Curious's Journal

Steve Jobs will be giving the Keynote on Monday… here are my predictions:

75% or higher certainty

• Demo new iPhone (name possibly iPhone HD) Release ~end of July
• iPhone will have amazing battery life, front/rear cameras, flash on back
• 4.0 for iphone will be released at or near keynote
• 4.0 iPad beta will be released Steve will say that they will try to keep them at the same release going forward
• Joke about iPhone leak

50% or higher certainty

• Some sort of update on XServers and/or MacPros (it has been over a year and a quarter since these things have been updated)
• New LCDs (it’s been over three and a quarter years since apple has come out with any LCDs except for the 24″ that came out at the end of 2008, and the 24″ is also the only display port LCD apple has released thus far)

25% or less certainty (75% apple will announce these in September)

• Revamped MacTV based on iPhoneOS, designed to be controlled by iPad/iPhone/iPodTouch or from basic remote
• iPod Touch will have a wider form factor (possibly like iphone’s)
• formfactor will allow for extra battery, which will give it more then iPad’s 10hour of video life
• will also have a much larger storage option (next year they may phase out ipod classic)

Note: My predictions have been way off in the past, so I do not recommend gambling on these predictions.

I’ve been looking for a good ebook reader that would let me take notes, annotate, and highlight. A capacitive screen tablet seems like it should do just the thing. The problem with the tablet are as followed:

• iBook does not appear to have any of the necessary functionality
• review sites indicate that the rounded back make it unsuitable for typing on a flat surface
• There is an apparent lack of rotation lock, meaning that if your reading laying down on your side the words will run perpendicular to your eyes.
• And, it’s not e-ink

Now, you may be saying, “Hey! Amazon or Barnes and Noble could add some of this functionality to their iPad apps!”. Yea, but because of Apple’s control over the app store their competitive ebook readers may never make it to the iPad. Welcome to the walled garden. I will keep an eye on this though. Once it is jailbroken, apps like sbsettings and non-approved apps can be added to the iPad. I may become more interested in it then.

Here is a screenshot of SBSettings app for jailbroken iphones. Notice the rotation on/off add on that enables/disables auto screen rotation.