Apple News
By Marco Tabini, Macworld
As launches go, the introduction of the iPad at Toronto’s Yorkdale Mall, home of Apple’s flagship store in Ontario, was a typically Canadian affair: a small, orderly, and enthusiastic crowd greeted the 8 a.m. opening with cheers and happy chatter. Notably absent were fans dressed as their favorite Apple device, people wearing homemade iPod jewelry, or the bleary eyes that identify those who had camped out all night, but at least there was plenty of Tim Horton’s coffee–without which Canada probably would stop functioning–on hand.
The lines at the store were not quite as long as the ones that formed in occasion of the device’s U.S. launch on April 3, or, indeed, of those that various report indicate have formed at other locations throughout the world, likely due to the fact that many Torontonians live close enough to the American border (or travel to the States often enough) that they have picked up their very own iPad ahead of its launch, or pre-ordered one for delivery.
Casey Smith of Etobicoke (a Toronto suburb) belonged to both groups: “I bought a Wi-Fi model in Buffalo in April, and I hope to get my hands on a 3G model today, which should make taking the iPad on the road easier,” he said while taking his place in line.
A smaller crowd meant a much more relaxed atmosphere, with Apple Store employees chatting with customers awaiting their turn into the store. Meanwhile, those who had just received their iPads stood outside, unpacking their new gadgets and comparing their app purchases.
As was the case with the U.S. launch, two lines formed outside the store–one for customers who had pre-ordered their iPad, and the others for those who were hoping to secure one without a reservation. The store was also offering instant activation for those who couldn’t wait to unpack their tablets and connect them to iTunes on their own computers; judging from the crowds at the activation stations, that option was quite popular.
The launch of the iPad has been greatly anticipated by Canadians throughout the nation, particularly given the proximity to the U.S., where the device has been available for over two months. Earlier in May, Apple quietly “flipped the switch” on the Canadian iPad app store, enabling those without an American iTunes account to start making purchases for their devices. Canadian cellular providers Rogers Communications and Bell Canada both announced support for the iPad and introduced plans that, while not comparable to the unlimited access that AT&T offers in the U.S., are generous by national standards, with 250MB of data available for $15, and 5GB for $35.
Both companies are making their data plans available without a term contract, which is virtually unheard of in Canada, where a few carriers need to compete for a relatively small customer base spread over a very large territory. Apple’s Website initially indicated that Rogers was also going to allow existing customers with a smartphone to share their data plan on the iPad for a $20 monthly fee, but the cellular provider later backtracked and stated that the data-sharing option would not be available after all.
The difference between the U.S. and Canadian pricing of the iPad–$50 for the 16GB Wi-Fi model–didn’t seem to be a problem for anyone in line. “That’s a fair exchange rate, given where the U.S. dollar is at,” said Jerry MacDonald, who was in line with his daughter. “It doesn’t bother me at all.”
Inside the store, in the meantime, customers wrangled with the agony of choice between the various models, accessories and cases. While store employees wouldn’t release any numbers, sales seemed brisk and there was plenty of stock on hand.
“I came here worried by all the reports of shortages in the States,” said Maria Papadopulos, who was in the stand-by line. “Luckily, it looks like I won’t have a problem buying one today.” Perhaps now Americans will visit the Great North in search for the elusive iPad, instead of the other way around.
Read More At The Original Source: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/197447/small_but_enthusiastic_crowd_greets_ipad_in_toronto.html
For more Macintosh computing news, visit Macworld. Story copyright © 2010 Mac Publishing LLC. All rights reserved.
The countdown to the year’s biggest Apple launch so far has begun and in less than 24 hours, thousands of Britons will have received their first UK iPad devices or buy them from the device from either Apple stores.
Currys and PCWorld (but not Dixons) have iPad static pages ready to go live (but still without any info) but these should be updated within the next few hours. We expect that only some stores will have available stocks and these are likely to be less than a few dozens each, if not much less.
Electro Candy’s Adam Roche said that he contacted TNT UK and was told that a first batch of 13,700 iPad tablet PC has already arrived in the UK and that delivery has already started. It is very likely that all the iPads of the first batch have already gone.
Not surprisingly, #ipad and #ipads have been trending today on Twitter and according to the Daily Telegraph, dozens of Apple fans have received their iPad 24 hours before the product is due in the stores.
We will be covering the launch of the iPad live from their Regent Street Store from 7am and you’re invited to join us. You can already bookmark our video landing page here where you will find the livestream.
ITProPortal also launched a contest inviting prospective and current iPad owners to get up to £500 worth of iPad accessories (including iPad Apps and Apple iTunes Credit) simply by submitting the list of accessories they’d like to have. Simples!!
Are things a little dull these days at Yankees games? Don’t bring your iPad to pass the time.
Apple’s popular tablet has been added to Yankee Stadium’s existing security policy, which bans laptops at the park, according to a Yahoo Sports blog.
The writer notes that the rule is somewhat absurd, because even the TSA doesn’t require you to take the iPad out of your luggage during screening, and some people might want to use it on the long commute to and from the ballpark. However, he also notes that this is a high-class problem. And maybe you should put down the iPad and, you know, watch the game?
As of Tuesday morning, the 8GB iPhone 3G is no longer for sale on Apple’s Web site.
To be clear, that’s the 2-year-old iPhone 3G, not the year-old iPhone 3GS. But Apple has been offering a steep discount on the 3G since last year and now it appears customers no longer have the option to buy it online at all. Apple hasn’t responded to a request for comment about it.
But this isn’t very surprising. Apple is widely expected to introduce a new iPhone at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference on June 7, an event that’s now just a few weeks away. It’s very likely that once the new iPhone hits stores, the iPhone 3GS will take the 3G’s place as the discount model phone.
The clues that a new phone is imminent have begun to pile up: Wal-Mart announced it is cutting the price on the 16GB iPhone 3GS to $97, an indication that the retailer is trying to blow out its stock of the device to make room for new products. Earlier Tuesday there were reports that Apple was casting for a new iPhone commercial. And last week came a report that one of Apple’s contract manufacturers was in the process of fulfilling a huge order for iPhones.
Of course there was also the photo evidence from the lost iPhone episode. Last month, Gizmodo purchased and published photos of what is thought to be a prototype of the next iPhone from a man who found it in a bar after it was left behind by an Apple engineer.
Jeff Bliss
The U.S. Justice Department is making preliminary inquiries into Apple Inc.’s business practices regarding its iTunes digital music service, two people familiar with the matter said.
The antitrust division’s questioning of music industry officials and Internet companies is in the early stages, and the department hasn’t found that Apple has done anything wrong, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Apple offers more than 11 million songs through the iTunes store, which it opened in April 2003. ITunes now operates in 23 countries. The Cupertino, California-based company says it is the world’s largest music retailer, with 8.5 billion songs sold.
The inquiry initially was reported by the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
Apple spokesman Steve Dowling declined to comment. Gina Talamona, a Justice Department spokeswoman, couldn’t be reached immediately for comment.
You might think that this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference will be low on surprises, what with the whole iPhone prototype affair, but one thing you can count on? Steve Jobs taking the stage on to give his customary keynote.
Apple announced on Monday that the CEO will be kicking off WWDC 2010 on June 7, with a presentation at 10 a.m. Pacific time in San Francisco’s Moscone West conference center. What he’ll be talking about? The iPhone and iPad would be a pretty good guess. What he’ll be wearing? Bet on the classic turtleneck, jeans, and sneakers. Will he mention the Mac? Well, that may have to wait until next year. Then again, maybe he’ll just get up there to read a selection of his favorite e-mails from the last six months.
There was a time not so long ago when some thought the age of the Jobs keynote had faded into the sunset. It’s good to see that the man is back with a vengeance. Don’t forget to join Macworld for live blow-by-blow coverage of the Jobs keynote on Monday, June 7.
Harry McCracken
An analyst report says the iPad is outselling the Mac and closing on the iPhone, at 200,000 units per week–putting Apple on a pace to sell eight million iPads this year.
All Things Digital’s John Paczkowski is reporting about an analyst report that says the iPad is outselling the Mac and closing on the iPhone, at 200,000 units per week–putting Apple on a pace to sell eight million iPads this year, according to the analyst firm’s forecast. That’s a lot of iPads–and if the firm is right, it means that the rumors from months ago that Apple expected to sell ten million iPads in the gizmo’s first year on the market aren’t so nutty.
(Of course, when folks were doubting that Apple could sell ten million iPads in a year, many of them were expecting the “iSlate” to sell for a thousand bucks or so. Only Apple knew that the most basic model would go for a relatively affordable $500.)
Here’s a rerun of the numbers on sales of past Apple products I pulled together when the ten-million-iPads rumor first surfaced. Now that we know a lot more about the iPad, I don’t see why it can’t sell about as many units in a year as the iPhone did last year, assuming that the international rollout doesn’t suffer any further major hitches…
Total sales of Apple I, 1976-1977: about 200
Apple II units sold, 1977-1982: 750,000
Apple II units sold, 1982: 300,000
Total Apple III units sold, 1980-1984: 65,000
Original 1984 Macs sold in first 74 days: 50,000
Original 1984 Macs sold in first year: 250,000
Macs sold, October-December 1993: one million
iMacs sold in first 139 days: 800,000
iPod during first full year: 378,000
iPod at 5 1/2 years: 100 million
Total original iPhones sold: 6.1 million
iPhone at 46 weeks: six million
iPhone/iPod Touch at 20 months: 30 million
When Apple first started selling the iPad, it didn’t allow consumers to buy its tablet with cash. The idea, the reasoning went, was that forcing people to buy the iPad with a debit card or credit card would help ensure that no one violated Apple’s two-iPads-per-person rule.
But all that has changed. Recently a California woman named Diane Campbell went to an Apple store in the hopes of buying an iPad with greenbacks. She was turned away by the store’s employees, who cited the no-cash policy. After she contacted KGO, an ABC television affiliate in California, the news outlet ran a story on her ordeal. After hearing the story, in which Campbell asked Steve Jobs to “give a sister a break,” Apple decided to reverse policy and allow cash customers.
“We want to make sure it’s as fair as possible for people to get iPads,” Ron Johnson, a senior vice president at Apple, told KGO, adding that the company decided to change its policy after hearing Campbell’s story. He also had two Apple employees personally deliver an iPad to her house for free.
According to Apple, anyone who would like to pay cash for the iPad at an Apple Store can now do so. The only catch is that cash buyers must create an Apple account in the store. Those who pay with a credit or debit card can set up their Apple accounts at home.
By JESSICA MINTZ
It’s been three years, an eternity for gadgets, since Apple Inc. unveiled the iPhone, and by now other phones do some things better. Yet Apple is selling more iPhones than ever.
What is it about the iPhone? Its success shows how Apple has triumphed at two crucial qualities: status and simplicity. And it’s a reminder that while intense Apple fans will obsess over the upgrades the iPhone is expected to get this summer, such details won’t matter as much to everyday buyers.
Other phones have higher-resolution cameras and can shoot high-definition video. The processor seems faster in new phones such as the Droid Incredible. A more energy-efficient touch-screen technology is eclipsing the one used in the iPhone screen. And competitors are matching features that once set the iPhone apart, including its slim shape and its store with thousands of applications and games.
“This thing is not state of the art,” says ABI Research analyst Michael Morgan.
But whether the iPhone has the best technology doesn’t seem to be the question most people ask.
Instead, many people crave the aura of cool that iPhones seem to convey.
“When you see people with them, I’m like, `Oh, OK, they get it,’” says Jason Sfetko, a designer at Complex magazine in New York. When he sees someone with a BlackBerry, “I might think, maybe they’re an accountant or something. They’re answering too many e-mails.”
The allure extends to China, where Apple started selling iPhones in October. “I’m quite amazed about what the iPhone has achieved,” says Deng Jinchun, a manager at Jing Lang, a large iPhone retailer in China’s Hunan province. With slight changes, “Apple has been selling the same phone for about three years and the sales are still increasing. I can’t imagine a Nokia phone or any other brand could achieve something similar.”
Others are more focused on the simplicity of using the iPhone.
Mark Britton, CEO of a company called Avvo that publishes ratings on lawyers by their clients, is on his iPhone so much that his wife jokes it’s his fourth child. He says it’s surprisingly easy to talk on the phone and look up something on the Internet at the same time.
The Web browser helped sell Sara Maternini, 35, who works in public relations in Milan, Italy, on the iPhone 2 1/2 years ago. She needs to always be online and says the iPhone was the only device that made Web surfing feel as it does on a computer.
Maternini says her next phone will be another iPhone.
This raises a common criticism from Apple’s dissenters: Once users build their lives around the iPhone system, they’re essentially locked into buying more Apple devices. Other phones can’t connect to iTunes, which manages iPhone owners’ music, video, photos and other files. Nor can other phones run the “apps” people download for everything from online banking to crossword puzzling.
For many iPhone users, though, familiarity breeds contentment.
Ingrid Ougland-Sellie, 41, a writer and part-time hospital employee, uses her iPhone to take photos of mystery vegetables she gets from a community-supported farm program. She e-mails pictures to the farmers to be identified, then looks up recipes on an iPhone app. She uses it for scheduling, finding addresses and swapping photos of her son with her husband, also an iPhone owner.
“I’m sure technology has come a long way,” Sellie says. “But I am kind of a creature of habit at this point. I know how to use this phone. I’m comfortable with it.”
Apple has sold more than 51 million iPhones since they hit the market in 2007, including 8.75 million in the most recent quarter. That was more than double the number it sold in the comparable quarter last year.
The surge also has helped Apple’s stock double over the past year, and investors are betting that the iPhone still has room to grow. The iPhone ranks third in the global smart phone market, with a 14 percent share. Nokia Corp. has 47 percent and Research in Motion Ltd., maker of the BlackBerry, has 20 percent. However, phones that use Google Inc.’s Android software are increasing sales faster. Android accounts for 4 percent of the market, up from less than 1 percent last year, according to Gartner Inc., a market-research company.
Carolina Milanesi, who lives in Britain and analyzes the mobile market for Gartner, has tried to switch away from the iPhone but gets hung up on something every time. She spent 20 minutes trying to set up e-mail on an Android phone, only to fail. The iPhone is so simple her 2 1/2-year-old daughter can operate her spelling and animal-noises apps herself.
The iPhone isn’t as flexible as some others, and Milanesi bristled at things Apple wouldn’t let her do, such as set custom tones for incoming text messages, a common tweak in Europe.
“But then you kind of get used to it, and you don’t miss it,” she says. “You kind of think that that’s for your own good.”
Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs has been replying to emails again, this time a 2am response over the weekend to Gawker blog writer Ryan Tate, who asked what was so revolutionary about the iPad. Annoyed by an Apple ad and citing Bob Dylan, Tate asked: “If Dylan was 20 today, how would he feel about the company? Would he think the iPad had the faintest thing to do with “revolution?” Revolutions are about freedom.”
Gawker Media is an online media company and blog network that includes Gizmodo, who recently hit the headlines when they paid for a next-generation iPhone prototype, which allegedly was lost in a German themed US bar and was eventually returned to Apple. According to reports, California’s Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team reportedly entered Gizmodo senior editor Jason Chen’s residence last month with a warrant, seizing four computers, two servers, and a number of other incidentals including flash drives, cameras, and mobile phones.
In a lengthy exchange of emails, for the Apple CEO at least, Jobs replies, quoting a Dylan lyric while taking a dig at Adobe again over Flash and iPad battery life and highlighting Apple’s no porn stance when it comes to iTunes App Store applications: “Yep, freedom from programs that steal your private data. Freedom from programs that trash your battery. Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom. The times they are a changin’, and some some traditional PC folks feel like the world is slipping away. It is.”
Hightlighting various publishers, magazines, iPad applications and technical standards, Gawker’s Tate wonders if Apple will have an adverse effect on the future of digital publishing. Jobs responds claiming publishers have the freedom of choice not to develop for the iPad.
“Wait – of course they don’t have to. They don’t need to publish on the iPad if they don’t want to. No one is forcing them. But it appears they DO want to,” Jobs insists.
“There are almost 200,000 apps in the App Store, so something must be going alright. The magazine apps will be far better in the end because they are written native. We’ve seen this movie before.”
“Gosh, why are you so bitter over a technical issue such as this? Its not about freedom. Its about Apple trying to do the right thing for its users. Users, developers and publishers can do whatever they like – they don’t have to buy or develop or publish on iPads if they don’t want to. This seems like its your issue, not theirs.”
The email correspondence continues, Gawker’s Tate covering Apple’s attitude to application programming interfaces (APIs) and “Apple’s pet police force literally kicking in my co-workers’ doors.”
Jobs, writing at 2.20am sends a final response, for now at least: “You are so misinformed. No one kicked in any doors. You’re believing a lot of erroneous blogger reports.”
“Microsoft had (has) every right to enforce whatever rules for their platforms that they want. If people don’t like it, they can write for another platform, which some did. Or they can buy another platform, which some did.”
“As for us, we’re just doing what we can do to try and make (and preserve) the user experience we envision. You can disagree with us, but our motives are pure.”
“By the way, what have you done that’s so great? Do you create anything, or just criticize others work and belittle their motivations?”
The full email correspondence between Gawker’s Tate and Apple’s Jobs can be found here. According to Wikipedia, Gawker.com is New York based blog that bills itself as: “The source for daily Manhattan media news and gossip” with a focus on celebrities and the media industry.
The “lost” fourth-generation Apple (NSDQ:AAPL) iPhone that surfaced last month, and the resulting media coverage, could have immeasurable damage on current iPhone sales, Apple claimed in court documents relating to the case.
In documents released by a San Mateo, Calif. county judge on Friday, Apple called the published materials surrounding the discovery of the Apple iPhone 4G prototype “immensely damaging.” The just-released documents detail what lead up to the search of Gizmodo editor Jason Chen’s home and the seizure of several computers after Chen and Gizmodo published several stories and photographs detailing the new iPhone prototype, which many expect Apple will launch at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) next month in San Francisco.
Apple representatives said the iPhone 4G prototype was “invaluable” and that the publication of the images is “immensely damaging” to Apple, wrote Matthew Broad, a member of the San Mateo County Sherriff’s Office and a member of the Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team (REACT), in court documents, including a search warrant for Chen’s home. “By publishing details about the phone and its features, sales of current Apple products are hurt wherein people that would have otherwise purchased a currently existing Apple product would wait for the next item to be released,” he wrote, citing his conversation with the representatives, adding that Apple feared its earnings would take a hit.
Apple representatives couldn’t estimate a potential dollar amount that would be lost due to the lost and found Apple iPhone 4G prototype, but told Broad it was “huge.”
But Apple is jumping the gun when it said sales of current iPhones and products would nosedive because of the sneak peek at the 4G. Apple has proven itself a sales magician and has rounded up a loyal cadre of followers who will buy nearly each and every product that bitten Apple logo appears on, even if they already own a previous generation model.
Apple’s sales prowess can also be seen in the recent release of the Apple iPad. Many industry watchers predicted the iPad would be dead on arrival and questioned the need for a touch-screen tablet that with a form-factor wedged between a smartphone and a laptop. Apple sold well over a million iPads in roughly the first month, and the release of the 3G model several weeks later only added more fuel to the sales fire.
Apple is known for constantly refreshing its product. And the technology company has consistently offered annual updates to the iPhone hardware since it’s official launch in 2007. Apple followed 2007’s first generation with 2008’s iPhone 3G, then followed that with 2009’s iPhone 3Gs.
Apple buyers and consumers know a new iPhone will hit in the summer of 2010. They’ve known it since they plunked down the dough for a 3GS. That’s how Apple works. For Apple to claim that early details of its latest smartphone creation leaking to the public will have a “huge” negative impact current sales is short-sighted. Apple is assuming consumers don’t expect a new iPhone each year.
Instead, Apple should embrace the leak as free advertising and publicity and get out ahead of it. Apple knows it has the power to make consumers and fanboys alike salivate with the prospect of new gear, why not use the leak to its advantage instead of crying poor house?
Could the iPhone leak put a tiny dent in two months worth of iPhone 3GS sales as consumers await the 4G? Perhaps. But saying the leak is “huge” and will be “immensely damaging” is hyperbole.
Apple need not worry. It can expect another blowout quarter when it reports third quarter earnings in a couple of months.
Despite a lack of signs pointing to an Apple MacBook Air refresh, there are some indications of an impending update to the more pedestrian MacBook.
The same Vietnamese Web site that purportedly did a teardown of an iPhone 4G now seemingly has a new MacBook in its hands, according to a video posted on YouTube (below). Specifications for the MacBook that appear in the video include an Intel 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor (updated from the current 2.26GHz chip) and Nvidia GeForce 320M graphics (updated from the aging Nvidia 9400M graphics silicon).
Note that those are the same chip upgrades that the aluminum 13-inch MacBook Pro got when it was updated last month. The MacBook Pro is also offered with a slightly faster 2.66GHz Intel processor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_c0sK8lclk&feature=player_embedded
There is no indication about when or whether the updated MacBook might be available. But if the gent in the video is cracking open a sealed box–which appears to be the case–availability may not be too far off.
Jeff Bertolucci
If you’ve been following the strange tale of how tech blog Gizmodo came upon an unreleased iPhone prototype, wrote about it, and raised the ire of Apple and law enforcement officials, you probably know the basics by now.
In short, Apple engineer Robert “Gray” Powell accidentally left his fourth-generation iPhone in a Redwood City, California restaurant. One Brian Hogan gained possession of the phone and began shopping it around to several tech publishers, supposedly including PCWorld (although a hasty newsroom poll revealed no e-mail or other contact from Hogan). Gizmodo bit, paying the 21-year-old Hogan $5000 (and perhaps more) for the phone. It then published a detailed preview of the device, garnering millions of page views in the process.
Then all hell broke loose.
- During an April 20 meeting between Apple representatives and San Mateo law enforcement, Apple claimed that Gizmodo’s April 19 story exposing the next-gen iPhone was “immensely damaging” to the company. It said the article would hurt sales of current Apple products because potential customers would shun the current iPhone and wait for the new model.
- Apple attorney George Riley couldn’t provide an estimated loss, but estimated it would be “huge,” according to an affidavit by San Mateo County Sheriff’s detective Matthew Broad.
- Immediately after the iPhone story hit, Apple CEO Steve Jobs contacted Gizmodo editor Brian Lam and asked for the phone back. Lam responded via -email that he would, provided Apple sent him a letter stating the handset did in fact belong to the company.
- Now, what’s interesting here is Lam’s e-mail to Jobs, which attempted to draw parallels between Gizmodo and Apple. Lam asked Apple’s co-founder to recall what it was like to be a scrappy startup. In a particularly ballsy (if ill-timed) move, Lam pitched for better communication between his blog and the privacy-obsessed Apple: “When we get a chance to break a story, we have to go with it, or we perish. I know you like walt and pogue, and like working with them, but I think Gizmodo has more in common with old Apple than those guys do.”
- “Walt” is Wall Street Journal tech columnist Walt Mossberg, and “pogue” is David Pogue, tech writer for the New York Times. Both writers are Apple favorites, typically getting review units of Cupertino’s latest tech marvels (along with USA Today’s Ed Baig) before other reviewers. Ham went on to defend Gizmodo’s actions: “Right now, we have nothing to lose. The thing is, Apple PR has been cold to us lately. It affected my job right at iPad launch. So we had to go outside and find our stories like this one, very aggressively.” Well, that warmed my heart. Apple PR is cold to me too. At least I’m not alone.
- When Apple got its iPhone back, the device was dead as a doorstop. If you’ve watched Gizmodo’s detailed autopsy of the handset, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. Anyway, here’s a breakdown of the damage: 1) a broken ribbon cable; 2) a screw inserted into the wrong location caused an electrical short; 3) broken back plate snaps; 4) stripped screws.
- Gizmodo editor Jason Chen originally offered Hogan $10,000 for the iPhone prototype, according to Hogan’s roommate Katherine Martinson. At one point Hogan showed Martinson a camera box containing $5000 in $100 U.S. treasury notes (isn’t that cop-talk for cash?) and told her he had received $8500 for the sale of the phone. Martinson wasn’t sure where the additional money was from, however.
- Hogan also told Martinson he would receive a cash bonus from Gizmodo in July if Apple announced a new iPhone at that time.
- Hogan comes off like a major dirtbag in the court documents. Example: Martinson and her friends tried to talk him out of selling the iPhone. Doing so, they argued, would ruin the career of Apple engineer Powell. Hogan allegedly replied: “Sucks for him. He lost his phone. Shouldn’t have lost his phone.”
In the late 1980s, Apple Computer was better known for fantasizing about breakthrough products than making them. Most famously, CEO John Sculley envisioned a futuristic gizmo called the Knowledge Navigator–featuring a bowtied digital assistant–in his 1987 book Odyssey. It made for a mighty impressive futuristic video.
In September of the same year, Apple announced a competition it called “Project 2000.” Teams from a dozen universities were invited to submit papers about Knowledge Navigator-like concepts representing the PC of far-off 2000. An impressive panel of judges–Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak, personal-computing visionary Alan Kay, futurist Alvin Toffler, science fiction legend Ray Bradbury, and Encyclopaedia Britannica’s Diane Ravitch–judged the entries in early 1988.
A group from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign won, for a paper titled TABLET: The Personal Computer of the Year 2000. “We seek something which fits comfortably into people’s lives while dramatically changing them,” the entry explained. And then it went on to describe a machine that was as different from the typical portable computer of the era as you could imagine.
The device was about the size of a paper notebook, and it packed a high-resolution color touchscreen with a virtual keyboard, gigabytes of solid-state storage, cellular connectivity, GPS, and a built-in microphone and speaker. Sophisticated software based on UNIX let you tap icons on a desktop and use pop-down menus to use it for note-taking, connecting to online services, driving directions, e-mail (complete with junk-mail filtering), social networking, 3D games, and both network TV shows and wacky user-generated video. Accessories included a wireless keyboard for those who preferred to touch type, and if you lost your tablet, a clever service even let you use the GPS to track it down.
Pretty heady stuff–we’re talking about the second Reagan administration here–but Apple incorporated all these ideas into a slim tablet that went on to be a groundbreaking success.
Oh, okay, Apple didn’t release the tablet in 1988, or even 2000. It waited until 2010, when it unveiled something called the iPad. (You may have heard about it). And I have no reason to think that Apple’s gizmo draws any inspiration whatsoever from the University of Illinois’s concept; in fact, it’s entirely possible that nobody involved with its design, including Steve Jobs, is even aware of Project 2000. (The contest was held when he was off running NeXT–although he returned to Apple in time to have a hand in its real computers of the year 2000.)
But I’m still struck by how close the Project 2000 tablet came to predicting the one Apple would build more than twenty years later. Tech predictions are so tough to get right that even very smart people get them embarrassingly wrong. But the University of Illinois team pretty much nailed every major feature of the device Apple eventually created–right down to “Find My iPad.”
Which is not to say that the 1988 tablet was utterly iPadlike. Some notable ways it differed:
- It could be controlled via your fingertips, but it also sported a stylus and handwriting recognition.
- The gigabytes of storage were provided not in fixed form, as in the iPad, but in interchangable memory cards. They sound a lot like SD cards, but were about the size of credit cards and based on optical RAM technology.
- While the paper does talk about online services hosted by powerful remote computers, it didn’t quite predict the rise of the Web. (It would have been neat if it had–and fitting, given that the graphical Web browser was invented at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign just a few years later.) Instead, the team expected that a lot of databases would be distributed on memory cards and that users would “trade them like baseball cards.”
- There was a built-in camera–incredible, huh?–for videoconferencing.
- The tablet connected wirelessly with peripherals not through something like Bluetooth or Wi-Fi but via an infrared connection.
- It was thick. Really thick. (In the 1980s, the concept of superthin computing devices didn’t exist–Digital’s 1994 HiNote may have introduced it–and the winning Project 2000 team failed to predict it.)
- Oh yeah–it could multitask apps and run them in windows. (That appears to be Father Guido Sarducci in one of the tiny video windows.)
Those are all minor nits to pick–and in fact, the iPad could include some of these features today if Apple decreed so, and might be a better machine if it did. Absolutely nothing that the paper predicts was wildly unrealistic or worthy of mockery.
The most striking things the team got wrong didn’t involve specs at all. They were about price and timing. Its members thought it would cost much more than an iPad–about the same as a late-1980s PC. (Back then, Toshiba’s T1000 portable cost $999, or around $1900 in 2010 dollars–well over twice as much as even the best-equipped iPad.) And they believed it would be feasible to build the device by 2000, exactly one decade before the iPad became reality.Would it have been possible to design, build, and sell a computer at least sort of like the one described in the winning Project 2000 entry in 2000? Maybe. At Comdex 2000, Bill Gates demoed the first Tablet PC, another system that bore more than a vague resemblance to the one outlined in the paper–including the stylus and handwriting recognition features which the iPad lacks. But the 2000 Tablet PC didn’t have massive amounts of solid-state storage. Or GPS. Or a cellular modem. Or a camera. All those technologies existed in 2000, but they weren’t standard equipment on any consumer computing device. Apple released the iPad as soon as it was possible to build one that wasn’t hopelessly clunky and pricey.
Okay, enough about the paper–here it is in its entirety. It was a good read in 1988, and is just as captivating –for different reasons–in 2010.
Bonus Project 2000 artifact (thanks, Paleo-Future): A video featuring interviews with the judges and a variety of mocked-up Apple computers which it still hasn’t gotten around to building.I kind of doubt that Apple would hold an equivalent competition–call it Project 2022–today. (Steve Jobs’ company doesn’t even like to talk about what technology will make possible a few months down the road, let alone a dozen years from now.) But if the authors of the winning 1988 paper–Bartlett Mei, Stephen Omohundro, Arch Robison, Steven Skiena, Kurt Thearling, Luke Young, and Wolfram|Alpha‘s Stephen Wolfram–care to make any predictions, I’d sure listen. Their track record is pretty darn spectacular.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs made a personal plea for the return of a missing next-generation iPhone prototype last month after the secret device’s disassembled carcass surfaced on the website Gizmodo, according to court papers unsealed Friday.
The search warrant affidavit provides a riveting tale of the missing iPhone’s journey into the hands of a Gizmodo editor and the urgent response of alarmed Apple executives, with fresh details of how the phone’s finder offered it for sale to multiple sites and was ultimately turned in by a roommate.
The loss of the camouflaged iPhone was considered “immensely damaging” by Apple executives, who worried that its public revelation would hurt sales of the existing iPhone, according to the affidavit unsealed by San Mateo Superior Court Judge Clifford V. Cretan.
Apple executives told investigators that an “invaluable” trade secret had been stolen. A lawyer for Apple said that he could not estimate the damage but that it was “huge.”
On April 23, armed with a warrant signed by Cretan, investigators with a high-tech task force broke into the home of Jason Chen, the Gizmodo editor and blogger who disassembled the phone and posted a video of it on Gizmodo’s website. They seized computers and documents.
The iPhone went AWOL in late March when an Apple engineer out celebrating his birthday left it in a Redwood City bar. There it was found by Brian Hogan, 21, of Redwood City.
Hogan’s lawyer earlier
described him as a caring person who “believed there was nothing wrong” in sharing the phone with the tech press. But the affidavit paints a harsher picture based on an account from one of his roommates to investigators.
Katherine Martinson said Hogan offered it for sale to several publications, and seemed indifferent to the plight of the Apple engineer who had lost the phone. She said they looked up the phone’s owner on the Internet and discovered he worked for Apple.
Martinson told investigators that she and other friends tried to persuade Hogan to return the phone, but that he replied:
“Sucks for him. He lost his phone. Shouldn’t have lost his phone.”
She described Hogan as technically knowledgeable, and said he told her he was offered a large amount of money for the phone, and that Gizmodo’s editor would pay that sum because “they know it is valuable. They would receive millions of hits,” or visits to their website. The magazine has reported that it paid Hogan $5,000 in cash. Hogan later told her he had received a total of $8,500, and showed her a camera box full of $100 bills.
Hogan’s lawyer, Jeff Bornstein, said he believes “the basic story that we have previously confirmed in our statement, is accurate. And I reiterate, that when approached by the police and requested, Brian Hogan and his family cooperated fully with the investigation, including insuring that all of the evidence that they sought, meaning computers and other materials, was provided to them.”
Martinson contacted Apple after the Gizmodo story ran, saying she was afraid she would be implicated because Hogan had hooked up the prototype iPhone to her computer.
Apple Senior Vice President Bruce Sewell told detectives that Jobs reached out to Gizmodo editor Brian Lam, though he did not say how. Lam replied in an e-mail to the Apple CEO, saying he wanted confirmation the phone belonged to Apple.
“I understand the position you’re in, and I want to help,” Lam e-mailed Jobs. “I get it that it would hurt sales to say this is the next iPhone,” he continued. But, “when we get a chance to break a story, we have to go with it, or we perish.” Lam complained that the computer giant had been “cold” to the Web magazine, favoring “walt” and “pogue,” an apparent reference to Wall Street Journal and New York Times columnists.
Apple confirmed the phone belonged to the company, and Lam then provided Chen’s home address.
Armed with the search warrant signed by Cretan, members of the Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team searched Chen’s Fremont home, seizing computers and documents.
No charges have been filed in the case, but the affidavit for the search of Chen’s home alleges he committed three felonies — buying or receiving stolen property, theft of a trade secret and maliciously damaging property worth more than $400.
The company told investigators that the returned phone was damaged, shorted out by a screw inserted in the wrong location, and a ribbon cable and snaps on the backplate were broken.
The affidavit was unsealed at the request of a media coalition. The search raised First Amendment concerns because Chen is a journalist protected by a state shield law from disclosing sources.
Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe confirmed Friday that Cretan had agreed to the appointment of a special master to review law enforcement requests to inspect the material it seized from Chen’s home. Wagstaffe said he has “no idea at this point” whether charges will be filed, “until the police give us their reports.”
That should take two or three weeks, he said.
Photos and videos of a next-generation cellphone with the Apple logo and what appears to be an Apple-designed processor show up on a Vietnamese website.
Apple seems to have lost another prototype of its next-generation iPhone.
Photographs and a video of an iPhone-shaped device that includes Apple’s logo and apparently an Apple-designed processor cropped up Wednesday on a Vietnamese website. The site user who posted the information said the device was an iPhone 4G that was recently brought to Vietnam.
Assuming the phone is an authentic Apple prototype, it would mark a second serious breach in Apple’s legendary wall of secrecy in as many months. Last month, tech blogs Engadget and Gizmodo published photographs that they said showed another iPhone prototype, which was discovered in a Redwood City, Calif., bar.
An Apple representative did not respond to a request seeking comment on the Vietnamese report.
Although it’s unusual for Apple gadgets to be seen months before they are officially unveiled, the recent leaks are not all that surprising, said Van Baker, an analyst with technology research firm Gartner Inc.
IPhones have transmitters that connect to cellphone networks, which means they require regulatory approval and a good deal of field testing, Baker said.
“That complicates the [secrecy] issue a little bit for them,” he said.
The cellphone pictured on the Vietnamese site is almost identical to the one found in Redwood City. The chief differences are that it doesn’t have two screws on its bottom surface and it says it has 16 gigabytes of storage. The amount of storage in the Redwood City gadget was crossed out.
The latest report had at least one notable revelation. Unlike Gizmodo and Engadget, the Vietnamese site dismantled the iPhone prototype enough to discover the chip inside. Photos indicate that the new iPhone will include a version of Apple’s A4 processor, the same chip at the heart of the company’s iPad tablet.
Analysts said it wasn’t surprising Apple would put an A4 processor in the next iPhone. The company has been widely expected to design chips for its phones since it bought chipmaker P.A. Semi in 2008.
The current iPhone, the 3GS, reportedly runs on a Samsung chip that is slower than the A4.
Putting the A4 in the next iPhone “is a logical move,” said Tim Bajarin, principal analyst at tech consulting firm Creative Strategies.
It was unclear from the Vietnamese site how the prototype was obtained or by whom. In the past, iPhones have been made by contract manufacturers in Taiwan.Gizmodo bought the previously disclosed prototype for $5,000 from a person who obtained it after an Apple engineer left it in a Redwood City bar. The tech blog returned the phone to Apple after the company asked for it back.
Police are investigating the incident as a possible felony theft.
Ted Landau
A few weeks ago, I covered reports of some users having problems with poor Wi-Fi reception on the iPad. At the time, Apple had not officially acknowledged that such a problem existed–beyond noting general issues that might affect Wi-Fi reception on any device.
Now the company has admitted there is a problem that will require an update to iPad software to fix: “A very small number of iPad users have experienced issues with Wi-Fi connectivity. Apple will address [this] with a future iPad software update.”
Meanwhile, as I reported in my prior article, “several users agreed that increasing the screen brightness prevents the failure to reconnect after waking from sleep.” I was a bit skeptical of this fix, as it seemed unlikely that changing brightness level would improve Wi-Fi reception, especially increasing brightness. However, Apple’s updated support article confirms this, stating: “If brightness is at lowest level, increase it by moving the slider to the right and set auto brightness to off.” As noted in Macworld’s news report on this topic: “Perhaps that’s one reason Apple…calls the iPad ‘magical.’”
There is no mention as to when the promised update will be released or exactly what it will fix. As such, users are already expressing doubt that this update will be coming any time soon or will be the ultimate solution. Time will tell.
Katie Hoffmann
Adobe Systems Inc., whose software is barred from being used on Apple Inc’s iPad and iPhone, took out newspaper advertisements today and posted an open letter to call out the tablet-computer maker for stifling competition.
The advertisements appeared in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Adobe also put the letter on its Web site, signed by founders Chuck Geschke and John Warnock.
“In the end, we believe the question is really this: Who controls the World Wide Web?” the letter states. “And we believe the answer is: everybody, but certainly not a single company.”
The letter is part of a widening rift between Apple and Adobe. Two weeks ago, Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs wrote a 29-paragraph public missive panning Adobe’s Flash as having “major technical drawbacks.” U.S. antitrust enforcers also may investigate Apple following a complaint from Adobe, people familiar with the matter said this month.
Adobe shares rose $1 to $34.80 yesterday in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. Apple, based in Cupertino, California, advanced $5.57 to $262.09.
Stan Schroeder
One of the biggest surprises of 2010 in the IT industry might be Apple’s sudden inability to keep its upcoming products hidden from the public eye.
A company generally well-known for its secrecy, Apple has been losing the next-generation iPhone left and right. This time, a slew of images and a video of another iPhone 4G prototype appeared on Vietnamese site taoviet.vn.
This new prototype is very similar to the one Gizmodo bought last month, but there are some minor differences; for example, this one lacks the screws at the bottom.
Furthermore, this new device has been turned on, revealing an image of an explosion and the sign “Inferno” on the screen.
As always, it’s possible that this device is fake, although the number of images (including a full teardown of the device) and the video suggest it’s real.
A closer look at the device’s innards reveals that the prototype appears to sport an Apple A4 microprocessor, similar to the one found in the iPad.
Harry McCracken
Taiwanese phone maker says Apple has violated five patents, asks to ban sales of the iPhone, iPad, and iPod.
This isn’t even slightly surprising: HTC is suing Apple. The Taiwanese phone giant says that the iPhone maker has violated five HTC patents, and it’s therefore asking the U.S. International Trade Commission to prevent the iPhone, iPad, and iPod from being imported into the U.S. and sold.
Last month, Apple sued HTC, seeking to ban that company from selling phones in the U.S. Apple is also suing Nokia, which is itself suing Apple. Twice.
(Extremely unlikely but perversely satisfying potential scenario: All three companies win all their lawsuits, preventing all of them from selling any products whatsoever and driving them all out of business. At least it might dissuade other businesses from doing battle in the courtroom rather than the marketplace…)
Microsoft, meanwhile, isn’t suing HTC-it’s collecting royalties whenever HTC sells an Android phone. But the unspoken message of its pact with HTC appears to be “Strike a similar deal with us, makers of Android phones, or we might sue you.”
HTC doesn’t seem to have disclosed which patents it thinks Apple is violating, but its portfolio includes hundreds of ones relating to mobile gadgets. Just for fun, here’s a drawing from one HTC patent that probably isn’t involved-the clever one covering the phone that became the AT&T Tilt. (Come to think of it, I’d be interested in buying an iPhone based on this patent-too bad Apple never violated it…)
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