iCam concept turns your iPhone 5 into a point-and-shoot killer

Jordan Kahn

When author of the official ‘Steve Jobs’ bio, Walter Isaacson, sat down for an interview with Fortune earlier this month, we learned that Steve Jobs had three key industries he wanted to reinvent: the television, textbooks, and photography. We’ve certainly heard a lot of rumors about an iTV in the works, and Apple has arguably already done a lot for the textbook business, despite Jobs having loftier goals for the industry as a whole. While the iPhone 4S’s redesigned camera might be good enough to get an endorsement from photographer Annie Leibovitz, the guys at ADR Studios have created this new ‘iCam’ concept imagining a separate accessory that would turn the iPhone 5 into a full-fledged point-and-shoot.

Keeping rumored iPhone 5 specs in mind, ADR’s concept would include a 10.1 megapixel sensor and provide an “ISO range from 100 to 3200 (extendable up to 6400 equivalent)” for full HD at 60fps. Imagined specs for the accessory include an aluminum unibody, interchangeable lenses, a small touch-screen on the front, LED flash, pico-projector, SD UHS-i slot, motion sensor, and bluetooth. We’re guessing a few companies are already at work on a similar accessory after seeing these gorgeous mock ups.

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Aaron Sorkin “strongly considering” writing Steve Jobs screenplay for Sony

9to5 Staff


Image courtesy of AnimationMagazine.net

According to E! Online, screenwriter, producer and playwright Aaron Sorkin is “strongly considering” writing a screenplay for a rumored Sony movie about the life and work of Steve Jobs. Sorkin was quoted as telling the publication at the P.S. Arts Express Yourself 2011 event in Santa Monica:

Sony has asked me to write the movie and it’s something I’m strongly considering. [...] He was a great entrepreneur, he was a great artist, a great thinker. [...] He’s probably inspired my 11-year-old daughter Roxy more than he’s inspired me. She plays with all his toys.

Sony Pictures recently acquired feature rights to film a flick based on Walter Isaacson’s authorized bio. As we already informed you, someone from ER is likely to play Steve Jobs. The choice could come down to George Clooney (50) and Noah Wyle (40). The latter played Jobs in Pirates of Silicon Valley and recently said he would give his eye teeth, in the heartbeat, to play Apple’s charismatic co-founder.

Sorkin’s work includes the well-received television show The West Wing. He also wrote screenplay for the controversial movie The Social Network which covers how Facebook came to be while portraying its co-founder Mark Zuckerberg as a ruthless young entrepreneur  who stole an existing idea from the Winklevoss brothers, tweaked it and made it his own.

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Watch a candid Steve Jobs brainstorming with his team behind the scenes at NeXT (video)

Jake Smith

Walter Isaacson, in his  biography on Steve Jobs, didn’t go terribly in-depth on the NeXT era of his subject’s life. Luckily, incredible videos from the series Entrepreneurs have become available online and show Steve Jobs working with his team at NeXT. The videos really highlight Steve Job’s leadership style, at least at that phase of his career and show how hard it is to start a company. (via The Next Web)

Check out a few others after the break:

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Sony’s Stringer: “No doubt that Apple is working on changing the traditional television set”

9to5 Staff


A rendition of an Apple-branded television set.

The WSJ reports that amid losing money on every television set they make, Sony somehow has a strategy for redemption. Stringer declined to provide details about what Sony is developing but said “there’s a tremendous amount of R&D going into a different kind of TV set”.

He he has “no doubt” Apple’s Steve Jobs also was working on changing the traditional TV set. “That’s what we’re all looking for”, he noted, warning “it will take a long time to transition to a new form of television”. Slim margins, low prices and little innovation make the business of researching, developing and marketing high-definition television sets a cutthroat one, he remarked:

We can’t continue selling TV sets [the way we have been]. Every TV set we all make loses money.

His company, Stringer said, spent the last five years creating an ecosystem to take on Apple, even though the company had seen little success with the Google TV platform and other connected television efforts:
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Isaacson on Jobs’ final words: “Steve left us with a mystery” (and other great quotes)

9to5 Staff


Steve Jobs’s authorized biographer Walter Isaacson and Fortune’s managing editor Andy Serwer on stage at NASDAQ | Photo: Tanner Curtis

In a series of tweets, Fortune released some interesting new quotes by Steve Jobs’ authorized biographer Walter Isaacson, who sat down for a “breakfast conversation” with the magazine’s managing editor Andy Serwer.

“It’s good that we’ve made a big deal out of a creative business leader, rather than a celebrity,” Isaacson told Serwer, describing his rock star status as a cultural icon of our time. “There’s an emotional connection Steve Jobs made across the world – like a rock star or a prince”.

“Steve thought the digital hub had moved from the computer to the cloud,” Isaacson said. Over the years, Jobs changed as a manager in a way that “he didn’t become sweeter or kinder, he learned to channel his energy and passion.”


Walter Isaacson signing books in Times Square | Photo: Tanner Curtis

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Ron Johnson tapping former Apple peers but not poaching…yet

9to5 Staff

Ron Johnson, Apple’s former vice president of retail and the creator of the Apple Store, left for J.C. Penney November 1 and already he is picking industry veterans to join his leadership team at the Plano, Texas-headquartered department store chain. The Wall Street Journal reports that Johnson is tapping former Apple talent, including former chief financial office of Apple Retail Michael Kramer and Apple’s chief talent officer Daniel Walker.

Interestingly, it was Walker who helped Steve Jobs hire Ron Johnson to head Apple’s retail efforts. Both men served at Apple from 2000 to 2005. Granted, Walker and Kramer are both long-exited Apple people, but the temptation for current Apple talent to somehow make its way to Penney will always linger.

Sure, you might say who would  rather work at J.C. Penney rather than the most powerful, cool technology company in the world. But on a granular level, there might be high paying jobs with Johnson that Apple won’t match that could draw some top Apple talent.  Johnson himself is probably the best example of that.

There is also likely a non-compete clause in Ron Johnson’s severance agreement barring him from poaching Apple employees, but those are easily circumvented.  Just as Steve Jobs poached a bunch of his top Apple engineers to build out NeXT…
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