Mac Predictions

Aluminum remote finally released

2009-10-20T20:25:00.004+01:00

I'll have more to say on today's announcements soon, but for the time being, I'm pleased to see that MacPredictions' aluminum mouse prediction has finally come true (sort of).

Is Microsoft playing possum?

2009-10-10T12:58:00.002+01:00

This week’s critical drubbing of Windows Mobile 6.5 may give Redmond something to smile about.

Back in the day, Microsoft used to get it in the neck from the Feds, from the developer community and from the industry at large. It seemed that whatever they did provoked ire. From their heavy handed negotiations with PC manufacturers, to their wilful bundling of useful new features into their market dominating operating system.

How times have changed. These days, it just doesn't seem sporting to bait Microsoft. They appear to have lost the search engine wars (with Bing proving to be more of a Blip); they've lost the digital music wars (with Apple enjoying Windows-like market domination for their ubiquitous iPod & iTunes ecosystem); and then there's the sorry tale of Windows Mobile - a product that is hard even for Steve Ballmer to love.

So what's eating Microsoft? They have some of the best and brightest minds in the world cooped up in their Redmond campus, and yet, time after time, they appear to fail to deliver, ceding one sector after another to an arch rival… Or do they?

Superficially, Microsoft may not seem much like a possum. After all, possums are cuddly-looking and cute, whilst Microsoft is testosterone-charged and sweaty. But perhaps they have more in common than meets the eye. North American possums (or technically "opossums") have developed the remarkable ability of feigning sickness and injury to evade a predator: they "play possum", exhibiting the unsavoury behaviour of looking and even smelling like a sick or dead animal, thus repelling their enemies.

Could Microsoft be employing a similar strategy? Certainly, their predators’ attentions are elsewhere. President Obama's new antitrust czar at the Department of Justice, Christine Varney, is famously quoted as saying "For me, Microsoft is so last century. They are not the problem." Instead, the U.S. economy will see problems "potentially with Google."

The truth is that Microsoft's high profile failures mask their rude health and notable success. It's a significant but oft-overlooked fact that Microsoft earns money on the sale of every iPhone, through its Exchange ActiveSync Licensing Program. As Apple, Palm and Blackberry battle it out for domination of the emerging mainstream smartphone sector, you can rest assured that Microsoft will win regardless the outcome, since interoperability with Exchange is a prerequisite for the success of any handset. And that means a healthy Microsoft tax on every handset and server sold. That poor old possum, Microsoft, must be weeping all the way to the bank with Apple's recent success.

Far from losing sleep over the poor reviews garnered for Windows Mobile 6.5 this week, perhaps the folks at Redmond were uncorking the champagne, as another brilliant, yet dastardly strategy reaches fruition.

iTunes Loaded and Genius Fill

2009-10-06T20:36:00.005+01:00

Posted by Martin Algesten, 6th October 2009

Surely Apple is not going to sit and watch idly as a small European upstart with a bad logo eats its market share? Week by week, update by update Spotify adds literally thousands of new songs, which means Apple's current lead in content is gradually eroding and eventually may result in a significant amount of customers opting for the flat fee as-much-as-you-can-eat style service. With Spotify's recent iPhone killer app, (Apple approved) and sold off the iTunes store, which introduced elected playlists offline, a first step is taken to conquer the portable music market, which means one of the last arguments to buy your music is also going away. Incidentally, the iPod Touch and iPhone may be the reason Spotify has a chance to succeed where other similar services have failed - portable players are key.

Interestingly, shouting about DRM shackles is nowhere to be heard amongst the Spotify crowd - is it, perhaps, that Spotify is a black box - we never get to see the individual files, so there's no feeling of right to own them? Or are we mentally relating to the service as a rental, akin to Blockbusters, so we accept the non-ownership?

Seems to me Apple would be foolish to just sit back and watch as this little company grow stronger. Spotify may not be returning a big profit yet, but the mere resonance amongst the hip young crowd, may indicate a market space, and surely Apple would want this one too, and they are in a prime position to grab it: The iTunes store has already got the songs; people have accepted that you must use iTunes to access it; Apple has complete control over the iPods (Spotify will never run on a Shuffle); the payment systems are in place; the regional markets are there; they have the existing commercial relationships with the media owners. Enter: iTunes Loaded.

iTunes Loaded comes in two versions. One free version that is powered by iTunes Genius, and a paid for version where you are in control. In the free version, Genius Fill will help you load up your iTunes with fresh tracks you probably like based on your current library. The tracks are not burdened with ads, but you can't chose which tracks you want or when they expire.

The paid for service puts you in control. You can still let iTunes Genius find new tracks, but you are free to keep, reorganise or remove. You mix your favourite tracks into playlists, chose to access these playlists offline and synchronise them with all your iPods. You can also share your iTunes Loaded playlists over Bonjour or any way you want with your iTunes Loaded friends (Email, Facebook, etc). Your iTunes Loaded playlists will of course also sync with your Mobile Me account and be available on all your Macs.

One potential stumbling block is if the media companies don't want to license the music to Apple in this way. The owners are already concerned that Apple has become a too strong player, dictating the terms in the agreements, and they may see Spotify as a way to counter Apple's dominance. I wouldn't be surprised if Steve is battling this point in endless meetings already.

The battle for the iPhone

2009-08-24T14:52:00.000+01:00

Why Apple, Google and the Government are fighting for control of your phone

If you owned a shop, would you expect the government to tell you what products you should sell in it? Recently, America's Federal Communications Commission (FCC) asked Apple to explain its decision not to sell Google Voice in its iPhone App Store. Their interest was presumably piqued by online protests from those challenging Apple's policy of vetting 3rd party apps.

Protests have focused on Google Voice, despite the fact that few people know what the service does, and fewer still actually use it. The two most common allegations against Apple are that this decision is anti-competitive and that it infringes iPhone owners' rights. But is there any merit to these allegations?

The iPhone is not the only gadget with built-in constraints upon its functionality. Devices such as games consoles and DVD players are similarly limited, (try skipping one of those tedious copyright warnings at the start of a movie). Whilst we may be free to use the electronics that we purchase as we see fit, manufacturers are free to determine the scope of functionality for the gadgets that they sell us. And if you choose to make your own modifications (such as installing Linux on your Xbox, or jail-breaking your iPhone) you only have yourself to blame if the manufacturer informs you that your warranty is now void. There may also be legal limitations in your right to customise. For example, in America, you are not free to modify your equipment if this results in a circumvention of copyright protection technology, in which case you will have committed a criminal offense under the DMCA. (Apple is currently arguing that this is the case in relation to iPhone jail-breaking).

Which brings us to the second allegation - that Apple is being anti-competitive in not selling the Google Voice application in its store. In the tech world, the term "anti-competitive" inevitably brings to mind the US Department of Justice and the European Commission's cases against Microsoft. However, there is a key different here between the iPhone and Windows. The iPhone may be popular, but it is far from a monopoly. At best, it represent 20% of the smartphone market, and competition is very healthy, with new entrants, such as Android and Palm's new Web OS emerging all the time. Whilst many consumers have no option but to use Microsoft Windows on the desktop, there is a great deal more choice when it comes to the mobile sector.

In other words, if you don't like Apple's policy of rejecting some 3rd party applications, you're free to buy a competitor product instead. And since the iPhone was never marketed as a device suitable for using Google Voice, then iPhone owners can hardly complain if it is not fit for that purpose. They could always purchase a competitor product that does support Google Voice, like Google's own Android OS. Apple's customers are not locked-in to iPhone OS in the way in which Microsoft's customers are locked in to Windows.

Apple has, this week, responded to the FCC, offering an explanation for their policies. It remains to be seen whether their response will satisfy the FCC, and what remedial action the agency may take if it does not. Either way, what sense can we make of Apple's position here? By limiting their users' freedom, aren't they committing a PR own-goal, without any obvious benefit? After all, few people are likely to use Google Voice anyway, and even if they do, wouldn't Apple prefer that they did this on an iPhone, rather than on a competitor's device?

The answer goes to the heart of Apple's uniqueness and its recent success. Whilst companies like Microsoft and Google sell software, and companies like Sony and Dell sell hardware, Apple's position as a true hybrid is practically unique. The remarkable success of the iPod and iPhone is due in no small part to their trademark ease of use, and this is achieved by a tight integration between hardware and software. Apps such as Google Voice allow the user to swap out core features of the device to be handled by third party software, and Apple's concern is that the seamless user experience will suffer as a consequence.

It will be interesting to see how the next few weeks play out. Apple is hedging its bets, claiming that it hasn't rejected the Google Voice app, but rather, it simply hasn't accepted it yet. They would doubtless prefer to reject it, but are, at this stage, testing the water with the Feds, to see how far they want to take this. If the FCC acquiesces, then Apple will presumably never get around to approving Google's pesky app. Then it will be down to the consumer, rather than the government, to decide whether they favor the stunning simplicity of a functionally constrained iPhone, to the flexible utility of an clunky, unintuitive Android handset.

New blue iDisk icon replaces pink... was predicted by this blog in April

2009-08-15T11:40:00.007+01:00

Last year, I questioned Apple's aesthetic judgment, regarding their choice of pink as a color for the new iDisk icon, with the switch from .Mac to MobileMe. Well it seems like someone at Apple is listening (to good sense, if perhaps not to me personally).

With the release of 10.5.8 earlier this month, the iDisk icon has switched to a far more attractive shade of blue. Now if we can just get rid of the hideous pink-stars default desktop, we really will be getting somewhere.

It's a minor point, but I have to add that the new blue iDisk icon was predicted by this blog in a mockup we produced way back in April.

CultOfMac.com features my book

2009-08-15T10:33:00.008+01:00

More blatant self-publicizing for my new book, Secondomics...

Leander Kahney over at CultOfMac.com has run an interview with me about Secondomics, and how it relates to Apple's business. For a brief moment, I felt like Chris Anderson there ;)

Check it out: Cult Of Mac Interview

(Coughs humbly) ...the book is available from Amazon.com, priced $16.00, and you can read more about it at www.secondomics.com

Could the new iTablet actually be an iPod touch HD?

2009-08-08T13:08:00.004+01:00

With the rumosphere buzzing once again about Apple's much rumored tablet, and some analysts chatting like excited school girls, it's time for MacPredictions to gear up the SVU (special visuals unit) and crank out another mockup.

The tablet is a bit of a riddle. Why would Apple release one? They sat out on the whole pen-based computing thing, with Jobs pouring scorn on Gate's pet project (the Tablet PC). On that occasion, Apple's instincts proved correct. So what has changed now?

Earlier this year, most speculation focused on the idea of a touch-screen device as Apple's answer to the growing netbook category. The problem with this picture is that netbooks are cheap to manufacture, whereas Tablet PCs are quite the opposite. Something didn't add up.

Add to this the strange idea that Apple may be prepping Snow Leopard as a touch-based OS (based upon rather far-fected speculation about supposed touch-friendly features such as Dock Exposé). This blog has never subscribed to the idea of a touched based version of Mac OS X. It would just be too confusing for developers (both within Apple, and 3rd parties). Apple has just one touch-based platform - the iPhone OS, and that's plenty enough.

Fast forward a few months, and reflect upon the awesome success of iPod touch combined with games on the app store, and things become a little clearer. All that Apple needs to do is introduced resolution-independence to the iPhone OS (which will surely have to come at some point anyway), and they can then launch a true PSP/DS killer in the form of an iPod touch HD - a big brother to the regular iPod touch.

It would be compatible with all existing iPhone games, plus a whole slew of new HD games. It could also play HD movies - and completely undermine Microsoft's upcoming Zune HD in the process.

Suddenly the idea of a tablet from Apple starts to make more sense.

Chris Anderson "Free" spoof

2009-07-12T16:57:00.003+01:00

To readers of this blog, (who are almost exclusively Apple-fans), Wired editor Chris Anderson's argument in his new book, "Free," will probably not ring true. After all, when has Apple ever released a free product? (OK, so there's iTunes and Safari/Webkit, but they're the exceptions that prove the rule). Heck, Apple even charges for MobileMe.

It's this strange habit of producing killer products, and then having the temerity to charge top-tier prices for them, that in part inspired Wired to argue that "Apple got everything right by doing everything wrong."

Renowned writer and all-round polymath Malcolm Gladwell (Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers) waded into the debate with a somewhat challenging review in The New Yorker. This, in turn, prompted a "friendly" response from Anderson.

I've just finished reading Free, and whilst it's a great read, I do see Gladwell's point. So, for kicks, I posted a parody on my other blog, Secondomics.com, entitled "How can buses be free?"

Why "Chrome OS" won't have Cupertino or Redmond quaking in their boots

2009-07-12T14:46:00.005+01:00

As embarrassing as it may be for Google, there really is no need for Eric Schmidt, their CEO, to resign from Apple's board. After all, their recently announced Chrome OS is not their first attempt at an operating system, and by all accounts, it's even less of a threat to Apple than Android, their other free OS offering.

To understand why, let's look at what Google are proposing, which is essentially a stripped down Linux distro, bundled with the Chrome web browser. As a product, this is in no way comparable with either Microsoft Windows or OS X. Why?

There's a lot of confusion about what an operating system actually is, and this is not helped by Apple and Microsoft confusing matters by marketing their operating systems by focusing on the features of the applications that they bundle with them.

These days, an OS comprises of the following:

A kernel, which manages memory and controls processes (for Apple, this is the Mach kernel, for Google OS, this is Linux, whilst Microsoft have their own home-brew)
Various services running on top of the kernel, for things like the file system (Apple uses a BSD layer, called "Darwin," Google will presumably use GNU, whilst Microsoft, once again, do their own thing)
Device drivers that allow the software to talk to all kinds of different hardware (Apple and Microsoft invest an enormous amount in this area, whilst support is sometimes lacking in Linux distros)
Application frameworks & GUI - these are the crown jewels of a modern OS. They're what makes a Mac Mac-like (Cocoa), and Window the distinctive thing that it is. This is where Apple switches from open source to its own propriety layer. Chrome OS will apparently not provide an SDK for third parties to access this layer
Applications - these are core apps that you'd expect to come with any OS, such as a text editor and file browser. These days you'd also expect things like e-mail client and web browser, plus plenty more besides. Chrome OS will only come with a web browser, (ironically, this is based upon Apple's own Webkit rendering engine.)

In other words, Chrome is simply a bundle of existing technologies: Linux, GNU and Webkit. There will apparently be no support for 3rd party applications - taking a stand similar to that Apple initially adopted for the iPhone, where they said that they would not allow 3rd party developers access to the iPhone, recommending instead that they developed web applications to run in Safari. Imagine how things would have turned out for iPhone had they stuck to that line. We would never have had the App Store!

If anything, Android looks like a more promising technology than Chrome for netbooks - and that's really saying something. The sad truth is that Google will now have two OSs for low end computing, and apparently neither of them will offer serious competition for Apple and Microsoft. Seems like Schmidt can stay on Apple's board for a while yet.

Oops - what happened?!

2009-06-28T10:34:00.003+01:00

As the dust has now settled on WWDC, and the new iPhone 3GS is out in the wild, it's time to reflect upon recent events in the rumorsphere, and consider what we've learned.

Firstly, I have to concede that this blog's predictions for WWDC were more than a little off the mark. This has led me to reflect upon what the purpose of this blog is, and how best to approach future keynotes.

So, to clarify things, moving forwards... There are two types of content that appear on this blog:

Analysis: what I think it would be neat if Apple did
Rumorsphere: what the blogosphere seems to indicate that Apple is going to do, often producing original mockups to illustrate

"Analysis" is very speculative - there's really no way of knowing if and when it will ever be announced, and just because it doesn't see the light of day at a given keynote event, doesn't mean it never will.

"Rumorsphere" is a synthesis of what the Apple fanboy hive-mind anticipates (I don't have any inside sources, and I don't claim to either). Whilst all the information is culled from 3rd party sites, the mockups are original, and are indicative of consensus prediction for an upcoming keynote. I'll do my best to help sort the signal from the noise. Whilst these rumors are often completely off the mark, they're still a lot of fun, and tend to be the most popular content on this blog.

I will take more care in future to flag which type of content each post represents. Any thoughts or ideas - please stick them in the comments thread.

iPhone video - Multi Touch clickable area at bottom of handset

2009-06-06T10:31:00.003+01:00

On June 4th, TUAW reported that the new iPhone would be called iPhone Video. It's worth noting that this blog predicted the name iPhone video way back on April 12th.

On May 28th, iFun.de reported that the new iPhone would have a black bezel. This blog predicted a black bezel on February 21st.

On June 3rd, iSpazio reported that the new iPhone would have a front-mounted camera - something this blog predicted on April 12th.

If all these things come turn out to be true, then MacPredictions will have had a rather good WWDC. Roll on Monday. In the meantime, here's a mockup of what the new iPhone would look like if the Chinese black bezel component turns out to be real. Of note, the home button at the bottom would no longer be round - it would be a giant clickable area that take up the entire bottom area of the phone. Perhaps it could even have Multi Touch, like the clickable glass trackpad on the new Macbooks.

New Nikeplus.com to be announced at WWDC

2009-06-06T10:13:00.005+01:00

On 29th May, a post on the Nike Running blog revealed that "this summer" they would be launching a new Running site that incorporates Nikeplus.com, and features new features for Nike+iPod users. Initially, that post featured several screengrabs of the new site.

Whilst the post is still there, the screen grabs have mysteriously gone. Could someone - let's say, a notoriously secretive company - have asked for them to be taken down? Could they, perhaps, have revealed some functionality from the new iPhone, which is thought to support Nike+?

My guess is that the new iPhone will support two way syncing, so that run-data can be downloaded from Nikeplus.com to the iPhone. Any regular Nike+ users know what a cool feature that would be... That, and fixing it so that it never crashes and loses your run data, just when you've clocked your best ever time.

New iPhone spyshots, in focus

2009-05-31T15:17:00.004+01:00

Our forensic imaging team at the MacPredictions SVU (special visuals unit) has put together this mockup of how the new Compass app may look, based upon the spyshots currently doing the rounds. Enjoy!

Woah, Black Bezel, bam-ba-lam

2009-05-28T18:51:00.003+01:00

Macrumors reports that the next version of the iPhone may feature a black bezel. Funny that - I seem to remember predicting just such a bezel, way back in February.

Secondomics - shameless book-plugging

2009-05-25T13:04:00.003+01:00

I've just published a book that may be of interest to regular MacPredictions readers. It's called "Secondomics: How coming second can be a winning strategy."

The book features a mix of game theory, economics, evolutionary biology, and psychology to explore the phenomena of "second mover advantage". As a self confessed Apple fan-boy, I make a lot of references to Apple in my case studies.

You can download the first few chapters for free, and check out my new blog at www.secondomics.com. If you would like to purchase the book on Lulu.com, it's currently on special offer at $6.91.

I'd appreciate any feedback. Sorry for the blatent self-promotion - I'll get back to speculating about Apple again now :)

Affordable 12-inch Macbook

2009-05-25T11:54:00.003+01:00

John Gruber of Daring Fireball recently speculated that Apple may be planning a minor rebrand of its portables, dubbing the entry level white model "Macbook," whilst renaming the 13-inch aluminum model a "Macbook Pro", making the entire unibody lineup "pros".

Currently, the white Macbook is all but forgotten - it's no longer mentioned on the main Apple site, and hardly featured in the Apple Store. But with recent changes in market conditions, combined with Microsoft's "Laptop Hunters" campaign putting pressure on Apple's pricing strategy, now may be a good time to review the entry-level end of Apple's portable lineup.

The current white Macbook model is really a hold-over from the previous polycarbonate Macbook line. It doesn't possess recent Apple revisions such as the glossy black bezel, black keyboard and glass trackpad. In happier times, Apple may have been planning to phase this model out altogether, but the credit crunch, combined with the popularity of netbooks may well be causing the company to review this strategy.

An alternative option would be to introduce a more competitively priced entry level model, that differentiates itself from the Macbook Pro range (including the re-named 13-inch model). To do this, the new Macbook could sport a 12-inch screen, and white polycarbonate case. But it could still inherit some nice perks, like the glass trackpad, black keyboard and glossy bezel. At a price of, say $599, this could fly off the shelves, without excessive cannibalization of the 13-inch Macbook Pro's sales.

Such a machine could still be a decent computer, without the kinds of awkward compromises inherent in a netbook. It seems a more plausible entry-level play from Apple than the rumored 10-inch tablet.

Laptop hunters - the facts

2009-05-04T15:13:00.008+01:00

Macbooks may be more expensive that PC notebooks, but consider this:

they use faster memory
they use faster processors
they have higher resolution screens
they come with awesome bundled software
everything comes as standard (e.g. webcam, backlit keyboard & Bluetooth)
they're not slowed down by virus software

The answer to Microsoft's laptop hunter ads is simple. Macbooks are more expensive because they're better, and if you were to make a genuine like-for-like comparison, you'd find that they represent incredible value for money.

I know I'm preaching to the converted here, but I couldn't resist the rant. If only someone from Microsoft would come up to one of us and say "you find it, you keep it."

(NB: the above is based on Sheila's choice of an HP HDX 18t series in preference to a gorgeous 15" Macbook Pro. Strange girl).

iPod Tablet vs iPhone size comparison

2009-05-02T14:45:00.003+01:00

Thanks to Scott, who suggested this visual in a comment on my previous post. Sorry it's a bit of a rough visual, but it gives you the idea. Also, doing this made me realize I'd got the home button too small on the previous visuals - oops. This is corrected in the above visual.

Many eyeballs, better mockups

2009-04-26T19:19:00.003+01:00

Following Linus's Law, (with enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow), here's a revised mockup of theiPod Tablet. Our mockup has been doing the rounds over the past week, cropping up on sites in Romania, Germany and Russia. Thanks to all the sites that have featured a link - and thanks to all the readers from those sites who posted comments. On the basis of this feedback, I've made the following corrections:

Removed the Phone app icon
Substituted the iPod app icon for Music and Videos icons
Added volume buttons to the side, and power button to the top
Added a camera to the back

For those who picked up on the Bluetooth icon, this is deliberately there, since Apple will be supporting Bluetooth for wireless stereo headphones on the iPod Touch with iPhone 3.0.

Sorry for all the mistakes in the previous version. Doh! the humanity :)

Tim Cook says no to "Mac" netbook... perhaps an iPod instead?

2009-04-23T09:42:00.002+01:00

I'll be posting a more detailed discussion on Apple's earnings conference call soon, but this is just a quick one to observe that Tim Cook was quite careful with his words when he said that there would be no "Mac" netbook from Apple. He goes on to say that people wanting netbook-type functionality ("a small computer for e-mail or web browsing") may want to buy an iPod touch or iPhone instead.

So whilst Apple is sticking to their previous doubts about entering the netbook sector, they're open to positioning their iPod/iPhone line as a challenger in this area - which seems to add some credence to our previous post on an iPod Tablet.

(Updated for clarification based upon comment from ChuckGee)

iPod Tablet [Mockup]

2009-04-18T22:38:00.009+01:00

WIth the imminent release of iPhone 3.0, Apple is introducing landscape mode to all of its key apps. MacPredictions believes that this gives us a clue to the format of Apple's much-rumored low cost tablet.

Imagine an iPhone in landscape mode with the keyboard active. Now imagine that the screen is twice as deep - so it becomes 480x640 (VGA format, protrait) rather than the normal iPhone 320x480. It's not such a stretch to imagine this, as the illustration above demonstrates. You end up with a tablet capable of presenting 42 iPhone apps on a single springboard screen.

What's the significance of this? Screen density. As technology moves forward, screens become increasingly dense - that is, more pixels are packed into the same amount of space. As a consequence, the user interface elements become smaller. This doesn't matter so much on a Mac, where for example, the high density screen of a 17" MacBook Pro shows everything much smaller than the lower density screen of the MacBook Air. But on an iPhone, the size of the user interface matters a great deal, since the widgets must be the appropriate size to be operated by fingers.

Palm once solved this problem by leaping to a double density format. With the Tungsten T, Palm effectively doubled the resolution of their display from 160x160 pixels to 320x320, whilst the physical dimensions of the device remained the same. They were even able to provide backwards compatibility to Palm OS 4.0 applications, by offering a lower resolution mode (effectively two-for-one pixels).

Apple could perform a similar trick with the new iPhone 3.0 software for its tablet offering. By doubling the screen resolution, they can enable their key apps to take advantage of the higher resolution screen, whilst providing support for lower resolution iPhone apps. Moving forwards, they could encourage their app developers to support both native resolutions (320x480 and 480x640).

The really nice thing about such a device is that it could be manufactured relatively cheaply, since it would run the lightweight iPhone OS, rather than a full version of Mac OS X. It could also be touch screen without the bother of trying to work out how to retrofit Multi-touch onto Mac OS X (a seemingly intractable problem).

Estimated dimensions 85 x 120 x 10mm

Don't forget to check out this visual in full resolution to get a feel for all its VGA goodness.

iChat Video for iPhone [Mockup]

2009-04-13T14:39:00.002+01:00

See previous post for details.
Click on image to enlarge.

iPhone Video with VoiceOver and iChat Video

2009-04-12T19:09:00.010+01:00

Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference is two months away. The big news that we're all hoping for is that Steve Jobs will be resuming his regular duties as Apple's CEO. And what better way to hit the ground running than with a Stevenote at WWDC to launch iPhone 3.0 and the all new iPhone Video.

As the rumors are steadily leaking out, a clear picture is beginning to emerge. The two biggest themes for iPhone in 2009 will be video and voice.

Video
iPhone 3.0 will finally introduce MMS messaging (although Apple will avoid using the term MMS), whilst the new iPhone Video will finally offer a video recording feature (owners of earlier iPhones will likely be disappointed if they're expecting support for this via a software update). We may finally see the introduction of a video camera to the front of the phone, for use with iChat Video. This would, after all, be the most obvious way to differentiate the iPhone Video from the present iPhone 3G.

Voice
The new Shuffle has introduced VoiceOver to the iPod platform. This will inevitably find its way onto the new iPhone as well. We can expect it to come with the new headphones that already ship with the Shuffle, with integrated controls on the cord. However, VoiceOver will be extended further in the iPhone 3.0 software to support voice dialing and other voice commands.

Feature summary:

iPhone 3.0 software update

VoiceOver
Video messaging
Picture messages
Cut, copy & paste
Landscape mode
Stereo Bluetooth

All new iPhone Video

3.2 megapixel camera
Video recording
iChat Video
32GB
Headphone controls
Turn-by-turn directions (magnetometer - digital compass)
Matte-black back
Faster processor
802.11n faster WiFi

Updates: Thanks to iPhones.ru for pointing out that the camera should be 3.2 megapixel (now corrected). Thanks to everyone who pointed out that the screen should show iPhone 3.0 - also corrected. Some people have suggested that the front-camera would be concealed in some way. I think the best clue to how this would appear is the camera on the new MacBook Pro, that is on the black bezel, under the glass - this is how I've attempted to make it look. Finally, for those commenting on roundedness of the corners, this is deliberate to reflect the shape of the leaked iPhone casing (don't know if it's genuine).

A look at Snow Leopard's top-secret Marble UI [Mockup]

2009-04-10T12:36:00.006+01:00

As more is steadily leaking out a Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, it's starting to sound like it will offer significantly more than simply the under-the-hood improvements promised at last summer's WWDC. Not that these improvements aren't important and welcome, but they're not what deliver sales of a consumer-oriented desktop operating system.

MacPredictions was always curious about how Apple was going to market an OS revision that offered no new end-user features. In fact, this blog had previously concluded that it would be offered as a free update to existing Leopard users.

But recent talk of a brand new user interface skin called Marble, which would reflect developments over the last couple of years in iTunes, iWork, Safari and iPhone, starts to promise us a little more.

So here, for your consideration, we present a mockup of how 10.6 might appear. In the background is iTunes, the rosetta stone of all Apple UI speculation. In front of it, there's a QuickTime X window. Contrary to popular opinion, which suggests it has a translucent window bar, we've mocked it up as reflective menu bar - similar to the way that the controls in the iPhone iPod application reflect the album art above them.

At the front, the window with focus is the new, completely re-written Cocoa Finder. MacPredictions has published a similar mockup of this before - featuring skimmable folders. Here, it's been updated to reflect the subtly tweaked button bar on the Safari 4.0 beta, which has a lighter highlight, and sharper keylines. Plus, of course, the controversial new tabs. Tabbed browsing in Finder will surely be worth the $129 upgrade fee alone.

Landscape mode makes netbook tablet based upon iPhone OS X more likely

2009-03-17T23:22:00.000Z

In today's preview of iPhone 3.0, Apple showed off their new landscape mode. What's particularly interesting here is that it's indicative of a more towards resolution independence, since all the key apps must now be capable of re-laying out to a wider format.

Maybe it's just the cool-aid talking, but I'm starting to believe this netbook tablet rumor.