For the coming days leading up to Macworld, I will be releasing a series of articles focused on specific rumors slated for Macworld 2008.

Todays article is about the rumored iPhone updates and enhancements.

On January 9th, 2007, Steve Jobs finally broke the rumors and announced the iPhone. Today, one day short of it’s first birthday, the world is wondering what the next iPhone has in store for us. There are many rumors regarding the iPhone at Macworld 2008- some predicting just a firmware update while others believe the introduction of the iPhone 2 is eminent. Somewhere in between the broad line of speculation lies the truth- we are definitely going to hear something about the iPhone next week.

The cell phone industry is extremely hard to keep on top of. From the four major carriers in the US all releasing products through a myriad of hardware companies, all running different firmware- some even Operating Systems. The iPhone has broken many of the molds of the cell phone industry but the competitors aren’t sleeping on it (like with the iPod). LG is offering arguably the closest competition to the iPhone, the LG Voyager, which is offered by Verizon Wireless.

All of this keeps extra pressure on Apple, who is already busy leading the market with the iPod and keeping the Macintosh (and it’s OS) shiny for those three percent of the world. The iPhone, while revolutionary- is now a year old, which is about mid-aged for a cellphone, and basically outdated for an iPod. While they can’t re-re invent the wheel, Apple can keep it’s consumers (and critics) happy by adding small refinements and refreshes. This can come in the form of firmware updates or hardware refreshes.

The upcoming February iPhone SDK will certainly please all, and we can begin to see the true power of the iPhone unfold as they progress. The upcoming 1.1.3 update looks promising (if the pictures are actually real). However, hardware wise- the iPhone could use 3G and a storage bump- to name a few. We should definitely see something pertaining to the iPhone at Macworld.

Read more…

Mid afternoon yesterday, Apple posted a new Get a Mac commercial entitled Referee. We have since published it on The Daily iLife podcast, which you can subscribe to in iTunes or watch here.

A referee is present, according to PC, to make sure that Mac doesn’t go on saying that Leopard is better and faster than Vista. When Mac defends himself saying that it was The Wall Street Journal who compared the two, PC complains, and the referee sides with Mac. Upon insulting the referee, PC gets ejected.

WebKit made big news in November after it was revealed that it would become the rendering engine in Google’s Android platform. The announcement came as a surprise to some who assumed that Google’s cozy relationship with the Mozilla foundation would lead them to select the Gecko rendering engine. WebKit however, holds the distinction of already being a well established platform for mobile devices, seeing service on a series of Nokia internet tablets and of course, on the iPhone. Not bad for a browser that was once doomed to die.

The WebKit team has had a busy December as well, adding support for the getElementsByClassName JavaScript function, beginning to add support for HTML 5, creating a new JavaScript benchmark called SunSpider and getting ready for its big Qt 4.4 and GTK debuts. WebKit is rapidly becoming a major contender in the browser wars, and is poised to replace KDE’s KHTML (which WebKit was originally based on) with the release of the KDE 4 desktop environment next year.

Ok, so the official countdown reads now reads 7 days- time to update on Macworld! Sidney and I have been working on the AJAX app and are proud to announce that the framework has been completed this weekend. It is now time to add the Javascript to make everything pretty as well as add some parts of the back end, to make it easier to post while at Macworld. This means that the Application itself should be done before weeks end (or at least, in beta)! This screenshot above is not the photoshop mockup anymore, that is an actual HTML file. We are very proud to announce this, and will certainly let you know when you can start testing it, as well as registering your phones for SMS updates.

At some point, we have all wanted to move our email accounts and mails over to another computer. Unfortunately, Mail doesn’t make it very easy to do but, it is possible. You can watch the screencast here or continue reading after the jump.
Read more…

For the coming days leading up to Macworld, I will be releasing a series of articles focused on specific rumors slated for Macworld 2008.

Todays article is about the rumored iTunes movie rental service.

Arguably the second biggest rumor lined up for Macworld this year, the iTunes Movie Rental service has been rumored to appear since full featured movies on iTunes became official. Presently, you can purchase approximately 1000 full length movies at prices ranging from $9.99~$14.99, including DRM. While this is great, the quality is nothing to write home about- nor is the price especially, versus a DVD. The DRM certainly doesn’t make the deal either.

Movies and TV Shows aren’t really comparable to music, in terms of their use. While Jobs advocates for the users owning their digital music, videos are different from music. You may watch a TV show once maybe, twice. You might watch a movie a few times more- or you might not. On the other hand, music you listen to time and time again. Currently, iTunes only allows for the outright purchase of media. I think for the future Apple is considering rentals as an option, certainly for video content.

It makes far more sense to be able to rent videos. Not only is it cheaper but, it is already a successful industry! However, the digital rental market is far from crowded. With its large content selection and huge user base, the iTunes Movie Rental Store already has potential. Rentals could allow Apple to solve the problems to a number of existing iTunes issues. First being the high prices of iTunes Movies and TV Shows! Secondly, it could allow users to get better quality movies, depending upon the technologies they use such as streaming. Finally, Apple could put a real use to the HD-ready AppleTV- watch and rent movies from your couch or even from your iPhone or iPod Touch!!

But, who knows specifically how Apple will handle it. They could have you download a the video, and have it expire (through DRM) within 24 hours (or set period of time) after its first play. Or they could stream it to you, but how would they judge the 24 hours? There is also speculation that the rentals could be for a 30 day time period. Whatever length, transferring large, potentially HD movies is tricky because everyone is on a different speed internet connection and, naturally some are faster than others. The major questions remains- which studios would first join? Many are speculating FOX, and of course, Disney. Lots of questions with little backing or answers. Macworld will tell.
Read more…

If you haven’t noticed over the past few days, there has been a lack of new Daily iLife videos. We apologize for the inconvenience, however we at theiLife.com are very busy preparing for Macworld 2008 and writing other daily content. Sorry for the delay, hang in tight: The Daily iLife will be back during Macworld with whatever new videos Sir Steve gives us- we promise!

After the catastrophic realization that Apple would be switching its processor architecture over to x86, Macintosh fans everywhere have to get used to a new approach to product releases. While the PowerPC architecture was limited to a few models, and was updated annually at best, the Intel roadmap looks like something out of a horror movie to the dedicated Mac head. Apple has responded to Intel’s somewhat convoluted release schedule by shying away from timing product launches with hardware changes. The update from Core to Core 2 for example, was non event, the Apple store was updated and that was that. This policy sets a new tone for product releases, and as such, has the added benefit for Apple in making their product releases harder to pinpoint.

It may be hard to say when a product will be updated, but the architecture that will go into the upcoming notebooks is no secret. At CES in January, Intel will show off its brand new 45nm mobile family, codenamed Penryn. This family of processors is the successor to the Merom and Conroe mobile chipsets that were the foundation for the first mobile Core 2 chips. Penryn will have a host of new features, but its role is more evolutionary than revolutionary when compared with the previous jump from the Pentium M/Yonah family of processors to Conroe. The next major revision to the Intel architecture is Nehalem, tentatively scheduled for a late 2008 release.

For now, the Penryn family of processors will see a tremendous improvement in power consumption (a benefit of is 45nm architecture and smaller memory die), cache size (with the high end models having as much as 12mb) and SSE4 processing instructions (which will greatly increase the speed of activities such as video encoding with the proper software optimization). The desktop version of Penyrn, called Wolfsdale will be released shortly after the mobile one, sometime in February. A third variant, Yorksfield is a quad-core variant that may see service in Apple’s Mac Pro line, though so far, that product has been exclusively tied to Intel’s Xeon server chipsets in an attempt to boost power and distinguish it from consumer products.

Performance increase in this series will probably be slight at best and negligible at worst. Unless a program has been optimized for the new SSE4 instructions (DivX is one such program), Penryn has anywhere from a 1% to 10% gain over its Merom/Conroe predecessor at similar clock speeds. For mobile products however, the lower power consumption will result in improved battery times and improved heat management. It is entirely possible that a MacBook Pro update could be announced at Macworld, but with the sheer volume of other possible, and the ambiguous launch date of Penyrn based products, it is far from guaranteed.

For the coming days leading up to Macworld, I will be releasing a series of articles focused on specific rumors slated for Macworld 2008.

Todays article is about the rumored ‘ultra-portable’ laptop.

Probably the biggest rumor going for Macworld this year has to be the ‘ultra-portable’ MacBook. The rumor has been floating around for years, resurfacing many times over the years! In 2003, ‘The Year of the Notebook’, Apple introduced a 12″ and 17″ PowerBook to diversify the lineup. Going way back, the PowerBook 2400 was considered a true ‘ultra-portable’ and included an external Floppy drive. Now more than ever, the rumor seems realistic except- Steve Jobs doesn’t like having of external optical drives.

I came this realization recently, which added to the skepticism I have surrounding the ‘ultra-portable’ without an optical drive. Jobs can be heard while introducing the iBook G3 comparing the new laptop to other competitors at the time. At minute 9:41, Steve says:

“Some people leave optical drives out of notebooks. We think people need optical drives in their notebooks, so we build them in.”

But, this doesn’t mean that the rumor is out- just because Jobs doesn’t like something does not mean that it won’t happen! Also, this was a couple of years ago now!

I think that in Macworld we will definitely see new laptops of some kind. Whether they are ‘ultra-portable’, I can’t say for sure. It is true, that if you look at (or open up) a MacBook Pro, you can see that almost a quarter of the surface area is taken up with the optical drive- and lets face it: physical media is on its way out! Just like Jobs cut ADB for USB or Floppy disks, we can be certain that in the future (maybe the near one) we will no longer have optical drives. However, at this point in time, I think an optional external optical drive isn’t ideal- and I think Apple agrees at this point in time, unless this new laptop is dirt cheap. ($599? $699? $799)?

Read more…

With the New Year fresh upon us, it is time to reflect upon the past year. 2007 was a very lively year for Apple, from the introduction of the iPhone to strong Mac sales due to the failure of Vista. Leopard was delayed from Q2 to October, but still was meet with high praises. The iPod Hi-Fi was discontinued and AppleTV saw little success.

And the rumors! Even with ThinkSecrets death, Apple was hit with astonishing breaks in secrecy. From the iPhone itself (a rumor which, was floating around for years) to the new iMac redesign but, particularly the new Keyboard, which leaked to the internet weeks before the August 7th release. Same with the 6th Generation interface changes, which a video was first posted on MacRumors in July, months before it’s September 5th release. Images of the 3rd Generation iPod Nano before introduction or recently, the iPhone 1.1.3 firmware update videos and pictures that is currently running wild.

But, more importantly, Apple has grown significantly. However, with large growth comes new challenges, being a larger company with a bigger install base and stiffer competition. In the New Year, Apple has to keep up with its market and products- from the iPod to the Mac. For the past few years, Apple has done a great job of keeping it’s iPod line selling, but can they continue with the iPhone or the Mac?

Only time can tell, but 2008 has the potential to seriously expand in many markets. 2007 was a great year for the company- the question is: What does 2008 have in store for us?