A mockup image of the new iPhone which incorporates the recently leaked bezel has been posted online by MacRumors member, Carniphage.
The image depicts what is rumored to be a new black bezel with a redesigned ear speaker. You can take a look below.
(via iClarified.com)
Tuesday marks the end of Apple’s one-price-fits-all model at the iTunes Store, where songs will now fall into one of three pricing tiers, with many of the most popular tracks commanding a 30% increase from 99 cents to $1.29.
Many songs will remain priced at 99 cents while some older and less popular tracks are expected to fall to 69 cents. But as of Tuesday morning, those cheaper songs were few and far between. Instead, Apple appears to have made price increases its first priority.
As of press time, 6 of the top 10 and 29 of the top 100 songs on the digital download service saw their price increase 30 cents to a $1.29. Many of those same songs remain at 99 cents over at the Cupertino-based company’s largest digital rival, the Amazon MP3 Store, where none of the top 10 singles and only 10 of the top 100 songs are priced above 99 cents.
Apple has long placed the blame for this week’s hikes on the record labels, who are struggling to adjust to the digital marketplace for their content now controlled by iTunes, which last year became the world’s largest retailer of music.
The iTunes operator said back in January that this week’s changes would correlated directly with new prices commanded by record labels, who otherwise would not have been willing to make their music catalogs available on the service in unprotected iTunes Plus format.
“[B]ased on what the music labels charge Apple, songs on iTunes will be available at one of three price points — 69 cents, 99 cents and $1.29 — with many more songs priced at 69 cents than $1.29,” said Apple chief executive Steve Jobs.
While iTunes has rejuvenated interest in music and drawn in buyers that may have joined the masses of pirates on peer-to-peer file sharing networks, it’s fragmented sales for labels at the same time. The lone sore spot has been a loss of high-margin album sales with consumers instead taking advantage of iTunes’ a-la-carte format to cherry pick their favorite tracks without forking over the full $10+ that the service — and traditional brick-and-mortar music stores — charge for an artist’s complete work.
As such, the labels are now scrambling to find ways to cash in on their most popular offerings. One approach has been a concept called iTunes Pass. Similar to an iTunes Season Pass for TV shows, the digital offering combines upcoming album releases with exclusive singles, videos, and other media that will be made available to subscribes over the period of several weeks or months for a premium price.
In February, Warner’s Reprise Records kicked-off the program with an $18.99 iTunes Pass that coincided with the release of Depeche Mode’s new album Sounds of the Universe. According to the Wall Street Journal, this week will see the second installment of an iTunes Pass — a $17 subscription from Sony Corp.’s Epic Records for the pop band the Fray.
“It’s one more thing that helps offset the negative,” said Apple iTunes chief Eddy Cue, who sees iTunes Pass as a means for record labels to keep their album releases relevant for longer periods of time. “[Once a traditional album] gets out the door, you can’t update it, you can’t refresh it, you can’t do anything to it.”
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iPhone camera. Image via pocketables.net
Apple has placed orders with a local component supplier for new parts that suggest it will upgrade the iPhone’s camera to 3.2-megapixels when it introduces new models a bit later this year.
Citing its usual ‘market sources,’ Taiwanese rumor site DigiTimes claims Apple has tapped Sunnyvale, Calif.-based OmniVision to supply it with 3.2-megapixel CMOS image sensors for the next iPhone, which is expected in the coming months.
The report adds some corroboration to an earlier AppleInsider report, which similarly cited sources as saying the iPhone maker was due to include a higher-resolution camera with its upcoming handsets that would also be capable of capturing video.
Both the original iPhone and the iPhone 3G shipped with a 2-megapixel camera and neither version supports video recording.
There has also been some anecdotal, albeit unintentional, evidence provided by Apple that hints at iPhones with new video features. In particular, a MobileMe control panel that shipped as part of the first beta of iPhone Software 3.0 included a screen labeled “Publish Video,” presumably to facilitate uploads of videos captured with the upcoming device to users’ MobileMe websites.
Separately, DigiTimes claims that OmniVision “is also said to have secured 5-megapixel CIS orders for another Apple product expected to be launched later in the year.” The fabless CMOS image sensor designer reportedly beat out STMicroelectronics and Aptina Imaging for the orders.
(via AppleInsider.com)
9to5Mac has posted a list of ten signs that points to a new iPhone coming soon.
THE TEN SIGNS:
1. AT&T is selling refurbs for $99 (again) with activation and plan
2. O2 is giving away free iPhones with their low cost plans (not their expensive plans)
3. AT&T and Apple are now selling iPhones without contract (or second line) knowing that more will go Jailbroken this way. (If you have $600-$700 to spend)
4. France is now selling them unlocked at department stores.
5. China Unicom might get offloaded a few million on May 17th, ahead of new model.
6. AT&T executives have the new models for testing and are so excited they can’t keep their mouths shut.
7. UK retailers are selling unlocked 3G iPhones.
8. WWDC, the traditional launching pad for new iPhones was announced yesterday. It will be June 8-12th.
9. Remember all of those extra iPhone part numbers found in the 3.0 build? Yeah, those can’t all be Tablets.
10. Steve Jobs is coming back at the end of June. You don’t think he will be empty handed do you?
Information has been leaked from a source inside AT&T regarding the new iPhone. The source who is “pretty high up in AT&Ts food chain” provided the following information to the BoyGeniusReport.
- New iPhone announcement around mid-June (duh)
- New iPhone will be faster and have a more seamless experience unmatched by any device (could be just talking about 3.0, but we think it’s also a new iPhone)
U-Verse iPhone application; will allow control of your home DVR (play, pause, rewind, etc.)
- The annual iPhone launch is “becoming a tradition.”
- Nothing official is being confirmed, but they said that people should prep for an exciting time this summer.
- AT&T is said to be working with Apple to create a unified product with an unparalleled experience across all their products and services.
- Apple’s 3.0 software should tell us where the iPhone platform is going… uh, k?
- They said customers shouldn’t need to choose from AT&T’s high-end devices because of features, they should choose based on preferences. The gap in capability should be filled with the new iPhone. Ok, bets on slide out QWERTY, autofocus camera, video sharing, blah blah?
- Seems like the higher speed HSDPA (7.2Mbps) is being hinted at too which should confirm the earlier rumors of the new Infineon chipset.
- The $99 3G netbook will start selling this summer, and the first one won’t be a Windows OS.
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Leaked photos on Thursday purport to reveal a new iPhone design with an unfamiliar model number and a more subdued, matte black surface.
The images, first sent to iPod Observer in early form but followed up by a couple of larger versions atMacRumors, show what at first looks to be the familiar, tapered back of iPhone 3G but give signs that they may represent an entirely different model.
The empty shell appears to have official model markings for a 16GB iPhone but lists a new model number, A1303, that doesn’t correlate to existing iPhone models with the same capacity. Existing 16GB iPhone 3G units often have the model number A1241.
More tellingly, the example put on display drops the glossy coat that has defined both black and white iPhone 3G models since launch. It’s instead a dull, matte finish not unlike the back of current aluminum iMac models. The tip to Mac Rumors implies that the finish is also textured and less prone to slipping out of one’s hand.
Supposedly originating from China, the photos are difficult to authenticate and still carry the risk of being identified as fakes. However, they’re posted by the Observer in the belief that its history with sources supports this latest leak; tellingly, the news site was one of the first to have a photo of what was later confirmed to be the iPhone 3G’s back.
There have yet to be additional rumors supporting the change in case design, though Apple has been steadily dropping hints of a widely anticipated iPhone revision, including a hardware identifier string for an unreleased iPhone 2,1 and statements by both Apple’s Phil Schiller and carrier partners that allude to a June refresh.
(via AppleInsider.com & multiple other sources)
Folks at Gizmodo have published three concepts of Apple’s new iPhone.
iPhone Pro:
The first one was designed by Mat Brady. He called it iPhone Elite, an iPhone with 60GB of storage, true 16:9 aspect ratio, slide-out keyboard, one megapixel front camera for iChat, and a high quality camera, with good lenses, optical zoom, and video capability.
Folks at Gizmodo fixed the keyboard to make it more compact, removed some unnecessary keys and added a direction pad and two buttons to make the new iPhone a true Nintendo DS competitor. They called their tweaked version iPhone Pro as you can see below:
iPhone - MacBook Inspired:
The second one was designed by Jim Young and as you can see below was inspired by MacBook. His iPhone included 3G, GPS, Front camera for iChat, Removable battery, 3.2 Megapixel camera, Video, 32 GB. (You already know this one)
iPhone - MacBook Air Inspired:
The latest concept of Apple’s new iPhone is designed by Rodolphe Desmare. As you can see from the curves and tapering that it has been inspired by MacBook Air.
(via iPhoneHacks.com)
Various clues on the next version of the iPhone are being collected that point to a major architectural overhaul that could bring dramatically improved graphics performance to Apple’s popular smartphone.
Recently, the new hardware identity string “iPhone 2,1″ began turning up within the logs of an iPhone software analytics tool as well as the recent iPhone 2.1.1 firmware. The label identifies a new hardware version that hasn’t yet shipped.
A blog posting published by Pinch Media reported that the company’s Pinch Analytics software detected some “iPhone 2,1″ devices as early as the first part of October 2008. The units continued to appear in its logs sporadically until mid-December when the sighting began to accelerate. Geolocation tracking shows the devices are “almost exclusively located” in the south San Francisco Bay Area where Apple is located, and the company says the units report making connections both over WiFi and AT&T’s cellular network.
Pinch Media sells services to iPhone app developers and maintains a set of free analytics tools that report activity from phone units running the apps of participating software makers. Their services do not detect display resolution or any other details. The new hardware label is unlikely to identify a new product category such as a tablet however, as Apple typically changes its internal string name entirely when creating a different product.
Apple’s String Identifiers
The original iPhone was internally referenced as “iPhone 1,1″ while last year’s iPhone 3G identified itself as being “iPhone 1,2.” While the latest iPhone version sported major new features including 3G and GPS, more RAM, as well as an entirely new case design, it did not use a significantly different processor and chipset architecture.
Apple’s internal naming conventions for Mac desktops, notebooks, and Apple TV follows a similar numbering system, indicating a major revision number when the hardware architecture is updated to use a new processor or system chipset, but only incrementing the minor revision number when a new model is merely an update of the same basic design.
For example, Apple’s MacBook Pro notebooks were assigned a major revision number (such as “MacBookPro4,1″ to “MacBookPro5,1″) with the change to a new processor architecture (Core Duo to Core 2 Duo), an increase in processor speed associated with a new chip family (Merom to Perym), or a complete change in the design of similar magnitude.
What’s next for IPhone?
While it should come as no surprise that Apple would be working on a new iPhone, the new version number appears to signal a major architectural overhaul for Apple’s mobile smartphone that is more significant than last year’s iPhone 3G. This could include the use of customized “System on a Chip” components developed by Apple, using ARM processor cores and incorporating new PowerVR video and graphics processing core designs developed by Imagination Technologies.
Last December, Apple was officially cited as a licensee of Imagination Technologies’ latest PowerVR mobile graphics technology, which would enable the company to develop state-of-the-art custom silicon for future iPhone and iPods at its recently acquired PA Semi fabless chip design lab.
Creating its own custom parts would enable the company to differentiate its mobile hardware further, while also leveraging software technologies such as Grand Central and OpenCL to accelerate media processing using hardware specifically optimized for parallel, multicore execution.
While initially developed for Mac OS X Snow Leopard, OpenCL on mobile devices could enable a new range of applications that demand high processing performance, from voice recognition to video processing. Highly efficient rendering would also help Apple to push ahead its efforts to enter the mobile handheld gaming arena with both the iPhone and iPod touch.
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3G iPhone, Apple Computers, Apple News, Rumors, What's New, iPhone
