to announce a CDMA phone in June — and without a CDMA iPhone, there’s no iPhone for Verizon.2 Ask again when Verizon’s next-generation LTE network is running, though. But that’s just the iPhone. If Apple is preparing to soon announce its supposed tablet / mediapad / whatever, and if said tablet / mediapad / whatever is going to support mobile broadband, it could well use EVDO from Verizon without contradicting anything Cook said about CDMA or the iPhone remaining exclusively on AT&T. (Brief Interpolation Regarding the Proper Perspective Regarding Any Rumored New Devices: Keep in mind that these tablet / mediapad / whatever rumors are growing to the point where if the WWDC keynote comes and goes without any mention of this device, the jackass contingent is going to blame Apple for not releasing it rather than blame the rumor reporters for being wrong. BusinessWeek’s report had the most details about purported new devices, but in terms of timing, only said “One of these devices may be introduced as early as this summer.” Point of this interpolation being that if — and this is a very real if — this really is a device Apple is preparing to release, fever-pitched rumors won’t make it appear any sooner than when Apple deems it ready.) Erring on the Side of Increased Market Share It’s my assumption that Apple’s long-term plan for the iPhone platform is patterned after Apple’s long-term plan for the iPod. Apple’s iPod strategy has been phenomenally successful, and there are many obvious parallels. The biggest difference is that the iPhone has succeeded far faster than the iPod did — Apple didn’t release the Windows version of iTunes until two years after the original iPod was released as a Mac-only peripheral. One of the key points in the history of the iPod was the release of the iPod Mini in January 2004. That’s when Apple expanded the iPod from a single product to a family of products, and the Mini proved to be a smash hit. The formula behind the iPod Mini was simple: Apple made a smaller, cheaper device with more or less the same technical specs as the original iPod from October 2001. Apple went on to repeatedly improve upon the iPod in two ways: on the high end by producing new devices with the same shape and price but with new features (additional storage, color screens, larger screens, video, etc.); on the low end by taking the existing features and making them smaller and cheaper. So here’s how I see Apple applying its iPod strategy to the iPhone. At some point the iPhone will expand to two form factors: A high-end iPhone with the same basic size and price as previous iPhones, but with significant new features. Obvious potential new features would be things like more storage space, more RAM, a faster CPU, an improved (and eventually video-capable) camera, 802.11n Wi-Fi, and superior battery technology. A new, lower-priced, smaller, and more adorable iPhone, with more or less the same technical specs as the original iPhone. Given that those specs include the 320 × 480 display, I wouldn’t expect something tiny, but remember that the original iPod Mini was “just” 35 percent smaller by volume than the then-current full-sized iPod. Shrink the iPhone’s forehead and chin and make it thinner — maybe a lot thinner — is what I’m thinking. Existing iPhone apps would run just fine on the new device, as it’d have similar, if not identical, CPU performance and RAM to previous full-sized iPhones. Such an iPhone sounds much like the “iPhone Lite” that BusinessWeek reported its source saw. The only question is when. Could be this year. Could be next year. But put me on the record for predicting it’ll happen before the end of 2010. The reason why Apple did this with the iPod, and why I’m convinced they’ll do it again with the iPhone, is that when it comes to managing the balance between per-unit profit and overall market share, Apple is determined to err on the side of market share. (Not as much with the Mac, however — the difference being that PCs are now a firmly established market.) Most gadget companies, when they have a smash hit on their hands, try to milk it. A typical company that found itself selling millions of $400 hard-drive-based digital music players would try its best to continue selling the same $400 hard-drive-based digital music players for as long as it could. Apple, despite an overwhelming 70 percent market share, aggressively added features and drove down its own prices, year after year after year. I’ve previously quoted the following passage from Steven Levy’s 2004 Newsweek interview with Steve Jobs, but it’s worth repeating here. The topic was the Mac’s long-stagnant (at the time) market share. If that’s so, then why is the Mac market share, even after Apple’s recent revival, sputtering at a measly 5 percent? Jobs has a theory about that, too. Once a company devises a great product, he says, it has a monopoly in that realm, and concentrates less on innovation than protecting its turf. “The Mac user interface was a 10-year monopoly,” says Jobs. “Who ended up running the company? Sales guys. At the critical juncture in the late ’80s, when they should have gone for market share, they went for profits. They made obscene profits for several years. And their products became mediocre. And then their monopoly ended with Windows 95. They behaved like a monopoly, and it came back to bite them, which always happens.” In the near term, Apple could fuel explosive iPhone unit sale growth just by reducing the entry price. But at some point, looking a handful of years down the line, expanding the iPhone’s U.S. market share is going to require going beyond AT&T. The only question is when. Worth a footnote: Munster never mentioned Verizon by name. He simply asked about maintaining exclusivity with AT&T. Cook brought up Verizon on his own. ↩ The CDMA/GSM schism has blocked Verizon users from even unlocked iPhones. I’ve long wondered how much more prevalent iPhone unlocking would be if Verizon had a GSM network. ↩

  • The Complete iTunes History -- SoundJam MP to iTunes 9

    Watching Steve take the stage and roll out a new version of iTunes got us all nostalgic for the old days, when iTunes logos changed color and our jukebox looked like it could withstand a bomb blast. Below is the history of the application that is running more than any other on our Macs. It spawned the iPod, iPhone, Apple TV and gave us an excuse to throw out those ugly CD towers that resided in the corners of our houses in the 90s. The ever present, iTunes. THE STARTSoundJam MP Somewhere around the time Metallica began suing Napster over the leak of its "Mission: Impossible II" track, "I Disappear," in 2000, a light bulb appeared over Steve Jobs’ head. Ever the innovator, Apple’s iCEO saw the peer-to-peer network as more than an illegal nuisance and began to develop a way to leverage the Napster revolution into the next killer Mac app. Audio players such as Audion and SoundApp had already exposed the inadequacies of QuickTime, and Apple knew it needed to build its solution from the ground up.After being rebuffed by Panic, which was already in negotiations with AOL over use of its Audion code, Steve Jobs approached Robin Casady and Michael Greene to discuss their SoundJam MP app, a powerful digital encoding program that looked a lot like Apple’s QuickTime player. After a series of short negotiations, Casady & Greene sold the rights for SoundJam to Apple for an undisclosed sum, and Apple immediately set to work on the app that would forever change the digital landscape.While the terms of the contract were top secret (Casady and Greene discontinued their app on June 1, 2001, but were barred from discussing the Apple deal for two years), Apple certainly wasn’t shy about ransacking SoundJam as it incorporated many of its signature features into iTunes, including visualizers, plug-ins, online retrieval of album data and drag-and-drop playlist creation. Much to the dismay of Jelly fans, however, Apple opted to leave SoundJam’s skins on the cutting-room floor. iTunes 1 (Jan. 9, 2001-Oct. 23, 2001) About 10 months later, at Macworld San Francisco in 2001, Apple debuted iTunes alongside iDVD and the CD-RW-enabled Power Macs. While it wasn’t exactly a show-stopper (though 275,000 copies were downloaded in the first week), the "world’s best and easiest to use ‘jukebox’ software" definitely raised the bar for music players on the Mac, which were relatively sparse and rather pricey (SoundJam cost $40). By offering iTunes as a free download and installing it on every new Mac, Apple essentially cut down the competition at the pass--or at least put a good scare into them. "Apple has done what Apple does best--make complex applications easy, and make them even more powerful in the process," said Steve Jobs at the time. "iTunes is miles ahead of every other jukebox application, and we hope its dramatically simpler user interface will bring even more people into the digital music revolution."For many Mac users, iTunes was an introduction to digital music, and Apple strived to create a straightforward jukebox that needed little or no instruction to get started. Popping a music CD into your Mac automatically launched iTunes, which loaded the disc, collected track data from Gracenote and added them to your library. A clean interface split into boxes kept everything neat and always within reach of a mouse click.Conspicuously missing from iTunes 1 was the ability to burn a CD on an external drive, a deficiency compounded by Apple’s mostly CD-RW-less line of Macs. Apple answered the cries a month later at Macworld Tokyo with the introduction of new iMacs and Cubes with write-able drives, a 1.1 update that added third-party support, and the launch of the controversial "Rip, Mix, Burn" campaign. iTunes 2 (Oct. 23, 2001-July 17, 2002) After racking up more than a million downloads in just a few short months, it quickly became clear that iTunes was every bit as revolutionary as Apple hoped. What all those users didn't know, however, was that the music player was merely the first part of a strategy that would redefine the company as more than a Mac maker. in October 2001, Steve Jobs showed us the next piece of Apple's digital hub in the form of an oddly named, undeniably sexy hand-held device. Built exclusively to leverage the popularity of Apple's music app, iPod came bundled with a brand-new version of iTunes that allowed it to seamlessly integrate with the songs and playlists stored on our Macs.Along with a considerable ratcheting of burn time, Apple also added "the three most requested features" into iTunes 2: MP3 CD burning, a 10-band equalizer and cross fading. A holdover from SoundJam, iTunes’ overdue equalizer came preloaded with more than 20 presets and brought robust, receiver-style tweaking to the desktop. The new crossfader eliminated the annoying gaps between songs and paved the way for a new generation of laptop DJs, and a sound enhancer appealed to audiophiles by adding depth and richness to tracks.But the real reason for iTunes 2 was iPod support, offering an unparalleled experience that transferred a few days’ worth of music from your Mac to your pocket in just about 10 minutes. iTunes 3 (July 17, 2002-April 28, 2003) Introduced at the final Macworld New York keynote as a companion to the first “solid-state touch wheel” iPod, iTunes 3 was a mostly incremental update with few dramatic changes. In the 18 months since its inception, some 14 million copies had been downloaded, so Apple had little reason to change the formula; rather it added just enough new features and enhancements to keep the iPod + iTunes revolution rolling.With iTunes 3, however, Apple threw down another gauntlet. Reduced prices, greater capacities and slimmer enclosures made the second-generation iPod even more desirable, but the addition of Windows support was the big change, opening up the popular player to millions of new music lovers. But Apple wisely kept iTunes tied to the Mac, forcing Windows users to sync their iPods with MUSICMATCH, a sub-par jukebox that basically served as an advertisement for iTunes’ sleek interface and finer points.As if to drive the point home, iTunes 3 added a few dozen new features, including track ratings, Sound Check for consistent volume playback, support for Audible audiobooks and Smart Playlists, which streamlined and automated the creation of digital mixes based on a series of predetermined rules. A few other enhancements--new track tags, library consolidation, playlist importing/exporting and track joining--added to the experience and widened the gap between iTunes and every other jukebox on the market.   Click to embiggenTHE STOREiTunes 4 (April 28, 2003-Sept. 7, 2005) If iTunes 1 was a revolution, iTunes 4 was a bloody coup. What otherwise would have been a point update with a few minor playback improvements, AAC encoding and network sharing, iTunes 4 would have barely been noticeable without the addition of a new member to the "Source" sidebar: Music Store. A first-of-its-kind shopping experience that blew the roof off the industry and turned a thorn into a rose, the iTunes Music Store brought 200,000 high-quality songs from BMG, EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal and Warner under one fully searchable, completely legal roof.Album artwork, one-click purchasing, in-apps video and a mostly unrestrictive DRM all for less than $1 a track. A million tracks were sold in the first week; four months later it surpassed 10 million. Along the road to the milestone 100 millionth download, however, Apple took iTunes 4 in a decidedly different direction when it rolled out the second generation of its store. Determined not to duplicate its prior proprietary mistakes, Apple didn’t renege on its promise to deliver the iTunes Music Store to Windows users by year’s end--and certainly didn’t skimp on the goods. A near-identical port of its award-winning iApp made its way onto PCs in October 2003 with a streamlined, expanded store (Mac users called it iTunes 4.1).With a 28-month upgrade path, version 4 stayed on desktops longer than any other iTunes release, gaining a slew of new features before retiring to digital graveyard: iMix, Party Shuffle, Apple Lossless, Podcasting, AirTunes, iPod photo and shuffle, and the European and Asian Music Stores all made their debuts under the iTunes 4 umbrella. Half a billion songs and 10 updates later, Apple had established itself as the undisputed king of the digital music domain. iTunes 5 (Sept. 7, 2005-Oct. 12, 2005)  Where iTunes 4 was a lengthy, meandering release, the next version came and went in just five weeks. Introduced in tandem with the iPod nano at what would become an annual September digital music event, iTunes 5 packed an overall peppiness and a refined, cleaner mini player, but was surprisingly light on new features--and fittingly was the first numbered upgrade that didn’t come with a new color for the music note in its icon.Sadly, the highlight of the pack was a new Search Bar that made quick work of rummaging through the store’s two million songs, rounded out by Smart Shuffle, playlist folders, parental controls, AAC VBR importing and Outlook syncing. Ultimately, though, it was the bug-ridden app’s dark platinum makeover that got the most attention. iTunes 5 ditched the outdated brushed-metal skin of its predecessors, and the thinner, sexier look filled many a forum with praise and criticism.Better known as iTunes 4.10, the fifth version of iTunes was mostly a disappointment. Rumors about TV show purchases and movie rentals that had swirled in the days leading up to the event failed to materialize, and even Steve struggled to come up with something nice to say: "We are constantly improving iTunes with new features like... better searching because we love music ourselves and want to surprise and delight music fans around the world." iTunes 6 (Oct. 12, 2005-Sept. 12, 2006) What a difference 35 days make. At an unexpected "One More Thing" event in early October, Steve kicked iTunes 5 to the curb and rolled out the red carpet for the next generation of the digital jukebox. Arriving in tow with new iMacs and video iPods, iTunes 6 brought serious changes to the store, adding online gift options, customer reviews, "Just For You" recommendations and some 2,000 music videos and Pixar shorts, all priced at $1.99 and formatted for new iPod’s 2.5-inch color screen.But that wasn’t all. Never content to rest on his laurels, Steve rolled out TV show downloads with iTunes 6, priced at the same $1.99 as the far-shorter music videos. Just five Disney shows were available at launch--"Lost," "Desperate Housewives," "Night Stalker," "That's So Raven" and "The Suite Life" --but when more than a million videos were purchased inside of three weeks, it didn’t take long before other networks came knocking. Before the end of the year, NBC Universal had signed up, followed shortly by MTV, Showtime, Fox and CBS, and soon iTunes 6 had done for TV what iTunes 4 did for music, cramming more than 220 shows onto its shelves within 12 months.iTunes 6’s TV Store didn’t make quite as much noise as the Music Store, but its 11-month tenure marked the start of an exciting time for Apple, as momentum began to build toward something huge on the horizon.  Click to embiggenTHE SYNERGYiTunes 7 (Sept. 12, 2006-Sept. 9, 2008) Billed as the "most significant enhancement to the world’s most popular music jukebox and online music and video store since it debuted," iTunes 7 was indeed a dramatic reinvention of the five-and-a-half-year-old iApp, with sweeping interface changes, speed boosts and a renewed focus on the jukebox.Packing two new navigation views--a list mode dotted with album artwork and an officially sanctioned version of Steel Skies’ Cover Flow--iTunes 7 put the emphasis back on iTunes as a music player, starting with the debut of the MiniStore, which strengthened the marriage between the two segments. Everything from the Source list to iPod integration received an overdue makeover, and Apple even fixed the age-old microsecond of silence that iTunes stubbornly inserted between joined tracks. Of course, it wouldn’t be an iTunes update without a new addition to the store, and Apple didn’t disappoint here, either. With users already downloading more than a million videos and TV episodes each week, iTunes 7 made the logical leap to movies, adding some 75 near-DVD quality titles from Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar, Touchstone Pictures and Miramax Films at launch and growing to more than 2,500 films from nearly every studio over the course of its two-year upgrade cycle. What made the seventh version so significant, however, was its versatility. By the time it had run its course, iTunes 7 had well grown into its role as the center of the digital hub, with iPhone, iPod touch Apple TV, movie rentals, the App Store, and a slew of nanos and shuffles all landing on its watch. Through it all, iTunes 7 never felt stale, bloated or sluggish, smoothly adapting to the new demands with little more than a software patch.  iTunes 8 (Sept. 9, 2008-Sept. 9, 2009) After 19 software updates to iTunes 7, it was time for the next whole number, and Apple finally delivered iTunes 8 at its annual music event in 2008. Following such a tremendous update was no easy task, and Apple could easily have packaged the new stuff into iTunes 7.8, if not for the super-smart technology hiding within.The centerpiece of iTunes 8 was the Genius feature, an underrated playlist tool that combined the controlled randomness of Smart Shuffle with the queue capabilities of Party Shuffle (iTunes DJ after 8.1) to transform your Library into a personalized radio station. Adding to the fun was the optional Genius Sidebar, a mildly intrusive strip of song recommendations culled from a mix of your favorite songs (and in later versions, TV shows and movies) and "anonymously-gathered knowledge from millions of other iTunes users," all crunched by a series of Apple algorithms, neatly packaged and beamed back to your computer.Minor tweaks elsewhere improved upon the broad refinements introduced in the prior release, and Apple dumped the Search Bar in favor of a return to field-specific exploring. An enhanced grid mode replaced album view with an iPhoto Events-like scheme that grouped albums and artists into interactive mini widgets. Taking a break from its relentless tide of upgrades, the store was mostly left out this round of enhancements, but iTunes 8 did usher in high-definition content (despite Steve’s previous declaration of 2005 as the year of HD).iTunes 9 (Sept. 9, 2009) Exactly a year after iTunes 8 meekly landed on desktops, Apple welcomed Steve Jobs back to the main stage by dropping a bombshell of a release that overhauled the store, made iPhone syncing effortless and updated the classic vinyl jacket for the 21st century.Open iTunes 9 and you’re immediately smacked by a new white background, giving the grid a clean, bright look that makes your album art pop and beckons you inside. Speed improvements are noticeable throughout, particularly when using Cover Flow, which can now handle speedy scrolling with only the slightest bit of lag. Delving further into the latest version of Apple’s nearly nine-year-old jukebox reveals hipper icons, a few extra curves and whistles, and a new Home Sharing feature that finally lets your trade music with friends and family members.Flip to the store and you’ll find a host of newness, beginning with a personalized welcome note, sensible layout, enhanced album pages with quick view windows and previews that borrow cues from the mobile iTunes Store. Dig a little deeper and you’ll find iTunes Extras (think DVD bonus features for digital movies) and iTunes LPs, the greatest thing to happen to music since, well, iTunes. A far greater thing than the digital PDF booklets bundled with album purchases, iTunes LP--while currently limited to just 12 albums and saddled with nonuniform pricing (Jay-Z’s pre-order costs $16.99 while Pearl Jam’s costs $9.99)--is poised to rekindle the creativity and connection that’s all but been stripped away by MP3s.  With iTunes X most likely slated for a September 2010 release, we can only wonder what new features are being realized in a secret bunker in Cupertino. Only time, and Steve Jobs, will tell.   What has been your favorite feature over the years? Share in the comments.  

  • iPhone nano now rumored for June, Unicorn delayed again until September

    Ready for more iPhone nano rumors? Good, because apparently the Chinese trade paper Economic Daily News is now reporting that Taiwan Semiconductor Company (TSMC) will be handling chip manufacturing for a low-cost device being referred to as... you guessed it: the iPhone nano. While the paper has a fairly good reputation, it is filtered through the lens of DigiTimes on our end, so as usual, take it with the required grain of salt. Still, the source is calling a June launch of the handset on the heels of an order for the components in March. The time frame is reasonable enough, and if history is any lesson here, Apple loves to intro iPhones in the Summer. Given that China has yet to see a deal for the iPhone proper, and a lower-cost entry may be perfectly tuned for vast Asian markets, the nano could gather in a whole new fold of users (and the smaller screen would be less of an issue given the need for character recognition). That theory falls in line with statements from analysts, though as always, putting too much stock in any of this speculation could be hazardous to your health. Just ask Steve Jobs.[Via AppleInsider]Filed under: CellphonesiPhone nano now rumored for June, Unicorn delayed again until September originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Jan 2009 12:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

  • The Complete History of the WWDC Keynote

    The hype. The sell-outs. The personal promises from the CEO. It wasn’t always like this. Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference began as an intimate gathering in Monetery, CA that was of little interest to anyone outside of Apple’s close-knit world of software architects. Sure, Apple was there--and at the very first conference in 1983, Lisa tagged along for her first public appearance--but there wasn’t much to speak of; quite literally, a non-disclosure agreement kept most things under lock-and-key.“Most of what was discussed was for developers’ ears only and even the contents of the keynote was delivered under a non-disclosure agreement that kept the press and the general public away,” wrote Ted Goranson of About This Particular Macintosh. “Which isn’t to say that the things announced at WWDC were of any possible interest to anybody who wasn’t writing device drivers for an AppleTalk-to-Centronics hardware print spooler.”Case in point: In 1987--when Apple and IBM oddly shared the same space at the Santa Clara Convention Center--Apple countered IBM’s PS/2 announcement by adding CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers) to the Mac II. Not exactly headline-grabbing stuff.Still, that’s not to say juicy details didn’t leak out. During the 1988 conference, for instance, select Apple employees, including then-CEO John Sculley, wore curious buttons with a pixelated half-cow, half-dog creature set against a neon green background. When prodded, inquiring minds were told that her name was Clarus the Dogcow and the sound she makes is “Moof!”But even without giveaways and live blogging, it didn’t take long for WWDC to blossom into an event that sent Apple watchers into a frenzy. Long before Steve Jobs decided to use its stage to unveil the latest Cupertino innovations, Apple’s annual developers conference steered the industry in bold directions and laid the foundation for the next big things to come: 1990: With a renewed focus on inexpensive, mass-market machines, Sculley and COO Michael Spindler vowed Apple would “catch up” with the market for “low-end and laptop Macs” and “reach and create new users and hook them early.” Going a long way toward accomplishing this monumental task was a brand-new multimedia platform called QuickTime.1991: Multi-tasking, file sharing, drag-and-drop and a trashcan. Of course, we’re talking about System 7, which ceremoniously shipped at WWDC 1991. 1992: Sculley painted Apple’s future with a bright paintbrush at the ’92 conference, delivering a wide-ranging keynote that offered glimpses of Newton, AppleScript, Open Collaborative Environment and PowerPC, along with the makings of Apple’s newest open-source-ish framework, OpenDoc. Begun the year before after an impromptu brainstorming session, Apple’s OpenDoc project sought to develop a simplified, standardized document competitor to Microsoft’s Object Linking and Embedding.1993: Apple silenced any and all doubters of its forthcoming chip switch by demonstrating a prototype Macintosh computer running on an unprecedented 80 MHz PowerPC 601 processor, while simultaneously showcasing a Rosetta Stone-like emulator to run current software on the new chip. Also making appearances were QuickDraw GX (for smoother graphics and better printing) and Apple Interactive Help (for in-app assistance), and a solid summer ship date was nailed down for the eagerly anticipated Newton project.1994: While hardly a secret, Apple formally unveiled its new object-oriented dynamic programming language, Dylan, aimed at expanding Apple’s library of commercial software titles. Shortly afterward, Bob Dylan filed a trademark infringement suit. (No joke.)1995: While OpenDoc was evolving in the wild, Apple was busy utilizing the technology for a tandem project called Cyberdog, an open-source Internet suite designed to bring OpenDoc into the mainstream.1996: Cyberdog exited beta stage (and immediately began its slide into obscurity) at WWDC 1996 and MkLinux, Apple’s ill-fated attempt at an open-source Linux OS, raised more than a few eyebrows, but Mac OS 8 (the latest iteration of Copland) clearly stole the show. In an attempt to rescue “one of America's all-time great companies,” CEO Gilbert Amelio took the first step toward the future by demonstrating a semi-working prototype of what should have been the desktop of the future.1997: The return of Steve Jobs was marked by color-coded demos of Apple’s next-generation OS, code-named Rhapsody (based on the NeXT code), and a bold announcement that an Intel version of what would become Mac OS X Server was under development. With the new OS came the death knell for the Apple Clone experiment, as Apple acquired and subsequently shuttered Power Computing. A memo from Jobs put the $100 million acquisition in perspective: “The license fee Apple receives from the licensees does not begin to cover their share of the expenses to engineer and market the Mac OS platform. This means that, in essence, Apple is giving a several hundred dollar subsidy with each licensed copy of the Mac OS.”1998: After several years of starts and stops, Steve Jobs finally arrived at WWDC 1998 with OS X, the real desktop of the future. Combining the best parts of Rhapsody and NeXTSTEP (and putting Copland out of its misery once and for all), Steve spent the better part of his keynote showing off how Carbon will help Classic developers enjoy all the goodies OS X has to offer. 1999: With Jobs back in charge, WWDC quickly turned from a semi-insider event to a Macworld-sized juggernaut. A surprise announcement of Lombard PowerBooks--of which Apple raffled off 50 units throughout the show--kicked things off, followed by demos of OS 8.6 (with Sonata and Sherlock 2), OpenGL, Java 2 and the release of Mac OS X Developer Preview 1, which barely resembled the product that would ship just two years later.NEXT: 2000 to Present >>2000: With the OS X push in full swing, developers received a new preview disk with the final API specifications needed to upgrade OS 9 apps to take advantage of Mac OS X’s new capabilities. Or, as Steve put it, “With this Preview release, developers now have everything they need to make killer applications for Mac OS X.”2001: With OS X already on shelves and developers hard at work on Cocoa apps, Steve trumped his own announcement of an all-LCD flat-panel display lineup by declaring Apple would be installing OS X on all new Macs a full two months ahead of schedule. Mac OS X Server also made an appearance, along with some new Power Mac G4 models built specifically to handle industrial-strength tasks. And some 1,500 attendees walked away with a nifty leathered jacket adorned with an Aqua-colored OS X logo.2002: Sherlock 3, Rendezvous, Quartz Extreme and an Address Book. Of course, we’re talking about Jaguar, which developers got to take home at WWDC 2002. And attendees paid final respects to OS 9 at a mock funeral capped by a moment of silence and a single rose laid on a coffin.2003: The keynote even “premature specification” couldn’t ruin. On a larger stage at the Moscone Center, The next cat made its debut (Panther), attendees got free iSights and a stable Safari popped up in Software Update, but all developers wanted to talk about was the new Power Mac, powered by the 10-years-in-the-making G5 chip.2004: Another year, another cat. Tiger--including Dashboard and Spotlight--was unveiled alongside the “gorgeous” 30-inch Cinema HD Display.2005: It’s true. After months (years?) of speculation, Apple formally announced the end of the PowerPC era and announced a partnership with Intel to supply Macs with x86 processors. Stunned developers were able to purchase a Transition Kit for $999, “consisting of an Intel-based Mac development system along with preview versions of Apple’s software.”2006: Quad 64-bit Xeon Processor stormed onto the scene and Time Machine, Spaces and Boot Camp added some spice to the sixth major version of Mac OS X, dubbed Leopard.2007: A lackluster event brought a “near-final” version of Leopard (with a delayed launch date), Safari for Windows and support for Web apps on the soon-to-be-released iPhone.2008: A monster of a conference that more than made up for the prior year’s tedium, the first sold-out WWDC brought the worldwide launch of the iPhone 3G and the App Store, Snow Leopard and MobileMe... well, nobody’s perfect.2009: New MacBook Pros were just an appetizer to the main course, iPhone 3GS. More Snow Leopard and Safari rounded out the first Steve-less keynote in a decade.2010: After turning a small show into a one of the most anticipated events of the year--complete with rumors and police raids--Steve returns to the stage at Moscone Center this year with an uncharacteristic e-mail assurance: You won’t be disappointed. Follow our live blog of this year's WWDC keynote beginning Monday, June 7 at 10AM PDT. 

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