The diligent ppl from PreCentral.net report, what this automn will come from Palm:
Read all of the news in detail at PreCentral.net…
Tablet PCs seem to be the next big thing. After Apple’s smartphone revolution with their iPhone, it seems the next big market revolution might be the Tablet PCs.
Steve Ballmer of Microsoft introduced one of the Tablet PCs – a prototype of the HP Slate – last week on the CES 2010. In his presentation the HP Slate is of course running Windows 7, what else, but there are rumors it might also be shipped with Google’s Android. We suppose Amazon’s Steve Bezos will not really like it, because Steve Ballmer showed the HP Slate running the PC Kindle application.
Dell seems also be ready to enter the Touch PCs’ market with the Dell Slate. Gizmodo.de got photos of a prototype of Dell’s Slate. Dell’s Slate has a 5-inch screen, most likely an OLED, a SIM slot and a 5 megapixel camera.
If Apple was a typical tech company they would also have showed something to the public on the CES, but Apple isn’t. Anyway there are enuff rumors floating around about Apple’s Touch-Mac – rumored to be named Apple iSlate. According to Reuters Apple might be launching the iSlate in Q2/2010. It is expected to have a 10 or 11-inch display and a aluminium case. TheStreet.com reports that Apple’s Slate will be shipped with a P A Semi CPU, instead of Intel based Atom CPUs. This could be also the reason, why Atom CPU has been removed from Mac OS X Snow Leopard’s latest update 10.6.2. It is widely expected that Apple will announce the iSlate on Januar 27th, 2010.
Kara Swisher of AllThingsD interviewed Mr. Podfather Prefather Jon Rubinstein of Palm at the CES. Although he seems to have been highly involved in the development of Apple’s iPhone back in the days when he was Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, he said he never used an iPhone. Well… All in all he wasn’t telling too much, but when Kara asked him, if Palm will do a Tablet aswell, Rubinstein answered: “(..) we designed webOS to scale and it could be used in different form factors.”
In contrast to Apple’ AppStore, Palm today announced, they will also allow distribution of Palm Pre applications outside of Palm’s App Catalog.
The WebOS developer program will officially start in december 2009 for an annual fee of 100US$. The annual fee does not apply for open source applications, as they will be taken into the App Catalog and distributed for free.
For commercial apps aswell as Apple with their AppStore, Palm with their App Catalog will charge 30%, while 70% will go back to the developer.
Adobe released a video yesterday featuring the Palm Pre running Adobe Flash. Adrian Ludwig from Adobe Labs shows websites running with Flash Player 10.1 beta on the semi-official iPhone challenger Palm Pre.
In their official press statement Adobe say
“A public developer beta of the browser-based runtime is expected to be available for Windows® Mobile, Palm® webOS and desktop operating systems including Windows, Macintosh and Linux later this year.”
Developers may sign up for notification about the Adobe Flash beta for the Palm Pre.
Interestingly neither this statement nor the statement on Adobe Labs include a single word about Apple’s iPhone or the iPhone OS X. Could this mean Flash will not come anytime soon to the iPhone?
While letting those rumors dwell, enjoy the Palm Pre video featuring Adobe Flash…
The Video is courtesy by Adobe 2009.
» Adobe’s press statement on BusinessWire.com…
» Adobe’s statement on Adobe Labs…
» Adobe Flash for Palm Pre notification registration…
» Adobe TV featuring the Palm Pre (currently unavailable)…
We’re almost sure, you read it already all over the net: Steve Jobs is back in his office. Rumors say he was transplanted a liver about two months ago and he is in good health condition.
Our comment
Does all these news affect anything? Currently it seems no.
Apple’s presentations can also be run by Tim Cook, Phil Schiller, Bertrand Serlet, and Scott Forstall as we’ve seen on the last WWDC. But what about the future? What about the products?
This year’s WWDC
This year’s WWDC did not have new big products. It was all about the operating system update to 10.6. (called Snow Leopard) and iPhone 3GS that mainly has been speed improved and now got features that many people said to be overdue.
The future?
What will be the next WWDC presentation about? Yet another Mac Book Super Pro? Or another iPhone 3Gs2?
Who will be the wholistic spin doctor who feeds the company with ideas and innovations? This is the main question. And we’re gonna find out within the next few years.
Competition
We suppose competition will become harder at least in the field of cell phones. As Palm hired Apple’s iPod architect Jon Rubinstein three years ago it seems Apple has lost someone knowing how to design user interfaces for digital media.
What leads us to the bold question: why not buying Palm to stop those “separatistic” tendencies and make Jon Rubinstein Steve Job’s successor?
Apple’s policy to upgrade devices once a year seems also to apply to the iPhone. A new iPhone – 3rd generation – is expected to be released at the end of june/beginning of july.
Rumors are circulating about the following features:
Will the 3rd gen iPhone be the same success story like the 1st and the 2nd generation? Let’s see.
We are very curious on the battle against the Palm Pre, that has been designed by the former Apple Manager and iPod architect Jon Rubinstein.
By the way: iPhoneBuzz.com has already released a comprehensive comparison between iPhone OS 3.0 beta and the Palm Pre. And StuffTV.com yet allows themselves to summarize the Linux based Palm Pre will be superiour to the iPhone. See here:
The News
According to several U.S. journalists, Apple will present the iPhone firmware 3.0 tomorrow. As of now there are some rumors, that it eventually will contain:
Comment
As a normal cell fon user you may ask if this is really worth the news, since both MMS and tethering is standard in almost any 10US$ cell. Well you are right. But this is the Apple world. Apple knows by including these features their clan of fanboys will immediately be satisfied. The internet will be immediately full of flames if anyone utters criticism. Anyway we don’t believe it will have all those three features. It will have one. Firmware 4.0 will than have another of these and so on.
And there is still the question of Sun Java or Adobe Flash. What about these? Will we have them in firmware 8.0 or never? We really like the iPhone’s UI. It definitely brought the mobile internet thing major steps forward, but we expect the iPhone’s time is up. We currently recommend to not buy an iPhone or GPhone, but wait for the Palm Pre with WebOS.
Did you know the Palm Pre is beeing developed by the former Apple iPod creator Jon Rubinstein?