Doubtful

Apple doesn’t comment on rumors or give users a roadmap to the future so no one is quite sure what today’s press conference about iPhone 3.0 will reveal. That doesn’t mean you can’t dream (for a few more hours anyway, after that your hopes for an iPhone nano will be smashed against the unyielding wall of reality) for nifty new features. Macworld has done just that with a list of fifteen things they’d like to see revealed at today’s event.

All the usual suspects are on the list: cut and paste, Spotlight, tethering etc. The more interesting thing about the list isn’t what is there but how basic the stuff on the list is. It’s basically fifteen items of “Wy the hell hasn’t this been here since the first iPhone came out?”  A little depressing really but it is important to remember that the iPhone excels at usability. Sure a lot of phones can do everything on the list but none of them do it very easily.

Yes, the Pre might annihilate the iPhone. It is possible that the pre will completely dominate the smart phone market. It seems unlikely when the Pre available only on Sprint but it’s possible. But what isn’t possible is that the Pre will dominate the smartphone market because of the six reasons in the video.

Reason the 1: Multitouch much improved.
The thinking here is that the Multitouch on the Pre is so much better than the iPhone that people will flock to it. It makes sense, people love pinching and zooming and all but the Multitouch on the Pre is more complex. More complexity is better for geeks but not better for consumers. Palm must keep the Pre intuitive. Whi knows how that will play out.

Reason the 2: It’s built to multitask.
The video narrator explains that the Pre is built for Multitasking, see it has linux at the heart of the operating system. Two things here: first most consumers, and that is what the iPhone is aimed at don’t care about multitasking. Secondly, the iPhone is based on OS X… more...

You know what would make the iPhone even better? If it were perfectly round. Actually, that’s not even remotely true, browsing the net and so forth is much better on a squarish device since the net is designed for computer screens. But just because the general take is that squarish shape is the most logical option for a cell phone screen doesn’t mean everyone thinks that is the current design of phones is the ultimate in phone design.

Take this perfectly round, touch screen capable phone concept phone from Motorola.

Gah! Okay, so Motorola is calling this a digital butler and stressing the social networking bits of the device. But it has a built in accelerometer, 4 G connectivity, a built in projector and (I’ll guess) an App Store so the company can call it a digital butler but most everyone else will just call it ugly.

Apple doesn’t want other folks using multi touch on iPhone competitors. The position is understandable, Apple sees multi touch as proprietary intellectual property. The problem with relying on patents and such to protect your product is that someone will come along with something better. That something better might be on the way.

Some folks at MIT have put together a borgish looking device that responds to hand gestures and projects the screen onto a flat surface. They call the tech Sixth Sense and the device that takes advantage of it Wear Ur World. One supposes that naming things isn’t the strong point of MIT types. Taking a look at the thing and generating a mental image of the device after some industrial design will give you a distinct feeling that you might be looking at the next big thing.

via Cnet

If you’ve followed Apple for any amount of time you know the deal about MacWorld. For true Mac geeks MacWorld is like Christmas for a six year old. Six year olds believe a oddly dressed fat guy is going to come down the chimney and leave them unspeakably cool toys that they will play with every day for the rest of their lives. Mac fans don’t believe anything that absurd. No, Mac fans believe some uniformed magic Guy will walk out on stage and announce magical toys you’ll use for the rest of your life.

You remember from your childhood that half the fun of Christmas was imagining what you might get and Mac fans (and now iPhone fans) are no different when it comes to MacWorld. Instead of shaking boxes MacWorld followers go on rumors and clues. Well mostly rumors and the more legit a rumor sounds the better.

All that out of the way the latest rumor gaining credibility is… the iPhone nano. Let me be perfectly clear, the iPhone nano is pure rumor so don’t save your cash expecting it to happen. But if you really want to shake the… more...

“We think there is strong reception of AAPL’s new iPhone 3G Gift Card program,” Wu wrote in a report to clients Wednesday, “where the process of giving the iPhone as a gift is greatly simplified without the need for activation and personal information. … We estimate several hundred thousand to one million units could be impacted.”

That’s Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu commenting about Apple’s iPhone Gift card prospects as reported by Fortune.

The article continues to explain the upside of gift cards for Apple (more cash) and the downsides (the recipient probably won’t activate the gift card until after Christmas). For Apple any gift card sale is a good news and an unactivated gift card sale is pure awesome (more on this later).

Will people really be buying these things up and giving them as Christmas presents? First off, unless you’re buying a Chris Howard a gift card for vegemite there’s a no way to know if the recipient is really going to use it. This is doubly true with the iPhone. An iPhone gift card is kind of like giving someone a puppy, you save them the expense… more...