Right,

Only a few hours to go, when someone from Apple will take the stage, and talk about what 2011 will be the year of.

Now it's painfully obvious that this is the new iPad announcment, but what will the new iPad entail? 

I have discussed this before but I have a few more things to add before it's show time, so it's the last chance to read the tea leaves, and toss around the chicken bones.

Voice

I think voice control is going to be something Apple are going to try and get right. Since there purchase of Siri last year, it's been assumed that they were going to use this talent to incorporate some of Siri's functionality, and this may finally show it's face tomorrow, if not in june with the iPhone 5, which may be more reliant on voice control. You can already, while your phone is in your pocket, press and hold the headphone button to invoke voice controls, say "What time is it?" and the phone will speak it back to you. I expect this to be expanded. Same with Text-to-Speech (TTS) voices will be improved. Apple have worked on over 50+ voices for Mac OS X lion, I expect these far more pleasing voices to make it to iOS too.

Notifications

The blue bouncing boxes of death are horrible, no real functionality, no history or tracking. You have to respond to them now or never. This has to change, Apple know it, they just like giving them selves time to get it right, but I think it's been long enough. Revamp imminent. 

MobileMe

I have MobileMe, I have had to since about 2008 couldn't use multiple macs and an iPhone without it. It keeps your "Info" (Address Book, Calendars & Mail Etc) all in sync accross all devices (iPad included) all the time with minimal conflicts, if any. This is part of what has made a lot of people (Including me) lazy with physical, over a cable, syncing. I rarely do it anymore, because it takes too long and who wants to do it? Now, MobileMe will be going free, I'm assuming for all users of iDevices. (I'm pre-paid for the next coulple of years, hopefully they'll sweeten current users with some extra features but anyway.) MobileMe is going free, but not just for syncing. The iDisk feature will see a revamp with a new cloud storage for iTunes Backup. Eliminating the need for syncing via USB. You'll be able to move music and video over the air directly to your device.

iOS 4.3 & 5

The 4.3 beta has been around a while and is ready for showtime. Main features of this update are access to subscriptions, AirPlay APIs for more streamy goodness and improvments to HTTP live streaming, and a few more tweaks. But the preview of 5 is what we're really after, and this should give us a good insight in to what the next iPhone will shape up to look like in the way of features.

Lock Screen

This might tie in with the notifications system but a new lock screen would be a nice addion. It's been the same since day one and it a waste of a space that could be better used for storing 'At a glance' info. Such as iCal appointments, New Emails, Notifications etc. 

We'll only know for sure, when it happens.

Some of these are certain, like the MobileMe update, other are wishes and wants. So let's see which happen.

You can probably watch the announcment live on Apple.com at 10am PST (6pm GMT)

 Bingo

Two Steve Balmers....88!

I've made up one of these bingo cards to mark up how right or worng I am, print it off and play along at home!

Download Here

With the arrival of the Verizon iPhone the old stories of the "Death Grip" are coming back.

The phone, just like the GSM iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS before it, have the same issue when tightly held in a particular way with both hands or as much as possible with one hand.

Here is want it boils down too:

Radio waves are waves, just like light waves (debatable) and sound waves.

When you cover your phone, any phone as much as possible with two hands.

IT'S GOING TO STOP THE WAVES OF ENERGY HITTING THE PHONE.

Why?

BECAUSE YOU HAVE A MEATY HAND SHIELD IN THE WAY.

Try this little experement at home.

Carefully, read the entire proceedre, you may end up permanently blind if only followed half way!

1. Take a few seconds to observe the world around you.

2. Place both hands over your face, taking great care to ensure that both eyes are covered entirely by hand.

3. Attrempt to observe the world around you again. 

4. Remove your hands from your face.

Notice how it's much harder for the waves of light to reach your eye when your hand is in the way.

Now i'm sure that medical science is aware of the problem and are striving forward, trying to reach a solution for this terrible afflicting issue just as Apple are working on preventing a little thing like the laws of nature from getting in their way to.

Luckily I have a solution, and I think it's explained best with an old "Doctor, Doctor" joke.

Man: Doctor, Doctor! It hurts when I do this! (The man hops on his toes while kicking himself in the arse)

Doctor: Don't do it then.

The iPad has quickly become my main computer. 

Faster than I thought it would, and initially I didn't think it ever would, but it happened.  

I try and find excuses not to use my Macbook Pro for things, desperately trying to not have to go back to a mouse and separate keyboard, and the iPad has proven that you can get a lot done without these 30+ year old input devices.

You don't need a mouse pointer when you have 5 perfectly good pointers on each hand.

You don't need a keyboard in front of you all the time, hanging around like an over eager shop assistant , constantly asking if you're ok. I'm just browsing, why would I need you, please Mr Keyboard leave me alone, I'm not even typing.

The fact that I can wield this sheet of glass to do my bidding is what makes the iPad so what I want from a computer, and this is only the first one.

It's similar to when I got the first iPhone, it freed me from the shackles of crappy feature phones, and carrier brand Windows Mobile 'dumb' phones. The iPad looks to free me from a PC style computing world. So what can the iPad 2 bring to take this another step further.

Now then, yes, this is one of those "top 10 bullshit things I want from Apple in the next year" kind of posts so just get over it. Now.

 

What I want from the next iPad and will hopefully get. 

1.

Two cameras

One either side with their good friend Facetime.

Its a dead cert, can't not happen. This is the video phone from 2001, you know the bit with the little girl who is either the best or the worst child actor you've ever seen. Also I'm expecting as soon as the iPad joins the Facetime gang, as the last of Apple's devices to do so, Apple will open up the protocol to 3rd parties. Skype better have something up their sleeve.

 2.

iOS 4.5

Just like iOS 3.2 for iPad was a weird halfbreed of 3.0 and 4.0 with some features of each, I expect this to be the same. What features these will have? I have no idea but I bet it still doesn't get a calculator.

But general overhaul, more API's for devs and performance improvements should be plentiful.

But things that really do need sorting are notifications, some kind of notification centre to help keep track as it's far too easy to miss some.

Then later on when the iPhone 5 comes along. It will be upgradable to iOS 5.

3.

AirPlay for Apps

Not just is this for your music and movies now, but also apps and more importantly perhaps, games. 

Imagine Monopoly, fun to play with four people, but for four people around a 10 inch tablet, it isn't enough, also the idea of having 4 iPads isn't ideal.

But pushing it to the TV so everyone can see it at the same time and use the iPad as the controller. We are suddenly in a fun place to be. 

It's the same for apps. Pushing notifications or other information to the screen would be an interesting idea and a great way to browse the web collaboratively.

Some interesting thoughts about Facetime also arise, although could be tricky to achieve with cameras on the iPad and the video on the TV screen. But either way, I'd hate to be nintendo over the next few years. Casual gaming is now serious business.

4.

Not a retina display (But I still want one)

It's technically possible, but not going to happen.

The way screen resolutions work gives the prospect of a retina display a lot of obstacles to overcome. Because the basics of computer displays rely on pixels means that the resolution can't be doubled. It has to be quadrupled. Because they have to double both vertically and horizontally. This gives us 4x as many pixels to push, and that takes a lot more power, a lot more ram. And would significantly rise the price on the next iPad. I think to stay affordable in this market, which Apple need to do to keep their lead, they can't support retina displays until the 3rd gen model.

They can't go for middle ground either, anything other than doubling would cause resolution compatibility issues for apps. Some apps would fit, some would need a lot of coding to fit and most would need to do some complicated math to blend graphics together to fit producing very ugly results.

We'll see it in 2012, we'll just have to wait. 

5.

Better sound

The speaker on the new iPad should be better, the current lacks the range and the oomph needed for watching movies. (unless your David Lynch of course) The can't have stereo sound, as a 360º device it could switch left and right in software but would have to go to double mono when held in portrait mode, and that's too messy. Possible but definitely not Apple.

6.

More Sexy

The new model is bound to be sexier, they always go to make the previous model look old, in a way that makes people go "Oh, poor you, *tut* you've got the OLD iPad" just like they did with the first iPhone.

But also thinner, lighter and maybe a smaller bezel.

The thing I'm unsure about if the liquidmetal glass polymer tech that Apple acquired during a takeover last year will see it's way to the 2nd gen or will have to wait for a bouncing iPad until next year..

7.

Even longer battery

10 hours is good, but wouldn't 15 be even better?

I don't think 15 is totally possible, but they might take it to 12 just to stick it to RIM's playbook which is shaping up to be a power hungry Goliath.

Battery life here though isn't really the issue, 10 hours is about all we need unless we go to weeks without charging. It's the charging that needs to be improved, charging from a standard USB port takes forever, it's faster on one of the boosted iPad chargers but not much better, improved charging would be a great step towards making this a even more reliable computer.

8.

More power!!!

This thing is going to make the old iPad soil itself.

Rumours of Dual-Core,1.2Ghz chips with 2GB of RAM have been circulating for a while, as well as dual core graphics. I think that sounds about right only maybe only 1GB of RAM, 2 sounds a bit generous.

The only thing we know for sure is that the iPad has a bit of catching up to do in the data crunching department. It only has half the RAM of the iPhone 4, but the same CPU. However a lot of phones and tablets are on either here or on the way have over taken the current iPad, Apple has managed to keep the lead with this spec however, so improvements are going to push them well ahead again.

9.

Near Field Communication

This is funny one, it could be the best thing since sliced bread, or as useless and unloved as a pikelet. It's basically a dynamic version of an RFID chip. These are used in a lot of things like membership cards, passports and transport cards. The biggest example I know would be the Oyster Card system used on the London Underground, their system is run with little blue cards the size of a credit card and data and be read and written by passing the card over a small scanning plate. Recently however this tech has made it's way into a lot of credit cards, where you just scan your card over a panel and BEEP, they just charged you 2.70 for your coffee, and I've already left the place. Awesome.

I imagine that it would be similar for the iPhone, tied to an iTunes payment system, although it would be nice if you could also protect it with a pin. If you could also tie it in to your Oyster card or Gym membership it would be great.

Only problem is this makes sense on the iPhone, but not the iPad. 

I'm wondering if the iPad is going to get NFC as the rumours suggest, it's more for receiving data or at least performing the handshake for setting up a data connection via another network, such as bluetooth or WiFi. It could be used for data on it's own, but the speeds are poor, This is an interesting one, because if it is there, it's going to be fun to find out what the hell they do with it!

10.

Apple,

Just fking surprise me.