Laptop, notbook, tech news

 

Forget iPhones, Snow Leopard, and iPhone OS 3.0 — the biggest question out there for this year’s Apple Worldwide Developers Conference is whether Steve Jobs will make an appearance today. Ever since the Apple CEO stepped down for health-related reasons, rumblings have pointed to WWDC as the most probable date to kick off his comeback. Here’s a breakdown of major events that point to a Jobs appearance at WWDC.

Steve Jobs steps aside

In January, Steve Jobs stepped down from his post as Apple CEO for “issues related to a hormone imbalance.” At the time, Jobs said his health problems were more complicated than he anticipated and needed to take some time off to recuperate. In a letter to Apple employees, Jobs indicated that he would remain involved in Apple’s major strategic decisions and would return to the helm at 1 Infinite Loop by June 2009.

Questions over Jobs’ health had been going on for several months, and some wondered if Jobs’ announcement meant the end for both Jobs and Apple.

Calling it in

 

Artwork: Chip TaylorA little over two weeks after Apple announced the dates for this year’s WWDC, The Wall Street Journal in April ran a report that Jobs was working on major Apple products from home as promised. The WSJ said those products included a new iPhone, the user interface for iPhone OS 3.0 and the mysterious Apple tablet. At the time, Apple had not announced its keynote speaker for WWDC, a spot traditionally reserved for Jobs. So many Apple pundits — including myself — wondered if Jobs would swoop in at WWDC to lead the keynote address once more.

However, since then it has become clear that a team of Apple executives lead by Phil Schiller would take over the WWDC keynote duties.

The Woz Report

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak last month told The Wall Street Journal that Jobs sounded “healthy” and “energetic.” Wozniak said he hadn’t asked Jobs directly about his health, but said the Apple CEO didn’t “sound like he was sick” or in the middle of a health crisis.

The WSJ didn’t specify what kind of contact Wozniak had with the Jobs, but Wozniak’s statements imply he has only spoken to Jobs over the phone.

Jobs Sightings

Only two days after the Woz report, several blogs heard rumblings that a healthy-looking Steve Jobs had been spotted at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California. There is no direct confirmation of this, but considering that Jobs is due to return this month infrequent appearances by Steve Jobs at Apple HQ would not be surprising.

Jobs’ health on-track

Another report last week from The Wall Street Journal indicated that Jobs’s recovery is on track, and the Apple CEO will be returning to his post this month.

WWDC

Based on several reports, Jobs is healthy and ready for action. If that’s the case, what better time to make an appearance than WWDC? Apple is not a company that lets a press opportunity pass it by, and today the tech world will be focused on the keynote address at WWDC. For months Apple watchers and fans have been predicting a new iPhone would be unveiled today, and many are reporting that Apple will soon introduce a new touch tablet to compete in the netbook market.

With so much attention and anticipation focused on Apple, it makes perfect sense for Jobs to make an appearance and do what he does best: get the world excited about a new Apple product.

It’s entirely possible that Jobs will be sitting at home following the WWDC live blogs WWDC like the rest of us, but I doubt it. If I had to guess, my money is on Phil Schiller delivering the famous “one more thing” line, and then turning the spotlight on Apple’s CEO. Who knows? A dramatic appearance by Jobs, could even outshine the introduction of a new iPhone. Only a few hours left until we find out.

Follow PC World’s coverage of Apple’s WWDC keynote address beginning today at 10 a.m. Pacific Time.

Connect with Ian Paul on Twitter (@ianpaul).

Laptops and desktops could see software performance gains with parallel programming tools built into Apple’s new operating system, Mac OS X 10.6, which was introduced by the company on Monday.

A number of enhancements allows the OS, code-named Snow Leopard, to tap into the processing power of multiple CPU and graphics processing cores to boost software performance. The OS builds in multiple programming and software tools that divide up tasks for simultaneous execution across the cores.

Snow Leopard is more intelligent than its predecessors in taking advantage of hardware resources available to drive system performance, observers said on Monday. The OS also is better at identifying resources available and can accordingly allocate threads across multiple cores and processors, observers said.

The new tools in Snow Leopard include Grand Central Dispatch, a programming environment that breaks up tasks into multiple threads based on the number of cores and threads available. It also builds in native support for OpenCL, a set of programming tools to develop and manage parallel task execution.

“A lot of Macs will have supercomputers sitting there for free,” said Neil Trevett, president of The Khronos Group, the standards organization that defines the specifications for OpenCL.

Video processing in particular could see up to 50 times improved performance on Macs with the new OS, Trevett said. Video decoding could be a lot faster as pixel processing will be distributed across multiple CPU and graphics processing units in a system.

Snow Leopard’s evolution is tied to challenges hardware and software makers have faced in the past. The traditional way of boosting application performance on PCs was by cranking up CPU clock speed, said Linley Gwennap, president and principal analyst at The Linley Group. That led to software being written in a sequential mode for execution on a single core, with an increase in clock speed providing the boost in software performance.

Ultimately, cranking up clock speed led to excessive heat dissipation and power consumption, and chip makers like Intel reverted to adding cores to boost performance. That brought a set of new issues to software developers, who faced the challenge of writing applications to take advantage of multiple cores to scale application performance.

“As the processor vendors brought forth dual-core and multicore processors, the operating systems guys have had to play catch up in terms of bringing out software that works with the new chips,” Gwennap said. Apple has unlocked a piece of the software puzzle, as parallel processing is the only way ahead to get big gains in performance, he said.

Apple has also laid the groundwork for software providers to write multicore applications with Snow Leopard, Gwennap said. But users may not see performance benefits until programmers stop writing applications for single-core processors and retrain themselves to write in parallel.

Another analyst agreed with Gwennap, saying that programmers aren’t used to thinking in parallel, even though the problem dates back to the 1940s.

“Programmers have to be educated to think about how to break down their program into multiple tasks that can execute simultaneously,” said Tom Halfhill, senior analyst at In-Stat, and senior editor of Microprocessor Report. Native support for OpenCL in Snow Leopard could encourage more programmers to write in parallel.

OpenCL is a programming framework that includes a C-like programming language with a few APIs to manage distribution of kernels across hardware like processor cores and other resources.

Apple’s push of parallelism to desktops and laptops could ultimately reach smartphones, Halfhill said.

“Ultimately Apple could go migrate it down into products like their iPhone,” Halfhill said.

But Microsoft isn’t far behind Apple, Halfhill said. Microsoft is trying to bring in additional multicore execution capabilities with its upcoming Windows 7 operating system through a new DirectX set of application programming interfaces (APIs). Earlier versions of Windows — like Windows XP and Vista — have been panned by observers for failing to take advantage of multiple cores in CPUs to boost application performance.

Freescale Semiconductor displayed a number of devices containing its chips at Computex Taipei 2009 this year, including an e-book reader made by an Asustek Computer subsidiary, and a smartphone and two handheld computers with Google’s Android software on board.

The U.S. chip maker is one of a group of mobile phone chip makers promoting handheld computers and a new kind of device they call smartbooks, which look and feel like mini-laptops, or netbooks, but are made using mobile phone parts and chips with ARM processing cores instead of PC components.

The handheld computers fit the profile of the mobile Internet devices (MIDs) the PC industry is peddling as devices with slightly bigger screens than smartphones. At its office, Freescale had a MID from Inventec Appliances with a 6-inch touchscreen running Android that allowed Web surfing and doubled as an e-book reader.

A prototype of a device from Kinpo with a 7-inch touchscreen and also running Android sat by the Inventec device. Both machines use chips from Freescale and are designed to be constantly linked to wireless networks the same way as mobile phones.

Freescale also had a smartphone from Inventec designed for the Chinese market with a 4.3-inch touchscreen, also running Android. The device sported a QWERTY keypad that slid out from beneath the screen.

The devices show Inventec has jumped on the Android bandwagon, along with Acer, Asustek, HTC and Samsung Electronics, among others, with devices running Google’s Android smartphone operating system. The software is meant to make communications and Web browsing easy, especially on Google sites such as Docs, Gmail and Google Maps.

E-books were also on display at Freescale’s office, including Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader Digital Book, which use Freescale’s i.MX31 low-power chips.

These devices sat next to a new e-book made by Unihan, a division of Asustek that develops non-PC products. Unihan won’t market the device itself because it’s a contract manufacturer. It will sell the design to a customer and then take care of the manufacturing.

Freescale also displayed several smartbooks, which with their 10-inch screens and full keyboards look a lot like netbooks, but work somewhat differently. Since they’re built from mobile phone parts designed for power efficiency, smartbooks should run much longer than netbooks on a single charge.

Glen Burchers, director of global marketing at Freescale, said a smartbook with Freescale chips inside can run for eight hours on a three-cell battery, much longer than comparable netbooks, which can only last two or three hours with such a battery. Most netbooks are sold with a heavier six-cell battery and can run for around six hours before needing a recharge.

Smartbooks from Pegatron, another contract manufacturing spin-off from Asustek, were on show at Freescale’s office. They will cost around US$199 each if they’re made for Wi-Fi wireless Internet access. Adding a 3.5G module would increase the cost by around $50 but would also subject the device to a completely different marketing plan because it would then likely be sold by a mobile service provider and could be free with a signed contract.

Netbooks with 10-inch screens and Wi-Fi connectivity generally cost between $300 and $400.

The Pegatron smartbooks were first displayed at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas early this year, but Freescale showed off some new smartbooks made using its i.MX51 chips, including the N900Z from Wistron, the former contract manufacturing arm of Acer. The Wistron device used Ubuntu Linux as its operating system, while the Pegatron smartbooks on display carried a variety of Linux OSs.

Smartbooks made using chips by Qualcomm and Texas Instruments were also on show at Computex.

Today at Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco, the Cupertino computer maker announced a host of new products before an audience of developers and media. Among other announcements, the company has updated its MacBook Pro product line, launched a new version of its Safari Web browser, offered a preview of its upcoming Snow Leopard operating system, and readied iPhone 3.0 for market.
New Notebooks

First up in its presentation, Apple showed off new MacBook Pro laptops, including a new version of the 15-inch MacBook Pro. With a longer-lasting battery (similar to that featured in the existing 17-inch model), the new machine will have a battery life of up to seven hours, two hours longer than its predecessor. It also features a nicer display, an SD card slot in place of the former Express Card slot, and support for up to 8GB of RAM. It will be available with processor speeds up to 3.06GHz abd 6MB L2 cache, making it the fastest notebook Apple has made to date.

The 17-inch MacBook Pro has also been refreshed with a 2.8GHz processor and a 500GB hard drive.

The 13-inch unibody aluminum MacBook has received a bump up in status, making it a MacBook Pro. Unlike its predecessors, it will now feature support for 8GB of RAM and 500GB of storage, with the option of a 256GB SSD drive.

Apple has dropped the prices of its notebook line as well. The 13-inch MacBook pro will range from $1,199 to $1,499, the 15-inch model will range from $1,699 to $2,299, and the 17-inch model will cost $2,499. All models begin shipping today.
Snow Leopard

The long-anticipated update to Apple’s OS X Leopard operating system, dubbed Snow Leopard, made an appearance in the demo. Coming in September, Snow Leopard will run faster than the current operating system, and will include updates to all of its apps. Mail will run faster, as will Preview and other integrated apps.

Business users will be able to use Microsoft Exchange servers with Mail, iCal, and Address Book. In a demo of the new features, Apple Senior Vice President of Software Engineering Bertrand Serlet explained that the three built-in contact, scheduling, and e-mail apps will now feature Exchange configuration as a standard option. Users can simply enter their Exchange e-mail address and password, and Snow Leopard will automatically configure all three apps at once.

Snow Leopard will also include updates to Expose, Quicktime, and its underlying graphics technology, which will be based on the OpenCL standard.

Come September, Snow Leopard will sell for $129, with an upgrade for existing Leopard users available for $29.

Apple’s Web browser, Safari, has also received a refresh, and ships today in version 4 for Leopard, Tiger, and Windows. Safari 4 includes better handling of browser plug-ins, which will allow the browser to continue functioning if a plug-in such as Flash crashes while viewing a page.
iPhone 3.0

The most talked-about bunch of updates Apple unveiled at WWDC came from its iPhone 3.0 software upgrade, which purportedly adds 100 new features to the iPhone. Critics have long stressed the need for cut, copy, and paste features across the iPhone OS, and those features are now built in. Also, all key apps in the iPhone now feature landscape mode to maximize screen width. And in the U.S., iPhones on the AT&T network will finally feature MMS support later this summer.

Search features have also been enhanced in iPhone 3.0 with the addition of Spotlight. This will enable users to search not only their contacts, but also calendar entries, notes, e-mail, and even apps on the device.

iTunes will now allow iPhone users to purchase or rent movies directly from the device, and Apple has added parental controls that will restrict the kinds of movies, shows, and apps that children can run on the phone or iPod touch.

For Mobile Me customers, Apple will offer a service called Find My iPhone, which will locate a lost or stolen device (if it’s turned on).

As promised in a previous iPhone announcement, iPhone 3.0 includes push notification for instant messaging and other applications.

Perhaps the most exciting update for iPhone 3.0 is the addition of tethering capabilities. At last, users who are away from their Wi-Fi network will be able to use the iPhone’s cellular broadband connections to connect their laptop to the Internet. This feature will work via USB or Bluetooth, and is supported by 22 carriers in 44 countries.Unfortunately, AT&T is not one of the carriers supporting this feature, which leaves U.S. iPhone customers wanting.

The iPhone 3.0 software is available to developers today, and ships to customers next Wednesday.

Along with the updates iPhone software, Apple is releasing new iPhone hardware. The iPhone 3GS will sell for $199 in a 16GB version and $299 in a 32GB version. The existing iPhone 3G will continue to be available at a price of $99. (All prices with a 2-year AT&T contract.)

The iPhone 3GS will be faster than the iPhone 3G, and will include video capture, voice control, built-in support for Nike+ accessories, hardware encryption for Exchange users, and improved battery life. The phone will be available on June 19.

Today all Apple rumors will either be satisfied or squashed during the keynote address at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference. We’re just a few hours away from the presentation, and the tech world has been in full gear all weekend to get their final predictions out before the speech at 10 a.m. Pacific Time. So here are highlights of the latest rumor and speculation about Apple’s developalooza.

iPhone 3GS

John Gruber of Daring Fireball has weighed in with one last set of predictions on the possibility of a new iPhone. Gruber stands behind his prediction from several weeks ago of an iPhone with a faster processor, and double the RAM and storage of the current iPhone 3G. However, Gruber says he’s heard the codename for the new iPhone is iPhone 3GS, and he bets Apple will also use this moniker as the official name of the next iteration of the iPhone.

IPhone 3GS is the second name to be thrown around concerning the next iPhone. On Friday, we heard rumors the device might be called iPhone Video, which would highlight the new video capability believed to be built into iPhone OS 3.0. So if Gruber were right, what would the ‘S’ in iPhone 3GS stand for? Gruber’s best guess is it stands for “speed.”

For me, a name like iPhone Video or something similar makes more sense than iPhone 3GS. Simply because Apple product names typically follow a basic principle of marketing: use the brand name to identify product value. Consider iPod names like Nano, Mini, Shuffle and Touch, or even iPhone 3G. All of these identify something particular about the product, while iPhone 3GSpeed is just a general promise of improved performance. I’m not buying it, because iPhone 3GS just isn’t Apple’s style.

In other iPhone predictions, Gruber believes the new iPhone will have 15-20 percent longer battery life, and the current 8GB iPhone will downgrade to a $99 model — possibly until Apple runs out of stock of the iPhone 3G.

More blurry iPhone photos

More photographs purporting to be the next iteration of the iPhone have surfaced. The French blog Nowhere Else has photos of an all-black 16GB iPhone. Similar photos popped up last week on the Italian blog iSpazio. The photo sets from Italy and France coincide with previous claims by a Chinese electronics reseller that it is selling official spare parts for the next-gen iPhone. Among those parts was an all-black iPhone bezel, as opposed to the chrome ring that has gone around previous iPhone models.

Snow Leopard

Apple has already said it plans to distribute copies of Snow Leopard, the newest version of OS X, to developers at WWDC, with a public launch several months after. When it was announced at last year’s WWDC, Apple said Snow Leopard would focus on under-the-hood improvements with no new features. However, there has been speculation that Apple would add a few little goodies including a new look, codenamed “Marble.”

Computerworld’s Seth Weintraub weighed in on Snow Leopard saying he believes Apple will port the Core Location feature from the iPhone into the new version of OS X. That would allow your Mac to identify its location, which could then be used by your Mac’s dashboard applications and standard programs. Weintraub is also betting that Snow Leopard may work with ARM-based chips so that Apple can port the OS to tablets and so-called smartbooks. Other predictions from Computerworld’s blogger include out-of-the-box support for Microsoft Exchange, and a new version of QuickTime with direct upload capability to YouTube and Mobile Me.

However, Gruber is also making some bets for Snow Leopard, saying the new OS will not have any new features as promised, and will not include the new Marble look. Gruber also says a free Snow Leopard upgrade for current Mac owners is out of the question due to how Apple interprets U.S. business accounting rules.

Both Gruber and Weintraub agree that Apple may sell Snow Leopard at a lower cost than typical OS upgrades for its Mac and MacBook lines.

MacBook Mobile?

Sticking his neck way out there, Weintraub is also betting that Apple may unveil MacBooks with 3G or WiMax capabilities, including the MacBook Air which could also see an upgrade to 4GB RAM.

The End is Near

At 10 a.m. Pacific, a team of Apple execs will take the stage at San Francisco’s Moscone Center West for the WWDC Keynote Address. At that time we’ll know the fate of the rumored front-facing video camera, tethering capability, and FM transmitter for the iPhone. And we could learn more about the mysterious Apple Tablet. Then again, we could hear nothing new at all. The best way to find out is to tune into PC World for all the Apple-juicy details from WWDC.

Connect with Ian Paul (@ianpaul).

Nvidia’s problem with weak packaging material that caused some of its laptop graphics chips to fail prematurely hasn’t hurt the company’s relationships with laptop makers that use its chips, a company executive said.

“It hasn’t hurt us in terms of getting new design wins at all. None of the OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] held that against us or anything,” said Ujesh Desai, vice president of product marketing at Nvidia, speaking on the sidelines of the Computex exhibition in Taipei last week.

“These are pretty complex devices and things happen every once in a while,” he said.

Nvidia took a one-time US$196 million charge last year to cover warranty and product replacement costs associated with faulty graphics chips. In March, a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission revealed that Nvidia spent $43.6 million of that amount during its previous fiscal year.

Nvidia’s customers include Apple, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Acer, among others.

Despite the packaging material problem that emerged last year, demand for Nvidia’s laptop graphics chips remains strong and is growing. “Our connect rate on notebooks is going up for graphics and I think it’s going to go up even more this year,” Desai said.

Besides taking the one-time charge to cover additional warranty costs, Nvidia also released a software update that causes laptop fans to run more frequently to reduce thermal stress on the chips. Nvidia also started using an improved material package that fixed the problem.

Nvidia’s quick response to the problem helped to ensure that its relationships with the OEMs remains strong, Desai said.

“As a company, I think we stepped up and we did a good job with how we handled that. Our customers appreciated how we handled that,” he said,

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Windows Vista users won’t have to pay much to upgrade to Windows 7, which is slated to ship October 22.

Upgrades to Windows 7 Home Premium, which includes improvements to Vista’s sluggish-yet-pretty Aero interface as well as multitouch features, will set Vista users back just $49.99, according a leaked Best Buy memo posted by Engadget. Updates to Windows 7 Professional, targeted at business users, will cost $99.99.

The Best Buy “presell” deal will start June 26 and run 16 days through July 11. Other retailers will offer the promotional pricing as well, the memo states. It’s unclear, however, whether the upgrade prices will continue beyond the promo period.

While Vista users can order Windows 7 this summer, they won’t get the OS until the October launch.

Compared to current upgrade prices for Vista, the Windows 7 deals are relatively cheap. Online retailer Newegg, for instance, sells the Vista Home Premium SP1 Upgrade for $123, and the Vista Business SP1 Upgrade for $188.

Best Buy’s memo also took a shot at the much-maligned Vista by saying that Windows 7 is much more than simply a “Vista that works.” Given the positive previews and high hopes placed on Win 7’s shoulders, let’s hope the memo is right.

Best Buy will also start a “Technology Guarantee” program whereby customers who purchase a PC that runs Vista Home Premium, Business, or Ultimate between June 26 and the Win 7 launch will get a free Windows 7 upgrade.

Personally, I think Microsoft should extend the discount Win 7 upgrades beyond July 11. The low prices would mean more sales to Vista users, and the move would be good PR for Redmond, which has suffering through months of embarrassing — and deserved — Vista bashing.

Taiwanese consumer electronics maker BenQ plans to launch a smartphone and a netbook running Google’s Android operating system next year, a company representative confirmed Thursday.

The announcement adds BenQ to a growing list of companies either making or planning smartphones and mini-laptops running Android software instead of Microsoft Windows offerings. Android is a smartphone operating system developed by Google that is meant to make communications and Web browsing easy, especially on Google sites such as Gmail and Google Maps. The majority of netbooks today use Windows XP.

BenQ currently sells netbooks under the name Joybook Lite running Microsoft Windows XP, mobile phones with the Symbian OS and a mobile Internet device with a Linux OS. A few years ago, the company was a contender in the worldwide mobile phone industry but its acquisition of Siemens’ mobile phone division went sour over mounting losses and lost market share.

The company hopes to market an Android-based smartphone next year, a BenQ representative said, as it attempts to rebuild its name in mobile phones. A netbook based on Android is also in the works, but its makeup hasn’t yet been decided.

Most mini-laptops shown at Computex Taipei running Android use microprocessors from Arm Holdings, usually in chipsets from companies such as Qualcomm, Texas Instruments or Freescale Semiconductor. But Acer displayed a version of its Aspire One netbook with an Intel Atom microprocessor that also ran Android. Acer plans to ship that device in the third quarter.

Mini-laptops with Android from several other companies have been seen at Computex, including from Elitegroup Computer Systems, Inventec, Asustek Computer subsidiary Pegatron and an Android Eee PC from Asustek.