9to5 Staff

We’re rolling out our good ol’ fashioned 9to5mac Livepanel which will be circulating different feeds throughout today’s iPhone 3.0 announcement.  As you might remember, this framed page shows four of the best feeds at once and is refreshed every 15 seconds so your mouse button finger doesn’t have to bleed.  It works best on large (24"+) monitors and uses 1990’s html frames technology to bring sweet, sweet iPhone 3.0 information to your eyes as quickly as possible. 

Will we see MMS, copy/paste, tethering, landscape email typing, wireless synching, push notification or maybe even a Tablet?  Tune in to find out.

Update: Apple Stock already up almost 3 points in early trading

Here’s the post.  It basically goes like this:  Apple has said it is increasing its embedded device list this year.  Ten-inch touch screens seem to be flying around Asia en route to Apple for late Summer. 

If there is a tablet with higher resolution/independence, developers are going to need a few months to tweak their apps for launch.   What if that $20 minimum Premium App Store happens to be for higher resolution apps?

Also, ARM’s new line of Cotex A8 architecture processors are tablet-worthy. 

Plus, I need something to look forward to…So here’s why we might see a tablet intro tomorrow.

Speaking of which, we’ll have the 9to5mac LivePanel open for the iPhone 3.0 Event.  Stop by to see all information sources in one page.

Update: it appears to be a chip that Apple will license out as part of its "Made for iPod" licensing scheme.

There seems to be a lot of brouhaha over at iLounge and Boingboing over the revelation that the iPod Shuffle’s new headphones contain a special new chip that could be some sort of hardware DRM.  Of course we haven’t figured out what the 8A83E3 chip does yet., many think it is a multiplexer. 

Unfortunately, Apple has been known to be a little bit "closed" when it comes to iPod and iPhone connectors (see video out cable). 

But maybe it is a just controller chip for the Shuffle’s headphone buttons?   It also may be a way to communicate with Aliens…no one is sure yet. 

We hope it isn’t some sort of DRM that controls what headphones or charger the Shuffles can use, but until someone with knowledge of the situation can sort it out, we’re going to just sit by and watch..

We’ve noticed a few HD TV deals populating the 9to5Mac Toys section this weekend.   Here’s a recap:

Amazon.com offers the Samsung Touch of Color 58" 1080p Widescreen Plasma HD Television, model no. PN-58A650, for $2,254 with free shipping. It ties our mention from a week ago for the lowest total price we could find by $14. Features include a 1920×1080 (1080p) native resolution, 1,000,000 dynamic contrast ratio, integrated ATSC (HD), NTSC, and QAM tuners, four HDMI inputs, and VGA, component, and other video inputs.

Electronics Expo via Amazon.com offers the Sony BRAVIA XBR 52" 240Hz 1080p LCD HD Television, model no. KDL-52XBR7, for $2,588.74. (You may have to choose Electronics Expo in "More Buying Choices" on the right.) With free shipping, that’s $39 under our mention from a week ago and the lowest total price we could find. Unlike most LCD TVs we’ve listed, this model features a 240Hz refresh rate, purportedly producing more life-like picture motion. Other features include a native resolution of 1920×1080 (1080p), 80,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, 3,000:1 static contrast ratio, 8ms response time, ATSC (HD), NTSC, and QAM tuners, four HDMI inputs, and VGA, component, and other video inputs.

Amazon.com still offers the Toshiba REGZA 1080p 52" Widescreen LCD HD Television, model no. 52RV535U, for $1,199.98 with free shipping. That’s tied with last week’s mention and the lowest total price we could find by $140. Features include a 1920×1080 (1080p) native resolution, ATSC (HD), NTSC, and QAM tuners, four HDMI inputs, and VGA, component, and other video inputs.

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=thepartim-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=B0015PBTHM&md=10FE9736YVPPT7A0FBG2&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifrhttp://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=thepartim-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=B001JJBQN6&md=10FE9736YVPPT7A0FBG2&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifrhttp://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=thepartim-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=B001EWDFBE&md=10FE9736YVPPT7A0FBG2&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr

We’re not huge fans of Diggnation* but Kevin Rose has on again off again luck with his Apple predictions.  So, for your amusement:

http://www.viddler.com/player/829ad9ef/

*to say the least

The Telegraph is reporting that O2 will now be giving away free iPhones with their lower cost plans in order to clear out inventory for the new iPhones which will be released this summer:

O2, which has exclusive rights to sell the iPhone in the UK, is believed to planning to give the eight gigabyte (GB) 3G iPhone away for free on £34.26 pay monthly tariffs from May.

At present the 8GB device costs £96.89 on the cheapest tariffs and is only free on £73.41 and £44.05-a-month contracts. The operator is also said to be planning to give away the 16GB on £44.05 per month contracts.

O2, who was contacted by the Telegraph, said that any pricing changes would have to be approved by Apple. The Telegraph speculated that the iPhone Nano will appear this summer. 

O2 is also rumored to be the sole carrier of the Palm Pre, which its parent company, Telefonica, may have scored an exlusive agreement to distribute throughout Europe and Latin America.

From the Toys section:

If you’ve been Jonesin’ for the biggest available consumer hard drive, Platinum Micro thru Amazon is now selling the Western Digital 2TB SATA Caviar Green SATA hard drive with 32MB of cache for $329. 

You are paying a significant premium for having the biggest consumer hard drive on the planet, however.  If you are willing to drop down to 1.5TB, you can have 3/4 of the storage for much less than half that price ($129).

The iPhone is likely to get a premium App Store if rumors from Wired are true (and previously from Pocketgamer).  They say game developers, enterprise developers and other premium vendors will soon have  a place to sell their wares free from all of the free and $.99 drivel that pollutes the regular app store. 

They put the $20 price point as the barrier for entry into the new "velvet rope area" premium App Store.  No game developer would, of course, corroborate their story.

This, of course is a rehash of January’s Pocketgamer.biz’s story of the same subject matter

Not that you didn’t know it already from all of the hoopla, but the new iPod Shuffle is smaaallll. And the technology inside is even smaller. The fine folks at iFixit did what they do best and ripped apart a new Shuffle for everyone to see:

Step 1 — First Look 

• Here it is, in all its magnificent glory — the new Shuffle! We’ll post updates on twitter about interesting things that we discover as we go.

• The box is as dainty as its contents.

• According to Apple, the Shuffle has a "true volume" of 4,326 cubic millimeters and weighs in at 10.7 grams. A single MacBook Pro 17" weighs as much as 286 of these Shuffles.

Step 2

• Contents of the box:

  • iPod Shuffle

  • Apple Earphones (with in-line remote)

  • USB Cable

  • Quick Start guide

• We gave it a quick listen before tearing it apart…

• The controls are not as awkward as we expected, but we still prefer pushing buttons.

• Compatibility does not appear to be this iPod’s strong suit. We tried this iPod with a Shuffle 2nd Generation dock, but it doesn’t fit. We tried the cable with a Shuffle 2nd Generation, and that didn’t work either.

Step 3

• The usual suspects.

• Can you pick the Shuffle out of this lineup?

• The Shuffle does not say iPod (or Shuffle) anywhere. As far as we know, this is the first iPod that Apple didn’t label.

Step 4

• Upon connecting the shuffle to a computer, we learned that the voice-over feature must first be downloaded via iTunes.

• Interestingly enough, normal headphones can still be used to listen to music. The only drawback: without Apple’s proprietary headphone playback control, you will not be able to change songs or adjust the volume.

• The headphone playback control offers two buttons for volume control and a center button for playback control. The center button can be clicked once to play, twice for the next track, and three times for the previous track.

Step 5

• On to the dismemberment…

• Apple hasn’t made their iPods easy to open lately, and unfortunately we don’t expect things to change with this iPod.

• We begin by inserting a metal spudger into a crevice between the rear cover and the rest of the shuffle.

• Inserting the metal spudger creates a gap big enough to insert an iPod opening tool. We slide the iPod tool across the length of the gap to dislodge the left side of the rear cover.

• Now that one side of the rear cover is fully dislodged, it’s easy enough to use the iPod opening tool to dislodge the right side as well.

Step 6

• We’re in. That wasn’t too bad, but the shuffle isn’t going to win any awards for easy serviceability.

• It’s fairly easy to bend the rear cover even though it is made out of aluminum.

• There is a retaining tab on the top of the shuffle that prevents the rear cover from being pulled apart on the top side. The rear cover should be pulled apart from the iPod on the bottom side first.

Step 7

• Is this the future? A single IC, a battery, and some user interface components.

• Amazingly, at least on our scale, both halves weighed 5 grams. That means the entire functional half of the iPod weighs only about 10% more than a single sheet of letter size paper.

Step 8

• Remove the small Phillips screw. We won’t waste our time circling it — there’s only one.

• We get lots of requests to add more screw guides. Fortunately we don’t need to make one for this iPod. Just don’t drop the screw, and you’ll be fine.

Yes, this isn’t a lot of exciting news (most smartphones have had these features forever) but we know there have been a few of you clamoring for these two features for years. 

Will the iPhone 3.0 have MMS and Tethering (USB and Bluetooth)? 

Maybe. 

Will AT&T reach into your pocket and take some more of your cash? 

Of course they will… sucker.

We’ll take some cut and paste too while you are at it…

You think maybe we’ll see some cool new Pre busting stuff? How about some push notifications? Copy/paste?  MMS multimedia?  Tethering?  Are you excited?

Join us at an invitation-only event to learn about the new SDK and get a sneak peek at the iPhone OS 3.0 software. The event takes place at Apple, Building 4, Town Hall on March 17 at 10:00 a.m.

Engadget just got the announcement.

We just got the announcement, iPhone OS 3.0 is coming. Set your clocks, mark your calendars. It’s going down March 17th. Apparently, we’ll get a sneak peak at the new OS, as well as a look at a brand new version of the SDK. Exciting stuff indeed, and we’ll be there live at 10am PST (1pm PST) with the liveblog. Apple’s calling this an "advance preview of what we’re building," so we’re not expecting anything ready to go as of the 17th, but hopefully this will allow developers to start building toward future functionality (hey, how about some push notifications?), and presumably users won’t have too many months to wait after that for the real deal.

iTunes 8.1 is out.  Go get ‘er.  We’ve heard many reports of significant snappieness™

iTunes 8.1 is now faster and more responsive. You will enjoy noticeable improvements when working with large libraries, browsing the iTunes Store, preparing to sync with iPod or iPhone, and optimizing photos for syncing.

In addition, iTunes 8.1 provides many other improvements and bug fixes, including:

• Supports syncing with iPod shuffle (3rd generation).
• Allows friends to request songs for iTunes DJ.
• Adds Genius sidebar for your Movies and TV Shows.
• Improves performance when downloading iTunes Plus songs.
• Provides AutoFill for manually managed iPods.
• Allows CDs to be imported at the same sound quality as iTunes Plus.
• Includes many accessibility improvements.
• Allows iTunes U and the iTunes Store to be disabled separately using Parental Controls.

For information on the security content of this update, please visit this website: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222

There is a bit of a learning curve involved with learning the iPod Shuffle as you can see by Apple’s KB article. We’re sure it is worth it for those of you who are into it.

via Engadget

The iPod shuffle’s new voice feature is a great navigation tool for screenless browsing of your music collection.  But how does that little device read all of your music titles/artist/genre, etc. to you?  That takes a lot of CPU power for a device the size of a tie clip. 

The answer?  It doesn’t.  All of the voice rendering will be done on the PC or Mac in iTunes 8.1.   That’s why the PC voice will be a woman (built in voice system) and the Mac will be a man’s voice.  iTunes 8.1 will put some extra voice data in your music files (see below) to include the name of the band and title of the song.  While this will be relatively small in size, the space changes will take up more space than before, thus growing the size of your library.  Eventually, Apple might include this audio data in itunes downloads.  Heck, they might even have Jimmy Page’s voice tell you the next song is Led Zepplin.  A value add!

Apple filed a patent for this a few years ago as well…see more  below…

digg_url = ‘http://9to5mac.com/itunes-8-1’;

From the Patent Application

In order to achieve portability, many hand-held devices use user interfaces that present various display screens to the user for interaction that is predominantly visual. Users can interact with the user interfaces to manipulate a scroll wheel and/or a set of buttons to navigate display screens to thereby access functions of the hand-held devices. However, these user interfaces can be difficult to use at times for various reasons. One reason is that the display screens tend to be small in size and form factor and therefore difficult to see. Another reason is that a user may have poor reading vision or otherwise be visually impaired. Even if the display screens can be perceived, a user will have difficulty navigating the user interface in “eyes-busy” situations when a user cannot shift visual focus away from an important activity and towards the user interface. Such activities include, for example, driving an automobile, exercising, and crossing a street.

It is noted that text strings that correspond to standard text strings can have pre-recorded audio files. Such text strings may correspond to common user interface controls, such as “play”, “stop”, “previous”, etc., and to common menu items such as “Music”, “Extras”, “Backlight.” These audio files can be created using a voice talent or speech synthesized from the voice talent’s recordings. The other text displayed as part of the media player user interface that is usually user specific, such as contacts and customized playlist names can all be synthesized by building a voice from the voice talent recordings. This provides consistency by having the same voice for all textual data to be presented to the user.

More from Hrmph

Reuters is jumping into the 10-inch-screened laptop device bandwagon with today’s story.  Not much new here except that it is a new kind of display (OLED?) that would be cool/expensive) and that it is being made by the same company that makes iPod and iPhone screens:

Apple will take third-quarter delivery of newly developed 10-inch touchscreens from Taiwan, a source said on Wednesday, amid talk the U.S. firm is developing a touchscreen PC. Taiwan touchscreen specialist Wintek already makes small screens for Apple iPhones, and has received orders for the larger ones that are roughly the same size as those used in mini PCs, said the source close to the Taiwan firm. He asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

We are actually starting to believe it. But will it be 720P?

Oh, and that isn’t the screen, just some Internet art.

According to the video below, the Shuffles that sync Mac and PCs have different VoiceOver voices.   The Mac voice is a man’s voice.  The PC’s is a woman’s. 

Why? 

Oh, and can you use these as tie clips?  Would that be weird?

That’s the Apple we know and love.  Coming out of left field (no leaks!) with a Shuffle that is smaller (basically the size of a large tie clip) and with almost no buttons.  You flip through your songs with the headset and hear voice menus. 

Stevo is still in command!  Check the video below and head over to Apple for the details. 

http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/SwkAc6VXx6g&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999&border=1

Take that! you recession freaks…

Silver (MB867) and Black 4Gb iPod Shuffles?  Surely you jest! New Dock and cable..Oh, and an audio based menu system like on the Nano?  Perhaps…

Update: Expired

From the Toys section:

Today only, Amazon.com offers the Canon Laser Faxphone L80 Fax Machine / Laser Printer for $95 with free shipping. That’s an $83 overnight drop and the lowest total price we could find. Features include 6 ppm, 600 dpi, 350-page fax memory, and more.

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=thepartim-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=B0001KWE0S&md=10FE9736YVPPT7A0FBG2&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr