MacRumors

Apple's media event will take place on January 27th at 10 a.m. Pacific time, where Apple is expected to unveil its latest "creation". Rumors have pegged the focus of the event to be a new tablet device from Apple.

9 to 5 Mac summarizes information it has received from contacts in the publishing industry in recent days, revealing that Apple has been pushing aggressively forward in discussions with publishers about bringing their content to Apple's tablet rumored for introduction on Wednesday.

According to the reports, Apple has been touting the tablet's software as a "game changer" for the e-reader market and positioning its distribution model in contrast to Amazon's Kindle by offering publishers greater control over content and pricing. Other tidbits include:

- Apple is expected to have general agreements with major publishers in place by Wednesday, allowing it to tout the partnerships while still leaving "nuts and bolts" details of the arrangements to further negotiations.

- Scrollmotion and other companies serving as middle-men to bring e-books to the iPhone are being cut out of the tablet, with Apple preferring to work directly with the publishers.

- A large library of e-book content for the tablet is not expected until "mid-2010 at the very earliest", although Apple will likely have something to show at the media event.

- Publishers have not been provided access to any tablet prototypes, although the device has reportedly been described to them as having a 10-inch glass screen and smaller than but roughly equal in weight to Amazon's Kindle DX.

- Apple's tablet will not be priced "anywhere near" the $1,000 mark that some have floated as a possible price point.

As part of a broad report in advance of Apple's media event scheduled for Wednesday, The Los Angeles Times claims that a team of New York Times employees has been traveling to Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, California to work on a new version of the newspaper's iPhone application offering video and optimized for a large-screen tablet device.

Apple has been slowly amassing digital reading material for the forthcoming device. A team from the New York Times has been working in Apple's Cupertino, Calif., headquarters in recent weeks, developing a large-screen version of the newspaper's iPhone application that incorporates video for the yet-to-be-unveiled device, according to one person with knowledge of the matter. A Times spokeswoman declined to comment.

The claim is reminiscent of a story related by the developers of flight simulator application X-Plane 9, who were invited to Cupertino to work alongside Apple's engineers to port their application to the iPhone in hopes of demonstrating it at the company's "Let's Rock" media event in September 2008.

The New York Times has long held a close relationship with Apple in regards to the iPhone platform, frequently finding itself featured in demonstrations at media events and keynotes. Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. revealed last week, however, that he will not be attending Apple's media event, and when pressed for comment on Apple's involvement with the newspaper's plans for restructuring online access, said only "Stay tuned."

HotHardware claims that AT&T may be losing its iPhone exclusivity as early as Wednesday at Apple's media event:

According to an inside source close to the going-ons involved in all of this, a new tablet of some sort may not be the only thing on deck for next Wednesday though. We have been led to believe by an inside source that AT&T will lose their iPhone exclusivity on the same day, though it's not yet clear what other carrier (or carriers) will be stepping in to also carry the phone

We've never reported on a rumor from HotHardware before, so we have no record of the accuracy of their sources. That said, AT&T exclusivity has been a hot topic ever since the iPhone was released. In the U.S., AT&T remains the only mobile phone carrier that offers the iPhone.

This deal has been rumored to be expiring in mid 2010 with indications that Apple has been working on a Verizon-compatible iPhone. While the announcement of a Verizon-compatible iPhone certainly seems possible this year, we're not sure how it would fit in with what is believed to be an event focused on the new Apple Tablet.

TechCrunch reports that Steve Jobs has been heard saying that the upcoming Apple tablet "will be the most important thing I've ever done." The report is said to come from multiple independent sources:

We haven't heard this first hand, but we've heard it multiple times second and third hand from completely independent sources. Senior Apple execs and friends of Jobs are telling people that he's about as excited about the upcoming Apple Tablet as he's ever been.

Jobs had been previous quoted as being "extremely happy" with the upcoming tablet.

Apple is holding a media event on January 27th. We'll provide ongoing updates as well as a Spoiler Free page if you would rather wait to watch a video of the event yourself after it is posted.

As first noted by Jesus Tablet, the company that has been registering the iPad trademark internationally en masse has also applied for it in the U.S. We revealed earlier this month that a company called IP Application Development had begun applying for the iPad trademark in mid January.

The company has been loosely connected to an Apple shell corporation called Slate Computing through a similar iPad trademark application in Canada. The U.S. trademark application arrives in the backdrop of Apple interest in contesting Fujitsu's U.S. iPad trademark.

We believe it's likely that Apple is behind the IP Application Development company's actions, though no further evidence links the two companies. Apple is rumored to be introducing their tablet next week at a media event on January 27th.

As we reported earlier, it's no surprise that Apple is actively working on Mac OS X 10.7. Bug reports from the early builds were spotted in November and as early as December Mac OS X 10.7 signatures appeared in web logs from Apple-owned IP addresses. More spottings have been since reported, and we've found Mac OS X 10.7 signatures in our own web logs with increasing frequency since October.

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_7; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.7.1 (KHTM
L, like Gecko) Version/4.1 Safari/532.7.3

Apple has said nothing of the next major version of Mac OS X, though John Gruber had said he had heard that Mac OS X 10.7 would be ready for developer release by WWDC this June.

Rumored features that never made it into Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard such as the Marble interface revamp may make their way into 10.7.

AppleInsider reports that Apple has seeded a new version of Mac OS X 10.6.3, termed Build 10D538, to select developers for testing. According to the report, the update addresses issues in several areas, including QuickTime X and Logic Studio.

More specifically, people familiar with Friday's beta say it includes an update to QuickTime X that, when finalized, will improve security and compatibility while simultaneously enhancing overall reliability. The release will also include tweaks that aim to enhance the performance of Apple's 64-bit Logic pro audio suite. Other planned improvements include better compatibility with third-party printers and OpenGL-grounded applications, those same people say.

One documented known issue reportedly remains in the latest build, involving the viewing of photos via Front Row.

Apple seeded its first test version of Mac OS X 10.6.3 to developers earlier this month, revealing a significant number of fixes in the new update, as well as several outstanding issues still needing attention at the time.

Mac OS X 10.6.3 also reportedly contains greatly improved support for OpenGL 3.0, which would offer significantly improved graphics performance should Apple implement full support for the standards. It is unknown at this time whether the latest 10.6.3 build has made any additional steps toward that goal.

Illusion Labs, developer of the popular iPhone game Touchgrind, has posted a video demonstrating a Mac version of the game utilizing the multi-touch capabilities of the MacBook's trackpad.

All of Apple's notebooks now contain a multi-touch trackpad that could be used for such purposes. In fact, Apple's multi-touch trackpads can track up to 11 distinct multi-touch presses.

Despite conflicting reports, we have reason to believe that the upcoming Apple Tablet will indeed carry a front facing video camera as recently described in the Wall Street Journal:

This person said Apple has experimented with the ability ... for the gadget to automatically recognize individuals via a built-in camera.

While the presence of a front facing camera could allow for this novel use of facial recognition, it would also open up the possibility for video conferencing, which has been a long requested feature for the iPhone. Apple already supports video conferencing with their Mac OS X iChat software, so the ability to tie in video conferencing with their existing technology would be trivial.

The focus of the tablet rumors has been on content deals and multi-touch, though a camera could introduce other interesting features.

Hardmac reports that new ultra-low voltage Intel chips, introduced earlier this month as part of a major roll-out in conjunction with CES and presumably destined for the next revision to Apple's MacBook Air, are not yet being produced in mass quantities. The delay in chip availability may result in Apple having to push back the introduction of updated MacBook Air models by several weeks or else offer Intel a premium price to snap up limited quantities of the chips currently available and in production.

According to the last rumors, the MacBook Air might not be updated in a very near future with either Core i3/i5 has it uses Low Voltage version of the Intel mobile CPUs. Such processors are not fully ready/available and Apple will have to delay the update of the MacBook Air by couple of weeks. It is still possible that Intel ships first samples to Apple, in small quantities, at a premium price.

According to our buyer's guide, Apple's MacBook Air is nearing the end of its usual product cycle, and when combined with the new chips from Intel, many have thought that a product update might be in store in the near future. The company's MacBook Pro and Mac Pro models are also reaching the end of their usual update cycles, leaving several opportunities for imminent Mac hardware updates.

Apple has scheduled a media event for next Wednesday, where the company is widely rumored to be introducing its tablet device, as well as possible details on iPhone OS 4.0. There have been no reports of refreshed Mac hardware being announced at the event, as Apple may prefer to spend its limited time in front of the media focused on its handheld products.

BusinessWeek reports that Apple has been in talks with the educational arm of publishing giant McGraw-Hill to bring e-textbook content to Apple's tablet device. The discussions also reportedly include portions of McGraw-Hill's Connect online learning system.

Apple's talks with McGraw-Hill cover how the two companies can market textbooks for the tablet and ways their software development teams can collaborate to publish digital textbooks and educational content on Apple's latest device, two people say. "The talks are as much about marketing as they are about software development," says one of the people involved in the discussions.

According to the report, Apple and McGraw-Hill have held extended discussions for about a year, supporting earlier claims that McGraw-Hill had been actively working to bring its content into the iTunes ecosystem. McGraw-Hill is also one of the partner's in CourseSmart, an e-textbook company that has already brought thousands of titles to the iPhone and iPod touch and has envisioned how its offerings might work on a concept Apple tablet.

McGraw-Hill's Connect, which apparently developed out of the collaboration with Apple regarding e-textbooks, offers professors a convenient means to manage electronic homework assignments and testing while offering students the ability to watch video, read textbook materials, and complete assignments.

McGraw-Hill is certainly not the only publishing company talking to Apple about tablet possibilities, as the report notes that both Hachette and Wiley have been in discussions, and a report earlier this week claimed that HarperCollins was also participating in negotiations.