My Thoughts on Technology and Jamaica: Apple and Augmented View - The Future is now

Monday, September 6, 2010

Apple and Augmented View - The Future is now


All are architects of Fate,
Working in these walls of Time;
Some with massive deeds and great,
Some with ornaments of rhyme.

Longfellow, The Builders

Apple is seems, has done its refresh on September 1st 2010 AD, and yet I am not fazed by these announcements or pronouncements, as they really ought to be called.

Nothing new, would be the comments of many, just form factor changes to the Apple iPod Nano, Apple iPod Shuffle and the Apple iTV as confirmed in the article “New Apple TV: $99 Netflix streaming, 99-cent TV rentals”, published September 1, 2010 11:43 AM PDT by Matthew Moskovciak, CNET News – Crave.

Ditto that in the article “For 99 cents, Amazon sells shows, Apple rents them”, published September 1, 2010 2:31 PM PDT by Ina Fried, CNET News- Beyond Binary.

FaceTime on the Apple iPod Touch device is not helping much, worse as it not much different from an Apple iPhone 4.0, the media centric nature of its design being its only distinction, as I understand that this particular gadget can also make calls. The low pricing on the Apple iTV was good, and its cute in-your-hand form factor makes it a definite keeper, but the technology gear unveiled appeared half baked and CEO Steve Jobs appearing a bit winded.

It appears that the Apple Team had nothing in the tank, and thus decided to wow the crowd with a good song and dance presentation or pronouncements. This is a telling sign of the times, when Apple is out of ideas, and John Public, putting it squarely on the table, is ready to give some serious straight talking typical of a country man from Milk River, Clarendon. John Public puffs his chocolate peace pipe and lays them straight…………..what Apple Fanboys want……….

Apple should have, at the very least, launched with a new additional device, a solar charger or better, solar powered devices, as per the suggestions of their patent filings as stated in the article “Apple eyes gadgets with built in Solar panels”, published January 22, 2010 7:46 AM PST by Martin LaMonica, CNET News - Green Tech and as further asserted in the article “Apple patent bid combines Solarwith touch Screen”, published June 7, 2010 6:31 AM PDT by Martin LaMonica, CNET News - Green Tech.

This would have made the hard drive-less Apple iTV, a real steal, especially for the traveler, wishing to go to European and its madness of different electrical sockets or even Africa with electricity not being so common-place.

With Broadband connectivity whether via 3G or Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11n) and solar power cutting the link to an analog past, Apple would have been back in the innovation seat, hence my prior rant in my blog article on the topic.

I realize, however, that criticism is not helping, especially as it not a product that Apple can make and sell to consumers. Thus,  I, John Public, dig into my treasure trove of past ideas and with a bit of spit and polish, quietly suggests the following ideas for the next refresh, as this refresh was clearly not up to the usual Apple standard.

The first new product I would like to suggest would be research and improvement with eventual integration of Augmented Viewing (AR) into all Apple products that have a camera, as already FaceTime, which should have been on the Apple iTV, thus making it a Video Phone (thanks to Beyonce and Lady GaGa for that reminder in song Video Phone) is now the defacto standard on Apple iPhone 4.0

This technology will be very big in the future as stated in the article “Augmented Reality Goes Mobile”, published November 3, 2009, 12:44AM EST by Rachael King, BusinessWeek -AUGMENTED REALITY.

Granted, the research is already pretty advanced, as Augmented Viewing has long been in use in the theatres of operation by the US Military, specifically the Iraq War, to provide soldiers with real-time information.

Its most recent commercialization, via the shaking of an Apple iPhone with the Yelp App installed, called Monocle, is generally regarded as the first Augmented Viewing implementation.

Apple iPhone 4.0 on the launch of its new iPhone 4.0 OS which finally supports their unique take on multitasking, folders (finally), as the new Apple advertising platform called Apple iAd, a game social network called Game Center, similar to that of Microsoft Xbox 360.

iBook, similar to the iBookStore App on the Apple iPad with a free complimentary book Winnie the Pooh (first thing Apple has ever given away for free!!) as hinted in the article “Will iPhone 4.0 derail Microsoft's phone plans?”, published April 9, 2010 10:24 AM PDT by Ina Fried, CNET News - Beyond Binary and confirmed in the video “CNET The AppleByte” aired April 8 2010 by Brian Senior Editor, CNET News.

It Apps Store is second to none, and is the mainstay of is devoted Developer Clan, pocketing healthy profits, despite its rigid rules and its Apple rabid mad dog Fanboys as stated in the article “Apple's Endless Expanding App Universe”, published Monday April 26, 2010 By Peter Burrows, BusinessWeek - FEATURES.

Having sold nearly fifty million (50,000,000) Apple iPhones since its debut in 2007 and having plans to sell another twenty four (24,000,000) million more as stated in the article “Report: Apple readying 24 million units of next iPhone”, published May 17, 2010 10:25 AM PDT by Erica Ogg, CNET News - Circuit Breaker.

Apple is clearly on target, as the runaway train that is the Apple iPhone and the Apple iPad, which shows no sign of slowing down is set to surpass these analyst generated targets. The next Apple iPhone and Apple iPad Refresh is in February 2011 and already plans are well in gear to launch an even better, more polished product.

Combine this baked in Augmented Viewing Service with facial recognition software to enable recognition of people’s faces both over the already fully baked FaceTime Video Calling Service and viewed by it 5 Megapixel cameras, possibly using an integration of Luxund’s Blink “Blink-induced log-in now available on 64-bit Windows”, published August 6, 2010 10:15 AM PDT by Polina Polishchuk, CNET News - The Download Blog.

Or even an integration of Face.com software as stated in the article “Face.com opens its face recognition tech to devs”, published May 3, 2010 10:00 AM PDT, by Josh Lowensohn, CNET News.

Apple would have another winner on their hands, as up to this point, no matter what software or hardware the competition in Silicon Valley develop, no-one, not even Google, is yet to develop an implementation of Augmented View that is quick, zippy and correctly identifies everything rapidly from a connected Cloud-based database in the cameras field of view

This is an advantage Apple has, as they make both the Hardware and Software. The Liquid Metal Casing of its future products, as hinted at by the purchase of LiquidMetal, a company that specializes in making an amorphous metal (that is non-rigid polycrystalline molecules structures for you non-Inorganic Chemistry people!!) as stated in the article “Metallic Glass could encase Future Apple Products”, published Wednesday August 11, 11:40 am ET by Stuart Fox Tech News Daily Staff Writer, LiveScience.com, Yahoo News

Apple’s purchase points to a future of high end, high priced polished and more easily fabricated products for Apple and possibly ceramic encased and insulate redesign of its troublesome External Loop Antenna using this magic easily moldable metal, provided of course that the metal is not ferromagnetic, an excellent candidate for an antenna in the microwave band.

Thus a future refresh should include not only the incremental improvements of the other features of thee devices, such as the camera resolution, support for both form of 4G, that being WiMax 4G Mobile (IEEE 802.16d) and LTE (Long Term Evolution) and the processor speed.

But this can also be interpreted also as a definite push for a shinier, sleeker, more expensive polished metallic finish with a solar powered future and an Augmented Viewing baked in. This would finally make full use of the accelerometer, magnetometer and built in GPS, already baked into the Apple iPhone 3GS, were included for in the first place.

But wait………..what of the glasses from Dolce and Gabbana and Miu Miu that support tethering to a refreshed Apple iPhone and thus enabling hands free Augmented Viewing?

Details of this I shall explain in yet another episode when I take another bit of the Apple………..

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