Haptic Feedback Coming To iPhone? Haptic feedback would go a long way to silencing complaints about the iPhone’s on-screen keyboard. If it worked, that’s. I tried out several force-feedback handsets at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and was consistently disappointed. The only…
Haptic feedback would go a long way to silencing complaints about the iPhone’s on-screen keyboard. If it worked, that’s. I tried out several force-feedback handsets at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and was consistently disappointed. The only advantage is that you know the phone has recognized your button press. The small vibrations do nothing to help you navigate a keyboard by touch. In short, current haptics do nothing that a click or beep couldn’t do.
That hasn’t stopped loose-lipped execs from Immersion Corporation bragging that their company is in talks with Apple about a licensing deal. Immersion provides haptic solutions to many phone companies already.
I can’t really see the point, but then, I can’t touch-type anyway. Even if this rumor turns out to be true, and if the tech actually makes it out of Cupertino’s super-secret labs, don’t expect anything in this Summer’s new iPhone 2.0. There’s simply not enough time.
If you’re a laptop-toting AT&T internet customer, your trips to Starbucks are about to get cheaper: AT&T is rolling out Wi-Fi access at more than 7,000 Starbucks locations around the U.S. The service, unlike the T-Mobile Wi-Fi currently available in…
If you’re a laptop-toting AT&T internet customer, your trips to Starbucks are about to get cheaper: AT&T is rolling out Wi-Fi access at more than 7,000 Starbucks locations around the U.S. The service, unlike the T-Mobile Wi-Fi currently available in most Starbucks stores, will be free to “qualifying” AT&T broadband customers. “Qualifying” means customers who subscribe to the company’s higher-speed residential broadband service, small business broadband packages, and AT&T U-Verse packages.
Customers of AT&T’s cellular service, including iPhone-toting, EDGE-using suckers like me, will still have to pony up for full wireless access, though the company is promising “a mix of free and paid connection options.” In the San Antonio stores where the rollout begins this day, customers can purchase a two-hour pass for $4, or order a monthly subscription for $20.
AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson offered the following statement, helpfully translated into more intelligible Swedish Chef-ese by the encheferizer.
“Veet zee pooer ooff oooor Vee-Fee netvurk, und thruoogh oooor pertnersheep veet Sterboocks, ve’re-a strengzeeneeng oooor ebeelity tu meet zee needs ooff tudey’s mubeele-a cunsoomer furtooelly unyvhere-a und iferyvhere-a,” Stephenson stated. “Expundeeng oooor reech ecruss cumpuny-oopereted Sterboocks luceshuns neshunveede-a helps us breedge-a zee gep betveee oooor vured und vureless ooffffereengs und effffurms ET&T’s cummeetment tu cunnect peuple-a veet zeeur vurlds, iferyvhere-a zeey leefe-a und vurk. Bork bork bork!”
Apple might not be recession proof, but it’s doing surprisingly well for all that investor hand-wringing and stock trashing nonsense that went on earlier this year. While the company wasn’t able to repeat its record-breaking first quarter performance, it did…
Apple might not be recession proof, but it’s doing surprisingly well for all that investor hand-wringing and stock trashing nonsense that went on earlier this year. While the company wasn’t able to repeat its record-breaking first quarter performance, it did set a March quarter record for revenue and earnings and once again beat Wall Street’s estimates.
Indeed, it would appear the stagnant economy is having virtually no effect on Mac sales. Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer stated the company sold 2,289,000 of the computers during the quarter, a 51 percent unit growth and 54 percent revenue growth over the year-ago quarter. That’s more than two and a half times the overall market growth rate for PCs, too.
Interestingly, it appears that MacBooks, Macbook Pros (and yes, even MacBook Airs) are continuing to fly off the shelves. Apple said laptops saw unit and revenue growth of 61 and 58 percent over the same period last year. Even more surprising, unit and revenue were actually up, 7 and 5 percent, respectively, from Q1. Yes, that would be the record-breaking holiday quarter. While Apple didn’t break sales down into precise categories, it’s safe to assume a lot of that money came from new MacBook Pro and MacBook Air purchases.
In total, the company reported revenue of $7.51 billion, up 43 percent year-over-year, which was also more than $500,000 above Wall Street estimates.
For the quarter, Oppenheimer stated the company moved:
10,644,000 million iPods, representing one percent unit growth and eight percent revenue growth over the year-ago quarter.
1,703,000 iPhones, which falls somewhere in the middle of analyst estimates which were 1.5 to 2 million. Total iPhone-related revenue recognized for the quarter was $378 million.
During the call, Oppenheimer also said Apple generated about $4 billion in cash flow from operations in the first half of fiscal 2008, which yields an ending cash balance of $19.4 billion. Not too shabby.
Regarding the ongoing iPhone shortage, COO Tim Cook would only say that Apple is still committed to hitting the 10 million mark by the end of the year. “At this point, both inventories in stores and the channel are low,” he stated. “We believe the reason for this is that there are more phones being bought with the intention of being locked, which is a significant number.”
Unfortunately, Cook didn’t offer any estimates this time about what that number is, but he did state the company continues to see this trend “as a proxy for the worldwide demand for the phone.”
“We’re on target to roll out into more countries in Europe and Asia later in the year,” he said.
Figuring in those 1.7 million in iPhone sales for the quarter, that now means Apple has shipped about 5.7 million phones worldwide.
On a related note, Cook also told listeners that developer demand for the iPhone SDK continues to be strong. So far, 200,000 developers have downloaded kit, he stated, and more are being added each week.
As for the dwindling iPod sales, there weren’t too many surprises during the call. Oddly, it appears we’re starting to see a reversal trend when it comes to iPod revenue and unit sale numbers from a couple years ago. Whereas during the second quarter of 2005 and 2006, iPod unit sales were up 24 precent and revenue was down one percent. This quarter, sales were barely up a measly one percent while revenue was up 8 percent from the year ago quarter. That seems to confirm that those buying the now ubiquitous devices are opting for the higher priced models like the Touch and Classic.
Apple stock was down a fraction of a percent in after hours trading at $162.80.
If a Palluxo.com source is to be believed, Apple is currently in talks with Immersion Corp. regarding haptic technology implementation for the iPhone. Immersion Corp. solutions have been implemented in Samsung handsets in the past and it now looks like Apple want in on the action. The conjecture gathers weight thanks to Clent Richardson, a former Apple executive that has just been appointed as Immersion Corporation’s CEO.
According to Palluxo.com, the two companies have already met, with a follow up meeting planned for next week to discuss licensing terms of Immersion’s haptic technology. The iPhone would likely receive force feedback via inbuilt sensors, meaning a vibration of sorts would be output at the touch of on screen buttons, which would make the absence of a physical QWERTY that much more bearable. We’d probably give our right bionic arm (if we had one) for such haptic feedback on the iPhone, so we’re hoping these rumorings are as solid as well formed stool. Until we hear something concrete, we’ll keep you entertained with poo jokes. (See above.) [Palluxo]
The Optimus Maximus Keyboard Is Now Available For Purchase, If You’re Filthy Rich Art Lebedev’s Optimus Maximus keyboard, with its 133 tiny OLED display keys, is finally available to the general public (or more likely, photo-shopping enthusiasts) on ThinkGeek.com. The keyboard was only previously available through a limited pre-ordered list at the Lebedev…
Art Lebedev’s Optimus Maximus keyboard, with its 133 tiny OLED display keys, is finally available to the general public (or more likely, photo-shopping enthusiasts) on ThinkGeek.com. The keyboard was only previously available through a limited pre-ordered list at the Lebedev website. Each key can be individually programmed to display different tasks, like playing tiny movies, HTML codes, or your favorite websites.
But if you thought that the price might have come down to bring in the curious consumer, you’re wrong. And endearingly naïve. At $1,600, it costs more than a few iPhones, most quality laptops, and even a couple of Danny Dumas or Brian Lam haircuts. Heck, you could even take a round trip to see Lebedev himself in Europe – why don’t you buy him a beer in Russia’s most expensive pub for coming up with such a cool and crazy-cracky product? Or you can stare at tiny screens and see your own fonts come to life, which is its own type of fun.
The first allegedly-leaked shots of the 3G iPhone arrived earlier this month. Yesterday, Engadget claimed that the iPhone was going to look all black and shiny, like in the pic. (Although they didn’t say that was a pic of the stated unit.) Today, what we know for sure is that the thing in the photo is just a protection case available for the current iPhone out of Hong Kong. While it’s logical to assume that 3G will be in the next iPhone, we still have to wait to see if its all-black color, the GPS, or any of the other predictions are true or not. [winandmac]
Are you one of those lousy parents that won’t buy a dog for your kids but try to pass off a goldfish as a pet that’s just as good? Well, if you want to help your case that fish are just as fun as an adorable golden retriever, there’s the R2 Fish School. It’ll let you train a goldfish to do such tricks as play basketball and swim around objects in its tank. The excitement never ends, as the ridiculous instructional clip after the jump demonstrates.
Essentially, it looks like this is your basic reward system, with a special food wand making it easier to jam food right in your goldfish’s face when it does something right. Of course, you can’t scratch it behind the ears or take it for walks or go outside and play with it, but a coldhearted parent like you doesn’t care about things like that, do you? [R2 Fish School]
Little Lego Men Assist in iPhone Unboxing The ritual of unboxing has taken many forms over the years. There’s the euphoric (and overtly sexual), the grandiose, and then there are the much rarer instances of creative unboxings. This pic gallery of little Lego men methodically unpacking an…
The ritual of unboxing has taken many forms over the years. There’s the euphoric (and overtly sexual), the grandiose, and then there are the much rarer instances of creative unboxings. This photo gallery of tiny Lego men methodically unpacking an iPhone definitely falls into the latter category. In case you were wondering, Lego storm troopers are smitten with Apple products, too.
Ryan at Engadget says they’ve been chatting up one of the divinely chosen to lay eyes on the second-gen iPhone, and they’re claiming a couple details we haven’t heard before, as well as the by-now familiar: 3G and real GPS—expected, and hoped for. Metal backing out, glossy black is in, with chrome volume buttons, which should help with signal issues. It’s also a little fatter (probably cause of GPS and battery, which still isn’t removable) but you can toss your stupid headphone adapter. The screen is the same size and res (we’d heard they were trying to move to plastic, but doesn’t seem to be the case). He’s guessing it could ship in July. Update: To be clear, neither us nor Engadget were claiming that this is an actual pic, just illustrative (besides, it’s a few weeks old, see the in-body link). [Engadget]
L.A.-based artist Nick Rodrigues’ “Porta-Party” is a roughly iPod-shaped booth you can walk into. Just shut the door, crank it up, and get crazy. But watch out: Once you go in, it appears that the iPod’s screen displays a video…
L.A.-based artist Nick Rodrigues’ “Porta-Party” is a roughly iPod-shaped booth you can walk into. Just shut the door, crank it up, and get crazy. But watch out: Once you go in, it appears that the iPod’s screen displays a video of whatever is happening inside. So if you were thinking of using this as, state, a makeout booth — like LAist editor Zach Behrens — you better be a bit of an exhibitionist.
“Is this a statement about isolation or just a fun place to make out and do other scandalous activities?” Rodrigues writes on his site. “Who knows, what I do know is it’s available for rent at your next party.”
Haptic feedback would go a long way to silencing complaints about the iPhone’s on-screen keyboard. If it worked, that’s. I tried out several force-feedback handsets at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and was consistently disappointed. The only advantage is that you know the phone has recognized your button press. The small vibrations do nothing to help you navigate a keyboard by touch. In short, current haptics do nothing that a click or beep couldn’t do.
If a Palluxo.com source is to be believed, Apple is currently in talks with Immersion Corp. regarding haptic technology implementation for the iPhone. Immersion Corp. solutions have been implemented in 
The first 
Are you one of those lousy parents that won’t buy a dog for your kids but try to pass off a goldfish as a pet that’s just as good? Well, if you want to help your case that fish are just as fun as an adorable golden retriever, there’s the R2 Fish School. It’ll let you train a goldfish to do such tricks as play basketball and swim around objects in its tank. The excitement never ends, as the ridiculous instructional clip after the jump demonstrates.
Ryan at Engadget says they’ve been chatting up one of the divinely chosen to lay eyes on the second-gen iPhone, and they’re claiming a couple details we haven’t heard before, as well as the by-now familiar: 3G and real GPS—expected, and hoped for. Metal backing out, 
L.A.-based artist Nick Rodrigues’ “Porta-Party” is a roughly iPod-shaped booth you can walk into. Just shut the door, crank it up, and get crazy. But watch out: Once you go in, it appears that the iPod’s screen displays a video of whatever is happening inside. So if you were thinking of using this as, state, a makeout booth — like 
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