Apple news this week slowed to a halt after the momentous previous week that included new Apple hardware and a quarterly financial report.
Rumors continue to build around several subjects, including the mythical tablet device and the end of iPhone AT&T exclusivity. New Tablet rumors center around the possibility that it would be used for reading books and periodicals. Experts continue to speculate on whether the iPhone will be available on other networks, such as Verizon, in the U.S.
Meanwhile, Apple TV may soon be getting an update to version 3.0 of its operating system. A new terms of service agreement given to Apple TV owners states that version 3.0 would allow iTunes LPs and video extras. This makes sense, but one wonders what other new things will be in the third version of the Apple TV OS.
The Magic Mouse, released last week but only available with new iMacs, is now shipping as an individual product. It does not seem to be available yet in retail Apple stores, at least outside of the Cupertino area. But some people have reported getting their from Apple’s online store. It is listed as shipping in 5-7 days. At first, the software update required to allow the mouse to work on older Macs was not available, but it can now be downloaded from Apple’s site.
Perhaps the biggest news in the Apple world this week doesn’t come from Apple or have anything to do with Macs, iPhones or iPods. Microsoft released its new version of Windows, Windows 7, with little fanfare compared to previous releases. How Snow Leopard and Windows 7 compete against each other for market share will be the single biggest factor in the immediate future of Apple’s computer market share.
This very useful new feature of Expose and the Dock was missed by many who upgraded to Snow Leopard. If you want to see all the windows of a running application, just click and hold on its icon in the Dock. After a second, Expose will activate and show you the windows of that application. Then just click on a window to bring it to the front. Or, click again on the icon to return to how you were.
If you like following the latest goings-on at NASA, then the new NASA App for iPhone is your new favorite app. This free app gives you lots of news feeds, pictures, video and other information about all the different missions and programs. So far it has been updated constantly, even with count-downs to launches.
This week the Apple rumor sites are out of control. They are reporting on a mention of an “Apple Slate” by the executive editor of the New York Times. They say that this mention, in a private meeting, is proof that the device exists and is coming soon.
I find it amazing that bits of data like this are reported as akin to fact. Being a rumor makes it OK to report it as a kind of news. Being technology news makes it OK to be held to a lower standard of what defines news. And being Apple news seems to make it anything goes. I’m sure that the editor knew nothing specific and was merely being hypothetical.
But this did get me thinking about the mythical tablet again. You see, I’ve had a problem with the basic premise of the rumors. If Steve Jobs is spending most of his time on this device then it can’t be just be a big iPod Touch. There’s got to be more to it. After all, the iPhone came out and it wasn’t just a phone with an iPod.
So I have been trying to think about the angle here. What could an Apple Tablet be? Jobs must have an angle.
So here’s a big prediction. Let’s see how close I get:
The Apple Tablet will do for books what the iPod did for music. It will be an eBook reader, but in the same way the iPod Touch is a music player. It will be so much more.
As a matter of fact, if it sounds like the Kindle, I think it will be very much like it. It may even be the next Kindle. Amazon may be in league with Apple here, ready to pass the torch to the new Tablet.
I’ve always been of the mind that Amazon doesn’t care about the Kindle, they care about selling books. The Kindle was simply a way to sell more books. As evidence, look at the iPhone Kindle app — a free app by Amazon. Why would they do that, considering it must have reduced the number of Kindles sold. It is because they just want to sell books. The Kindle was a way for them to lead the industry forward and set some standards.
So one of two things will happen: Jeff Bezos will stand on stage with Steve Jobs during the announcement and proclaim the Apple Tablet to be the successor to to the Kindle. Or, perhaps it will be a little more subtle and the Apple device will simply support the Kindle format and the Kindle will slowly disappear as Amazon lets Apple take over.
So what else will this tablet do beside eBooks? Well, it will let you subscribe to newspapers and magazines as well. You can also read RSS feeds, play music and audiobooks, video, get email, and surf the Web.
How about apps? I predict that there will be a Tablet app store, but it will be separate from the iPhone/iPod Touch app store. After all, those apps are all made for 480×320 screens. I also think that Apple will take much stricter control of this new App store — kind of like they do with pure iPod apps. There will be a variety of Apple-approved apps centered around productivity, business and education.
The Tablet will also let you input data with a stylus, like the PC tablets. That tech is already built into Mac OS X, so it makes sense. It will be a great device for students to be able to take notes — even recording audio synchronized with the notes. You can tap a word or figure that you scribbled and hear the audio recording from that moment in time.
I think it will be heavily marketed toward education, with commitments from text book publishers to provide text books in 2010 in this format.
Wirelessly, the device will have wi-fi, and maybe nothing else. It would be great if it allowed you to bring your own 3G USB device so you could choose your own service, but I’m leaning toward wi-fi only right now.
OK, so there’s my prediction: a supercharged eBook reader that works with Amazon’s Kindle system, plays other media, and does basic email, Web surfing and has a small selection of high-quality apps.
Apple news was dominated this week by the announcement of all new iMacs, a new unibody white plastic MacBook, new Mac minis and a new wireless mouse. In addition, Apple released its quarterly financial results, pleasing investors and sending the stock price sharply upward.
The new iMac line comes in two screen sizes: 21.5-inch and 27-inch. Both feature faster processors, more memory, larger hard drives and better graphics chips. The 27-inch can also come with new Intel quad-core processors. The new iMacs have an SD card slot and LED-backlit screens.
The new Mac minis also receive speed, memory and drive upgrades. But more interesting is the release of a special Mac mini server product, with two 500GB drives instead of an optical drive. The server comes with Mac OS X Server instead of the desktop version of the OS, and seems to be aimed at business workgroups, not home media serving.
The new MacBook is an update to the only model in the MacBook line, giving it a unibody construction made from white plastic as opposed to the aluminum body of the MacBook Pro. It also updates the laptop with an internal 7-hour batter like the MacBook Pro.
Apple replaced its Mighty Mouse with the new Magic Mouse, a wireless-only mouse with a touch-sensitive top that responds to clicks and gestures. The iMac now comes by default with a wireless mouse and keyboard.
In its financial report, Apple made $1.67 billion profit from $9.87 billion in revenue in the last quarter, beating expectations. A record of 3.05 million Macs were sold in the quarter, up 17 percent from the previous year. In addition, 7.4 million iPhones were sold and 10.2 million iPods. This is an increase in iPhone sales,but a decrease in iPod sales. However, more of the iPods sold were iPod Touches than in previous reports.
MacMost has its second entry into the iTunes App store this week with Free Games. This is a simple little free app that lists the 20 free Web-based games at MacMost.com. It is simply an easy way to bookmark them as an app on your iPhone, rather than as bookmarks in Safari. As something extra, the app also lists some other free games recommended by MacMost.
The two competing disk cloning and backup utilities are the previously recommended Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper!. I’ve recently switched to using SuperDuper! as I find it handles making full hard drive backups a little more smoothly. It is a free trial, and then $28 for all advanced features.
While typing in many applications such as TextEdit, you can see a list of words that start with the letters you have typed before by pressing the esc key. For instance, type “macintos” and then esc and you will get Macintosh, macintosh, etc. You can use the arrow keys to scroll down and select one with the return key.
Check out the first MacMost Apple Trivia Quiz. Test your knowledge of Apple history. See how many out of 20 questions you can get right.
Interactive Data Corp released its computer sales estimates for the third quarter and declared that Apple now has 9.4% of the U.S. market. This is up from last quarter and last year, even though the numbers include cheap netbooks and Apple has no netbook on the market. Apple still lags behind HP, Dell and Acer in quarterly sales.
A dangerous bug has been reported by some Snow Leopard users that wipes their home folders clean. It isn’t clear why this has happened to a few users, but the connection seems to be logging out of your account, logging into the guest account, and then logging back into your main account. Apple acknowledged that this happens, but only in rare cases. Keeping a Time Machine backup is the best way to protect yourself from this, or from any number of mishaps.
Apple has released a performance update for Leopard and Snow Leopard that “prevents hard drive stalls” — their notes don’t go any further explaining the issue or why the update is a specific download and not a part of the Software Update system. You can find them here for Leopard and Snow Leopard: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL946, http://support.apple.com/kb/DL947.
The follow-up to the popular GeoDefense game, GeoDefense Swarm doesn’t disappoint if you are a fan of tower defense games. It looks like the original, but it is an open field game, as opposed to a fixed path game. In fact, it adds an interesting element as it is hex-based instead of grid-based.
The good folks from Otterbox send me their Otterbox Commuter Case for iPhone to protect my iPhone. Another great design from them. It protects all the edges very well, but doesn’t hinder access to the screen or any of the controls. Comes with a screen protector too.
In Snow Leopard you can sort the Expose windows with some keyboard shortcuts. Press F9 to start Expose, then Command-2 will sort by application, while Command-1 will arrange them by name. Press Tab repeatedly to view windows from each application in the Dock.
