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]

Microsoft (MSFT) started with a vision of a computer on every desk, and soon it hopes to put one on every wall as well.

During Microsoft’s 12th annual CEO Summit today, Chairman Bill Gates demonstrated TouchWall, a 4-by-6-foot multitouch computer that can transform home and office walls into computers. Gates calls TouchWall “the whiteboard of the future,” and it may turn out to be just that–if Microsoft can get it to market at a reasonable price. The company’s other multitouch computer, Surface, is currently shipping for about $10,000.

In the run-up to Apple’s (AAPL) Worldwide Developer’s Conference in June, the Mac faithful are sifting entrails for portents of iPhones to come.

Yesterday the creators of the popular ZiPhone jailbreak discovered in the latest test firmware for iPhone developers a reference to Infineon’s (IFX) SGOLD3H chipset–a chipset that supports 3G wireless broadband of up to 7.2 Mbit/s.

Now “industry sources” cited by TG Daily are claiming that the next-gen iPhone that runs on that chip will debut at WWDC. And there’s more. The device will be slimmer than its predecessor (by about 2.5 mm) and it will be offered in least two configurations at current price points: an 8GB version for $399 and a 16GB $499.

It’s been 267 days since Apple last updated the MacBook Pro. That’s 81 days longer than the company historically takes between updates. Which means it was high time for an upgrade. And today we were finally given one.

This morning Apple (AAPL) refreshed both its MacBook and MacBook Pro lines, adding Intel’s Penryn Core 2 Duo chipset (up to 2.4 GHz for the MacBook and up to 2.6 GHz for the MacBook Pro). As Apple’s flagship portable, the MacBook Pro now boasts the same multitouch trackpad found in the MacBook Air and an LED backlighting option for the 17-inch model. All but the low-end MacBook feature a two-gigabyte RAM, with a build-to-order option that allows for their upgrade to a four-gigabyte RAM. New Macbooks are priced from $1,099 to $1,499, new MacBook Pros from $1,999 to $2,799.

Tonight, tech’s highest roller gave what may have been his final Vegas performance. Sadly, it was far from his most memorable. All glitz and very little glory–certainly not the sort of glory befitting such an iconic figure. In the end, the memory of the event that lingers longest is not Gates reflecting on his storied career in tech or prognosticating about the future, but Gates singing “Big Pimpin’ ” to rap star Jay-Z. Which was funny as hell, but not exactly “The Road Ahead” material. Anyway, here’s what we got, more or less in reverse chronological order as I live-blogged his keynote:

7:40 p.m. A few more moments of guitar wankery from Slash and … well, I guess that’s it. Bach, not Gates, ends the keynote. “I’ll see you again next year,” he says as Gates waves briefly and leaves the stage. Must be rushing off to that billion-dollar-a-hand poker game at Caesars … And the lights go up. That is it. Quite a disappointment. Take away the celebrity appearances and what’s left is a well-rehearsed series of anticlimaxes and rehashes of demos past. A pity, really.
7:38 p.m.: Gates: She’s pretty good. But I’ve got my own ringer here … (Pleeeeease let it be Wayne Newton)
Nope. It’s Carrot Top. Kidding … It’s Slash it’s from Guns n’ Roses playing “Welcome to the Jungle” for real. He doesn’t miss a note either. Dry ice smoke and flashing lights.
7:36 p.m.: Bach challenges Gates to a Guitar Hero 3 match. Bach invites Guitar Hero champion Kelly Clarkson to play against Gates. … She plays Guns n’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle” and doesn’t miss a note.
7:35 p.m.: Gates using the device to navigate video archives of keynotes past. Microsoft’s version of iTunes’ ‘Cover Flow.’ Messy.
7:33 p.m.: Gates uses the device to scan a photo of the Vegas skyline behind him. Clicks on the Venetian. The screen displays information for his keynote address. Pops another note indicating Ballmer’s playing nickel slots at another casino. Laughter.
7:31 p.m.: Bach brings Gates back onstage to discuss the future. … Gates takes the stage again with a handheld video recognition device. He points it at Bach and clicks. It recognizes Bach, displays his name onscreen, along with a note saying he owes Gates money.
7:29 p.m.: Fellow presenter uses Tellme to search out a movie theater, browse movie listings, purchase tickets for a movie and then send them to a friend. Pretty slick, especially given the size of the mobile advertising market.
7:27 p.m.: On to Windows Mobile and Microsoft’s Tellme service.
7:26 p.m.: Bach and fellow presenter now demoing “Sync”–an in-car voice-command technology that enables Zune owners to sync their Zunes to their car stereos and then navigate their music libraries with voice commands.
7:24 p.m.: Bach talks about Zune Social as a service that drives music transactions from discovery to purchase. Find a song you like on a friend’s page, click on it and purchase from Zune Marketplace. Again, haven’t we heard all this before?
7:22 p.m.: Listening habits are tracked via “cards.” Bands can create their own Zune Social pages as well. Essentially, MySpace for music.
7:20 p.m.: Zune Social apparently tracks your listening habits in real-time. It’s all about “people-powered music discovery.”
7:18 p.m.: Bach talking up the Zune now. … Demoing Zune Social.
7:17 p.m.: British Telecom is to begin selling Xbox 360s as Media-Room based set-top boxes. Price of relocation to UK not included with activation fee …
7:15 p.m.: In addition to this, MGM will also be adding its film library to Xbox Live. End result: Twice as many hours of on-demand programming as any cable provider out there.
7:14 p.m.: ABC and Disney will be bringing their programming to Xbox Live.
7:13 p.m.: Gates brings Robbie Bach onstage to talk about Xbox 360.
7:11 p.m.: Using Microsoft Silverlight technology, NBC and MSN will put some 3,000 hours of high-definition footage of the Beijing Olympics online. Wow: 3,000 hours of video. What a massive effort. First of its kind.
7:10 p.m.: Gates commenting on broadcast television: “It simply isn’t as fulfilling an experience as online video.”
Here comes another video segment. … Bob Costas pitching.
7:09 p.m.: Moving on to Silverlight. Gates says NBC has chosen Microsoft as its exclusive online video partner for the 2008 Olympics.
7:08 p.m.: He finishes up the design, lays his phone down on the screen and it automatically emails his design to friends for review.
7:07 p.m.: Gates, thankfully, back onstage for another demo. Wait, what’s this. Another Surface demo?! Didn’t we see this last year? Yes, we did–but given by Steve Ballmer, not Gates. Gates using Microsoft’s Surface multitouch computer to demo a snowboard-design service.
7:05 p.m.: The big achievement being touted here seems to be the connection between these services and the single log-on. As Dan Aykroyd might say: Isn’t that AMAZING?
7:04 p.m.: Windows Live Photo Gallery … in browser photo editing, sharing (via email or Flickr) and exporting to blog. Bor-ing. They would have been better off playing the farewell video again. That ‘Bib Pimpin’ segment was comedy gold.
7:02 p.m.: First up: Windows Live Calendar now with … wait for it … multiple calendar overlays (YAY! sigh…)
But wait, there’s more … Windows Live Events, an invitation/event organizing service. They really should have called it Windows Live eVites …)
7 p.m.: Gates brings Mika Krammer, a director of product management for Windows, onstage to demo some new features of Windows Live.
6:59 p.m.: And here comes the product line-up overview: Windows Vista, Windows Live, Windows Mobile ….
6:58 p.m.: A key building block of the second digital decade, the centerpiece building block will be. … (drum roll, please) … Microsoft Windows!
6:56 p.m.: “Devices will know our context and location,” Gates continues. There will be new modes of interaction and natural interfaces. “We’re very interested in simpler ways of navigating our technology.” If he were going to announce Microsoft Bob 2.0, now would be the perfect time to do it. Nope. Ah, well. “The software industry will build these new modes of interaction–touch, voice, gesture–into the software.”
6:55 p.m.: And now for a few predictions. “In the future Microsoft products and services will run on the desktop and in the cloud,” he says. Would that be the cloud with all the Google AdWords all over it? “And 3-D environments will exist for Web experiences, high-quality video and audio in a pervasive way.” Make way for Third Life …
“Devices and services will be connected.” As an example, Gates talks about photos automatically being uploaded to digital-memory application.
6:54 p.m.: Gates back onstage discussing the coming transition in leadership at Microsoft when he will step down from his day-to-day role as the company’s chairman. He says Microsoft is aligned well for success with Steve Ballmer, Ray Ozzie and others.
Moving on … “The second digital decade heralds the following: high definition experience is everywhere.”
6:52 p.m.: Video ends to thunderous applause. UPDATE: Here’s the video:

6:50 p.m.: Footage of Gates cleaning out desk, taking box of office supplies to his Ford Focus. Ford Focus–now that’s funny.
Cut to Peter Jennings: “Let’s face it, all of us here at NBC News will miss reporting on this brilliant, powerful, sexy man who just doesn’t like to pay more than $7 on a haircut.”
6:49 p.m.: Gates calls Jon Stewart and asks about a co-anchor job. Stewart turns him down.
Gates calls Hillary Clinton. She turns him down as a running mate, so he calls Obama:
Gates: It’s Bill.
Obama: Bill Shatner?
Gates: No, Bill!
Obama: Bill Clinton?
6:48 p.m.: Steven Spielberg reviews Gates’s audition reel (”X-Men” and “Matrix” re-enactments; Gates in Wolverine get-up, Gates and Ballmer in Matrix-style black trench coats) and denies him a part in his next film.
6:47 p.m.: Footage of Gates calling Bono in the middle of a U2 concert. Gates plays guitar riff on “Guitar Hero” for Bono. Bono tells him there’s no place for him in U2. Which is OK, I’m sure, since there’s certainly no place for Bono at Microsoft.
6:46 p.m.: My God … Gates in recording studio with Jay-Z… Holy … Gates singing “Big Pimpin’.” Wild laughter and applause. “It was great,” Jay-Z tells Gates, before turning to the camera and muttering, “not so much.”
6:45 p.m.: Various Microsoft execs talking about Gates. Clip of Gates in office playing with action figures: “Never doubt the power of software.” Laughter.
Quickly followed by Gates in gym working out with Matthew McConaughey, who doesn’t really strike you as a Windows user.
6:44 p.m.: “This is my last keynote. Come July, it will be the first time I won’t be working at Microsoft since I was 17.” And here comes the inevitable farewell video ….
6:42 p.m.: He mentions the progression of digital entertainment–music, movies, photos. The trend is clear: all media and entertainment will be software driven in the second digital decade. And in the third, it will all be driven by Microsoft Windows! Muahahahahaha. Kidding … Moving on … “I’ll soon step down as chairman.”
6:40 p.m.: Gates finally takes the stage. He recalls his first keynote in 1994, a time when Windows ‘95 was first coming together. “It was the beginning of the first digital decade.” Ah yes, “The Digital Decade.”
6:39 p.m.: Here comes another silly video, this one set to “Believe in Magic,” featuring people from all walks of life extraordinarily happy to be using Microsoft products. They look like they’re all on Ecstasy. And it’s probably safe to say that nobody has ever looked like that while using a Microsoft product.
6:35 p.m.: Shapiro says Gates has given 10 CES keynotes, eight consecutively. He’s spoken at CES 11 times. Guess he must be the Guinness World Record holder. How ’bout that, huh?
6:33 p.m.: And here comes Gates. Wait–that’s not Gates. It’s Consumer Electronics Association President Gary Shapiro. OH RAPTURE! Disappointed applause. “In my opinion these are the best four days of the year,” says Shapiro. (Tell that to Steve Jobs next week.)
6:30 p.m.: Silly CES promo video… Correction: advertisement.
6:29 p.m.: Getting started right on time. Guess Jim Allchin and the Vista development team didn’t do Gates’s makeup this time around. Lights dim….
6:25 p.m.: In a few moments, Bill Gates, the Frank Sinatra of the Dat(a) Pack (Steve Jobs presumably in the Dean Martin role), will deliver his 11th Consumer Electronics Show keynote–and by many projections his last.
6:00 p.m.: The ballroom of the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino is pretty much packed, and like most things in Las Vegas it’s BIG. But it has to be the worst pre-keynote music EVER: from 1982 video game soundtrack to passed-out-after-the-rave techno to European disco to new wave. Really covering all the genres. At this rate, Bill Gates could take the stage to the theme from “The Dukes of Hazzard” or the “Annie” soundtrack.

Well, Apple Insider isn’t paying much mind to the sudden closure of its Mac rumor site brethren earlier this week. Citing the same sort of “people familiar with the matter” that got Think Secret into trouble, the site today reports that Apple plans to adopt Intel’s upcoming ultra-mobile Silverthorne chip in “not one but multiple products currently situated on its 2008 calendar year product roadmap.”

Silverthorne, part of Intel’s “Menlow” Mobile Internet Device platform, reportedly runs as fast as a second generation Pentium M processor, but consumes between half a watt and two watts of electrical power–about a tenth of the power consumed by a typical notebook processor. No wonder Apple’s said to be interested in the chip. It would appear to be perfect for a number of devices rumored to be secreted away in its product pipeline–the FlashBook, the multitouch Newton, the Mac tablet.

That said, we’ll likely not see it popping up in a 3G iPhone, though at first glance it would make sense there as well. “According to several iPhone teardowns, Apple is likely using the Samsung S3C6400, or some special equivalent built just for them, in the iPhone,” explains News.com’s Tom Krazit. “That chip is based on the ARM1176 core, which at 620MHz consumes just 279 milliwatts. That’s running all-out, whereas most of the time you’re actually going to be drawing much less power than that. Silverthorne, by contrast, will consume 500 milliwatts of power at minimum, and probably only when it’s doing nothing in idle mode. Those numbers just aren’t going to work in a phone, especially an Apple phone, if the company really is so concerned about power consumption that it has held off on releasing a 3G iPhone until the power consumption of that modem improves.”

If Jeff Bezos truly hopes to create “the iPod of reading,” observers say he’s going to have to do a hell of a lot better than Amazon’s new Kindle e-book reader. Because though Kindle, with its paperback-sized form factor and an electronic display that reportedly looks and reads like real paper, might project an aura of bookishness, it doesn’t project much of a value proposition.

Amazon has priced Kindle at $399. It’s offering digitally rendered books for download over the device’s wireless Whispernet service for an average price of $9.99 a book. And it’s peddling subscriptions to newspapers like the New York Times for up to $14.99 per month and blogs such as the Onion at 99 cents per month. This, despite the presumably vast disparity between the manufacturing costs of dead-tree publications and digital ones. Apparently to Amazon, economies of digital distribution don’t translate into lower prices for the consumer, but greater revenues for the company.

“This is the most important thing we’ve ever done,” Bezos told Newsweek. “It’s so ambitious to take something as highly evolved as the book and improve on it. And maybe even change the way people read.” Change the way people read? Seems doubtful–at this point at least. Especially when Apple could easily develop an e-book reader for the iPhone or the multitouch tablet it’s allegedly prepping for market, launch it in concert with an iTunes bookstore or a partnership with Google Book Search and, ba-da-bing, turn the Kindle into the Zune of e-book readers.

“Google’s Book Search project has already pumped much of the world’s printed matter into Google’s servers,” writes Forbes’ Brian Caulfield. “Downloads of classic titles, such as ‘Bleak House,’ can already be had for free. Mix Apple’s iTunes content distribution smarts with Google’s vast storehouse of content, and you’ll have an instant competitor to Kindle–one with a touch interface and the ability to play movies and music, too.”

Course, if the primary market Amazon’s gunning for here doesn’t quite pan out, there may be another worth targeting: the textbook market. Says Good Morning Silicon Valley’s John Murrell: “No more crushing backpack-load of tomes, no frustrating trips to the bookstore trying to find what you need in stock, and, for the publishers, no need to hold off updating until there’s enough to make a new edition. If the textbook industry could get together on an open standard format, if schools and/or the industry subsidized the hardware, if the electronic bookstore would allow for sale or rental, if the device allowed for things like automatic handling of citations and bibliography … well, that’s a lot of ifs, but I think there’s something there.”

Odd, isn’t it, that Google will award up to $30 million in prize money to anyone able to land a privately funded spacecraft on the moon, but it’s willing to pony up just $10 million to spur interest in development of its new Android platform for mobile devices. Apparently Google’s dominion over space figures higher on the list of company priorities than its dominion over the mobile market.

This morning, Google’s Open Handset Alliance released the Android Software Development Kit in concert with the Android Developer Challenge, a contest that will see Google doling out $10 million in prize money to programmers able to create workable applications for the platform.

“We’ve built some interesting applications for Android but the best applications are not here yet and that’s because they’re going to be written by developers,” Google co-founder Sergey Brin said in a statement. “We’d like to reward these developers and recognize them as much as possible.”

Cash prizes will range from $25,000 to $275,000. Half of the $10 million will be awarded for entries submitted between Jan. 2 and March 3 of next year. The other $5 million will be distributed in a second round that will start after the first Android-based phones arrive at market in the second half of 2008.

Android is built on a Linux 2.6 kernel and supports multitouch interaction, which means we’ll likely be seeing quite a bit of creativity on the platform.