• Apple to Unveil iOS 5, New MobileMe at Media Event in Early April

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

    A new rumor claims Apple will hold its annual iOS roadmap event in early April to show off iOS 5 as expected, but also states the company will also unveil an updated MobileMe service.

    Citing a “confident” source, German site Macerkopf.de reported Tuesday (via Google Translate) that the event will be held in early April at the company’s Cupertino, Calif., campus. The timing would not be a surprise, as last year’s iOS 4 preview event was held in early April.

    But the inclusion of MobileMe in the annual event would be new, and could signal that anticipated changes to the cloud-based service will be heavily integrated into the next major release of Apple’s mobile operating system for the iPhone and iPad.

    In February, The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple plans to improve MobileMe by having the service act as a “locker” to hold personal data such as photos, music and videos. It was also said that Apple is considering making the service, which currently costs $99 per year, free.

    Corroborating that information, The New York Times separately reported that Apple plans to roll out an enhanced MobileMe this year. It was said that Apple is working on improved “voice navigation” on the iPhone, allowing users to operate the device through voice commands without the need to rely on a virtual keyboard.

    Further evidence of planned changes to MobileMe came as Apple discontinued the sale of retail boxes for the service last month. It has also been rumored that the new MobileMe will rely on self-storage from a home computer for streaming, rather than remotely saved files hosted by Apple.

    [via appleinsider]

  • What Do We Expect in iPad 2?

    // Gradly // Apple, blog, iPad, News, Rants & Raves, Tech. No Responses

    There are a lot of expectations for iPad 2 hardware out there but ours largely falls in line with AllThingsD:

    Aesthetically, the iPad 2 is expected to be slimmer and lighter than its predecessor, with a larger speaker and an improved display designed to deliver a better experience in bright sunlight. It will likely run on a 1.2GHz, dual-core, ARM Cortex-A9 chip and Imagination’s SGX543 GPU architecture–a big improvement over the SGX535 Apple uses today. A Qualcomm multimode chip will allow it to run on both GSM- and CDMA-based networks around the world. And it will have double the RAM–512MB, same as the iPhone 4. Finally, it will feature those front- and back-facing cameras we’ve been hearing about for some time now–one for FaceTime and Photo Booth, the other for POV FaceTime and shooting photos and video.

    The star of the show might be iOS 5 preview which will likely showcase new voice navigation features with Siri’s AI, perhaps a new maps application and certainly Cloud/MobileMe/iWork/iLife integration.  And notifications have to be getting updated.

    We’re getting pumped.  12 hours to go.

  • MobileMe Goes AWOL At Apple Retail And Online Stores

    // Gradly // Apple, blog, Rants & Raves 1 Response

    The single and family license packs of MobileMe have gone AWOL in Apple online and retail stores and some resellers have been advised that these products have been declared end-of-life by Apple.

    The abrupt departure by these apps from retail channels indicates that something is going to happen. I’m sure we’ll find out more on March 2nd next week with iPad 2 Launch.

    It isn’t clear about the direction Apple plans to take with MobileMe, Lets wait for March 2 and see.

  • More Detail On Apple’s iPhone Nano

    // Gradly // Apple, blog, News, Rants & Raves 1 Response

    We have already learned that Apple is currently working on an iPhone Nano, which according to Sunday’s Wall Street Journal is real and may be headed to market this year.

    But what cult of Mac has got will blow your mind. Here is the whole details:

    Firstly, Apple has been working on a smaller, mass-market iPhone for a long time.

    But to do that, Apple had to figure out a way to strip away some of the components to reduce both its size and cost.

    Apple decided to lose some of the memory, which is by far the most expensive component of the iPhone (up to one-quarter of the device’s cost, according to iSuppli estimates).

    By “some” of the memory, we mean ALL of the memory. The iPhone nano will have no memory for onboard storage of media, our source says. It will have only enough memory to buffer media streamed from the cloud.

    “I’m talking strictly storage memory here,” said our source.

    The iPhone nano will pull ALL it’s content from MobileMe. When users buy a movie or TV show on iTunes, it’s available to stream to their iPhone or iPad. The service is based on technology from LaLa.com, a streaming service that Apple bought last spring and then shut down.

    “It would be a mostly cloud-based iOS,” said our source.

    The WSJ report reported many of the same details, and also hinted that the new iPhone nano will have limited storage: “MobileMe… would serve as a “locker” for personal memorabilia such as photos, music and videos, eliminating the need for devices to carry a lot of memory,” the Journal said.

    The prospect of a memory-less iPhone is intriguing, and our source has a great track record, however, it does raise a few questions.

    The device cannot surely come without any memory — what about the operating system and critical system data?

    And what about pictures and movies taken by the iPhone, assuming it has a camera? No onboard memory means photos and video will have to be streamed UP to the cloud, and presumably in real-time.

    The device will also have to stream a bunch of other data in real-time — from email attachments to documents and spreadsheets in users’ Home folders. Such a system must have some local storage, or could each and every piece of data be streamed to the iPhone’s RAM, and quickly swapped in and out depending on the task at hand? And what happens when the iPhone is inevitably offline?

    And no more loading up movies for long-haul flights, I guess. Better hope more airlines start offering free WiFi by the summer.