Macbook ultraportable and Penryn Mac Pro due for Macworld, 3G iPhone in June?

from Engadget by Nilay Patel

We've taken a "don't stop believing" approach to Apple ultraportable rumors up to this point, and there's no reason to think these "fresh" predictions from CNBC's Jim Goldman are anything different, but they at least serve as a nice refresher in the lead up to Macworld in January. Goldman predicts the new Pro laptop will be half the thickness of the MacBook Pro, the hard disk will be replaced with NAND storage, and Apple will be selling the thing for $1,500 -- the same price the black MacBook currently goes for. He's purportedly citing sources that claim to have seen the product, and says that the laptop is supposedly due to show up at Macworld. Jim's sources also say that the 3G iPhone is supposed to hit shelves by late May or early June of next year, which beats out some industry predictions of a late '08 release.

Of course, since it's just a month before Macworld, it's about time the rumor mill heated up a little beyond incessant Macbook and iPhone rumorings, and MacBidouille is stepping up to stoke the flames. The French rag is claiming that the Mac Pro will get bumped to an 3.2GHz eight-core Penryn setup ( totally believable) featuring NVIDIA QuadroFX graphics (sure) with a BTO Blu-ray burner available (maybe), and that DVD Studio Pro will be renamed Disk Studio Pro and refocused on BD authoring (another definite maybe). On top of that, MacBidouille also claims that OS X 10.5.2 will be released, and that it will be "the largest and most important intermediate system update ever released by Apple." We're a little less sure we buy that, but as always, only time and Steve will tell.

[Thanks, L2 and Mark]

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Sarcos humanoid robot learns how to take a shove

from Engadget by Donald Melanson

We've already seen some of Sarcos' robotics gear put to some slightly frightening use in the form of a military exoskeleton, and it now looks like one of the company's full-fledged robots is getting a chance to strut its stuff as well, with a little help from the folks at Japan's Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute. As New Scientist reports, they've developed some software that allows the robot to stay on its feet when its bumped, shoved or even kicked (which makes mere dynamic balancing robots look positively inadequate). The key to that, it seems, is that the robot's joints are never kept rigid, which allows them to give slightly when any of the array of sensors detect the slightest jolt, giving the software a chance to then adjusting the robot's feet as necessary to keep its balance. Not surprisingly, they don't seem to have given the robot the ability to shove back just yet, but you can check out its current capabilities in the video available at the site linked below.

 

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IBM tries to stop Asus imports over patent violations

from Engadget by Nilay Patel

In what's becoming a common strategy by patent plaintiffs to try and speed up the settlement process, IBM has asked the United States International Trade Commission to ban imports of Asus computers due to claimed patent violations. The two companies had a patent license that expired in December of 2004, and IBM says Asus has continued to use the disputed tech since that time, in both Asus-branded machines and machines it's OEM'd for others, like Apple and Dell. IBM isn't getting specific about which patents are being infringed, except to say that it's three patents that cover "important aspects of computer systems, including power supplies, computer cooling and computer clustering capabilities." As always with ITC hearings, there's a 45-day window for the Commission to make a determination, so you may want to snap up that Eee PC sooner rather than later.

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FujiXerox shows off color e-ink display with writing capabilities

from Engadget by Nilay Patel

Filed under: Displays

We've only seen a couple prototype color e-ink displays here and there, but this latest version from FujiXerox seems like its the furthest along in terms of refresh rate and usability. The A6 sized panel is made of three polymer-dispersed liquid-crystal layers, but it's still flexible, at just .4mm thick. No hard specs, really, but Tech-On says refresh time is less than one second -- just quick enough to make this viable for the next-gen Kindle, eh?

[Via Tech-On!]

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Postal Service to Netflix: redesign your mailers or face fees

from Engadget by Darren Murph

You know those handy mailers that you've been sending back to Netflix for ages as you eagerly await the next few flicks in your queue? Apparently, those buggers have cost the US Postal Service a staggering $41.9 million in additional labor costs over the past two years due to their "nonmachinable nature," and if things aren't changed, it could cost 'em another $61.5 million over the next couple years. In a letter from the Inspector General's office, Netflix is being, um, asked to rework its mailers or face a $0.17 surcharge per envelope, and if such a fee was tacked on, it would reportedly decrease the outfit's monthly operating income per paying subscriber by a whopping 67-percent. Not surprisingly, it sounds as if Netflix will bite the bullet and redesign the problematic mailer if the USPS is serious about the charges, so feel free to keep an eye out for a design change in the not-too-distant future.

[Via TechDirt, image courtesy of ABC]

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