The Handwriting Recognition team is seeking an engineer who will be responsible for advancing Apple’s handwriting recognition technology for Mac OS X. The ideal candidate will be an expert in the area of pattern recognition, with an excellent understanding of handwriting recognition issues. The person will also assume primary responsibility for maintaining and enhancing existing code and tools. The recognition technology you create may extend beyond Mac OS X to other applications and the iPhone.
This is from Apple’s job site. Someone shared the post from Macrumors.com, who reminds us that “Rosetta technology has found its way into Mac OS X under the name ‘Inkwell,’ but requires a tablet to be installed for use.”
The folks over at UnwiredView.com have posted mock-ups of a clamshell iPhone design that’s based on Apple’s own “dual-sided trackpad” patent drawings.
Says Unwired:
The main idea with this device is to separate capacitive touch sensor array and the phone display into two separate units. Then put the touch sensor array on a translucent (transparent) panel, make this panel touch sensitive on both sides – top and bottom and connect them with a hinge.
It’s a pretty cool idea – a smaller, multi-use hinged piece that swings down and serves as the main control.
What interested me was the part about drawing phone number digits with your finger and having the iPhone recognize them. Sound familiar? Instead of “handwriting recognition,” it would be “fingertip recognition.” And this wouldn’t be simple iPod or picture editing controls either. We’re talking about drawing a two with your index finger and a “2” coming up on-screen. Sounds an awful lot like our favorite green machine.
I like the clamshell idea because that’s how I like my cell phone. The Samsung model I currently carry is a flip phone. It folds up nicely into my pocket. Take that idea to the iPhone, and you’ve got what you see in the pictures at the top – sort of an idea for the iPhone Nano.
Even Unwired admits this is all speculation, and while their renderings are crafty, they probably have no relation to anything Apple would release. Few people get these kind of things right. Apple ends up blowing all the posturing away with a design so slick it beats whatever the Photoshop twerps come up with.
Still, drawing digits on an iPhone? The Newton idea keeps popping up.
Steve Jobs introduced new iPod Touch features that are bringing it closer and closer to a modern-day Newton. “Now there’s even more to touch” touts the new Apple.com page, and it’s true: Mail, Notes, Maps, etc. It all adds up to a more Newton-like device than the previous iPod Touches.
The iPod Touch is now a true iPhone-clone, without the phone and subscription model.
It makes me wonder what the GTD crowd thinks of this updated Touch (Macrumors has a forum dedicated to just this subject). The Newtonlist has been buzzing with Newton software packages that make the MessagePad a handy tool for GTDers.
And I suppose that, after the SDK comes out for the iPhone and iPod Touch, developers will be builder 43folders-ish software all over the place. Jailbroken iTouches already have these kind of capabilities.
But does all this spell the end of those Newton 2.0 rumors that were flying pre-Macworld? John Gruber thinks, perhaps, not:
I am nearly convinced that this product exists, at least as a project in development. My hunch is that AppleInsider has it spot-on: it’s in development, but not yet ready to launch, and, perhaps, never will if Apple can’t get it right…A successful tablet-like device from Apple, I think, would clearly be designed as a secondary computing device — a satellite attached and synched to a Mac or PC (probably, of course, through iTunes).
What’s missing, says Gruber, is the “why should I buy this?” factor that accompanies most new Apple products. Tablets have failed to catch on, he argues, so why release one if it doesn’t blow people away?
(Gruber’s predictions of Macworld were, by the way, spot-on, except for his plea for new Cinema Displays. Everything else he got right. Kudos.)
So here we Newton fans still sit, stuck between a maybe-it’ll-happen Newton 2.0 and an iPod Touch that, as it adds features, becomes more and more like Apple’s long-abandoned PDA.
My GCal countdown says “1 day until: Macworld.” The time is almost here, and every Apple fan knows it.
But unlike last year, there’s no oh-my-dear-sweet-Jesus news waiting for us. At least that’s what everyone, like John Gruber at Daring Fireball, thinks:
And so what I’ve noticed over the years is that in the week or so prior to a keynote, if expectations are running too high, word somehow gets out, at least to the press. What made last year’s pre-Expo prelude so electrifying is that while speculation was rampant that Apple would announce a phone, there was no one — no one — saying “Well, that’s not what I’ve heard.” When, in the face of white-hot speculation, Apple goes totally silent both officially and privately, that’s when they have something big.
Things were dead quiet last year. And they seem pretty quiet again this year. Donning my Cupertino-Kremlinology hat, I can’t help but see last week’s week-before-Macworld debut of brand-new Mac Pros as a hint that their keynote announcements plate runneth over. But there’s a big difference this year — last year, speculation was running rampant about one particular thing, “the phone”; this year, not so much. The consensus rumors and guesses are interesting but not earth-shaking.
In a mild/medium/hot scale, where mild is a lame keynote that’s mostly a “state of the Apple Union” address and hot is a major new product along the lines of the iPhone, my gut feeling is that we’re looking at a medium — spicy enough to be enjoyable, but not one for the ages.
Meanwhile, over at AppleInsider, the Newton drumbeat goes on. They say “Newton 2.0” won’t be coming at Macworld 2008, but it’s “remains a work-in-progress, according to people familiar with the matter.” I think the Newton 2.0 rumor is still pie-in-the-sky mythmaking, especially considering that Apple has two items that could serve as light-weight PDAs. The iPod Touch and iPhone may lack the handwriting technology, but they’ve got just about anything else you’d need.
Anyone want to place bets? I already have. I just plunked down about $850 for five shares of AAPL, courtesy of ING’s buy-out of ShareBuilder. Apple’s stock was over the $200 mark for the first time about a week ago, and now it’s dipped to about $172 a share. Well I’m putting my money where my mouth is, and investing in a company I have great faith in.
Even if this Stevenote isn’t as big as last year’s, my money says it’ll be enough to keep Apple in the spotlight.
New Mac Pro – A new Mac Pro. I’m going to buy one of these (assuming they contain 45nm CPUs), so they damn well better be introduced.
New displays – New Apple external displays. I have grave doubts about this one (see later square), but the existing line desperately needs updating.
MacBook Thin – A new subnotebook from Apple, regardless of its actual branding or product name. What’s a subnotebook? Use your own judgement. The only restriction I’ll add is that it must have a hardware keyboard.
“Boom” – Steve Jobs says the word “boom” while demonstrating something.
The site has posted the card as a download-able PDF file, so you can play along at home.
And there it is – the second coming of Newton, thanks to YouTube and someone’s slick animation skills.
I have to admit, the dock-like scrolling along the side is pretty cool. It’s like functional Cover Flow on the iPod Touch, but pragmatic, with some AppleTV/Front Row built in.
This was made by user ElysiumMedia07, who did a wonderful job putting the “Wow” in a Windows Vista parody ad.
A new Apple “Newton 2” rumor has popped up, this time with “evidence” from a SeekingAlpha.com author, David Sieger.
Says Sieger:
This new Apple device, which could be an Ultra Mobile Computer, has not been sighted out and about the Apple campus or even in the area normally designated for testing new Apple products, suggesting that it’s still in the software and hardware design period. Once it’s physically spotted outside Apple’s secretive labs, we may see an actual product release of 6-8 months, closely following other new Apple product introductions.
Sieger’s evidence is based on Apple buying up 5.2″ touchscreens, tons of flash memory, and lack of QWERTY keyboard.
Sieger, however, leaves out room for chance, or Apple’s ability to surprise people with something totally new and unexpected.
He says it can’t be a new Newton, because of the lack of PDA demand from the American public, “although various PDA functionalities may in fact be included in the final version of the device.”
It’s all shot-in-the-dark stuff, and the evidence he sites is flimsy at best. This could all belong to that nebulous cloud of Applet tablet rumors we’ve heard so much about.
Previous patents have pointed more toward the iPhone, in retrospect. And the argument for a tablet says that doctors and do-gooders on the move can really use a portable Mac like what’s proposed. But the thing about Apple rumors is they’re rarely accurate. Or even true. This tablet Mac rumor has seen more than its share of screen space.
We’ve known that Steve Jobs holds no love for PDAs (or else Newtons would be alive and well, right?). My take (and I’m not alone on this one) is that if there is a Newton- or tablet-like device, it may just be a modified iPhone. Apple may decide to freshen things up in this product line like it did with the iPod: color, photo, video, games, etc.
But heck, is the rumor even true?
This will be the first edition of “RumorPad Watch.” I’ll keep you updated. Back to the poetry…
