July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Toshiba announced today that it will refresh its line of Excite tablets with new technology, including a crystal-clearl screen with twice the resolution of most tablets. On top of that, Toshiba is launching a new line of laptops and desktops with Intel’s Haswell-based microprocessor technology.

Toshiba is launching three new Excite tablets based on the Android operating system. Two of the three models include the company’s signature display technology, the 2,560-by-1,600 PixelPure display, which competes with Apple’s own Retina displays for its tablets and laptops. The tablets include the Excite Pro, Excite Write, and Excite Pure. They have 10.1-inch screens, Nvidia Tegra 4 processors, Harman Kardon speakers, and a touchscreen digitizer for precise input and handwriting on the touchscreen.

The Japanese company said all three models are run on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. Toshiba also launched a series of laptops and desktops based on Intel’s Haswell microprocessor technology.

“With more and more consumers adopting tablets as their go-to devices for entertainment and travel, we wanted to push the boundaries even further and equip our new Excite tablets with the technology and features needed to maximize the potential of these devices,” said Carl Pinto, the vice president of marketing at Toshiba’s U.S. division. “By focusing on boosting the capabilities of the screen – from increasing the resolution to adding a digitizer option – we’re also evolving the way consumers can use these devices from consumption to creation.”

The PixelPure display can cram 4 million pixels into the screen, or 300 pixels per inch. The Excite Write version focuses on productivity apps by bringing a “pen and paper” experience to the tablet screen thanks to the precise digital pen. The TruPen has 1,024 pressure points.

You can write words in cursive on the screen and it will search through your handwritten notes to find a match for your word. The device comes with Toshiba’s own TruNote app for editing and storying notes. It also has ThinkFree Office Mobile for Android for editing and creating documents.

The tablet also includes TruCapture, a Toshiba-developed application that quickly and easily captures whiteboard content using the tablet’s built-in camera and converts the snapshot for easier integration into presentations and documents. The Pro and Write models use the Tegra 4 processor and have an 8-megapixel camera. The Excite Pure uses the Tegra 3 processor.

Toshiba also offers an option of having a keyboard that turns the machine into a laptop. You twist the keyboard around and it becomes a protective cover for the machine. The Excite Pure (with a 1,280-by-800 Autobrite screen) will sell for $299, while the Excite Pro is $499 and the Excite Write is $599. The tablets will be available June 25 from ToshibaDirect.com and from major retailers in July.

Not to mention dorky glasses.

The first prototype shows an image of a dollar sign — apparently the researchers are already thinking about commercialization. While it currently can display only simple images (similar in complexity to a cheap dollar-store calculator), Imec says future versions should be able to control light transmission to the retina, create different colored irises, and function as a heads-up display, which could superimpose almost any image right onto your field of vision.

You can see the new contact lenses in this movie from Imec … with appropriately James Bond-ish music:

The LCD display technology that Imec created allows the use of almost all of the contact lens surface, unlike LED-based applications that only enable a few pixels. In fact, Imec says, the technology will work for a range of pixel sizes and numbers.

The main challenge, of course, beside the thinness, has been the shape:

“Normally, flexible displays using liquid crystal cells are not designed to be formed into a new shape, especially not a spherical one,” Jelle De Smet, the project’s primary researcher, said in a statement. ”Thus, the main challenge was to create a very thin, spherically curved substrate with active layers that could withstand the extreme molding processes.”

Imec, which claims to be three to ten years ahead of the industry, created the new contact lens at the Center for Microsystems Technology.

It’s almost too bad that Apple has already patented its term for very high-density, high-quality screens. Because this truly has the potential to be a real retina display.

photo credit: jonycunha via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

The original retina MacBook Pro, the 15″ model, earned a miserly 1/10 in iFixit’s repairability score. Now the teardown specialists have ruthlessly ripped apart Apple’s innocent new 13″ retina MacBook Pro, and the results are in.

2/10.

It’s not much of an improvement, but it does double the score for Apple’s pro lineup of notebooks. The biggest change? A battery that can be squeegeed out of its cocoon in just 15 minutes. In comparison, the 15″ MacBook Pro’s battery took 30 minutes on the third try — and the first two attempts resulted in punctured batteries.

Source: iFixit

Retina 13″ Macbook Pro – on the inside

Not cool, and not extremely safe.

Highlights of MacFixit’s teardown include an odd circuit board between the laptop’s battery control board and its logic board. MacFixit is befuddled — and so are we — but possibilities include yet another piece of Apple tech to eek out even more battery life. The new retina machine is rated at 7 hours, similar to Apple’s much weaker MacBook Air models.

The teardown revealed no fewer than 11 chips on the logic board, including three from Intel, two from Hynix, and oddly, a small two megabit serial Flash chip on the trackpad logic board.

The biggest change iFixit found inside the new laptop? The way Apple rearranged the battery cells, fitting the MacBook Pro’s flash drive underneath the trackpad assembly:

Source: iFixit

Removing the battery

Image credits: iFixit

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

I’m sitting down in my hotel room. It’s evening, and I’m taking a deep breath.

Today we had one of the biggest Apple events I can remember. Between hardware and software, Apple announced at least six new products today, seven if you include Apple Fusion Drive, and a whopping 23 new products if you include different models and build configurations.

Here’s the full list:

• New iBooks software
• New retina 13″ Macbook Pro (two build configurations)
• Mac Mini (three build configurations)
• iMac (at least two sizes, each probably with at least two build configurations)
• Apple Fusion Drive (not a standalone product, but very cool, and an orderable option)
• 4th-generation iPad (six main models)
• iPad mini (six models)

Tim Cook spoke to the huge number of new products — and his team’s effort — at the end of the event.

“We told you we’d deliver amazing innovation this year,” Cook said, “and I hope you’ll agree we did.”

Added to the list announced today, Cook mentioned iOS 6 with hundreds of new features, OS X Mountain Lion, which works with iOS like hand and glove — which is one of iOS’s great advantages over Android — the new iPods recently announced, the new iPhone 5, and the previously announced retina-screen MacBook 15″.

“It’s been an incredible year … a truly prolific year of innovation for Apple,” he said. “We hope you love these products as much as we’ve loved creating them.”

It is a staggering list.

When you look at Apple as a product company, it doesn’t have a huge number of SKUs … four main product families (Mac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad), perhaps 15 total products within those, and then some 50 or so versions of those products.

Any way you slice it, Apple has refreshed a massive proportion of its product line today. In addition, Apple has done something that it rarely does: Osborn a product. The announced new iMac product line won’t be available until November — the 21.5″ model — and December, for the 27″ version.

It’s impressive chutzpah, based on the capabilities of possibly the most sophisticated supply chain in the business. And it’s an impressive line-up for the holiday shopping season.

At the end, Cook thanked the teams at Apple, “the most talented and innovative people I know.” They’ve done their job. Now it’s time to see how the other titans of the industry — Microsoft and Google — will answer.

We won’t have to wait for long.