By Greg Mills

Currently the Apple Developer Tools used to create apps for iOS, that run on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad are really professional programs. While they have drag and drop elements, the way they all fit together and work to create an app is not something a child can easily do.  

Some background in programing is very helpful. That is likely to change as an easy way to create apps for iOS may well be on the way. While it has not been announced or even hinted at by Apple, a move by Google guarantees a "user friendly" iOS app creator program will be released by Apple any time now. 

The Google competition with Apple over content in their app stores is going to heat up with a new "Google Android App Inventor" tool to be launched soon by "Big G."  With this software kit, that runs on Google servers "in the cloud" on a web browser, a person can create simple apps using "blocks" of programing that are graphically put together to preform...

Apple has been granted a patent (number 7,757,173) by the US Patent & Trademark Offic for its for a voice menu system for its idevices -- and apparently plans to tweak it even more in the future. It relates to media players and, more particularly, to navigating menus of media players.

The invention generally allows for updateable audio menus. Although a device might have some pre-packaged menu components, other menu components can be received from a server. Each menu component, regardless of whether it is original or received from the server, has an associated voiced name. When a user highlights a menu choice, the voiced name can be played. The user then has the option of selecting the menu choice or scrolling to a new menu choice. In this way, a user could navigate the menu without having to actually see a visual display of the menu, which may be especially useful for users unable to see the visual display or users with visual disabilities. The inventor is Alexander B....

Last week I devoted several columns to what I perceive as the future of the Mac. I've asked my "MacNews" compadres to offer their thoughts. And here they are...

Scott Alexander says:

"Five years -- that's a long time in technology. There's the obvious stuff like speed, speed, and more speed. There are a lot of directions I could go here; for example practical 3D displays with multi-touch and then move to my perennial favorite home servers (my newest term for that is now 'femtocloud' -- owing to the popular cloud mentality and the AT&T home cell phone access points).

"However, I think that I'll focus on improving the ability of the Mac devices to work better together. I was completely awed by the idea represented by a single act in the blockbuster 'Avatar' movie where one of the characters was working on what appeared to be a normal desktop workstation (with an admittedly was cool display) when he 'grabbed' the data he was working on and dragged it from...

This has got to be good news for Apple (and other tech companies): electronics purchases are top of mind for consumers this year, according to About.com’s April 2010 Consumer Electronics Study. Findings also revealed that consumers are being smarter about their electronics purchases with nearly 65% planning to spend more time researching online before buying.

After researching key areas of consumer behaviors including how consumers shop for electronics (e.g., computers, wireless phones, TVs, DVD players, cameras, music players, video games and E-book readers), what advertisements they find most appealing and what types of electronic products they plan to purchase this year, the analysis revealed the following.

When consumers shop for electronics products:

° Nearly 70% of the respondents said they usually wait a few months to purchase electronics to ensure the product is worth the money and functions properly.

° While consumers are price conscious, they...

Although Apple's Big Love right now is being bestowed on the iPhone and iPod, I think we'll see some truly innovative Macs in the next 2-3 years. I certainly expect some to offer built-in micro-projects, as I've mentioned. I also expect to see a laptop and combination dock/display.

Of course, you can buy docks for current laptops. But Apple has at least considered making a portable device that inserts into a special display. A patent (number 20080278899) appeared in 2008 for methods and apparatuses for docking a portable electronic device that has a planar-like configuration and that operates in multiple orientations.

The invention relates to improved techniques for transferring data and/or power between portable electronic devices and the docking stations. The docking system also includes a docking station configured to mechanically accept and operatively interface with the portable electronic device in any of its multiple orientations including vertical and...

Apple has been granted four iPhoto related patents by the US Patent & Trademark Office. Following is a summary of each.

Patent number 20100172579 involves distinguishing between faces and non-faces. It involves methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer program products, for evaluating image data. In one aspect, a method includes accessing an image that includes a candidate face, such as a face detected during a face detection operation. The method further includes generating a sharpness measure based on image data corresponding to the candidate face, evaluating the sharpness measure to determine a confidence score representing a likelihood that the candidate face corresponds to a human face, and accepting the candidate face when the confidence score compares in a predetermined manner to a confidence threshold. Additionally, the method can be implemented to include generating a skin tone measure based on image data corresponding to the...

By Greg Mills

Greg Bites some crow. Not one to easily admit I was wrong, I have to admit that parts of my rage yesterday against the Apple MPEG 2 video import into iMovie were not exactly fair.  Sometimes you fool around with things and somehow get it to work.  

For one thing, the QuickTime MPEG 2 software, according to Apple, sometimes does work and delivers sound. It depends on the codex being translated. In this case it didn't work and Apple did give me my money back.  

They were nicer about it than I was. They had to agree that a bold disclaimer that some MPEG 2 codex would not allow the sound to be decoded by the Sorenson MPEG 2 video decoder they sell as a download. That disclaimer would preclude a lot of upset Apple Store customers.  

I also had other Mac people email me with similar upsetting experiences. I also admit I didn't read all the information before I assumed the MPEG 2 decoder would work for my application. 

...

By Greg Mills

I wanted to believe platform envy for the Mac faithful towards the dark side of the force was over. WRONG.

Try using some of the more popular USB camcorders on a Mac. I love plug and play, as it just works.Why can't Apple fix this deficiency in the Mac infrastructure? There are still plenty of incompatible camcorders out there.

I bought a cool tiny Sony camcorder that was bundled with a 320GB hard drive at Best Buy. The package was only US$335 for the camera and the slick little hard drive. A great deal, in my opinion. The hard drive works great and boots as an USB hard drive just fine on my MacBook Pro.  

The camera works fine and can hook up with USB to my MacBook Pro -- but iMovie and iDVD refuse to see the Sony camera. The USB ports is working, as I checked the "About This Mac" index under the Apple logo. After drilling down to see what was showing on the USB Bus, there was the camera, bigger than Dallas.   

I...

Several Apple patents have appeared at the US Patent & Trademark Office. Following is a summary of each.

Patent number 7752366 is for a non-blocking address switch with shallow per agent queues. In one embodiment, a switch is configured to be coupled to an interconnect. The switch comprises a plurality of storage locations and an arbiter control circuit coupled to the plurality of storage locations. The plurality of storage locations are configured to store a plurality of requests transmitted by a plurality of agents. The arbiter control circuit is configured to arbitrate among the plurality of requests stored in the plurality of storage locations. A selected request is the winner of the arbitration, and the switch is configured to transmit the selected request from one of the plurality of storage locations onto the interconnect. In another embodiment, a system comprises a plurality of agents, an interconnect, and the switch coupled to the plurality of...

FaceTime is one of the most highly touted features of the iPhone 4. I think it's just a matter of time before it comes to the Mac.

In case you're not familiar with it, FaceTime is video calling that uses Wi-Fi. Apple says that using FaceTime is as easy as making a regular voice call, with no set-up required. On the iPhone 4, you can instantly switch to the rear camera to show others what you are seeing with just a tap.

FaceTime works right out of the box. You don't have to up a special account or screen name.If you want to start a video call with your best friend, find her entry in your Contacts and tap the FaceTime button. Or maybe you’re already on a voice call with her and you want to switch to video. Just tap the FaceTime button on the Phone screen. Either way, an invitation pops up on her iPhone 4 screen asking if she wants to join you. When she accepts, the video call begins.

Right now FaceTime only works iPhone 4 to iPhone 4. However, since all Macs but...

I've never been shy about making what some consider wacky predictions. So here's my latest: by 2014, Macs will no longer have dedicated USB, FireWire or video ports (or eSATA, for that matter). Instead, they'll have Light Peak.

Developed by Intel and codenamed "Light Peak," this technology paves the way for a new generation of extreme computer input and output (I/O) performance, delivering 10Gb/s of bandwidth, with the potential ability to scale to 100Gbs over the next decade, according to David Perlmutter, executive vice president and general manager, Intel Architecture Group. At 10Gb/second, a user could purportedly transfer a full-length Blu-Ray movie in less than 30 seconds. Intel says it intends to work with the industry to determine the best way to make this new technology a standard.

The optical technology allows for smaller connectors and longer, thinner, and more flexible cables than currently possible. Light Peak also has the ability to run multiple...

Several Apple patents have appeared at the US Patent & Trademark Office that hint at either changes in Final Cut products -- or perhaps new media presentation tools.

Patent number 20100168881 is for a multimedia display based on audio and visual complexity. The present invention relates generally to the field of authoring media presentations and, in particular, to authoring media presentations using profiled audio data.

Here's Apple's background and summary of the invention: "Current media presentation applications offer features for creating slides and manually customizing the ways in which a set of slides, i.e., a slideshow, is played. Such applications also offer features for attaching themes to slideshows, where such themes may affect the appearance and general behavior of the slideshows when played. In addition, such applications further offer features such as customizing slide colors, customizing transition behavior, customizing transition...

By Greg Mills

Microsoft has announced the Kin phone is dead. The Barbie phone may also be canceled. Mattel, maker of the Ken and Barbie phone for Microsoft had no comment. Here is the press release from Microsoft:

"Microsoft has made the decision to focus on the Windows Phone 7 launch and will not ship KIN in Europe this fall as planned. Additionally,  we are integrating our KIN team with the Windows Phone 7 team,  incorporating valuable ideas and technologies from KIN into future Windows Phone releases. We will continue to work with Verizon in  the U.S. to sell current KIN phones."

(Greg Mills is currently a Faux Artist in Kansas City. Formerly a new product R&D man for the paint sundry market, he holds 11 US patents. He's working on a solar energy startup using a patent pending process of turning waste dual pane glass into thermal solar panels used to heat water. Married, with one daughter still at home, Greg writes for intellectual web...

By Greg Mills

The Monday morning coffee at too many law firms is still brewing while the top legal minds are plotting a new law suit against Apple. Frankly, I get tired of reading stories about the new law suit of the day being filed against Apple, for whatever reason.  

Some of the lamest suits have been filed and dismissed in recent years. It is interesting to me that the filing of a suit and the dismissal of most of them are treated far differently by the press. With great fanfare the suite is filed' without even a blip on the screen the suite goes away. The hope of most of those filing suits is for an out-of-ourt settlement.  

At any given time, there are likely a hundred or more suits still pending against Apple. It takes a small army of lawyers to keep up on them all and not allow a deadline to pass without answering actions of the other side. Holding a portfolio of patents also costs a fortune and requires another division of lawyers to...

Several Apple patents have appeared at the US Patent and Trademark Office. Following is a summary of each.

Patent 7,747,765 is for a method and apparatus for media data transmission. A digital processing system is provided with a time related sequence of media data provided to the digital processing system based on a set of data, wherein the set of data indicates a method to transmit the time related sequence of media data according to a transmission protocol. The set of data, itself, is a time related sequence of data associated with the time related sequence of media data. The time related sequence of media data may be presented and/or stored by the digital processing system. The inventors are Anne Jones, Jay Geagan, Kevin L. Gong, Alagu Perlyanna and David W. Singer.

Patent 7,747,784 involves a data synchronization protocol. Among other things, techniques and systems are disclosed for syncing data between a client device and a...

Needham & Company analyst Charles Wolf, predicts that Apple will sell nearly 13 million Macs this year. With those figures in mind, you have to wonder if that number would increase still more if Apple released a Mac with some really bang-up features rather than incremental improvements.

As Wolf points out, Apple sells Macs for nearly twice the price of Windows boxes, yet the sales keep growing faster than the rest of the industry. Of course, we're not figuring in return-on-investment, but that's a topic for another day.

So what's in store for the Mac? Well, obviously there's USB 3.0. It's just a matter of time until we see that. I'll be surprised if the iMac doesn't get an HDMI port a la the latest Mac mini. I still think Apple is making a mistake if it doesn't offer Blu-ray playback on some Macs, at least as a build-to-order option. And, to me, adding a built-in tuner to the living room-friendly iMac seems logical.

Also, as Arik Hesseldahl at...

I'd love -- REALLY LOVE -- to have an iPhone 4 (assuming, of course, I could get my hands on one). However, AT&T's crappy wireless service in my neck of the woods prevents this -- though Verizon's service has gotten increasingly worse. Maybe I need a femtocell.

International research firm Parks Associates today announced the results of the most comprehensive survey to date of U.S. consumer attitudes to femtocells, conducted on behalf of the Femto Forum.

AT&T, among other companies, is rolling out femtocells that, when connected to the home's broadband modem, will pick up signals from the cell phones in the home and relay them through the Internet connection. In essence, they're small cell towers for the home. AT&T wants to sell me one for $150. But if their wireless service stays crappy, they should give 'em away.

Regardless, lots of folks are going the femtocell route. A new survey by the Park Associates research group finds that more than half of...

Amid all the hoopla over the iPad and iPhone 4, a handful of folks have predicted that the Macs days were numbered. If so, it's because that Apple wants to lose money.

Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com) has released its "Global Top 10 Computer and Peripherals Companies -- Industry, Financial and SWOT Analysis. Apple is, of course, in that group, along with HP, IBM, Toshiba, Dell, NEC, Canon, Asustek, Acer and Lenova.

The global computers and peripherals industry generated total revenues of $540.1 billion in 2008, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5% for the period spanning 200408. And now the important (for this op-ed anyway) part. According to Research and Markets, the personal computers segment proved the most lucrative for the global computers and peripherals industry in 2008, generating total revenues of $236.9 billion. That's...

By Greg Mills

While Apple supports open source software and even provides powerful program elements, such as WebKit, their tendency is to have a closed system. While some hate that concept, the truth is, Apple has thrived on it lately.  

The late 80's saw the much more "open" PCs as cheap PCs and Microsoft swamped Apple in the market place. Apple even dabbled with licensing software to Mac clone companies. That experiment was aborted as Apple returned to a solo, closed business model.  

The openness the PC world craves is also open to malware of every stripe and color. The relative safety of the Mac platform is commonly passed off as a function of the smaller size of the installed computer base. Why waste time hacking Macs when there are so many easy PC to infect? I think the truth is that the more closed system of the Mac helps ward off attacks due to the infrastructure being more secure from the foundation up and in no small part, the work of...

And in writing for "InfoWorld" (http://macosg.me/2/f0), Paul Venezia has an interesting premise: "Rumor has it that Apple may release a gyroscopic Wii-like controller, too. Couple a 27-inch LCD panel with a Mac running Mac OS X and games developed for the iPad/iPhone, all controlled by the equivalent of a Wiimote, and you suddenly have a compelling gaming system that could run the same games on devices ranging from the iPhone to the iMac. From the developer's perspective, it's develop once, run on every Apple device."

In fact, it's similar to a GameDock system proposed by "Mac/Life": "Take this nifty little gaming platform and assign it double duty as both a handheld and a console system. The GameDock accommodates the iPhone and iPod touch and hooks directly to your TV and the Internet. Whether you download a game wirelessly via the handheld or wiredly via the GameDock, you pay just once for two versions of...

Here's another reason I think we'll see an iMac 3D sooner rather than later: interest in 3D gaming is strongest among early adopters and gaming enthusiasts, but a new study from the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) shows that interest in 3D gaming extends to the casual video game player as well.

The "3D Gaming: Entertainment’s Next Dimension" study of online U.S. adults also found that more consumer demonstrations and education are needed before adoption can take off. Interest in a 3D gaming experience is not limited to the devoted gamer. While two-thirds (64%) of those interested in 3D gaming say they are video game enthusiasts, more than a third (35%) that showed interest are casual gamers.

No matter what their gaming level, consumers interested in 3D gaming expect 3D gaming devices coming to the market to serve as multi-media players. Most consumers expect to use their 3D gaming device to watch 3D movies (58%) and connect to the Internet (51%). Nearly half...

Here's another reason why Apple won't be abandoning the Mac: money. On the heels of an exceptional fourth quarter in 2009, global personal computer shipments followed suit with year-on-year growth of 27.1% in the first quarter of 2010, according to the IDC research group (http://www.idc.com). And we're just getting started.

Unlike most of 2009, the recent market recovery has also seen a small rebound in higher priced SKUs as netbooks became less of a driver of volume (perhaps thanks to the iPad, eh?). Although low to mid-range portable computers still dominate the market, desktop computers also recovered with its first yearly growth since the second quarter of 2008.

Commercial desktops posted positive growth, a first since the downturn, while the popularity of all-in-ones was a major factor in driving consumer desktop growth. That's good news for the Mac Pros -- way overdue for an update -- and the iMac --...

A handful of Apple patents have appeared at the US Patent & Trademark Office. Here's a summary of each.

Patent number 2010053450 is for a system and method for authentication using a shared table and sorting exponentiation. Disclosed herein are systems, computer-implemented methods, and computer-readable media for authentication using a shared table. The method receives an authentication challenge from a first entity including an accumulator with an initial value, lists of elements in a shared table, and a list of sorting algorithms, each sorting algorithm is associated with one of the lists of elements and modified to include embedded instructions operating on the accumulator. The method then generates a temporary table for each list of elements in the shared table by copying elements from the shared table as indicated in each respective list of elements, each temporary table being associated with one sorting algorithm in the list of sorting algorithms...

A new Apple patent (number 20100150276) at the US Patent & Tradmark Office shows that the company may be planning HD radio features in upcoming iPhones, iPads and iPod. The patent is for digital radio tagging using an RF tuner accessory.

According to the patent, an accessory having an RF tuner for digital radio, such as HD radio, can be in communication with a media player such as a portable media device ("PMD"). The user can be given the ability to command the accessory to provide raw digital data, the ability to scan only for stations having digital audio content (or for all available stations), the ability to provide station lists of stations having digital audio content (or all available stations), and the ability to request and store metadata beyond that for stations actually being listened to provide enhanced search capabilities. Enhanced metadata and searching can provide the listener the ability to refine station choices without having to listen at length to any...