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WWDC dates in flux?

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Mar 5 2010 - 10:40 am PT
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Apple likes to schedule its events in secret.  The last few WWDCs were marked in Mosone’s corporate calendars as generic “Corporate Events”.  The same with Apple’s events at the adjacent Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.  Luckily, not too many huge conventions are scheduled in secret, so it makes finding Apple’s events a little easier.

We, like many other sites, saw the saw the late June, early July corporate event as being a likely time place for WWDC.  But, with a recent change to the calendar (and the removal of Sun’s JavaOne conference – wow!) it looks like WWDC might have changed dates…or even *gasp* changed venues.


Old Moscone Schedule circa January

The new calendar shows a shorter Corporate Event scheduled for June 23-24 but it is only labelled a “Meeting” as opposed to a “Convention”.  That is during the time the Sun JavaOne conference was originally scheduled.  The time period originally thought to be the Apple Corporate event (WWDC) now no longer exists in the calendar.

No other generic corporate events are scheduled for the forseeable future so we have a few guesses to throw out in the order of probability (in our opinion obviously):

  • Apple got Moscone to hide the corporate event even further by not even listing it
  • WWDC dates are in flux and haven’t been listed at Moscone yet. 
  • WWDC won’t be held at Moscone this year.  Apple is having WWDC at another venue
  • WWDC?  Apple doesn’t need a WWDC when it has Apple Stores!.

Thanks Moscone Tipster!

Wikipedia: Coming to an iPhone/iPad/iPod search near you

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Mar 4 2010 - 6:02 pm PT
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(different search engine strings on left, Firefox 3.6 for Mac on the right)

Here’s some more interesting information from the 3.2 SDK while we wait for the developer site to come back up.  It isn’t a biggie like Bing, but you will be able to set your search to something besides Google in the search bar of the iPad’s Safari in upcoming iPhoneOS releases. 

Right now, the two options besides the current default Google are Wikipedia and Yahoo, but plugins *could* be developed to do things like Amazon and Bing searches directly from the search bar in the Safari browser. 

Not that Apple isn’t 100% completely happy with Google right now or anything.

There is even a suggestion manager for both Google and Yahoo depending on which search engine you choose.  Again, no Bing

Apple planning to deploy iPhone Advertising SDK?

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Mar 4 2010 - 9:21 am PT
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According to a recent Job posting, Apple is looking for an “iPhone Advertising SDK Manager”.

This job opportunity obviously stems from their recent purchase of Quattro wireless, a mobile advertising platform.  What’s interesting (and different from Google) here is that Apple appears to be integrating the advertising engine INTO the iPhone SDK so developers who want to put advertising in their apps will likely be able to do so from within Apple’s iPhone SDK environment and get payouts from the same place that they currently receive payments from paid apps.

Google currently has separate entities for Adsense Mobile, Admob (which hasn’t yet cleared regulatory approval) and the Adroid SDK.  Apple’s system, unsurprisingly, is more elegant.

Job description     The iPhone team is looking for a manager to work on supporting next generation mobile advertising. This will involve managing a talented team of developers working on the frameworks included in the iPhone SDK. The ideal candidate will be responsible for the day to day management of the engineering, as well as related frameworks. He or she will spend much of their time interacting with the engineering team, program managers, other engineering teams, and executives. We need someone who is comfortable working in a fast paced environment with rapidly changing priorities.
Experience
– Bachelor’s degree (CS preferred) and 5-10+ years experience.
– Strong programming and design ability.
– Excellent problem solving, critical thinking, and communication skills.
– Familiarity with Unix, Mac OS X, Cocoa, iPhone SDK, Objective-C, C, and C++ is highly desirable.
– Experience in the online advertising industry

via iPodNN

Penguin's vision of their iPad future

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Mar 3 2010 - 6:46 pm PT
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Paid Content (via Gizmodo) caught a pretty interesting presentation by Penguin CEO John Makinson in London on Tuesday.  The topic?  iPad Books…er Apps.  He sees ebooks hitting 10 percent of book sales next year (this year 4%) and with ‘books’ like these, that doesn’t seem to be out of the question.   Also check the presentation below.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdExukJVUGI&w=700&h=400]

Penguin is not using the ePub format for these ‘books’, rather building the applications in html according to Makinson.  Some fun facts:

Apple security has iPad under lock and key at WSJ

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Mar 3 2010 - 12:41 pm PT
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Apple has someone over at the Wall St. Journal HQ in New York City keeping an eye on their loaner iPad if remarks from Rupert Murdoch are taken at face value.

Mr. Murdoch said the Journal planned to be on Apple Inc.’s iPad tablet computer. “In fact, we’ve been allowed to work on one, and it’s under padlock and key. The key is turned by Apple every night,” he said in response to a question. “But we will be on that with The Wall Street Journal.” Mr. Murdoch said he believed in a year or so there will be a half dozen or more devices on which consumers will be able to receive newspapers and other media.

Oh, and the Journal is going to be on the iPad (in case you thought it might not be) as well a a slew of other devices like the Kindle (pictured).

AT&T's CEO doesn't think many people will use the iPad on 3G

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Mar 3 2010 - 11:14 am PT
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With an exemplary track record of wireless network load planning like AT&T’s, it’s important to listen to what they believe will happen with future products.  Tucked into yesterday’s investor meeting, AT&T’s CEO mentioned that he didn’t expect much 3G traffic from the 10-inch screen media device with Youtube and other network-heavy applications:

AT&T Inc expects users of Apple Inc’s iPad to connect to the Internet mostly using short-range Wi-Fi networks rather than AT&T’s cellular network, the chief executive of AT&T said on Tuesday. While AT&T has agreed to provide wireless connections to the iPad tablet computer, Randall Stephenson said he does not expect the device to result in many new service subscriptions for AT&T as consumers will instead use Wi-Fi or prepaid services, where they do not subscribe to a service contract. “My expectation is that there’s not going to be a lot of people out there looking for another subscription,” he said during a webcast of an investor conference, adding that the device would be a mainly “Wi-Fi driven product.” Many consumers have their own Wi-Fi networks at home or go to coffee shops where they can avail of free Wi-Fi.

We took a poll (screengrabbed below) which seems to say that 3G will be an important part of the iPad experience with almost half of the people expecting to get iPads opting for the 3G version.  Our poll wasn’t alone in this “reverse Bell curve”.  Changewave got similar results.

The next few months might be interesting for those of us who rely on AT&T’s network.  Meanwhile some may consider the Mifi model.

Pundits question Apple's decision to sue HTC

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Mar 3 2010 - 10:06 am PT
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Not everyone in the Apple camp is happy with Apple’s decision to sue HTC.

Here’s Wil Shipley’s thoughtful Open Letter to Steve Jobs concerning the HTC lawsuit.  

John Gruber from Daring Fireball says: “If you can’t beat ’em, sue ’em”.  That applies to Nokia and it applies to Apple.

And below, here’s Steve Jobs back before he was surrounded by lawyers, who might have also disagreed with 2010 Apple:[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU&w=700&h=500]

Why didn't Apple sue Google?

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Mar 3 2010 - 9:42 am PT
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Apple is using (and touting) too much of Google’s technology at the moment to sue Google by name.  By suing Google’s most prominent handset partner, they are isolating Android rather than Google as a whole.  Can you imagine Apple touting Google technologies in their presentations (They do it often) while there is a huge public lawsuit going on between the two companies at the same time?

Is Google too important for Apple to sue?  Maybe, but I have a feeling that Apple would like to have its own Maps applications sooner rather than later.

At the iPad event last month, Steve Jobs touted Google’s mapping back end as the heart of the iPad’s Maps application.  Also skip ahead to 23:00 for more Google Maps and Youtube luvin’.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tw8tljgZ30A&w=700&h=400]

AT&T talks exotic "variable pricing model"

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Mar 2 2010 - 10:17 pm PT
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AT&T CEO Randall L. Stephenson talked at a investor conference today according to the Wall St. Journal.

He said that AT&T is carrying half of the nation’s wireless data traffic. He said that carriers will eventually move to a “variable pricing model,” and that it was inevitable that heavy users should pay more than low users. 

By “eventually”, he means starting in a few weeks.  The iPad will be on a prepaid $15/month for 250MB and $30/month for Unlimited.  Get used to it.

He also revealed that AT&T wasn’t in a big hurry to roll out 4G LTE, expecting it to gain momentum in 2012.  Way to push the envelope.

Apple Stores will get iPads on March 10th, customers on the 26th?

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Mar 2 2010 - 4:08 pm PT
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The Examiner has a pretty interesting iPad story for us today.  According to their sources, the iPad will reach Apple Stores for employee training on March 10th.  On March 15th, the television commercials (remember the one filmed in a diner in California?) will air.  Then on March 26th, iPad sales will open to the public of the Wifi version.  3G versions will follow in late April or May.

That all seems to mesh with us and we’ve heard repeatedly that the release date would be March 26th, barring any unforeseen delays.  They conclude with this little tidbit: People who camp out for the iPad lauch will receive a “special gift.”

Why doesn't Apple get Intel's best chips anymore?

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Mar 1 2010 - 9:42 pm PT
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What happened to Intel and Apple?  Intel CEO Paul Otellini used to pop up at Apple presentations with his clean room suit and pal around with Steve Jobs like they were best buds. Apple was always the first one to get new Intel chips, often before they were even announced officially.  Heck, Intel even built a special low-power processor for the first MacBook Air that no PC vendor could ever get their hands on.  That was then, this is now.

Today, HP unveiled a glorified netbook with a Core i7 Processor.  It has a 12-inch screen and weighs 3 pounds.  Somehow they got a Core i7 in there but Apple is unable to release a Core i7 MacBook Pro.  Intel’s Core iX lineup is on mainstream PC laptops but not on even the highest end $2500 Apple MacBook Pros. 

And for workstations?  You can make a faster Mac Pro by buying an off-the-shelf Intel processor that Apple doesn’t offer even in the $10,000 configuration

Tablet screen mystery solved: Send in the Clones

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Mar 1 2010 - 6:34 am PT
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Remember that monster iPhone-lookin’ glassware that MacObserver found a few weeks before the tablet launch? At the time, there was some speculation that it was the glass for the iPad.

Well it did belong somewhere, just not within light years of an Apple product.  In fact, China was already cloning the iPhone/iPad before it was released  Engadget today shows us:

And the back:

It runs Windows 7 on Netbook-type hardware.  That means it can also be made into a Hackintosh.

High end drive update options for your MacBook/Pro

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Feb 28 2010 - 12:23 pm PT
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Apple stocks its MacBook/Pros with a solid array of hard drives that appeal to most Mac users.  But Apple has also made it beyond easy to upgrade your stock drives with something much better.  Below, we’ll list a few of the options you have.

First, consider if you want a traditional hard disk or a Solid State Disk.  Traditional disk drives are much cheaper but are more prone to fail and are usually slower.  Solid State Disks are much more expensive (often  but are also faster and more reliable because they have no moving parts. 

Let’s talk Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) first.

Unibody MacBook Pros can take notebook hard drives up to 12.5mm thick.  Older MacBook Pros usually top out at 9mm thick with a few exceptions (17″).  That’s important because the high end Motebook hard drives are often 12.5 mm thick.  For instance,

 

 

In a perfect world, you could boot your OS, prefs and applications from a small solid state disk drive and put your media on a traditional drive.

Steve Jobs rocks a 3.1.2 OS iPhone

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Feb 26 2010 - 11:34 pm PT
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So Mike from Macsoda wrote us saying he got a response from Steve Jobs to his email wondering about the future of Final Cut Pro (40 Final Cut Pro developers were recently let go).  Typically brief, Steve Jobs said:

No worries. FCP is alive and well.

But we weren’t just going to take his word that the email was from Jobs.  We asked for the header information from the email as well  —  which was sent to us. 

The email looks legit as it originates from an internal Apple 17.x.x.x IP address.  But then we noticed something kind of funny.  Steve Jobs’ iPhone is listed as iPhone Mail (7D11) which means he’s on 3.1.2.  That’s not even the current version of the iPhone OS (3.1.3 – 7E18), let alone the 4.0Beta we’re were hoping to see.

Anyway, if you are out there Mr. Jobs…you can keep your iPhone current by connecting it to iTunes and then running an update.

Apple files for 'Magic Trackpad' trademark

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Feb 26 2010 - 9:22 am PT
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Apple filed for the ‘magic trackpad’ trademark on February 26, 2010 with the US Patent & Trademark Office according to Patently Apple.  ‘Magic Trackpad’ likely refers to an external peripheral device for desktop computers or laptops plugged into external displays.

With more and more of OSX relying on Multi-touch gestures, Apple will likely provide desktop users a way to take advantage of such a system.  Will it be just a trackpad lifted from a MacBook and connected via USB or Bluetooth or will there be more to it than that?  Perhaps Apple is referring to a keyboard/trackpad combo?

Opera 10.50 for Mac brings HTML5 video support, Multitouch gestures, crazy speed

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Feb 25 2010 - 11:23 am PT
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Update: Whoa! Opera just beat stock Safari in its own Webkit Javascript benchmarking tests.

Frankly, we mostly use Opera for its in-line (legal!) Torrent downloading ability, but it is always good to hear that they are working on features like those announced today. This version of Opera is supposed to use its new Javascript engine that it calls the fastest in the world. We’ve benchmarked it with Sunspider on a 13″ MacBook Pro here.

Headlining the list are HTML5<video> support and multi-touch gestures. The full list of updates below:

  • Stabilization Improvements: You will find that this build is much more stable than the pre-alpha build.
  • More polished user interface: The whole UI is more polished now. We’re still not done yet, and expect more polishes and improvements in the builds to come.
  • Opera Unite: Opera Unite now works with this release. You can browse through and download unite apps through the Unite Apps Repository.
  • HTML5 <video>: This beta now supports the html5 <video> tag.
  • Widgets as standlone apps: We’ve already talked about widgets as standalone apps, but this functionality was till now, only available in windows builds. Now even in this build of 10.50 beta for mac, you can use widgets as standalone apps.
  • New Developer Tools Menu: You can go to ‘View->Developer Tools’ Menu to access common and usefull tools for developers, such as Opera Dragonfly, cache information, the error console, the source code of the page, and more.

Download Opera 10.50 Beta for Mac

Opera via Geekword

Valve's Steam gaming platform coming to Mac?

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Feb 25 2010 - 8:08 am PT
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Steam is a content delivery system used by a company called Valve to deliver thousands of games to PC users.  

Steam is a digital distribution, digital rights management, multiplayer and communications platform developed by Valve Corporation. It is used to distribute a large number of games and related media entirely over the internet, from small independent efforts to larger, more popular games. Steam is set apart from similar services primarily by its community features, completely automated game update process, and its use of in-game functionality. There are over 1,000 games available on Steam, and in January 2010 Valve announced that it had surpassed 25 million active user accounts. It regularly services in excess of two million concurrent users.Although Valve never releases sales figures, Steam is considered by its competitors and clients to be the market leader, controlling an estimated 70% of the digital distribution market. Many major publishers have catalogues on Steam, including Electronic Arts, Activision, 2K Games, Ubisoft, THQ, Sega, Codemasters, LucasArts, id Software, and BioWare.

Why should you care?  Because MacOSX icons recently turned up in the PC version of the platform:

This could mean a lot of things (including a MacOSX theme/skin), but there’s a chance that Steam might be bringing their platform to Mac, which would be incredibly good news for Mac gamers.

If you are really interested in Gaming (on any platform), you should check out OnLive, which streams games over the Internet –you guessed it– live.