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“The applications include references to multiple potential external accessories that could communicate with a device like an iPhone. Many of them have already been established with the forthcoming AirPlay standard, including external speaker systems, video players and other multimedia devices,” Hughes reports. “Some, however, suggest Apple’s short-range wireless capabilities could expand to new areas, including home appliances (like a refrigerator or dishwasher), exercise equipment, security systems, home or office automation, cameras, user input devices (a mouse or game controller are mentioned), measurement device, medical devices, or automobiles and automobile accessories (like a car stereo system).”
Hughes reports, “AirPlay and AirPrint will represent a major change for Apple, letting device makers into the company’s ecosystem in a way never before allowed. The move has cleared the way for accessory makers to accept wireless media and data streaming from iOS devices with functionality built into the mobile operating system itself.”
There’s much more, including Apple’s patent application illustrations, in the full article here.
By allowing their software and technology to be embedded in OEM products Apple can leverage their installed user base in ways still mostly unforeseen.
But I expect Android will also be a runner in this area. The customer will have to decide.
this, my friends, is the future of apple’s ecosystem. can anyone say “tipping point”?
This is all fairly recent and incredibly promising. It wasn’t long ago (I believe, with 3GS) that Apple had opened the dock port on the iOS devices to the third-party hardware makers with the detailed specification and API for app development. Many interesting gadgets have showed up since, including audio interfaces for digital multi-track recording (a mouth-watering offering for musicians).
The ability to send audio, video and other media from an iOS device to any other piece of hardware within range opens up in credible opportunities to imaginative people.
Mac OS X will end up stuck in a 20-century thinking (keyboard-mouse-display), with the old-fashioned physical USB and wireless Bluetooth connectivity with devices, while iOS will march on with these new ideas of the future.
Luckily, Mac OS X is living its twilight years, and we’ll all soon be using iOS on all of our future Macs.
osx may be living it’s twilight years but macos is not
I think that soon apple is going to come out with a portable mac (probably simular to the ipad) or combine macos and ios (so you will have finder and applescript on your ipad) not to mention apple has filed numerous patents about removing the keyboard and adding a touch interface to the mac
Yeah but what does it all mean?
Mac OS is not on its way out, these iOS devices serve a purpose but we still need a sever type machine to serve up our data and we need a nice large screen with keyboard and fast processor to do real work on, not jsut writing emails or putting together some class essays.
I have exel spread sheets i need to use for real work that would decimate a A4 processor. Thats real work!!
Stephen,
I believe that will be the same kind of transitional period as was the time of ‘Classic’ inside of Mac OS X.
I have no doubt that Mac OS X will be killed and buried just a few years from now. Steve may even arrange a similar ‘funeral’ service as he did for System 9 in May 2002. When OS X came out, all Mac were still shipping with System 9 as the primary booting OS. It wasn’t until 10.1.2 (nine months later) that OS X began to be the boot system. Even then, Macs continued to be bootable from System 9 until 2003 that Macs could no longer boot System 9. The ‘Classic’ environment continued to live on a bit longer, until 2005, when move to Intel essentially killed that too.
So, what we’ll probably see here is a hybrid iMac with iOS running on top, or inside a blue box environment (kind of like the Classic) of an ordinary OS X (perhaps Snow Leopard’s successor). Next generation of iMacs will move more towards the iOS ergonomics (lying flat or tilted on the desk), with the option to boot directly into iOS. Subsequent generations of iMac will possibly even move to Apple’s own A4 chips and thus completely kill Mac OS X support (the way Intel move killed System 9). By then, majority of major app vendors will have long ported their offerings to the new iOS UI paradigm. Mouse will become history.
As I had been saying all this year, there is no reason why you couldn’t use multi-touch interface on a 27″ display, the same way you use it on an iPad. As for computing power, obviously, mobile devices will always use mobile chips that conserve power. Desktop devices have no reason to use mobile chips (although most iMac tend to have those). So, expect future iOS iMacs (and eventually, Mac Pros with proper multi-touch displays) to continue to have plenty of muscle for your Excel, Final Cut, Illustrator, Maya, Pro Tools, etc.
“As I had been saying all this year, there is no reason why you couldn’t use multi-touch interface on a 27″ display, the same way you use it on an iPad.”
Predrag, I gotta disagree with you bud. I don’t think it will ever happen.
There’s this little thing called Gorilla arm.
Just try holding your arm out in front of you, straight, for 5 minutes. Then think about doing this all day.
Wait, “just sit closer to the 27″ display” you say…
Ok, then get yourself some spf 150 cause you’re going to get a tan.
Now… if you turn that 27″ display into an actual desktop… not a desktop computer, but a real desktop that you work on, then you’ve got something.
It´s really interesting. When the iPad came out with iPhoneOS/iOS, everybody whines about no full MacOS, no real operating system, just a larger toy
and now everbody believes, iOS is the general solution for all IT jobs. iOS and MacOS will stay for a long time side by side and the Apple server farm between them will keep all data in perfect synchronisation. Its like the example mentioned by steve jobs: there are trucks and there are cars and even when Apple sell 10 times more iOS than MacOS devices, traditional computers will keep their purpose like trucks.
Are you all starting to see the iOS device modules that will be options you get when you buy your car, HDTV, stereo, … I think that is why Apple Computer changed their name several years ago.
Will the next product you buy have a Apple compatible / iOS devise logo in it?
Jim – TIV:
You said something that caught my attention:
“Wait, “just sit closer to the 27″ display” you say…”
I took it to mean, when you have a small (17″ monitor, you sit closer to your computer; with a 30″ monitor, you don’t. If this is what you meant, then it is actually not right.
HDTVs all have identical pixel count (as long as they are all 1080p), from a 22″, all the way to 60″ or whatever is the largest display. Due to the visual acuity of human eye, as these pixels get larger, we need to sit farther away from the TV in order to perceive image as clear and sharp, without noticing individual pixels.
Unlike HDTVs, though, computer monitors generally tend to have the same, or similar pixel density of about 96 pixels per inch. A 17″ monitor will have resolution of 1024×768 pixels, while a 27″ monitor will have 1920×1024 pixels. Regardless of how large the monitor is, pixels are same (or similar) size. Therefore, your text, icons and other images are the same size on all those monitors. Consequently, you will always sit at approximately the same distance from that monitor, regardless of how large it is.
One other thing you said:
“Ok, then get yourself some spf 150 cause you’re going to get a tan.”
Your message implies that today’s computer monitors emit ultra-violet rays, which is not quite true. However, if you do sit way too close to a monitor, you may eventually need eyeglasses…
“Yeah but what does it all mean?”
Hello McFly?
Apple’s going to release Apps on AppleTV by making iOS apps sync what’s going on your iOS device on the big TV screen
This is how Apple is going to have Apps on the TV.
I don’t think these patents automatically make apps transmit to your TV.
@Predrag & others
Claims that MacOSX is on the way out miss one important point, namely that iOS and MacOSX are the same OS, tweeked and parameterized differently, mostly to account for differences between the Touch interface and the mouse/keyboard interface, single-user-centricity, etc.
The touch interface may partially make it to desktop machines, though, either because the screen may become the desktop (think big-ass table:), or by means of trackpads, touch-enabled upright screens, etc.
What is most bothersome to me in the iOS environment is the fact that it tries to hide the file system. Granted, Apple is refining a new file system model. They may be right to restrict access to the file system, but there should be shared access to a shared directory structure. The iDisk does some of that, not to (my) great satisfaction (but that’s probably because I didn’t configure it right to sync what I need using MobileMe).
One further note about iOS frustrations for MacOSX power users:
Restrictions that seemed natural on the iPhone sometimes tend to spring in the eye and may turn out to really sit in the way on the iPad, because one EXPECTS REAL COMPUTER BEHAVIOR on the iPad. But I am sure Apple is working on that.
One example is: when you edit a mail without sending it and are interrupted, e.g., with the need to briefly look something up in Safari, YOUR WORK IS GONE. No save dialog when you exit, no persistence. No nothing. That’s bad. Nothing you typically run into on an iPhone, but on an iPad this behavior is unacceptable.
Maybe iOS 4.x will solve this, because apps tend to preserve their state in it.
@vanfruniken,
Yeah, gotta agree with you about the draft email problem. Losing an email I’ve been working on for a few minutes because I HAVE to look at something else is definitely a PITA!
@vanfruniken
@Original Jake
In iOS 3 there is the option to save a draft – haven’t tried it on an iPad, but I am sure it is the same; here’s what you do:
1. you are composing your messagem you want to look something up, so choose Cancel (to end message composition)
2. Mail will then ask if want to save the message as a draft
3. Save the message, it can be retrieved from the Drafts folder (you won’t have seen it if you have never saved a draft, it appears under the Inbox in the list before the Sent; like the Outbox folder, it only appears when required)
4. now you can launch another app, then return to Mail and the Drafts folder, choose the message you saved and continue where you left off.
5. after you send the message, the draft is deleted, and so if it was the only draft that you have saved, the Drafts folder will also ‘disappear’ from the list – until the next time you save a Draft.
Even though iOS 4 will allow you to multi-task to swap out of Mail without losing your message as it is being composed, saving to a draft is good practice anyway.
Another method:
1. copy the text of your message
2. save it to the included Notes app
3. do your other research in Safari / other app, return to Notes
4. paste any new text you want to add to your message to the entry you saved in Notes
5. copy the text of the whole entry, then return to Mail
6. paste the completed text into a new message and then send
I’ve never looked at it, but there is an user guide to your iDevice accessible from one of the pre-installed bookmarks in (mobile) Safari – it probably covers all the built-in apps and so could mention this tip – otherwise, there are a number of other 3rd-party iDevice user guides you can search for – Macworld have one for the iPad – though I don’t know what it covers.
Please keep the faith and double-check online if something isn’t working the way you expect it – 18yrs with Apple has shown me they know what they are doing and there are good reasons why they do what they do – I don’t expect they miss important things on purpose, it might just be that decided to ‘Think Different’ on how to implement a feature.
Peace Out.