Mute Witness > Apple Rumors

Well today is the day! The Apple event to detail the changes to the iPad and who knows what else.

I’ve said a few times on Oh My Pod! that I really don’t think that the iPad is going to LOOK much different. I think we’ll see the front and rear facing cameras. I’m hoping for a dual core processor and more RAM, but I’m not sure we’re going to see the thinner lighter model every one is talking about.

I am hoping we’re going to get a sneak peek at iOS 5. I want to see what Apple has planned for the next version of the iOS.

What do you think will happen?

I’m reading all over the Apple Blogosphere today that both the iPad2 and the iPhone5 are going to be shipping late. The only problem with this is… Apple hasn’t announced either of those products.

I mean we ASSUME that an iPad2 is on it’s way and we assume it will be released soon, because it was last year. And we ASSUME there is an iPhone5 coming in June/July because well it has for the past four years. I don’t really think that either product will be released late according to our ASSUMED dates, but even if the iPad2 was not to come out until June of this year, it wouldn’t be late. As it hasn’t yet been announced, It’d simply be released in June.

This weekend and yesterday for that matter, the Apple Rumor mill was a buzz with reports of new MacBook Pros coming this week. All signs seem to point to Thursday as the day (which is strange given that Apple usually announces things on Tuesdays) with anonymous reports of sealed pallets being shipped, instructions to not open them, delayed orders, shrinking supplies etc, it all looks pretty good.

Now I am going to put it out there, I’m not in the market for a new MacBook Pro. I’m ridiculously happy with my MacBook Air and I’m not sure I can go back to a laptop that’s not as light and thin as my Air. However, one of the rumors did catch my attention and got me to wondering. BGR is reporting that the new MacBook Pros will come with an small 8-16gb solid state drive to run the OS with a standard hard drive (or optional solid state drive) to hold the rest of your data.

This would certainly boost performance but it begs so many questions! This situation would work fine out of the box but what if someone like my dad needed to restore his Mac. Would the installer just know to do this? Would your average Mac user “get” where to put stuff? I wonder if the OS would appear to be on the normal hard drive and be basically non accessible to a user?

All that being said, I DO think that Apple could and should pull this off. The performance increases I’ve seen by going all solid state have been huge. But would they be as noticeable if Applications were on a regular hard drive? I checked and my system files are about 16GB right now is 16GB enough? I guess we’ll have to see.

Yesterday I read a blog post on TUAW that CNet reported that Apple is getting ready to announce a new High Speed connection technology very soon. TUAW and quite a few other sources are speculating it’s the new Light Peak technology by Intel. Light Peak is a single universal replacement interfaces such as SATA, USB, FireWire, and PCI Express. It has a very large bandwidth and you can daisy change connections together. It is supposed to be based off an optical connection (hence the “Light”) but currently has been developed in copper.

It certainly makes sense that Light Peak would be a technology that Apple might like to use given their relationship with Intel as well as Light Peak’s more universal usage scenario. As PCs move to USB 3.0, Apple needs to do something to catch up.

Add this to rumors that new MacBook Pros are coming this week and it should be a very interesting announcement.

Well the rumor mill is abuzz with rumors of a new smaller iPhone. I’m not sure what exactly to make of this. This latest rumor comes from the Wall Street Journal. Their “unknown” source (please don’t get me started with the Wall Street Journal using unknown sources) says they saw it last year and it’s going to be on sale along side the iPhone 5, it will be cheaper and it will have… a touchscreen! NO SHIT it’s an iOS device. I mean really WSJ? Why are you reporting on this?

I personally don’t think this is going to happen. I think Apple’s solution for cheaper is now and will continue to be selling the previous generation phone at a discount. I mean right now you can get an iPhone 3GS for 49$. I do however wonder if this device might not be another iPod device. What do you all think?

Today, a huge milestone occurred in the world of Apple Rumors… finally the long rumored Verizon iPhone went on sale. It’s here… the Apple rumor mill should be rejoicing that they got one right. Well I mean did they? We’ve been hearing rumors of a CDMA iPhone since the very first iPhone came out, most of them based on little actual knowledge. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Add to the fact that so many of these rumors come from “secret sources” that many of these rumors sites don’t even really start a rumor… they merely pick it up and run with it. I know what you’re thinking… so am I but… let me say this… see any ads on my site? See any way I’m making money? Nope. I’m not trolling for page clicks like those sites. I’ve expressed this frustration before but today took the cake.

It all started with what seemed like an innocent post by John Gruber over at Daring Fireball at 7am this morning. A really good post where he spoke about his GUESS that perhaps there could be another iPad announcement this year at the time we normally get the iPod announcements. He based his GUESS off some really good points about how the iPod announcements don’t carry the weight and excitement that they used to. That announcing an iPad before the iPhone/iOS announcement puts the iPad out for almost a year before it’s most important selling time frame… the holidays. All points that I thought were excellent and I thought he made it really clear that he was just GUESSING… speculating… until… almost EVERY rumor site reported on this as if it was him reporting something he knew. Not something he guessed.

I know I’m beating a dead horse but these rumors aren’t just fun like they used to be when the main stream didn’t pay attention to Apple. These things get picked up on by everyone, tomorrow my local news will be talking about an iPad 3. I really wish these rumors sites would exert a little restraint and journalistic integrity. If they had just reported on the story from the angle of a well known Apple blogger posited that there would be an iPad 3 that would be enough.

It seems all I can read tonight on the internet is rumors of the iPad 2 being in production already. I’m pretty sure it is too. I think that we’re only days away from the announcement of what the iPad 2 will have in it. Most of the rumors are pretty safe ones, faster processor? Duh. Front Cam? ah yeah… more memory? that’s a given.

I don’t really think the iPad 2 will be too revolutionary, but it will be evolutionary. I am sure it will be lighter, faster, thinner and I am sure it will have cameras (tho I can’t see why it needs a back camera). I also believe it’s going to ship with iOS 4.3, which means that it won’t live up to it’s full potential until iOS 5 comes out sometime this summer. I do think it’s going to be worth buying!

Knowing all this… I just really want them to announce it, so I can start drooling

Well today I was going to simply write a post about “The Daily”, a new newsmagazine by Newscorp for the iPad. It’s an amazing app that is really interactive. I really enjoy how much like a magazine it feels when you use it. Read a story, click a link and suddenly a video story is playing. Rotate the iPad and you get photos to go along with the story and not just stuff pulled in from the web but content actually created for “The Daily”. It’s updated in earnest first thing in the morning and then throughout the day more content comes in. My one major complaint is that of course the video content is not available when you’re off line but all in all it’s not so bad. It’s interactive, inventive and best of all it’s reasonably priced. Free for the first two weeks and then $0.99 a week or $39.99 for a year. Finally a decent price for a newspaper/daily news magazine.

And of course it was the news of the day, every blog and news source was talking about it. I’m sure downloads were through the roof and I was content enough to write about how much I liked it – until I read a story on the AppleInsider where a Reuters report states an “eyewitness” saw an “iPad 2 prototype” with a front facing camera at the event. And of course this is spreading like wild fire throughout the Apple News blogosphere.

This is bull shit. Serious and utter bullshit. I saw one yesterday at the grocery store. Where is my news story? I mean are we really so desperate for Apple News that an uncorroborated report of a product that we know is coming and that we are reasonably sure will have a certain feature is a news story? I mean at least AppleInsider made the point that the chances that an “iPad 2″ prototype is out in the wild at a major event like that are pretty slim. I’m quite sure after the Gizmodo fiasco with the iPhone 4, that Apple is taking few chances with products being out in the wild.

I think what’s pissed me off is that now major news sources are picking this rumor bullshit up. I really love Apple and I love to speculate on what is coming, but we need to keep it in check. We need to apply at least some journalistic integrity to what we post.