Category Archives: Apple Inc

Revealed: Secrets of Apple’s Tablet

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Wow. Guess what appeared on my doorstep this morning? The new Apple tablet, two days before its public unveiling. I’m not supposed to talk about it until Wednesday — but who cares? I’m not afraid of Apple’s legal department. I won’t reveal all, but here are a few highlights:

• You may be surprised at the name of the tablet: iRule. I was told that it refers to Apple’s expectation of the device’s market dominance. Turns out, it’s also the nickname that Apple employees affectionately use to refer to their boss, Steve Jobs.

• As widely predicted, the iRule will include an e-reader. That’s old news. What you do not yet know its that it will also sport a built-in coffeemaker. I can now confirm that Apple has worked out a deal with Keurig, whereby the iRule will accept Keurig’s coffee pods.

• How will you enter text on the iRule? This is really cool. The iRule projects an image of a full-sized keyboard onto the surface in front of you. And when I say full-sized, I mean it. It will have all 88 keys, even the black ones.

• The iRule will not ship until June. Is Apple concerned that Amazon’s Kindle may gain critical market share in the meantime? Not at all. Apple will announce that it is purchasing Amazon.com and, in its first move, will be discontinuing the Kindle.

• The operating system of the iRule? It’s neither Mac OS X nor iPhone OS. Instead, Apple has created a new third OS: Supreme Ruler OS. It combines the complexity of Mac OS X with the lack of flexibility of iPhone OS X. One example:

Similar to the Mac, there are seven different ways to transfer files between the iRule and other computing devices. Similar to the iPhone, however, they have all been disabled.

Click here for even more secrets revealed.

Magic Mouse and Mac Pro: A Bad Combo

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It’s official. Apple, we have a problem.

I have now owned three separate Magic Mouses (Mice?). In each case, I have had the exact same symptom. The Mouse’s Bluetooth connection to my 2009 Mac Pro kept cutting in and out. It would happen so often that I was ultimately unable to use the device (which is why I went through three of them).

Of note, I also have an older Bluetooth Mighty Mouse, which has worked and continues to work perfectly (as I previously covered in a Macworld article). This led me to conclude that the problem is not simply with the Mac Pro, as some have suggested.

I have now done further testing. With my third mouse, I gave up on using it with my Mac Pro and connected it to my MacBook Pro instead. For the past week, it too has worked perfectly — not one disconnect. For me, this confirms that the problem is due to some odd interaction between the Magic Mouse and (at least some) Mac Pros. Neither device by itself causes the symptom. The two simply do not play well together.

Hopefully, Apple is aware of this and will issue some sort of firmware update that fixes it.

Licensing the iPhone OS?

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One of the more eye-catching products I saw at last week’s CES was Pure’s Sensia Internet and FM clock radio. It’s been available in Great Britain for several months now, but it won’t be sold here in the U.S. until the spring. What most drew my attention was its colorful and detailed touch-screen interface. All of the features of the device are accessed via this touchscreen. There are no dials or buttons that I recall. It’s as if an iPhone had been implanted in the Sensia and was running a special Sensia app. Except it was not the iPhone interface. It wasn’t even an iPhone interface imitation. It was Pure’s own original take on an touchscreen interface. In the demo I saw, it worked quite well. There’s just one problem:

I use an iPhone. I am comfortable with and experienced with its interface. I am not particularly interested in having to master a second touchscreen interface. I could do it. But I’d rather not. Unfortunately, mastering the Sensia could be just the start of a slippery slope. As touchscreens become more common, showing up in more and more devices, what if each company developed its own interface? What if you had to master a dozen different touchscreen “operating systems” for all the devices you owned? And you had to be able to remember which actions went with which device? Not fun.

From this dilemma, I see a great opportunity for Apple. What if they licensed a special “dedicated” version of the iPhone OS? What if, for example, a company could create a touchscreen alarm clock and not have to bother to reinvent the interface wheel? Instead, they could license the special iPhone OS, modifying it to be meet the specific requirements of their hardware. Boom — they have an alarm clock that looks instantly familiar to all iPhone users. There would be an iPhone-like Home screen from which all other features are accessed. There could be a Settings app, looking and feeling just like the one now on the iPhone, from which you would set the clock’s main features (such as the time zone). An Alarm app would be used to set the alarm. Another app to access the radio. And so on. Plus, all the touchscreen actions, such as pinching and swiping, would work the same as on the iPhone.

Similar to how iHome’s iA5 works, vendors could even have a matching iPhone app that remotely controlled the clock.

For the vendor, this would give the device a competitive marketing advantage, helping spur sales. For Apple, the advantage is twofold. The iPhone OS could become a de facto standard for touchscreen devices. And Apple would make money both from licensing the OS and (indirectly) via more iPhone sales.

Admittedly, there are lots of obstacles in this path. Apple has never done anything quite like this before. I wouldn’t place any bets on this happening any time soon. But it’s something to consider.

Assessing iSlate rumors

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Everyone’s waiting for the Apple’s rumored tablet device to be released. It looks like the wait may soon be over. I’ve been going through the rumors, assessing what I think is likely to be true and what is not. Here is my current assessment of where things stand (based on nothing than my own speculation and experience):

• The name of the device is iSlate.

Accuracy confidence: 75%. Ultimately, whatever it’s called won’t matter as much as what it does.

• The iSlate will be announced on January 26 at Yerba Buena media event.

Accuracy confidence: 95%.

• The iSlate will be more like an iPhone than a MacBook. In particular, it will be based on the iPhone OS rather than Mac OS X. It will have an iPhone-like Home screen rather than a Finder. Many apps that now run on the iPhone will run on the iSlate as well. Of course, this all means that the iSlate will have a touchscreen.

Accuracy confidence: 90%.

• The iSlate will have a 10″ display, or close to it. Some iPhone apps will need to be rewritten to accommodate the larger screen size.

Accuracy confidence: 80%.

• The iSlate will include a new “ebook reader” capability. Some rumors suggest that the iSlate will be entirely an ebook reader, not a tablet computing device at all. I am skeptical of this. My gut tells me that Apple is planning something bigger than just a competitor for the Kindle and Nook. Much bigger. See this Daring Fireball article for exactly how big; I completely agree with the overall point of this article.

Accuracy confidence: 95%.

• The iSlate will feature expanded streaming audio and video features. For example, I expect a subscription service that offers movie streaming, akin to what is now available via Netflix. Actually, this is likely to be expanded to all iTunes users, whatever device you have.

Accuracy confidence: 45%.

• The iSlate will not be released in January. More likely, it will not be available until March or even later. Some suggest that its arrival may have to wait until iPhone OS 4.0 is released this summer. I doubt we will have to wait that long or Apple would not be announcing the product in January. But it’s possible.

Accuracy confidence that we will have to wait at least until March: 75%.

• The device will not be a phone, but it will support 3G/4G data services.

Accuracy confidence: 85%.

• The device will not have a foldable cover or a physical keyboard. That is, its form factor will not resemble a MacBook. Rather it will be more of an open “slate,” as its name implies. In that respect, it will look and behave more like the Kindle. There will similarly be no physical keyboard.

Accuracy confidence: 75%.

• Will you be able to attach standard computer peripherals to the device? Most critically, will there be a keyboard accessory? I am going to go with yes here. Will there be a USB port? Will you be able to attach optical drives or hard drives to the device? I am going to go with no here, at least for this first iteration of the iSlate.

Accuracy confidence: 40%.

• Apple stock will take a hit immediately after the announcement. When it does, it may be an excellent time to buy Apple, as stock will bounce back after iSlate becomes a big success.

Accuracy confidence: 70%.

• The iSlate will not be on display at Macworld Expo (even though the event takes place a week later at almost the same location where Apple will host its media event). For whatever reason, Apple appears to be determined to snub the Expo as much as possible.

Accuracy confidence: 60%.