Seth Weintraub

Sometimes-reliable Digitimes is reporting that Apple will have a 3.2 Megapixel camera sensor on its next iPhone.  The brief report states:

OmniVision has received 3.2-megapixel CMOS image sensor (CIS) orders for Apple‘s next-generation iPhone, according to market sources. The company is also said to have secured 5-megapixel CIS orders for another Apple product expected to be launched later in the year.

OmniVision beat out STMicroelectronics and Aptina Imaging for the Apple orders, the sources added.

One of the bigger complaints about the current iPhones is the camera’s low-megapixel output.  While the picture quality is amazing for 2.1 megapixels, there is certainly room for improvement (yes, there are many other factors contributing to the quality of a picture besides megapixels).

This would put the iPhone (again) on par with the soon to be released Palm Pre.

And what is with the 5 megapixel camera?  Is it us or does that have "tablet thingy" written all over it?

iPhone 3.0 is also expected to bring video recording capabilities to the next iPhone.

Yes, we know that jailbroken iPhones have had video for decades now.

(image from Macrumors)

Telcos.  You can’t live with them and you can’t use an iPhone without them. 

If you are a Tmobile iPhone customer and you are enjoying your Skype application, you might be in for some bad news.  Deutsche Telekom AG on Thursday said it may prevent its customers from using Skype on Apple Inc.’s iPhone.  Word is that Rogers in Canada might be trying to do the same.

Skype, a phone service that routes calls through the Internet and is owned by eBay Inc., made its debut on the iPhone on Tuesday. It allows most iPhone users connected to a wireless Internet network or third-generation cellular network to call other Skype users at no extra cost.

Skype’s iPhone application puts it in competition with cellular operators such as Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile and Telefónica SA’s O2 in Europe..

The article cites a TMobile spokesperson as saying: "…even using Skype at a Wi-Fi hot spot is a breach of contract."

If there is any possible way for them to do this, you can be sure that AT&T will try to do the same as well.  Apple has made it clear that it wants to allow VoIP on its devices so long as they aren’t using AT&T’s network.  That seems to be more than fair.  I’ve done a lengthy post on why the telcos are screwed because of VoIP here if you re interested.

What happened to that European fair competition regulation that forced France to allow every carrier in the country to carry the iPhone?  Oui Oui!  We hope they step in and allow Tmobile customers to use Skype.

For those of us still on the Apple enterprise bandwagon (95% of you can disregard), Xserve refresh times are an important thing to gauge when making purchases.  You don’t want to be on the tail end of a cycle and end up with a product that has been refreshed before you’ve even had a chance to deploy.  If you are in that camp, do not buy an Xserve yet.  Apple is about to do an update the Xserve line to the Nahalem architecture.  It doesn’t appear that much else will change.

PCWorld caught the HK Apple Store prematurely readying the Store webpage for the Nahalem processor XServes.  Macrumors caught a screengrab before Apple took it down.  This means we are days away from a refresh.  Be patient!

Apple is most likely clearing out inventory of current XServes before releasing the new product.  As there are no big events scheduled in the next few weeks, this seems like it might be one of Apple’s silent updates.  Expect a press release with a quote from Phil Schiller and, unfortunately, not much else.

beyond…

Tech Crunch reports that Microsoft’s Stephen Elop slipped and admitted to Tim O’Reilly that there was a version of MS Office coming for iPhone.  He then backtracked a bit. 

We’ve got the video – but it is a half hour long talking about Microsoft Office and we can’t watch for more than a few minutes.  We’re going to crowd source this one.  At what time does he talk about the iPhone?  Leave it in the comments and you win!  Update: 5:35 is the good stuff. 

it1294 wins some crappy gifts in the comments.  Losers, you can have them too.

It is too nice outside.

Want to brush up on your coding skills and make a truckload of money selling your great idea as an iPhone application?  Stanford is offering their CS193P Cocoa programming for iPhone class online through iTunesU  for free. 

From the press release:

Relevant Web URLs:

• Stanford on iTunes U
• iPhone Application Programming Course
• Stanford Computer Science Department
• Apple iPhone App Store

It’s a hot ticket: Free Stanford course on developing software for iPhone and iPod touch comes to iTunes U

From the toys section:

Amazon is having a 56% off special on the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX500K 10.1MP Digital Camera with 5x Wide Angle MEGA Optical Image Stabilized Zoom.  It ships for free and is the lowest price we’ve ever seen for this 5x wide angle lens.  Silver is available for $1 more.

Throw in an 8GB SDHC Memory card for $15 including shipping.

Manufacturer Description
The Lumix DMC-FX500 is Panasonic’s first digital camera with a 3-inch touch-screen LCD, and also features a 25mm ultra-wide-angle Leica DC lens, 5x optical zoom and 10.1-megapixel resolution. With a dual control system using both touch-screen and joystick operation, the ability to record high-definition video and advanced Intelligent Auto technologies, the FX500 packs both innovative features and intuitive design.

The FX500 has a hybrid control system that combines joystick control with touch-screen operation, so users can make fine adjustments by touch, using their finger, or the included Lumix stylus-pen. In manual exposure mode, adjustments can be made using the on-screen sliders to adjust aperture and shutter speeds. You can also set the auto focus and exposure in frames by simply touching the subject, on screen, while recording. In playback mode, a new Easy Organization menu allows for photos to be selected and viewed by scrolling through the thumbnails located below the main window. Then, users can edit the titles using an on-screen keyboard.

Plus, with an ultra-wide-angle, 25mm lens, the FX500 can capture almost double the photo area at the same shooting distance compared with a conventional 35mm lens. Also new is Auto Focus (AF) tracking, a feature that tracks the photo subject even if it moves after the AF is set — especially helpful for catching active children or pets.

Panasonic’s iA (Intelligent Auto) mode is an advanced system of technologies that engage automatically, so the user does not have to change any settings. Maximizing the iA mode, users can go a step further and easily set auto focus and exposure by simply touching the screen. This kind of quick, easy operation is made possible with the touch-screen technology.

Additional Features

Intelligent Exposure: To help correct photos from being under- or over-exposed, the FX500 instantly analyzes the framed image and adjusts the brightness in areas that are too dark because of dim lighting, backlighting or the use of the flash.
Digital Red-eye Correction: Helps eliminate the red-eye problem that sometimes results when taking flash shots at the night. Incorporated into the built-in flash, the camera emits a small preliminary flash before the main flash, detects red-eye and digitally corrects it.
MEGA O.I.S.: Gyrosensors detect hand-shake and the lens system shifts to compensate, helping to prevent hand-shake from creating a blurry image.
Intelligent ISO: Determines if the photo subject is moving and changes the ISO setting and shutter speed accordingly.
Intelligent Scene Selector: Senses the ambient conditions, recognizes the shooting environment and automatically selects the appropriate scene mode from: Scenery, Portrait, Macro, Night Portrait or Night Scenery mode.
Face Detection: Detects faces anywhere in the frame and automatically chooses the optimal focus and exposure settings so portraits come out clear and crisp. Detecting up to 15 faces, Panasonic’s Face Detection can even track a face if the subject is moving.
Continuous AF: Maintains focus on the subject even without the user pressing a shutter button halfway, thus minimizing the AF time.
Other features include the ability to take1280 x 720p HD video content and still photos with a 16:9 aspect ratio, perfect for viewing on an HDTV. In addition, the FX500 incorporates the Venus Engine IV processor, featuring more advanced digital signal processing technology for taking even higher-quality images. The fdsa proprietary Venus Engine IV also heightens the detection accuracy and corrective features in both MEGA O.I.S. and Intelligent ISO Control.

Product Description
10.1 MegaPixel / 5x Zoom / 3.0" LCD Touchscreen / HD Movie / Picture Adjustment

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=thepartim-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=B0011Z44KA&md=10FE9736YVPPT7A0FBG2&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr

We know some of you are excited about the Pre while others (most?) of you are diehard iPhone fans. I think we can all agree that competition is good for consumers. With that, we’d like to share the latest Pre video with you.  Notice the speed at which the apps switch – likely due to that ARM Cortex A8 processor under the hood.  It is almost as fast as an iPhone commercial! 

While the Pre hasn’t yet sold one handset and the iPhone is heading toward 20 million, we hope to see some more competition in the smartphone (and how about carrier?!) field soon.

via Giz

We really thought we liked Sling.  Not anymore…They just became another greedy media company in one very poorly thought out move.  Sling is only allowing users of its more expensive products to use the upcoming iPhone client.  Slingbox, Slingbox AV, and Slingbox TUNER owners won’t be able to use their Slingboxes on the iPhone or iPod touch.  They will need to buy some of the more recent hardware (with a $50 discount).  Poor form Sling, very poor form.  Image below.

via Engadget

We’re not trying to get all wishy washy here on you but Obama’s iPod gift to Queen Elizabeth II actually could be seen to have some deeper meaning. 

For any of you that have to do work in Europe, you know that the prices of iPods over there are about 25% higher than you can find in the US.  We often get hassled by our European colleagues to bring iPods (and sometimes iPhones and Macs) with us whenever we visit.  It is also why, oftentimes, when you see Europeans in the US, they are likely looking for an Apple store or walking out of one. 

But that’s not the point.  The Queen didn’t ask Obama to get her an iPod to save a few bucks (hopefully).

Obama’s choice of the iPod as a gift represents a lot of what America is good at.  We are the world leader in Technology (for the time being).  We may not manufacture all of it but we design a lot of it.  Apple is also one of the leading brands in the world.  It is a very recognizable symbol of ingenuity and creative thinking.  The iPod also holds Music and Movies.  We are also pretty good at those things as well.  In fact, these areas are some of the last where the US still leads the world.

Of course the British press is all over Obama’s gift giving choices.  Hiis previous "gaffe" was getting Prime Minister Gordon  Brown a set of 25 incorrectly region-coded DVDs.  Who knows if this had some sort of deeper meaning or sentimental value?  If gift giving is the biggest complaint they can throw at Obama, we’re still in good shape. 

We think the iPod Touch makes a great gift, even for a Queen.  They even loaded it with videos of the Queen’s last visit to the US and some Broadway showtunes.  

It certainly beats a framed self portrait.

Think Matt Groenig is a Mac Fan because of all of the Mac references in Futurama?  He might be,  but he at one time also did an ad for Apple.

Via

cover	back
page 1	page 2
page 3	page 4
page 5	page 6
page 7	page 8
page 9	page 10
page 11	page 12
page 13	page 14
page 15	page 16
page 17	page 18
flap 1	flap 2

http://homepage.mac.com/mbishop/PhotoAlbum30.html

We just found something very interesting.  When you install Skype on a 3.0 developer preview iPhone, you can use AT&T’s connection to make and receive calls.  It even works pretty well over EDGE.  Skype treats AT&T’s WWAN like a Wifi connection.  I did a quick video and posted it below:

Update:we just made a Skype call over 3G to another 3.0 iPhone using 3G.  The sound quality was as good, if not  better than normal AT&T.  (Thanks  Josh!!)

BTW, if you are commenting that it doesn’t work for you and you don’t have the 3.0 developer preview, you are missing the whole point of this post.

We haven’t heard anything specific, but we’d like to see something very much in the iPhone 3.0 update next week.  It isn’t cut and paste or tethering or even push notifications, though we’d really like to see all of these features.  

How bout Wifi/Bonjour synching?  This would make a

Along with some other sneaky stuff, the 10.5.6 update moved the Trackpad system preference out of the Keyboard & Mouse pane for all Leopard laptops.  This brings parity with unibody MacBooks who’ve had the separate pane since inception.  The pane offers a limited amount of multi-touch functionality (below).

Apple’s product naming is easy to love.

Apple’s recent success in the technology market is, of course, the result of several factors. The solid hardware, the meticulously maintained and simplified software, and a fantastic retail show from the store floor to the unboxing of its products. They have a total user experience that no one has yet been able to touch.

Something that isn’t talked about much, however, is quite basic: Apple’s product naming strategy. No other company puts as much effort into distilling and simplifying their product naming.

You’ll even notice that when referring to their gadgets, Steve Jobs and other Apple employees refer to them as “iPod” or “iPhone”, not “the iPod” or “the iPhone”. Taking out the definite article anthropomorphizes these products, likening them to a friend or pet.

Because of this, it’s easy to get your head around Apple’s array of products. Just four basic product lines – Macintosh, iPod, iPhone and AppleTV – and not much else besides a few accessories, software and services that Apple sells.

For iPhone and AppleTV, that’s all you need to know. The only other classification information for these two product lines is the memory space. iPhone 8GB, 16GB. AppleTV 40/160GB. Easy.

For iPods and Macs, there are a few more variables. But nowhere will you find confusing model numbers in the product lines.

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1996, he slashed everything that wasn’t profitable and moving forward, simplified the Apple lineup. Gone were the many different clones, the Power Macintosh 8500/180s, the Newton MessagePad 2100/Emate 300 and the Powerbook 1400, 2400 and 3400.

In came the PowerMac G3, the iMac, the Powerbook G3 and then later the iBook, MacPros, MacBooks and MacMini. iPods are no different: Shuffle, Nano, Classic, Touch; no numbers, just names.

Contrast this with Nokia, which sells its solid N-series phone lineup from N70 to N96. Ask all but the most hardened geek what differentiates each one and you’ll get little more than a confused expression. How about the Toshiba G900 or the Samsung F700? – both great phones with forgettable names. It’s hard to have a relationship with an anonymous number.

How about a network product from Linksys or Dlink? My NAS is a Dlink DNS-323 but it doesn’t do domain naming. I love the Linksys WRT54G router line for its hacktasticness, but it’s hard to even identify. The software I use to run it is called DD-WRT. Is that, wert?

Apple calls its wireless product Airport. It has for years. When it adds more features like a Gigabit Ethernet hub and USB hard drive support, it becomes Airport Extreme (I know “extreme” is oh so tired – but stick with me here). The smaller, portable model? Airport Express. Non-techies can get this.

Or how about PC Manufacturers like Dell, HP and Sony, which offer models like the VGN-PR2 or the XPS 420. It’s hard to endear yourself to an XPS-420 unless your name is R2-D2 or C3PO.

Certain other tech companies have had success with real names. The LG Chocolate. The Samsung Blackjack. Motorola’s RAZR, KRZR, etc. But these are the exception rather than the rule.

With the success that Apple has had with its simplified naming strategy, it is a wonder that more technology companies aren’t copying such an obvious success and persist in confusing and alienating their customers.

…what Port25 is to Open Source.

Is it me, or is ‘Azure’ the worst name you possibly could think of for a Cloud Computing initiative? The word Azure reminds people of a cloudless sky, a clear day. A world without clouds.

If you look up Azure in a dictionary, you get ‘cloudless’ over and over again. If you look up ’cloudless’ in a Thesaurus, you get Azure as the #1 synonym. Perhaps this is reverse engineering the Microsoft thought process.

It reeks of Phillip Morris’ nicotine addiction programs or oil companies’ alternative fuel advertising. Blatantly disingenuous.

So, what message is Microsoft, the traditional software company, trying to convey with this naming strategy? I think the answer is as clear as day.

Over at Computerworld, I did a quickie on Apple’s product names being so much better than their competitors.

Would you rather have an XPS-420 or a MacPro?

a Toshiba G900 or an iPhone 8Gb?

a Sandisk e270 Mp3 Player or an iPod Nano?

an Apple Airport Extreme or Linksys WRT54G? (OK, I’m not sure about this one- DD-WRT FTW – but you get the point)

With a Big. Simple. True. (as the folks at Wolff Olins used to say) naming strategy, Apple is already a step ahead of its competition – before the customer even sees the products.

Apple’s not-so-secret branding advantage

The big iPhone news today is what appears to be certain confirmation of the mobile operator deals for iPhone in Germany, France, and the UK. What remains to be seen is the feasibility and longevity of these exclusivity deals, given the differences in European laws and U.S. ones. 

We talked to an employee at Orange in Paris about details of their agreement with Apple to carry the iPhone.

1. He reiterated that Apple is going to get 10% of the revenue from Orange. However, French Law states that after 6 months, you can take your phone to another provider (you can also keep your number – like in the US). The initial provider must allow the phone to be moved and provide whatever access codes necessary to move it.  The iPhone will still be sold with a 2 year plan…so that will be interesting to see play out.

Because of this, we speculate Apple may only collect from Orange for 6 months. Apple and Orange may get around this at least in the short-term by offering only 2-year plans, but after 6 months a user could pay an early termination fee and move on. Additionally, the illegal unlocking of iPhones could therefore be a significant revenue risk for Apple, since operators other than Orange would, by law, have the right to have the iPhone on their network. The link below has more information about the French law and its implications.

http://www.minefi.gouv.fr/directions_services/dgccrf/documentation/fiches_pratiques/fiches/b31.htm

Le d