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Monday, March 28, 2011

iOS 5 pushed to the fall: major revamp, cloud-based, WWDC preview?

TechCrunch reports that Apple has decided to wait until fall 2011 to launch their rumored iOS 5 for iOS devices: iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Major iOS upgrades are typically revealed by Apple during February or March then previewed again in early June alongside a new iPhone, then released on or around the new iPhone’s availability date. The report claims that 2011 will be different and that customers will likely only get their hands on the next-generation mobile operating system during the fall. It would make sense that Apple would unveil the final touches at their annual fall/September music event.
The report says we’ll most likely get our first glimpse at iOS 5 at Apple’s annual World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) in early June, and we assume developers will get a preview download at that date. The report is scarce on iOS 5 details but it does claim that it’s a major revamp and it will be heavily cloud-based. This should go hand-in-hand with the rumored music locker service from Apple – in addition to Media Stream and Find my Friends. TechCrunch is again expected a new iPad for a fall announcement- that just doesn’t seem likely to us, though.
In terms of Apple launching a fifth-generation iPhone at WWDC with iOS 4 – it does not seem likely given Apple’s past release cycles but could be possible. In fact, we found references to an iPhone 5 with an A5 processor - same one as in the iPad 2 – in the iOS 4.3 development kit. Apple also appears to still be working on iOS 4.x as they released an update yesterday. In addition, Media Stream and Find my Friends were both found in the iOS 4.3 SDK. Apple is also rumored to launch a revamped MobileMe around April that is also heavily cloud-based. Perhaps the new (possibly free) service will tie together with Apple’s next-gen iOS.
TechCrunch has not been the most accurate when it comes to pinpointing Apple information. Less than a week after the iPad’s unveil in January 2010 they reported that Apple is already at work on a Mac OS X tablet - for a 2010 launch – with an intel processor. They were one of the many sites who pinpointed a January reveal of the Verizon iPhone 4, though. TechCrunch also said back in 2008 that Apple is working on their own search engine.

AMD throws down the gauntlet to Nvidia on graphics speed claims

As Apple transitions its line from NVIDIA graphics cards to AMD (and opens up the OS to much more variety), we’re noting some stong words coming out of each camp on who makes the fastest graphics card in the world. On the 8th of this month, AMD announced it had released the fastest Graphics card on the market, the AMD Radeon HD 6990.
NVIDIA fired back this week and said they had the fastest Graphics card. No it is getting real.
Dave Erskine, Senior Public Relations Manager for Graphics Desktop at AMD just fired this off:

We combed through their announcement to understand how it was that such a claim could be made and why there was no substantiation based on industry-standard benchmarks, similar to what AMD did with industry benchmark 3DMark 11, the latest DirectX® 11 benchmark from FutureMark.
So now I issue a challenge to our competitor: prove it, don’t just say it. Show us the substantiation. Because as it stands today, leading reviewers agree with us here, here, here, and here that the AMD Radeon HD 6990 sits on the top as the world’s fastest graphics card.

It should be noted that Direct X isn’t going to have much bearing on Mac users, but it is informative and entertaining nonetheless to see these two industry titans slug it out.
It may also explain why Apple moved from NVIDIA to AMD.
NVIDIA has had some build issues that cause recalls of its portable line which may have also soured Apple to NVIDIA products. They also build a Tegra 2 processor which powers most of the Android phones and tablets that challenge Apple’s iOS for portable supremacy.