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AllThingsD: 'iPad Mini' to get its own event in October after new iPhone reveal
After refreshing its computer range, Apple's gearing up for two events for its new phone and tablet hardware, according to sources at AllThingsD. Given the excitement welling up behind its next iPhone, many have noted (including Daring Fireball's John Gruber) that it would make a whole lot of sense to furnish both the phone and the heavily rumored smaller tablet with individual events -- and that is, apparently, what's going to happen. Unfortunately, the anonymous sources weren't revealing anything further -- Apple's yet to confirm that posited September 12th event date, let alone any secondary event. But when it does, be assured that we'll be there to cover both of them.
AllThingsD: New Kindle Fire will feature 1,280 x 800 resolution, ship in Q3 2012
Rumors and scuttlebutt are already afoot: Amazon is ramping up to release a Kindle Fire successor later this year. It certainly seems reasonable enough; come November the original $200 slate will be a year old, outpaced by the young Nexus 7. According to AllThingsD, however, Amazon aims to keep things fresh -- updating the tablet with a thinner profile, a 1,280 x 800 resolution display and a built-in camera. According to sources "familiar with Amazon's plans," the tablet is slated for a late Q3 launch, agreeing with its previously rumored July / August debut. The finer details -- like the unit's price and internal specs -- are still MIA, but we'll let you know if the rumor mill churns out anything new. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Complete video of Tim Cook's AllThingsD appearance now available
As a warm up to WWDC, AllThingsD released an interview with Tim Cook that was recorded during the recent D10 conference. The casual talk with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher covers everything from Apple's relationship with Facebook to the challenges the company faces in China. Though its been covered extensively in a live blog, words can't capture Cook's personality which shines in this video. You can watch the 200-minute talk on AllThingsD's website. And when you are done, join us for even more Tim Cook who is expected to headline today's WWDC keynote that'll kickoff at 10 am PT (1 pm ET).
Archive of Jobs videos makes iTunes go all things Steve
The mark that Steve Jobs left on the industry is a deep one, indeed. But aside from regular product announcements, we didn't see all that much of the Apple founder. Jobs's appearances at the All Things Digital conference certainly do a little to remedy the late-executive's notoriously private nature, and now you can watch them all from the comfort of your own Apple-branded media player. All Things D has released Jobs's six lengthy interviews in video and audio format via iTunes.
Google's Sundar Pichai confirms that offline Google Drive 'coming in five weeks,' hints at ad-supported Chromebook
During the closing session here at D10 in California, Google's on Senior Vice President of Chrome & Apps Sundar Pichai was joined by Susan Wojcicki (SVP of Advertising at Google) at Walt Mossberg. Sundar was able to drive the majority of the conversation in the realm of Chrome and Chrome OS, and quite a few interesting nuggets were dropped. For one, he made an offhand comment that "offline Google Drive [is] coming in five weeks," a clue that it'll be revealed and launched in full at Google I/O next month. On the topic of Chrome's browser market share, he reckoned that around a third of the world's desktop browser use is now done on Chrome, noting that percentages are far, far higher in the consumer realm as compared to enterprise, where lots of companies mandate that employees still use Internet Explorer at work. Oh, and Sundar also stated that it's "not lost on [Google] that it can use advertising to provide better value propositions [for Chromebooks] as well. In other words, Google's at least evaluating an ad-supported Chromebook. Looking for more? A fair amount of the back-and-forth is transcribed after the break.
Skype CEO Tony Bates confirms 250m monthly users, talks Microsoft partnership and future plans
Skype CEO Tony Bates just took the stage here on the final day of D10, and he got right into the news delivery mindset: as of now, there are 250 million monthly connected users. Said Bates, "When we closed [the Microsoft deal], we had 170 million monthly users, so haven't skipped a beat in terms of momentum." Continuing on when asked from Kara Swisher about integration with Microsoft, Bates said: "I'm not going to talk about future products, but I'll steal a line from Tim Cook. We're going to double-down on integration with Windows 8, and we're doing to double-down on secrecy." Specifically, he mentioned that there'd be some "great integration points" with Windows 8, noting that Skype is viewed as an "experience, with most folks viewing it as a Swiss army knife, regardless of where and how it's used." Kara followed up with a question on Kinect, and Bates did his best to dodge the bullet by re-referencing intent on Windows 8 and Windows Phone -- there wasn't a peep mentioned in either direction on if it'd end up there. Kara asked what his most important smartphone platform was, and Bates said: "I wouldn't classify it as one most important. As far as download numbers, it's absolutely iPhone, but Android is gaining momentum. Our top priority is mobile; we made two acquisitions in that space. The Android marketplace -- as many know -- is quite fragmented, and this was a big challenge for us from an engineering standpoint. This team in the Qik acquisition really helped us there. I'm very hopeful -- Windows Phone is very exciting for me because of that people-centric nature." Kara pushed to see if Windows Phone would get a "special" version of Skype, and Bates simply said that he "hopes they can add value." Given that both Windows Phone and Skype now live under the same roof, though, we're guessing that he's underselling things in the effort of "doubling-down on secrecy."
Spotify director Sean Parker: Apple tried to keep Spotify out of the United States
Daniel Ek (co-founder of Spotify) and Sean Parker (Director at Spotify) just took the stage here at D10, with Walt Mossberg asking the two about the company's impact in America, negotiations with record labels and -- perhaps surprisingly -- its links with Apple. Outside of confirming that there's still around 10 million Spotify users worldwide (with around three million of those being of the paid variety), the duo also confirmed that it's working daily to improve the catalog. Said Ek: "We're up to 18 million songs, growing at 10,000 or 20,000 songs per day -- it's very much a growing catalog." Walt was curious as to why iTunes had upwards of 30 million tracks, and why all of the services simply don't have the same library, but both players were quick to brush off the topic and pivot directly to the importance of playlists. Ek stated: "If you look at iTunes, the vast majority of songs haven't been purchased by anyone -- it's driven by hits. We see 80 percent of our whole catalog listened to." Following that, Parker contributed: "The playlist is now the CD. It used to be a few songs were wanted by the consumer, and the rest of it was garbage. It's the new mixtape, but accelerated on a massive scale." As it turns out, Spotify actually sells "bundles" (which are glorified playlists) as pay products in Europe, and when Walt asked why these weren't available in America, Parker obliged: "We just haven't released it yet." In other words, they're coming soon.
Aaron Sorkin talks about future Steve Jobs movie, impact of technology on his writing
You don't have to look far to get a grasp on who Aaron Sorkin is -- he wrote A Few Good Men, The American President, The West Wing, Moneyball and The Social Network, for starters -- and he showed up at D10 to talk creative media, how the digital age impacts his writing and his impending movie about late Apple CEO Steve Jobs. While not involving hard technology news, the interview was exceedingly refreshing, and it delved deep into the world of tech as it impacts his upcoming show about a fictional newsroom (The Newsroom on HBO). The highlights included a frank quote that whoever ends up playing Jobs in his movie -- not to be confused with the one already in production with Ashton Kutcher -- will have to be "good, and intelligent." He also confessed to being fully engaged in the "three screens" movement, but wasn't too prideful to admit that he taps into the brain of his 11-year old daughter for lots of technological help. Pretty wild for a guy that many would label "genius." For more from the interview, head on past the break.
Intellectual Ventures' Nathan Myhrvold defends patent trolling, calls tech industry immature
Intellectual Ventures' CEO and founder Nathan Myhrvold, who previously spent some 14 years at Microsoft Research, took the stage here at D10, and as predicted, his interview with Walt Mossberg was quite the invigorating one. You may know the man and his company for its vicious patent trolling -- or, what appears to be patent trolling. In essence, a lot of its business comes from acquiring patent portfolios, and then licensing and / or suing companies to "enforce" them. Naturally, Nathan has a radically different perspective than most sane individuals on the matter, insisting that the system isn't necessarily broken, and that "making money from enforcing patents is no more wrong than investing in preferred stock." The talk centered predominantly around how Intellectual Ventures operates, what it does, and if its CEO feels that the "rat's nest of lawsuits" -- as Walt put it -- was getting out of control. Despite saying that his company has hundreds of people working on new inventions to help deliver medicines in Africa (in response to a question from the crowd on whether his outfit was truly helping people), he confessed that suing to enforce patents was simply another method of capitalism working. Care to take a ride on the crazy train? Head on past the break for a few choice quotes from the interview.
Zynga CEO Mark Pincus says 'no thanks' to console gaming, isn't worried about a life detached from Facebook
Zynga CEO and founder Mark Pincus just took the stage here at D10, and in a wide-ranging interview with Kara Swisher, he sidestepped conversation about Words With Friends and Farmville long enough to touch on the murky world of console gaming. In a bid to quell any potential surprises at E3 next month, Mark said outrightly that his company is not interested in getting into the console world. "We're aiming for you," he said while pointing at Swisher. "We're going after the mainstream market. There's too much friction [in the console world]." He also made clear that he tries to not look too far ahead of where the world really is. When talking about the undeniable shift to mobile, he made clear that there's still a huge amount of desktop traffic on Zynga's games -- "lots of people play while bored on conference calls at work," he quipped. It's an interesting viewpoint in a world where PSN and Xbox Live Arcade has given independent developers all new distribution platforms to reach users, but it also highlights the outfit's intrinsic attachment to Facebook in particular.
Apple CEO Tim Cook interview at D10: the liveblog
We had quite the time here at the 2011 edition of D, and if you're fully caught up with last year's shenanigans, it's time to get to work. And by "work," we mean listening in to the opening keynote of DX. The 2012 conference is kicking off in earnest on May 29th, and it'll be Apple CEO Tim Cook taking the stage alongside hosts Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. By our calculations, this looks to be his first offsite interview outside of the financial realm, and we'll be liveblogging the whole of it from the Terranea Resort in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. The action's scheduled to kick off around 6:15PM PT (that's 9:15PM for you folks on the right coast; 3:15PM in Tahiti), and you can follow along just past the break. As to what'll be discussed? Just guessing here, but in no particular order: Samsung, intellectual property, Foxconn, iOS, earnings, lawsuits, iPad, acquisitions and cold, hard cash.
ASUS' Jonney Shih unveils Transformer Prime Android tablet: 10-inch, 8.3mm, quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3
Whoa, Nelly! ASUS head honcho Jonney Shih just revealed the "next-generation Transformer tablet" here at AsiaD! It's the same one that we saw teased just yesterday, and Jonney affirmed that it'll ship with a quad-core NVIDIA chip, 10-inch display, mini-HDMI port, a 14.5-hour battery, an SD card slot and a top lid that looks precisely like its Zenbook line. Oh, and it's 8.3mm thick, though Jonney didn't specify as to whether that was docked or undocked (we're guessing the former!). Naturally, it'll ship with Android, and we're assuming it'll be Honeycomb to start. That said, Shih did affirm to Walt Mossberg that he expects Ice Cream Sandwich to hit tablets by the end of the year -- "perhaps earlier." Finally, we were informed that it'll be called the Transformer Prime, and while a final ship date wasn't given, we're told to expect more news on that front during the November 9th "official reveal." %Gallery-137055%
Liveblog from AsiaD: Andy Rubin, SVP of Mobile at Google
Thought today's festivities were over from Hong Kong? Think again. While Samsung and Google tag-teamed the morning with the introduction of the Galaxy Nexus, the first-ever AsiaD conference is kicking off as the sun sets over Victoria Harbour. The opening keynote is quite the impressive one, with Google's own Senior Vice President of Mobile, Andy Rubin, on the docket. Mr. Rubin's no stranger to these events -- in fact, we've liveblogged his interviews twice from All Things D events -- and we're expecting quite the talk tonight following the official unveiling of Ice Cream Sandwich. Join us after the break for the liveblog!
Rumor: Next iPhone will launch in October
The next iPhone may arrive in October, not September according to a new report from AllThingsD. A source familiar with Apple's plans claims the rumor that AT&T was blocking vacation at the end of September in preparation for an iPhone launch was incorrect. AT&T may still black out vacations for that time period, but it's not for the iPhone 5. Instead, this source claims the iPhone 5 will launch in October, possibly late October. But what about Apple's annual iPod event in September and iOS which will launch this fall? In the past, Apple has announced the iPhone a few weeks before its actual launch. It's possible that Apple may confirm the iPhone 5 in September for a mid-to-late October launch. iOS 5 should also be released around that time as well.
iPhones now being sold by 200 carriers worldwide
Whether or not a new iPhone will be introduced this year is largely irrelevant to sales of the device, according to Goldman Sachs analyst Bill Shope, quoted in a Wall Street Journal All Things Digital post today. That's primarily due to the continuing addition of new carriers throughout the world. Apple officials noted that the company is now selling iPhones through 200 carriers, up from 186 at the beginning of April. This kind of continued expansion of sales of the iPhone 4 and 3GS all over the world means, according to Shope, "iPhone shipments can remain robust through this summer, even with a delayed product refresh." Shope believes that Apple's iPhone carrier expansion may actually be accelerating, which will further fuel sales of the iconic smartphone. We'll have to wait until Apple's third-quarter figures are available in July to find out for sure, but iPhone 4 sales may also have been helped by the long-delayed release of the white model.
Disney will not be a part of iCloud launch
Disney CEO Bob Iger spoke at the D9 conference this week, and said that while he considers the cloud to be a huge force in technology going forward, he's not sold enough to be included in the first round of Apple's almost-announced iCloud service. Whatever Steve Jobs announces for iCloud on Monday (likely a music sharing and storage service, according to the rumors), it will not include goodies licensed under Disney. Still, Iger lauded Apple for working on what he called a "digital locker in the sky," saying that a system like that would really be "a step in a better direction for the user experience." Hopefully Apple will nail down Disney's agreement for iCloud in the future, if indeed it is going to serve as a media storage unit in the cloud. Meanwhile, Iger's plans seem much more local to his company -- rather than relying on Apple or any other company to sell and store his content, Disney apparently plans to "deliver entertainment directly to our consumers through a proprietary site or platform," said Iger. Seems a little inconvenient to have each content company set up its own platform to sell content (rather than going through Apple's store and service), but to each his own, we guess.
Mac growth outpaces market for 19 straight quarters
If you've been following Apple's quarterly financial calls for the past several years, you know that many of the new products -- iPhone and iPad, specifically -- have been selling like the proverbial hotcakes. But you might be surprised to know that Apple's 27 year-old Macintosh personal computer line has seen a remarkable resurgence in sales. John Paczowski at the Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital looked at the skyrocketing sales of Macs in a post today. As he notes, Apple's first quarter 2011 results (ending December 31, 2010) marked the 19th consecutive quarter that Mac sales have outperformed the PC market. In the consumer market, the Mac posted growth in shipments of 17.1 percent over the previous year, while the rest of the market declined about .6 percent. But the surprising numbers are in the business market, where the Mac showed 65.4 percent growth year-over-year compared to 9.7 percent for the broader market. Things really get crazy in the government market segment, where sales of the Mac grew at an astounding 549.5 percent (of course, the government market only accounts for about one percent of all Mac sales). Paczowski notes that Needham analyst Charlie Wolf credits the halo effect for the surge in sales. People who purchase and grow to love an iPod, iPhone or iPad are more likely to buy Macs. Since iPads are being tested or deployed in most of the Fortune 100 companies, IT departments are also beginning to look at the Mac in a new light.
All Things D posts full Mike Lazaridis video from D: Dive Into Mobile
By now you've no doubt heard about Mike Lazaridis' recent appearance at the D: Dive Into Mobile conference, where the RIM co-CEO arrived with his own personal reality distortion field and made statements like the surprising fact that RIM "arguably" invented the smartphone, and that the BlackBerry Torch is actually fast. Don't believe us? Well, thanks to All Things D, you can now watch the complete 40-minute appearance for yourself, which just so happens to also include a fairly lengthy demo of the PlayBook. Check it out after the break.
Google's Andy Rubin says iTunes is "not the right experience"
Yesterday's announcement of Google Books was another sign that the internet powerhouse intends to compete with Apple on all levels. If a comment that was made yesterday at D:DiveIntoMobile by Andy Rubin, Google's Vice President of Engineering, is any indication, Google has plans to create an online music store to compete with iTunes. D:DiveIntoMobile is a conference sponsored by the Wall Street Journal's AllThingsDigital, and it features panels with a number of mobile computing notables and the AllThingsDigital staff. During his talk yesterday, Rubin quickly demoed Honeycomb, the tablet version of the Android OS that is designed to compete directly against the iPad. At the prompting of a moderator, he discussed Google's plans in the music space. When asked if Google would start off with some "simple" download store like iTunes instead of a planned cloud-based subscription service, Rubin reportedly said that "We could build that 10 times over... (it's) not the right experience." Rubin said that he wants the Google music service to have an "intimate connection," reminiscing that he still remembers album titles that he and a date were looking at in a record store when he was 15 years old. What do you think, TUAW readers? Does Apple need to change the model and the experience for iTunes in order to compete with whatever will eventually come from Google? Leave your comments below.
Analyst says Apple is working on thinner CDMA-GSM iPad
With speculation about suppliers for the 2nd generation iPad already flying about, we're also hearing that Apple is working on creating a "World iPad" that would contain both GSM and CDMA capabilities making it compatible with phone carriers around the world. According to All Things Digital, analyst Brian Blair of Denver-based Wedge Partners performed channel checks on wireless supplier Qualcomm and believes that Apple's next iPad will feature one of Qualcomm's multi-mode CDMA-GSM chips. Blair went on to say that Apple would be "ratcheting down production of the existing 3G iPad over the next two months" prior to starting production of the World iPad. Blair's recent supplier checks point to Apple building a whopping 48 million iPads during the 2011 calendar year. The combo iPad would mean that Verizon Wireless, which uses a network based on the CDMA standard, would be able to offer iPads without having to rely on selling a Wi-Fi only model plus a MiFi mobile hotspot. Blair's discussions with suppliers also indicate that the next-generation iPad will be thinner than the existing model, made from one piece of metal in a process similar to that used for the unibody MacBook Pros. As expected, the new model will have "at least" a front-facing camera for use in FaceTime video chats. [via The Mac Observer]
