Apple's 2011 iMac gets teardown.

Yesterday, you saw the new 21.5-inch iMac fully specced out and up for sale on Apple's online store, and you were even treated to the sight of its 27-inch sibling pushing three displays and 11 megapixels of resolution. Today, you get to witness Apple's latest all-in-one computer fully disassembled. iFixit is doing the honors, as usual, and the investigation starts with the detachment of that familiar LG-produced IPS display and a Sony Optiarc optical drive, followed by the discovery of an Intel controller for the solitaryThunderbolt port on board (there are two on the larger model). Other notables include an AMD Radeon HD 6750M graphics chip and a 2.5GHz Intel Core i5 CPU, but you'll have to punch the source link to see them up close and personal.

Google Docs Finally gets an Android app

Google's had a mobile-friendly version of Google Docs available for some time now, but it's now finally gone the extra step and released a dedicated Android app. That will of course let you access and edit your documents on your smartphone, but the real standout feature is the ability to capture text with your phone's camera and have it instantly made editable thanks to some optical character recognition. Google notes that won't work with handwriting or some fonts, but it promises it will get better over time. Hit up Android Market to try it out for yourself.

Eye-tracking microdisplay delivers Terminator vision

The folks at Fraunhofer IPMS have done it! After years of tireless research and promises of Borg-like eyewear, the group has delivered a prototype of the world's first bidirectional, eye-tracking OLED microdisplay (got all that?) at SID 2011. The rig is much like a monocle, except with a transparent OLED display inside, which overlays digital information on top of the reflected light that usually hits your eyeballs. What's more, there are integrated photodetectors inside and special software to monitor the direction of your gaze, allowing you to interact with your newfound augmented reality using only the flick of an eyeball. Fraunhofer foresees joggers taking in movies while out for a run, which sounds more than just a little dangerous. I, on the other hand, envision a world in which the first thing anyone does upon meeting someone new is discreetly check their relationship status on Facebook -- finally fulfilling the social network's full creep potential.

App Store placeholder hints at another iOS device

What appears to be a placeholder that popped up briefly on some App Store listings last night is causing a stir, hinting that another iOS app capable device could be on the way.

As spotted by developer Cabel Sasser and picked up by MacRumors, a compatibility description for "ix.Mac.MarketingName" appeared briefly under Sasser's listing for his newest iOS app called Prompt.

The app, which serves as an SSH admin tool, is universal--meaning it works on both the iPhone and iPod Touch, as well as on the iPad. The "ix" moniker showed up as a fourth device within that list. Since being discovered, the item has been removed.

The apparent placeholder shows up fewer than two months ahead of Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference where the company has said it is showing off "the future of iOS and Mac OS X". That future could very well include bringing iOS apps to other Apple products where they cannot currently be had, such as the Apple TV and computers running the next major version of Mac OS X.

For months, rumours and code snippets have suggested that Apple was looking to bring apps to the Apple TV, however when the second-generation device was released the features were not present. As for Macs, some of the design and interface changes to pre-release versions of OS X 10.7--including touch-screen-like track pad behavior and app organization with the Launchpad feature--have suggested the OS is getting more finger-friendly.

Say hello to the new Commodore 64!

This is amazing!  It has been announced that there is a new Commodore 64 although things are a little... complicated. We were first contacted way back in March when the company shared the news that it had acquired the rights to sell PCs under the name. Then what happened? Turns out this was not exactly the case... although CEO Barry Altman assured us that they were on their way towards hammering out a deal. And here we are, in possession of a press release saying that indeed, Commodore USA, LLC, and Commodore Licensing B.V. have finally come to an agreement, meaning that your subsequent purchases will at least come with a Commodore decal. But that ain't all! This also paves the way for the company's newest offering, the Commodore PC64, an Intel Atom-powered PC featuring 4GB DDR3 memory, SATA 1TB HDD, HDMI output, optical drive (either DVD/CD or optional Blu-ray), and more -- all in "an exact replica" of the original beige C64 chassis. Of course, doing any significant amount of work with the original Commodore keyboard will probably be a challenge, but we like to think we're up to it. As always, we'll believe it when we see it, but in the meantime we'd like to be the first to formally request a review unit. If everything goes according to plan, this bad boy should be out in time for the holidays.

The Android Dev's Infographic

I find it strange that they would build a mobile phone OS on top of linux but then make it run a java virtual environment.  It's like getting mac but only running windows inside parallels or virtual box with it.  Hmmm.

I know this infographic won't be that interesting to most people but I found it cool so here it is.

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Browsers and Operating Systems

I was look at my stats on blogspot today and found some of the information interesting:

Lets start off with the browsers.  I love how the readers of my blog are not idiots, in fact the go against the general sats for browser usage.

Look at all those dumb people using the slow bloated internet explorer (my apologies if you are one of those people).  Only 9.71% of the general crowd is using the superior super-speed Chrome =(

At least you guys know better.....right?

Now for OS's.  No real surprise here Windows DOMINATES (unfortunately).  But it is interesting that more of my readers use Linux than Mac.  That's kind of awesome!  I run linux sometimes (right now I have the 11.04 beta on my netbook and I'm lovin unity!) bu I think thats great that people are using these community based operating systems that don't rely on greedy black turtle-neck wearing CEO's!  Just think about it, Apple probably spends millions of dollars on advertising and Research Development, yet Linux manages to achieve a bigger market share than it (or at least of the people who read tech blogs).

WAY TO GO GUYS!

p.s.

What linux distro do you like to run?

A Tablet Infographic

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The Complete iPhone 5 Rumor Roundup.

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The Browser Smack-down: Chrome vs. IE vs. Firefox

There's no doubt the latest crop of stable browsers from Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla are the best the companies have ever produced. But how do they perform when tested under identical conditions?

CNET put the latest stable versions of Firefox, Chrome, and Internet Explorer through a gauntlet of benchmarks that considered JavaScript and HTML5 performance, as well as boot times and memory usage. (Opera and Safari were not tested because they have not been updated recently, and neither has yet implemented hardware acceleration close to the level that the other three browsers have.) Note that these charts are at best a snapshot in time, and are dependent on the hardware being used and any extensions installed. The full charts are below, followed by analysis and an explanation of our methodology.

*JSGamebench was conducted by Facebook developers. The test was included because it's a publicly available test of real-world gameplay, though we opted to use Facebook's published data for simplicity's sake. The hardware acceleration using WebGL results were not included because only Firefox 4 and Chrome 11 were included in the test group, and Chrome 11 was not tested by CNET this round because it's still in beta.

	Chrome 10	Internet Explorer 9	Firefox 4
SunSpider 0.9.1 (ms)	336.20	250.60	292.37
Kraken (ms)	8,806.30	15,606.77	7265.13
V8 v6 (higher is better)	5,173.67	2,235.33	3540.33
JSGamebench 0.3* (higher is better)	322.00	1,156.00	1,482.00
Boot time (s)	26.22	21.86	17.80
Memory (kb)	390,532	205,616	148,020

Though the competition is extremely close in some cases--especially JavaScript rendering--Firefox 4 is strongly favored by HTML5 processing, boot time, and memory usage. Overall, I'd judge from these results that Firefox 4 is the winner this time around.

Chrome, however, is absolutely killing it on Google's V8 benchmark. Expect the next version of Chrome to perform much better on the JSGamebench test, once hardware acceleration has been fully enabled. You currently have to toggle a few switches in about:flags to get it all. Also expect Chrome's boot time and memory performance to improve--Google has said it plans to spend more time working on Chrome's memory hogginess in the coming versions.

Given the renewed resurgence in Internet Explorer, it's also hard to imagine that the IE development team isn't already working on making the browser better.

Also of interest is that the SunSpider results are extremely close. The gulf between 250 milliseconds and 290 milliseconds is just not going to be that detectable by the average person.

How we tested
Our test machine was a Lenovo T400, with an Intel Core 2 Duo T9400 chip running at 2.53GHz, with 3GB of RAM, using Windows 7 x86. We used four publicly available tests: WebKit SunSpider 0.9.1, Mozilla Kraken 1.0, Google V8 version 6, and JSGameBench 0.3. All tests except for JSGamebench were conducted using a "cold boot" of the browser, that is, both the computer and the browser being tested were restarted before each test. Each test was performed three times, and the results you see are the averages. Browsers had all extensions and add-ons deactivated for the tests.

We opened five Web sites for all tests, in addition to any test site. These were: talkingpointsmemo.com, aol.com,youtube.com, newyorktimes.com, giantbomb.com, cnettv.cnet.com.

The boot time benchmarks were conducted by manually starting a stopwatch when clicking on the browser's taskbar icon, and then hitting stop when the last tab's resolving indicator stopped rotating. One half-second was subtracted from Internet Explorer 9's pre-averaged times to account for the extra time it took to hit the Reload previous session link, since the browser doesn't support that feature the way Firefox 4 and Chrome 10 do.

The memory test was conducted by opening the aforementioned set of tabs and looking at Google Chrome's memory manager. You can access it by typing "about:memory" into the Chrome location bar. The figure we used is the Private Memory, which only totals memory used by the browser that's not shared by other processes. It's also useful because it tallies all of Chrome's open tab memory usage into one convenient number.

NASA and U.S. Air Force considering chicken fat as jet fuel

Maybe it's to offset the high price of chicken, but NASA and the U.S. Air Force could soon be fueling their aircraft on jet fuel derived from recycled chicken fat.

Seventeen organizations are participating in Alternative Aviation Fuel Experiment II, or AAFEX II, to see if hydrotreated renewable jet fuel is a viable, eco-friendly fuel for jets.

"It's made out of chicken fat, actually," said Langley's Bruce Anderson, AAFEX II project scientist. "The Air Force bought many thousands of gallons of this to burn in some of their jets and provided about 8,000 gallons to NASA for this experiment."

To launch the experiment, this month NASA researchers from Langley drove cross-country in a specially equipped 32-foot van, dubbed "the EM-50," to deliver the hydrotreated renewable jet fuel to test sites in California.

Research team loads up for the drive to California.

(Credit: NASA)

Anderson and his team will test a 50-50 mix of biofuel and regular jet fuel, biofuel only, and jet fuel only, NASA said.

One test was conducted on a NASA DC-8 at Dryden Flight Research Center's Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale, Calif.

Another test challenged a U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor at supersonic speeds over Edwards Air Force Base in California. That test used a 50-50 mix of the special biofuel and regular jet fuel.

It may not have been the case for everyone, but the NASA announcement gave me flashbacks of the Muppet chickens clucking out their version of Strauss' "The Blue Danube" waltz from "2001: A Space Odyssey."

Release Date for Mac OS X Lion

Today when I woke up I found this email waiting for me:

Join us for a preview of the future of iOS and Mac OS X.

WWDC 2011 attendees must agree to the Registered Apple Developer Agreement and the WWDC 2011 Attendance Requirements and Refund Policy.

Pricing will appear in your local currency during checkout through the Apple Online Store in your country. Prices, product offerings, and program terms are subject to change at Apple's discretion. Some products or promotions are not available outside the U.S. For further information, please review the WWDC 2011 Attendance Requirements and Refund Policy.

You are receiving this email because you are a Registered Apple Developer. If you would no longer like to receive communications from Apple Developer, you may unsubscribe.

Some applications are not available in all areas. Application availability is subject to change.

TM and copyright © 2011 Apple Inc. 1 Infinite Loop, MS 96-DM, Cupertino, CA 95014.

All Rights Reserved / Keep Informed / Privacy Policy / My Apple ID

This email is proof that Mac OS X Lion is arriving this June.  The question is what is happening to IOS, what big news are they going to be breaking that is so importnat it is being released at the same time as Mac OSX Lion?  Only Steve Jobs knows.

Google not ready to share Honeycomb source code

Though it prides itself on Android being an "open" mobile operating system, Google says it's being extra-protective of the tablet version of its OS before releasing it to the world.

Google said today that it will not release the source code Android 3.0, known as Honeycomb, just yet. The company says it's not yet ready to be customized in the same manner as previous versions of the OS, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

Current hardware partners will not be affected by the decision; Motorola just launched the first Honeycomb tablet, the Xoom, and Samsung, Dell, HTC, and Acer are expected to follow suit.

It appears Google wants to control the Android 3.0 experience, though the move is said to be temporary.

Google's Android chief Andy Rubin may have foreshadowed this move at the introduction of Honeycomb last month. He noted how he'd seen Android on a bunch of tablets at the Consumer Electronics Show, and that was very exciting to Google. However, he said, though it's an open-source operating system, Google considers itself "the shepherd."

It's not too far a leap from that comment to the idea that he and his cohorts would like to have a bit more oversight of how and when the software is used, rather than just allowing any hardware maker to slap Honeycomb on any piece of hardware.

First Look Video: Mac OS X Lion

We got our hands on a prerelease version of Apple's latest big cat, Mac OS X Lion, and we're definitely excited about what we've seen so far. The new Mac OS isn't slated for release until this summer, but the early prerelease shows off many of the latest bells and whistles that Apple hopes will help you be more efficient on your Mac.

Several of the new features make navigating your system and software easier. The new Launchpad, accessed from an icon in the Dock, lays out your applications just as on an iOS device, making it easy to launch your favorite apps quickly. Another cool new feature is the addition of what Apple calls Mission Control, which lets you do a four-finger upward swipe to see all open applications, your desktop, and even applications open in Spaces.

Multi-Touch controls seem to be a big theme in Lion, especially if you're using a multitouch trackpad on newer-model MacBooks. You can swipe to switch apps, pinch to zoom in, and use several other multitouch shortcuts to get where you want to go quickly.

All of the main Apple apps like Safari, Mail, and the Calendar app have been fine-tuned as well, adding extras that Apple hopes will save you time and give you a better computing experience.

There's plenty more to Mac OS X Lion, and we'll be putting together a comprehensive video, slideshow, and written review of the new Mac OS closer to the launch date this summer. But for a quick overview of more of the latest features in Apple's newest OS, check out Brian Tong's First Look at Mac OS X Lion.

Exec shakeup lays blueprint for Sony's future

Kaz Hirai, CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, has been named as a possible successor to CEO Howard Stringer.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

Sony's CEO has named an heir apparent.

Howard Stringer, while making some organizational tweaks, today chose Kazuo, or Kaz, Hirai to possibly succeed him at the helm of the iconic consumer electronics company.

Hirai, 50, rose up through the ranks in the music and video game businesses and has been the president and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, which produces the successful PlayStation franchise as well as the video game business. Now, he's been tapped as the head of the entire consumer business, meaning not only video game consoles and titles, but TVs, Blu-ray players, notebooks, and more.

This is a pretty big deal. Hirai's heading the business will mean changes in some ways, but it will also establish some consistency for whenever Stringer does eventually decide to leave. Here are the most important things about today's announcement.

Stringer's "convergence" agenda should stay on track
Sony's chairman, president, and CEO first laid out his plan at the Consumer Electronics Show in 2009, stressing that the future of consumer electronics was the convergence of PCs, TVs and other gadgets, and entertainment. For most consumers we'd say, well, that's fairly obvious what with our smartphones and tablets being able to play our downloaded apps, videos, and music, and the emergence of lots of streaming entertainment content from the Web to our TVs through video game consoles, set-top boxes, and through the TV itself.

But that wasn't necessarily as obvious two years ago. And Sony has historically struggled with different business divisions working together across music, video, and software platforms. By putting everything--TVs, entertainment software, PlayStation, MP3 players, Vaio laptops--under one roof and a single executive, that actually encourages more cooperation across the company. It's a way of securing his legacy at the company.

The guy in charge of video games is now in charge of TVs
TVs and audio were the jewels in Sony's crown for decades. But today? Apple introduced the iPod a decade ago and basically dismantled Sony's Walkman business. The TV business has been outpaced by Samsung, and hasn't turned a profit in more than half a decade.

Hirai's appointment shows how important the PlayStation business is to the company's fortunes now. For many years, the consumer electronics divisions and video game divisions treated each other as almost separate companies. The PlayStation group is profitable and is responsible for Sony's PlayStation Network, where games and movies can be downloaded to the PS3. By combining responsibilities for Hirai, now the same person will be responsible for the PSN and the Qriocity platform, which has services like Music Unlimited that allow songs to be bought and streamed to the PlayStation 3, and Sony TVs, and Blu-ray Home Theater systems, as well as a range of Sony's portable devices.

He's not another Stringer
Compared to Stringer, 69, Hirai is about two decades younger. As Sony's iconic brand name ages, and as the cachet once associated with having a Sony stereo or TV has been replaced by the cachet of owning an Apple product, it's not a bad move for Sony to pick a leader whose experience aligns him better with its core demographic: young, male gamers.

While Hirai lives in the U.S. now, he was born and raised in Japan. Longtime observers of the company would say that's important for a Sony, whose founding and legacy is distinctly Japanese. As previously noted, Hirai grew up in the company and is recognized as being instrumental in the growth of its gaming business. Stringer was born in Wales and is a former journalist and media executive. He was brought into Sony to shake things up precisely because he was an outsider. It appears that experiment will soon be over.

This isn't set in stone
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal today, Stringer said that Hirai isn't his successor for sure, but is "the leading candidate." Just two years ago, Stringer had selected four executives that he dubbed the "four musketeers," relatively young English-speaking Japanese execs that would help his turnaround the company's fortunes. Hirai was one of them. Hiroshi Yoshioka was another, and he has now been charged with running a group parallel to the consumer business, the Professional and Device Solutions Group.

Stringer has been known to shake things up every few years. So if he does stay on until 2013, as some have speculated, it's not entirely outside the realm of possibility he'll change his mind yet again.

Tablets are the 'post-PC era'? No way!

          I've been hearing "post-PC era" so much now that I wince when I hear the term. Clearly it must be time for me to get something off my chest.

There is no post-PC era.

Not as I see the landscape, at least. To me, tablets are a big break with the past when it comes to user interface, but deep down, more stays the same than changes. And the better tablets get, the more they'll simply absorb what we do with PCs.

In short, tablets will become PCs. Different PCs from today's PCs, but PCs.

Granted, I might be using the term "PC" differently from the main proponent of the "post-PC" idea, Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs, who eagerly trotted the phrase out over and over during the iPad 2 launch last week. Apple often means "Windows personal computer" when it uses the term "PC," as evidenced in the Mac vs. PC ads. And there was a day when PC Magazine, PC World, PC/Computing and their ilk were indeed devoted to the Wintel world and not Macs.

But I prefer the term PC in a more generic "personal computer" sense. I use a MacBook Pro, a Lenovo Windows XP laptop, and a Dell Windows 7 laptop, and to me they all feel like, well, personal computers. There are differences between the Windows and Mac machines, sure, but I use the tools for exactly the same work and personal tasks. In short, for personal computing.

Today's differences
          

          Right now there are plenty of legitimate distinctions between tablets and PCs. First and foremost, tablets have a touch-screen interface rather than the traditional combination of a keyboard and a mouse or trackpad. They're smaller and lighter. What they lack in processor power they make up for in battery life. They come with a different operating system that means the vast array of PC applications won't run. And at least in the case of the iPad, they lack the profusion of ports to connect external monitors, digital cameras, wireless network dongles, backup systems, thumb drives, and, yes, heated slippers.

Then there's the matter of how people use tablets. There's plenty of overlap--Web browsing, e-mail, social networking, casual games--but there are differences as well. Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son has ditched his PC for an iPad at work, but most people probably aren't ready to follow him just yet even if conservative corporate IT administrators could be persuaded to make a pretty radical change.

Many routine work chores become harder or impossible on a tablet. Microsoft Office is absent, typing on a virtual keyboard isn't the same, and file storage and transfer is a more complicated matter.

On the flip side, there are things tablets can do that PCs today can't. Games, drawing apps, and other interactive software take on a new direct, physical connection with a large touch screen and an accelerometer that tells a program how a person is moving the tablet around. Watch Apple's demo of iMovie for the iPad to get a feel for how far user interfaces are moving away from WordPerfect 5.1.

In addition, tablets function as book readers much more gracefully than laptops and are significantly more portable. The battery life means they're not nearly as tethered to power sockets. And the instant-on availability means people put off by the hassle of booting a PC might grab a tablet for a mid-conversation search to identify six wives of Henry VIII.

All these new options for tablets lead Gartner to agree with the post-PC idea: "We expect growing consumer enthusiasm for mobile PC alternatives, such as the iPad and other media tablets, to dramatically slow home mobile PC sales, especially in mature markets," said George Shiffler, a Gartner research director, last week.

In other words, to some extent, it's an either-or situation, where tablets replace PCs in some circumstances.

Tomorrow's similarities

          To this point, I agree with the "post-PC" idea, too. Smartphones and tablets are qualitatively different from PCs, and they're supplanting PCs to some significant extent both when it comes to purchasing choices and daily usage.

But when I unleash my imagination and fast-forward a few years, I think the distinction between what we call PCs and tablets will fade.

Let's start with peripherals. Today, you can connect a Bluetooth keyboard to your iPad. As I see things shaking out, wireless connections--Bluetooth, Wi-Fi Direct, or something else--also will permit many other devices to be attached. And as tablets adapt to the business world, I predict they'll get ports. Maybe Intel's new Thunderbolt, though doubtless expensive today, will provide a one-port-to-rule-them-all simplicity that will get along better with the sleek tablet world.

Processor power, too, will improve. Certainly very thin and light designs can't accommodate the hot and power-hungry CPUs of high-end or even mid-range PCs today, but the better mobile processors become, the more average computer user's workload they'll be able to handle.

The way I see things shaking out, people will often end up carrying a tablet with them. When necessary, modular keyboards, mice, and large monitors will be linked up to assemble something that would be awfully hard to think of as anything but a PC. Maybe for the laptop crowd, people who don't always have the luxury of a desk to clutter up with assorted accessories, keyboards will snap on or be built into optional covers.

I don't think PCs, as we see them today, will die out. But they'll be relegated to a smaller niche. Laptops have steadily encroached into the mainstream PC world, edging tower and desktop PCs away from the center of the market toward those on a tight budget, gamers, workstation users, and cubicle farm dwellers. Tablets, I think, will do the same thing to today's conventional laptops--push them out to the fringes where people need optical drives or major processor power or aren't willing to pay a premium for lots of flash memory or something slimmer than a pancake.

A continuum of PCs

          "It's a shame, almost, that we squandered the term 'personal computer' 30 years ago," lamented the John Gruber of Daring Fireball while swooning over Apple's iPad 2 announcement.

Nonsense, I say. "Personal computer" was a perfectly reasonable term then, and the term will be just fine until Ray Kurzweil's singularity arrives and Skynet converts all the humans into smart matter.

A MITS Altair, a TRS-80 Model 4, an Osborne 1, an Apple II, a BBC Micro, a Macintosh SE, a Gateway 486DX2-40, a Power Computing PowerCurve 601/120, an IBM ThinkPad, an Asus eee PC--they're all PCs to me.

There have been some revolutionary shifts over the years, of course. Graphical user interfaces, hard drives, networking, graphics processors, portability, CD-ROM drives, the Internet, Wi-Fi--each of these have profoundly changed what a PC is.

With tablets, we get touch screens, orientation sensitivity, and geolocation.

In the future, maybe we'll get voice control that works, a high-speed, all-purpose optical communications port, biometric identification that rids us of our 450 usernames and passwords, smartphones that beam information to our contact-lens displays, batteries that recharge from the sun or from a glass of whisky, truly reliable and pervasive wireless networking, and nanobots swimming among our neurons so we can download the ability to speak Mandarin Chinese.

Is it personal? Is it computing? Then it's a personal computer.