MacRumors

For the last several years, netbooks have been a booming business for a number of computer manufacturers as consumers look for low-cost, portable machines to browse the Internet and perform other light tasks. Apple resisted entering the netbook market, repeatedly pointing to numerous shortcoming of such devices as it wrapped up development on its iPad tablet device, its own take on how consumers will want to consume music, video, and Web content in a portable form factor.

Fortune today reports on a new note from Morgan Stanley research analyst Katy Huberty that reveals just how dramatically growth in the netbook industry has slowed since the beginning of the year. Huberty attributes the slowdown to Apple's iPad, which saw tremendous publicity leading up to and since its introduction in late January.

As her chart (above) shows, sales growth of these low-cost, low-powered computing devices peaked last summer at an astonishing 641% year-over-year growth rate. It fell off a cliff in January and shrank again in April -- collateral damage, according to Huberty, from the January introduction and April launch of the iPad.

Huberty also cites data from March showing that 44% of surveyed consumers who were planning to purchase an iPad were doing so instead of purchasing a notebook or netbook computer, the largest category of cannibalized products. Notably, over half of those customers were planning to purchase an iPad instead of an Apple notebook, with the remainder forgoing a non-Apple netbook or notebook.

Also of note, a full 41% of those surveyed said that they would be purchasing their iPad instead of an iPod touch, suggesting that Apple may take a hit to that portion of its sales going forward. The news isn't as bad as it appears, however, as Apple is undoubtedly happy to be keeping those customers in the Apple fold and "upselling" them to the more expensive iPad.

A pair of interesting patent applications from Apple were published today by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office revealing concepts Apple engineers have been tossing around as they work to develop features for future products.

Unwired View points to an application entitled "Seamlessly Embedded Heart Rate Monitor", and while some might assume that Apple is looking to build new Nike+ capabilities into its mobile devices, the company's focus on this technology actually appears to be related to biometric identification of users.

To determine the user's heart rate, heartbeat, or other cardiac signals, the electronic device can include one or more sensors embedded in the device. The one or more sensors can include leads for receiving electrical signals from the user's heart. . . . To provide an electrical signal from the user to the processing circuitry, the leads can be exposed such that the user may directly contact the leads, or may instead or in addition be coupled to an electrically conductive portion of the device enclosure (e.g., a metallic bezel or housing forming the exterior of the device).

In particular, Apple envisions the use of heartbeat signals either for authenticating a user for access to the device's content or for identifying the user and loading a customized profile utilizing their preset preferences for the device.

A second patent application, entitled "Multidimensional Widgets", demonstrates Apple's research into offering Dashboard widgets with multiple sides, allowing users to rotate them in virtual three dimensions to present different data or functionality and reduce visual clutter.

As an example, Apple describes a stock ticker widget where a user can define each side of a three-dimensional widget to contain detailed financial information on a single stock. The widget could adapt in shape to the number of entries made by the user, expanding or contracting based on additions or subtractions.

For example, a three-dimensional widget with four or fewer functions can be of the form of a tetrahedron; a three-dimensional widget with five or six functions can be of the form of a hexahedron; a three-dimensional widget with seven or eight functions can be of the form of a octahedron; and a three-dimensional widget with nine functions can be of the form of a dodecahedron. Thus, if a user specifies ten stock tickers for quotes and technicals, the widget 420 can expand from a hexahedron to a dodecahedron.

Apple also describes a "widget receptacle", where multiple 3D widgets could be grouped together based on certain criteria and represented on a single larger 3D surface. Upon activation of one of the faces of the receptacle, the corresponding widget would be instantiated on its own.

Apple has explored other virtual multidimensional interface environments in previous patent applications, including on an iPhone-like mobile device and in a 3D desktop similar to that used by BumpTop, which was recently acquired by Google.

Computerworld reports on comments from Broadpoint AmTech research analyst Brian Marshall suggesting that AT&T may have gained an extra six months of iPhone exclusivity in the United States with its bid to provide data service for the iPad, extending its window through the end of 2010.

"AT&T had to do something dramatic to get the iPad," said Brian Marshall, a Wall Street analyst at BroadPoint AmTech. AT&T's move was to discount their normal wireless data plans by 50% to iPad customers.

As part of the tit-for-tat, AT&T got what it wanted. "For that pricing [on the iPad], AT&T was able to negotiate a six-month extension on the iPhone exclusive," Marshall said.

Marshall provides little evidence for his claim beyond the observation that Verizon failed to win the rights for iPad service. Numerous sources had indicated to Marshall that Verizon was a "certainty" for the iPad, suggesting that some major happened to push Apple's focus to AT&T.

AT&T's exclusivity window for the iPhone in the United States has been the subject of some debate, with early claims pegging it at five years being disputed by other reports that AT&T initially had a two-year agreement that extended through mid-2009 but gained an extra year when it increased the handset subsidies paid to Apple. A report from early last year suggested that AT&T was searching for a way to extend its exclusivity for yet another year until mid-2011, and its iPad data pricing offer may have been a means to get halfway to that goal.

As noted by TechCrunch, Apple appears to be leveraging their unique position as App Store curator in their upcoming iAds service.

The above slide shows Apple's ad company Quattro Wireless pushing a program to potential iPhone app advertisers called "Verification of iTunes Purchase" (VIP). The program allows advertisers to track actual App Store purchases to measure an ad's performance. Apple can then use this knowledge to prevent the ad from being displayed to that user again. While this sort of ad conversion tracking is routine on the web, it is a bit more complicated for 3rd parties on the App Store.

Ad companies such as Admob do provide a similar feature but it requires code modification to the target app to track usage. Apple, however, has already taken steps to make this feature difficult for 3rd parties to offer. Apple's latest SDK terms stipulate that Apps may not "collect and send Device Data to a third party for processing or analysis". This restriction is the source of some debate as well as a topic of the FTC investigation into Apple.

Clamcase is likely the first of many integrated keyboard case designs for the iPad. The Clamcase promises a protective shell, integrated bluetooth keyboard and stand for the iPad. The iPad, itself, is housed in the top segment that can open up and fold backward.

The images look like they may just be renders than actual product photos, however, so its hard to say how well the case will work in practice. The case is claimed to be available sometime later this year.

In his "Thoughts on Flash" letter last week, Apple CEO Steve Jobs noted his company's frustration with Adobe's slow pace at getting Flash working well on mobile devices, citing missed timelines and a sense of relief that Apple didn't wait for Adobe to deliver the technology.

We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it. Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009, then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say the second half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we're glad we didn't hold our breath. Who knows how it will perform?

In answer to that question, Zedomax reports that Adobe at this week's Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco is showing off an Android-based tablet running Flash, as well as the company's AIR cross-platform runtime.

Despite the author's claim that Flash and AIR apps run "flawlessly" on the tablet, Daring Fireball's John Gruber points out that the device's browser crashes while the user is accessing YouTube in one video clip.

PC Pro reports that Intel this week is showing off a laptop running the company's "Light Peak" connectivity standard initially offering transfer speeds of up to 10 Gbps in both directions. The company previously demonstrated the technology using a prototype Mac Pro motherboard last year, but has now reduced the required hardware to fit inside a laptop enclosure.

Intel's chief technology officer, Justin Rattner, claimed that the bandwidth afforded by the optical technology is practically unlimited. "Light Peak begins at 10Gbits/sec, simultaneously in both directions," he said. "We expect to increase that speed dramatically. You'll see multiple displays being served by a single Light Peak connection. There's almost no limit to the bandwidth - fibres can carry trillions of bits per second".

Intel envisions Light Peak as being able to replace USB, Firewire, and display connectors in the future, and notes that the hardware should become available to computer manufacturers by the end of this year. Given the initial demonstration using Mac Pro hardware and rumors that Apple played a role in the development of the technology, many observers expect Light Peak to quickly make its way into Macs.

In a widely-publicized blog post today, Robert Reich, who served as U.S. Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, offers his thoughts on the rumored antitrust inquiry being considered by federal regulators over Apple's exclusion of cross-compilers for creation of applications running on its iPhone OS devices. Reich argues that the Federal Trade Commission's efforts targeting Apple could be better spent on investigating Wall Street banks, but federal law excludes the financial industry from the FTC's purview.

Our future well being depends more on people like Steve Jobs who invent real products that can improve our lives, than it does on people like [JPMorgan Chase CEO] Jamie Dimon who invent financial products that do little other than threaten our economy.

Reich's position is that Apple's move is not anti-competitive, with many other companies rapidly innovating in the sector, and if Apple's decision results in less competition on the iPhone platform, Apple itself will be the one to suffer.

Apple's supposed sin was to tell software developers that if they want to make apps for iPhones and iPads they have to use Apple programming tools. No more outside tools (like Adobe's Flash format) that can run on rival devices like Google's Android phones and RIM's BlackBerrys.

What's wrong with that? Apple says it's necessary to maintain quality. If consumers disagree they can buy platforms elsewhere. Apple was the world's #3 smartphone supplier in 2009, with 16.2 percent of worldwide market share. RIM was #2, with 18.8 percent. Google isn't exactly a wallflower. These and other firms are innovating like mad, as are tens of thousands of independent developers. If Apple's decision reduces the number of future apps that can run on its products, Apple will suffer and presumably change its mind.

While Reich is not the first to make this argument, his public statement comes with the perspective of an academic and political insider who has spent considerable time in the upper reaches of government.

One of the many new features provided to developers in iPhone OS 4 are new APIs that give developers full access to Video capture data. This could open the door to some interesting apps including Video Capture/Editing and more robust Augmented Reality apps when iPhone OS 4 finally becomes available to the public.

The iPhone 4 Beta SDK, however, also reveals the ability to capture video at higher resolutions than the current standard 640x480 ("VGA") resolution. These preset values suggest that a future iPhone will be able to capture at 720p (1280x720) resolution:

AVCaptureSessionPreset640x480
AVCaptureSessionPreset1280x720

The next iPhone has been pegged to use a 5 Megapixel camera, though the video capabilities of the hardware are unknown. The next iPhone revision has been also rumored to be dubbed the "iPhone HD" which would fit well with this new 720p video recording capability.

Apple is expected to introduce the new iPhone at the Worldwide Developer's Conference which takes place between June 7-11th in San Francisco, CA.

MacStories reports on a new email response to a customer from Apple CEO Steve Jobs, this time promising that full support for HTML5 is coming "soon" to the company's Safari browser. HTML5 has been a popular topic recently, given Jobs' continued support of the next-generation Web standard as a key component of future technologies that he believes will leave Adobe's Flash Player in the past.

But as you probably know, Apple doesn't actually fully support HTML5 in its flagship browser, the desktop version of Safari. Indeed, Safari for Mac (and Windows) doesn't have official and full support for many HTML5 specs like Geolocation API, Drag and Drop, Form Features and Inline SVG but according to this new email from Steve we received, all this stuff is coming.

Given that Google has just introduced several of these HTML5 features in its new Google Chrome beta version, it appears that Apple will likely need to move forward relatively rapidly in order to demonstrate its commitment to deploying the tools necessary for HTML5 in Safari to reach the potential espoused by Jobs. "Full" HTML5 adoption may be a bit of a moving target for Apple, however, as the standard has not yet been officially formalized.

The third beta of iPhone OS 4, released and then pulled yesterday after an installation issue with the development tools was discovered, is now back in Apple's iPhone Dev Center. Following on yesterday's discovery of new iPod controls and a screen orientation lock available through the iPhone OS 4 multitasking interface, Boy Genius Report covered several additional new highlights for the updated operating system.

File Sharing

Currently available with iPhone OS 3.2 on the iPad, iPhone OS 4 seems set to bring this feature to the iPhone and iPod touch, allowing users to drag-and-drop files between certain applications and their computers.

Closing Applications

In earlier beta versions of iPhone OS 4, users wishing to close applications in the multitasking tray had to touch and hold each application's icon until an extra "close" icon appeared in the upper left corner of the application's icon and then touch it to close out the application. The awkward and time-consuming process when trying to close multiple applications was a complaint of some users, and Apple has addressed the issue by now allowing users to simply touch and hold one application's icon to activate the close option for all visible applications in the multitasking tray. Once activated, users can quickly close multiple applications.

9 to 5 Mac reports that the latest iPhone OS 4 beta, released earlier today, includes several new features as part of its multitasking capabilities, including quick access to iPod controls, as well as an option for locking the screen orientation in either portrait or landscape mode.

The new features are accessed via a left-swipe from the multitasking "dock" manager in much the same way that the Spotlight search screen is accessed from the first home screen in iPhone OS 3. The iPod options include the traditional iPod icon to allow quick access to the iPod player functionality, as well as play/pause and track navigation buttons.

The screen orientation lock is a much-requested feature that is particularly handy for users attempting to use their devices while lying down or reclining. The feature receives prominent attention on the iPad, with the device's originally-planned "mute" switch being replaced before launch by a dedicated hardware button to enable screen rotation lock.

Update: Users are reporting that the screen orientation lock feature can currently only lock the screen in a portrait orientation.

Google today announced the release of the official beta versions of Google Chrome 5.0 for Mac, Windows, and Linux. The release brings several new enhancements to the stable testing version of the browser, including an integrated Flash Player plug-in and speed increases.

Today's new beta release incorporates one of Chrome's most significant speed and performance increases to date, with 30% and 35% improvement on the V8 and SunSpider benchmarks over the previous beta channel release. In fact, looking back in time, Chrome's performance has improved by as much as 213% and 305% on these two benchmarks since our very first beta.

The new version also includes synchronization of Chrome preferences across computers and new HTML5 features such as geolocation support and file drag-and-drop.

Google is also taking the opportunity to show off Chrome's speed enhancements by deploying a set of "experiments" showing Chrome loading a webpage alongside other "blink-of-an-eye" events, all filmed with a high-speed camera and played back in slow motion. While the "results" of these new speed tests have not yet been released, Google has published a "making of" video showing how they were developed.

Following a trend of biweekly releases it established with earlier developer seeds of iPhone OS 3.2 for iPad, Apple has released the third beta version of iPhone OS 4 and the associated Software Development Kit (SDK). Available to registered developers via the iPhone Dev Center, the third beta is a refinement of the operating system and developer tools initially released in early April alongside a media event to introduce the next-generation software for Apple's iPhone OS devices.

No details on changes included in the new beta have yet been detailed.

Apple is expected to publicly release iPhone OS 4 to iPhone and iPod touch users "this summer", although early models of those devices will not be compatible with the new OS and even some newer models will not be able to take advantage of all of the features. iPhone OS 4 will come to the iPad "in the fall".

Update: Apple has reportedly temporarily pulled the new version due to an issue with installation of the revised SDK tools.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Google is planning to begin selling eBooks in late June or July of this year, creating yet another area where it will compete head-to-head with Apple, which rolled out its own iBooks application and associated iBookstore alongside the iPad in the United States last month.

Google says its new service--called Google Editions--will allow users to buy digital copies of books they discover through its book search service. It will also allow book retailers to sell Google Editions on their own sites, taking the bulk of the revenue. Google has yet to release details about pricing and which publishers are expected to participate.

Just yesterday, Apple announced as part of a press release celebrating one million iPads sold that customers have already downloaded over 1.5 million eBooks in the 28 days since launch.

Early last month, Apple also announced that iBooks and the iBookstore will coming to the iPhone and iPod touch with iPhone OS 4 later this year. And while the iBookstore is currently limited to the United States along with the iPad, the company is working to line up deals to extend the store internationally.

The Loop reports that Apple is facing a new patent lawsuit from NetAirus Technologies over the iPhone. While Apple is routinely the target of such actions, this particular lawsuit is interesting if only because it appears to be targeting the entire concept of the iPhone rather than a minor aspect of its features or technology.

Filed in the Central District of California Western Division, NetAirus claims that Apple's iPhone infringes '380 patent. The patent issued on September 5, 2006 and held by NetAirus describes a "Wireless Handset Communication System."

The suit targets all three versions of the iPhone released so far and seeks cash damages and a halt to iPhone production.

Little is known about NetAirus, although it appears that this patent's inventor, Richard J. Ditzik, holds a number of patents related to flat panel display technology. Barron's notes that he has filed patent lawsuits against several other companies over the past few years, including Panasonic and Samsung. Ditzik appears to have filed the lawsuits using different company names over the years, suggesting that he may be a one-man operation setting up a various corporate entities to pursue patent complaints against larger corporations.