All Things Digital

Q: Will there be an iPhone?
Steve Jobs: One never knows. We don’t usually discuss products we haven’t announced.
Q: What do you think of the tablet PC?
Jobs: We’re not sure the tablet PC will be successful. It’s turned into a notebook that you can write on. Do you want to handwrite all your email? We have all the technology ourselves to do that–we just don’t know whether it will be successful.”

–Interview with Apple CEO Steve Jobs, International Herald Tribune, Sept. 2002

Are you passionate about providing handwriting solutions to end customers? Do you strongly believe that using a stylus and a tablet is the way to interact with computers?”

–Apple recruitment ad, Aug. 11, 2005

At a 2007 all-hands meeting to discuss the iPhone, Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs said the company has the “best Macs” ever in the new-product pipeline right now. The machines waiting in the wings are “off the charts,” he said. Now just what Jobs meant by that is, obviously, known only by the man himself and those whose heads would be piked on the gates at 1 Infinite Loop if they ever told.

But according to Apple Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer, we’ll find out before the year is over. Apple is headed for a “future product transition” later this year, Oppenheimer said during the company’s quarterly conference call with investors Monday. And it will involve “state-of-the-art new products that our competitors just aren’t going to be able to match.”

With Apple’s MacBook and iPod lines both due for refreshing, it was easy to presume that these are the products to which Oppenheimer was referring. But what if they aren’t? What if he was referring to Apple’s mythical tablet PC? Consider this rumor posted to MacDailyNews:

Think MacBook screen, possibly a bit smaller, in glass with iPhone-like, but fuller-featured Multi-Touch. Gesture library. Full Mac OS X. This is why they bought P.A. Semi. Possibly with Immersion’s haptic tech. Slot-loading SuperDrive. Accelerometer. GPS. Pretty expensive to produce initially, but sold at “low” price that will reduce margins. Apple wants to move these babies. And move they will. This is some sick shit. App Store-compatible, able to run Mac apps, too. By October at the latest.”

Sounds plausible, doesn’t it? Certainly, given the success of the iPhone’s multi-touch platform and its speedy extension to the iPod Touch, it doesn’t take take a leap of imagination to see multi-touch making its way into a Mac tablet. Hell, it might even use the finger as a stylus. Handwriting recognition has come a long way since the Newton, and if you don’t believe that, check out the Chinese character recognition system on the iPhone.

Running with this a bit further, a finger-as-stylus touchscreen Mac tablet would make a hell of a nice counterpart to Apple’s new MobileMe service, wouldn’t it? It would make a great e-book reader too–if Apple ever gets around to adding a bookstore to iTunes. And if Apple were to link it up to iTunes U, as it undoubtedly would, the Mac tablet might even become higher education’s killer app. Especially if it arrives at market right before school starts, as it seems scheduled to do. A notebook, a textbook AND a MacBook–all in one.

Sound like “a state-of-the-art new product that our competitors just aren’t going to be able to match” to you? Does to me.

Still, Jobs has often dismissed rumors of an Apple tablet. “There are no plans to make a tablet,” Jobs said during a panel discussion at the 2003 All Things Digital conference. “It turns out people want keyboards. … We look at the tablet and we think it’s going to fail.”

Of course Jobs said Apple would never build a phone, either.

[Image Credit: FactoryJoe]

A brassy little outfit called Psystar is getting a lot of attention today for peddling Leopard-compatible desktops. These “OpenMacs,” as the company’s named them, run on Intel (INTC) chips and feature 2GB of memory, a DVD drive and whatnot. They’re built from PC parts and, if you’d like, Psystar will even outfit them with Mac OS X Leopard.

Sounds like a compelling proposition for folks who would like the Mac OS on cheap hardware. Too bad the Mac OS X EULA specifically forbids installing the OS on non-Apple computers. Apple (AAPL) legal is, no doubt, already half-finished with a cease-and-desist letter.

Note: Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski is off sick today. This post is being filed from notes taken at the Macworld keynote at San Francisco’s Moscone Center by Associate Editor John Sullivan. Check back later for Paczkowski’s take on the proceedings.

After a week of rumor buildup and speculation, Apple CEO Steve Jobs’s Macworld keynote seemed almost subdued. He gave the crowd what it expected in terms of new iPhone apps and additional iTunes features, and then finished with the announcement it had been primed for: the MacBook Air, the world’s thinnest laptop computer.

Jobs began his keynote a few minutes past 9 a.m. For the barely contained crowd (Moscone West was packed), the aura of anticipation was heightened by rock and hip-hop music blaring over the speakers. After the lights came down, the crowd hooted and yelped. Then, after a Mac Guy/PC Guy video (about what a terrible year it was for PC guy, who finishes by telling Mac Guy he’s “gonna copy everything you did in 2007″), Jobs took the stage in his uniform black turtleneck and blue jeans, declaring: “Clearly something is in the air today.”

After noting that 2007 was an “incredible” year, an “extraordinary” year, capped by the “revolutionary” iPhone, Jobs announces that he will address four things:

1. Leopard:

   This was the most successful release of Mac OS X, Jobs notes, with 5 million units sold. He quotes reviews from Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal (and co-executive editor of this site), David Pogue from the New York Times and Ed Baig of USA Today.

   As for Time Machine: For backing up files, it works great, he says. Today, he’s announcing a companion product: a backup appliance called Time Capsule. Plug it in, turn it on, enable Time Capsule on all your machines: one with 500 gigabytes ($299) and another with one terabyte ($499). “We want people backing up their content,” he says. “[This] is a perfect companion to Leopard.”

2. iPhone:

   “Got some great news for you,” Jobs announces. “Today is the 200th day the iPhone is on sale. Sales of 4 million so far. What does this mean for the smart-phone market?” He quotes research: RIM had most sales (39%); Apple had 19.5%; Palm 18%. First 90 days, iPhone equaled Palm, Motorola and Nokia sales combined, Jobs says.

   SDK for the iPhone is coming in late February, Jobs continues, but: “We wanted to give something today.” He lists “great new features”: maps with location; Webclips to customize home screen; SMS messaging to multiple people; chapters capability for video; and support for Lyric.

   Map app looks much more localized, customizable; drop a pin, move a pin. Developed in conjunction with Google, Jobs says.

   SMS more than one person: With the new app, you can message multiple recipients–one click and you can send multiple messages.

   Webclips: We worked with Google on this app, Jobs notes again. The icons can be added to screen of iPhone. Jobs demos a “jiggle” function to edit Webclips and rearrange them. This feature can add up to nine home screens to the iPhone.

   How do we make maps work? Jobs asks: Skyhook Wireless, which mapped Wi-Fi hotspots and located 23 million of them. “Isn’t that cool? It’s really cool,” Jobs enthuses. Triangulation is the key, he says, noting that’s what Google is doing.

   “All of this is available today as a free update to all iPhone users,” he proclaims, to applause.

   Then, almost as an afterthought: iPod Touch. “We’ve decided to add five apps”: maps with Wi-Fi location, mail, stocks, notes and weather–all of which will be built in to new models, with a upgrade available to existing users for $20.

3. iTunes:

   “We sold our four billionth song this month,” Jobs notes, adding that on Christmas Day, iTunes sold 20 million songs. It has sold 125 million TV shows and 7 million movies.

   But, he adds, we think there’s a better way to deliver movies: iTunes movie rentals. Not like music, which you buy to listen to a thousand times. You watch a movie once. Touchstone, Miramax, MGM, Lionsgate, New Line are all on board, plus (big applause): 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros., Disney, Paramount, Universal and Sony. “We have every major studio supporting us: really, really great films…We’re gonna launch with 1,000 films by the end of February.” And you can watch them anywhere, Jobs notes: Mac, PC, iPhone–anywhere with broadband. When you rent, you get a 30-day window to watch a movie, with a 24-hour start/stop time frame. Plus, he notes, you can transfer them around your devices, too. Cost: $2.99 for library titles, $3.99 for new releases.

   Jobs repeats point that all movies can be moved to a different device: e.g., iPod or PC. But what about flat-screen TV? “All of us have tried,” Jobs says of that hurdle, “and we’ve all missed.” But now, he adds, we’re back with Apple TV, Take 2: No computer, but it still syncs with TV.

   The iTunes movies can also be rented in high definition with Dolby 5.1 sound. You can get podcasts, photos from Flickr and .Mac. Finally, Jobs mentions a YouTube connection: 50 million videos. So you can buy TV shows and music and play this iTunes content on TV too.

   The HD-quality option is $1 more, Jobs says: $4.99 for new releases. (Demo: Jobs shows free preview function for “Blades of Glory,” as well as an almost instantaneous download and play of movie). Full DVD quality. Then, he gives an HD demo of “Live Free or Die Hard”: “Very strong,” Jobs opines.

   TV shows: Over 600 shows, he notes, at $1.99 per episode. All can sync with PC or Mac.

   Podcasts: lot of HD podcasts, very cool. “HD content streaming free.” Shows “incredible” clip from Teton.

   For Apple TV: free software upgrade for current owners. But because “We want to make Apple TV even more accessible,” starting today, Jobs says, the new price is $229 (from $299).

   “I think we’ve got it all together,” Jobs says, noting Apple has a great working relationship with Fox. He then introduces Jim Gianopulos, chairman and CEO of 20th Century Fox Filmed Entertainment: “When you get down to it, there are two things,” Gianopulos says. “Make great movies, and give them to audience in as many ways as they want.” People want choice, he adds, viewing options, access, control and availability.

   “This is the coolest thing we ever heard,” Gianopulos says. “Music, then iPod. Phone, then iPhone. Apple does things in innovative ways. We’ve been working on DVD…[his Blu-ray mention draws applause]…But we also don’t want to deny the viewer the option of having a copy”–a physical copy of the movie. He shows first one, a take-off on “Star Wars.” “It’s an exciting beginning with Apple,” he concludes.

4. MacBook Air.

   Jobs is back: “There’s something in the air,” he repeats. “As you know, Apple makes the best notebooks on the planet. Today, we’re introducing a third kind of notebook: MacBook Air.” After comparing all subnotebooks, he announces: “There was room for improvement.”

   So, MacBook Air stats: .76 of an inch at thickest part to .16 of an inch at thinnest. “We’re talking thin here; let me show it to you now.” He picks up a manila envelope and produces the aluminum device; crowd oohs and ahs at its size. Yet it has a full 13.3-inch display; “gorgeous” Jobs says. It also has a built-in camera; full-size back-lit keyboard; multi-touch gesture function–in short, Jobs says, “We’ve taken things we’ve learned from iPhone and now they’re in our computers.”

   How did Apple do it? Three things: battery; 1.8-inch drive; 80GB hard-disk drive (or 64 SSD, as an option). The laptop’s board is the size of a pencil. “An amazing feat of engineering,” Jobs notes. “And we didn’t compromise on performance: speedy processor: Intel Core 2 duo.” Jobs mentions Apple’s great relationship with Intel; “We asked them to consider smaller packaging on their chip: They came up with the same chip in a package that is 60 percent smaller, and that’s why we were able to build the MacBook Air,” Jobs remarks.

   Then Intel CEO Paul Otellini comes onstage and delivers his take on how the two companies collaborated on meeting the challenge. In short, a commitment to innovation drove the effort.

   Bottom line: After more discussion of the MacBook Air’s features, Jobs mentions price: All these features–along with a battery that gives five hours per recharge–for $1,799. Audible “wow” from the audience.

   One other side of MacBook Air, Jobs adds: environmentally conscious: aluminum case; arsenic-free glass; mercury-free and bromide-free components, plus less packaging.

So, Jobs concludes, “The thinnest notebook in the world joins MacBook and MacBook Pro, the best in the industry.”

Apple’s latest security updates include so many fixes that you might mistake them for a Windows Service Pack.

Among the 25 issues repaired in Leopard 10.5.1: a major one that resulted in a “potential data loss issue when moving files across partitions in the Finder” as well as other problems with Time Machine, Firewall, Back to My Mac, Airport and Mail.

The release of OS X 10.5.1 follows hot on the heels of OS X 10.4.11, Apple’s 11th and likely final update to Leopard’s predecessor, Tiger, which patched 41 vulnerabilities in the OS.

Conventional wisdom and Apple spin have long held Macs to be more reliable and more secure than PCs. But after reports of installation bugs, along with data loss and other problems in Mac OS X Leopard, some are beginning to ask: how much more reliable? How much more secure? Especially now that Apple has confirmed that OSX.RSPlug.A, a malicious new Trojan found on several pornography Web sites, can indeed compromise Macs running Mac OS X.

“We’ve been made aware that a small number of Web sites attempt to trick Mac OS X users to install malicious software on their Macs,” said Apple spokeswoman Lynn Fox. “Apple has a great track record for keeping Mac OS X users secure, and as always, we encourage people to install software only from trusted sources.”

And be sure to stay away from porn sites that require you to install software to view them.

So is OSX.RSPlug.A an anomaly or a harbinger of things to come? Security researcher Gadi Evron says it’s the latter. “Apple’s day has finally come, and Apple users are going to get hit hard,” Evron told Wired. “OS X is the new Windows 98. … It’s Mac season. The next two years will be interesting.”

That gold master copy of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard that appeared on the Torrent indices last Thursday morning–24 hours before the operating system’s official launch–didn’t have much of an effect on sales. In a press release broadcast this morning, Apple said it sold or delivered more than 2 million copies of Leopard in its first weekend at market.

An impressive number, and one that took Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger–once “Apple’s fastest selling OS release ever”–39 days to hit. Said Apple CEO Steve Jobs, “Early indications are that Leopard will be a huge hit with customers.”

Certainly appears that way. “These numbers show the Mac user base is growing,” Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said in a research note. “It also shows that it is an unusually active user base, with 9% of the approximately 23 million users upgrading in the first four days.” Clearly, Mac users are quite a bit more excited about Leopard than Windows users are about Vista.

Like Jaguar, Panther and Tiger before it, Leopard will be “the best upgrade to Mac OS X that Apple’s ever released.” This according to CEO Steve Jobs, who today said Leopard will arrive at market Oct. 26, as expected.

Priced at $129 for a single-user license, Leopard offers some 300 new features–“Even Leopard innovations have innovations,” says Apple–among them, a solution to the “Fix the F-ing Finder” problem, a significant update to Mail, a virtual desktop application called “Spaces” and Apple’s eagerly awaited backup solution, “Time Machine.”

Looks to be an impressive release. Certainly, Wall Street expects it to be. Just last week Piper Jaffray & Co.’s Gene Munster predicted Leopard would add $240 million to Apple’s next quarter, nearly double the $125 million in revenues that Tiger brought in during its opening quarter.

Chris Swenson of the NPD Group, too, figures Leopard will outperform its predecessor. “Tiger was the best launch of Mac OS X ever according to our data,” he told ComputerWorld, “and I expect Leopard to do even better.”

With the iPhone firmly ensconced at market and the full brunt of its engineering resources brought to bear on Leopard development, Apple is reportedly on track to meet its self-imposed deadline of shipping the next version of the Mac OS later this month.

Developers received the latest Leopard pre-release last week, a build that some say seems very close to the final release candidate. And now sources close to the company are telling Apple Insider and Think Secret both that we can expect Apple to ship Mac OS X Leopard on or around Oct. 26.

Accompanying it, at least according to some theories, will be a significant software update for the iPhone, one expected to add support for Notes syncing and perhaps even the SDK (software development kit) for which developers have been pining.

“Apple hasn’t shipped an SDK yet, not because Apple is evil, but because the iPhone is a Leopard device,” theorizes Blackfriars Communications analyst Carl Howe. “You didn’t think all those nifty animations on the iPhone were all one-offs, did you? Everyone was so excited to hear Steve Jobs say that the iPhone was built on a Mac OS X foundation that I think many people never really thought about the fact that he never specified which one. I believe that the iPhone is built on a Core Animation and Leopard foundation, and since some Leopard functions are still not public, Apple can’t release the SDK without (you knew this was coming) ‘letting the cat out of the bag.’ I have heard from developers that applications of all types are being held for the Leopard release. Why? Because they rely on either foundational data structures or features. … Once the Leopard launch is complete and all the Leopard functions are public, all of these constraints will be relaxed.”

Well this ought to give all those Newton fans who demonstrated in the parking lot of Apple’s Cupertino campus the day the company killed the device in February 1998 a bit of satisfaction. “Well respected sources” (whatever that means) tell Apple Insider that Apple is hard at work on a modern-day Newton project.

“Like iPhone and the iPod Touch, the new device runs an embedded version of Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard operating system,” Apple Insider reports. “Externally, the multi-touch PDA has been described by sources as an ultra-thin ’slate’ akin to the iPhone, about 1.5 times the size and sporting an approximate 720×480 high-resolution display that comprises almost the entire surface of the unit. The device is further believed to leverage multi-touch concepts which have yet to gain widespread adoption in Apple’s existing multi-touch products–the iPhone and iPod touch–like drag-and-drop and copy-and-paste.”

Sounds like a slick device–assuming it’s not vaporware. But really, you think Apple has time for such distractions when it’s doing all that it can to get the Tablet Mac ready for Macworld?

Pity the poor Apple investors who closed out their position in the company after
reading an erroneous report yesterday that the launches of the highly anticipated iPhone and Leopard operating system had been delayed. “This one doesn’t bode well for Mac fans and the iPhone-hopeful: We have it on authority that as of today, the iPhone launch is being pushed back from June to… October (!), and Leopard is again seeing a delay, this time being pushed all the way back to January–of 2008,” Engadget reported. “The latest WWDC Leopard beta will still be handed out, but it looks like Apple quality takes time, and we’re sure Jobs would remind everyone that it’s not always about ‘writing a check,’ but just how much time are these two products really going to take?”

Shares of Apple slipped on the news, falling to $103.42 from $107.89 in about six minutes. And the company’s market capitalization dropped by $4 billion. Problem was, the report was erroneous–based on a bogus internal memo broadcast to an unknown number of Apple employees and subsequently passed on to Engadget. Apple was quick to quell the rumor–issuing a press release assuring investors that both products will ship on schedule. And the company’s stock soon recovered. But that did little to appease investors outraged by the market-moving story. “What a joke,” wrote one Engadget reader. “Engadget posts unsubstantiated rumor, AAPL drops. Engadget later posts correction, stock fails to fully bounce back. Reckless and irresponsible, Engadget. Thanks a lot. Your ’source’ doesn’t happen to sit in an office in Redmond by any chance?”