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| Bites from the Apple: Slow Week... |
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In its relentless drive to announce or release something every week in 2008, Apple dropped the price of its 1 GB iPod shuffle to $49 and announced that a 2 GB model would be available by the end of February for $69. Well, it's not a MacBook Pro announcment, but at least it's something.
Speaking of super-secret Apple announcement events, it looks like the rumor that Linkin Park would be joining Steve Jobs on stage got squashed this week. Instead, the band played a surprise gig at Apple's Soho store in New York City (with Maroon 5 now scheduled to play on Sunday at the same venue). In other Appley goodness from a relatively slow news week...
Is Apple working on a three-dimensional multi-touch system akin to the one Tom Cruise operated in Minority Report? Ars Technica looks at a recent 80-page patent filing for a custom input surface that can respond to gestural input in three dimensions, as well as automatically adjust to input from one finger, multiple fingers or a stylus.
Speaking of multitouch, LoopRumors says that it's learned through "reliable" sources that a new, more sophisticated touch device is on the horizon for mid-year, which would have a more robust processor that could enable iChat video conferencing via Wi-Fi.
Hard Mac asks, what's happened to the availability of the Airport Express plug-in wireless base stations. Will we see an updated model with 802.11n connectivity in the near future?
Several sites have noted that the BBC announced that it's iPlayer software (which enables viewers in the UK to watch recently televised programming on a PC) will become available for iPhones and iPod touches in the next few weeks. Sadly, this won't help me access the Ashes to Ashes, the sequel to one of my faves, Life on Mars, since the iPlayer requires a UK IP address. But this brings up some interesting possibilities. Currently, the iPlayer software streams in Flash format on Windows PCs (Mac PC compatibility is promised for later in the year). Does that mean that Flash will be coming to the iPhone as was rumored in last week's Bites? Or will the BBC encode its video in the MPEG-4-based H.264 standard, as YouTube had to do when the iPhone first launched? Finally, another plus to be a UK iTunes user: a selection of BBC shows are now starting to filter into the store.
Tip of the week: How to get around the 24-hour rental period applied to iTunes movie rentals.
Woz Watch: Wharton interviews Steve Wozniak in its online business journal, Knowledge@Wharton, and it's a good long read for the weekend covering his prankster side, relationship with Steve Jobs, and teaching computer science to fifth graders.
~Agen G.N. Schmitz |
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posted by GadgetMan @ 4:43 AM  |
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