Just when you thought the only differences between the iPhone 4 and the iPod Touch were the size and the phone, a closer look reveals that the Touch actually has a different camera.

Apple’s specifications page for the Touch lists a resolution of 960-by-720 pixels for the rear camera, which is roughly one megapixel. That’s several steps below the 5-megapixel camera seen in the iPhone 4.

Then again, the iPod Touch is about one millimeter thinner than the iPhone 4 (which is significant when it comes to pocketability). Anything bigger than a one-megapixel sensor probably would have been a squeeze, especially when you consider that the Touch includes a front-facing camera, too.

When Apple refreshed its iPod family last year, many expected the iPod Touch to gain a camera and were left disappointed when it didn’t. However, a teardown by iFixIt revealed that was just barely enough room for a camera. iFixIt CEO Kyle Wiens speculated that the feature was omitted due to engineering challenges.

Long story short, the iPod Touch’s camera probably isn’t great, but we’re glad it’s finally here.

See our earlier posts for more details on the new iPods announced today.

Via DaringFireball

See Also:

• Live Blog: Apple’s iPod, Music Event
• Sporty New iPods Tout Tiny Touchscreens, Retina Display

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

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Promotional Image from Apple.com.

There’s a lot to say about the new Apple TV that Steve Jobs presented today. But I’m not going to talk about the tiny little box. Instead, I’m going to talk about that remote.

Actually, there are two remotes. The first is the little, minimalist, metal slab that will ship with the Apple TV.

The first iteration of Apple TV had the same little white infrared remote the company used to ship with laptops. It was great for clicking through a slideshow presentation. It wasn’t very good to keep around your living room, unless you stuck it in a bowl with your keys. It wasn’t a real remote, and most people hated keeping track of another remote anyway, especially one that got lost at the drop of a hat.

The new remote, released earlier this year and shipping with the new Apple TV, isn’t a lot different from that old white remote. It’s a nicer device. Like everything else Apple makes now, it’s longer, and it’s aluminum. It’s still got just six buttons: up, down, right, left, play/pause and menu.

But that minimalism seems almost smarter now. Apple now seems to be figuring out the exact number of hardware buttons it needs on each device. It took away too much on the iPod Shuffle, so now some buttons are coming back. It wanted to get rid of the buttons on the Nano, so it changed it to touchscreen.

For the Apple TV, it’s keeping the action on the screen, with the software interface. Make that easy to navigate, give people the exact options they need depending on context, and you don’t need dozens of buttons on the remote/media player/phone.

Maybe you don’t even need a remote, though. That’s because Apple TV’s second remote control is the Apple-made mobile device that Apple TV customers probably already own.

Seriously — what are the chances of someone buying Apple TV who doesn’t have an iPod, iPad or iPhone?

[Continue reading]

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Apple on Wednesday refreshed its family of iPod products. The iPod Nano, iPod Touch and iPod Shuffle all received some compelling makeovers that should help Apple stay in the lead in the portable media player market.

The iPod Nano was the most interesting upgrade. It does away with the click wheel seen in previous models and is now more like a belt buckle with a multi touchscreen displaying four mini icons on the main screen — basically, a quarter of the size of an iPhone or iPod Touch.

The Nano is now 1.6 inches wide, 1.4 inches tall and just 0.3 inches thick including the belt clip.

One screen on the Nano shows Artists, Playlists, Genius Mixes and Now Playing. Swipe your finger and you get a few more apps: radio, photo, podcasts and settings. There’s no home button, so you have to hold your finger down on the screen to exit an app, which is simple enough. You can also rearrange the icons by holding your finger on an app until it jiggles, then move it to wherever you’d like — just like on the iPhone.

The question remains as to whether or not the iPod Nano is running iOS and if we’ll be able to jailbreak it to run different apps. Apple hasn’t disclosed whether the operating system was iOS, but it sure looks like it. Update: An Apple engineer told Wired magazine editor Mark McClusky that the Nano does not run iOS.

Also noteworthy is that the Nano does not include a camera, even though last year’s model just introduced one. I guess nobody cared about shooting video with the tiny device, which isn’t surprising.

What’s nifty on the Nano is the small integrated clip to snap the device on to your pocket or belt buckle. The entire body including the clip is made of aluminum so it feels nice and sturdy.

Moving on to the iPod Touch, this was a predictable but monster update. It’s about a millimeter thinner than the iPhone 4, even though it’s got most of the same guts. There are the front and rear cameras — the rear for shooting high-definition videos and photos, the front for FaceTime video conferencing.

The Nano now has an Apple A4 processor and the high-resolution “retina display.” Grip it in your hand and it feels really smooth and light.

I had a chance to test FaceTime and it felt even faster than FaceTime on the iPhone 4, though this time around Apple might have just had a better Wi-Fi connection.

Overall, the new iPod Touch is the same as the iPhone 4 but now we can’t really say, “It’s an iPhone without a phone,” because the Touch includes a video-conferencing webphone! That’s a major difference and should have an impact on video conferencing in general.

Last, and least important, was an upgrade for the iPod Shuffle. To put it simply, it’s another belt-clip iPod similar to the Nano, only with the traditional click wheel. On the top is an integrated button for VoiceOver, which enables you to dictate the playlist or artist you want to listen to. Example, if you say “Play songs by The Shins,” the Shuffle will obey your commands.

The Shuffle is puny — 1.2 inches wide, 1.1 inches tall and 0.3 inches thick. And it is so lightweight I could barely even feel it in my pocket, which should be ideal for athletes.

Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Update: Corrected an error where I said the previous iPod Nano snapped photos, when actually it only shot video.

See Also:

• Hands-on With the New $100 Apple TV
• Apple Takes Aim at Cable With Tiny New Apple TV
• Live Blog: Apple’s iPod, Music Event
• Apple to Live Stream Press Conference — to Apple Customers Only

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SAN FRANCISCO — When Steve Jobs was preparing to introduce the Apple TV, he called it “one more hobby,” and based on our first impressions, that’s a safe choice of words.

The new Apple TV is a major hardware revamp — one quarter the size of its predecessor. It’s a small black box with curved edges, somewhat resembling a hockey puck. The highlights: It costs $100, and it integrates nearly instantly TV and movie rentals, along with Netflix streaming.

The major limitation: For TV rentals, only two studios are on board to stream shows through the Apple TV — ABC and Fox. This isn’t an adequate replacement yet for cable subscriptions.

So calling it a “hobby” was right — Apple’s starting out small, and maybe it’ll roll into something bigger if more studios warm up to the idea.

I got some hands-on time with the new Apple TV and it is a promising start.

TV and movie rentals are really snappy and fast. After choosing to rent a movie or show, the Apple TV takes a few seconds to prepare a buffer and begins streaming right away.

Also particularly cool was internet integration. I enjoyed searching through Flickr streams. Select a photo and hit the Play button and it immediately plays a slideshow with music and fancy transitions. I’m too lazy to check my friends’ Flickr streams the normal way on Flickr.com, aren’t you? Plus, the photos look great on a big screen through the Apple TV’s HDMI connection.

The Apple TV’s remote is familiar: It’s got the same aluminum and black design as the current MacBook Pros. It’s also very similar to the current Apple remote that controls Macs — only it’s a little longer and the buttons have small bumps for subtle tactile feedback. It feels great in the hand and navigating through the Apple TV menu was really smooth.

As good as the idea sounds, you won’t be able to use your iPhone or iPad as a remote for the Apple TV (not yet, at least). Instead, there’s a feature called “AirPlay,” so if you’re using your iPad or iPhone to listen to music, look at photos or watch a video, you can tap an AirPlay button, select your Apple TV and boom — your content is streaming onto your Apple TV. We weren’t able to test that since this feature won’t be available until iOS 4.2 ships in November, but we’ll keep you posted.

You can also stream media from your Mac’s iTunes library by choosing the “Computer” option and selecting a movie or playlist. I tested that out too, and it worked fine, but do note that iTunes only supports a few formats for video (.H264, for instance). So if you prefer getting media through some alternative non-iTunes-compatible means, you’re still going to be doing a lot of file conversion before you can watch your videos on the Apple TV.

All in all, it’s a cool device, and for $100 it’s going to pose a serious threat to the Roku Netflix player. But as a TV replacement, it’s still not there yet. Maybe later.

See Also:

• Apple Takes Aim at Cable With Tiny New Apple TV
• Live Blog: Apple’s iPod, Music Event
• Apple to Live Stream Press Conference — to Apple Customers Only

Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

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SAN FRANCISCO — In a sign that its television “hobby” has turned into serious business, Apple announced an aggressively-priced new set-top box that takes aim at the heart of the cable TV and DVD rental industries.

The new Apple TV, which will go on sale at the end of September for $100, is a puny box just 1/4 the size of the previous model. It has an HDMI port, a power supply built in it, an optical audio port, an Ethernet jack, and built-in Wi-Fi.

“It’s silent, cool and tiny,” said Apple CEO Steve Jobs, showing off the diminutive metallic box.

Despite rumors, the product was not re-branded as “iTV.” Jobs did not state whether it was running a version of iOS, although the Apple TV’s new interface includes some very iOS-like touches, such as icons that jiggle when you are rearranging them in your Netflix queue.

Apple joins an increasingly crowded and risky scrum of companies trying to reinvent television for the internet age. Netflix and Hulu both have been offering streaming video playback of movies and TV shows, with some success, for over a year. Google is working on a set-top box that would blur the line between TV and internet fare, YouTube is said to be planning mainstream film rentals and Amazon is rumored to be planning its own Netflix-like video streaming service. But the real threat are the cable companies and TV networks, which have a lock on the shows that people want to watch — and so far, there’s been little incentive for them to open up their tightly-controlled ecosystems to internet upstarts.

Apple’s play is for convenience, but it’s not the cross-platform strategy needed for dominance, wrote Andrew Eisner, a director at online electronics retailer Retrevo.com.

“A TV OS vacuum exists at the moment and unfortunately for consumers, TV manufacturers appear to be filling it with their own proprietary offerings,” Eisner wrote recently. “Apple needs to gain control of the third screen or TV screen, after smartphone screens and computer screens, and the TV industry needs to move away from closed environments and let their connected TVs work with all the apps and streaming content that consumers are finding so appealing.”

The company will also be providing a feature within iOS 4.2 that customers can use to share videos wirelessly from their iPhones, iPod Touches or iPads. Called “AirPlay,” the feature will let customers display a video from their mobile device, on an Apple TV-connected TV screen, with a single tap. IOS 4.2 won’t be available until November.

AirPlay “puts iPhones and iPads in the driver’s seat and makes the TV just an output device for the Apple ecosystem,” said Forrester analyst James McQuivey. “Expect Apple to gradually push more and more in that direction.”

“But,” McQuivey added, “as of this moment in 2010, Apple has not yet made a significant play for control of the TV.”

In an implicit acknowledgment of Apple TV’s poor sales to date, Jobs again referred to the product as the company’s “hobby.” He showed the new Apple TV at a press conference here on Wednesday.

But Jobs was careful to cast the company’s previous product as a learning experience, and indicated his intention of throwing more of the company’s weight behind the upgraded Apple TV.

Apple TV customers will be able to rent first-run HD movies for $5, at the same time as they’re released on DVD. That’s a substantial improvement from the past, when there were significant time lags before movies were available through iTunes.

Customers will also be able to rent HD TV shows from ABC and Fox for $1, a discount from the previous price of $3. The shows will run without commercial interruption.

Netflix customers will also be able to stream video from Netflix via Apple TV, and can also use the device to browse and view YouTube videos and content uploaded to Apple’s MobileMe service.

Customers can also stream content from their computers, including photos, videos and music, with no syncing required.

Apple is already accepting pre-orders for the new Apple TV on its site.

For full coverage of Apple’s press conference, see Wired.com’s live blog of the event.

Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

See Also:

• Why iOS Could Make Apple TV Succeed
• Logitech Google TV Box Embarrasses Apple TV
• Boxee Beta, Now On Apple TV
• Apple's New iTV Will Cost $100, Won't Do 1080p

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Apple Wednesday showed off a sporty new model in its popular line of tiny MP3 players, the iPod Nano, a “retina display”-enhanced version of its iPod Touch, and a new version of its iPod Shuffle.

The new iPod Touch is basically the same as the iPhone 4 but thinner, and without the phone: it gains the latter’s high-resolution display, front- and back-facing cameras for videoconferencing, A4 chip, three-axis gyroscope, and iOS 4.1 with Game Center.

The display, which Apple calls a retina display, is the same 326 ppi, 24-bit color LED screen found in the iPhone 4.

The new Nano, which is a small square apparently about 1.5 inches on a side, does away with the click wheel on previous models, replacing it with a tiny, square touchscreen that nearly covers the face of the device.

The Nano has hardware buttons for controlling the volume. It will support the voiceover feature that first appeared in the iPod Shuffle, and will also have an FM radio and support for the popular Nike+ pedometer/fitness add-on. Apple claims its battery will last for 24 hours of audio playback.

The iPod Nano will come in two versions: one with 8GB of storage for $150 and one with 6GB for $180.

Apple also announced a small, square, screenless version of the iPod Shuffle. It’s actually larger than the previous model Shuffle, but CEO Steve Jobs said that customers missed the control buttons, so the clickwheel interface returns to the larger Shuffle with this model.

The iPod Shuffle will have 2GB of storage and will cost $50.

For full coverage of Apple’s press conference, see Wired.com’s live blog of the event.

Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

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SAN FRANCISCO — Apple Wednesday announced the next two versions of iOS, its operating system for iPhone, iPod Touch, and the iPad, adding support for multiplayer gaming, HDR photography, and wireless printing.

The first revision to the operating system, iOS 4.1, will be available next week as a free download for the iPhone and iPod Touch, but not the iPad. IOS 4.1 includes bug fixes, support for making high dynamic range (HDR) photos, TV show rentals, and an entertainment feature for multiplayer gaming called Game Center.

Jobs says that the bug fixes are focused on the issues most frequently raised by customer support calls.

“We think we’ve nailed a lot of them and we think you’re going to be pretty happy with them,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs said.

The next version, iOS 4.2, will available in November for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad users. Its feature enhancements will be focused on iPad users, with a focus on wireless printing from the iPad. It will also include features already available to iOS 4 users on the other two platforms, but which have not yet been made available to the iPad: multitasking, multi-threaded e-mail and folders.

Story continues …

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GeekDad has already repeatedly geeked out over Sylvia’s Super-Awesome Maker Show, and Bruce Sterling gave her newest episode a “Holy cow, kid” at Beyond the Beyond yesterday, but Gadget Lab readers need to see it for themselves.

“Whether you’re a beginner or an advanced microcontroller engineer,” Sylvia says, “here’s two projects me and my dad came up with to get your brain going.” After watching her break down using the Arduino, I actually feel like I could build a Randomly Influenced Finger Flute or MintyBoost of my very own now.

Also, the video’s directorial style is so fine it makes Rushmore-era Wes Anderson look like a hobo. Just sayin’.

• Super Simple Arduino at Makezine;
• Showtime at Beyond the Beyond;
• Rockets and Maker Faire 2010 at GeekDad.

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Sony’s not taking competition from the Amazon Kindle lying down. The company has added touchscreens to its three e-reader models, while switching to the new ‘Pearl’ screen from E Ink for better contrast and improving the user interface on the devices.

What the company hasn’t done is drop the price. Sony’s cheapest e-reader will cost $180–and that’s without Wi-Fi or 3G–while Amazon charges $140 for the Wi-Fi version of the Kindle.

“The bottom line is we didn’t want to compete on price,” says Steve Haber, president of Sony’s digital reading business division. “We wanted to build quality and overall experience. We want to give consumers the feel of buying an e-reader, not a toy.”

Sony three e-reader models are the Pocket, Touch and Daily Edition. The $180 Pocket Reader has a 5-inch display, 2 GB memory and will come without W-Fi or 3G access. That means users can only load books by connecting the device to their PC using a USB cable.

The $230 Touch Edition has a 6-inch display, 2 GB onboard memory, expansion slots for up to 32 GB of additional memory, the ability to play audio files and Wi-Fi connectivity.

The $300 Daily Edition model includes both Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity and sports an even larger 7-inch display. It too has 2 GB of onboard memory and an expansion slot for up to 32 GB additional.

Sony’s new e-readers raise the stakes in the e-reader market. In July, Amazon introduced the third generation of its Kindle e-reader, including a Wi-Fi only model, and slashed the price to make it more competitive with rival Barnes & Noble’s Nook. The move took a toll on smaller e-reader makers who haven’t been able to compete on either price or scale of their book stores. Earlier this month, Foxit announced it will stop development on its eSlick e-reader. Plastic Logic canceled its plans to bring its e-reader to market, while Cool-er’s e-readers have been listed out of stock in the U.S. for months.

Sony is betting on better design to draw in users. Its new e-readers are colorful (hot pink, red, silver and black) and have an aluminum body that gives them a better finish and feel compared to the plasticky- shell of the Kindle or the Nook.

But the biggest change has been the introduction of the touchscreen across all models. Previously only one of the models called Touch Edition had a touchscreen.

Unlike the capacitive touchscreens popular on mobile phones, Sony’s e-readers use optical touchscreen technology so it responds to both finger and a stylus.

A major problem with the earlier version of Sony’s touchscreen e-reader was the touchscreen layer added to the top of the display. The layer decreased contrast, making the e-reader’s display difficult to read compared to the Kindle or the Nook, and also offered a sluggish response to touch. The optical touchscreen technology seems to have solved some of the problems and in my brief hands-on with the devices I found the display to be startlingly responsive and quick.

The Pearl display has also helped improve contrast and render crisper text.

“The number one focus for us is the reading experience,” says Haber.”The e-reader is not the Swiss Army knife of devices so we have done everything to make the experience immersive.”

Over the next few weeks, Sony also plans to launch mobile apps of its reader software for the iPhone, iPad and Android.

In improvements to the user interface, Sony will incorporate book reviews from the GoodReads site into its book store. It has also expanded the news stand section of its book store and partnered with more news publishers such as The Guardian and The Harvard Business Review.

Sony hopes to ship the Touch and Pocket models in the next few days. The Daily Edition e-reader will not be available till early November.

See Also:

• Upstart E-readers Fade to Black as Tablets Gain Momentum
• Now Sharper Image Launches an E-Reader
• E-Readers Will Survive the Onslaught of Tablets
• 5 Things That Will Make E-Readers Better in 2010
• Plastic Logic Que E-Reader Turns Into Vaporware

Photo: Sony Touch e-reader/Sony

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IBM/Apple PowerPC 750 350MHz G3 by David Lieberman/Flickr. Used gratefully under a Creative Commons license.

Apple ditched IBM’s PowerPC for Intel because the chip didn’t have a low-power roadmap for laptops. Then it passed up Intel in favor ARM on its iOS devices for similar reasons. So it’s no surprise that IBM and Intel are pumping up their R&D and acquisition efforts to get back in the game with tiny, low-power, low-heat speed demons for tomorrow’s mobile devices.

At a research conference last week, IBM engineer Michael Floyd presented a new deep-sleep mode, codenamed “Winkle” (after Rip Van). Along with a “nap” mode where the processor uses a fraction of full power but can return to full power quickly, “deep-sleep” reduces power to near-zero, but takes longer to wake up. It’s kind of like the “Hibernate” mode in Windows XP, but at the processor/controller level.

Floyd gave no specific indication of when IBM would actually be rolling out Winkle. It may be introduced for the company’s current line of Power 7 chips, but the Power 8, which doesn’t yet have a release schedule, could be more likely.

Intel, on the other hand, isn’t waiting. Instead of (or maybe in addition to) pushing its new Moorestown line of Atom processors for mobile phones, they’re buying the wireless-chip division of Germany’s Infineon Technologies AG for $1.4 billion, in a deal that should close in Q1 2011.

As R&D Magazine reports, buying Infineon would make Intel the fifth-biggest supplier of mobile-phone processors in a list topped by Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and STMicroelectronics.

It’s not a huge slice of the market, but it’s a solid foothold. Infineon’s most visible customer? Apple, who uses their chips for 3G. And now Intel/Infineon will be inside RIM, Samsung, and Nokia mobile devices too.

See Also:

• Qualcomm Ups the Game With Faster Smartphone Processor
• Intel Introduces Ultra-Low-Power Processor for Smartphones …
• Texas Instruments Embraces Next-Gen Mobile Processor
• Samsung Galaxy S Phone Processor Packs a Punch
• Droid 2 Teardown Reveals Beefed-Up Processor, Few Other Changes …
• Samsung Captivate Processor Overclocked to 1.2 GHz
• Wired 9.09: The Creative Processor

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