Hasta La Gadget!

pspan class=”mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image” style=”display: inline;”img alt=”AppleGestures.jpg” src=”http://uk.gizmodo.com/AppleGestures.jpg” width=”400″ height=”361″ class=”mt-image-none” style=”” //span/p pApple is still busy patenting every possible application for a touchscreen or control system that hasn’t already been used and on Christmas Day filed a new one called ‘Swipe Gestures For Touch Screen Keyboards’./p pThe idea is for it to supplement the on-screen keyboards on its current devices by allowing people to use various gestures to simulate access to common keys. br / /pimg width=’1′ height=’1′ src=’http://feeds.uk.gizmodo.com/c/552/f/9581/s/2a558f3/mf.gif’ border=’0’/div class=’mf-viral’table border=’0’trtd valign=’middle’a href=”http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/sendemail2.html?title=Apple Files Patent For New Gesture-Control Touchscreenlink=http://uk.gizmodo.com/2008/12/29/apple_files_patent_for_new_ges.html” target=”_blank”img src=”http://rss.feedsportal.com/images/emailthis2.gif” border=”0″ //a/tdtd valign=’middle’a href=”http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/bookmark.cfm?title=Apple Files Patent For New Gesture-Control Touchscreenlink=http://uk.gizmodo.com/2008/12/29/apple_files_patent_for_new_ges.html” target=”_blank”img src=”http://rss.feedsportal.com/images/bookmark.gif” border=”0″ //a/td/tr/table/divbr/br/a href=”http://da.feedsportal.com/r/27588658908/u/0/f/9581/c/552/s/44390643/a2.htm”img src=”http://da.feedsportal.com/r/27588658908/u/0/f/9581/c/552/s/44390643/a2.img” border=”0″//a

HP’s 1.5TB MediaSmart Server ex487 (and its smaller 750GB sibling, the ex485) were just announced hours ago, but that hasn’t stopped a few lucky reviewers from putting their hands-on pictures and impressions online for the world to pore over. The biggest knocks that seemed to really grate the nerves of critics were that the single eSATA port was not port-multiplier aware, and despite the bump to 2GB of RAM, the TwonkyMedia and Remote Media Streaming software were still deemed “quirky and in need of some polish.” Those gripes aside, the newfangled unit was pretty well adored. In fact, WeGotServed flat-out called the device “stunning,” praising HP for its tightly integrated applications that worked fairly well on top of Windows Home Server. For those eying a simple-to-use media server, it looks like HP finally produced one that can be purchased sans regret; the real question, however, is will the outfit push these delectable new features down to existing ex470 / ex475 owners?

Read – MediaSmartServer review
Read – WeGotServed review / hands-on

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Storage

HP MediaSmart Server ex487 gets hands-on love and full-blown review originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 29 Dec 2008 08:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Here’s the new iPhone Pro, something that we don’t expect at MacWorld 2009 at all. However, we do expect something like this to come at a later date. Why? Because it just makes sense.

Click on image above for higher resolution version

This concept started as a Photoshop idea by Giz reader Mat Brady. He wants to get rid of his Nokia N95 but can’t get himself to buy an iPhone for the same reason other people don’t like the current iPhone. Lack of a physical keyboard, lack of a good camera, and not enough storage.

I’ve an iPhone 3G. I love it. In fact, now that I’m in Spain and I can’t use the 3G—because AT&T will nail me for the data roaming at a buck per megabyte—I miss a lot of things, from Maps to Facebook. But even while I can’t live without it, I can see those shortcomings. In fact, I’ve bitched about the camera and the storage quite a few times. Mat made his concept and called it iPhone Elite: an iPhone with 60GB of storage, true 16:9 aspect ratio, slide-out keyboard, one megapixel front camera for iChat, and a high quality camera, with good lenses, optical zoom, and video capability.

That’s good, but we thought it could be a bit better. We fixed the keyboard to make it more rational and compact, losing some unneeded keys. With the space, we added what it’s really needed to make the iPhone a true Nintendo DS competitor: A direction pad and two buttons. For the D-Pad, we didn’t want to reinvent the wheel and just copied Nintendo’s tried-and-proved design.

Is this doable now? Technologically, it is. We’ve seen designs by HTC that get close to this, although they don’t have the software and the final polish that this class of Apple product may have. Would it be more expensive too produce than the current iPhone 3G? Of course. Would we want to pay extra for it? Definitely yes.

Wouldn’t you? [Original design by Mat Brady]

Apple’s said it’s taking a break from adding flashy features to OS X to focus on the foundations and stability of the system with Snow Leopard, and this latest leaked screenshot might indicate that those foundations are moving to 64 bits — it shows System Preferences saying it needs to restart in 32-bit mode to open the Network panel. That’s certainly interesting, given the rumors that Apple’s dropping support for non-Intel machines and maybe even 32-bit Intel processors with this release, but it could also just mean that whoever took this screenshot doesn’t have a 64-bit-friendly version of that preference pane installed. (We’re guessing the latter, since there are a lot of 32-bit only Core Duo Intel Macs out there.) Restarting apps to change modes seems pretty clunky, though — shades of System 7 and the 32-bit Enabler, for the olds — so we’re hoping Apple’s got a more elegant solution in the works. Macworld’s just around the corner, we’re sure we’ll hear more from Steve Phil soon.

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Leaked Snow Leopard image potentially indicates a 32 / 64-bit divide originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 28 Dec 2008 14:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ha, you or someone you love just paid full retail for an iPhone 3G a few days ago, didn’t you? We’ve always heard that the best deals come after Christmas, but people just never learn. All smack talk aside, those who didn’t get a new cellie under the tree, but did acquire a Benjamin or so courtesy of cash-stuffed holiday cards, can certainly score a big deal today. AT&T is now offering the 8GB iPhone 3G in refurbished form for just $99 with a two-year agreement, while the 16GB refurb is $199 on contract in either black or white. Call us crazy, but we don’t foresee these hanging around in stock for too awfully long.

[Thanks, Brenson]

Filed under: Cellphones

AT&T letting go of 8GB refurb iPhone 3Gs for $99 on contract originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Dec 2008 14:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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