tech news and opinions
We received news from a credible source that BestBuy Mobile will be getting an exclusive deal with Sprint for the Palm Pre release. For 60 days the number one consumer electronics retailer will be the only place where you can get your hands on the Palm Pre, besides Sprint of course.
CrunchGear received some information regarding Palms CES announcements. The announcements will include the new OS, “Nova,” which is said to be “amazing” and will have many applications ready for it when the first Nova phones ship. The operating system is said to be linux based and will have the standard calendar, contacts, and e-mail applications along with a media playback suite.
The phone that will be accompanying the release of Palm Nova will have a touchscreen and a slide out QWERTY keyboard. The image above is just a mockup of what the new hardware could look like.
Palms announcement should happen this Thursday at CES.
Exclusive: New Palm phone to have slide-down keyboard, large touchscreen.
Rumors have it that AT&T has been reallocating its EDGE service to the weaker 1900MHz band this move is supposed to improve 3G strength in HSPA devices.
I currently am relying on EDGE service with my first generation iPhone and even though I live in a small city of 30,000 or so I haven’t seen any signal issues even when I’m miles outside of town.
It’s odd that AT&T would decide to do this now, unless they are going to begin really pushing 3G coverage to more and more areas and (obviously) eventually phasing out 2G altogether.
I have a feeling that there won’t be too many people affected by this, hopefully AT&T will be smart enough to know where this strategy would work and where it wouldn’t be a good idea, but let’s face it, AT&T has made some mistakes in the past and will obviously make more in the future.
TechCrunch claims to have 3 independent sources telling them that Apple is expected to release a 7″ or 9″ tablet to be released this Fall. One of their sources even claims to have seen and handled the prototype and also says that Apple is talking to OEMs in Asia about mass production.
Apple has been experimenting internally with large form tablet devices for years, one source says, but there was concern that users wouldn’t like the device.
Rumors like this come and go but the fact that Michael Arrington would have 3 independent sources on the subject seems a little bit more concrete. I would have to say though that the idea that anyone close enough to the Apple “inner circle” to actually see or handle this yet to be released tablet wouldn’t be the kind that would go telling people about it.
I’m not going to rule out the idea of a device like this being made, in fact I’m sure Apple has experimented with it in the past and is probably doing so now, but I don’t know if I believe that Apple would be releasing one this year. I think the iPhoneOS is just too early on in its life span to be able to handle both a 3.5″ screen and a 7-9″ screen. And, certainly Apple wouldn’t want to take developers away from developing specifically for the “funnest iPod ever.”
If Apple was to make a tablet it would make much more sense for it to be running a full version of OS X modified enough to run a bit easier with just a touch screen.
TechCrunch has a run down of what Ballmer will (supposedly) be announcing at this years CES keynote.
Overall not a very interesting keynote but then again I’m not sure if Microsoft has announced anything “exciting” since Windows 95 (in my opinion at least, and I was only 7 years old in 1995!).
Ballmer’s CES Keynote Promises To Be A Snoozer Non-Announcements Revealed.
8 inch display at 1600×768 resolution
Windows Vista
1.33Ghz Processor (probably Atom)
Sony’s new high end netbook is called P for “Pocket” | 9 to 5 Mac.
I highly doubt that this is real, especially since if it was real then it would be an image thats copyright was owned by Apple, and Apple would have sent out takedown notices by now. but, since they haven’t sent them out yet it is safe to say that this image at least is fake.
But, you can’t rule out the possibility of an iPhone Nano completely since XSKN has already started selling skins for the yet to be announced iPhone Nano. Although I find it hard to believe Apple would make such a change to the iPhone platform this early on in its life you have to remember that XSKN also released iPhone 3G and second generation iPod Touch skins a bit early as well.
iPhone Nano Concept Photo? – Mac Rumors.
XSKN iPhone Nano cases go up for sale, rumor mill catches fire.
Let’s hope this one will be a little bit better than the G1, but I think most of the shortcomings weren’t in hardware but were problems with Android itself.
The T-Mobile G2, as the device will reportedly be called, will debut on January 26, according to reported by Cell Phone Signal. The new device is expected to have a 5-megapixel autofocus camera, VGA camera for video calls, a full touch screen, and Wi-Fi connectivity, according to the blog.
However, although Apple is expected to show off Snow Leopard at Macworld, the software is very unlikely to be in consumers’ hands until at least a month later – and more likely two or three months later. “I think it will be a major factor at Macworld. The question is when it is going to be available,” says Enderle.
It doesn’t seem unlikely, especially since Schiller has seemed to be part of almost every software demo I can remember (in the short few years that I’ve payed attention to Apple news). I’m really excited for Snow Leopard but am still trying to figure out if Apple would be charging the full $129 for the upgrade, I don’t think they will since there are no new user focused features.
Apple ready to show Snow Leopard’s spots | Technology | The Guardian.
It was pretty easy to assume that new Mac Minis and iMacs would use Nvidia chipsets but it wasn’t confirmed until a member of the InsanelyMac forums went looking through the extension files that ship with the latest MacBook and MacBook Pros and found references to the new models.
This I’m sure is a big deal to Mac Mini lovers as they will gather from this that at least the computer isn’t going away any time soon (as rumors of its demise have been floating for what seems like ages).
But, what we don’t know about these new models is when they are coming. If I was to guess I would say sometime around MacWorld but I wouldn’t assume that they would be mentioned on stage, especially since they probably aren’t going to see any more of a hardware upgrade then the MacBook and MacBook Pros recieved and they will most likely not be seeing any design changes. It is still hard to say what we are going to be seeing at MacWorld but I would expect to see Snow Leopard and probably not these new Minis and iMacs.
AppleInsider | New iMacs and Mac minis confirmed to use NVIDIA chipsets.
