iPad mini announced!

Apple announced an iPad mini that is as thin as pencil and weighs just over half a pound, as light as a pad of paper. It has a 7.9" display. Apple has made the iPad so that it has the same resolution as the 1024 x 768 iPad 2, so no extra work for developers. It sports a 720p FaceTime HD camera, a 5MP iSight camera, and a dual core A5 chip, as well as having LTE. And even though it's a smaller form factor, it still has a 10-hour battery life! It starts at $329 for a 16GB Wi-Fi only.

October 23rd

It's been awhile since I've written, since I've been busy, but there's news!! The rumors are confirmed; there is going to be an Apple event on October 23rd. Attendees began receiving invitations on Tuesday, according to iMore and Arstechnica. The tagline? "We've got a little more to show you." And interesting tagline, especially considering that all the rumors are pointing to the release of a smaller (little), 7.85" iPad. In addition, Apple is also rumored to refresh the iPad 3, with the new Lightning connector, as well as iMacs, Mac minis, 13-inch retina MacBook Pro, and the release of iTunes 11.


It's looking like it will be a very interesting event. The only thing that I'm almost completely sure about: the iPad mini (or the iPad Junior, as Dan Benjamin likes to call it), and the release of iTunes 11. There's been a lot of news about the rumored iPad, dating all the way back to February 15th with an article from the Wall Street Journal. Over the course of the last few months, there have been so many rumors about the smaller iPad that it lends quite a bit of credibility to the existence of such a device.
iTunes 11 was previewed at the iPhone 5 event, and the release date? October. It would make sense that iTunes 11 would be released this next Tuesday along with the iPad mini. We'll just have to wait to see then!

The September 12th event

It's official! The rumored September 12th event was  officially announced on the 4th! It is assumed by the invitation that this is the long awaited, long rumored iPhone 5 release. I've seen many, many crazy rumors about what the new iPhone might have/look like. However, some of the rumors I think are very likely. I'll cover a few of the most interesting rumors here.

• LTE. The iPad 3 already has LTE, and it would only make sense for the new iPhone to have the same technology. Of the many rumors floating around, I think this is the most likely one by far.
• A 4-inch screen. Many sites have already reported that the new iPhone will sport a new 4-inch display. It makes sense, considering that the 3.5 inch display is a bit small and cramped, especially next to other hot smartphones such as the 4.8-inch Galaxy S III, the 4.3-inch Nokia Lumia 900  and especially the gigantic 5.3-inch Galaxy Note. The original iPhone had a 3.5-inch display back when it was released in 2007, over 5 years ago. The industry has changed dramatically since the original release and I think it's time for change. Also, rumors are saying that the new iPhone won't be wider, just taller. This makes total sense, considering that scaling up the display will drop the DPI to a lower than retina resolution. If the iPhone 5 has the rumored screen it will also be 16:9, a nice change from the 4:3 of the iPad and the 3:2 of all the other iPhones. Rene Ritchie has a good post over on iMore that explains this in much more detail. I think this would be a welcome and very likely change to the next generation iPhone.
• A new dock connector. Cnet and several other sites have circulated a rumor that Apple is changing the 30-pin dock connector. However, they can't all agree on what the new dock connector will be. Some say a 19-pin connector, some say 9-pin, others say 8-pin...it's all a crazy mess. One thing they do all agree on is that the 30-pin is out and a new connector is coming to take its place. I don't really have a strong opinion on this one. The 30-pin connector is over a decade old, since it shipped with the very first iPod, released on 2001. Technology has come a long way since 2001, and what was once accomplished by a large 30-pin connector can now be replaced by a tiny connector that could be even smaller than USB. I don't really know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. On the one hand, a smaller and potentially thinner data port will allow for a thinner and lighter iPhone. One the other hand, many people have a vested interest in the 30-pin connector. They've bought charging cables, docks, speakers, alarm clocks, and even cars that all have the same 30-pin connector. But, iLounge announced that Apple is rumored to sell an adapter. That brings along a whole set of other problems. The adapter is rumored to cost about $10, which is far from expensive, but a little adapter can easily get lost or misplaced. And what happens when you forget the adapter? More than likely you'll end up with a couple in each room, one in your bag, pocket, purse, etc. That $10 when multiplied out can get pricey. All that being said, I still don't have a strong opinion on the subject. I think Apple, whether or not it decides to change the dock connector, will have a good reason to change the connector.

Those are just a few of the most compelling and interesting rumors. More rumors can be found on various iPhone 5 rumor roundup pages. I will leave you one last piece of information, a leaked commercial for the iPhone 5. Watch it here:

WWDC 2012 Keynote video

The WWDC Keynote from this morning is now available from Apple. You can watch the full video of the event here.

WWDC 2012 coming up: A new MacBook Pro in the works?

The first banners for WWDC 2012 have gone up at the Moscone Center. The banner reads "WWDC 2012: Where great ideas go on to do great things." The banner sports many popular iOS apps, such as Facebook (very interesting to me, as Apple hasn't been on good terms with Facebook), Evernote, and Netflix. A high-res image is available here, thanks to MacRumors.
WWDC is only 4 days away. I am really excited to see what is unveiled at the keynote on Monday. I can't wait for the event, so I decided I'd write up a blog post about the rumors surrounding the supposed next generation MacBook Pro...
Earlier this week, Weiphone disclosed the alleged specs for the next generation 13 inch MacBook Pro. Here's the picture (click for bigger size):

If you look under the display size, you notice that the resolution is only 1280 by 800. This resolution is not even close to what Apple would consider a retina display. However, an anonymous person sent in the alleged specs for the 15 inch MacBook Pro to 9to5Mac. Here's the picture (again, click for bigger size):

Looking under the display specs, you can see that the resolution is said to be 2560 by 1600 pixels. That resolution is high enough to be retina grade. (More information about what is a retina quality display)

Another pointer to the possibility of a high-res display for Apple's laptops is the report that HiDPI retina images have been found in OS X. Several different websites have posted articles about their findings. Here's a picture from MacRumors showing the retina graphics:

Left: Retina graphics loading
Right: Non-retina graphics

This pictures are from the Messages Beta, released on February 16th, with the developer preview of OS X Mountain Lion. 

I am really hoping for a retina display. However, websites that don't have retina images look really bad on a retina display, as seen when the iPad 3 was released. I would only get a retina display MacBook Pro on the condition that I can set the resolution lower so that websites don't look so bad. There are a number of articles covering this. Unfortunately, web standards haven't caught up to the retina display. You can use CSS media queries to serve high res images to devices with retina display, but it's not the most efficient way. There is a proposal to add support for loading different images to HTML, but that could take a long time to implement.

More rumors about the MacBook Pro...

Cnet posted an article two days ago about the "leaked" spec sheets for the MacBook Pro. According to the source, the next generation MacBook Pro will have two USB 3.0 ports. I sure hope so, as various Thunderbolt drives range from $300 - $400 to well over $2K, whereas a 2TB USB 3.0 hard drive costs only about $200. Since I do a fair amount of video editing, I can't use a standard USB 2.0 drive for storing video files. I currently use a Firewire 800 drive, but I'd like to get something a little faster. Although USB 3.0 isn't as fast as Thunderbolt, it is quite a bit faster than Firewire 800 (picture from Apple's Thunderbolt page):

In addition, according to the Cnet article, Apple plans to refresh at least four out of its five computer lines, the MacBook Pro, the MacBook Air, the iMac, and either the Mac mini or the Mac Pro. The MacBook Pro could also be thinner according to MacRumors. This will require taking out the optical drive, the Ethernet port, and the Firewire 800 port. This was talked about on MacBreak Weekly episode 299. I don't really have an opinion on this rumor. I do use the Ethernet port quite often, but there are adapters available, so the thinner form factor would be an okay tradeoff.

I hope this article has been useful and informative for you as a reader. If you have a comment, by all means, leave it! 

Apple announced Q2 earnings for 2012

Apple released its Q2 2012 earnings on April 24th. The company sold over 35 million iPhones in this last quarter, down from 37 million iPhones in Q1 of this year (Q1 report). Apple sold over 11 million iPads, as well as more than 7 million iPods, and 4 million Macs. The sales have decreased a bit from last quarter's earnings, but Apple is certainly still growing. What do you think? What are next quarter's earnings going to look like?