Now that’s a mouthful, a mouthful of powerful computing and one that could land on Tuesday. ZDNet lets us know that several tipsters claim Apple is ready to revamp their Mac Pro lineup, adding a new Hexacore Xeon Core i7-980x to the lineup. For those unfamiliar with this processor, it boasts of some pretty impressive specifications:

• 3.33GHz (TurboBoost to 3.6GHz)
• 6 cores / 12 threads
• 32nm architecture
• Socket LGA1366
• 130W TDP

If  you see the Apple Store go down Tuesday, it’s a safe bet we’ll see see this monsters available shortly thereafter.

For iPhone detracters (and yes, there are a few left), they often harp on the iPhone’s lack of multitasking. While the iPhone offers multitasking of sorts within it’s core apps, you cannot use an application like Pandora to stream music while checking your email. Palm’s webOS and Android have different implementations of multitasking support, both of which are more robust than available on the iPhone. Apparently, that’s all going to change with the release of iPhone OS 4.0. AppleInsider is reporting that Apple will introduce their multitasking solution that will allow several third party apps to run in the background.

Their sources say Apple has developed a “full-on solution“. Apple has always reasoned that battery life was a major reason for the lack of support. This solution would have to optimize resources as to not have an overtly adverse affect on battery life. Apple’s solution reportedly leverages interface technology inherent in Mac OS X.

The only downside is that development of iPhone OS 4.0 has a “way to go” before being ready for release. Let’s hope that “way to go” doesn’t change our hopes and dreams of a June release.

via AppleInsider

Just proving that the iPhone is mostly used as a home gadget, analyst firm Localytics looked at the usage data of a number of iPhone apps, figured out the timezones, and found that most apps get played at 9pm on weeknights and all through the weekend. You mean people use their toys when they actually have time to play? Who would have thought!

Sarcasm aside, it does show that the iPhone is far more “personal than professional”, and for all its work related possibilities, the iPhone excels at entertainment. It seems common sense that this time period would be where you’d find heavy use, as it’s when people unwind after their day’s work.

[via Venture Beat]

Capcom’s much discussed transition of Street Fighter IV has finally landed on the iPhone—and it’s not cheap. The $10 app (link) features eight playable characters:  Ryu, Ken, Chun Li, Guile, Dhalsim, Blanka, M. Bison and  Abel, and the venerable M. Bison is the final boss. It’s odd that a port of the newest SF game only has a single of the new characters: Abel. The game uses an onscreen joystick and buttons, has a built-in training mode for new users, and can handle head to head over bluetooth.

The graphics look pretty good for an iPhone game, though it’s very tempting to compare them to the console version.

If you know or come into personal contact with an Android user, you’ve probably had that nifty little Google Goggles app thrown in your face a few times already. It’s a handy little app that uses visual recognition to identify objects and products and direct you to the Internet to find and buy said objects. Think of it as one of those barcode scanner apps, minus the need for a barcode.

Well, the day has finally come for the iPhone to get a visual search app of its own. In this installment of “Does it Work?” we take a look at oMoby, which hit the App Store a few weeks ago and claims to make searching simple by letting you snap photos of any product and locating it for purchase on the Internet.

Think oMoby will work? Check out our assessment after the jump.

How it Works:

According to the developers’, oMoby works a little by computer vision and a little by “magic.” When you snap a photo of an object in the app, the “computer vision” goes to work to identify the object, and when that fails, the app turns to a network of humans to help solve the mystery. The instructional video posted on YouTube is a bit more explanatory, as it describes how the app looks for characteristics in an image, instead of mainly text or logos.

The Test:

When you open oMoby, the app launches right into camera mode, ready for you to snap away. I started with a few simple media items: a digital camera, a DVD (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), and a paperback book (Into the Wild) to test the waters without rocking the boat.

Immediately after taking a photo, the app reverted back to my “history” screen, which displayed all of the items in my list of queried items. For each item, a thumbnail shows to the left and text to the right would read “Searching” and “Analyzing Image.”

After a few minutes, the text changed to read “We will notify you when the product is identified.”

After another few minutes and after closing the app, I received a push notification on the icon on my home screen, letting me know that an item I had searched for had been identified. The digital camera I took a photo of had been identified..correctly!

Opening the results page for the item shows a list of options, such as sharing your result via e-mail, or searching information on the item through sites like Google, Bing, and Wikipedia. The real meat of the app comes in the list of shopping links offered for 10 websites like Best Buy, eBay, Walmart, Google Products, or Overstock. You also have the option of posting your results on social sites like Facebook or Twitter. Even better, all of this searching on other sites is done inside the app.

So oMoby successfully identified my digital camera, but the rest of the media items didn’t go over so well—at first. It took much more time than the digital camera to identify at all—by about half an hour—and when the app finally did identify them, they showed as incredibly vague titles: “book,” “comic book” (for the DVD—wrong).

So I did more searches of some more difficult items, using the tips offered in the instructional video, and also retook photos of the items that were vaguely identified. The same vague identifications were given for these and took almost twice as long to get:

Lysol cleaning wipes — “Food Item”

Burt’s Bees hand lotion — “Bees”

Picture frame from Target — “Wood Thing”

Sharpie marker — “Sketch Pen”

Apple iPhone earbuds — “Earphones”

I’m not kidding about “Wood Thing,” either.

However, literally an hour later, while I was putting together this here review you’re reading, I checked my iPhone to see that I had 10 push notifications from oMoby. I opened the app to see that every item in my history had been updated and that each item had been more specifically identified, with titles for the media items and more specifics on the others: “Lysol Dual Action,” “Burt’s Bees,” “Picture Frame,” “Sharpie” and “Apple Earphones.”

I guess it really does work by magic.

Conclusion:

In short, yes, the app does work. Patience and precision is absolutely necessary for the app to work as promised, though, and seeing as this is a fairly new app, it’s going to take a bit to work out some kinks. oMoby insists that the more the app is used and the more users correct misidentified items, the better the app will work. So we have to kudos for the “community” aspect to the app.

As a tip, do take the developers’ advice to take as clear of a photo as possible, to make things easier for the magical elves working behind the scenes. And although oMoby insists text isn’t necessary to make the app better identify objects, if you’re snapping a photo of a product with any branding or specific identifiers on it (i.e. the picture frame from above), you’re most likely not going to get the results you really want. Sure, if you snap a photo of a picture frame, you should expect to have the app identify it as a picture frame. But that’s not quite what users of this app are using it for, anyhow. The magic seems a bit lost, in this sense.

The final verdict? … It works. Go download it! oMoby

Price: FREE

The Game Developers’ Conference is a major event for the behind the scenes work of actually crafting the applications that we play. This year they’ve included an iPhone Games Summit, which kicked off this morning, and today’s talks will be on creating server software for iPhone games; social networks; a postmortem on Call of Duty: World at War Zombies; and how Epic brought Unreal 3 to the iPhone.

Day two will be on business and marketing.

The talk about creating servers for iPhone multiplayers has been presented by ngmoco, who are giving a presentation on the multiplayer aspect of Eliminate. TUAW have written up their presentation here, which gives an interesting rundown of the problems they faced.

Two programmers with TippingPoint’s Digital Vaccine Group created a proof of concept botnet, which showed that smartphones are just as susceptible to the attacks of black hat hackers as anyone else. The pair created a “weather” app called WeatherFist, and distributed it through Android marketplace and on jailbroken iPhones. While in this form, it was relatively benign, just gathering the users location data and phone-numbers, at the recent RSA Conference they showed that it could easily transition it into a more traditional botnet, which would steal their information and spread spam.

I think it’s an important point to remember that iPhones, like traditional computers, can be usurped by people with less than honorable intentions. If you’ve jailbroken and are picking up random apps over Cydia, remember that literally anything can be there, and you have no idea of the intentions of its creators.

[via Sophos]

Today’s contestant is FBR Capital chip analyst Craig Berger, who wrote that Apple is poised to produce 4-5 million iPads in the first half of this year. He believes all the talk about delays and bottlenecks were “false alarms”, and that Apple will also see a boost in their other products. He’s also estimating substantially more units produced of the iPod and desktops, but fewer iPhones:

“[Berger] sees Apple building 9.3 million iPods in the March quarter, up from his previous estimate of 4 million, with desktop units increasing to 1 million from 500,000, and notebooks now at 1.7 million, up from 1 million. By contrast, he has reduced his iPhone build forecast for the quarter to 6 million, from 7.5 million.”

You can be one of those lucky first five million, by winning an iPad through our competition here.

[via Barron's]

Say what? With  iPhone releases, Verizon has been know to distribute PowerPoint slides illustrating why customers should not purchase the iPhone. With the iPad coming next month, Verizon is back again, but with a different message. According to Verizon’s internal slides, the iPad represents an opportunity for big red to sell data plans and specifically the very excellent Verizon MiFi.

Anyone planning on the ultimate combo of the iPad and Verizon MiFi?

via Engadget

Apple today released iPhone OS 3.2 SDK Beta 4, which includes updated development tools for the iPad. We’re not sure what’s new, but Apple seems to be pushing a steady stream of updates to iPhone OS 3.2 SDK.

If you are a developer, head over to developer.apple.com for the update.

via MacRumors

Pocket Gamer is reporting that the Kings of the Iron Fist tournament might be making its way to your iPhone. According to their source, Namco has been working on the application for a while, and ”the game is being finished up and it plays rather nicely.”

Details are scarce, with Pocket Gamer thinking it might be a port of the PSP version of Tekken 6, though a complete remake is not out of the question. Street Fighter IV is already on its way to the iPhone, so it only makes sense for other major franchises to try and get in on the action. It just remains to be seen if the controls will be completely unwieldily or not.

[via Cult of Mac]

Doodle Jump, the insanely fun $0.99 iPhone app, has passed 3 million sales since its release in March 2009. Gathering almost $3 million in revenue in that single year, I guess it goes to show that a decent concept and some good press can go a very, very long way. The game’s developers—Lima Sky—are claiming that this number of sales is a first for any indie developer, a stat I don’t know enough about to disagree with.

While the developers do keep pushing out minor updates and holiday themed palette swaps, the fundamental gameplay has remained unchanged, and the game has enough positive buzz behind it to keep moving units. Congratulations to the developers for making an affordable and crazy fun application!

[via Crunch Gear]

The latest version of the iPhone OS is currently 3.1.3. Come April 3rd, the iPad will ship with version 3.2. Changes between the two allow for differences between the iPhone and iPad. Today we bring word from Jim Dalrymple of The Loop that iPhone OS 4.0 will be available in June and  will bring with it “lots of new features”. Dalrymple expects a new iPhone this June.

Given the tight timetable, they expect Apple to release OS 4.1 sometime in the September, October timeframe. OS 4.1 will unifiy the OS for both the iPad and iPhone.

So, iPad in April and a new iPhone OS and iPhone in June? What’s happening in May?

via DF

Analyst Yair Reiner of Oppenheimer issued a report today, essentially saying that Apple’s suit against HTC was a warning shot to handset manufacturers. According to Reiner:

“Starting in January, Apple launched a series of C-Level discussions with tier-1 handset makers to underscore its growing displeasure at seeing its iPhone-related IP [intellectual property] infringed. The lawsuit filed against HTC thus appears to be Apple’s way of putting a public, lawyered-up exclamation point on a series of blunt conversations that have been occurring behind closed doors.

“Our checks also suggest that these warning shots are meaningfully disrupting the development roadmaps for would-be iPhone killers. Rival software and hardware teams are going back to the drawing board to look for work-arounds. Lawyers are redoubling efforts to gauge potential defensive and offensive responses. And strategy teams are working to chart OS strategies that are better hedged.”

In other words, Apple isn’t taking kindly to multi-touch no-keyboard phones, and will fight off models it sees as being too similar to the iPhone.

While this may be true, it remains to be seen if Apple’s patents will hold up under ITC investigation, and if if Apple’s desired precedent is established. Even if it isn’t, the financial burden of litigation may be enough to dissuade some manufacturers.

[via Fortune]

Apple’s pruning of the app store has continued, beyond the previously reported sexy and Wi-Fi cull. According to TechCrunch, Apple has started to target “cookie cutter” apps, ones that were designed using a template from an app-building service. However, they’re not targeting all apps made this way, just ones with almost no functionality—mirroring a single RSS feed, or acting as a business card. Essentially, the glorified web apps, with functions that can be matched by a bookmark.

While cutting out the almost useless apps seems to be a positive step in improving the app store experience, will Apple’s current trimming of applications stop there? TechCrunch writer Jason Kincaid thinks that ebooks might be next in the firing line. After all, a great number of the ebooks in the app store are public domain titles that are packaged up and sold for $0.99. It certainly isn’t too far-fetched, given Apple’s recent pruning of the app store, and how many duplicated novels already exist.

We mentioned that Wired raised the point that the iPad seems to be missing some fairly basic apps, a situation that John Gruber of Daring Fireball weighed in on, citing well-informed sources. It’s not that they’re being recast as widgets, but being left out entirely, as they don’t survive the transition to the larger format well. It’s not that they don’t function in any way, just that when scaled up they look mediocre, and were culled by Jobs.

However, all is not lost for  Stocks, Calculator, Clock, Weather, and Voice Memos—they might land with the assumed revisions associated with this Summer’s planned arrival of iPhone/iPad OS 4.0.

Even with the sad lack of the ability to check the weather, you still have the chance to win an iPad through our competition.

There are not shortage of adjectives in the Apple’s latest product videos, so that opens up the door for some excellent spoofs. This video showcases the magical ePad.

Thanks iNinja!

When the iPhone launched in China, it was with crippled hardware—due to governmental regulations the phones did not have Wi-Fi. Partly because of this, the iPhone performed mediocrely at launch, selling only 5,000 units over the first week. Reports are now surfacing that Unicom—the phone’s distributor in China—wants to try and bring Wi-Fi functionality to the country.

The trouble arises from a Government restriction banning Wi-Fi enabled phones from being sold in China unless they conform to the Chinese WAPI standard, rather than the international Wi-Fi. Because of this the iPhone shipped without either, and sold poorly, which was worsened by grey market Wi-Fi enabled ones being available. Recent changes in legislation allow for phones to be sold if they have both Wi-Fi and WAPI, which Unicom and Apple are now said to be working on.

According to the Times, Apple executives are heading over to Britain this week to talk with wireless providers about selling the iPad. In the UK the iPhone is currently sold by three companies: Vodafone, Orange and O2, and assumedly all three will be vying to stock the tablet. O2 were the sole sellers of the iPhone from 2007-2009, however Apple is not expected to offer an exclusive arrangement in the British Isles for the iPad.

The Times’ sources say that preliminary discussions have been underway for a while now, but that no decisions have been made over price.

In the USA, Apple made waves for the comparatively low price, no contract wireless data plans to be offered via AT&T at the launch of the 3G iPad.

[via iLounge]

Merrill Lynch analyst Scott Craig thinks that the iPhone is going to sell gangbusters this year and into the next, regardless if they get Verizon on board or not. When talking to investors, Craig pegged the phone at moving 33 million units for 2010, up to 35 million in 2011 if a second telephone company doesn’t come on board. That’s up 1.5 million units from Craig’s previous estimates, but below the Wall Street estimate of 44 million.

However, if Apple does manage to make a deal with a second service provider, Craig’s estimating that sales will skyrocket up to 55 million in 2011, making it more or less the most popular thing since ice cream.

[via Cult of Mac]