#pastblast - The Potential of MobileMe→

#pastblast - The Potential of MobileMe

We think Shawn Blanc’s “Blast from the Past Link Day” initiative is a great idea: today only, get to share and discover again great & interesting articles from months or years ago. I thought I might link back to an article from Shawn himself, from October of last year. The article is about the potential of MobileMe, and I think it’s still particularly relevant to Apple fans and iOS users as it provides exquisite insight into features we’re still waiting for Apple to implement:

In many ways Dropbox and Google are driving the iOS / OS X relationship more than MobileMe is. While MobileMe is syncing my contacts and calendars, Dropbox is syncing my most-dear files: the projects, articles, and notes I’m interacting with every day. What are iWork.com and MobileMe for if not for the sharing and syncing of everything between our Macintoshes, iPhones, and iPads in sync?

Imagine if you will what a merging of Dropbox and MobileMe might look like. Something simple and completely expected, I suppose. It would be free, it would sync and share info and files, and it would let other apps use it for syncing. Imagine setting up your iPhone with your Apple ID once, and then any app that has a Mac and/or iPad counterpart would sync. Sounds like mobile bliss.

To keep some bit of a revenue stream, there could easily be a paid version of MobileMe as well. The free version could offer syncing and come a small yet reasonable 2GB of data storage. Paying for an upgrade might buy you increased cloud storage, an @me.com email address, Find my iPhone support, and that photo gallery thing which nobody uses.

Sounds like the perfect solution for geeks, or those OS X users who know what app-to-app OTA sync is. I don’t know if the average iOS user – your friend who bought the iPhone for Angry Birds – would be excited about a Dropbox-like feature in iOS, though. And that’s why Apple is working on two features that can be easily explained to anyone: Photo Stream and Media Stream.

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Physical Mailbox Sends Push Notifications to iPhone

Matt Richardson over at Make: Online might have just come up with the ultimate way to get push notifications on the iPhone from physical objects in the real world. Like your garage door, your secret stash drawer – or your mailbox. Thanks to the power of open-source hardware Arduino, a PHP web server and the Prowl iPhone app, he managed to create a system that sends a notification to his iPhone every time mail is delivered to his mailbox. The notification arrives in seconds, as the mailbox is wired to an internet connection (no wireless for now) and the Arduino board tells the web server to forward a notification to the Prowl app via API. Of course, there is a sensor below the mailbox that knows when the lid is opened and closed.

The concept is great, useful and requires minimal PHP and hardware knowledge to be up and running. Sure, you still need to get an Arduino and follow the instructions, but it’s price worth to be paid only to be able to connect the real world with iOS. Let me say it again: real word sends push notifications to iOS. [via Boing Boing] Read more

New Apple Patents: Multitouch Display On Mouse, Heart Monitor for Music

A new day, new Apple patents surface on the Internet. Unlike most days when we get to know the latest inventions the teams at Cupertino have been awarded, today’s design embodiments and ideas are fairly interesting and not so much projected in the future like a touch-based iMac could be. As reported by Patently Apple, a new patent shows two new possible touch input systems that might soon replace our usual mice and physical keyboards.

The patent applications reveal a mouse equipped with a multitouch display capable of visualizing information and virtual keys such as a numeric pad on the device’s surface. The mouse would still come with standard features like soft left / right buttons, but in the middle there would be place for a display carrying an additional interface for users. Read more

iOS 4.3 Gestures, Bezels and An Apple Patent From Last Year

In the first beta of iOS 4.3, Apple introduced “multitasking gestures” for iPad: offered as a preview for developers to play with and test compatibility with apps, these 4 and 5-finger multitouch gestures allow users to execute a series of actions otherwise assigned to the Home button. You can switch back and forth between apps, open and close the multitasking tray or pinch back to the homescreens. The gestures need to be activated through Xcode as, again, they are a developer preview of a feature that won’t even be enabled in the public release of iOS 4.3, as Apple let devs know last night.

The presence of gestures that offer some functionalities previously exclusive to the Home button also let the rumor mill run wild, with some bloggers speculating that Apple may get rid of the Home button in the next iterations of the iPad and iPhone. Personally, I think gestures on the iPhone’s tiny screen are a terrible idea – and it gets worse if you have non-average, big hands.

Gestures are a neat new feature for the iPad that provide a glimpse at something Apple is clearly working on: more multi-touch capabilities for iOS devices. These very same gestures, though, gave several developers a hard time trying to figure out how to integrate them with their apps. Read more

Here’s Why Gestures On The iPhone Are A Bad Idea

Rumor has it Apple may be willing to implement the multitasking gestures already seen in the iOS 4.3 beta for iPad on the iPhone as well. Those willing to believe that gestures will take over buttons on our mobile devices someday even claim that Apple may get rid of the Home button altogether on the next iPhone and iPad.

Four and five-finger gestures on the iPhone’s screen, however,  have always sounded like a terrible idea to us. And now there’s video proof that, indeed, the iPhone isn’t meant for all those fingers.

It goes like this: a Youtube user enables multitasking gestures on the iPhone (weren’t they supposed to only being tested internally?) and records a video of the multi-touch galore in action. The result is embedded below. And, quite frankly, we do believe the Home button is here to stay.

[Youtube via Engadget] Read more

Apple Sues Nokia Again In The U.K.

Back in September of last year, Apple sued Nokia in the U.K. over 9 patent infringements for technologies developed by engineers in Cupertino. The Finnish company had already sued Apple in the U.S., U.K., Germany and the Netherlands over 37 patent infringements claiming that Apple “owed it royalties for using Nokia technology that allows such basic mobile tasks as sending email or downloading applications”.

Bloomberg is reporting that Apple has fired back in High Court in London challenging one of the seven patents filed by Nokia in its lawsuit against Apple in Germany. The patent covers scrolling on touch-enabled devices:

Apple Inc., maker of the iPad tablet and iPhone, sued Nokia Oyj in the U.K. over claims that one of the Finnish company’s European patents for scrolling technology on touch-screen handsets is invalid.

“Nokia is confident that all of the 37 patents it has asserted against Apple” are valid, Durrant said in the e-mail. “We are examining the filing and will take whatever actions are needed to protect our rights.

The lawsuit is another piece in the complicated puzzle of patent infringement claims that are going around between Apple, HTC, Motorola and Nokia, among others. Perhaps this can help.

iPad 2 Event on February 9?

In case you didn’t know, Apple’s icons are full of secrets. From the Maps icon to the Mail one, they come with references to internal Cupertino jokes the average consumer may or may not understand by looking at a simple graphic file. But sometimes, the reference is obvious.

Take the alleged “iPad 2 Springboard” preview image found in the iOS 4.3 beta: it shows the Camera, FaceTime and Photo Booth icons, but it also comes with an updated calendar icon. Which, unlike the calendar icon used in promo material for the iPad 1, doesn’t have a 27. But why does the calendar app on the original iPad have a 27 on it? Because the device was announced on January 27th, 2010. See the reference?

On this new preview image, the number is 9. The updated icon may or may not suggest that the iPad 2 will be announced on, say, February 9? That’s a Wednesday, and it would be two months before the rumored April 9 release date. This would give Apple a 60-day timeframe to announce the device and get developers ready with their apps.

If Apple doesn’t change the icon again in the next weeks, there’s a good chance we’ll have an iPad 2 announcement on February 9. At least, we hope so. What do you think? [via Shimanke]

Update: Too bad the same “Calendar 9” icon can be found in the current iPad under Settings, Brightness & Wallpaper. We wanted to believe.

Leaked Screenshot of Internal iPhone with Gestures?

Well after the 4.3 Beta that previewed multitasking gestures on the iPad, there is now some supposed evidence that suggests that the iPhone is also being considered by Apple to have gestures thanks to an internal build that BGR claims to have gotten some screenshots of.

Obviously there is an issue with the supposedly leaked pictures, gestures on the iPhone would likely have to be different to those previewed on the iPad that used four or five finger swipes because they would be pretty unreasonable to use on the iPhone’s smaller screen. That said it remains possible that the text is left over from the iPad and whilst being tested internally has not been edited to reflect the iPhone’s gestures.

Engadget notes that information from it sources says that since the lost iPhone 4 debacle Apple made significant changes to how it keeps track of it’s devices and that it added clauses to screens saying “Confidential and Proprietary, if found, please contact…” listing a Cupertino 408 number. The photo’s BGR have gotten a hold have this message, adding credence to this leak. All three pictures posted after the break.

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