• Glasses Free 3D on iPad 2 and iPhone 4 via Head Tracking

    // Gradly // 3D, Apple, blog, Gadgets, iPad, iPhone, Rants & Raves, Tech. 1 Response

    Jeremie Francone and Laurence Nigay from the Laboratory of Informatics of Grenoble at the EHCI Research Group have created an amazing tech demoes by combining head-tracking technology that uses the iPad’s front facing camera to deliver glasses-free 3D experience that doesn’t require the accelerometer, but it’s entirely based on the camera and the movements of a user’s head in front of the screen. The position of the user will give the illusion of tridimensional objects moving on the display.

    We track the head of the user with the front facing camera in order to create a glasses-free monocular 3D display. Such spatially-aware mobile display enables to improve the possibilities of interaction. It does not use the accelerometers and relies only on the front camera.

    Francone and Nigay were inspired by the work of Johnny Lee who built a similar system using a Wii system.

    Glasses-free 3D has been deployed by Nintendo in its latest 3DS portable gaming console, and a series of reports in the past suggested Apple could implement glasses-free 3D in the future. The app does not yet appear to be available for download.

  • Apple Ordered 12 Petabytes of Storage For iTunes Video Offerings

    // Gradly // Apple, blog, News, Rants & Raves No Responses

    Citing a new reports by StorageNewsletter.com,  Apple has placed a order for about 12 petabytes of storage from Isilon Systems. According to an inside source, the company will use this storage to support iTunes video downloaded by its customers. This order will make Apple the largest Isilon’s customer.

    Apple ordered as much as 12PB of capacity from Isilon Systems, notably to manage the video download of its customers using iTunes, according to an inside source of the new division of EMC. It’s probably the largest of its 1,500 customers recorded at the end of December, including 20% in Europe

    Already several journalists have been briefed under embargo on the new releases and we will publish a deep analysis on the subject next week.

    A petabyte of data is a huge amount of data; it’s 1024 terabytes. If you tried to store a petabyte of data on dual-layer Blu-ray discs (50 GB each), it would take almost 21,000 discs to fit it all… and Apple just bought 12 of those. It’ll be interesting to see what they do with all of that storage? Maybe with the new MobileMe and a more cloud-based “locker” that stores media.

  • iSteve: ‘The Book of Jobs’ First Authorized Biography of Steve Jobs Coming Early 2012

    // Gradly // Apple, blog, Books, News, Rants & Raves, Steve Jobs No Responses

    The first authorized biography of Steve Jobs which dubbed iSteve: The Book of Jobs by Walter Isaacson will be published in early 2012 by Simon and Shuster as announced sunday by ABCNews. Here is what Fortune had to say about the man who won Jobs’ trust:

    The Jobs book will be his fourth major biography. In addition to Kissinger: A Biography (1992) he has written Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (2003) and Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007). His most recent book is American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers, and Heroes of a Hurricane (2009).

    How did Walter manage to win the trust of Steve Jobs, a man whose penchant for secrecy, and his contempt for journalists, are legendary? Says Simon & Schuster editor-in-chief Priscilla Painton, Isaacson’s editor and a Time alumna: “It was Walter’s idea. And you know Walter — he just worked at it.” Fortune has a great profile on Isaacson who has a long history of convincing notable people to tell them their story.

    The Jobs book was announced in February of last year but with no title and release date.

  • New Fuji Mountain Wallpaper in Mac OS X Lion Hints at Future Retina Displays Mac

    // Gradly // Apple, blog, iPad, Rants & Raves, Rumors, Tech., Wallpaper 2 Responses

    The new default wallpaper on OS X 10.7 Lion Developer Preview 2 featuring Fuji Mountain has a whopping size of 3200×2000 pixels as noted by the guys at osxdaily.com.

    Click here to download the full version, [3200×2000 pixels.]

    However, 3200×2000 pixels is significantly larger than any existing resolution offered by Apple displays, including the 27″ and 30″ Apple Cinema Displays. Furthermore, the default wallpaper size in Mac OS X 10.6 is 2560×1600, which is exactly the maximum resolution of Apple’s 30″ Cinema Display. Is it just coincidence that Apple is bundling an ultra high resolution image in Lion as the new default wallpaper, or does this suggest that higher resolution Macs, possibly with retina displays, are coming sometime in the future?

    Here’s a nice chart that shows what screen size at what viewing distance with that resolution would be considered a retina display:

    Notice that even for the closest viewing distance of 18 inches, a 3200 x 2000 resolution represents a Retina Display for display sizes up to and including 17 inches. And of course, that covers the entire range of Apple laptops on the market today.

    And smaller displays wouldn’t need a resolution that high to be considered retina:

    A 13.3” MacBook Air, for example, would need a screen providing approximately 2200 x 1375 pixels (191 dpi) to be considered a Retina Display at an 18-inch viewing distance.

    To help understand what a “Retina Display” means. Steve Jobs, at the announcement of the iPhone 4, had this description:

    It turns out there’s a magic number right around 300 pixels per inch, that when you hold something around to 10 to 12 inches away from your eyes, is the limit of the human retina to differentiate the pixels.

    Other than providing dramatically improved display clarity on a Mac, the other reason a Mac with a 3200×2000 pixel resolution makes sense is for iOS developers. So what does this have to do with iPad 3?

    … according to an analyst cited by AppleInsider, the high resolution retina display will come to iPad 3 in the form of a whopping 2048×1536 resolution display. If this happens, you’d expect similar displays to come to the Mac platform so that developers can accurately produce and test apps for the ultrahigh resolution.

    Indeed, 3200×2000 would be such an ultrahigh resolution for a Mac, and it would be more than adequate to develop for a 2048×1536 pixel iPad 3 display.

    Sure, this is speculation based on a new wallpaper in a developer preview OS, but who knows what Apple is prepping for us.