An interesting 3-D 'holographic' effect on an iPhone (video)

Posted by Dave MertenFolks, this is really cool. It's an illusion of a 3-D hologram—produced by animator David O'Reilly—jumping off the screen of an iPhone. The 3-D scene's perspective is warped using anamorphosis, the same technique used in Hans Holbein's painting The Ambassadors.

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Plan B

Last week I presented my best guess why Microsoft would want to buy Yahoo. What was it that made Yahoo worth $44.6 billion to Bill Gates? Based on what I believe is a pretty profound understanding of the innards of each company, I said it came down less to competing with Google and more to transforming Microsoft into a new company operating under new rules and successful in a new era. Anything else simply didn't make sense to me. Ganging up on Google might sound good, but combining corporate cultures is difficult and in the short term -- which is all that matters to most companies today, seeing their trajectories simply as a succession of short terms -- it could only help Google and hurt Microsoft/Yahoo. If Microsoft was serious about its bid for Yahoo, then there had to be some bigger prize for Redmond that went beyond simple market share. But what if Microsoft wasn't serious about its offer? Well then things start to get REALLY interesting. Certainly Microsoft's offer for Yahoo has thrown that company and several others into a tizzy. Yahoo can't be getting much work done, that's for sure. And if you believe the press reports, AOL and News Corp have been dragged into the strategizing, too, and are subject to disruption. For Yahoo, as the primary target, overall efficiency in the company will have dropped instantly by 20 percent just because people will be talking at the watercooler rather than doing their work. And Yahoo wasn't a very efficient place to begin with. This alone has some value for Microsoft, where I will guarantee you the distraction is far less. Screwing with the minds of Yahoo has value to Microsoft and screwing with AOL and News Corp, too, well that's just a bonus. You can see that Yahoo is concerned about Microsoft's real intentions in its response to the Microsoft bid. The Yahoo board said the bid undervalued the company, but Yahoo spokesmen (not the board) carefully added that regulators might block the deal and Microsoft was offering no financial guarantees. If Microsoft were to come back to Yahoo with a sweetened bid nearer to $50 billion and a guaranteed $1 billion termination fee if for any reason the deal should be blocked or fall through, I'm guessing Yahoo would respond much more favorably. It's up to Microsoft now to prove its intentions. There is good reason to believe, however, that Microsoft's intentions are anything but good. Redmond's real goal may be simply to poach people from Yahoo, and this deal could help them do just that. There is plenty of historical precedent for such behavior. Back in the 1990s, for example, Microsoft made many approaches to Borland, a company that was giving it fits in the programming languages business at the time. Borland's products were simply better (and a lot cheaper) than Microsoft's. Bill Gates had also been stung by the defection of an important Microsoft executive, Rob Dickerson, to Borland. Failing to buy Borland at a good price, Microsoft took to recruiting Borland employees, sending limousines during lunch hour with Microsoft signs in their windows to Borland's Scotts Valley, California headquarters to pick up techies for job interviews. Microsoft reportedly took this technique to an even higher level around the same time when it tried to buy Intuit, which at that point was primarily known for its Quicken home finance application. Microsoft wooed Intuit and won the company in 1994 with a $1.5 billion all-stock offer. Another reported incentive to Intuit was Microsoft's threat to throw $1 billion into development of competing products if Intuit didn't sell out. Already in antitrust trouble with the Department of Justice, Microsoft eventually dropped the offer, paying Intuit a $46.25 million termination fee. But according to at least one Intuit techie who jumped to Microsoft shortly thereafter, the primary purpose of Microsoft's bid was actually to get information on Intuit's programmers, NOT to buy the company. Unlike Borland, where Microsoft paid a PR penalty (and later scored a lawsuit) for sending limos to the parking lot and interviewing anybody who would get in, by entering a formal due diligence period with Intuit, Microsoft got access to many details, including Intuit’s product plans and employee records. By the time they bailed on the deal, Microsoft had a very good idea exactly which Intuit employees to recruit to both improve Microsoft Money and to hurt Quicken, QuickBooks, and TurboTax. It is a testament to Intuit that the company survived. Now jump to Yahoo, where exactly the same process could be in effect. At a minimum Microsoft is forcing competitors to act when they would rather not. If Yahoo succumbs Microsoft will gain exactly the sort of inside information they got from Intuit. Yahoo is a huge company plagued with pockets of inefficiency (pockets of efficiency?). A failed Microsoft bid, even one involving a termination fee, could lead to horrific results for the company. Remember that Yahoo is staggering here while Intuit was at the top of its market and its game. I'm not saying this is what's happening, by the way, just that it concerns me. I guess we'll have to wait and see. And while we are waiting, most of the technology world has been hanging out this week in Barcelona, learning about the future of mobile technology at the 2008 Mobile World Congress, which sounds like a government agency but is really just a trade show for cellphones. Google is there announcing a new version of its Android open source software developers kit for building Linux-based mobile phones that will work well in the Google ecosystem. But unless it is happening behind closed doors and I am unaware of it, nobody in Barcelona is looking at a true Google Phone or gPhone, which won't hit the market until later this year. The whole concept of the gPhone is problematical both for the market and for Google, itself. I'm making a distinction here between Android phones introduced by any number of vendors and a true GOOGLE phone — a gPhone — actually sold under its own brand by Google. Microsoft doesn't sell PCs, you may notice, because to do so would step on the toes of their hardware OEMs. Okay, the xBox 360 is a lot like a PC, but it is still a lot more like a video game and Microsoft was around for 25 years before it dared sell an xBox. So conventional wisdom says Google won't sell a gPhone, preferring instead to see the world repopulated with Android phones, instead. But Google is not like other companies, which means they are sometimes bolder and sometimes more foolhardy, because a Google-branded gPhone — two of them, actually — is on the way. Here is what little I know, dropped in my lap this week by a loyal reader (you know who you are). There are two gPhones slated for release with the first coming in September and the second probably not appearing until after Christmas. Given that the first is the high-end model and the second is cheaper, Google will probably expect to make as much money as possible on the higher-margin units at Christmas before revealing the budget model even exists. How Apple-like, eh? Both will include WiFi, which makes me wonder if a VoIP client will be there, too. The high-end phone will look somewhat like a Blackberry Pearl, but the screen flips up and there is a keyboard for texting. No word on pricing for the high-end phone, but the second model is intended to be less than $100 — AFTER Christmas. The actual manufacturer of these gPhones will be Samsung (rumors to this point had indicated HTC, so this is a change) and Google is still talking with both T-Mobile and Verizon as potential carriers (rumors also said Verizon had passed — not). That means there are both GSM and W-CDMA versions in the works. Given AT&T's success with the iPhone I can't imagine Verizon will let the gPhone pass, but it will be interesting to see if Google will be able go with a nonexclusive deal and get both U.S. carriers. Nah.
10 Great iPhone Camera Apps

� By now, you've probably launched the Camera app and taken a few pictures. Maybe you've even shared these pictures with other people. Though the built-in camera doesn't do everything your point-and-shoot does, and it will never have the optical abilities of a DSLR, it has a major advantage over dedicated cameras: the iPhone OS lets you install apps that take your pictures and video to another level.Here are 10 great apps that let you create, modify and share your images. You probably don't need all ten, as there's some feature overlap among these apps. Try a few of these to see if your creative mind enjoys using a variety of tools. CameraBagPublisher: Nevercenter Ltd. Co.Price: $1.99Imagine that your iPhone is a bag full of different film cameras, and you're on your way to understanding Camerabag. This app lets you play with different "looks" for your photos. Choosing the "Instant" style lets you make pictures reminiscent of the kind that came from old instant cameras. Another style, "Helga," gives your photos saturated, darker colors and simulated vignetting in the corners. "Fisheye" lets you pretend you've mounted a fisheye lens onto your iPhone. All told, there are 12 filters in the newest version. The Helga style: vignetted corners, rich hues Though the end results may feel like you're using different cameras, the app is really a set of filters that modify images after they've been made. You can use it on pictures you've already taken, or you can create new pictures using the app.When you use the app to take pictures, you won't see the filter applied in real time. That makes it even more like the old-school cameras, where you didn't know what the picture looked like until you developed it. Luckily, if you don't like what one filter did to the image, you can easily switch to another filter until you get the look you want.You can also run an image through multiple filters, to combine them. Just save a filtered image, open it, apply another filter, and save it again.ShakeItPhotoPublisher: Nick CampbellPrice: $0.99Maybe you long for the days of old, when a bulky camera's click followed by a sustained motorized whirr meant a picture was coming in a few minutes. Or maybe you're too young to remember those days, but have heard OutKast sing that you should "shake it like a Polaroid picture," and you want to know what that's about. ShakeItPhoto lets you do both.�This model airplane looks more contrasty, thanks to ShakeItPhoto This app copies the squarish aspect ratio of the old-school camera, as well as its saturated hues. After you take your shot, you can click the "Use" button, and hear those ancient gears push a white-bordered photo down onto your iPhone's screen. You can watch the images develop slowly, or shake your phone to speed up the process.Sure, shaking to develop the picture may be a waste of computing resources (since it takes more calculations to fade the image in slowly rather than just process it to get the final result). Sometimes you have to be inefficient to have a little fun.GorillacamPublisher: Joby Inc.Price: freeIf you wish the Camera app had more camera-like features, try Gorillacam. It's free, though it may make you want to spend money on hardware.While taking pictures, Gorillacam can display a grid on the screen, letting you easily compose a photo using the "rule of thirds," which can make many photos more interesting. It can also display a bubble level along the top, so you can be confident your horizon is straight. Gorillacam also lets you save smaller pictures, and includes a digital zoom slider, a camera shake indicator, and three-shot burst, which some users may find useful. Grid lines made it easy to set up the shot for rule of thirds composition. The bubble level is visible at the top.Where Gorillacam really shines is in its time lapse and self-timer features. You can use those to take multiple pictures over time, or to take pictures of yourself. But how will you set up your phone to take such a picture? The publisher, Joby, hopes you'll drop $40 on its Gorillamobile case and stand, which has three bendable legs that you can wrap around things to hold the iPhone in place. The legs can also stand the iPhone on a table. And, what do you know? That bubble level and composing grid can come in handy when you're setting up the stand to take pictures.It's as if Joby had it all planned out.Camera GeniusPublisher: CodeGooPrice: now on sale, $1.99Not content to just improve on the Camera app, Camera Genius wants to improve your photography.Just because the iPhone doesn't have a "real" camera doesn't mean you can't make great photos with it. Hidden inside the app is something called the "Camera Manual," which is chock full of pointers that will make you a genius with the iPhone's camera. It's like a class in aesthetics, and it even comes with examples. It takes only a few seconds to study all of the topics.The grid lines let us align the Chemung River and a bridge along the top third easily. At top left is a counter that says how many photos we've taken, and on the right is a time and location stamp (which you can turn off). The camera side of Camera Genius features multiple guide line patterns, a shake indicator, burst shooting, capturing by sound (say "Cheese!"), a timer, zoom, and a bigger button for taking pictures. It also lets you visibly stamp your location and the time onto photos when you take them. (You can also change the location to any text).Camera Genius also makes it easy to share images by e-mail or by copying, for paste into another app.Photoshop.com MobilePublisher: Adobe Systems Inc.Price: freeIt's easy to say that photographers use tools like Photoshop as a crutch, but the fact is, many images can be improved with a few tweaks. Most professional photographers spend some time editing photos before they're ready.Photoshop.com Mobile's crop and straighten tools can give photos tighter composition and fix crooked horizons. Rotating the image helps if the iPhone got confused about which side of the image should be topmost. You can also flip the image. It's easy to adjust exposure, saturation, contrast and tint, or quickly convert the photo to black and white.Exotic money looks more exotic-er, thanks to the Tint filter! Beyond that, there are sketch, soft focus and sharpen filters, as well as a handful of interesting and tasteful effects that you can experiment with. Borders let you frame up the image, for even more variety. The app supports multiple levels of undo, so you can experiment until you're happy with the resulting image.Photoshop.com Mobile is integrated with Photoshop.com, which offers similar editing tools and also acts as a photo sharing service. Like the app, that website is free, though you'll need to sign in with an Adobe ID.�FX Photo StudioPublisher: MacPhun LLCPrice: now on sale, $0.99If you prefer more extreme manipulations to your photos, check out FX Photo Studio. In addition to letting you crop and rotate images, and adjust brightness, it comes with some 125 different effects. You can make it look like the picture was taken through water or snow, in a lightning storm, or through a fun house mirror. You can surround your image with butterflies, cupids, or hearts.It took a few swipes to give this sailor suit the rainbow treatmentYou can do all sorts of color transformations on your image, or make it look like it was taken with old film, or with a vignetting lens. Or make it look like it was so cold the lens got frosted. Or so rainy, your image is wet. You can even overlay fire, scary faces, a skull and a ghost, all of which are great if you're angry at someone. Post the finished images to Facebook or Twitter, or e-mail the photos right from the app.Photographers debate each other over whether they should call the gadgets and apps they use to help them make images "tools" or "toys." FX Photo Studio can be used as a tool, but it can also be used as a toy, depending on your creative preference. If you like putting wacky things into your photos, you'll be happy with this. But if you're more conservative about photography, you probably won't find a use for most of the effects.ColorSplashPublisher: Pocket Pixels Inc.Price: $1.99If you've ever exclaimed, "Gosh, I wish there were a way to easily make most of my photo appear in grayscale, while coloring the part I want people to see the most," you'll be happy to know that yes, there's indeed an app for that. ColorSplash converts any image to grayscale, and lets you use your finger as a brush to paint the color back in. Choose from opaque or transparent brushes with soft or hard edges, and paint away. If you mess up, you can always undo, or just switch to painting with gray.Why yes, I do like my pizza with clams. By coloring only the pizza, you may not notice that the plate is on a hotel bedspread If the process seems intimidating, the app includes a helpful tutorial video that shows you how easy it is. Once you get into it, it just feels natural: using your fingers to paint, scroll and zoom really leverages the power of the touch interface. Best of all, it's so easy, it makes you look like you did it on a more conventional computer, with expensive photo editing software.You can e-mail the finished images, or post them to Facebook, Flickr or Twitter from inside the app. You can tell your friends you used ColorSplash, or keep them in the dark and make them think you're a god of image manipulation.CinqPublisher: Tunaverse MediaPrice: $0.99If you take a lot of photos on your iPhone but don't connect it to your computer once in a while, you'll have some photos in one place and other photos in other places. Cinq tackles that problem by letting you transfer pictures to your home computer over 3G or Wi-Fi. It also lets you look at your photo library from your iPhone, which is great if you aren't already carrying all of your photos with you.If you've only been to Niagara falls when it's warm outside, you're missing out. All of these JPEGs are sitting on my Mac at home.Cinq works by turning your Mac or Windows computer into a server that listens for requests from the iPhone app. The Cinq server software is a free download. For security, Cinq will only send or receive images if the phone and computer are both logged in to the same Tunaverse.com account. Those accounts are free.Even if you used iTunes to put your entire photo library on your iPhone, you can still get some use out of Cinq. The pictures on your iPhone are probably shrunken versions of the original photos on your computer, so many of the fine details may be missing. Cinq lets you zoom way in on details of the larger photos on your computer, letting you look closely without hogging up space on your phone. The server resizes the image on the fly and decides how much it needs to send you with each swipe, so it's reasonably quick even over a 3G network.TwinShot3DPublisher: Amalgamated Coders Inc.Price: $1.99Stereoscopic photography -- the art of taking pictures that give an illusion of depth when viewed with the right equipment -- is an ancient art. TwinShot3D lets you make three-dimensional photos with your iPhone.�3D images look better if you have a distant background, which in this case is my bookshelf. The tower at the bottom left of the photo is made from hotel soap. If you've still got your 3D glasses from two Superbowls ago (or any amber/blue 3D glasses on hand), try them on now. There are, of course, some limitations. You need 3D glasses for the app to work at all. Knowing this, the publishers support three different kinds of 3D glasses. (If you've still got your Intel 3D glasses from the Superbowl in 2009, tell TwinShot3D you've got amber and blue glasses.)Real 3D images are made by capturing images from two perspectives simultaneously, to simulate the gap between each eye. Since there's no way to do that on the iPhone, the app prompts you to take one photo, then move the phone a few inches and take another. It's best if your subject doesn't move while you're taking the pictures.After that, line up the images and tell TwinShot3D to process them to make one 3D image. If it worked, you just might get hooked on making 3D images.iVideoCameraPublisher: Laan LabsPrice: $0.99Most of the apps in this article focus on still photos, but let's not forget that the iPhone's camera can also make video. iVideoCamera takes video recording to the next level, by letting you use effects.Meowy McMeowerson gets the scoop on what matters to viewers like you! You can add film scratches, or make it look like you're on television news. A snow globe filter makes light fluffy flakes fall downward, and if you rotate the iPhone, the flakes will change direction, so they'll keep going down. You can make text scroll, pretend you have night vision, or go for a trippy infinte zoom effect. Other effects packs are unlockable for $.99.Once you're done with your movie, you can post it to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Vimeo, or TwelveSeconds. You can also FTP it, e-mail it, send a link to it by SMS, or save it to your camera roll. It even turns the iPhone into a web server for sharing movies on the Wi-Fi network, and gives you an address for friends to type into their browsers.On top of that, it works on any iPhone, even the ones that don't ordinarily have video capability including the original iPhone and iPhone 3G.�Got a favorite camera app we missed? Drop it in the comments below. �
Macworld 2010 special iPad event liveblog

Filed under: Macworld, Hardware, Blogging, iPad We are live from the floor of Macworld 2010, where they're be talking about the iPad in a special event feature Jason Snell, Macworld editor-in-chief, and a panel of industry experts. We have heard that won't be an actual iPad on the show floor, so it's not clear whether we'll get to see the device, but we will hear commentary and insight on what the iPad means for Apple and the world at large. After the break, find an updating liveblog of the event as it happens, straight from Moscone Center in San Francisco.2:04PM Ted: I would like to see 1) if there will be iPhone OS changes brought back from the iPad, and what hidden features we'll see there. And 2) what options are available for printing. Dan: Can I use it as a phone? Or a camera? (laughter) No, when we saw it, we said, the screen looks kind of empty, doesn't it? You can put about six apps in the dock, so I think we'll see a newer design for the homescreen, something that takes more advantage of the extra space. Something more appropriate for the product rather than just a large iPhone.2:02PM Jason: Frasier Spiers said do you realize how amazing this will be in education? And yes, you'll see a real change there. One last question: what is your biggest unanswered question about the iPad?2:01PM Andy: It will lend credibility to the idea of computing via tablet, and Android and others will follow that path in another year or so as well. It'll finally break us free from the "type on this, look at this" paradigm we've been stuck with.2:00PM Andy: We'll also see a halo effect. Star Wars didn't invent the sci-fi movie, but it showed that sci-fi wasn't the problem, bad movies were. So tablets aren't the problem, bad tablets are, and the iPad will remind people of that.2:00PM Andy: iPad won't be a big hit until 2011 -- it will take a while after the people in this room buy them to show them off to the normal civilian, and the next time they need a portable computer, they'll remember the iPad they saw on the airplane or in the classroom.1:59PM Ted: I also think we'll be surprised. Third-party developers will surprise us. Jason: Right, apps are front and center on iPad, and we only had web apps when the iPhone came out. Andy: I don't believe that tablets have been tried and failed, I don't believe they've ever been tried. No tablet I've seen compares to the iPad -- tablets I've seen are a desktop computer in tablet form, the iPad is an actual tablet.1:58PM Ted: This is also the ultimate remote control. We'll see it controlling a more digital home in the next few years, and the iPad is the way to control it. Turn on stereo, run lights, control thermostat, the iPad is made for that.1:57PM Jason: What about people who use only a fraction of a computer -- only email or only web browsing? Ryan: Sure, it's fine if netbooks get assassinated by the iPad -- around the house computer. But it's still not going to take the place of productivity or when I need to go on the road. In addition to, but not a replacement for. Ted: Agreed, around the house computer instead of a laptop. I'm optimistic about the long-term as well -- it's not there today, but things will change. Majority of people with a computer today don't really utilize it to the full extent, and the iPad will satisfy those folks.1:55PM Ryan: I'm not so sure -- you need feedback, you need tactility, you can type fast because you need the keys and you need to know where they are. Apple did release a keyboard dock -- the tech may change, but we're not there now, and it's going to be a while before we abandon the keyboard or the traditional computer. Steve even acknowledged that it was an in-between device.1:54PM Dan: Younger people will be the one to watch. When this becomes an option, will people not bother to learn or use the traditional mouse and keyboard? We're used to it, but if you look at someone learning, you realize the challenges behind the mouse and the cursor and the traditional interface. There's a huge disconnect, and especially for kids, we'll have to see if they prefer the iPad to the exclusion of traditional computing. Their intial reaction is to touch.. which is why you don't take them to museums (laughter). When kids grow up with this, will they wonder what's wrong with us for using archaic keyboards and mice?1:52PM Jason: Time to talk about the future. What impact will the iPad have in the next five years? What about the tablet market? MS said a while ago that tablets were the future, and they're a flop so far, basically. Will we see a significant change in tablet computing or how we use them?1:52PM Jason: Some people don't mind reading on screens like the iPad, some people do. There will be options no matter what. Kindle is for reading books, iPad has more functionality. Please no, Amazon, put in an API for apps -- its strength is reading books. Ted: Will you feel that way when you have to carry two devices? Dan: I still carry an iPhone and an iPod, but then again I'm really strange.1:50PM Andy: We already have an iPad nano, it's the iPhone. If you want something with less or more functionality, you've got choices.1:50PM Dan: They can totally coexist, just like the original iPod was still around after the iPod touch. The iPad won't kill the Kindle any more than the Kindle killed the book.1:50PM Andy: The $500 price point is now radioactive if you're an ereader. But you can do very well at a lower price point. Ted: I also think there will be a cheaper iPad, just as the iPhone dropped in price after it came out. Jason: I can see a day when the Kindle is free. Ryan: Absolutely. That's the future of Amazon's business model. It's not going away.1:48PM Ryan: The question is: are you going to want to read on the iPad. Comic books make a ton of sense, but I didn't want to read a book on the iPad -- too bright, colors too vivid, I feel like the contrast on the Kindle is better for certain reading. Books will still be best read on e-Ink. Jason: I agree that even with the iPad, there's a future for something like the kindle or a more traditional ereader. Ted: I've read books on my iPhone and it's not painful by any means. I think from a price perspective, the Kindle is a hard sell. Dan: Ha, well the large Kindle is a bad investment anyway.1:46PM Dan: Bookstore wasn't even active in the iPads we used -- the icon was there, but it didn't work, we haven't even seen it yet. Jason: A Kindle app for the iPad will be interesting, too. Comic books, thanks for mentioning those, because comics on the iPad's bigger screen will be a big deal.1:45PM Andy: I'm co-authoring an app that will work as my printing press -- once the press gets built, then it's just making the content. There's always an outlet, as opposed to a third-party where you have to wait for approval.1:44PM Andy: Application-based content is here to stay -- designing your own app can help you release content your own way. Jason: Except that costs more money. Build your own app is great, but some devs can't do that. Maybe a third-party will, but not everyone can do their own.1:43PM Andy: iBooks won't be the most signficant part of the periodical delivery mechanism on the iPad -- even comic book and periodical publishers aren't supporting the iPad so much as tablet devices in general. They're using Webkit -- not platform specific, but iPad included.1:42PM Andy: The iBooks app is a quiet piece of news, but that's an incredibly significant announcement. That app that we tried that day was probably the least functional of all the apps on there -- will it freeze up, will it slow down? It's downloadable because it's not ready in time for shipping, and Apple understands that the app will have to evolve quickly and update often.1:41PM Ted: A semester's worth of books on the iPad at (hopefully) a fraction of the cost, not to mention that the used market could possibly be gone for good, a good thing in publisher's eyes. Jason: Lower the price of the new textbook, make more money back on the lost used market. If they'll agree to that, which they probably won't.1:40PM Ted: I want to get back to books for a second. Textbooks will change thanks to the iPad for sure.1:39PM Jason: There will be apps for newspapers or magazines, but it'll have to be someone else or they'll have to make their own, and that's a fractured space. Ryan: Apple could have changed the game on that, but they aren't doing that now.1:38PM Ryan: Except that book aspect here is books. There's no periodicals for the iPad right now, no iMagazines. If Apple had created a standard or introduced an app like the Kindle, maybe revolutionary. But all they're talking about right now is books. There's no solution for the industries that are having trouble.1:37PM Dan: Still, the music industry lost the battle for DRM, will that happen to book publishers? Andy: The web was an experiment that absolutely failed for books and magazines, and what it did was train the average consumer that a web browser is free -- charging for web content isn't right. But the Kindle taught that produced content by professionals does cost money, and the iPad can run that same market.1:36PM Andy: It's a computer, so it can do whatever devs and content publishers want it to do. Apple is using epub, which is remarkably flexible for sharing and lending books and licenses, even to libraries. So it could make it easier to share and borrow books -- your local public library as a version of Amazon.com. "There's a license available for Tom Clancy's book, I'll sign that out." Dan: Sure, libraries may have applications even -- if they can find the money.1:35PM Dan: It seems like the early days of the music industry's digital revolution, where publishers want to lock things down. It's a good idea for convenience -- a whole library in a device. But losing that freedom to content and sharing worries me.1:34PM Jason: When this product was rumored for months... Ryan: Years... Decades.... Jason: When Nostradamus predicted the iPad (laughter), ebooks were a big deal. What does this mean for books and newspapers and magazines?1:33PM Ryan: It's not as intimate of an experience on a laptop, but it's a little more convenient. Jason: Accessories will be key -- cradles, docks, stands. Ted: Two different modes -- primarily a consumption device, like a book. But more serious work will require a keyboard, stand, different environment.1:32PM Jason: In the testing area at the event, iPads were on raised platforms, with each one having an Apple employee told "if you let this thing out of your sight, we won't just fire you, your family will end up wondering what happened to you." Andy: Glossy front. Not a problem with a notebook, but what about a tablet? We'll see. Dan: It's easier, I can tilt the iPad anyway I want. Ryan: You also don't have to be holding your laptop at all times, but the iPad will have to be held up most of the time.1:30PM Andy: That'll be interesting to see what happens in real life though. Apple events are magic acts -- they're planned. When Steve was using that book on stage, was the chair even designed for him to hold the iPad in the right place? What will it be like to hold an iPad (1.5 lbs) while standing or trying to do something in a weird position? What about when people see what you're doing in a coffeeshop, or at a table? We will have to see.1:29PM Ted: People that are happy with an iPad today will be happy with a laptop in three or four years. Dan: That's a bold statement. There's a duality between iPad today vs. iPad in three or four years. But there is a ubiquity to computers today, and we've all adapted quickly to having them around in the same places the iPad will be -- on the couch, in the kitchen, and so on. It's nice to have something that doesn't make you feel like you have to match to it, but it matches to you.1:27PM Ted: The iPad can't do everything that a Mac can do, but the release of the iWork software was an opening salvo. You can start using this as a productivity machine -- you can't use it tomorrow, but look how far the iPhone has come thus far.1:27PM Andy: There are two checkboxes for me as a user -- I need to write a lot at any given moment, and I need to transfer files on and off of it, and the iPad meets both needs just fine for me. This will be as transformative a product as the original Mac was.1:26PM Jason: Is it right to say that Apple is taking another crack at what computers are, and is it the right approach? Andy: Yes, I think so. Computers don't have to have file systems or browsers, they just have to solve problems, and the iPad still does that.1:25PM Andy: I agree -- if you have a system level switch, it even solves the problem of support. If something breaks, make sure that override on third-party apps is turned off, and you're back to working paradise.1:24PM Dan: I'm playing devil's advocate, because I agree with you, but Apple's philsophy is that. They don't want you to be a tinkerer, because they aren't aimed at tinkerers. We don't agree with that, but it's their product, even if we're buying it. You can do what you want, if you go down the jailbreak road, and people will always find a way. But it is a lot harder than it needs to be, even if I understand why Apple is doing that.1:23PM Jason: Yeah I think there's room for non-App Store apps, but App Store apps would get preference. Ryan: Yes, the App Store is literally a revolution in software distribution. But Apple is not bugding on their philsophy at all. There's no reason why you shouldn't be able to set the override switch and do what you want.1:22PM Ryan: 3rd party apps are dangerous, but as long as you warn users, what's the problem? It is my toaster oven, right?1:21PM Jason: App Store -- will it work the same on the iPad, will we see the same iPhone issues? Andy: If it works, then great. If not, the weaknesses will be more clear. I want a computer that will potentially will always work, never crash, will always run software. The win from the App Store concept is that you get a more stable machine at the expense of freedom that you might not excercise anyway. Steve Jobs is a benevolent tyrant -- he'll give you everything you want, all he demands is absolute obedience, and you'll be fine.1:20PM Ted: What do you care, I said? And no, they say, it will degrade the experience of using the toaster oven. And one more thing, they said -- those poptarts in your pantry won't work with your toaster oven either -- you didn't buy them directly from our CuisineArts store. Plus, they'd actually rejected Poptarts from the Art Store. Extended metaphor -- if the iPhone was a toaster, Ted would have issues getting it to do what he wanted.1:18PM Ted: All of the closed things concern me as they apply to the iPad. He's telling a story about how the lower story of his house is very cold downstairs, so he decided to rig up a toaster oven to serve as a space heater. He rigged it up with an extension cord, and it didn't work. He called tech support, and said he was using an extension cord, and they asked if it had a "Made for Cuisinart" sticker on it. It didn't, so he bought a special Cuisinart cord, but it still didn't work. Called back tech support for the toaster, and finally had to admit he was using the toaster oven as a space heater. "No," they said, "you're not authorized to do that." Terms of purchase actually prohibit "jailbaking" (laughs from the audience).1:15PM Ted: On the record, I think the iPad will be a great success, so I like it, I'm buying one. But I expect the iPad is still a closed platform, and it will not replace laptops and more complex computers.1:14PM Jason: Ted is here, even though he didn't use the iPhone, because this seems like Apple saying "we're moving the ball forward" in computing. This is a new paradigm -- touchscreen, direct interaction. iWork is going from Mac straight to the iPad -- is this a netbook/laptop replacement or not?1:13PM Dan: Yeah without the bezel, there's no place to put your thumb - we're so accustomed to the iPhone that it seems like wasted space, but once you use it, it'll fade into the background like everything else.1:12PM Jason: The bezel got complaints, but we have thumbs and you need that extra not-screen space to actually hold it. Ryan disagrees -- he says the iPhone has no bezel and people hold it just find. Andy: This one I really need a grip on, though -- people may even put grip tape on the back to help you not drop it. In the tub for example. (laughs)1:11PM Ihnatko: We could probably charge $499 for these foam iPads though. If anyone wants some blog hits, just take one of these and get some blurry shots of it, you'll get thousands of hits in a few seconds.1:10PM Andy's first impression: build was high quality. It feels like a premium product -- no gaps, it really does disappear in your hand. The device itself disappears within the first five seconds -- it's all experience. Holding it is not the same as seeing it, which most of the complainers have only done.1:08PM Jason: The screen is 4:3, not 16:9 -- even when they showed Star Trek, it was a little weird, but a 16:9 device would be more uncomfortable to hold. Ryan: Right, you can't have both. Either be really wide or more traditional, and they went 4:3, and I kind of prefer it.1:08PM Ryan: Also slightly less foamy than these foam prototypes on stage. It feels really well constructed, a bit heavier than it should feel, but still portable. I do have complaints, but we'll get to that.1:07PM Jason: It helps that we've seen the iPhone interface. Ryan: Everything serves the screen. As a browser, it's nice to go in and see nothing but the content.1:06PM Dan Warren: It's suprising how natural it feels. There's something about it that feels very intuitive. Like a book, you don't pick it up and think "how can I use this?" It makes sense.1:06PM Ted is the only one who hasn't touched the iPad, but everyone else was at the event. What were your first impressions?1:05PM Panels are coming up on stage. Jason says "We don't have a real one, Apple's not here." Four of the five people on stage have used an iPad, however. Dan Warren of Macworld, Ted Landau, Mac Observer and Macfixit. Ryan Block of GDGT and our old Engadget colleague, and Andy Ihnatko.1:04PM Paul introducing Jason Snell, finishes with "We'll see you next year, right?" Hope so!1:03PM The person holding one of the balls that was bouncing around? She just won an iPad from Macworld -- they're going to give her one when the iPad actually ships. Congrats! Maybe we should have participated in the ball bouncing.1:02PM Here's Paul Kent. "Welcome to our iPad special event." He's got an iPad mockup, but it's not the real thing. "You know that this is not shipping yet?" He just dropped it as a joke.1:01PM The lights are going down.12:59PM "Ladies and gentlemen, we need to fill every seat." The hall is practically full, and still more are coming in the door. Someone behind us thinks there will be an iPad here, but we'll see. 12:57PM Four minutes out -- even the press corps is really batting these balls around. I just got hit in the head. That's what we go through for you readers. 12:54PM The crowd is bouncing around a big ball and they seem excited about the iPad. Good thing they probably don't have one -- if one showed up in the hall here, they might get mobbed. 12:50PM Once again, word direct from Jason Snell this morning is that we will not see an actual iPad at this event. But of course, you never know. 12:49PM They're showing the promotional video that's been playing all week here at Macworld. The public has just been allowed in to see the show, and seats are filling up.TUAWMacworld 2010 special iPad event liveblog originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 13 Feb 2010 15:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink�|�Email this�|�Comments Apple - San Francisco - Moscone Center - Jason Snell - Macworld
Hot Future Tech Coming to Your Mac, iPhone and iPad

Some seriously cutting-edge tech is cresting the horizon, ready to take your Apple devices and other gear to the next level of awesome. We’ve searched out the breakthroughs on the verge of becoming reality to discover how Macs, iDevices, and other tech are about to become even more impressive.�Illustrations by ArtBombersIf you’re a regular reader of Mac|Life, you know that every January we look at the fanciful future of Apple, ranging from the prototype cars to the VR goggles that might emerge from Cupertino one not-so-soon day. This is not that story. This story is about real tech that genuinely works--it’s visible on the horizon, and it could be in your Apple gear in a year or three. Think of this story as a preview of the near future.Of course, we can’t say for sure that all this technology will end up in future products (we’re good, but we’re not psychic). Some of it may never leave the lab. What you can rely on is that old standards will hit their technical limits, and progress will march on. But for a reasonable-guess preview of how Macs, iPhones, iPads, iPods, and other tech will grow, evolve, and improve in the coming years, continue reading.�The Display's the Thing�Since the original Macintosh, our screens have been passive windodws into Apple's machines. That's about to change.�3D in Your Home�Three-dimensional TV has been a glimmer in the eye of television and movie studios since House of Wax and other 3D features first popped out at audiences in the 1950s. But the gimmick never caught on, thanks in large part to clunky technology that sacrificed picture quality. As James Cameron would be happy to explain to you, times and tech have changed, and in 2010, 3D is making the jump from the big screen into our homes…and hands.Despite technological advances, the principles behind 3D haven’t changed much in 60 years. When a 3D image is displayed, two pictures of the same scene taken from different perspectives are shown. Those spiffy glasses make sure each is sent to only one eye, then our brain combines the two images into one, complete with the illusion of depth. A more mysterious part of the brain is responsible for deciding if it’s worth paying 10 bucks for popcorn at the multiplex.But really, we can’t picture Steve wearing those dorky glasses at the introduction of the iMac 3D (but when we do, it always puts us in a good mood). Simplicity is Apple’s mantra, and what’s simpler than 3D screens that do the filtering for you, providing a 3D picture while eliminating the need for special eyewear? Such screens--called autostereoscopic displays--exist today. Some are peppered by tiny lenses that direct images to each eye; others use a layer of fine slits to split the display’s light in two. One of these technologies is about to get a boost from Apple’s biggest mobile-gaming rival, Nintendo. Announced this March and due for release in spring 2011, the Nintendo 3DS will be nothing less than a shot from the House That Mario Built across Cupertino’s bow. This next-gen upgrade to the popular DS handheld will sport sophisticated dual touchscreens, motion control, and--mamma mia!--autostereoscopic 3D.Competition is another Apple mantra, and it’s no secret that Apple sees games as a big part of the success of its Multi Touch devices. Steve won’t sit still if competitors like Nintendo can gain an advantage that draws gamers away from Apple and back to the Mushroom Kingdom. If Cupertino can improve on the 3D experience offered by Nintendo’s next handheld, you can bet that App Store games--and maybe even the iPhone and iPad OS--will enter the third dimension too.�OLEDs...So Pretty!�Today we watch videos everywhere from the living room to the hotel room on our HD TVs, MacBooks, and iPads. As great as those devices are, couldn’t they all stand to have even thinner, brighter, and more energy efficient screens? Trick question--of course they could. The good news is they will, thanks to OLEDs, an acronym for organic light-emitting diodes.OLED screens aren’t grass-fed, free-range displays sold at Whole Foods, but they do use organic material (that is, material derived from the element carbon) to produce a picture. Unlike traditional LCD screens that require power-hogging backlights to project their images, OLEDs generate their own light when electricity passes through the organic polymers sandwiched between layers of film in the display. Because those layers are only about 500 nanometers thick (that’s even skinnier than a human hair) and don’t require much else besides a power source to work, OLED screens can be dramatically slimmer and lighter than conventional displays now on the market.Better still, large OLED displays are relatively easier to make than LCDs, and their gorgeous picture makes your spiffy plasma TV look like a 1950s Zenith. That’s because there’s no need to grow sheets of fragile crystals. Instead, organic molecules are sprayed onto film in a process much like inkjet printing, and that film can be transparent, flexible, or even foldable. An OLED screen’s flexibility and toughness make it suitable for use in a wide range of gadgets, most of which haven’t been invented yet. From giant HDTVs and miniaturized smartphones to futuristic heads-up displays in cars, OLEDs can potentially be incorporated into almost anything--potentially even woven into clothing. And because of their brightness, vibrant colors, and wide viewing angles, you’ll always look great in your 720p iSweatshirt Pro.But don’t camp out in front of your local Apple Store for certified-organic MacBooks or casual wear just yet. While OLED screens are popping up in more and more devices (perhaps most famously in Google’s Nexus One smartphone), the technology’s best days are yet to come. Manufacturing OLED screens is still an expensive proposition, leading to high prices and tepid consumer interest. But as OLED’s momentum builds and costs drop, expect to see a gradual shift in the computer and electronics world away from LCDs, much like the transition that phased out bulky, inefficient CRTs. And expect to see Apple jump on the OLED bandwagon when the time and money are right. With its combination of energy efficiency, size, and image quality, we think OLED has a bright future in Apple’s Macs and its growing line of sleek mobile devices.�E-Papers, Please�Popularized by e-readers like the Kindle, e-paper has plenty to offer a company focused on mobile devices. Its slim design is durable, lightweight, and legible in bright sunlight. The secret lies between the sheets--plastic sheets holding tiny wells filled with black and white particles suspended in liquid. When the wells are charged, the particles move to the screen to appear as text. No backlight is required, and because electricity is only used once to draw the contents of each page, e-paper sips power compared to the LCDs in Apple’s portable lineup. Color e-paper is so hot, you gotta wear gloves. Metaphorically speaking, that is. Photo: LG.Phillips LCD., LTD.But while e-paper does monochrome well, most of today’s e-readers use filters to colorize their black and white text with pictures--and they simply can’t compare to LCDs. That will change. Philips is working on new technology using colored particles in a process much like blending ink dots in traditional print. The results should finally make good on e-paper’s promise, but they’re still years away.Even then, will Steve subscribe to e-paper? The iPad’s LCD screen would seem to be the last word on the subject, but Apple could always use multiple displays in its devices. For instance, e-paper battery monitors could offer much more information than the little green lights they use today.�The Wireless War�If you’re like us, your living room entertainment setup is the second most precious collection of gear in your home (next to your beloved Mac, of course). Every night, you’re on the couch with a bowl of popcorn in front of an HD screen complete with a Blu-Ray player and 7.1 sound. Trouble is, that sweet setup means fistfuls of wire to fuss with. But those knots may not stay tangled much longer.As home entertainment setups get more complex, something has to give. If two competing wireless standards--WirelessHD and Wireless Home Digital Interface (WHDI)--have anything to say about it, that something will be our HDMI, DVI, and other AV cables. Both standards promise something like Wi-Fi for multimedia. Compatible devices (laptops, game consoles, and mobile phones) will use them to find your HDTV automagically over the air in a system that “just works”--and the whole idea of ditching all those cords works in a big way for us.WirelessHD devices may be available from Panasonic, LG, Vizio, and other manufacturers by the time you read this. WirelessHD delivers uncompressed video up to 1080p, multichannel audio, and other data--including Hollywood-approved DRM--at speeds up to 4Gbps, with a theoretical ceiling of 25Gbps. That’s a lot of data, but WirelessHD will only carry it up to 33 feet. The WHDI standard will move your movies as far as 100 feet, but at only up to 3Gbps. You’ll be able to compare how the two standards fare against each other when WHDI devices hit stores late this summer or early fall. Only time will tell which of these standards will be a hit with consumers or whether Apple will adopt one or play a waiting game. Let’s hope we’re not kept waiting for the release of Avatar 2 before we can stream movies, games, and more from our iPads to our televisions.» Future Apple Devices: iPad 3, iMac 3D, Cinema Display» Expected Arrival Date: 2013» You'll Also See It In: HDTVs, handheld game consoles, displays» Future Awesomeness Rating: Deeply AwesomeNext page: Printers and Processors >>Powerful Prints�Yes, print and printers have a future in our networked world. No, they won't be like anything you've seen before.�Fab It Yourself�Teleporters and matter replicators may be the stuff of science fiction, but with 3D printers, you can create physical objects with your Mac out of thin air (and a lot of plastic). Apple hasn’t sold printers since 1997, but if anything could get them back into the game, 3D printing is it.For decades, 3D printers have been used to create “rapid prototypes” for manufacturers and architects. The idea is much the same as conventional printing--you design something on your computer, and the printer produces a hard copy. But these hard copies need time to cool. 3D printers take designs built in 3D modeling programs and melt plastic to “print” them with thin strands built up layer by layer into a finished product. The idea is about to get a big boost from HP, which will begin selling 3D printers this year at “bargain” prices expected to start under $15,000. So much for 3D printing for the rest of us, right?The MakerBot prints...in 3D! Want.Not quite! If you have a techie DIY streak, 3D printing can be yours today for under $1,000. MakerBot’s compact Cupcake printer is available as a kit that, once assembled, lets you manufacture objects up to 4x4x6 inches using Lego-quality ABS plastic. The idea is catching on, and other low-cost 3D printers (like the RepRap and Desktop Factory) are poised to slowly do what HP’s high-end offerings probably won’t--make 3D printing the desktop publishing of the next decade.Of course, it will take a while for 3D printing to catch on, but if it does, expect Apple to take note. After all, our Macs have helped us make things since 1984. There’s no reason to stop now.�An Inkless Job, But Someone Has to Do It�Let’s face it, next to Mafia Wars and Farmville, printing is one of the biggest energy hogs in an office. The paper and toner cartridges required by today’s printers consume a lot of energy to use and recycle. But greener workplaces may be one step closer to reality thanks to two new inkless, reusable printing technologies that are poised to send old-fashioned hard copies sailing on a one-way trip into the wastebasket of history.Late last year, Japan’s Sanwa Newtec company introduced the PrePeat 3100 II, a compact black-and-white printer that prints using heat instead of ink. The secret’s in the “paper”--flexible, waterproof, recycled plastic that reacts to the PrePeat’s thermal mechanism. Best of all, when you don’t need a page any longer, you can just feed it back into the PrePeat to erase it or print a new document as many as 1,000 times per page. Right now this green new world will cost you (the PrePeat retails for $5,600), but expect prices to drop if the technology becomes more widely adopted.Meanwhile, researchers at Xerox are using ultraviolet light to develop a technology called Erasable Paper. The process hits specially coated paper with a specific wavelength of UV rays to print your document to the page, and you can erase and reuse a sheet whenever you need to. If that sounds like a tanning bed for interoffice communications, you’re more right than you know. Like a tan, these printouts fade away over time, and within 24 hours, a UV-printed page will be blank again. While self-destructing Mission: Impossible documents are cool (and well-suited to sharing data with short lifespans), the limitation is one reason Erasable Paper is still being refined in Xerox laboratories.» Future Apple Devices: iLife '13» Expected Arrival Date: 2013» You'll Also See It In: iLife '13» Future Awesomeness Rating: Fit To Print�Dueling Processors�Current technology can only take CPUs so far. But don't worry--tomorrow's breakthroughs are being designed today.�More Cores for Your Buck�Smaller processors offer greater speed and improved energy efficiency, but engineers racing to make the best chips possible are running afoul of the laws of physics. Conventional manufacturing methods can only make circuits so small, and even the power of Steve’s reality-distortion field can’t change that. But some amazing new technologies might.For years, multi-core technology has given us Apple chips that pack the power of multiple CPUs into a single chip. Intel’s Xeon, Core i7, and venerable Core 2 Duo processors deliver up to six cores, and eight-core machines are coming soon. We hate to break it to those processors, but a new prototype from Intel unveiled late last year promises that a lot more muscle is on the way to the Mac.Intel calls it the single-chip cloud computer (SCC), and it boasts a whopping 48 cores on one processor…with room to grow to over 100. Computers derived from the SCC will bring the brawn of today’s massive data centers (the “cloud” of the chip’s name) to desktop-sized machines, paving the way for smaller, greener clusters. Initially, Intel is planning to build only 100 of these experimental chips so engineers can figure out what to do with all that power before it lands on the market. Intel is just one of the companies now developing “many core” processors, but given its relationship with Apple, it’s a good bet that the first Mac with the power of the cloud will have Intel inside.�DNA Processors�Meanwhile, another company is taking a radically different approach to building tomorrow’s processors. Last year, researchers at IBM announced a chipmaking breakthrough that uses something called “DNA origami,” and it’s as cool as it sounds. The process arranges strands of DNA into shapes used as scaffolding for carbon nanotubes and silicon nanowires, the tiny structures that could one day move data through really, really small processors.DNA origami is a “bottom-up” approach to chipmaking that builds the chip’s circuits, as opposed to more conventional “top-down” methods that carve silicon away, and it has a promising future. DNA designs could potentially deliver chip circuits as small as 6 nanometers--that’s just dozens of atoms wide! So Apple has good reason to keep an eye on how its story unfolds. They’ll have to be patient. The technology is still evolving and likely won’t produce commercial chips for another five years at the soonest.» Future Apple Devices: MacPro Extreme» Expected Arrival Date: 2015» You'll Also See It In: Windows PCs, Skynet» Future Awesomeness Rating: Sheer GeniusNext page: New Wires and New Storage >>Magic Buses�Our future gadgets will do more wirelessly than ever before. But they'll be able to do even more with wires.�It's USB's World, We Just Live Here�Once an upstart newcomer, USB has become an elder statesman in the electronics world with a presence in almost every device on Earth. But USB’s data-transfer speeds, last boosted by USB 2.0’s introduction in 2001, haven’t aged gracefully. Thankfully, USB 3.0 is here to breathe new life into an old favorite.USB 3.0 cables definitely lose the beauty contest to Light Peak (below).At first glance, USB 3.0 (a.k.a. SuperSpeed USB) doesn’t seem like a radical departure from its predecessor, and that’s a good thing. It’s backward-compatible with USB 2.0 and even uses the same rectangular port we all know and love, so your old devices will work just fine with the new standard. So don’t worry, you won’t have to buy a new USB beverage warmer for your cubicle.But USB 3.0 brings two new tricks to the table. The first is speed--its transfer rates reach up to 5Gbps, or 10 times USB 2.0’s performance. The second is improved power management, which means reduced power consumption and more juice for devices that need it. USB 3.0 gear is already on the market, so it’s only a matter of time before Cupertino rolls out the first Macs with the SuperSpeed standard. We hope they come soon--we’ve got HD video to import!�One Wire to Rule Them All�Fiber optic cables, long used by telephone companies to connect landline phone calls, have numerous advantages over traditional copper wires. So why haven’t they made it to the desktop yet? Intel hopes to put that question to rest with a new technology called Light Peak.Light Peak is Intel’s answer to…well, just about every cable in use today. From HDMI to USB, if it carries data, Light Peak can replace it. That’s because Light Peak’s bandwidth starts at 10Gbps, and its theoretical ceiling is a whopping 100Gbps. And since Light Peak’s flexible fiber optic cables transmit light, not electricity, they can carry data up to 100 meters without a hitch. That’s plenty more meters than we need, but some room to grow can’t hurt, right?Light Peak brings fiber optic speed to computing. And pretty colors, too.However, despite a planned 2011 rollout, don’t expect to sync your 5G iPhone with Light Peak. Intel is still working out ways to combine power with Light Peak to charge devices while beaming data at warp speed. One thing’s for sure, though--when Light Peak finally strikes, it’ll be fast.» Future Apple Devices: Almost all of 'em» Expected Arrival Date: 2011» You'll Also See It In: Every gadget on Earth» Future Awesomeness Rating: Blazing Hot�Reading, Writing, Revolutionary�Say goodbye to your old drives. Say hello to a new world of speedy storage.�It's RAM! It's a Hard Drive! It's Both!�There’s nothing New Age about “universal memory,” but it could usher in a new age of computers and electronic devices. Universal memory is any next-gen storage that combines the speed and affordability of today’s DRAM with the permanence and capacity of flash memory. Two technologies are fighting to rewrite the rules, and the winner may be coming to the Mac sooner than you think.Phase-change memory (PCM) gets our vote, if only for its cool name, which is derived from the use of chalcogenide glass that changes from a crystalline to an amorphous state with heat. It’s the same material used to make rewritable optical discs, but in PCM, the two states represent different electrical charges, or a zero and a one. PCM represents a major leap in durability over flash memory, and can be written to up to 100 million times versus flash’s upper limit of just 100,000 read-write cycles. Samsung has already begun producing 512MB PCM modules for use in mobile phones, but 1GB modules are still on the way. Looks like phase-change doesn’t happen overnight.The race for better memory is run on a tiny field, though, and IBM’s racetrack memory may have the inside track. It uses something called spintronics--don’t you want to hear Steve say that at a keynote?--to manipulate electrons into moving magnetic bits down nanoscopic, U-shaped “racetracks” to read and write data at blazing speed. Yet racetrack memory’s biggest asset may be its scalability, theoretically allowing HDD-size capacity to be squeezed into a much smaller area than competing technologies allow. But until racetrack memory is ready to leave IBM’s labs, this dark-horse contender will be one to watch, not buy.�Kind of Blu�Steve famously quipped that bringing Blu-Ray to the Mac was “a bag of hurt,” but Sony’s multimedia power-platter is still rolling along after years of Cupertino’s cold shoulder. Movie lovers--and anyone who wants to share giant files--can take comfort that when Blu-Ray finally arrives on Macs, it’ll be better than ever. Having long shed its 25GB limit, Blu now boasts capacities of up to 400GB, and 1TB discs are coming in just a few years. The promise of this year’s 3D Blu-Ray players is just one more feature that will keep Mac fans gazing longingly--sigh--at Big Blu’s bag of tricks.» Future Apple Devices: MacBook nano, Apple TV Blu» Expected Arrival Date: 2013» You'll Also See It In: Smartphones, PCs» Future Awesomeness Rating: Memorably CoolNext page: Networking, Power, and Interaction >>Network It Out�Tomorrow's wireless communications will be more important than ever. Good thing our networks will be able to keep up.�4G or Not 4G?�Poor AT&T. Just as it’s getting the hang of supporting the iPhone on its 3G network, 4G networks will begin popping up from Sprint this year and from archrival Verizon in 2011. What does that mean for us, besides catty PR fights among the carriers? A blazing fast mobile internet with enough bandwidth for HD movies, video chats, and--we hope--fewer dropped calls.Like 3G wireless networks, 4G isn’t a single new technology. It’s a blanket term for a range of technologies and specifications that add up to the same thing: speed. Current 3G offers downloads of roughly 1.4Mbps. Compare that to 4G’s promised bandwidth of at least 100Mbps, and you’ll see what the fuss is about. 4G works its magic in part by using MIMO (Multiple In Multiple Out) technology to broadcast using several antennas simultaneously on multiple frequencies.4G’s strengths make its eventual adoption by Apple a no-brainer, no matter which carrier has the iPhone next year. Apple is serious about establishing the iPad as a mobile media device, and it’ll want a big pipe to carry movies and music to cellular customers. That’s just what 4G provides. As for the iPhone, who knows? Steve may decide to stick with AT&T and its 4G network expected to roll out alongside Verizon’s in 2011.�Crank Up the 802.11AC�Closer to home, we’ll use 802.11n Wi-Fi, but at faster speeds than we’ve seen before. Apple has sold 802.11n devices since 2007, but the protocol’s final standard was only approved in 2009. Happily, that means the business of making Wi-Fi as fast as possible can begin in earnest. Like 4G, 802.11n uses MIMO to improve performance, but manufacturers couldn’t take full advantage of the technology before the protocol was complete. Now that it is, devices can officially support maximum speeds between 400 and 600Mbps…if your hardware has the antennas to deliver the boost. Expect that hardware to start arriving in stores later this year.But the Mac life is never a simple march of progress, and there’s always something new on the horizon. Sweet! Work drafting the next Wi-Fi protocol, 802.11ac, has already begun. Devices supporting the new standard aren’t expected until 2012 at the earliest, but they’ll boast speeds of up to 1Gbps when they’re available. At press time, Ethernet’s agent was unavailable for comment.» Future Apple Devices: 2G iPad, Airport Express Plus» Expected Arrival Date: 2011» You'll Also See It In: Smartphones, netbooks» Future Awesomeness Rating: Wildly Wireless�More Power to You�Apple is going power mad. Its future devices will charge up almost anywhere.�Powered by the Sun�Solar power is overdue for a makeover, and if anyone can do it, it’s Apple. In 2008, it applied for a patent to slip solar cells beneath a device’s LCD screen, and early this year, it applied for another patent to cover portable devices with solar collectors.Solar-powered MacBooks? Yes please!�Wilder still, a March 2010 patent describes a MacBook with a solar panel that folds to collect sunlight or even to illuminate the LCD screen without drawing power from the battery. We’re still waiting for these designs to see the light of day--ha!--but it’s clear someone at Apple has spent a lot of time looking at the sun.�Go Wireless�Besides flying cars, wireless electricity is the ultimate in futuristic convenience. Today’s charging mats come close, but the magnetic induction they use keeps devices tethered to one spot. That’s why we hope Apple adopts WiTricity’s technology for truly wireless power up to several feet away from the base station. The science involved would baffle the DHARMA Initiative, but it involves something called sharply resonant strong coupling to generate an oscillating magnetic field that’s captured and converted to electricity by a sensor in your device. Or it will, anyway, when WiTricity-powered gear reaches stores sometime in the future.Wireless power? As in, electricity beamed through the air? Shocking.» Future Apple Devices: iPod solar, ElectroMagneto MacPro» Expected Arrival Date: 2015» You'll Also See It In: Nice weather, mad scientists' lairs» Future Awesomeness Rating: Simply Electrifying�Your Valuable Input�No matter how cool Apple’s upcoming products are, they’ll only be as good as what we can do with them. Here’s how we’ll interact with the future.�Touchier Mice�The mouse has plenty of life left, at least according to Microsoft. It’s produced some stellar mice over the years, but Redmond’s recent Multi Touch prototypes could be the best yet. The FTIR (Frustrated Total Internal Reflection) Mouse’s high-res camera tracks finger gestures through a curved piece of clear acrylic so you can scroll, swipe, and pinch around on the acrylic in order to manipulate onscreen objects. The Orb Mouse works on much the same principle, but offers a whole hemisphere to interact with in your hand.The shrunken Side Mouse looks more like a wrist rest than a traditional rodent--its tiny camera tracks your fingers as they move across your desk or whatever surface you happen to be working on. Best of all, these mice incorporate the Multi Touch equivalent of keyboard shortcuts to perform zooms and other common commands quickly. Cupertino, start your copiers!Microsoft's FTIR Mouse makes magic out of a high-res camera and a piece of acrylic that together create Multi Touch-style input.But the coolest input technology on the horizon for Apple’s gear lies in--big surprise--touchscreens. Future Multi Touch devices will sport haptic feedback, or the sort of physical response you’ve gotten for years from vibrating gamepads and cell phones, to help make input feel more natural. In 2011, Artificial Muscle is bringing to market its EPAM (Electroactive Polymer Artificial Muscle) technology, which tenses and relaxes touchscreens in response to input. That sounds pretty fascinating all by its lonesome, but Apple’s recent patent applications show it has something more subtle in mind--a layer inside the touchscreen that delivers vibrating feedback localized to specific onscreen buttons and switches. That level of fine-tuned feedback would make typing on the iPad’s large screen even more satisfying and could pave the way for MacBooks without physical keyboards.» Future Apple Devices: Majestic Mouse, MacBook Touch» Expected Arrival Date: 2012» You'll Also See It In: Microsoft's mice» Future Awesomeness Rating: Terrifically TactileNext page: Too Wild for Apple? >>Too Wild for Apple?�Some of these technologies may seem out there even for Apple, but yes--chuckles aside--they’re real. Besides, today’s head-scratchers could be tomorrow’s game-changers. Maybe.�Huff and Puff into the Mic�You’ve finally gotten your mind around Multi Touch, but are you ready for Multi Puff? Zyxio’s Sensawaft technology lets you control a mouse cursor, scroll through text, or do just about anything else with your electronic devices using only your breath. The assistive possibilities for disabled users are obvious and awesome, but breath control could have other, less practical uses, too. Imagine blowing into your earbuds’ microphone to control music playback, skipping an annoying voicemail with a hiss, or puffing on your iPhone to zoom in for a kill while playing your favorite shooter. Apple’s engineers could do so much with this, it’s breathtaking.�Keep Your Finger on the Pulse�An iPhone fingerprint scanner makes a lot of sense, especially considering that Apple has so many intriguing patents out on the idea. Sure, a fingerprint-savvy screen would simplify security--and make “slide to unlock” really mean something--but we like to think about the possibilities for everyday iPhone control hinted at in Apple’s patents. With the iPhone of tomorrow, specific fingers could be used for certain functions, letting you change settings without even looking at the screen. You could use your thumbprint to play a song, your index-finger print to rewind, and your middle-finger print to...er…emphatically skip a song for those tunes so bad that a one-star rating just doesn’t cut it.You might not be able to remember a passcode that unlocks your iPhone, but we're betting you'll be able to remember your fingerprint.�Project Your Ideas�Pico projectors--low-power, handheld projectors--are handy for quickie presentations or impromptu slideshows with the family. Some of them even project with RGB lasers instead of white light for a picture that’s always in focus. But the image of these mini projectors will really improve if Apple ever makes good on recent patents to integrate them into MacBooks and iPhones. Sure, you could strike up a Keynote presentation on the go with a MacBook Pico, but throwing up movies, music, iTunes visualizations, and photo albums anywhere sounds like a lot more fun.�Wii Want Our Apple TV�Motion control brought gamers flocking to the Nintendo Wii, but can it do the same for Apple TV? Someone in Cupertino must think so, judging by a patent for a Wii-like motion-controlled remote to go with Cupertino’s set-top box. Sounds good to us. Apple’s Remote iPhone app is great, but it’s always seemed very “un-Apple” to require another device to deliver a satisfying Apple TV experience. Motion control--especially with the enhanced precision and reliability brought by the floating magnetic compass noted in Apple’s patent--would be a slick solution, and not just for easier navigation. Apple’s patent also describes using the remote to draw on the screen and manipulate photos with the flick of a wrist. That could give Steve’s favorite hobby product some much-needed pizzazz to help it catch the public’s eye. After all, the day will come when Cupertino will update the Apple TV again, and when it finally does, you may not even recognize it. What can we say? We want to see the little guy make good.Next page: Patently Awesome >>Patently Awesome�Apple’s patents are tea leaves that portend what technology’s cutting edge will look like for years to come. Here are some of tomorrow’s ideas Cupertino thinks are worth protecting today.�Nine Lives, Three Dimensions�OS X is the big cat that makes Cupertino’s products tick, but it’s Apple’s hardware that usually captures the public’s attention. That oversight will finally be corrected if a patent for 3D OS X becomes a reality.The 3D in question depends on parallax, the effect by which objects appear to change their position relative to each other as a viewer’s perspective changes. By keeping tabs on your position (likely with a head tracking iSight camera), this “OS parallaX” would alter the appearance of onscreen objects to form a simulated 3D space in which you could interact with files, study 3D objects, and more. While this could open up exciting new ways to use your Mac, it would also require complex new hardware and software, so don’t count on peeking behind alert boxes anytime soon.�An iPhone Gamepad�Judging by a recent patent, the iPhone and iPod touch might have more than just high-tech improvements in their future. Thanks to a unique accessory, someday soon we may be gaming old-school--with a twist--on our Multi Touch devices.In a few years, near field communication will let your iPhone be the boss of your videogame console, TV, and even your sprinkler.We love playing games on the iPhone, but sometimes we pine for the 20th century simplicity of physical controls. Call Apple’s potential solution the “GameFrame,” a shell that fits around your iPhone to add a D-pad, buttons, and other handy moving parts to the iPhone experience. Too old-fashioned for you? The device could also communicate wirelessly with HDTVs, opening the door to big-screen App Store gaming on the go. Hero of Sparta 3 on a 40-inch flatscreen? We’re so there!�"Home Screen" Gets a New Meaning�The iPhone’s superpowers seem to be growing by the day, but you haven’t seen anything yet. In the future, you won’t think twice about using it to lock the door, turn on the lights, and even water the lawn of your personal fortress of solitude.Apple’s recent home-control patent hinges on a technology called near field communication (NFC), a short-range wireless technology that’s slower than Bluetooth while offering a much quicker pairing time. That’s just the thing to control the Xbox, DVD player, and garden-sprinkler system shown in the patent application. Unfortunately, this remote-control magic requires NFC-enabled devices that are, like the iPhone that will interact with them, years away.�Slice the Mac into Pieces�To create, sometimes you must destroy, and the most intriguing Apple patent we’ve come across yet takes apart the familiar Mac we’ve used for decades and scatters it into…well, something else. We’re not sure if what it describes is a portable computer, a desktop machine, or something in between, but we call it the “MultiMac.” And we want one.The "MultiMac" splits a Mac into its component parts, which live where you'll use them.If it was built today, MultiMac’s components--a projector display, input devices, and a CPU--would be separate components, each powered wirelessly and communicating with each other over the air from wherever you wanted them to be. You could tuck the CPU on a bookshelf, surf from the couch, and project a movie on the wall as if using one device. Apple’s focus (pardon the pun) seems to be on the projector, which would do more than just show vacation pictures. The patent describes it as a networked device with multiple sensors controlling focus, color, or even built-in cameras. What are the chances those cameras could power a 3D OS X? Hey, we can dream.Will MultiMac be a novel new computer that ties together exciting new technology, a sophisticated Keynote presentation system, or a hub to synchronize a home full of mobile devices? We’re not sure, but that’s half the fun of being a Mac fan. Only Apple knows what’s coming next, and they’re not telling…yet.�
The Top 10 New Features of CS5

Software comes and software goes, but some releases make every Mac user sit up and pay attention. Nothing commands the attention of designers, photographers, and anyone else with an artistic bent like the release of Adobe’s next Creative Suite. We’ve been putting the beta versions of CS5 through their paces for a couple months now, and the results of our rigorous testing will be in your hands in next issue’s reviews. To whet your appetite, our reviewers put together a list of the most interesting, useful, and impressive new features in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Premiere. They also dove into what’s new in the other key apps of CS5. Check out the coolest new tools that Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Premiere add to your artistic toolbox.1 PHOTOSHOP’S AUTOMATIC RETOUCHING The new Content Aware Fill is akin to a fleet of intelligent retouching monkeys living behind the screen. To use it, first make a selection around something you want to remove from a complex background, and then choose the Content Aware Fill option in the Fill dialog. The selection is whisked away as the hole is filled in with a patchwork derived from surrounding areas. In the images to the right, we removed the tourist with Content Aware Fill by making a rough selection around him and simply pressing Command-Delete—no manual retouching was done. You can also invoke this mojo with a new Spot Healing Brush mode, which, when it works, is a sight to behold.2 ILLUSTRATOR’S VARIABLE STROKE WIDTH The four strokes you see in the screenshot are identical as far as the geometry of their curves. However, by using the new Width tool, we’ve adjusted thickness at various places along each path. The Width tool adds control points along a path, and by dragging the handles of these control points, you can quickly change a stroke’s appearance, making it skinnier or wider than the stroke’s original point size. You can add, reposition, and tweak multiple control points to endless effect; and by holding down Option, you can grab a single left or right anchor and make width adjustments to just one side (as seen in the screenshot).3 SPAN HEADLINES ACROSS COLUMNS IN INDESIGN Tired of creating separate text boxes for headlines? The Span Columns option lets you run display type across multiple columns and the gutters in between. It’s a paragraph-level text-formatting option, like specifying alignment. To use it, create a multicolumn text frame and then fill it with placeholder text. Select a paragraph and choose Span Columns from the Control panel menu. In the Span Columns dialog box, make sure Span Columns is selected in the Paragraph Layout menu, then choose an option from the Span Columns menu. The paragraph can flow across all columns of the text frame or across any number of columns. You also have the option to specify a Space Before Span and a Space After Span. The most efficient way to use the Span Columns feature is to include it as part of a paragraph style for headlines and other text elements that span multiple columns.4 PREMIERE’S 64-BIT, GPU-ACCELERATED MERCURY PLAYBACK ENGINE It might take you a few minutes to spit that all out of your mouth, but while you’re doing that, Premiere will be spitting out HD video in record time. The engine takes advantage of 64-bit technology to utilize all the available RAM in your computer, and it works hand in hand with Nvidia CUDA technology. Similar to Apple’s Grand Central, the Mercury Playback Engine takes advantage of today’s super-powerful GPUs. All that technology mumbo jumbo means you’ll be editing more and rendering less, even when you’re using one of those fancy new 4K cameras. 5 PLAY WITH PUPPETS IN PHOTOSHOP The Puppet tool is an amazing distortion capability grafted over from After Effects, and it delivers totally controllable warping effects that have no counterpart in any other software. It’s easy to use, allowing you to quickly bend and reshape images by using “virtual pushpins” to both constrain and bend pictures in a precise and fluid fashion. For example, the arm in this screenshot can be instantly turned into a Stretch Armstrong toy—the South Park guys wanted this capability years ago. This tool really needs to be experienced to be completely appreciated, but trust us—it’s awesome.6 AN END TO ILLUSTRATOR’S PATHFINDER MADNESS Adobe has been well aware of the difficulties inherent in the Pathfinder panel. Whether you want to merge shapes or pull off more complex tricks, getting the desired results has required the “hit and mess” method. The new Shape Builder tool ends all that by providing an intuitive method for path welding and trimming. In the screenshot, the circles in the left column are separate objects, but by using the Shape Builder tool on the first two circles in the second column, we merged their paths and defined the new shape’s color with a Swatch Preview that shows up over the cursor (not shown). In the third column, we held down the Option key to subtract the path of the green circle from the conjoined twins above.7 INDESIGN’S IMPROVED SELECTION TOOL In CS5, you can use InDesign’s Selection tool to move a graphics frame and a graphic. With the Selection tool chosen, move the pointer within a graphics frame. (It doesn’t matter whether the frame is selected.) Notice that when the pointer is within the frame, a donut-shaped “content indicator” icon is displayed at the center of the frame. When the pointer is outside the content indicator, you can click and drag to select the frame and move both the frame and the graphic within. If you move the pointer within the content indicator, a hand pointer is displayed. Clicking and dragging when this pointer is displayed selects the graphic and moves it without moving the frame. Sweet relief!8 PREMIERE’S PRE- AND POST-PRODUCTION WORKFLOW Premiere expands upon its ability to turn the spoken word into text while importing by adding Adobe Story and OnLocation to the mix. Adobe Story is part of the new CS Live Suite, and it helps you develop and break down your script for production. OnLocation utilizes the character and story metadata in Adobe Story to automatically create placeholders in your imported media. Premiere and OnLocation now support the latest tape-based and tapeless cameras (including the current and upcoming RED cameras) for the ultimate in flexibility on set.9 PHOTOSHOP GOES 3D Using Photoshop CS5 Extended, you’ll finally be able to easily create 3D extrusion effects with the new Repoussé tool, which puts some serious extrusion controls in your hands right within Photoshop’s 2D world. While it’s no substitute for a fully featured 3D-modeling program, it’s really cool when used with text for quick 3D logo treatments, and the new ray tracing renderer does a passable job making it look like a professional product.10 ILLUSTRATOR’S DASHED LINES AND ARROWS FINALLY BEHAVE In previous Illustrator versions, dashed lines never intuitively negotiated around angles, as seen in the ugly corner points of the blue star in the screenshot—yuck. But now a simple toggle aligns dashes to corners, as illustrated by the black star. Also, in the “no longer asinine” category: Arrowheads that don’t hide in the Effects menu! Arrowheads are now in the Stroke panel, and the size of the heads themselves can be easily adjusted; they’re no longer linked to a stroke’s point size.�THE REST OF THE CS5 GANGThe four apps we’ve focused on so far are the core of Creative Suite 5, but Adobe’s got loads more in the box. Check out the new features in the other key members of the CS5 family.ADOBE AFTER EFFECTS The Mac’s premiere motion-graphics tool, After Effects is a staple for animators, videographers, and special effects experts. Besides Photoshop, After Effects CS5 has some of the most significant updates in the CS5 lineup, and they’ll bring smiles to the faces of serious After Effects artists.- 64-bit operation--essential for editing HD video.- Overall rendering speed improvements—up to 30 percent faster than After Effects CS4.- Roto Brush greatly facilitates complex compositing challenges, allowing you to quickly isolate elements from complex backgrounds.- Refine Matte plug-in delivers exquisite mask edge controls for pro users.- New features in bundled Mocha application include variable-width feathering of masks and improved motion tracking support.- Custom color lookup table support, which is critical for high-end effects work.- Bundled DigiEffects FreeForm plug-in for 3D coolness.- Updated Color Finesse plug-in offers Vibrance, Highlight Recover, and HSL Curves for advanced color correction tasks.- Numerous interface enhancements and refinements.ADOBE FLASH PROFESSIONAL You’ve probably read lots about the Flash controversy surrounding the iPhone and iPad, but regardless, tons of websites utilize Flash as a primary programming scheme to deliver data-intensive, custom-based experiences. And it’s still popular as a video-delivery codec too. - Significantly beefed-up text handling and typographic control.- DefineFont4, a new embedded font format in Flash files for retaining advanced type characteristics.- XML-based FLA files offer more flexibility for managing Flash content development.- Code Snippets deliver modular code for easier programming functionality.- The addition of Springs to the integrated IK (inverse kinematics) system for better, more realistic animation effects.- New graphics tools include particle system, grid brushes, and natural effects brushes.�ADOBE SOUNDBOOTHThe audio-editing component of the Adobe stable, Soundbooth is primarily designed for editing audio to be used in video projects, but it’s easily pressed into service on more mundane editing tasks, such as podcasts and music production. This revision isn’t very dramatic, mainly focusing on multitrack-editing interface tweaks and a bunch of new audio content.- Resizable Track views for easier multitrack editing.- Bundled with 10,000 sound effects.- 130 customizable, royalty-free musical scores.- Nondestructive, round-trip editing with Premiere.ADOBE DREAMWEAVER Long considered a go-to website editor, the Dreamweaver CS5 update primarily addresses integration with external PHP-based CMS systems, such as WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla. It also continues to refine features introduced in CS4, such as the Live View previewing. It’s not a huge improvement over CS4, unless you regularly work with the aforementioned CMS solutions.- Works directly with editing and design of sites based on popular CMS systems.- Live View now works with dynamic links and dynamic-data driven pages.- Live Code provides real-time JavaScript tracing and debugging.- Emulates previews on multiple browsers entire within Dreamweaver.- Dynamically parsed PHP code for better debugging.- Enhanced CSS starter templates and layouts.ADOBE FLASH CATALYST This new program is geared towards providing a set of Flash-coding tools to folks who are intimidated by the main app, and it does a fairly nice job of letting you sketch up Flash-based websites without much hassle. You start with Photoshop-, Illustrator-, or Fireworks-based mockups and can add interactivity and dynamic data processing with a minimal amount of work or coding. The results can be saved as SWF or Adobe Air executables. - Codeless creation of Flash sites.- Predefined interface elements for modular development.- Timeline-based event editing tools.- Pro-quality transitions and animated element blending.- Extensive rich media (video) support. ��
iPad danger: app v. web, consumer v. creator

I tweeted earlier that after having slept with her (Ms. iPad), I woke up with morning-after regrets. She's sweet and pretty but shallow and vapid. Cute line, appropriate for retweets. But as my hangover settles in, I realize that there's something much more basic and profound that worries me about the iPad — and not just the iPad but the architecture upon which it is built. I see danger in moving from the web to apps. The iPad is retrograde. It tries to turn us back into an audience again. That is why media companies and advertisers are embracing it so fervently, because they think it returns us all to their good old days when we just consumed, we didn't create, when they controlled our media experience and business models and we came to them. The most absurd, extreme illustration is Time Magazine's app, which is essentially a PDF of the magazine (with the odd video snippet). It's worse than the web: we can't comment; we can't remix; we can't click out; we can't link in, and they think this is worth $4.99 a week. But the pictures are pretty. That's what we keep hearing about the iPad as the justification for all its purposeful limitations: it's meant for consumption, we're told, not creation. We also hear, as in David Pogue's review, that this is our grandma's computer. That cant is inherently snobbish and insulting. It assumes grandma has nothing to say. But after 15 years of the web, we know she does. I've long said that the remote control, cable box, and VCR gave us control of the consumption of media; the internet gave us control of its creation. Pew says that a third of us create web content. But all of us comment on content, whether through email or across a Denny's table. At one level or another, we all spread, react, remix, or create. Just not on the iPad. The iPad's architecture supports these limitations in a few ways: First, in its hardware design, it does not include a camera — the easiest and in some ways most democratic means of creation (you don't have to write well) — even though its smaller cousin, the iPhone, has one. Equally important, it does not include a simple (fucking) USB port, which means that I can't bring in and take out content easily. If I want to edit a document in Apple's Pages, I have to go through many hoops of moving and snycing and emailing or using Apple's own services. Cloud? I see no cloud, just Apple's blue skies. Why no USB? Well, I can only imagine that Apple doesn't want us to think what Walt Mossberg did in his review — the polar opposite of Pogue's — that this pad could replace its more expensive laptops. The iPad is purposely handicapped, but it doesn't need to be. See the German WePad, which comes with USB port(s!), a camera, multitasking, and the more open Android operating system and marketplace. Second, the iPad is built on apps. So are phones, Apple's and others'. Apps can be wonderful things because they are built to a purpose. I'm not anti-app, let's be clear. But I also want to stop and examine the impact of shifting from a page- and site-based internet to one built on apps. I've been arguing that we are, indeed, moving past a page-, site-, and search-based web to one also built on streams and flows, to a distributed web where you can't expect people to come to you but you must go to them; you must get yourself into their streams. This shift to apps is a move in precisely the opposite direction. Apps are more closed, contained, controlling. That, again, is why media companies like them. But they don't interoperate — they don't play well — with other apps and with the web itself; they are hostile to links and search. What we do in apps is less open to the world. I just want to consider the consequences. So I see the iPad as a Bizarro Trojan Horse. Instead of importing soldiers into the kingdom to break down its walls, in this horse, we, the people, are stuffed inside and wheeled into the old walls; the gate is shut and we're welcomed back into the kingdom of controlling media that we left almost a generation ago. There are alternatives. I now see the battle between Apple and Google Android in clearer focus. At Davos, Eric Schmidt said that phones (and he saw the iPad as just a big phone… which it is, just without the phone and a few other things) will be defined by their apps. The mobile (that is to say, constantly connected) war will be won on apps. Google is competing with openness, Apple with control; Google will have countless manufacturers and brands spreading its OS, Apple will have media and fanboys (including me) do the work for it. But Google has a long way to go if it hopes to win this war. I'm using my Nexus One phone (which I also had morning-after doubts about) and generally liking it but I still find it awkward. Google has lost its way, its devotion to profound simplicity. Google Wave and Buzz are confusing and generally unusable messes; Android needed to be thought through more (I shouldn't have to think about what a button does in this use case before using it); Google Docs could be more elegant; YouTube's redesign is halfway to clean. Still, Google and Apple's competition presents us with choices. I find it interesting that though many commercial brands — from Amazon to Bank of America to Fandango — have written for both Apple and Android, many media brands — most notable The New York Times and my Guardian — have written only for Apple and they now are devoting much resource to recreating apps for the iPad. The audience on Android is bigger than the audience on iPad but the sexiness and control Apple offers is alluring. This, I think, is why Salon CEO Richard Gingras calls the iPad a fatal distraction for publishers. They are deluding themselves into thinking that the future lies in their past. On This Week in Google last night, I went too far slathering over the iPad and some of its very neat apps (ABC's is great; I watched the Modern Family about the iPad on the iPad and smugly loved being so meta). I am a toy boy at heart and didn't stop to cast a critical eye, as TWiG's iPadless Gina Trapani did. This morning on Twitter, I went too far the other way kvetching about the inconveniences of the iPad's limitations (just a fucking USB, please!) in compensation. That's the problem with Twitter, at least for my readers: it's thinking out loud. I'll sleep with the iPad a few more nights. I might well rebox and return it; I don't have $500 to throw away. But considering what I do for a living, I perhaps should hold onto it so I can understand its implications. And that's the real point of this post: there are implications. : MORE: Of course, I must link to Cory Doctorow's eloquent examination of the infantilization of technology. I'm not quite as principled, I guess, as Cory is on the topic; I'm not telling people they should not buy the iPad; I don't much like that verb in any context. But on the merits and demerits, we agree. And Dave Winer: “Today it's something to play with, not something to use. That's the kind way to say it. The direct way: It's a toy.” : By the way, back in the day, about a decade ago, I worked with Intel (through my employer, Advance) on a web pad that was meant to be used to consume in the home (we knew then that the on-screen keyboard sucked; it was meant to be a couch satellite to the desk's PC). Intel lost nerve and didn't launch it. Besides, the technology was early (they built the wireless on Intel Anypoint, not wi-fi or even bluetooth). Here's the pad in the flesh. I have it in my basement museum of dead technlogy, next to my CueCat. : More, Monday: NPR's related report and Jonathan Zittrain's worries.
Apple Event Metaliveblog: Celebrate the tablet with TUAW

Filed under: Other Events11:12 SYNCS exactly like iPhone or iPod touch.Sync everything: media, calendars, apps, etc. Connect via usb sync 11:11 Great pricing! Want! Eng: 11:11AM And the iWork demo is done. "So what are we going to charge for applications like this? We're gong to charge just $9.99 each." He means $10 for Pages, $10 for Keynote... etc. 11:11: GIZ Jason Chen: What is Apple going to charge for each of the iWork apps? $9.99 each, so $30 if you want all. 11:10: Eng: 11:10AM It looks as though these new dropdowns menus are a major part of the iPad OS. Will be interesting to see how this translates to the iPhone and iPod touch. Is there going to be room? Or will they be left out entirely? 11:10 All this entry does make us ask the question, are you expected to type only on this device, or is there some sort of external keyboard option from Apple? Because if I could take iWork with me on the road, I might not want to type that entire Pages document by touchscreen. (via Macworld) 11:10: GIZ Jason Chen: So far we've covered ebooks and newspapers (TV and movies were already there from the iPhone), but we haven't covered magazines yet. I wonder what that's going to be like. gdgt: Showing the spreadsheet-centric soft keyboard. Auto-fields and sums showing as inferred. Pretty neat for a spreadsheet. Then again, it's still a spreadsheet. 11:10 Manipulating charts is a dream. 11:09: "I could see this being used as a cash register like the new card swipe systems at the Apple Store now. Be really easy to manage inventory too." -- Megan 11:08: Data entry keyboard. This is one of the amazing thing about touch entry keyboards. Showing that there are custom keyboards, all meant to help context entry. Over 250 options built in. Help built in. Mike Jones: "Nice new 10 key keyboard." 11:07: Now numbers demo. Let's do some typical spreadsheet tasks. Showing how you can manipulate tables. But what about data entry? 11:07: Mike Jones: "there's an awful lot of space around the screen that is making me wonder if they've added touch sensitivity to the edges" Sang: "one thing i notice about this, as opposed to the courier, is the lack of "floating" palettes. iPad's paletttes are more on-demand" 11:07: Demoing the page navigator. And showing the automated text wrap features. Yes. THIS: 11:06AM New tool: Page Navigator. It's a bit like the magnification loop and lets you jump through pages. Automatic image outlines -- just drag your image and text reformats. 11:06: Sande: "Spaces is *made" for the iPad". Mel: "I think this may kill netbooks if the price is right." Mike Jones: "I'm thinking if they do multitasking they will do it immediately after iWork" 11:05: Big applause after iWork presentation. Big. GIZ Jason Chen: I suppose the iPad would be a pretty good presentation device, letting you see the screens on your device and controlling it while it's being projected onto a wall through the 30-pin dock connector. (Video out is still unconfirmed, this is just my guess.) 11:04 "What about multitasking?" -- Megan 11:04: Eng: 11:03AM We'll say this -- iWork looks really robust. Far more than an iPhone app. Lots of options, lots of ways to work with your data. 11:03: "Look! I just done a mask, an advanced technique and it's easy". Now demoing how to do animations. Easy built-in animations, scaling, translation, etc. These are transitions between slides right now. Very easy, "with just my finger!!" 11:02: Showing access to photo albums, etc. How easy it is to drag things around whereever you want. Demoing resizing handles. Want to match sizes? tap the other one while resizing. Nice! 11:01: How do you do this without keyboard or mouse? Demonstrating gestures. Sang:"how awesome would it be if steve's been doing the presentation the whole time using iPad's keynote" 11:00 Amazing software. Want to be the first to show you. Let's show keynote. It runs in landscape orientation, because that's the standard for slides.And you first see your slide library. Gorgeous templates. What you'd expect. 11:00 Completely new version of Keynote: Specifically for the iPad. Create presentations with your fingers. Most beautiful word processor you'll ever see. New version of numbers. 10:58 re: iWork: "What they came up with is really magnificent". About to do iWork demo. 10:58 And now for something exciting. Looking at creating a version of iWork for iPhone a year ago. iPhone? Really? But iPad! Win. 10:57: "i was expecting more "eye-friendly" text, i.e. e-ink. i can't picture myself staring at this screen reading a novel" -- Sang 10:56 Steve showing off the store. Book at $14.99. "And that is iBooks" gdgt: Tap right or left to change the page - or drag the page manually. Very nice! GIZ Jason Chen: You can skip directly to chapters from the table of contents, and there are photos, as you'd expect. gdgt: "We think the iPad is going to make a terrific e-book reader not just for popular books, but for textbooks as well." 10:56 Eng: 10:56AM The store is very similar to iTunes. Same modal pop-overs. Pricing doesn't look too bad. The book page display is nice. You can turn pages slowly -- really slick looking page animation. 10:56: amazon: 0.75 +1.27&lrm; (1.06%&lrm;) 10:56: "Still no mention of 3G connectivity. Is it WiFi only?" -- Mel Martinaz "Only WiFi so far" -- Mike Schramm 10:55 Five big partners...Penguin, McMillon, Simon &Schuster, and more. Mike R: Wil Shipley's head just exploded 10:54: *blink* This afternoon? Really? 10:53: NEW iBOOK STORE: Fully integrated with iBooks app. Read your eBooks right on your iPad, NY Times bestseller lists, 5 of the largest pubs in the world, all their books on the store. Open the floodgates with the rest of the pubs starting this afternoon. 10:52 Want to show you another one of *our* apps. Amazon pioneered with Kindle. We're standing on their shoulders and going further. This is reading a book on kindle. iBooks announced. 10:52: Apple iPad page still not up. 10:50 More details about Major League Baseball. By the by, the Apple Store? Still up. Nothing shipping today. gdgt Game video with overlays, this is pretty dope. If you're a baseball fan, seems like this is probably going to be your new preferred viewing experience. Scott's back. 10:49 Next App: Major League Baseball. Looking at live game experience. "unless somethign dramatic happens in the next 10 minutes it's just a flat iPod touch." -- Dave Caolo; Isn't this 90 minutes? -- Erica 10:48 It's so PRETTY! Want one, want, want, want. Engadget: "10:48AM Need for Speed Shift on screen. Looks pretty good. "Building for the iPad is a little different -- it's kind of like holding an HD display up to your face. It's really cool.", gdgt: Touch and accelerator-enabled (of course). Tap the mirror to look behind. "A game like NFS really pushes the limits, so we wanted to show you just how fast this can really go." 10:47 Demo of game. Showing really cool racing game, first person viewpoint. 10:47: EAGuy: "really excited about iPad. Showing demo. Gorgeous 3d, showing racing game. 10:46 Electronic Arts up next. Number One mobile publisher of games. 10:46: Eng: 10:46AM This is very slick -- probably the most impressive demo yet. A very sophisticated use of the screen real estate. Brushes for the iPad looks like you can go pretty deep. Available at product launch. 10:44: Showing undo/redo. Wide range of brushes, etc. Digital finger painting. Megan: "Could you imagine Photoshop on this? It'll kill the Cintiq tablet: apple-creation-0275-rm-eng.jpg" 10:44: gdgt: Next up: an app called Brushes, an art browser. Can zoom in up to 32 times. Engadget: "10:45AM "Today I'd like to show you how brushes looks on the iPad." This is nice. Context menus for brush and color options. We're loving these new pop-over menus. No more diving!" 10:44: Taking full advantage of iPad firmware 3.2 (It's 3.2, not 4.0) 10:44: gdgt: Reading [the NYT app] syncs to the iPhone app. Inline video clips. 10:43 Megan: "Needs to be designed better. HIRE ME!!" Sang: "imagine using Keynote on the iPad. it'd be money" Megan: "This is the future of newspaper design" gdgt "We're incredibly psyched to pioneer the next generation of digital journalism." Ha, Martin Nisenholtz said "psyched." 10:42 Steve showed you the NY Times website. It's beautiful. So why do a new app for iPad? Our iPhone app downloaded 3Million times. Want to create something special for iPad 10:42 "gdgt: Martin: "Steve showed you the NYT site on the iPad, it's unbelievably beautiful. Why did we come out three weeks ago to develop an app for the iPad?" Wait, three weeks? Scott said peeps had 2 weeks. Anyway! "We think that we've captured the essence of reading a newspaper... all in a native app."" 10:41 Martin Nisenholtz of NYT. Martin is EVP of digital for the times 10:40 Next up New York Times. 10:38 Really excited about poss. for devs on iPad. "The iPad version of Nova ships later this year..." Interesting. Scott is back. "Next up, the New York Times."" 10:38 Demos. "gdgt Showing a title called Nova. This looks pretty decent, but still a tiny bit choppy. But hey, this was done in two weeks, so I'm gonna cut these guys some slack." 10:38 Devs invited 2 weeks ago. Will show you what they came up with. Mark Hickey of Gameloft is up. 10:38 "By the way, if they're available today, I'll be running to the Apple Store imediatly - 4 miles away." --- Steve Sande 10:37: Rewrote all our apps for this display. New SDK supports devs for new size. Can automatically scale app to full screen, can save profiles, and have it work in both systems. 10:36: Eep. 10:36 NEW SDK OUT TODAY!!!!! Sorry, but I think I just have to *eep* 10:36 Eng: "So all of the iPhone apps will run on this. In fact when you buy it, download all the apps you have right onto the iPad. Now if the developer spends some time modifying their app, they can take full advantage of this display." 10:35 Interface Builder is going to have to be smart about using dual resolution apps. 10:35 Pixel doubling. Eng: 10:34AM Games look amazing. He's playing an OpenGLS title right now and it looks super smooth. 10:34 Showing game video, "Video works great on the iPad", And 10:33AM Gaming obviously will handle this better, but a text heavy app looks lonely or weirdly huge. 10:33: "It just works." Demoing facebook now. It just scales up. Facebook uses text, video, etc. What app really drives graphics hw? Games do! 10:33 Eng: 10:33AM "Let's start with Facebook. It just works." He's showing off the non-pixel doubled version, a small app in the middle of the screen. It's kind of silly looking. A lone app in the center of a black screen. The scaled up app looks silly as well, especially in Facebook. 10:32: Forstall: App Store huge success, 18 monts old, billions of apps, 140k apps. We built the iPad to run virtually all these apps out of the box. Pixel for pixel accuracy and also, automatically full screen via pixel doubling. YAY! I think my inner Apple fangrrl just sqeed herself out. 10:32: All new built in applications. And Scott Forstall, sr vp of iphone softwar to talk aboutApp Store. 10:30: Scott Forstall on stage. 10:30 16-64 GB of flash storage. A MONTH, a freaking MONTH of standby. I am awed. Arsenic free, green and lovely. 10:30: Eng: "All the usual suspects: accelerometer, compass, speaker, mic, dock connector. And it's got battery." 10:30 Eng: 10:30AM "What is the battery life like? We've been able to achieve 10 hours of battery life. I can take a flight from San Francisco to Tokyo and watch video the whole time. And it has over a month of standby time." 10:30 This chip will *scream*. Latest in wireless networking. "All the usual suspects: accelerometer, compass, speaker, mic, dock connector. And it's got battery." 10 FREAKING HOURS OF BATTERY. 10:29: "as mentioned in every bit of upcoming advertising." -- Dave Winograd. 10:28: Getting back to the hardware a little bit. It's realllly thin. 1/2 inch thin. Just 1.5 pounds. Thinner and lighter than any netbook. 9.7 IPS display. Super high quality display. Best multitouch sensors in the world, married to our great display. 10:26: Now showing videos, movies. That is video on the iPad. That's a little overview of what the iPad can do. 10:26: "This interface is interesting, because unlike the iPhone, it's got panes and floating windows and lots of stuff that you can do when you've got a bunch of screen space.(via Macworld)" 10:25: Let's go to youtube. Let me show you a high def video on youtube. Again, let's go to landscape mode. And that's Youtube. Again, related clips, etc. Portrait, landscape. (Steve really really likes the portrait/landscape thing today) Movies, TV Shows, Music videos, etc. 10:24 Go to our current location in the maps app (Maps demo) in San Francisco. Should findall the sushi places nearby. mmmm sushi... And here's a sushi bar. Great demo. Mild, not wild, applause. That's maps. Let me show you video. 10:24 Events, Faces, and places. Shows a big map with pins in it. Tap and hold on the pin and see all the photos there. Tap on it to open the photos. There are built-in slideshows, so yo can bring up slideshow options and pick your transition. Just starts playing music and then flips through the images.(via Macworld) 10:23 Demoing iTunes now. Looking at calendar, again? Steve Sande: "I bet 24,343 Macbooks just went up for sale on eBay" Contact, calendar, address book, Also got a great maps app. Again, the eiffel tower,tap the corner, and pinch as big as we like. 10:22 TUAW staffers wondering about possible fingerprint tech for unlocking? Dave Caolo: "gotta agree: I think there's a 'wow factor' surprise lurking" jEng: 10:22AM Steve is playing more Dylan! iTunes: 10:22: Steve finishes slideshow demo to LOUD applause. Looknow at music collection, iPod, scroll through albums, tap to play. Eng: 10:21AM This is the ultimate tease. We've got a sneaking suspicion there's a lot more to come. 10:21: NYT wonders if this is the end of the laptop. Mike Rose: "WE HAZ BROKE THE INTERNETS" 10:20 Show you a map of all the places you've taken photographs. e.g. Photos I took in Paris. Built in slide shows as well as single image display. Picka transition, pick music. (This is on the iPhone too, right now. So not a new feature.) 10:20 Really good closeup of the keyboard: 10:19 Next, the keyboard. Can look at everything in portrait and landscape. Can look at any photo. Steve is *totally* getting into the portrait/landscape thing. Metadata from maps tied into photos. Can get events, places, at the same time. All tied into maps. 10:18: Engadget: Wow, nice email display -- message list in a column on the left, full message on the right. 10:17: Steve is showing off the improved e-mail browser. Can look at the metro in paris...As an example of PDF display. All the attachment support now being demo'ed Sounds like the E-mail support is going to be absolutely rocking. 10:16 Grab the tablet in the kitchen... A whole website in the palm of your hands. Read national geographic, for example. Very, very simple. Time magazine being demos, sports, right in the palm of your hands. So that is browsing the web. Now E-Mail. 10:12 Great slide show stuff built in. Built in a calendar, see a months' activities, a days', built in, a great address book, contacts, GOOGLE MAPS, satellite view, etc. iPad is an aweesome way to enjoy your music colleciton, and of course, ...iTunes, purchase movies, apps, music, etc. HIGH DEF YOUTUBE 10:12 Whole web page. It's phenomenal. It's incredible. Focus inon a message, see your inbox, turn it sideways (landscape and portrait support), keyboard pops up. It's almost lifesize, it's a dream. Your photos, your albums, your events, etc. 10:10 Very, very thin. Can change the background, Winterboard it out the wazoo (Winterboard is the jailbreak theming app) "Best browsing experience you'll ever have with a whole web page right in front of you. Way better than a laptop, way better than an iPhone" 10:10 It's the iPad. Mike R: "My iPad, let me show it to you. PREEECCCIIOOUS." Let me show it to you. Wild wild applause. 10:10: Some people have thought about netbooks: sThe problem is netbooks aren't better at ANYTHING." Applause. "They're just cheap laptops." We think we got something better. AND WE'D LIKE TO SHOW IT TO YOU TODAY. 10:09: Something better for browsing the web than a laptop? Watching videos? Something better? Media collection, playing games? If there's going to be a 3rd category of device, has to be better at these tasks. 10:08 Is there room for a third category of device? It's the tablet, of course... Steve is making a case for the mobile niche of Apple. gdgt: "In order to create a new category of devices, those devices will have to be far better at doing some key tasks - important things - better than the laptop and smartphone. What kind of tasks? Things like browsing the web..." 10:06 In 1991,In Apple shipped first modern laptop computer. Apple invented it. With an LCD screen. In 2007, Apple reinvented the phone. 2 years later, the iPhone 3GS. Apple is laptops, Apple is smart phones. 10:05 Steve: "Apple is a mobile devices company" How does Apple stack up against other companies that sell mobile devices. By revenue, is largest Mobile Device company in the world. More than Sony, etc. 15.6B in revenue. Bigger than Nokia. "apple is larger than sony mobile products division" -- via twit gdgt: "Lastly, we started apple in 1976 - 34 years later, we just ended our holiday quarter with 15.6 billion in revenue." Big applause. "That means Apple is over a 50 billion dollar company - I like to forget that, because that's not how we think of Apple, but it's pretty amazing." 10:05: GIZ Jason Chen: Next update: App Store. There are over 140,000 applications in the App Store. "A few weeks ago we announced a user downloaded the 3 billionth app from the App Store." 10:04 gdgt: "Last holiday quarter we had over 250 million visitors to our stores." Talking about the new New York stores. "It's so wonderful to be putting these stores right in the neighborhoods of our customers. It feels good. Next update: app store." WE ARE SWITCHING TO TRADITIONAL LIVE BLOG. Cover It Live is not responding. Happy Tablet Day! Here at TUAW, we are so excited to be able to share the moment with all of you stopping by. Today, we'll be metaliveblogging all the major outlets including Engagdet, Ars, and so forth. And adding to the metaliveblogging goodness, we'll be layering TUAW's own special touch of analysis and opinion on top of the summaries we'll be scraping from other sites. So thank you for joining us. Today we'll be covering feeds from: Today we'll be covering feeds from: Engadget Macworld Ars Technica MacNN Gizmodo and more..."Our Latest Creation" The Apple Media Event TUAW MetaliveblogTUAWApple Event Metaliveblog: Celebrate the tablet with TUAW originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink�|�Email this�|�Comments Apple - Engadget - Macworld - TUAW - Ars Technica
Fuel Added to Apple OLED Netbook/iPhone Rumors

Earlier I referenced a report by Australian news site Smarthouse’s David Richards saying Apple is close to launching a touchscreen “netbook type” computer according to unnamed Asian sources. Richards is now citing sources at Korean OEM components supplier LG who tell him not only will Apple soon launch new OLED notebooks and flat panel monitors but also a new iPhones and iPod touches to be released later this year with OLED screens made by LG, which last year secured a multibillion dollar deal to manufacture displays for Apple. Another SmartHouse anonymous source claims Apple already has a working prototype of a new netbook-type laptop to be manufactured in Taiwan with an LG-supplied OLED screen. What's So Great About OLEDs? So what's the big whoop about OLEDs? Well, if you're not familiar, the acronym stands for “organic light-emitting diode” technology, which some have been predicting for more than half a decade now will eventually displace LCD displays for computers and flat-panel televisions. The technology is also sometimes called light emitting polymer (LEP) or organic electro luminescence (OEL). OLED technology could theoretically enable fabrication of display screens 1,000 times thinner than a human hair using organic light-emitting diodes that can be printed on a sheet of plastic and should be cheaper to manufacture — costing only an estimated 60 percent as much as LCDs to produce. Fast and Energy-Efficient British OLED developer Cambridge Display Technology (CDT), now a subsidiary of Sumitomo Chemical, was founded in 1992 as successor to a project started in the Cavendish Laboratory of Cambridge University in 1989, when it was discovered that 'organic' LEDs could be made using conjugated polymers. CDT specializes in what it calls polymer light emitting diodes (P-OLEDs), claimed to have several intrinsic advantages over liquid crystal devices. It is an emissive technology: it emits light as a function of its electrical operation. Its displays consist of polymer material manufactured on a substrate of glass or plastic, and require no additional elements such as backlights or filters. The technology is very energy efficient and lends itself to the creation of ultra-thin lighting displays that will operate at lower voltages. Because LEP technology eliminates the viewing angle dependence of conventional LCDs, other benefits include: More addressable lines (higher level of multiplexability) Response time is fast (sub-microsecond), switching occurs at low voltage (5V), and the intensity of light is proportional to current. Higher contrast Less critical operating margins Reduced temperature sensitivity Larger displays possible A more technical explanation of how P-OLEDs work can be found here. Brighter, Clearer, Wider Viewing Angles In summary, P-OLED benefits include brighter, clearer displays with viewing angles approaching 180 degrees, simpler manufacturing, offering the potential for cheaper, more robust display modules, and ultra-fast response times allowing full color video pictures even at low temperature. CDT calls its screens light-emitting polymers (LEPs) — a type of plastic that can be charged to change color speck by speck. LEPs generate their own light, making them thinner and lighter in weight as well as more power-efficient than conventional LCD flat screen displays. They also have higher contrast with richer colors, offering superior quality images that can easily be viewed from wide angles. Additionally, LEP materials can be dissolved into solvents allowing deposition using ink-jet printing on glass or plastic substrates, thus providing a potential manufacturing advantage that could significantly change the way displays are produced and open new markets and opportunities for lower cost displays on flexible substrates that can conform to curved surfaces. CDT hopes LEPs can eventually be made from plastics soft enough to allow them to be rolled up. Greater Range Of Colors and Blacker Blacks LEP's also eliminate the need for heavy, expensive display backlights, color filters and energy-wasting polarizers used in LCD displays, as well as complex multi-shadowing techniques for depositing small molecules, since color is generated directly on the LEP's front focusing phosphors. OLED pixel colors have a greater range of colors, gamut, brightness, contrast (both DR and static), and appear correct and unshifted even at viewing angles approaching 90 degrees from dead-on and while LCDs can't render true black due to their backlight dependence, an “off” OLED element produces no light and consumes no power, giving black blacks. Contrast, brightness, and color are retained at relatively wide angles of view. The main OLED caveat has been limited lifetime of the organic materials used to make them, especially blue polymer OLEDs which have typically had a lifetime of around 14,000 hours (5 years at 8 hours of daily use) when used for flat-panel displays, which is less than one quarter as long as the projected service life of screens made with LCD, LED or PDP technologies (approximately 60,000 hours). CDT has reported more than tripling the lifetime of its blue polymers, but they still lag far behind the longevity of conventional technologies. $500M R&D Funding From Apple The Smarthouse report says LG intends to increase R&D investment by 25 percent and that recently Apple paid the Company over $500M up front to support new monitor and display technology, also noting that sources claim that while recent OLED screen testing on notebooks attracted “body oils and sweat” when a finger was constantly used on a screen, LG believes that by adding a layer in the manufacturing process that they can eliminate “finger marking.” However, and OLED info site cautions that while this rumor thread is getting interesting, “It's hard to believe that LG would actually release such information about a huge customer such as Apple, so we'll have to wait and see…” It seems that OLEDs are a technology whose time is coming, and Apple may be in the vanguard.
First Look: iWeb ‘09

It’s been a heady few months. The updates to iWork ’09 and iLife ’09 have, for the most part, been as impressive and inspiring as we’ve come to expect from Apple. I upgraded both suites the very second I could. I can’t tell you how much I love these products. Except…iWeb ’09. (Liam looks to the ceiling, gathers his thoughts…tries not to get agitated.) If you didn’t already know, iWeb is a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) website authoring tool. It’s an end-to-end solution that makes it supremely easy to create a complete, sort-of-professional-looking website from scratch. Only, I have some issues with it. Where to begin… I should begin by explaining something: I’m not a “lite” user. I’ve been developing websites and web applications for over a decade, and I’ve become accustomed to the power and flexibility offered by the like of Adobe Dreamweaver and (yes) Microsoft Expression Web. (Although, given the choice, I’d rather use Visual Studio 2008.) So I understand — I really do understand — that iWeb is not supposed to be competition for those other solutions. iWeb isn’t really for me. Nor does it try to be. It’s supposed to be something very simple, very easy to use. It’s supposed to be intuitive and accessible. It’s supposed to provide a seamless experience for anyone with even the tiniest bit of creative vision. And you know what — it does all the things it’s supposed to do. It just doesn’t do enough. So, before I get agitated again, let’s take a look at the new release and feel thankful for what it does do. The interface hasn’t change much, save for the introduction of a vertical panel along the right-hand side of the window, called the Media Browser. This gives easy one-click access to Audio, Photos and Movies on your Mac. Nothing the Media Inspector didn’t do before, except for the final tab - Widgets. Widgets Widgets make it quick and easy to add rich-media to web pages. MobileMe Gallery While the Gallery pages iWeb creates always have allowed users to hook-in to their .Mac or MobileMe galleries, this widget makes it possible to add a single, self-contained gallery-link to a page without the need to use iWeb’s more cumbersome “My Albums” section to your site. What you get is similar to the Events view in iPhoto; a square panel that shows thumbnails of photos in your chosen MobileMe Gallery. When you pass your mouse over the panel, you get different thumbnails of the photos that lie within. Clicking will open a new page that loads the original MobileMe gallery. YouTube Exactly what you’d expect. You paste a link to a chosen YouTube video into a popup dialogue box. It embeds the video on your page. Google Maps I really like this Widget. It doesn’t move the earth, it does precisely what you’d expect, but it takes the hassle out of coding these things by hand. Drag this Widget onto your page and you are presented with a sheet asking for the address you want to display. You can set zoom level, and choose which user-controls are available (such as zoom controls or the Google Maps search bar). Google AdSense Precisely what proportion of typical home-users are Google AdSense customers is an interesting question. I would hazard a guess it’s really not so many. In which case, this seems like a tip of the hat at providing something useful to more advanced users. Except I cannot see iWeb being used as a tool-of-choice by sufficiently advanced users (and by that, I’m referring to anyone who wants to create a truly decent, individual website — but more on that later). iSight Photo You could have done this before using PhotoBooth. Only now it’s built-in to iWeb. This widget starts you iSight camera and allows you to take a photo for instant-inclusion in your web page. iSight Movie Precisely the same as the iSight Photo option above. Only with movies. Countdown I could see this being popular with websites announcing upcoming weddings and birthdays. In short — completely pointless and not exactly something the websphere was crying-out for. Still, it’s something new. Enjoy selecting your birthdate for next year and watching it automagically work out the number of seconds between now and then. And count them down. (meh) RSS Feed Finally! A truly useful widget that was not previously easily-done. Except there is a catch — it doesn’t create an RSS feed from content in your page; it imports a feed from outside your site. If that’s what you want to do, this is a nice and simple way of making that happen. HTML Snippet Ironically, this is the most powerful widget of the lot. It allows you to construct your own HTML and generate pretty much anything you want. Of course, Apple expects you to be doing nothing more advanced than adding someone else’s banner, visitor tracking button or analytics script. If you want to embed anything more fancy than that - why on earth are you using iWeb? Nothing to See Here…Move Along… After the initial excitement with Widgets fades, you’ll realize there’s nothing else of any real added-value in this version of iWeb. There are only two new themes — “Leaf Print” and “Fine Line” — that would have been impressive in 1997. Today they look rubbish. Oh sure, they’re tidy and simple. But they’re not particularly exciting or fresh. Apple must know this — after all, they’re never gonna publish websites using those themes, so I don’t know why they imagine it’s alright to foist them upon the rest of us. There I go being a power user again. I’m sure Aunty Mavis would just love Leaf Print (rolls eyes). Going to Press The publishing options have been expanded somewhat. As well as the option to publish to MobileMe, you can also publish directly to a third party hosting service of your choice using the FTP connectivity new to iWeb ’09. The process is simple. Once you’ve entered and successfully tested your FTP login details, it’s business as usual. I Do Facebook, Too! Since iPhoto ’09 so nicely integrates with Facebook, it seems the iWeb developers felt they had to do something — anything — to get in on the action. Sounds interesting…what could they possibly do, though? Imagine it — by hooking-in iWeb to a Facebook account, the possibilities are endless! You could scrape your Facebook Wall updates into your personal website, link your Facebook/iPhoto galleries with your iWeb site so changes in one propagate automagically to the others, synchronize your iWeb blog with Facebook’s Notes, synchronize your Applications to publish their updates to your iWeb site, synchronize your Facebook Status Updates with your iWeb home page…actually, the more you think about it, the more exciting it becomes! The possibilities just go on and on. Unfortunately, it seems iWeb’s developers weren’t thinking about any of these possibilities, because the Facebook integration we get in this upgrade amounts to nothing more than the following line, published to your Facebook Wall, whenever you make changes to your website. And here start the problems I find in iWeb ’09… Crazy URLs A perennial complaint (really — Google it — you’ll find a lot of people complaining about this for years now). Whether you publish to MobileMe or your own web server, iWeb still insists on creating bonkers-crazy long URLs. And there’s just no excuse for this, there really isn’t. For example, my personal website is http://www.liamcassidy.co.uk and my iWeb website was originally named “liamcassidy.co.uk”. The effect this had on the final published site was a URL to a home page that looked like this: http://www.liamcassidy.co.uk/liamcassidy.co.uk/home.html I’ve since changed the site name to something shorter, but it’s still utterly ridiculous that iWeb doesn’t provide the option — just the option — to override this crazy URL structure/naming convention. Apple, I have a humble suggestion for you — not everyone wants to publish to MobileMe. Let your customers decide what’s best for them, and don’t make them suffer this laziness! A simple toggle in the Preferences ought to disable this kind of silliness so anyone more competent than Aunty Mavis will feel less embarrassed by the addresses iWeb spits out. This sort of thing is entirely avoidable. It’s simply shocking Apple hasn’t done anything about it. Obsolete Themes No one with any kind of appreciation for contemporary design, or accessibility concerns, is going to use the pre-built Themes that ship with iWeb. A very tiny select few look beautiful — but they’re still lacking. iWeb ’08 shipped with some nice new themes but, unfortunately, they dated quickly. The stingy two new additions in iWeb ’09 are laughable. Nasty Markup OK, this is something only more experienced web developers will care about so I won’t bang-on about it too much. It’s worth mentioning because 1) other WYSIWYG editors manage far cleaner code, and 2) there’s nothing semantic about this markup. There aren’t even any helpful comments to guide the curious. The CSS markup is packed-to-bursting with redundant markup (example: “border-top: 0px”, “border-right: 0px”, “border-bottom: 0px”…you get the idea.) Painful Publishing It takes forever to publish pages. Whether you use MobileMe or your own FTP address, publishing a simple 6-page site can take five or more minutes. This is ridiculous, given that any other (free) FTP software can get your files published in much, much less time. Not the “…within moments…” promised by the happy voiceover in the iWeb tour video. Oh no. The fastest way to publish your site is to not publish it at all — by selecting the confusingly-titled “Publish to Local Folder” option. This dumps all the relevant web pages and assets into a folder of your choosing on your hard drive. This takes seconds, but then it’s up to you to get those files to a server somewhere. As a sidenote, this may be the best way to overcome the problem with the crazy long-URL’s. Publish the site to a local folder, then use another FTP solution to upload the files to your own web server. You’ll have to mess around with links here and there to make sure the whole site works as planned, but at least you won’t have to deal with six-mile-long web addresses. Punishing Publishing Oh yes, and just a final word on publishing. If you don’t use MobileMe as your hosting platform, you can forget about your blog’s comments working properly. And kiss goodbye to your blog’s Search functionality. That’s gonna go, too. Seems Apple really wants you to use MobileMe. Tough Love It might sound like I’m bashing iWeb, but if I am, it’s only in the way a pushy parent might berate an under-achieving child for not doing as well as they could. iWeb could be, and should be, a far more powerful and impressive tool than it is today. I was expecting some interesting and exciting things with this upgrade — as it turns out, what I got wasn’t worth the wait. I know Apple is not trying to compete with other more professional web authoring solutions, but that doesn’t excuse sheer laziness when it comes to upgrading this software. iWeb has the potential to be a killer-application. Seriously — plenty of professional web developers would be happy to use it if only it didn’t suck so bad. And, in truth, there aren’t so many fixes required, either. Obviously, the Themes are a joke. Where Apple could shine here is build an iWeb Themes gallery, much the same as the Web Apps gallery that countless iPhone owners (myself included) practically lived-in until native applications could be installed on that device. Apple already features third-party developer software on its own website — why not showcase the best iWeb themes, too? Or, better still — why not create some really breathtaking themes worthy of that lugubrious (and indelible) credit, “Made on a Mac”? As well as vastly-improved themes, add a long-needed fix to the crazy URL issue, CSS editing and the ability to fine-tune the (cleaner, semantic) HTML markup, and you have a web creation tool that is still simple and intuitive, yet doesn’t try to compete with the big-kids already dominating the playground. If that means releasing a standalone “iWeb Pro” package that does for my websites what iWorks does for my documents, I’d gladly pony-up the cash. In the end, “simple and easy” doesn’t have to mean “crude and clunky.” Apple proved that with Pages and Numbers in iWork. The updates to iPhoto and iMovie (evolutionary and revolutionary, respectively) are nothing short of breathtaking. In this company of Kings, though, iWeb is an embarrassing, backward cousin. �� Green your IT. Save Money. Save the Planet � Register at $295�/�$495 regular � Hear Microsoft, IBM, Dell and Cisco execs at GigaOM's Green:Net.
The iPhone 4's second Vietnam: the proximity sensor (updated 3x)

The iPhone 4's second major problem isn't getting nearly as much attention as the first, but it's arguably just as bad — because it causes you to drop calls. The only difference is that your face is to blame, not AT&T's craptastic network.The proximity sensor in the iPhone 4 is what tells it how close the phone is to your face so that it can turn the touchscreen off while you're making a phone call. This has the effect of a) saving battery power, and b) preventing inadvertent touches of the screen by your face.The problem is that the proximity sensor in the iPhone 4 is on a hair trigger. It's either too sensitive, miscalibrated or both. In over three years of using the iPhone 2G, 3G and 3GS I've never accidentally hung up on, muted or put a call on speakerphone while holding it up to my face — not once. Yet I've done it a half dozen times on my iPhone 4 over the past weekend.As I first blogged about in my iLemon post, I frequently put calls on speaker, or accidentally “FaceTime them” or completely hang up on calls altogether because the proximity sensor errantly wakes the screen, which some part of my cheek proceeds to touch.And I'm not the only one. There are 66 pages of proximity sensor complaints in this one thread alone (which already has over 100,000 views) from iPhone 4 users in Apple's own support forums.What bothers me is that the prox bug — which seems to be more related to software than hardware — seems like childsplay compared to the antennae/reception issue. Also, it only affects the i4 and so a fix wouldn't have to be QA'd for Apple's other iPhone handsets.Can't Apple just dial back the sensitivity on the proximity sensor a couple of notches and release a software update? Why is Apple waiting for a “few weeks” and rolling everything into one massive update when it could probably release a proximity fixes for afflicted iPhone 4 users right now? It seems like a comparatively trivial bug and Apple is making its iPhone 4 customers suffer needlessly in the mean time.Does your iPhone 4 proximity sensor act up?Image: 9to5MacUpdate: Anthony Kinson has posted a video of the bug in action. Pay attention to the erratic behavior of the proximity sensor beginning at around the 1:34 mark.Update 2: Another video demonstration is here.Update 3: A PowerPage commenter reports that Apple is making matters worse by apparently deleting threads on its discussions.apple.com forum related to the prox bug. An example of a deleted thread is after the jump…iphone4_925 posted “Re: Issue with Proximity Sensor during calls” in “Issue with Proximity Sensor during calls” on Jul 5, 2010 6:16:29 PM.————————————————————–ramellam wrote:I took my phone to the Apple store for repair/exchange this evening. The Genius first said that he had not heard of the issue (yeah, right! total lie). I told him there are nearly 70 pages on the Apple Support forum for this exact issue. He immediately dismissed my comment and said, “We typically don't lend too much credence to support forum posts…” Ok….Anyhow, the Genius made a call on my phone and, of course, he did not encounter any of the proximity issues I'm having. He gave the phone back to me and said, “There doesn't appear to be any issues with your phone. You'll just have to get used to the new Proximity Sensor location on the iPhone 4…” I was like, “Ummm… Huh?” He refused to exchange the phone.Luckily, I bought my phone from Best Buy on launch day. I immediately went back to Best Buy and the Mobile Phone sales guy said they've already had 9 of their 30 launch day iPhones returned due to antenna and proximity sensor issues. He put me on a list to exchange the phone. Luckily, I have 45 days to exchange the phone, since I'm a Best Buy silver rewards card holder…Anyhow, I'm kinda bummed the Genius refused to help me :-(. He was rather arrogant, too, which really made me mad. Oh well… Back to Best Buy it goes…

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