Apple researching universal touchscreen remote with adaptable user interface for future TVs

A patent application published by the US Patent & Trademark Office earlier today reveals Apple is flirting with the idea of a universal touchscreen controller capable of controlling multiple devices including a “a television, a video tape player, a video disk player, a stereo, a home control system, or a computer system.” The patent application is titled “Apparatus and Method to Facilitate Universal Remote Control” and was filed September 30, 2011.

The patent application’s background covers many of the issues with current controllers for televisions and the devices mentioned above. It noted current universal remotes are “complex to operate” and unable to adapt to incorporate every command or control functionality supported by a device or future device. It also mentions the fact that users are often “confronted with multiple” remotes, which is the classic “table full of remotes” scenario described by Steve Jobs when talking about the Apple TV at D8. The patent application explained:

“While all of these buttons and switches are necessary for complete control of the appliance, users typically use only a small subset of the total controls on the remote control. The controls that are not normally used clutter the remote control and can cause confusion to the user when trying to locate a seldom-used feature.…users must spend time learning a new remote control or programming an existing universal remote control each time they purchase a new remotely controllable appliance, which detracts from the enjoyment of using the appliance after it is first purchased…What is needed is an apparatus and a method to provide remote control over multiple appliances without the difficulties described above.”

Apple’s solution would feature an automatic “discovery mechanism” allowing the remote to pair with other devices over Bluetooth or WiFi. The patent describes being able to customize the UI on the remote’s touchscreen without the universal remote control needing “special knowledge” of the device. In other words, graphical representations for any given device, such as a button layout, could be stored in the device and sent to the remote control wirelessly. The patent application also described using the remote with multiple devices simultaneously through a “active appliances” list.

According to the patent application, the unique UIs sent from a device to the remote could be customizable by the manufacturer of the device, hinting that the remote could control third-party appliances as well. Apple noted the UI “can also display an icon such as the manufacturer’s logo, user instructions, or an advertising message on remote control.”

When a user selects an appliance to control at the remote control, the remote control sends a message to the appliance requesting a menu description. In response, the appliance returns the menu description to the remote control. The remote control then displays the menu. If more appliances respond than can fit on a single page, remote control can provide multiple appliance selection pages including navigation icons on the appliance selection pages for switching between pages.

With latest reports claiming Apple is already working on a 42-inch+ HDTV, and today’s patent focusing mainly on televisions and video players (opposed to Macs and iOS devices), it’s possible Apple is experimenting with touchscreen remotes with adaptable UIs to interact with a future Apple-branded HDTV. Other reports claimed the yet to be unveiled Apple HDTV will feature voice-control courtesy of Siri-like functionality. However, there is no mention of voice-control functionality or Siri in today’s patent application for the universal remote.

The US Patent & Trademark Office also published a series of other patents today filed by Apple Inc. including one covering “Programmable Magnetic Connectors” that could hint at possible MagSafe-like connections for iOS and other Apple devices. Another covers “Automatically Adapting User Interfaces for Hands-Free Interaction” for an “intelligent automated assistant”, aka Siri.

Tim Cook at today’s Town Hall: Starting in June, Apple employees get $500 off Macs, $250 off iPads

Among the many topics discussed by Tim Cook at today's Town Hall session with employees, the Apple CEO revealed some new Apple employee benefits. Giving a little more back to the people who worked so hard to make Apple one of the wealthiest corporations in the world, Cook announced that Apple employees will soon be given $500 discounts on purchases of new Macs and $250 discounts on purchases of a new iPad.

The new discount program will officially kickoff at some point during June 2012. A major caveat is that Apple employees may only utilize the opportunity every three years and employees must have been working for Apple for at least 90 days. The Mac discount side of the program excludes the Mac mini, which is already close to that $500 of credit. Apple employees currently have a 25 percent discount on Macs, so in many cases the $500 is a big deal.

Here’s a rare prototype translucent Apple hard drive circa 1985

Apple and its cofounder Steve Jobs certainly helped design and popularize storage devices throughout computing history. For example, the Mac mainstreamed Sony’s 3.5-inch floppy drive in the 1980s, but Apple was working on its own storage devices even before the Mac debuted. One of our buddies discovered this eBay listing advertising for what appears to be a prototype of a previously unknown NISHA hard drive adorned with the colorful Apple logo. It comes in a translucent case, and it could easily be the first Apple product we have seen like this, even though it never shipped. It is neither a Hard Disk 20 drive Apple introduced on Sept. 17, 1985 specifically for use with the Macintosh 512K nor is it a Hard Disk 20SC.

The latter product was the first SCSI drive Apple manufactured and deployed on the Macintosh Plus in 1986, effectively obsolescing the Hard Disk 20 unit. It is a safe bet that this unit represents an early prototype of one of Apple’s hard drives, but it could also be a new hard drive design that never saw the light of day. The seller could not tell either, as the drive did not power up. Eagle-eyed readers are aware that Apple of the past had been designing its own storage devices and the aforementioned Hard Disk 20 serves as an illustrious example of the company’s closed approach to hard drives.

Apple designed and manufactured that drive exclusively for the Macs (except the Macintosh XL) and it was not compatible with any other Apple computer or other platforms. The advent of SCSI interface made the Hard Disk 20 obsolete, so Apple stopped supporting it with System 6 and dropped the necessary ROM code beginning with the Macintosh SE/30. Such an approach to storage devices goes back to internal competition between the Lisa and Macintosh product teams. Andy Hertzfeld was a member of the original Apple Macintosh development team during the 1980s. Nowadays a Google designer responsible for the praised Google+ circles interface, Hertzfeld reflected on the agony and ecstasy of working alongside Jobs in this article from 1983:

In 1980, Apple reorganized again, splitting off a new “Disk Division” headed by John Vennard, responsible for developing a hard disk code-named “Pippin” and a next generation floppy disk code-named “Twiggy”. Both were intended to be used first by the Lisa project, and eventually across Apple’s entire product line. At Rod Holt’s request, I had written some early diagnostics for Twiggy using an Apple II, but I felt lucky that they asked Rich Williams instead of me to transfer to the disk division as their software guy, since focusing exclusively on disks seemed pretty limiting. Woz’s Apple II floppy disk design was way ahead of the rest of the industry, so Apple felt confident that it could continue to innovate to extend its lead. Twiggy was a fairly ambitious project, more than quadrupling the capacity of standard floppy disks by doubling the data rate (which required higher density media) and employing other innovative tricks like motor speed control, which slowed down the disk rotation speed on the outer tracks to cram more data on them.

Steve Jobs’ authorized biography by Walter Isaacson offers additional insight, also quoting Hertzfeld:

Apple had a corporate division that built mass-storage devices, and it had developer a disk-drive system, code-named Twiggy, that could read and write onto those thin, delicate 51/4-inch floppy disks that older readers (who also remember the Twiggy model) will recall. But by the time Lisa was ready to ship in the spring of 1983, it was clear that the Twiggy was buggy. Because the Lisa also came with a hard-disk drive, this was not a complete disaster. But the Mac had no hard disk, so it faces a crisis. “The Mac team was beginning to panic”, said Hertzfeld. “We were using a single Twiggy drive, and we didn’t have a hard disk to fall back on”.

Jobs and two other members of the Mac team then flew to Japan and took a bullet train from Tokyo to visit Sony’s facility where a new 3.5-inch floppy drive was made. The Japanese company did not even have a working prototype at the time, so Jobs clearly was not impressed. He dissed Japanese engineers during a tour of the Sony plant:

“What are you showing me this for”, he snapped at one stop. “This is a piece of crap! Anybody can build a better drive than this.”

Although Jobs ordered Bob Belleville to continue working with Alps to produce its own floppy drive and cease all work with Sony, Belleville disobeyed and continued secretly working with Sony engineers. The Japanese giant sent over the engineer who had developed the drive to Apple’s Cupertino offices, where he would have to avoid bumping into Jobs. At one point, the engineer hid inside a janitorial closet when Jobs unexpectedly bustled into the Mac workspace. When in May 1983 Alps admitted it would take them at least 18 more months to nail down the clone of the Sony drive, Jobs panicked and investor Mike Markkula was not too happy either. Luckily, Belleville had a solution:

Finally, Belleville interrupted and said that he might have an alternative to the Alps drive ready soon. Jobs looked baffled for just a moment, and then it became clear to him why he’d glimpsed Sony’s top disk designer in Cupertino. “You son of a bitch!” Jobs said. But it was not in anger. There was a big grin on his face. As soon as he realized what Belleville and the other engineers had done behind his back, said Hertzfeld, “Steve swallowed his pride and thanked them for disobeying him and doing the right thing.”

Virgin America brands jet with ‘stay hungry, stay foolish’ to honor Steve Jobs

A Virgin America Airbus A320 now features the quote, "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish" directly beneath the cockpit in tribute to the late Steve Jobs, reports CNET. The quote is taken from Jobs's 2005 Stanford commencement speech and was suggest by a Virgin America employee. "The 'Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish' aircraft name was actually submitted as a tribute to Mr. Jobs by one of our employees in an internal plane naming competition," said Virgin America spokesperson Abby Lunardini. 

Virgin has always looked to innovate the industry and it was the first airline company to offer fleet-wide Wi-Fi. It is also the only airline based in Silicon Valley, and the company likens itself to the late Apple co-founder. "The idea behind Virgin America was to reinvent the travel experience by thinking differently about design and service–we are known for the tech-forward amenities we offer onboard," Lunardini said.

Foxconn employee tells us that the next iPhone is ready for production, indicates likely summer launch

We received word from a reliable source at Foxconn in China that the iPhone 5, as it is currently being called, is now gearing for production.  The source said various sample devices are also floating around (they vary slightly from one another), so it is impossible to tell which one will be the final.  Some things in common with all of them, however, are:

• 4+ inch display (made by LG on at least one of them).
• No teardrop-shaped devices, as rumored in the lead up to the iPhone 4S. Samples so far have been symmetrical in thickness (also longer/wider).
• Neither of the sample devices have the iPhone 4/4S form factor.
• Neither of the devices are the final versions.

We also heard the non-teardrop and 4-inch display information previously in a report from iLounge, but what is important to note here is that iPhone 4S production did not gear up until late spring of last year.  If we follow patterns and give a five month-ish lead time, it would appear that Apple is back on its new iPhone launch for summer/WWDC pattern that it maintained until last year.

We are still a long way off however.

This source is the same that indicated to us late last summer that the iPhone 5 was not happening against the prevailing tide of information, and that Apple was building the iPhone 4S model instead. (Love the comments in that post, by the way.)

For many, issues watching YouTube on Apple TV

Owners of the Apple TV set-top box around the world took to Twitter to complain about an unknown issue affecting the device's ability to stream YouTube clips through the Internet section of the main menu. According to reports, attempting to play any YouTube clip produces this error message:

No content was found. There is a problem communicating with YouTube. Try again later.

It would appear that some sort of backend issue is to blame, but it is inconclusive. The problem persisted since the past couple days; with a bunch of posts over at the Apple Support Communities indicating it is widespread. One poster claimed an Apple representative advised him to contact Google because this is "a YouTube issue."

It seems to be particularly bad in Japan, Australia, Canada and various European countries, including the United Kingdom, Scotland, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands, Denmark, Romania, Argentina and Croatia.

Not all users in the United States seem to be experiencing this issue, although some do. Resetting a router or the device will not help. Likewise, performing a factory restore to the latest 4.4.4 firmware did not do the trick for another poster. Some users are only able to see the videos in their History. Are you having same issues with your Apple TV? We would love to hear from you in the comments.

It looks like Apple's hobby business is gaining some traction. According to Apple's holiday-quarter earnings from yesterday, the company sold 1.4 million Apple TV units during the 14-week period ended Dec. 31, 2011 (Apple's first fiscal 2012 quarter). Taking into account the 2.8 million Apple TV units sold during last fiscal year, Apple so far moved 4.2 million iOS-powered Apple TVs. Apple CEO Tim Cook fielded a question in yesterday's earnings call about the future of Apple TV, saying: "We continue to add things to it, and I don't know about you but I couldn't live without it. We continue to pull the strings and see where it takes us."

Strategy Analytics estimated that Apple grabbed 32 percent of the connected TV player market in December of last year. This made Apple the top set-top box provider as it beat Android-based Google TVs by Sony and Logitech and dedicated TV boxes from the likes of Roku and Boxee. Still, just 8 percent of U.S. households had a connected TV player in December 2011, the research firm noted. Interestingly, Strategy Analytics mentioned that nearly one-third, or 30 percent, of the Apple TV customers rent movies and television shows versus 20 percent of users of other devices. The second-generation iOS-powered Apple TV with a tiny form factor and a price tag of just $99 debuted September 2010. Despite all the mock-ups, analysts and supply chain chatter, it seems unlikely at this stage that Apple is keen on entering the connected television market with a full-blown HDTV set of its own.

MacBook Air Thunderbolt editing 4K video shows why the Mac Pro as we know it can die

Describing it as "jamming a V8 into a Miata" in his blog post, Adobe's Dave Helmy set out to see if he could edit full-res 4K RED video footage in the field using a MacBook Air beefed up courtesy of various Thunderbolt solutions. The concept proves with enough RAM and a powerful processor, Thunderbolt could enable even the current-generation MacBooks to soon replace the Mac Pro altogether.

As for the performance of the 13-inch MacBook Air, Windows system settings shows a 1.8 GHz Core i7, and 4GB of RAM, but Dave pushes it to its full potential with a Red Rocket card installed into a Sonnet Thunderbolt-enabled chassis. He also uses an UltraStudio 3D playback peripheral from Blackmagic, which enables high performance capture of HD and 2K video as well as two full res 1080p streams for stereoscopic 3D content.

As you can see in the video above, Dave edits in Premiere Pro running on Windows 7 through Bootcamp. You might be surprised to learn that entire demo, he was also recording using a camera fed to the Blackmagic UltraStudio 3D box into a Promise RAID. Dave explained the setup allowed him to work with Thunderbolt inside the Sonnet Chassis for editing (which is also sending data to the Promise RAID), while also recording live through the Blackmagic box, enabling playback and recording simultaneously.