These images come from Italian iPhone blogger iSpazio, who posted an image yesterday and a more convincing set today. There appears to be an extra button on the lower-side of the case (camera shutter?) and the headphone jack for the iPhone appears to have moved down to the bottom of the unit. What are your thoughts
Apple has spent some time outlining technology that would add a new level of interaction between iPhone users, such as the ability to share and control playback of digital media files like music tracks and video during a telephone call.
The concept is outlined in a 19-page patent filing discovered by AppleInsider this week titled “Methods and systems for mixing media with communications” and credited to Apple software engineer Jeffrey Terlizzi. It begins by noting that while media items are becoming increasingly portable for mobile users these days, they’re still not as easily shared with others located remotely in real time.
“For example, an individual may call his friend to discuss music, but in order for the friend to listen to the music, the individual either may have to send the music to the friend using a device other than his telephone,” according to the filing, “or he may have to end the phone call and use the telephone to send the friend an email with the music attached.”
Cut-and-dried, Apple’s approach to improving upon this limitation is to include an “Add Media” option to the iPhone’s phone application that would allow users to attach and transmit media items to another iPhone user with whom they’re currently engaged in a phone call. Among the listed types of media suitable for transmission during calls are music files, video, images, voicemails, and podcasts.
“For example, the user may initiate a telephone call with his friend in order to ask the friend if she is familiar with a particular song,” Apple said. “Once the phone call has been established between the user and his friend, the user may select the song of interest from his communications device, and he may send the song to his friend over the same communication path used by the communications device to establish the communications operation, so that the two may continue their phone conversation while the song plays simultaneously.”
Alternatively, the filing notes that “the communications device may receive a communications operation in the form of a request for a video conference, and once the conference is established, the user may select a video (e.g., a YouTube.TM. selection) to be sent back to the conference initiator by the communications device over the same communication path.”
iPhone users would also have full control over playback of media items once they’re shared, according to Apple. For example, they could pause and resume playback of a shared digital music track, skip to the next or previous track in the sender’s music library, or switch to transmitting a different media item entirely.
Throughout the filing, the Cupertino-based company makes numerous references to interactive iPhone video conferences where digital media files are shared, something not possible with today’s iPhone models because they don’t include include a forward-facing video camera.
“For example, the user may wish to transmit a video media item to the recipient of a communications operation, where the ongoing communications operation is in the form of a video conference,” Apple said. “Thus, there may be two video data streams to transmit to the recipient, one related to the media item and one related to the communications operation.”
“There may also be two audio data streams to transmit. In order to transmit all of the streams over the same communication path, the control circuitry may employ a multiplexer to combine together any video streams, and to combine together any audio streams,” the filing adds. “The multiplexer may then combine into one fixed stream the two combined streams. The control circuitry may signal the communications circuitry to transmit the fixed stream to the recipient of the communications operation using any suitable approach.”
Having pioneered multi-touch for its iPhone and iPod touch handhelds, Apple later extended the technology to trackpads on its Mac notebook line and now appears ripe to introduce the first iPod click-wheels with similar capabilities.
Though sales of the iPod touch have taken off in recent quarters, recent reports suggest that we haven’t seen the last of click-wheel-based iPods, the next of which is expected to turn up this fall in the form of a fifth-generation iPod nano with a built-in digital camera and more compact circular scroll wheel.
This new nano could be the first iPod support multi-touch gestures through its click-wheel, according to recent patent filing discovered by AppleInsider this week that details methods for detecting “input gestures that traverse the center of the scroll wheel and to detect multi-touch input.”
More specifically, the 38-page filing made just this past September describes a “multi-dimensional scroll wheel” that “can sense a moving object, such as a finger, as it is moved not only in a rotational manner but also in a linear manner across the center of the scroll wheel.” This new breed of scroll wheel would also be capable of sensing more than one object at a time, such as multi-finger touch or motion.
“Applications can be enhanced by the improved range of input enabled by the scroll wheel circuitry,” Apple explained. “For example, linear motion, such as a swipe across the scroll wheel, can enable an image browsing application to cause images, such as album cover pictures for example, to be transitioned across a screen.”
Multi-touch input, such as one finger touching an inner region of the scroll and another finger rotating in the outer region, can also enable a zooming application to cause a displayed image to be zoomed-in or out, depending on the direction of the rotation. Similarly, a pinching or expanding of a user’s fingers can enable the zooming application to cause a zooming action.
“The scroll wheel circuitry can also bias the sensor element configuration according to the type of input event expected,” the filing adds. “For example, if a particular application permits only linear motion input along a particular axis (e.g., a horizontal or vertical swipe), the scroll wheel circuitry can utilize only the sensor elements arranged along that path to sense for an input event. By using less than all available sensor elements in this manner, the scroll wheel circuitry can achieve power savings.”
The filing is credited to over half a dozen Apple engineers, including Lakshman Rathnam, Louis Bokma, Fletcher Rothkopf, Andrea Mucignat, Erturk Kocalar, Benjamin Lyon and Joseph Fisher.
(via AppleInsider.com)
Carphone Warehouse, the largest independent European mobile phone retailer and an official iPhone reseller, added four placeholders to their inventory list for new iPhone models earlier today, sources tell AppleInsider.
With new iPhone models expected this summer, in addition to the previously-announced 3.0 firmware, Carphone Warehouse appears to be gearing up for the change. A screenshot of its inventory system provided by a person known to have access to such information shows placeholders for both 16GB and 32GB iPhones in both white and black. They’re mixed in among the existing and previous iPhone models, having reportedly cropped up just hours ago.
Numerous reports and inadvertent leaks from Apple’s partners over the past several weeks have signaled the arrival of third-generation iPhones in capacities of 16GB and 32GB. While the changes to Carphone Warehouse’s systems should not be treated as confirmation of new iPhone specifications, the retailers status as an official iPhone reseller could potentially make it privy to such information.
Coupled with Best Buy’s recently-released internal memorandum notifying employees of expected low inventory of the current iPhone 3G, as well as a similar advisory issued by Brightpoint, an iPhone distributor in Australia, retail signs are aligned in pointing to new iPhone disclosures early next week at Apple’s annual developers conference.
Last year, Apple introduced the iPhone 3G at the start of its 2008 developers conference on June 9th and announced availability would follow on July 11th. During the four weeks in between, supply of original iPhones were close to non-existent. Thursday’s report out of Carphone Warehouse was accompanied by word that the retailer has simultaneously pushed out some of its poster and offer changes until July 7, but AppleInsider has no reason to believe that date is of any broader significance.
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BeeJive has announced their update to BeeJiveIM for iPhone OS 3.0 will include push notifications and be free.
BeeJiveIM is one of most popular instant messaging applications for the iPhone. It features integrated support for AIM/iChat, MobileMe, MSN, Yahoo!, MySpace, GoogleTalk, ICQ, & Jabber.
According to a Mobile Crunch report BeeJive should have the release ready by WWDC next week.
Following the filing of a lawsuit by St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa over fake tweets made in his name, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has taken to the company blog to respond to the suit and detail Twitter's future plans to combat false accounts.
"With due respect to the man and his notable work, Mr. La Russa's lawsuit was an unnecessary waste of judicial resources bordering on frivolous, " Stone wrote in a post that went up Saturday. "Twitter's Terms of Service are fair and we believe will be upheld in a court that will ultimately dismiss Mr. La Russa's lawsuit."
Stone reiterated that the microblogging company suspends, deletes, or transfers control of accounts known to be started by impersonators. He said such action was taken in La Russa's case, and also called untrue reports that Twitter has settled the suit.
Verified Accounts on Twitter will feature a special seal.
(Credit: Twitter)Nonetheless, Stone said the company recognizes an opportunity to improve its customer service, and will experiment starting this summer with a beta preview of a feature, rumored for some time, called "Verified Accounts." These accounts will feature a special seal indicating that they belong to the person (or persons) they say they belong to.
The experiment will begin with "public officials, public agencies, famous artists, athletes, and other well-known individuals at risk of impersonation," Stone wrote. He said the company hopes to subsequently verify more accounts, but verification will begin with a small set due to the resources required.
According to the La Russa complaint, filed last month in the Superior Court of California in San Francisco, one tweet of the now-deleted account read, on April 19: "Lost 2 out of 3, but we made it out of Chicago without one drunk driving incident or dead pitcher." The latter comment was presumably a reference to Cardinals pitcher Darryl Kile, who died in his hotel room in 2002 of an arterial blockage, and/or to relief pitcher Josh Hancock, who was killed in a car accident in 2007.
In his lawsuit, La Russa said the fake tweets were "derogatory and demeaning" and caused emotional distress.
In another recent well-publicized case of Twitter impersonation, tweets allegedly sent from jail by convicted music producer Phil Spector were later determined to have been sent by an imposter.
TUAW has received an anonymous tip stating that the new iPhone will be called the ‘iPhone Video’. The tipster said that AT&T’s website will be updated to show the iPhone Video as a model selection when looking for support for Apple devices.
A screenshot showing the select box in action is attached below.
Currently only Original iPhone and iPhone 3G are listed as choices; however, this screenshot could be from a unpublished website that will go live once AT&T begins selling the device.
Earlier today an AppleInsider report showed evidence of the new iPhone in Carphone Warehouse’s system. The phones were referenced as iPhone32GbV3. TUAW suggests that perhaps the V stands for video?
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Intel appears ready to take another crack at flash memory-based acceleration--this time offering it with future chipsets.
Intel Braidwood technology is based on a flash memory module.
(Credit: Intel)"Braidwood is a flash memory technology that provides faster boot-up time, faster application launch, and a snappier, more responsive system," said Rob Crooke, vice president and general manager of Intel's Business Client Group, speaking during a presentation streamed over the Web from the Computex conference in Taipei, Taiwan, earlier this week.
Braidwood will be offered with the future "5 Series" chipset family--which is Intel's first single-chip chipset--and the future "Clarkdale" processor (see discussion below).
The chip accelerates I/O (input/output) accesses by saving that data to flash memory, according to Crooke. In a demonstration at Computex, Crooke showed Braidwood "caching the I/O...And then, when it launches that application again, it happens very quickly," he said.
Intel's first stab at technology analogous to Braidwood came in 2006. That product was code-named Robson and eventually branded as Turbo Memory. But it only received lukewarm reviews and was never adopted widely.
"Clarkdale," a Nehalem-based processor, will be offered with Braidwood, according to Intel documentation released at Computex. Clarkdale will integrate graphics silicon into the same package as the main processor. It is on track to begin production in the fourth quarter of this year--with systems available in 2010--and is built on Intel's second-generation 32-nanometer process technology. Clarkdale will be offered with the Intel 5 Series chipset.
On another front, Crooke also talked about the mainstreaming of Intel's Nehalem Core i7 desktop chips, which are currently limited to high-end enthusiast systems. Due later this year, the "Lynnfield" processor is a new four-core, eight-thread processor that will be paired with the P55 Express chipset. Threads essentially double the number of tasks a processor can perform.
Users can expect 40 percent better performance on widely used SPECint benchmarks with the Lynnfield-based platform, compared with last year's mainstream Core Q9650 processor-based technology, Crooke said
