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WSJ: iPad 2 in production, features FaceTime camera, faster processor
Oh look, what's this? The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the iPad 2 has entered production -- which exactly lines up previously rumored manufacturing schedules. According to the WSJ, the new edition of Apple's tablet will have a faster processor with a better GPU and more memory in a thinner, lighter package. There's also said to be a front-facing camera for video conferencing, but the much-discussed display resolution will remain "similar" to the current iPad -- which actually goes along with the most recent information we've gotten from our sources, who say that the next iPad will indeed stay at the current resolution, and that the higher-res display we'd heard about earlier may have actually been for a future model. As for availability, the WSJ says the new iPad will be on Verizon and AT&T, which certainly makes sense -- although it'll be interesting to see how Verizon handles positioning it against the upcoming Xoom, which Motorola is marketing in an aggressively anti-iPad manner. In any event, between the iPad 2, the Xoom, and whatever Palm has to offer tomorrow, this spring is about to get very, very interesting.
iPad high resolution display rumored for third generation
According to IDC research manager Tom Mainelli, the iPad 3 and not the iPad 2 will be the lucky recipient of a high-resolution display. Previous rumors have repeatedly suggested that the iPad 2 will sport a high-resolution "Retina" display. Most of these rumors came from Asian sources and were cautiously repeated with skepticism that Apple could pack a Retina Display into the iPad 2 and keep the price competitive. Mainelli bucks this trend by asserting that it is production and not cost that is the limiting factor for a 10-inch high-resolution display. The technology exists and is reasonably priced, but there are no production facilities capable of producing a Retina Display at the volume Apple will need for the iPad 2. Apple sold over 7 million iPads in its last quarter, and these numbers are expected to skyrocket in the upcoming year. Rather than experience lagging sales due to component shortages. Apple may have opted to push off the high-resolution display and manufacture the iPad 2 with a standard resolution display. Apple is reportedly prepping manufacturers for the iPad 3, giving them time to ramp up their display production capabilities for the third generation tablet. If this analysis by Mainelli pans out and the iPad 2 does ship with a standard display, will you be disappointed? Disappointed to the point that you bypass the iPad 2 and wait for the iPad 3? Let us know in the comments.
More iOS 4.3 digging hints at new iPad 2 camera, same 1024 x 768 display
We love all the little goodies that come out of iOS developer builds. It's been only a day since 4.3 hit the scene and already we've seen hints of future iPhone / iPad models, a Find My Friends feature, and now more hints of a camera for the next iPad. Which, of course, is far from the first time we've heard iPad and camera in the same utterance (cases, mockups, paperwork, even more code). Today's revelation comes in the form of shutter screens and camera / video icons care of 9 to 5 Mac, but here's the catch: to believe these imagery to be the real thing is to also accept that the iPad 2 might have the same 1024 x 768 display, given that's what these pictures are optimized for. You didn't really believe the iPad 2 would have a 9.7-inch, 2530 x 1897 resolution retina display... did you? Well, it's only speculative, anyway.
Microsoft seeking to quadruple Kinect accuracy?
Hacked your Kinect recently? Then you probably know something most regular Xbox 360 gamers don't -- namely, that the Kinect's infrared camera is actually capable of higher resolution than the game console itself supports. Though Microsoft originally told us it ran at 320 x 240, you'll find both color and depth cameras display 640 x 480 images if you hook the peripheral up to a PC, and now an anonymous source tells Eurogamer that Microsoft wants to do the very same in the video game space. Reportedly, Redmond artificially limited the Kinect on console in order to leave room for other USB peripherals to run at the same time, but if the company can find a way around the limitation, it could issue a firmware update that could make the Kinect sensitive enough to detect individual finger motions and inevitably lead to gesture control. One of multiple ways Microsoft intends to make the world of Minority Report a reality, we're sure.
Apple TV updated to 4.1.1, aims to fix resolution and download problems
See, sometimes dreams do come true. Just days after we asked how you'd tweak the second generation Apple TV, in flies an update that a good many TV owners have been anxiously awaiting. The 4.1.1 update purportedly solves "an issue that causes some high-definition TVs to incorrectly display at 480p," as well as an issue that "may cause a movie or TV show to be re-downloaded." It's pretty obvious that Apple's aiming to correct a nagging color / banding problem that has been plaguing some owners since day one, but according to users over at Apple Insider's forums, it's not a cure-all solution. A handful of members have stated that their sets -- typically using an HDMI-to-DVI adapter -- still display incorrect colors after the update. Flip on your own box and get the download started, and let us know if it's the fix you've been after down in comments below.
Breakfast Topic: What are your resolutions for the expansion?
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages. In the final days of old Azeroth, before the Shattering, my friends were chomping at the bit. They were farming the elemental bosses for JP, taking screenshots of Darkshore and Stormwind Park, and discussing names for their forthcoming gnome priests. Where was I, while all this was going on? Far out in the Bay of Storms in Azshara, fighting a giant "minnow" named Maws. Yes, that's right: in the final hours of Wrath, I was finishing the Blue Shard portion of the Scepter of the Shifting Sands quest line. A little late? Yeah, you could say that. An eternal procrastinator, I started the entire chain with Only One May Rise exactly three days before the Shattering occurred. As fellow Scepter-chasers will already realize, my efforts were truly epic -- and alas, all for naught. Though I was able to obtain the Blue and Green scepter shards after a mammoth three days of questing, farming, and running all over Azeroth, the Red scepter shard requires a second, fresh lockout of Blackwing Lair, and I did not have one. No Scepter for me. I don't regret doing the quest line, even if I didn't end up with the Feat of Strength; I'm a big quest nerd, and I loved experiencing the lore. I do, however, regret not starting earlier. Therefore, in Cataclysm, I've made myself a promise: I will do every quest available to me, from Hillsbrad to Mount Hyjal, Darkshore to Deepholm. As I go through the lowbie zones on my Loremaster druid, I won't move on when I get the achievement; I'll complete everything available, just to see what happens. Is there anything you were unable to finish before the Shattering? What are your resolutions for playing in a post-Cataclysm Azeroth?
UAE says BlackBerry is now compliant with regulations, free to rock on
The latest thrilling installment in BlackBerry's Middle East saga has turned out not to be so thrilling after all. Having set an October 11 deadline for RIM to comply with its "telecommunications regulatory framework," the United Arab Emirates is today reporting that the BlackBerry maker has managed to make the necessary changes with plenty of time to spare. Consequently, there'll be no state-ordained curtailing of email, web, or BBM services within the UAE, which mirrors similar agreements that BlackBerry has managed to finagle with India and Saudi Arabia. Of course, the grand purpose of the UAE's ultimatum was for RIM to allow the state access to encrypted messaging communications, and while the current announcement is pointedly missing details on what's been done to appease the Abu Dhabi decision makers, we can't imagine them giving up the fight without RIM making some type of concession. And the shady, undisclosed concessions happen to be our least favorite kind.
Guest Post: How to assemble a hot gaming rig for Cataclysm
This article has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to our pages. Today's post is the second of a three-part series on preparing your computer for Cataclysm. Last week, we covered upgrading your current system. Today, we'll look at building a system that will play WoW at max settings without breaking the bank. I like my cases how I like my women -- lightweight and protective. A computer case has three purposes in life: to house all the components, to protect them and to provide good airflow to them. Owning the most epic set of plate mail ever created does you no good if you cannot move or breathe in it. However, running around in your auction house tux is also a bad idea if you're the main tank. It's important to find a happy middle ground between the two. When it comes to computer cases, first, pick out something you like. A case should be an expression of its owner! Pick out a few different cases you like and then narrow down the search by the number of fans the case supports. Modern systems will require at least one 120mm front intake fan and one 120mm rear exhaust fan. A top exhaust fan is a nice bonus, since (as everyone knows) heat rises. You should be able to find a decent enough case for around $50 with free shipping.
Guest Post: Is your computer ready for Cataclysm?
This article has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com. The Lich King is dead, your GearScore is 6,000+, and you have enough alts to run your own 25-man ICC. You cannot wait for the upcoming Cataclysm expansion, but along with the new instances, gear and level cap, there are also significantly increased graphics to consider. You may be ready for Cataclysm -- but is your computer? While we have yet to hear official system requirements from Blizzard, we do know from the Cataclysm FAQ that "there will be incremental tweaks and updates to the graphics engine in this expansion. For example, we've made improvements to the way that water is rendered. We'll announce the exact system requirements closer to the expansion's release." This is the first part of a three-part series on getting your computer up to speed for Cataclysm. Today, we will cover how to cheaply upgrade your current system. Part 2 will look at how to build a cost-effective, brand new system that will still run WoW at full settings. Finally, part 3 will focus on building a future-proof monster computer capable of soloing the Blood Queen herself!
Researchers create pixels eight times smaller than the Retina Display
You might be pretty proud of your iPhone 4's Retina Display, and those teensy pixels 4x smaller than the already good-looking usual Apple displays. Or maybe you're looking forward to seeing the Retina installed in some of Apple's other products at the event later this week. But like most consumer electronics these days, that display isn't quite state-of-the-art. Researchers at the University of Michigan have created a display with nanometer-thin sheets of metal (called nanoresonators) that use slits to create pixels eight times smaller than the pixels currently on the iPhone 4. To show off their work, the University of Michigan researchers created their school's logo on a display only 9 microns tall (a strand of human hair is about 100 microns wide, so the display itself could fit inside the period at the end of this sentence). Crazy. You have to wonder what an iPhone-sized display would look like with a resolution like that (or if we'd even tell the difference, given that our eyes have a limit on the amount of detail they can discern). Obviously, this is strictly a research project at this point -- creating all of the "nanoresonators" required to make a fullsize display would probably cost a lot more than the iPhone 4 actually does. Maybe it's something to look forward to for the iPhone 5, 6 or 7.
ClearCam goes legit, will increase image resolution at a price
ClearCam has been around for a while, and I first took a look at it more than a year ago. It was a clever app that had two modes. One mode took a series of four pictures in rapid succession, and then it saved the best and sharpest one in your photo library; the other mode took six images together and stacked them in order to increase resolution and reduce noise. In practice, it meant that the old 3G 2MP camera became the rough equivalent of a 4MP camera. The app had been pulled from the App Store for a while -- the SDK did not allow access to raw iPhone images (only compressed images), which meant it was impossible to run any enhancement algorithms on the data. The SDK now allows for access to those uncompressed images, iPhone cameras are better, and ClearCam has returned as a regular iPhone app. It runs on the 3GS and the iPhone 4, and it requires iOS 4. The app is similar to the original version, although now it chooses the best shot out of three instead of four. For the stacking or enhanced mode, it still takes six images and then aligns and processes them. %Gallery-98422%
Sony limiting use of 1080p 3D in PS3 games
Sony's official guidelines for 3D gaming on PS3 limit the displayed image to a resolution of 720p, a Sony representative confirmed at the Develop conference this week. Even games that run natively at 1080p resolution, like Super Stardust HD, are downscaled in 3D mode to two 720p images (one for each eye), Sony's Simon Benson explained during a demo of the technology at the conference. While the PS3 is capable of displaying a 1080p 3D image -- indeed, it will support 3D Blu-Ray movies at that resolution later this year -- Benson said upping the resolution comes at the expense of the silky-smooth 60 frames per second available at 720p (Blu-Ray movies run at 24 frames per second). Benson said that a "more cinematic game" might be well-suited for the lower frame rate and higher resolution, but that Sony's current guidelines for 3D games wouldn't allow for such a setting. The effects of this policy are probably unnoticeable to most gamers. Benson said that, in 3D, even trained computer graphics artists could barely tell the difference between the resolutions. Still, for all you pixel counters out there who obsess over "full HD 1080p," here's another bit of technical trivia for you to argue over.
iPhone 4's resolution resolved
When Steve Jobs introduced iPhone 4, he claimed that its "Retina Display's" tiny pixels exceed what the human eye can differentiate. "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," Jobs said. Raymond Soneira, president of DisplayMate Technologies, refuted the claim in a Wired article entitled iPhone 4's 'Retina' Display Claims Are False Marketing. Meanwhile, Phil Plait of Discover magazine's Bad Astronomy column responds by saying that Soneira is (mostly) incorrect, while Steve Jobs is (technically) right. Begun this week the war has.
iPhone 4's retina display claim put under the math microscope
Samsung might have entertained us with some trash talk about the iPhone 4's IPS LCD yesterday, but this stuff is of a rather more somber variety. Raymond Soneira, president of monitor diagnostics firm DisplayMate, has said that Apple's retina display marketing is inaccurate, because he believes a display that truly makes pixels indistinguishable to the human eye would require a density in the vicinity of 477dpi. The iPhone 4 has 326dpi, and by now you might be surmising that Steve Jobs flat out lied when he said that the iPhone 4's pixels are too small for the human retina to discern from 12 inches away. But not so fast, says Phil Plait from Discover, whose résumé includes calibrating a camera on board the Hubble space telescope. He's done the math too and finds that the 477 number applies only to people with perfect vision. For the vast majority of us, Steve's claim stands up to scrutiny; even folks with 20/20 eyesight wouldn't be able to tell where one pixel ends and another begins. So it turns out Apple can do its math, even if its marketing isn't true for every single humanoid on the planet.
Microscopic signs that next-gen iPhone screen resolution will be 960 x 640
Czech Republic site superiphone.cz claims that it got hold of parts from the next-gen iPhone, but they've gone way beyond the analysis of sites like Gizmodo or Vietnamese sites taoviet and tinhte. Specifically, they've taken the screen from a next-gen iPhone, put it under a microscope (how cool is that), and counted the screen's RGB elements to figure out the screen's resolution. By doing this, the Czech site has confirmed what we've "known" for a couple of months: the next iPhone will have a screen resolution of 960 x 640. This is quadruple the number of pixels on current iPhones, which have a screen resolution of 480 x 320. MacRumors notes this increases the pixel density to 320 dots per inch (dpi), much higher than the Motorola Droid's 265 dpi or Nexus One's 252 dpi. Because the horizontal and vertical pixel density are exactly double that of current iPhones, scaling apps upward to fit the screen's new resolution will be even easier than the scaling that takes place for the iPad when running iPhone-optimized apps. For apps that do take advantage of the higher resolution (games are the first that come to my mind), the result will be graphics much crisper than anything we've seen before on a device this small. [Via Engadget]
Reader UI of the Week: Jake's Larger UI
Each week WoW.com brings you a fresh look at reader submitted UIs. Have a screenshot of your UI you want to submit? Send your screenshots, along with info on what mods you're using, to readerui@wow.com. This week on Reader UI of the Week I've decided to focus on helping people in need of user interface tips for smaller screen resolutions or the need to have buttons larger, as you will see in just a short time. It's kind of like Dear Abby, except with more video games and less mouthy grandmas. The Community has been great in its response to sending in your user interfaces, so keep them coming! Without further ado, let's go a user interfacin'...
iPad game display modes compared
When we saw the iPad at Apple's less-than-exciting unveiling event, we noted that the upscaling on iPhone games was a bit blurry. But, hey, we're no certified graphicsologists or anything. Luckily, Kevin Ng is, and through the help of the iPad SDK, he's compared the appearance of his game WordCrasher running on the device in several ways: at native iPhone resolution; using the iPad's zoomed-in "2X mode" and -- through a little bit of tweaking with the SDK -- full iPad resolution. His results in running WordCrasher at native iPhone resolution and in "2X mode" pretty much mirrored our own observations: standard and pretty ugly, respectively. When blowing up the iPhone version's graphics on the iPad, jaggies became prominent and it was a pretty ugly experience overall. However, when Ng rolled up his sleeves and started fiddling around, he found that tweaking his game to run at the iPad's native 1024X768 resolution helped create some strong visuals. Ng credits the device's support of OpenGL ES 2.0, which allowed him to "use bump maps and other shader techniques to present more realistic materials." Again, we're not graphicsticians (see? we can't even get the term right!), but it seems like the initial cries at the device's inability to make teh purty pics may have been a bit unfounded. [Via Wired]
iPad devsugar: Letting go of iPhone visual design patterns
The new iPad has lots of space. The screen offers 1024x768 pixels. That's way more room to work with than the iPhone gave you. And because of that room, it's time to re-think the way you designed iPhone applications. Things that worked well with the iPhone's limited space -- things that were meant to expand the device's virtual world beyond the screen's tiny reality -- are the things that you need to readdress and confront. Why keep using visual tricks when you can expand into real pixel space? Take the traditional UINavigationController class for example. Its entire role on the iPhone is to provide the same kind of tree view used in Mac OS X's Finder windows (View > As Columns, Command-3). The animations as you select and push view controllers and the back button are both there because you can't reasonably see an entire tree structure at once, in columns, the way you do on a Mac.
Watching movies on an iPad: What you see is what you get
Watching a movie on the new iPad will not as pleasurable experience as you might think. The screen being 1024x768 pixels is in a 4:3 ratio which is the exactly the same as an old CRT television set. Many of us are have gone on from there and are luxuriating in the glory of our 16x9 aspect HDTVs. It turns out that 16x9 will give you big honking black bars at the top and bottom of your screen as you can see by the green bar in the image above, and anything above or below it will be displayed as black bars. It gets worse, lots worse. Let's say you're playing a regular, non-widescreen movie which has an aspect ratio of 1.85:1. In that case anything above or below the blue area will be black bars. Now we get to ribbon-vision. Most widescreen films, from Star Wars to the new Star Trek were filmed in 2:35:1. This and all other resolutions mentioned refer to how wide the screen is as compared to how high. So these films are 2:35 times wider than they are high, and result in a mere ribbon on the iPad screen. Without measuring, it seems to me that a full half of the screen in landscape mode will be filled with black bars. One last kick in the pants. Having a resolution of 1024x768 pixels there is no way that you can display the gold standard of today's high-definition of 1080p. There just aren't enough pixels. So iBooks make sense, but movie watching will be somewhat limited. People frequently say that they really can't watch movies on an iPhone or iPod touch, since the resulting display is so small. The iPad will absolutely be better, but still at a trade-off. Thanks to Blake Walters for creating the chart and tipping us off about this. Note: Some users have questioned the graphic, so I'm posting a revised version by Arash Ayrom which is correct. I'm not sure who is correct, but hopefully it will come out in the comments. Either way, I'm still not happy being a purist with the home theater to prove it. I have little interest watching Ghost Busters in pan and scan where Ernie Hudson is hardly even in the film. DW. Here is Arash's graphic:
Apple files patent for multitouch manipulation of 3D objects
A blogger at the Baltimore Sun found an Apple patent filed last month that describes a multitouch interface for manipulating "three-dimensional virtual objects." The patent seems pretty vague in terms of implementation, but essentially Apple is citing a way to control 3D objects, whether they be icons, game objects, or characters, with a two-dimensional multitouch screen. Sounds like what you're already doing with a game like Zen Bound. Given that "the tablet" is the hot thing to speculate about lately, there are rumors bubbling up that this type of navigation and manipulation could be found in Apple's new device. But that doesn't seem very likely -- most of what we've heard about the tablet is that it'll offer a higher resolution version of the iPhone's interface, and Apple has no reason yet to step away from that. It's possible that this patent could be covering a new app set to release on the tablet, but of course as with everything here, we'll have to wait and see what Jobs shows us on stage later this month. [Via Engadget]
