What's good?
Brian Tong here and welcome to the Apple Byte for everything good or bad inside the world of Apple.
Let's get to the show.
And the biggest news of the week: Apple is taking its trademark filing for the term iWatch world-wide.
Now, Bloomberg reports that Apple filed for the iWatch trademark in Japan according to a June 3rd filing which appends patent office that was made public.
The very first
iWatch trademark report came from Russian newspaper Izvestia on June 3rd as well.
Now 9 to 5 Mac also reports that Tim Cook and company have expanded their iWatch trademark takeover to Mexico, Taiwan, Turkey and Columbia with the same filing date of June 3rd.
So, what is this mean?
Well, I think it's pretty much a no-brainer that the iWatch comes out this year and before Apple's new TV.
Now, if we look back in history, when Apple filed for the very first iPad
trademark in early January of 2010 in Canada, Europe and Hong Kong, Steve Jobs then announced the iPad on January 27th, and the 1st gen iPad went on sale on April 3rd.
Now the iWatch is probably not coming out that soon but I've talked to people working on the project.
They never give me specific details, of course, but the iWatch product is significantly further long and they're genuinely excited and getty about the interface.
So, you guys could pretty much expect it in 2013.
And
especially with the content deals still holding up the Apple TV, let say Apple TV in 2014.
Now there's still a lot of action on iOS 7 and Boy Genius report says Apple will be sticking to the 2-week cycle for iOS 7 beta releases with the 3rd beta expected to be available on July 8th.
Apple retail employees are also just as excited about iOS 7. But Apple management is cracking down on them in making sure they're going through an official developer account because their concern that they're sharing it
with all their co-workers.
Can you say bad Apple?
Maybe you guys could at least provide it to employees on phones in the break room so they can educate themselves about your next OS that they're supposed to champion.
See?
That's a good idea.
All right.
I'm not gonna call this next one a bad Apple, but it's a lame one.
Apple just announced their Back to School promo that's good through September 6th.
If you buy a Mac computer, you get a $100 gift card to the App Store, iTunes store and if you buy an iPad or iPhone,
you get a $50 app store gift card.
Now remember the days where you actually got $100 to $150 off a computer, but now they're basically telling you to spend that money on the App store.
-Come on son.
-All right, lots of leaks coming from China with some sketchy photos from the Wave phone forums showing off more pictures of the back plate of the rumored low-cost iPhone.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and hope that highlighter yellow, watermelon and neon green aren't going to be final colors.
And a new set of
Detailed design schematics claiming to be for the 5th gen iPad from website nowhereelse.fr show a thinner profile compared to the 4th gen and a reduced width for the thinner bezel that matches up with all the earlier rumor leaks and cases they made in China.
And since we're talking bezels, let's check out some of Apple's pads.
The big A has been granted a new patent that could bring touch controls to the bezel of a device with a small display.
The technology would allow a bezel to dynamically change by holding down on a specific area
and in area with controls would show up.
Now, what upcoming product could this be perfect for?
There's this small display and a watch has a really small display but-- that's probably not it, so yeah, let's have to wait and see.
Now, I know we've all been in a situation where there's a single iPhone that just doesn't get enough light in a dark setting but a handful of them remotely control just might do the trick.
That's the idea behind the patent filed by Apple called the illumination
system, where an iPhone could take a picture, figure out how much light is needed and then team up with other iPhones or multiple devices to act as camera flashes.
So, how would I use this?
Apple has also applied for patent on the computer port that combines 2 connectors such as a USB port and an SD card reader and they're calling it the Combined Import
Port.
Now, who wouldn't want this?
It's like text version of smuckers uncrustables.
You know what those like crust less bread pockets that have the peanut butter and jelly stacked on top of each other?
They're so good just like Apple's Combined Input Port.
All right.
Now, Apple Byters, we wanna do something a little different here in this week's show.
And a lot of you ask me all of a time: Is it good time to buy an iMac, MacBook Pro, iPad and all that.
So we wanted to put together a quick reference for you so you can make the best decision based on what we know and we call it our
Apple Bytes [unk].
So what is a bet to buy right now, if you've been following the news, MacBook Air and Air port extremes were just announced in-- even people wondering about the Apple TV.
We don't expect to see any major changes there, so we're giving you the green light, go for those.
For the products to pump your brakes on, start with the MacBook Pro.
They didn't see an updated WWDC, they're do for processor upgrade at a very least around the back to school season.
So we're expecting to see them then.
Don't buy anything until the next refresh happens.
You can take my word for it.
Then we have the redesigned iMacs and Mac minis.
They were last updated it over 7 months ago.
You could still buy these if you want.
It's more of a yellow light yield honestly.
But my hard advice is to wait on these even if that's a little more than a couple of months.
I expect to speed bump before the end of the year.
Now, if any of you buying an iPad or an iPhone in the next two months, I might have to slap you silly.
It's simple.
See that stop sign?
Do not buy.
We're expecting updates around the early September time frame, even thrown the iPad
Touch, which might get a slight price drop but it makes no sense at all to buy these now unless you're desperate.
And if you're wondering about the Mac Pros, don't make me answer that for you-- just start saving up for it a lot, as in over 3,000 a lot.
That's what we're guessing the price will be.
So, pretty much is the Airs, the Apple TV and Air ports that are the safe bets.
And finally, we asked you about the top 5 features you wanna see in the next gen iPhone but we're gonna save those one more week or so.
Keep sending your responses to the Apple Byte at cnet.com
or my Twitter at Brian Tong.
It'll be worth the weight with a surprised price or I could call the surprise and spell it "Z" but we'll do the giveaway to you the Apple Byters that we feature on next week's show.
All right.
That's gonna do for this week.
I'm Brian Tong.
That's for watching and we'll catch you guys next time for another byte of the Apple.
