“When Apple wants to make a big splash, it returns to its history,” Brian X. Chen reports for The New York Times. “Thirty years ago at the Flint Center for the Performing Arts, a roomy auditorium in Cupertino, Calif., Steven P. Jobs introduced the original Macintosh. On Tuesday, Apple will come back to the center to unveil a set of long-anticipated products: two iPhones with larger screens, and a wearable computer that the media has nicknamed the iWatch.”
“The so-called smartwatch will be the first brand-new product unveiled under Apple’s new chief, Timothy D. Cook, who took the helm after Mr. Jobs died nearly three years ago. It is expected to come in two sizes and combine functions like health and fitness monitoring with mobile computing tasks like displaying maps, said people knowledgeable about the product. It will have a unique, flexible screen and, like the new phones, will support technology that allows people to pay for things wirelessly,” Chen reports. “‘I believe it’s going to be historic,’ said Tim Bajarin, a consumer technology analyst for Creative Strategies who attended the original Mac event in 1984.”
“Multiple employees for Apple and its partners who were briefed on the products shared some details on the condition that they not be identified. Some said the smartwatch was one of Apple’s most ambitious projects to date,” Chen reports. “It has a flexible display panel that is protected by a cover composed of sapphire, a type of tougher glass, they said. The device’s circuit board, which includes its sensors and chips, was described as tiny, about the size of a postage stamp. For replenishing the battery, the smartwatch will rely on a wireless charging method.”
“The bigger iPhones, which have been widely written about over the last year, will come in two sizes, one measuring 4.7 diagonal inches and the other 5.5 diagonal inches. The larger version will be the more expensive model,” Chen reports. “To deal with concerns that a bigger phone will make typing with one hand difficult (the current iPhone has a 4-inch screen), some changes to the design of the iPhones’ software interface will allow people to type or use apps with just one hand — there will be a one-handed mode that can be switched on and off, two employees said.”
Much, much more in the full article – recommended – here.
Most things Apple does are historic.
Yeah, like maps! Lol
An old fashioned sort of a guy aren’t you.
This fall will be historic for Apple – beyond the watch.
Tim Bajarin’s comparison of Disney’s ‘ID Band’ and ‘iWatch’ is a good read and posted at MDN.
Apple’s iWearable could be bigger than naysayers think (like they underestimated the original iPhone )
With all these leaks, I think the biggest surprise will be whether Apple has kept anything secret.
Bet on it
Maybe Apple will come out with the iBed, which will come wired for whatever wireless charging method is used.
Apple has a history of making niche products that everyone buys.
So when Apple copies Samsung it’s historic.
Two points:
Scamsung didn’t mess with a watch until the rumors of the iWatch were everywhere. They literally only did it so idiots like you could make statements like this one.
If Apple’s watch is *anything* like SameSong’s, I’ll eat mine.
Some people just want to be idiots, it was the same with the Newton in all the time people knew it was being developed indeed even within the time it’s launch was delayed all sorts of wannabes developed naff palm type computers claiming that they were first. Been repeated ever since because the gullible or those with a ulterior motive are plentiful and will believe anything they are spoon fed. That’s what happens however when you go for quality over cheap tricks. And of course as anyone with half a brain would know Sony and various others produced wrist devices long before Samsung jumped on the bandwagon once Apple’s interest was published.
Apple didn’t “copy” but even if they had – Touche Shamdung! Turnabout IS fair play!
you only copy when your product tries to mimic the other like Samsung did down to the icons and when you violate patents like Samsung. Samsung knew it had zero design ability so it tried to camouflage it like an iPhone (like a $25 fake Prada ) .
Drunk Jony Ive wouldn’t build a device looking like a crappy Samsung idiot watch. His dog (if he had one) wouldn’t wear a POS like a samsung ‘ i ‘ Watch. As for design patents, Samsung’s are filed under ‘Tech Sh*t’ by the clerk in the patent office.
Well Samsung phones have the usual features of Android such as widgets, expandable storage, ect ect, but they also have their own innovations such as the S-Pen, the higher end phones also have bigger, higher resolution screens. The iPhone 6 is the first ever iPhone to be technically considered HD since it’s just barely above the bare bones 720p specification while 720p has been a standard resolution in most Android phones for the past 2 years and the Galaxy Note 4 will boast a quad HD screen.
I also don’t see them trying to mimic Apples awkward proprietary file system.
I think your definition of ‘mimic’ is a bit off. If Samsung decided they wanted to mimic the iPhone and started churning out a bunch of low spec dual core phones with 1 GB of RAM and sub-HD screens then I wouldn’t be buying their phones.
the reason Android phones need multi core processors is because it needs them to run reasonably well due to inherent flaws as admitted by google and explained by Google engineers like Andrew Munn. Android is a ripoff and due the RUSH to CHANGE the software from being a Black Berry clone with KEYBOARD inter face to the TOUCH interface after seeing the iPhone Google engineers layered an interface over the old one causing lag instead of creating a new OS from the ground up.
Andrew Munn at the Google.com website:
“It’s not GC pauses. It’s not because Android runs bytecode and iOS runs native code. It’s because on iOS all UI rendering occurs in a dedicated UI thread with real-time priority. On the other hand, Android follows the traditional PC model of rendering occurring on the main thread with normal priority.
This is a not an abstract or academic difference. You can see it for yourself. Grab your closest iPad or iPhone and open Safari. Start loading a complex web page like Facebook. Half way through loading, put your finger on the screen and move it around. All rendering instantly stops. The website will literally never load until you remove your finger. This is because the UI thread is intercepting all events and rendering the UI at real-time priority.
If you repeat this exercise on Android, you’ll notice that the browser will attempt to both animate the page and render the HTML, and do an ‘ok’ job at both. On Android, this a case where an efficient dual core processor really helps, which is why the Galaxy S II is famous for its smoothness.
On iOS when an app is installing from the app store and you put your finger on the screen, the installation instantly pauses until all rendering is finished. Android tries to do both at the same priority, so the frame rate suffers. ”
—
google’s mishmash of android is also why their apps are interior and why the interface is laggy unless you have a super powered phone and why real world app usage a spec supposedly inferior iPhone often outperforms them.
I got a Galaxy Note 2 with a quad core CPU right now, but before that I had an S3 with a little dual core. I ran the latest build of CyanogenMod on it as I do with my Note 2, which is based on the latest build of Android currently released. I never experienced any of the lag you just talked about. .
But loading up web pages isn’t exactly the most demanding type of benchmarking test you can do.
it’s a documented fact.
Munn is/was a Google techy. I copied the note from Goog’s own internal blog.
Munn was trying to explain why android phones always had to have more cores to run reasonably ok like your case. (that’ s also why Android’s got BIG fast to keep the big battery to run all the cores needed)
Munn wrote it some time back but he notes that the dual core S2 was needed and smoother than single CPUs at the time : ” this a case where an efficient dual core processor really helps, which is why the Galaxy S II is famous for its smoothness..”
The UI priority in Android is set up such because it was designed for a KEYBOARD not touch , that’s why the Google tech guy said : ” On the other hand, Android follows the traditional PC model of rendering “.
HERE is another take from Tribune news:
“Google added the butter effect in the Jelly-Bean software update for a smoother user interface; this somehow helped it in getting better interface flow. However, the Android is still not as smooth as the iOS. The reason is that the Android and iOS are both built on different architecture.
In the Android, the processing power is divided equally between rendering the user interface and other operations. The user interface runs on the main processing thread. The iPhone’s software, however, has a dedicated thread only for processing the user interface which, as a result, makes the iOS produce a smoother user interface. Unless Google goes back to the drawing board and modifies the architecture of the Android, quad cores aren’t going to apply enough butter.”
he says: QUAD CORES AREN’T GOING TO TO APPLY ENOUGH BUTTER.
get that? Cores on iPhone and Android are NOT EQUAL, you need more cores on android to run as smooth as iOS.
shoot as all androids and apple haters you will ignore it but facts are facts.
When I point out FACTS you go to your PERSONAL experience “my android POS is WONDEFFUL’ .. like who cares.
I can say my iOS device is great too. At least I don’t have apple engineers SAYING that iOS is inferior because it was a hurriedly paste over built over the WRONG FOUNDATION (due to the fact it was hurriedly changed from keyboard when Schmidt spied on the iPhone as an Apple board member ).
I had an Apple Insider explanation as well but didn’t use it as you would say Apple Insider was biased.
but they do a good job explaining it in normal language , so if you take it with an open mind:
Apple Insider:
“Munn noted that Android “has a ways to go” before achieving more efficient UI compositing, especially when compared against Apple’s iOS.
“On iOS, each UI view is rendered separately and stored in memory, so many animations only require the GPU to recomposite UI views,” he said. “GPUs are extremely good at this. Unfortunately, on Android, the UI hierarchy is flattened before rendering, so animations require every animating section of the screen to be redrawn.”
Another reason for the lag is the limitations of Android’s Dalvik virtual machine, which is “not as mature” as a desktop-class Java VM, Munn said. However, the issue with Dalvik will be offset by hardware acceleration from Ice Cream Sandwich on and improvements to Dalvik.
But, in spite of the improvements, Munn believes the Android user interface “will never be completely smooth because of the design constraints” that limit UI rendering to the main thread of an app with normal priority.
“Even with a Galaxy Nexus, or the quad-core EeePad Transformer Prime, there is no way to guarantee a smooth frame rate if these two design constraints remain true,” he said. “It’s telling that it takes the power of a Galaxy Nexus to approach the smoothness of a three year old iPhone.”
According to Munn, the reason behind the design change is that the original Android prototype didn’t have a touchscreen, as it was meant to be a BlackBerry competitor. As such, Android’s architecture is meant to support a keyboard and trackball. Munn further claimed that after the original iPhone arrived in 2007, Google rushed to complete Android, but “it was too late to rewrite the UI framework.”
You do realize that Android has gone under many, many, MANY revisions right? Android Cupcake was the first Android OS, meant to run on the Android prototype, about 7 years ago. Android today is nothing like it was back then.
“You do realize that Android has gone under many, many, MANY revisions right? ”
when the foundation is shit no matter how many layers you put on top it’s going to be weak.
e.g: “Munn believes the Android user interface “will never be completely smooth because of the design constraints”
but like I said before no matter the facts Fandroids will always ignore it. Just don’t come to an apple fan site with B.S that android’s are so superior due to more cores, they need it to run even half decent. (Just like Windows machines need more Ram and hard drive space than more efficient OSX. It’ll take too long to explain THIS as well… )
btw it baffles me why people support android, so obviously copied even from the evidence I presented above, i.e originally it was blackberry clone and then switched when Schmidt heard of iPhone ALL THE EVIDENCE IS IN THE CODE . something not enough to go to court over but it proves Android was not original but conceptually
copied , so rushed they didn’t even change the interface foundation. (that’s why Google doesn’t even bother to deny it).
Also Samsung etc copying, fined billion bucks for infringing etc. Samsung also fined by Taiwanese govt for making FAKE reviews of HTC phones, caught hiring astro Turfers to blog fake news , cheated their fans by after giving 8 core Exynos S4s to reviewers and hyping the 8 cores shipped millions of S4s loaded with cheaper 4 Core Qualcomm (not made by samsung) Snapdragons to consumers… etc. Why are you all so infatuated with stolen tech, companies with cheat their fans etc ?)
samsung loads Qualcomm snapdragons into their phones
The OS is by Google (stolen from Apple)
The design (as proven by lost court cases and obvious when you look at them ) was stolen from apple
So muscle (processor), brains (OS), body (design) All NOT from Samsung, so what did Samsung invent?
Apple masterminds the OS, the Hardware, the processors. And they are all built in LOCKSTEP so the OS maxes out the processor capabilities (that’s also why standard processor comparisons and benchmark tests don’t tell the whole story). Besides a weak foundation Android is designed to run on all kinds of processors, screens, etc so there’s no way to optimize it.
“You do realize that Android has gone under many, many, MANY revisions right? Android Cupcake was the first Android OS, meant to run on the Android prototype, about 7 years ago”
You are so stunned you are not even reading my excerpts:
Like the Tribune article pointed out (it’s not Cupcake dude but even at Jelly Bean state)
“Google added the butter effect in the Jelly-Bean software update for a smoother user interface; this somehow helped it in getting better interface flow. However, the Android is still not as smooth as the iOS. The reason is that the Android and iOS are both built on different architecture.”
Jelly Bean is the second last OS just before Kit Kat.
that means at least all the android users from Cupcake, donut, eclair, froyo , gingerbread , Honeycomb, ice cream sandwich to jelly bean SUFFERED the UI problem.
see I told you the foundation is shit.
i think all this talk about sapphire glass is for the watch, not iPhone
Stoked!!
The Hype over this to me, is too much.. there isn’t anyway Apple could meet all these expectations.. However, It will be an interesting Tuesday for sure.. they’ve got to have 2 hours worth of stuff to show…
What’s the point of a flexible display panel if it’s covered with harder-than-glass sapphire?
Assuming the sapphire is thin enough to bend and the new gadget actually gets introduced, a flexible display panel could make the gadget more comfortable.
This may be important if it’s worn for long periods of time. Say, if the gadget is a combination of house keys / remote control / wallet / doctor’s visit / cure for boredom / the only friend that understands you.
I think the flexible point is that they could simply bend the screen to fit the shape of the case below the sapphire cover. The wearable case is not going to be flexible.
The big question for me is the upgrade cycle. With phones, people were already used to upgrading at 2 year cycle. How often are people going to upgrade a watch, even one as cool as I expect from Apple? Sure, I’ll likely trade in my Pebble to snag one, but after that? Watches are products most people buy for 10+ years. I can’t see myself buying another watch for 4-5 years at minimum, especially if the price tag is $300+.
What I want to see is a devise that STOPS the world & makes Apples competition peeeee their pants!