iPhone 3GS prototype scooped up at airport, now on eBay

Seriously folks, what's up with these prototype iPhones falling out of nondescript white vans and ending up on eBay in the shadiest of manners? Just months after we saw an original iPhone prototype (ancient OS included) pop up on The 'Bay, now we've got one of the world's first iPhone 3GSs on there as well. According to the highly ranked eBay seller, the "guy" he "got it from" actually stumbled upon it at an airport, and rather than doing the nonsensical thing of hitting up lost and found, he...

Seriously folks, what's up with these prototype iPhones falling out of nondescript white vans and ending up on eBay in the shadiest of manners? Just months after we saw an original iPhone prototype (ancient OS included) pop up on The 'Bay, now we've got one of the world's first iPhone 3GSs on there as well. According to the highly ranked eBay seller, the "guy" he "got it from" actually stumbled upon it at an airport, and rather than doing the nonsensical thing of hitting up lost and found, he decided to make the most of the sudden opportunity. According to the new owner, an Apple Genius has confirmed that it is an iPhone 3GS, but due to its prototype nature, they can't help him get past the "Connect to iTunes" screen. In other words, it's an incredibly rare brick. If that sounds like just the thing to complete your collection, you can visit the road to overpaying through the read link below.[Via ElectricPig]Filed under: CellphonesiPhone 3GS prototype scooped up at airport, now on eBay originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

  • ★ Gizmodo and the Prototype iPhone

    The Phone The first question is, how did the phone leave Apple’s campus? Starting a few weeks ago, some number of iPhone engineers who, because of the nature of their work were already familiar with the details of Apple’s next-generation iPhone, were authorized to begin using late pre-production units outside Apple’s campus. Effectively, they became permitted to use these phones as their daily carry iPhones. Strict provisos govern such units. They must remain in cases designed to render them indistinguishable, at a glance, from an (encased) iPhone 3G/3GS. Such units are not allowed to be demonstrated or revealed to anyone. Not friends, not spouses. According to Gizmodo, one of the barcodes attached to the unit read “N90_DVT_GE4X_0493”. According to several sources (of mine) familiar with the project, “N90” is Apple’s codename for the fourth-generation GSM iPhone, slated for release this June or July. “DVT” stands for “design verification test”, an Apple production milestone. The DVT milestone is very late in the game; based on this, I now believe that this unit very closely, if not exactly, resembles what Apple plans to release. Why did Apple, so secretive about unreleased products, allow these units to be used off-campus? There’s simply no other way to test a phone. Even if maintaining the maximum feasible degree of secrecy, dozens of near-final units go into field testing a few months in advance of production. (This is true for Apple products other than phones as well, but I believe the practice is more widespread with the iPhone due to the nature of cellular network testing.) The same was true for the 3GS a year ago, and the 3G the year before that. The original iPhone was announced six months before it went on sale; in the interim between the January announcement and its debut in stores at the end of June, limited numbers of them were used for field testing.1 A phone that is allowed to leave campus is a phone that can be lost or stolen. A phone that is lost or stolen can wind up in the wrong hands. And we all know Murphy’s Law. For all we know, this is not the first such prototype iPhone to have gone missing. It’s just the first to have wound up in the wrong hands. The Sellers California’s penal code, section 485: One who finds lost property under circumstances which give him knowledge of or means of inquiry as to the true owner, and who appropriates such property to his own use, or to the use of another person not entitled thereto, without first making reasonable and just efforts to find the owner and to restore the property to him, is guilty of theft. California’s civil code, section 2080.1: If the owner is unknown or has not claimed the property, the person saving or finding the property shall, if the property is of the value of one hundred dollars ($100) or more, within a reasonable time turn the property over to the police department of the city or city and county, if found therein, or to the sheriff’s department of the county if found outside of city limits, and shall make an affidavit, stating when and where he or she found or saved the property, particularly describing it. Yes, I’m quoting both criminal and civil statutes. But the plain meaning is clear. Those who found the phone on a bar stool, if that’s truly how they came into possession of it, could return the phone to its owner or they could turn it over to the police. To keep it for three weeks and then sell it makes them guilty of theft. Here is an interesting case, discussing and upholding California Penal Code 485 in the Sixth Circuit on April 7, 2010. It’s long, but here’s one good bit from it: The only mental state mentioned in Penal Code section 485 is the perpetrator’s “knowledge.” The crime is defined in terms of two acts, one omission, and one mental state. The perpetrator commits this offense if he or she (1) finds lost property (an act), (2) appropriates it (an act), (3) fails to make “reasonable and just efforts” to find the owner and restore the property to the owner (an omission), and (4) does so with knowledge of the true owner or means of inquiry as to the true owner (a mental state). Nowhere in the statutory definition of the offense is there any suggestion that the perpetrator must harbor any additional specific intent. Now, in practical terms, these fellows had another option. Speaking from personal experience as one who has spent a fair number of hours in bars, there is a universal protocol for dealing with misplaced or forgotten personal items left behind by fellow patrons. Wallets, keys, phones, purses. Whatever. If you see something like that on the floor, or forgotten on a table, you pick it up and hand it to the bartender. If you realize you’ve lost something, you ask the bartender. Everyone knows this. This option arguably does not comply with the letter of California law, insofar as the bartender is not the owner and is not the police. But no one has or ever will be prosecuted for handing a lost item to the employees of the establishment where the item was found. Effectively you’re turning the bartender into the finder of the item. And, in this particular case, had these individuals done so, the phone would have gotten back to its rightful owner, who, in the days after losing it, called the bar repeatedly to ask whether it had been turned in. Even if it didn’t occur to the “finders” of this phone to turn it over to the bartender the night it was lost, all they had to do, at any point during the three weeks before they sold it to Gizmodo, was take it back to the bar, or just call the bar and ask whether the guy who lost it had called to claim it. Here is the story about their purported attempt to return the phone, as reported by Jesus Diaz at Gizmodo: During that time, he played with it. It seemed like a normal iPhone. “I thought it was just an iPhone 3GS,” he told me in a telephone interview. “It just looked like one. I tried the camera, but it crashed three times.” The iPhone didn’t seem to have any special features, just two bar codes stuck on its back: 8800601pex1 and N90_DVT_GE4X_0493. Next to the volume keys there was another sticker: iPhone SWE-L200221. Apart from that, just six pages of applications. One of them was Facebook. From the Facebook app, they obtained the name of the Apple engineer who lost the phone. Thinking about returning the phone the next day, he left. When he woke up after the hazy night, the phone was dead. Bricked remotely, through MobileMe, the service Apple provides to track and wipe out lost iPhones. It was only then that he realized that there was something strange that iPhone. The exterior didn’t feel right and there was a camera on the front. After tinkering with it, he managed to open the fake 3GS. Note that you are not permitted by law to disassemble found items. There it was, a shiny thing, completely different from everything that came before. He reached for a phone and called a lot of Apple numbers and tried to find someone who was at least willing to transfer his call to the right person, but no luck. No one took him seriously and all he got for his troubles was a ticket number. He thought that eventually the ticket would move up high enough and that he would receive a call back, but his phone never rang. What should he be expected to do then? Walk into an Apple store and give the shiny, new device to a 20-year-old who might just end up selling it on eBay? Admittedly, it would be very hard to get someone on the phone at Apple who would know what a device such as this one is. Apple, like most large companies, deliberately makes it difficult for consumers to reach (non-retail) employees. There is no lost prototype hotline. But they could have simply put the phone in a bubble wrap envelope and mailed it to 1 Infinite Loop. Apple’s mailing address is right on their web site. And they had the name of the engineer who lost the phone. It defies belief that calling Apple’s public phone numbers constitutes “reasonable and just efforts to find the owner and to restore the property to him”, as required both by law and by common sense. Take it back to the bar. Drop it in the mail. Send a message using Facebook to the engineer who lost it. Or, why not take it to an Apple Store? That’s a circuitous route, but this bit from Gizmodo’s report: Walk into an Apple store and give the shiny, new device to a 20-year-old who might just end up selling it on eBay? is how thieves think — that everyone else is as dishonest as they are. Taking it to an Apple Store, asking for a manager, and handing it over would have put the phone back in Apple’s hands. Even if you take their account at face value, it is clear the individuals who sold this unit to Gizmodo made no serious attempt to return the phone. Thus, even if the phone originally came into their hands by being lost, once they made no “reasonable and just” effort to return it and instead began trying to sell it, it became stolen. Consider, too, every coincidence that we’re asked to believe in this tale. What are the odds that the person who happened to be sitting next to the Apple engineer who lost such a phone would recognize it as something other than an existing consumer iPhone? It was snapped into a 3G/3GS-sized case. The screen is higher resolution, yes, but how many random people in a bar — even in Silicon Valley — would notice that? And they knew it might be worth thousands of dollars if offered to a site such as Gizmodo. In my book, anyone who did this with a phone left on a bar stool would be just as likely to, say, take it out of someone’s jacket pocket if they noticed its unusual nature while the engineer was using it at the bar — which, we know the engineer did, given that he updated his Facebook page that evening with a comment regarding the quality of the beer he was drinking. There is no reason to take anything thieves claim at face value, particularly when it’s all been filtered through Gizmodo, which has a decided interest in painting a picture where they didn’t realize they were purchasing stolen property. Gizmodo California penal code, section 496: (a) Every person who buys or receives any property that has been stolen or that has been obtained in any manner constituting theft or extortion, knowing the property to be so stolen or obtained, or who conceals, sells, withholds, or aids in concealing, selling, or withholding any property from the owner, knowing the property to be so stolen or obtained, shall be punished by imprisonment in a state prison, or in a county jail for not more than one year. However, if the district attorney or the grand jury determines that this action would be in the interests of justice, the district attorney or the grand jury, as the case may be, may, if the value of the property does not exceed nine hundred fifty dollars ($950), specify in the accusatory pleading that the offense shall be a misdemeanor, punishable only by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year. Given that Gizmodo claims to have paid $5,000 for the device, the latter half (regarding property worth less than $950) does not apply. Those who sold the phone to Gizmodo clearly obtained it in a manner constituting theft, whether they truly found it on a bar stool in the first place or otherwise. There can be no doubt that Gizmodo took possession of the phone, given that they’ve published photos and videos of editor Jason Chen holding it. So the question here is whether Gizmodo knew the phone was stolen. First, Gizmodo coyly suggests that they themselves were satisfied with the sellers’ tale of trying, and — alas! — failing, to return the phone to Apple by calling consumer-facing phone numbers. Regardless if the sellers truly believe that to have been a good faith effort to return the phone, would Gizmodo’s editors have us believe that they themselves believed that Apple had no interest in recovering this unit? Gizmodo’s primary defense against claims that they knowingly purchased stolen property is that they didn’t know whether the unit was truly an actual Apple prototype until after they obtained it and examined it. When posting Apple’s written request to have the unit returned to them, Gizmodo editorial director Brian Lam also posted what he claimed to be his emailed response: Happy to have you pick this thing up. Was burning a hole in our pockets. Just so you know, we didn’t know this was stolen when we bought it. Now that we definitely know it’s not some knockoff, and it really is Apple’s, I’m happy to see it returned to its rightful owner. P.S. I hope you take it easy on the kid who lost it. I don’t think he loves anything more than Apple except, well, beer. Note that I’ve quoted the original version of Lam’s purported response to Apple, a copy of which I saved, and which is archived publicly here at Cult of Mac. On Gizmodo’s web site, this response was edited (after I specifically noted Lam’s use of the word “stolen”, such that it now reads: Happy to have you pick this thing up. Was burning a hole in our pockets. Just so you know, we didn’t know this was stolen [as they might have claimed. meaning, real and truly from Apple. It was found, and to be of unproven origin] when we bought it. Now that we definitely know it’s not some knockoff, and it really is Apple’s, I’m happy to see it returned to its rightful owner. P.S. I hope you take it easy on the kid who lost it. I don’t think he loves anything more than Apple. The gibberish in brackets (punctuation and capitalization sic) was added, and the knife-twisting kick-in-the-balls quip about beer was removed. Keep in mind that this isn’t the editing of a weblog post — it’s the editing of what Lam and Gizmodo claim is the response they sent to Apple’s senior VP and chief legal counsel Bruce Sewell. Again, their defense, as best I can put it, is that only upon receipt of the letter from Sewell did they “definitely know it’s not some knockoff” and “really is Apple’s”. Curious, this supposed uncertainty, considering they published their photographs and videos of the device 12 hours earlier with the quite certain headline “This Is Apple’s Next iPhone”. Now, it’s worth noting that criminal charges are at the discretion of the District Attorney, not Apple. Apple can choose to file a civil lawsuit on its own, but a criminal suit can only be filed by the DA. If criminal charges are made, and they include charging the editors of Gizmodo with the purchase and receipt of stolen property, they can make whatever arguments they want in their defense. But Gizmodo certainly knew that if it was, in fact, an Apple prototype, that it did not belong to the individuals who were selling it, and that Apple would want it back. Yes, it could have been a hoax, but that defense could (and, I’m guessing, is) made by anyone prosecuted for purchasing stolen property of this nature. Imagine, say, that someone offered to sell you a unique and notable piece of stolen artwork. You pay them and take the item. You are subsequently arrested and charged with buying stolen property. What do you think your chances are of being acquitted on the grounds that you didn’t know for certain whether the item was a forgery at the time you paid for it? Further, upon receipt of the phone, Gizmodo inspected it for “about a week” before they began publishing their photos of the device. Whatever their questions regarding its legitimacy at the outset, it didn’t take them six days to figure out it was real. In the meantime, they kept it secret and did not return it to or notify Apple. I have two issues regarding Gizmodo’s actions regarding this story. First, I’m fascinated by their apparently cavalier attitude regarding the legal implications of their actions. I’m not offended by their decision to obtain this unit and publish everything they were able to ascertain regarding it. It simply boggles my mind the stakes they have effectively wagered that Apple will not pursue this legally. Second, publishing the name, photographs, and personal information of the Apple engineer who lost the phone is irrelevant to the story. It was the dick move to end all dick moves. Gizmodo is, ostensibly, a gadget site. The interest of their readers in this saga regards the phone. Publishing his name did not clarify in the least bit how they obtained the phone. The people whose identities I’d like to know are those who obtained and then sold the phone, not the guy from Apple who lost it. There is no interest served by outing him other than taking sociopathic glee in making a public spectacle of someone who made a very serious but honest mistake. This, I’m deeply offended by. I don’t know what Apple would do with prototypes for a new iPhone that had a radically new industrial design, such that they couldn’t be disguised as an existing consumer iPhone using a case. ↩

  • iPhone prototype caught on video

    We found a quick video of the iPhone prototype that you've probably already bid on. The excitement is palpable as the person on screen clicks his or her way through menu items, checks out mobile web pages and generally does the sort of things that we imagine one does with a test unit. No doubt your curiosity's been piqued, and we don't blame you. With a current bid of $2,000 and over thirty-five hours left on the auction, this is probably as close as we'll ever get to the thing. Video after the break. Continue reading iPhone prototype caught on videoFiled under: CellphonesiPhone prototype caught on video originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 10 Mar 2009 09:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

  • iPhone prototype surfaces on eBay, aims to fetch a pretty penny

    Okay, so we'll go ahead and crush a few dreams up front -- there's nothing here that proves this isn't some funky KIRF iPhone or just an ad hoc or jailbroken app making things look completely funkadelic. Now that our skepticism is out in the open, we'll be honest and say we really, really hope this is legitimate. According to the eBay description, this here iPhone prototype was constructed a few months prior to the real iPhone's release, and it actually powers on, makes calls and receives SMSs. It sports a totally beta plastic matte screen, and the software is obviously pre-release. Oh, and the best part? The auction winner also scores a second beta phone that won't turn on (yet), but we're sure the right tweaker could fix it up into the most amazing secondary phone the world has ever seen. Forget all that bad economic news you've been hearing -- you best bring the bring the bank if you're thinking seriously about claiming this.[Via iLounge]Filed under: CellphonesiPhone prototype surfaces on eBay, aims to fetch a pretty penny originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Mar 2009 19:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

  • Apple confirms and expresses sadness over death of Chinese iPhone prototype handler

    Reports have circulated the internet that a 25-year old worker at Chinese manufacturer Foxconn, which produces all the iPhone models for Apple, committed suicide last week following revelation that a fourth-generation iPhone prototype, one of the 16 iPhones he was responsible for, had gone missing. Some stories circulating have described illegal searches of the man's apartment and interrogation involving physical abuse by other Foxconn employees. While not confirming the case being a suicide or the cause being the disappearing device, a spokesperson for the Cupertino-based company did release a statement corroborating the news of his death, saying that it is "saddened by the tragic loss of this young employee, and we are awaiting results of the investigations into his death. We require our suppliers to treat all workers with dignity and respect." The status of the missing iPhone prototype, which may or may not have been one that earlier this month found itself on eBay given the timeframe (although a 3GS model and not "fourth generation") remains unknown. Our hearts go out to all involved.Read - Statement form AppleRead - iPhone prototype goes missing; Chinese worker investigated, commits suicideFiled under: CellphonesApple confirms and expresses sadness over death of Chinese iPhone prototype handler originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Jul 2009 23:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | Email this | Comments

  • iPhone prototype yanked down from eBay

    Filed under: iPhone A set of iPhone prototypes from 2006 briefly made the eBay rounds this morning, with bids running more than $2,000 for the two phones (one non-working) before Apple managed to get the listing yanked sometime during the day. The seller also made a YouTube video documenting the features on the phone -- while that too was pulled down due to Apple exerting its copyright, Engadget managed to salvage it and now has it up on its site.The prototype hints at several features that did not make it to the final version of the iPhone, including a possible option for video phone calls and games. The video is well worth watching. Even though the auction was pulled, we still manage to get a peek at the process that led to the phone unveiled in early 2007. We also have a glimpse of the iPhone at its most basic levels, something that will be an asset to developers.TUAWiPhone prototype yanked down from eBay originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 10 Mar 2009 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

  • 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 (1.06%‎) 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

  • Found Footage: iPhone prototype

    Filed under: Cult of Mac, Odds and ends, Found Footage, iPhoneRemember the ebay auction of an iPhone prototype? Well here's a video of another prototype from Germany -- although it looks very different from the one in the auction. The UI, still very rough, at least looks more "Apple"-ish in the German video. There are a few interesting moments too, like seeing a Terminal button (makes sense) and a little demo of the iPhone trying to track a finger as it moves across the screen. While we wait for iPhone OS 3.0 it's interesting to see the pre-1.0 release and realize how much has changed in such a short time.[thanks to Timothy for sending this in]TUAWFound Footage: iPhone prototype originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 17 Mar 2009 12:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

  • 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. 

  • Gizmodo, the iPhone 4th Gen, and Beer

    Image via Gizmodo Well, as much as I hate talking about rumors, fact is, this is a mammoth story, and it needs to be addressed here on Apple Gazette. This is going to recap the saga that is the 4th-Gen iPhone, Engadget, Gizmodo, Apple, and everything in between. But before we can talk about what it is and why it's so important, let's first discuss how this all shook out. On April 17, Engadget reported that they had been sent pics of the prototype iPhone. It had been left at a bar in San Jose, and the pictures were now being mailed to various tech outlets. It wasn't said specifically, but at the time the owner of said pics may have been shopping for a price on the device, which was alluded to in the post: There may be a chance to get some more face-time with the handset, but we wanted to get these photos to you guys ASAP. Stay tuned, we're working on more details as we type — for now, enjoy the gallery below! Well, Engadget didn't get the device. But someone else did, and is rumored to have paid $10k for it. Gizmodo. This topic has been pretty hot on the interwebs. So much so that Ken Sweet wondered about it aloud on Twitter: I'm waiting for the backstory on @gizmodo's #iphone exclusive. How was it lost/found? I think @nicknotned has said he'll pay for exclusives. Denton's response was just part of the answer: @kensweet Yes, we're proud practitioners of checkbook journalism. Anything for the story! So Gizmodo buys the supposed iPhone, then on April 19 – must have overnighted that thing – they posted up on the site with the title: “This is Apple's Next iPhone.” Sounded arrogant to me, and frankly, like a load. So I decided to read it, determine that it was probably another hyped up thing to garner pageviews, and went on my way. Except that I may have been wrong. Yesterday, Gizmodo released the story on how they came to acquire the device, and how it came to be found in that bar in San Jose. A software engineer named Gray Powell went to The Gourmet Haus Staudt to enjoy a beer or two, and along with him came his prototype iPhone. As it turns out, Gray works for Apple and is responsible for developing iPhone Baseband Software, which is how the iPhone can make a phone call. He went to the bar, had a few, and left the iPhone on the stool. A drunk guy found it, handed it to a less inebriated gentleman, who decided to hang onto it and give it back to the owner. He flipped it on, looked through some apps and found the owner's Facebook profile, and planned on calling him the next day. Except that he didn't. When he went to fire up the phone, it was now turned off – according to Gizmodo, probably via MobileMe – and now it was a useless piece of junk. So he decided to take off the case on the device and see what was doin. Turns out, it wasn't an iPhone 3G like the case said, it was something different. That's when things proceeded to go a bit differently. We don't know how it all broke down from there exactly, but we do know the end result: Gizmodo paid this guy to buy the iPhone from him, and then they published the results. What they found seems to be the next iPhone, and it's pretty hard to deny that it's at the bare minimum, a functioning prototype. You could ignore all this of course, and just say it's crap. That's what I did. But then Gizmodo called Gray at Apple to get a response: Gray Powell: Hello? John Herrman: Is this Gray? G: Yeah. J: Hi, this is John Herrman from Gizmodo.com. G: Hey! J: You work at Apple, right? G: Um, I mean I can't really talk too much right now. J: I understand. We have a device, and we think that maybe you misplaced it at a bar, and we would like to give it back. G: Yeah, I forwarded your email [asking him if it was his iPhone], someone should be contacting you. J: OK. G: Can I send this phone number along? J: [Contact information] At this point, I don't know how this isn't the next iPhone, or at the bare minimum, a really close prototype. So now the question becomes, what happens from here? From Apple's standpoint, this is a big f-ing deal. An employee took an Apple prototype out into the wild, acted irresponsibly, then lost the device. Now the whole world knows what's coming out sometime in June, and they have no big reveal. No iPad moment. No time to build up suspense about what the device is going to be and get customers lined up for hours to buy it. Instead, all the pomp and circumstance is taken out of the event, and people will walk into that conference center on June 22 with smug looks on their faces and tight-lipped smiles. No applause, no “one more thing,” nothing fancy. This has got to be eating Steve alive. There's been speculation as well that this is a controlled leak, designed to stir up hype about the iPhone and get people in line to make a purchase. I disagree. Apple leaks things to reputable companies like the Wall Street Journal, and does so in a very controlled way. Look at the iPad, for example. At first, you could make the argument that there was nothing but leaks around the device, since everyone out there from CEOs to newspapers were talking about the Apple Tablet. But no one had the device in hand – at least not that we say prior to the big reveal – and no pictures were taken. Every single photoshopped image of the iPad was fraudulent, and just an educated guess as to what could be. It was a bit chaotic, but it drummed up hype for the iPad, which was Apple's intent all along. Were this a leak, I imagine it would've gone down a bit differently. There's no way to tell that the person who found the phone would leak it to the press. It was only after Mister X got the case off of the phone that he discovered what it really was, and that's all by chance. I don't see it being possible that this was a controlled leak in any way, and fact is, we'll never know for sure. So what does Apple do? They sue the crap out of Gizmodo. They fire Gray. They lock down the building even more than before and maybe – just maybe – they delay the launch so they have time to redesign the device in some new way so that Gizmodo looks like an ass. I think it's very likely that the first two will happen, if the ball isn't rolling already. The rest is still unclear. We'll just have to wait until June to show the world. Gizmodo had better buckle down for a fight. When it comes down to brass tax, they purchased stolen property. Sure, Gray “lost” it, and that's how they'll defend it in court. But the mysterious person who found it should've returned it to him right away. Instead, he sold it to the highest bidder – and that's a problem. If Gizmodo is a reputable organization, then they'll claim that they can't reveal their source and will hide behind the constitution. If they're not, they'll rat out their Mister X and he'll go to jail, get fined, or sued himself. No matter what, Gizmodo is going to meet Apple's legal team. Of course, Apple could go another route with Gizmodo, as mentioned in the comments on their very post: You guys better be prepared for the mighty God hammer that will fall after June's unveiling. After that, it's going to hurt, A LOT! For 10k, the thief will lose a lot more than that defending himself in court. Gizmodo may be ban hammered for life from Apple events. This is Not going to end well. The reason that Apple's been quiet now is because they want plausible deniability that this is the next iPhone. Once it's announced however, Jobs will unleash the hounds of war. All those who are responsible for this betrayal will be punished. If Gizmodo is banned from Apple events, that could hurt their bottom line. Apple fanboys might leave the site because Gizmodo would have nothing to offer them. Of course, they would have lots of other things to post about – Apple isn't everything, remember – but it could be a kick in the junk to them at the minimum. But this story is developing quickly, too. Late last night, Gizmodo posted up a letter from Apple. The interesting part though is the response from Gizmodo: Happy to have you pick this thing up. Was burning a hole in our pockets. Just so you know, we didn't know this was stolen [as they might have claimed. meaning, real and truly from Apple. It was found, and to be of unproven origin] when we bought it. Now that we definitely know it's not some knockoff, and it really is Apple's, I'm happy to see it returned to its rightful owner. Followed by commentary about the legal ramifications, per their lawyers: (Our legal team told us that in California the law states, “If it is lost, the owner has three years to reclaim or title passes to the owner of the premises where the property was found. The person who found it had the duty to report it.” Which, actually, the guys who found it tried to do, but were pretty much ignored by Apple. ) Except that's not how it was portrayed in their first post. At least, not at first. I can't confirm this is any way, so I'm not going to make a blatant accusation. And frankly, I could be wrong. But I've spent a lot of time pouring through their post, and in the time period between putting draft 1 of this to bed along with myself, and waking up the next morning, something's been updated. I have no recollection of this passage: He reached for a phone and called a lot of Apple numbers and tried to find someone who was at least willing to transfer his call to the right person, but no luck. No one took him seriously and all he got for his troubles was a ticket number. He thought that eventually the ticket would move up high enough and that he would receive a call back, but his phone never rang. What should he be expected to do then? Walk into an Apple store and give the shiny, new device to a 20-year-old who might just end up selling it on eBay? That sounds like a big case of CYA if I'm correct, which could be verified with Apple at some point, I'm sure. If I'm not, apologies to all around. Regardless, Mister X did know who had the phone at the bar, and could've given it back to him directly just by sending him a message via Facebook. He had his name, after all. So even if this passage was added after the fact, Mister X is still in the wrong and could have – and should have – returned the phone. This may come across at first like it's the score of the century, and a huge scoop for Gizmodo. But the way the device was acquired, from start to finish, is shady and I think that there will be more revealed on this topic in the days ahead. I think at the end of it all though, this might be a lesson about how to deal with Apple and how not to deal with them.

  • Macworld 2010: Hands-on with the Parrot AR.Drone

    Filed under: Macworld, Gaming, iPad We first heard about the Parrot AR.Drone, an iPhone-controlled RC quadrocopter, back when it made such a big splash at CES, but unfortunately, since we weren't there, we didn't get to see it in person. Fortunately Parrot did come by Macworld, and the day before the show, we finally got to see their iPhone-controlled, dual camera-equipped, high tech toy in action. So what's the verdict? It's not super easy to fly (we crashed it into the walls, the ground, and even their marketing guy), but it's the real thing -- the extremely light (3/4 of a pound, as our own Steve Sande estimated with remarkable accuracy) quadricopter is packed with all kinds of fun gadgets, including variable speed rotors, the ability to lift off, hover, and land on its own, and super-sensitive touch controls along with two 640x480 VGA camera feeds running back to the iPhone via 802.11G Wi-Fi. We're not sure how ready it actually is for market (or what it'll cost yet), but the AR.Drone does what it says on the not-yet-designed box: Allows you to control a real quadricopter with and through your iPhone. Read our impressions of the hands-on below, and don't forget to stay tuned -- we'll have video of our demonstration later on. Gallery: Parrot AR.Drone The copter itself is actually very durable for what it is. There are two circuit boards inside of a foamlike superstructire that easily handled the bumps and bruises we gave it during our hotel hallway tests. The center section reaches four light arms out to four propellers, each with their own variable speed engines and tiny LEDs that glow red and green depending on whatever speed they're spinning to control the copter's roll and pitch. When it's actually up in the air, the copter hums about as loud as your old PC -- noticeable, but not enough to interrupt a conversation, and easily talked over. There is a breeze coming from the rotors, as you might expect, but once you get about two or three feet below the rotors, it dissipates. Controlling the thing, however, is easier said than done. The current interface (we were told that the drone and the app prototypes we saw were about 80% complete) is plain, with just a few green indicators over surprisingly clear video send directly from the two onboard cameras, one facing forward and one facing straight down. The iPhone can switch views between the cameras, or even set up a picture-in-picture view. The copter is controlled with both the touchscreen and the iPhone's accelerometer -- you can make the drone propel forwards or backwards by manipulating a virtual joystick with your left thumb, send it lower or higher by pushing your right thumb up and down a green meter, and then turn or tilt it left or right by shifting the iPhone's accelerometer. If that sounds complicated, you've probably got it right -- basically, you've got to keep the iPhone tilted in the right direction, while simultaneously moving your left thumb forward or back to control speed, and moving your right thumb up or down to change the copter's height. Flying it around an empty room is a piece of cake (until you turn the copter around and have to control it backwards), but manipulating it carefully requires practice and dexterity. Probably not as much as a full RC plane, but even by the end of our short time with it (about 30 minutes or so -- battery life on the copter is currently around 15 minutes), we were only starting to get it going in the right direction. Fortunately, the copter can take care of itself, too. There's also a button on the screen marked "Take Off," and if you hit that, the copter will lift itself off the ground, and hover calmly a few feet above the air all on its own. When in the air, the button changes, and it'll land automatically as well. If you ever let the accelerometer go (return it to level), the copter's bottom camera will search the ground for a familiar pattern, and as soon as it finds something (the carpet we were flying it over had some clear patterns and shapes that it easily spotted), it will level itself off and hover in the air, waiting for you. One of the company's reps even waved his hand underneath the camera, and the copter momentarily fluttered until it was able to ID the ground below and level itself back out. Parrot made a big deal of how open they wanted the functionality to be, but unfortunately most of the specifics are still stuck behind a veil of plans. They say they want the app to be free, and that they have opened it up to developers to create their own applications and uses. The copter can currently carry 100 grams without too much trouble, and the Parrot reps told us that a cargo hook is a no-brainer, but that they'd probably wait for someone else to develop it. They weren't able to demo the camera's AR abilities for us at the show, but they say that they have two companies currently working on AR games for the Drone. Which ones? "We're waiting until testing is done to say names." Price hasn't yet been decided yet either -- while a few prices have leaked out online, the Parrot folks confirmed that no official price has been said or set. Nevertheless, they're adamant that it'll be for sale before the end of 2010, so if you're already sold no matter the price, keep your credit card at the ready. Who the drone will sell to is probably the most interesting question still to be answered -- the company told us plainly that they consider it to be a toy, and that they plan to sell it to the same type of people who would be interested in video game consoles and high tech gadgets like that (and who would presumably already own an iPhone). But it's not really a pick-up-and-play device at all -- while you can definitely fly the thing around within a few minutes, actually guiding it to the degree that you'd need to operate a game will take quite a while. Still, it's a cool device, and even if the company just posts this prototype for sale on its website, there are people out there who will buy them. We also asked about the iPad, and if they'd tested it with Apple's yet-to-be-released touchscreen, but they said that they hadn't even cracked open the SDK. Presumably, the app will work, since all iPhone apps will work with Apple's tablet, but they haven't tested it at all. So as with many of the questions around the AR.Drone, we'll see. Still, it's a wonder. There are lots and lots of people who would like to fly a real-life camera-equipped quadricopter using software on their iPhone, and that's exactly with the AR.Drone does.TUAWMacworld 2010: Hands-on with the Parrot AR.Drone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments iPhone - Touchscreen - Handhelds - Smartphones - Marketing

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