At long last, the Palm Pre has a price and a release date. Ending months of rumor and speculation, Palm and Sprint said this morning that the device will arrive at market nationwide June 6. Price: $199.99 with a two-year service agreement and after a cheesy $100 mail-in rebate.
Palm’s too-long-in-coming smartphone, the Pre, seems on track for an early June launch. People briefed on the company’s plans tell the New York Times that Sprint will begin peddling the device the first week of June. That gibes with what I’ve been hearing as well, so it’s perhaps reasonable to assume that the June 5 street date batted around these past few weeks is a solid one.
This morning we learned that Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference does not herald the return of CEO Steve Jobs. Now comes word that it may not herald the announcement of company’s next-generation iPhone, either.
If/when Apple uncrates its next-generation iPhone at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June, it will be identical to its predecessor in physical design and boast only a few modest upgrades. This according to the latest rumor making the rounds, which describes the new device as a near “repeat” of the iPhone 3G.
The release of Palm’s bet-the-company handset, the Pre, is imminent–perhaps as soon as June 5, if a document obtained by Boy Genius Report turns out to be the real deal.
June 8. That’s the day Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference kicks off and the day the company is expected to uncrate its next-generation iPhone. Could it also be the day after Palm rolls out its new Pre handset? The latest rumors suggest it is, positing June 7 as one of the release windows for the Pre and noting that the company is casting a viral video campaign slated to run through that month as well. It’s an intriguing thought, but would Palm really do such a thing?
Market source reports from Taiwanese trade mags are best taken with a grain of salt, if not an entire salt flat–particularly if they concern Apple. That said, claims today that Cupertino has ordered a bunch of 3.2-megapixel CMOS image sensors for its next-generation iPhone seem entirely reasonable, if only because the device’s current camera is so poor.
Though it made no mention of a next-generation handset at its iPhone OS 3.0 preview last week, Apple is clearly hard at work on one. And if history is any guide, the company will bring it to market sometime in mid-June just as it did the iPhone 3G last year. And if history is any guide, this new iPhone will be a great improvement over its predecessor. So “100 percent confirmed” reports leaking out of AT&T claiming Cupertino is doing exactly that aren’t all that interesting.
Apple this morning announced an invitation-only event at the company’s Town Hall in Cupertino. As you can see from the invitation at right, the focus is clearly notebooks. It appears those alleged photos of the Apple next-generation MacBook Pro casing that have been floating around recently may be the real deal. Same goes for rumors of a new $800 MacBook.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
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