Okay, this one’s cutting it a bit to fine and exact to be a baseless rumor. ZDNet has this delicious rumor about the new HexaCore Mac Pros that the rumor mill sniffed out last year itself. If their word is corrent, then Apple is getting ready to unveil the new HexCore Mac Pros with the Intel Core-i7980x chip that Intel is supposed to unveil on the same day. The code name for the chip is ‘Gulftown’

Logically that only makes sense if Apple is to really get that exclusive deal that the first rumors talked about. According to those rumors, Apple is supposed to have a temporary exclusivity over this chip, like it has done in the past with Intel. If pressurized, Intel might oblige Apple because after all, Apple’s business means a lot of business to Intel and it goes beyond just chips.

The Gulftown chip is the result of the new 32nm fabircation process and will have six physical cores.  The Core i7-980x will be called the Core-i7x (Extreme Edition). It is going to be the very first dual-socket, six-core processor made by Intel. With its 6 cores, 12 threads and dual configuration, this new Mac Pro with the Core i7-980x will have 24 logical cores that will max out at a high 3.33 GHz. None of this is totally official but it is way too close now to be wrong.

The Mac Pros received a small speed upgrade last December but other than that it hasn’t seen any action since over a year. With rumors suggestiing a Mac Pro refresh on Tuesday and Intel gearing up to unveil Gulftown on Tuesday, it seems like a logical conclusion that they will be Apple’s new Mac Pro. There’s one snag to this dream team though and it has been pointed out by HardMac.

As they point out, Apple usually uses Intel’s special Xeon chips that are meant for servers, on their Mac Pro models. And Intel is also releasing multiple new Xeon 5600-series chips on Tuesday. This includes Intel’s 2010 flagship chip — the Xeon 5680. And now, Tuesday can’t come fast enough.

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And the frenzy has already started. Apple started the pre-order quite early today at 5:30am PT. The store was down as usual before that but this time at least we knew what was going on. There’s isn’t much to report. The shipping date has not changed (thankfully) and when you go to the Apple store now, you will see the iPad right before the iPhone and it has a prominent ‘Pre-order’ sticker above. Shipping seems to be free. WiFi-only models ship on April 3rd and the 3G models ship later the same month. The exact date has not been declared.

Go here for the beauties and enjoy ogling!

According to AppleInsider, Apple is going to enable proper multi-tasking on the iPhone OS 4.0. They have this from sources that have a proven track record for Apple Intelligence. Hence, they are putting a lot of emphasis on this rumor. It’s not that multi-tasking does not exist on the iPhone, it does. But the 4.0 update will finally allow third apps to simultaneously — something that has been sorely missing from the iPhone all this time.

The iPhone OS currently only allows certain apps developed by Apple to run in the background while the user is running another app. However, these a few essential apps and it’s not like all Apple apps are able to run in the background.

According to the said sources, Apple has finally developed a “full-on” solution that will allow multi-tasking on the iPhone without affecting the performance and the battery life — two of the main reasons why true multi-tasking hasn’t been allowed on the iPhone so far. In fact, without a proper solution like the one being touted here, mobile OS’ should not multi-task. The sources say that they have tried it out and deem that it still has some way to go before it goes public. But then will Apple be able to make it to their usual summer release for all things new in the iPhone world? We don’t know yet.

Apple made fun of the cumbersome task manager on the Windows Mobile OS when they were releasing the iPhone OS 2.o. And even though Android ‘boasts’ of true multi-tasking, there are several reports of the phones freezing and crashing due to the poor management of resources when too many apps overwhelmed the system.

In fact, it was earlier this year when Leo Laporte of Twit.tv mentioned live during one of his netcast that his Nexus One Once froze for over 3o minutes, during the course of which he was unable to do anything with it. That means it could not receive calls either. Even though Leo said he loves Android more than the iPhone now and has switched full time, he lamented the fact that users have to pay the cost of being able to multi-task by running out of resources from time to time.

The current restriction on multi-tasking on the iPhone is artificial and there’s nothing preventing Apple from flipping a switch one through an update Nothing except a proper solution like the one being talked about here of course. So technically, the iPhone OS as of 3.0 is capable of multitasking and anyone claiming anything different is wrong.

This capability in the iPhone can also be taken as a sign that Apple has been working since the very beginning on providing hassle free multitasking. Multi-tasking on the mobile phones has to be rethought according to the platform and not done in the way Widows Mobile did. So Windows Phone 7 series has actually done the right thing by walking the iPhone way. The main issue here is to let the user know what is running and all the while manage apps intelligently so that important functions like receiving a call still work under heavy load.

After all, what good is a phone that occasionally freezes up so bad that it can’t receive a call. Not to state the obvious but it’s kinda ironical that I can’t take calls on my ‘Phone’ because I was running too many apps on it.

Another reason why Apple doesn’t allow third-party apps to run in the background is because of security. If an app hides in the background without the user knowing about it, it could potentially be working to malicious ends. It could be a trojan or a rootkit or a worm or similar such malware that is up to no good. This is why jail-broken iPhones are the only ones till date to have gotten infected with malware.

If there’s one thing Apple doesn’t need, it’s a malware slipping into the App store and installing something malicious that runs in the background.

There’s also a huge challenge at the UI level. Apple, or any other mobile OS developer for that matter, has to design a solution for switching between running apps and also knowing what apps are running. Currently, the few things that are running on the iPhone OS have a visual cue to clue the user in about what is going on. But there isn’t enough real-estate on the screen to display multiple small apps running together.  This calls for an innovative solution that no one has thought of yet.

Also, efficiently switching between apps while maintaing an intelligent resource allocation is pretty hard. Resource allocation is what really matters when it comes to maintaing a stable OS environment. But making the phone figure that out without the user having to intervene or thinking about it is a real challenge.

In the mean time, there has always been the problem of providing that much horse power for apps. The mobile chips have not been all that powerful and hence running complex things like games have always been a problem on every other mobile platform except the iPhone. Now that Apple has the A4 and more RAM is being pushed in to the mobile devices, the iPhone might finally be ready to handle this kind of load. After all, Apple would never take the risk of the phone getting overloaded from  a few apps running together because the processor and the RAM couldn’t handle it.

So to underline the fundamental things required by Apple to maintain their great user experience after adding multi-tasking — they need to make it easy for the user to switch between apps without a noticeable lag, they have to ensure that the phone knows how to handle resource allocation automatically, they have to make sure that no app can hide in the background and above all — phone calls should always get through.

Apple has the brains in its UI and programming departments to pull something like this off. And with Apple’s obsession over controlling user experience, I will trust Apple to finally solve this problem and show others how it should be done. Now that Android has (almost) finished catching up with iPhone, it is time for Apple to step up the game.

Apple has never been one to jump in to something just because everyone else is doing it and the market craves it. They usually try to get things right before launching into something and this is what has probably kept them from flipping that multi-tasking switch. So if they are doing it now, I can hope that that they have a really innovative solution on their hands. If they don’t, they’ll losing market share that could’ve been theirs but went to Google instead.

There are a lot speculations around the iPhone 4.0. There’s the front-facing camera demand/expectation/rumor and the accompanying video conferencing rumor. Then there’s the navigation question along with mobile ads. But if this one feature is implemented and nothing else is, Apple will still gain a lot of new customers and sell still more iPhones.

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There’s still no answer to the question whether or not Apple will sell the iPad in China any time soon. Just like with the iPhone, there is a lot of demand for the device in China that is fueling the existent cloning attempts made by chinese manufacturers. In addition to that, there is a burgeoning grey and black market that is getting ready to make money off iPads imported from countries where they are officially on sale.

A lot of Chinese shops and outlets are already taking pre-orders for the iPad, who will then import it from countries where it is on sale. But there’s no stopping at that. China, as we know, is a clone makers paradise. You have clone making companies in every nook and cranny of the industrial areas of China and they are always busy making clones of big ticket items. Mostly smartphones and other handhelds and they often add their own special ‘touch’ to the phones, making them so very different from the original that the hilarious results often end up here and elsewhere on the Internet.

You get ‘iPhones’ with dual sim slots, multiple cameras, SD card slots, FM radio tuners and much more! You get ‘Blackberries’ and ‘Nokias’ as well, just name what you want on your phone and you will probably get it. Just don’t expect the UI and OS to be usable and stable.

Of course, even that is changing, thanks to Android. Here’s a great free OS which is actually rivaling the iPhone and growing constantly. So why not use it?

However, when it comes to the iPad clones, most of run full or modified versions of Windows. Many run Windows 7 That is probably because they want to flaunt marketing pitches along the lines of “can the iPad do this?”. After all, a lot of people think that a full fledged OS is far better than what they see as a blown up mobile OS on a tablet. This perception will probably change once more people start using these so called iPad competitors running full OS’.

But come what may, the chinese clone makers will keep on cloning whatever catches their fancy. To think that the iPad and most of its clones will be made within miles of each other in some cases! That’s China for you!

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Yes, that is what you should do when you legal notices bring you nothing but a tiny bit of media coverage that calls your bluff anyway. The Great Loong brother, China, is a manufacturer of Tablet devices. They had issued a legal notice against Apple with the claim that Apple copied their design with the iPad. What actually happened is that they basically made a tablet that carried the iPhone aesthetics very accurately and released it before Apple launched the iPad.

Of course, if anyone has claim over something that looks like an iPhone, it is the company that made the iPhone. So that legal notice did nothing for the Great Long Brother except draw some ridicule from the tech community in general. So the company has decided that it is payback time. They have taken the OS X aesthetics almost exact to the pixel (almost) and applied it over Windows. This news was uncovered and covered by The Register and Giz-China.

The resultant UI, as you can see in the images, is pretty accurate and believable. In fact, I thought they were going to pull another PsyStar on us by making the OS X run on non-Apple hardware. That much stupidity is rare though because what the Great Loong Brother has done is essentially put a skin over Windows to make it look like OS X. That has happened time and time again in the Windows customization community and is perfectly okay with Apple, even though many use its logo, including the Great Loong Brother Tablet. But that’s mainly because it’s the best form of flattery that a PC user can bestow upon Apple.

Of course, now that they have done this — there device looks more like a OS X tablet that a lot of people have wanted and some modders have achieved in the past and present. I don’t think they are going to issue any more legal threats in the near future. They have succeeded in what they set out to do — gain coverage through mocking blog posts, like the one you are reading right now.

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Of course, this is not much to get excited over, just that Apple has released a new beta version of the iPad SDK and there are a few significant omissions. And as you might know — omissions are extremely important when it comes to causing rumors and telling us things without telling us.

9to5 Mac has pointed out Apple has removed references to the camera and video conferencing that were found in the SDK when it was first released. This removal can mean two things — Apple is going to surprise us or Apple is going to ship exactly what Steve showed during the keynote. In all probabilities, the camera is being reserved for the 2nd-generation iPad and the iPads that will will grace us with their presence soon will not have cameras. If there is at all camera on the iPad at any time, it will have to be a front facing one for video conferencing and not one on the back for capturing photos like the iPhone.

My guess is that since the iPad SDK is basically an enhanced iPhone SDK, the front facing camera references are there because the new iPhone will have that, along with video conferencing. These features have long been missing on the iPhone and it is as good a time as any to add them. AT&T has softened up, Apple has a new chip to make a superfast mobile handheld devices and the competition is just waiting to tear Apple apart if given a sliver of a chance.

The other things that have been added to the SDK are ‘3Tap’ and ‘Long Press’ gestures. These are by themselves nothing new and Apple has been using them on  the iPhone/iPod Touch for quite some time now. But their addition in the SDK makes it easier for developers to use these features.

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As with the iPhone, Apple debuted it’s iPad Ad during the Oscars this Sunday. Everyone saw it and everyone thought what they did. But a lot of people took the pains to go through the entire ad frame by frame and uncover hitherto unknown tid bits. TUAW even analyzed the air time that each feature got and made a pie chart out of it! We are lucky to be surrounded by such people.

Looking at the aired AD frame by frame, the observers have caught a glimpse of a ‘My Document’ folder where — you guessed it — the user generated documents are likely to be stored. We are all guessing that this folder will show up as a mount point on iTunes and you can then copy over the files to Finder and then do whatever you want with them. Photos, videos, existing music — everything will be synced through iTunes, there’s simply no two ways about it.

The choice of the ‘My Documents’ may be to make PC users comfortable. Besides, it is a logical thing to name a folder that has documents on a ersonal device ‘My Documents’. There’s a ‘My Documents’ tab shown during the ad at one point, suggesting may be a drag and drop functionality in certain scenarios?

While the ad showed the iBook Store, the pricing was briefly shown. So when the frame is frozen, we get to see pricing that starts seriously low. It ranges between $7.99 – $14.99.  Of course, Apple has not said anything about it and it is unlikely that any comment will be made before the 3rd of April when it is slated to launch.

And then comes a major speculation — the ads show suspicious looking round depression/smudge/something that looks suspiciously like a camera or a proximity sensor. Since the iPad is not expected to be hugged or kissed, a proximity sensor doesn’t make much sense. So the rumor mill is leaning towards a camera. You will have to watch very closely though.

TUAW did an analysis of the total air time divided according to what feature was shown for how long. Turns out that Photo, iBook, Mail and Movie are the 5 main things shown in the ad with respectively 26%, 20%, 22% and 15% time dedicated to them. Safari showing NY Times follows at 9%, followed by Pages and Calendar at 4% and 2% respectively. Maps and Music each get about 1% of the total play time.

This highlights the fact that Apple is selling this device as meant for doing things like Mailing and consuming massive visual content (Photo, Movie, Book, Web). Content creation, navigation and music come in much lower on the priority list. If you look at the amount dedicated to showing off visual content, it becomes clear that Apple is emphasizing on its ability to display all that in a personal, non-netbook/non-iPhone like way.

Apple made it clear that this thing can do a lot of things and is not a niche device that will do one thing well. This is meant to become your comapnion through out the day and this Ad shows why.

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Asus is saying that they want to compete with the Apple’s new iPad and hence they are planning and working on similar products which they hope to release in the near future. The company wants to build on the things they see as the Apple iPad’s weaknesses.

According to a post made by Register Hardware, the Vice Presidenet of Asus system business group, Mr. Eric Chen, the iPad is just a an iPhone with a big screen. He’s of the opinion that Asus can improve on that (and hence capture market that belongs to Apple at the moment). They are interested in the market and have some similar products under development. He said that the company had a “couple of projects” happening at this very moment.

Asus is apparently planning to bring out these competing devices within one year from now, so that they can piggyback on the huge wave of interest in tablet computing devices that Apple has generated. That’s especially because Apple hasn’t launched the iPad yet. The vibe is expected to be really different once it launches.

But Asus will go on undaunted. Mr. Chen did not mention what kind of features we should be expecting from these devices but from his words it is clear that Asus will be forming alliances with various other business entities and will try to sell it that way.

Asus, like so many other manufacturers around, is very late in the game. Development of a solid device and more importantly, a good user experience is a not a very easy thing to do. Hence, it is highly unlikely that they will make something extremely compelling the first time. But as with the iPhone competitors — things are likely to shape up really nicely in the near future. So we will keep an eye on Asus and try to find out what they have up their sleeves.

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Apple has recently announced the shipping dates for the iPads. The pre-orders will begin soon — 12 March and the WiFi-only models are expected to hit the shelves on April 3rd. Will there be a mad rush like usual? Well, since this is Apple and it is one of their major products — my guess would be yes. What about the 3G model and what about the rest of the world though?

Well, those parts are still not very clearly defined by Apple. For the US, the 3G model is expected hit the shelves by the end of the April. The cheapest WiFi-only model is the $499 16GB model and the cheapest 3G model is the $629 16GB model.

As for the rest of the world — a few other countries are expected to get both models sometime by the end of April. UK is definitely on the list for an end of April shipping date. The same goes Australia, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain and Switzerland. All models if the iPad will go on sale by the end of April. These are basically the countries where Apple has been able to make local deals regarding the trademark, content, etc. Plus, these are countries that give Apple a lot of business. So obviously Apple has tried its hardest to bring the iPad to these countries as fast as possible.

All 3G iPad models are completely unlocked and they can theoretically be used on any compatible 3G networks. Of course, spectrum differences in 3G in different regions might cause the 3G iPads not to have any 3G support. However, there’s another bigger practical problem to users being able to go to their choice of service provider — the Micro SIM. Not every carrier has this and only AT&T has it in the US as of now. Carriers are of course going to start offering Micro SIMs to attract owners but I’m afraid that that may not be the case for all carriers in all countries. Offering a completely new type of SIM for just one line of devices might deter a few carriers and cause them to delay support for the iPad.

The countries that aren’t on the list above, can expect their iPads to go on sale by June. Sad, I know.

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Sony — a company that has its fingers in so many pies, it has to have a zillion fingers to do that! They are practically in every consumer and prosumer gadget category you can think of and hence, they too are going to try their hand at defeating Apple in the handheld segment. Not that sony is new to the whole handheld market (hello, PSP!) but this time they are looking at the whole hog.

So in an attempt to counter and constantly increasing threat of Apple Inc. Sony has decided to make a whole line of handheld devices that will do a lot of things including downloading and playing video games. In a report by WSJ, it has been said that this line-up will have a smartphone as well. They are going to develop gadgets that share the characteristics of netbooks, handled gaming devices and eBook readers. If haven’t guessed it already, that last bit should clue you in — they are fighting the iPad battle, as well.

They have thus joined the likes of Dell, Asus, HP, MSI and countless other companies (including the startups) who have sworn to themselves that they will never again be caught sleeping on a huge pile of empty chinese takeaway boxes like they were when the iPhone came out. Funny thing is that all these battle preparations have been going on since before the iPad was official and only some of them have reacted afterwards. Sony is one of them.

Now even if they have been working since early last year, it is still too little R&D when compared with the iPad. According to some estimates, Apple has been working on this for at least 5 years now and the iPhone was a test as a well as a great trainer for the iPad. The competing companies have been doing everything that Apple has and has not doing with the iPad in the hopes of catching whatever the market will take after. Such catch-all strategies are not very well-matched against Apple’s laser focussed targets.

But let’s step away from that debate for now and focus our lasers on Sony. So Sony is making thing that is going to have features of a netbook, handheld gaming device and an eBook reader. If I am reading this right — the Japanese tech giant is actually going to make something that will cannibalize into not one or two but four of its own product lines!

Sony already has the Vaio series and that has netbooks in it. Plus, there are rumors of a new $300 Vaio netbook being developed. Then there’s the PSP. It is a pretty famous gaming machine and one that Apple openly compared against the iPhone along with other handheld gaming devices in the iPhone 3GS keynote. According to many, dedicated handheld gaming devices will soon give way to the smartphone. May be Sony has taken that to heart and hence wants to phase PSP’s out for good.

I think I hear a distant roar of PSP fans screaming at me for saying that. Why don’t you guys ask Sony what they are doing? Okay, so may be PSP’s are not going to go away in a hurry. But this is still kinda threatening for them, no?

Then come e-Readers and since Sony has nearly every kind of gadgets covered, they have this too. In fact, they have recently added an online store for their e-Readers. If these new devices cannibalize these products, why would Sony still make them? Are they mad? Well, yes. You have to be a little mad to do things like these. But they are not mad enough to continue products that aren’t selling. Even though eBook readers have acquired quite a niche in the market, Sony is very far from being the market leader there. And the market leaders themselves (Amazon) are thinking of ways to bring more functionality and flexibility into their Kindles. So mostly bye-bye e-readers as we know them.

And last we have that smartphone. Now I do realize that ‘Sony Ericsson’ is a joint entity that sort of operates separately from either company but if Sony make a ‘Sony’ phone, won’t that be confusing for buyers? Here however, I am sort of hoping that Sony won’t do that and will brand the thing has a Sony Ericsson phone and then sub-brand it as a Sony special line. Like we have the Walkman and CyberShot phones.

And now let’s come back to the original debate of market viability. At the current moment, we have so many differently tablets in the making thanks to all the iPad competitors that it is confusing for anyone to keep track of who’s making what. Every conceivable feature, form factor and available OS is being used to make these tablets and together they are creating a huge mess for themselves. It will be extremely hard for them to differentiate themselves from the rest and none of them have the clear strategic advantage that Apple has thanks to the stratospheric interest that it generated everywhere. Even the bad naming makes sure that it gets talked about in casual conversations a lot.

Over all, Sony will be diverting its resources into making multiple things that will make sense to the new age consumer. If they are planning to go for a smartphone-smartpad combo like the iPhone-iPad, it sounds like a somewhat okay plan. But from the WSj report, it seems like they are making quite a few different form factors.

Even if they went for the Apple combo, they are quite a few years behind in development. Unless of course they surprise us like Microsoft did with the WinPho 7. But even Microsoft had been working on it for years and they had a single purpose and end product in mind when they were doing it.

So it seems like Sony will yet again enter a market it hasn’t a clue about and will fumble about with high quality products that have low relevance and even lower competitive value. Their eBook readers are the best example of the company hurriedly entering a newly emerging market niche.

Over all, I will admit it — I haven’t got much hope for Sony and I will have less of it if I find out that they are developing their own OS from scratch. Building on top of Android is the fastest way to go right now and most of the other companies have realized that by now. Not only is it fast, it is also free! So if Sony has to do something, I see them either working with Android or coming up with something akin to the Bada OS.

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