¶ S

Turns out I wasn’t too far off on my late-night predictions yesterday.

The iPhone 4S sports an A5 processor, 8MP camera with vastly improved optics, and 1080p video recording with stabilization. It also features an AI assistant called Siri. It looks exactly like the iPhone 4, which is great because the the iPhone 4 is awesome. It has an improved antenna that can handle both CDMA & GSM frequencies, and is coming to Verizon, AT&T, & newcomer Sprint on October 14.

iOS 5, iCloud, & OS X Lion 10.7.2 will be dropping on October 12. And iCloud did get one more new feature: Friends & Family. This looks like it could be kind of neat for my wife to able to see how close I am to home before calling me to tell me to stop at the store.

And the iPod nano and iPod received very slight revisions. The nano no longer needs a dongle for Nike+ and has more clock faces to choose from since some people have taken to using them as watches. The touch now comes in white (seriously, I don’t think anything has changes as far as specs).

However, I was wrong about the iPod classic. It lives on for yet another year.

Let's Talk iPhone

Next Tuesday.

AirPrint Gaining Traction

A while back I pondered why HP had a monopoly on Apple's AirPrint wireless printing standard. Today, I was happy to see that Canon has three printers available today featuring AirPrint, and Epson has thrown in their commitment, as well.

It just so happens that my beloved Canon printer of the past half-decade is starting to show its age mechanically, so maybe I will look into one of these AirPrint-capable models in a few months.

¶ STS-135 Atlantis

From NASA:

Emmy-nominated composer Bear McCreary, known for his television scores, has composed a fanfare specifically to commemorate the final space shuttle flight. After composing four seasons of music for a television show set in space, creating music inspired by a historic NASA mission was a natural fit. The composition will be played first on Friday morning at the NASA launch TweetUp.

People viewing the launch from some of the other locations at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida will also be able to hear the composition.

In just over an hour, NASA will launch its final Space Shuttle mission. It truly is the end of an era. McCreary's work on the score for Battlestar Galactica is some of my favorite instrumental music of all time. There isn't a doubt that music can capture and convey great emotion, and I applaud NASA for commemorating the Shuttle program in such a way.

NASA will be releasing McCreary's composition on iTunes soon.

Be sure to watch this historic occasion at 11:31 am EDT via the web, iPhone app, or iPad app.

The New Mothership

Last night at the Cupertino City Council meeting, a handful of mere mortals were granted an audience with Steve Jobs. Apple has always referred to its campus as the mothership, and this new one they plan to have completed by 2015 certainly fits that. The entire video is worth watching.

If you ask me, from above it kind of looks like a Stargate.

[via TechCrunch]

Update on 2011-06-09 18:23 by Chris De Jabet

It's All About the Software

From Apple PR this morning:

Apple® CEO Steve Jobs and a team of Apple executives will kick off the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) with a keynote address on Monday, June 6 at 10:00 a.m. At the keynote, Apple will unveil its next generation software - Lion, the eighth major release of Mac OS® X; iOS 5, the next version of Apple’s advanced mobile operating system which powers the iPad®, iPhone® and iPod touch®; and iCloud®, Apple’s upcoming cloud services offering.

It don't see how Apple could spell it out any more, but this year WWDC is all about software. Any next-gen iPhone hopefuls will have to wait until September, likely.

I'm glad to see Mr. Jobs will be on stage again. This medical leave has been very different than his previous ones. He is still very much involved during his absence.

Lastly, the iCloud rumor seems true. I can't remember the last time (if ever?) Apple pre-announced a product via press release. Needless to say, I have a feeling it will be big.

And who knows, maybe there will be "One More Thing".

Square is Kicking Cards & Taking Names

Okay, maybe Square isn't kicking cards yet, but they aim to reduce your need to swipe your card so often.

My favorite payment processor Square has raised the stakes yet again. Today, the company held a little press conference to announce version 2.0 of the app, which sports an interface refresh and adds a more robust register functionality on the iPad, allowing multiple price points for an item (say, a latte with small, medium, & large sizes), and sortable shelves, so a shop owner could have a separate Food from Drinks and what not.

They also demoed a couple upcoming features. The improved register on the iPad will soon get even better with a Google Analytics style reporting system that will tell a business how many of a particular item they sold throughout the day. The register will also allow a shop to set up a menu or service list that users can browse from their smartphone and even receive daily specials. Regular customers will even be able to set up a tab while they are at a shop.

This brings me to the second upcoming feature: the Square Card Case. The Card Case is what people will use to browse a business' menu, get directions, and set up a tab. The Card Case will also sport a directory of nearby Square merchants.

The tab feature is what I think is amazing. Pay once at a participating merchant, and then you can set up a tab for future visits. Your next visit, you just open your app, select the store, tap a "Start Tab" button, and tell the clerk to put it on your tab. I often go to a coffee shop for a few hours to write. I dread having to go up and pay multiple times if I want a second drink. With this tab feature, I start my tab, get what I need, when I need it, and when I leave, the tab closes and my linked card gets billed for the total.

In my opinion, Square just trumped NFC payments.

All that needs to happen is for more people to get their hands on a Square.

¶ If You Mess with the Bull…

About a week and a half ago, patent troll Lodsys started sending out letters to US-based iOS developers claiming they were infringing upon patents held by Lodsys regarding the use of Apple's In-App Purchase system. In a gist, they claimed Apple held a license to these patents, but that license did not trickle down to third-party developers.

This is especially troubling for the iOS ecosystem because the majority of developers are individual people or very small companies. These developers cannot afford a long, drawn out legal battle with a company that exists solely to litigate patent suits. Instead, these developers would just have to pay the license fee. Granted, the fee Lodsys was requesting is quite small and likely wouldn't put too many developers out of business, the problem stands that once one patent troll goes after developers, others will follow.

That would make developing for iOS fairly unattractive. How could a developer trust that a new feature Apple rolls out in the SDK wouldn't invite more licensing fees? Basically, if Lodsys had its way with developers, iOS as a development platform would dry up really fast.

So ever since all this broke, a lot of folks have been waiting to see how Apple would respond.

From Apple Senior Vice President & General Counsel, Bruce Sewell, to Lodsys, LLC, today:

I write to you on behalf of Apple Inc. (“Apple”) regarding your recent notice letters to application developers (“App Makers”) alleging infringement of certain patents through the App Makers’ use of Apple products and services for the marketing, sale, and delivery of applications (or “Apps”). Apple is undisputedly licensed to these patent and the Apple App Makers are protected by that license. There is no basis for Lodsys’ infringement allegations against Apple’s App Makers. Apple intends to share this letter and the information set out herein with its App Makers and is fully prepared to defend Apple’s license rights.

[…]

Under its license, Apple is entitled to offer these licensed products and services to its customers and business partners, who, in turn, have the right to use them.

[…]

Because Apple is licensed under Lodsys’ patents to offer such technology to its App Makers, the App Makers are entitled to use this technology free from any infringement claims by Lodsys.

[…]

Therefore, Apple requests that Lodsys immediately withdraw all notice letters sent to Apple App Makers and cease its false assertions that the App Makers’ use of licensed Apple products and services in any way constitute infringement of any Lodsys patent.

A saying my Dad has favored as long as I can remember comes to mind:

If you mess with the bull, you're going to get the horns.

Well said, Dad. Well said.

Microsoft® Windows® Skype™ Messenger® 7 Home & Student Edition

If it wasn't bad enough that Skype nearly made their product unuasbale with the horrible UI in Skype 5, things should get even more interesting. Microsoft has agreed to purchase Skype for $8.5 billion dollars.

I'm not saying just because Microsoft is now involved it will turn to crap. Honestly, Microsoft does ship some neat stuff (XBox for one, and as much I love to dog on Windows, 7 isn't entirely unbearable).

But if Steve Ballmer decides he needs to have a ton of input on Skype…well, let's just say I'd hate to be a podcaster who depends on Skype for their business.

¶ My Theory on Why iOS Logs Your Location

Media coverage is sensationalizing an open source tool, iPhoneTracker, which maps out location data points collected by a 3G-capable iOS device. Be sure to read their FAQ, which isn't so sensational.

Using this app to look at my data, it definitely pings off cell towers, not GPS. With this in mind, I posit that Apple may have the iPhone (and 3G iPad) keep track of cell towers to aid in speeding up its Assisted-GPS, which uses cell towers to triangulate a smaller search area for the GPS satellite. The device would be able to provide location results to the user much more quickly if it had an index of nearby towers.

This would also explain why this data is included in the iPhone backup. It would be inefficient to rebuild the database from scratch if you had to restore your phone.

And to pre-empt the argument of why doesn't Apple include a pre-made database:

• Databases take up drive space. The method of logging towers near you makes the data relevant to you, and excludes a lot data that would be largely useless to you.

  Addendum: Of course this still results in a database that takes up space, but it wouldn't be nearly as large. The point is that you have a database of relevant data.

• Also, Apple doesn't have to maintain updates to carrier databases when new towers are added. Instead, your iPhone just maps a new nearby tower itself.

Lastly, I haven't seen anyone provide any evidence that this data is transmitted back to Apple. So if this data only exists on your device and its backup file, what's the big deal? Especially since it is probably saving you time when you willingly tell the world where you are via geo-tagged tweets, Foursquare check-ins, and Instagram updates. Never mind that the Camera app geo-tags every photo you take in an instant.