Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on March 17, 2011
Crazy Apple Rumor: iPad with Camera Coming Soon
Today’s ridiculous Apple rumor comes from Apple Insider. The claim? That a new FaceTime-equipped iPad will be in stores in time for the holiday season, just six-months after the original launch. Bull.
That there will be an iPad with a FaceTime camera is certain, and it will probably be there in v2. But the idea that Apple would bring out a new model so soon after the first one is nonsensical in many ways. First, Apple can barely make enough iPads to keep up with demand. Only in the last few weeks have order-times dropped to a reasonable 24-hours, and with the iPad’s Chinese launch coming soon, it seems that Apple will continue to sell as many iPads as it can make. Introducing a new model so soon would be pointless.
Second, Apple runs its portable devices on a yearly update schedule. Every summer sees a new iPhone, every September a new iPod lineup. And while there is no precedent yet for the iPad, its safe to assume that it, too, will receive yearly updates. One year is long enough that early-adopters like me will be happy to buy every new model, and long enough not to piss off customers who feel that their toy has be obsoleted too soon. Remember the fuss about the iPhone price-drop? Imagine what would happen if a new iPad came out in a month or so.
Apple Insider’s source is “a person with proven knowledge of Apple’s future product plans” and says that:
A version of the tablet device with a built-in video camera and support for the new FaceTime video conferencing standard has already progressed to the advanced testing stages.
He also said that “there was an ambitious push inside Apple to verify the refresh for a possible launch ahead of this year’s holiday shopping season.”
Which brings me to a third point. Why rush an update into stores with just one tiny, incremental hardware change? It seems very unlikely that there will be a Retina Display in a new iPad so soon after launch. After all, if the prices of such a big, hi-res screen were already cheap enough to keep to the iPad’s $500 price-point, wouldn’t Apple have put them in there already? The same goes for an SD-card-slot, which I’m guessing will be in iPad 2.0. The price of the rest of the hardware will have to drop before these are added, and six-months into a product cycle seems to soon.
I say this rumor is nothing but a rumor. If you want a new camera-toting iPad, wait until April.
Apple to move aggressively on FaceTime, camera-equipped iPads [Apple Insider]
Photo: Brian X. Chen/Wired
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on September 13, 2010
New iPod Touch Has a Vibrator
Steve Jobs wasn’t kidding when he called the iPod Touch the “iPhone without a phone”. We have been calling it that for years, of course, but with each iteration the two iOS devices get closer and closer in terms of features. Now a vibrating alert has been added to the the Touch.
The first iPod Touch was a chunky slab of metal and glass, and didn’t even come with a hardware volume-control. As the product-line has evolved, Apple has added not only a volume switch but a speaker (the latest version has a proper speaker, not the tinny thing hidden in the headphone socket like last year’s model), a pair of cameras, a gyroscope and a microphone. The only the Touch now lacks are the cellular radio, the GPS and the mute-switch on the side.
The vibrator shows up as an alert for FaceTime on the iPod accessibility page:
If somebody wants to start a video call with you, youll receive an invitation along with a vibrating alert on your iPod touch asking you to join.
The obvious use though (no, not that one) is for games. Tactile feedback has been around on bigger consoles for years, and as the Touch is being pushed as a gaming device, adding in a vibrator seems like a great idea.
Which makes me wonder how long it will be before the Touch really is a phone-less iPhone. Is it possible that the next step is to add in cellular data, just like the iPad 3G, leaving out only the actual telephony hardware? That would still suit Job’s other nickname for the Touch, which is the “iPhone without a contract.” Couple that with FaceTime and who needs a cellphone anyway?
Video calling with FaceTime [Apple via MacRumors]
Photo: FCC
Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on September 7, 2010
Photo Shows iPod Touch with Camera. Again
If you thought that things would be quiet in the world of Apple news until the yearly September iPod event, you’d be wrong. The rumors have already begun. Hardmac claims to have pictures of a next-gen iPod Touch with a rear-facing camera and flash. Rather than the usual blurry-cam picture we expect for leaks, it is a nice Apple Store-ready hero-shot. It is also, weirdly, in a case.
It’s almost certain that the new Touch will have a camera. We also know that the iPhone’s camera is pretty big, and would only just fit into the Touch, so seeing it all the way up at the corner of the Touch – its thinnest part – seems odd. So too, does the lack of a FaceTime-capable front-facing camera, but maybe that’s being saved for next-year’s model.
There’s not really much to get excited about here. The most interesting question, and the one that no spy-shot will answer, is whether or not the iPod Touch will use Apple’s A4 processor. I’d say it’s pretty likely: there are advantages of cost by using the same processor in all iDevices, as well as making things a lot easier for developers, who only have to write for one powerful processor, and two screen sizes (if the iPod Touch gets the Retina Display, that is).
One thing we do know, though, is that there will be new iPod models sometime in September, just like every year. Expect analysts to start “predicting” this fact very soon.
Pictures of the iPod Touch 4… well, almost [Hardmac]
Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on August 5, 2010
FaceTime Over 3G on Jailbroken iPhone 4
Want a reason to jailbreak your iPhone 4? How about FaceTime calls over 3G?
If you’re comfortable jailbreaking your iPhone by letting a website execute unknown code on it via a browser exploit, then you too could make normally Wi-Fi-only FaceTime video calls over the 3G network. The video above comes from the fine folks at 9to5Mac, and shows the hack in action. As you can see, everything behaves just like a regular Wi-Fi call.
9to5Mac’s Mark Gurman writes that “[the caller] couldn’t tell the difference between the 3G FaceTime call and a WiFi FaceTime call; the quality is that good.” It certainly looks better than previous efforts to route calls over 3G using standalone MiFi routers, but given the state of the AT&T network in the US, and the fact that these high-res video-calls will burn through your precious 2GB data-allowance, it’s hard to see why you’d bother, except for quick chats.
To activate 3G FaceTime, you’ll need to pop into Cydia, the jailbreak app store that is installed when you hack your iPhone. Add a new repository (essentially, you add URL to a new app store section. In this case, the url is http://apt.modmyi.com) and install an app called My3G. After a quick setup, you’re done: just leave My3G running in the background and FaceTime should just work.
Due to briefly rendering my iPad unconscious yesterday in a failed jailbreak attempt, and not having an iPhone 4 with FaceTime, I haven’t tested any of this. If you do, be careful, and leave any tips in the comments.
FaceTime over 3G [9to5Mac]
Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on August 3, 2010
Porn Industry Aroused by iPhone FaceTime
You will not be surprised that the porn industry is all over the iPhone 4 like a bad case of the clap. The latest business opportunity is, almost inevitably, FaceTime, although it probably won’t actually be called Face Time.
Over in the UK, the ever-accurate Daily Mail reports that “video-sex chat services [...] are hiring workers through internet adverts.” These services would connect you one-on-one with the sex-worker of your choice.
It’s a great idea. Because FaceTime in Wi-Fi only, you won’t be surprised at the end of the month by huge and scary charges on your phone-bill. Another advantage is that, because it won’t work over 3G, it’s unlikely that the person on the plane next to you will be indulging. A phone would also seem to be the perfect place for this most personal kind of entertainment. As Quentin Boyer of adult production company Pink Visual told the Mail “A phone is such an intimate thing, you usually don’t lend it out or have someone else use it.” At least not without cleaning it first, we hope.
It’s often said that the porn industry drives technical innovation, but it might be more accurate to say that it is the ultimate early-adopter. People scoffed at the idea of smut on cellphones until the iPhone made it easy to browse the web and the number of mobile porn sites took off. And the iPad, a device ridiculed for its lack of Adobe’s Flash plugin, has seen adult video sites rushing to re-encode their catalogs in the iPad-friendly Quicktime format. Pushing sex over video chat has been pointless until now but, as the number of customers with easy video-calling explodes, so will the business opportunities.
Being the sensationalist rag that it is, the Mail veers off into talk of the dangers to kids (“children and sexual predators are often ahead of parents when comes to technology”) and tries to make a case that Apple somehow doesn’t like adult material on its devices (ridiculous, as Safari on the iPad is probably the best porn browser on the planet). But the best point in the article is made by adult actress Teagan Presley, who highlights a technical shortcoming of the face-to-face nature of video calls.
“You can have the phone on your face, or other body parts,” says Presley, “but not both at the same time.”
Now Apple iPhone 4 users can make video calls to X-rated stars with Face Time [Daily Mail]
Photo: Joe Loong/Flickr
Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on July 30, 2010
Faceplant Adds Missing Features to FaceTime
FaceTime is pretty typical of an Apple consumer-level application: it is insanely polished, easy to use and high on the wow-factor, but lacking in the most basic features. That’s just what Faceplant adds.
Unlike the most basic chat client, FaceTime has no list of online contacts, no way to leave a message for an offline user. Faceplant is an app (yet to be approved) and service which fixes this. It integrates with your contacts and checks to see if any of them also has Faceplant installed. If so, they show up in a list, and you can call them from there. If they’re offline, you can leave them a video “voice-mail” to be picked up later. These messages can be sent over 3G or Wi-Fi, and the recipient will get a pop-up notification when they receive it.
This looks like a must-have app for iPhone 4 owners, but suffers from the same problem as any such application: As it isn’t built in, people will have to go out and install it. And if me-too versions start to appear in the App Store to confuse people, the necessary critical-mass will never be achieved.
Faceplant [Faceplantapp via TUAW]
Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter..
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on July 23, 2010
Geek Artist Making $50 Caricatures Over FaceTime
Does your Twitter/Facebook/IM avatar suck? The answer is likely to be a resounding “probably”. You need a custom caricature, and being a proper geek, you should get it not from the dodgy street-artist with the portfolio of sample “work” downloaded from the internet, but over the actual internet.
That’s just what Dave Lanham, artist extraordinaire and designer at the Icon Factory (the people behind Twitterific and a lot more besides) is doing. Dave is holding FaceTime calls with his iPhone 4 and drawing the portrait of the person at the other end. The hi-resolution Retina display no doubt helps him to see deep into your soul.
The fun started when Dave broke his foot and was left lounging around the house. His friend Gio Gutierrez (right) volunteered for a portrait and then things just got bigger and bigger. Dave is charging $50 per portrait, which you can then use as your online personality (or print on a T-Shirt, we guess, if you are really narcissistic). The demand is likely to be huge, so even if you can’t get on his list, you should check out Dave’s website, which has time-lapse videos of his work being made.
FaceTime Portraits [Dave Lanham on Flickr]
@dlanham [Twitter]
Dave’s website home-page [Dave Lanham]
Picture credit Dave Lanham (Under Creative Commons)
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on July 16, 2010
UK Retailer Leaks New iPod Touch Details: Camera, FaceTime
UK retail giant John Lewis has leaked details of a new iPod Touch. The company’s audio and telecoms buyer, Rob Hennessey, detailed the new iPod in a Christmas sales presentation.
The details of the new iPod will come as no surprise to regular readers: it is essentially an iPhone 4 without the phone. But the fact that it has been revealed by somebody so high up in John Lewis makes this a little more juicy.
The details: The new iPod will be announced in September (as always) and will have a 5MP camera with a flash, a gyroscope (for gaming) and FaceTime over Wi-Fi (suggesting it’ll also get the front-facing camera from the iPhone 4). Oddly, there is no mention of the retina display.
As I said, all of this was pretty obvious, but one of Hennessey’s points shows just how big the Wi-Fi only FaceTime could get. The Touch will be targeted at kids and teenagers, and for them, FaceTime will be a way to talk to each other free (it will also be a pretty good way to cheat on tests).
The report comes by way of UK tech blog Pocket Lint, which also managed to get hold of the picture above. We suspect Mr. Hennessey will be getting a call from Apple any time now.
New Apple iPod in September – John Lewis spills the beans[Pocket Lint]
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on July 8, 2010
