Engadget and MacRumors were covering Steve Jobs’ keynote address at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2010 this morning, where Jobs announced the next-generation iPhone that everyone has already seen through the multiple, highly-publicized leaks in the past couple months.

The leaks suggested that the iPhone 4 would have a new front-facing camera as well as an LED flash in the back, and both these things were confirmed at the keynote today. In addition, the phone will feature a 5 megapixel camera, and high-definition recording at 720p and 30 fps.
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Apple recently announced that they’ve passed the 2 million mark for iPads sold, and it looks like a large number of the owners would like to import photographs onto the device from their cameras. The already overpriced Camera Connection Kit, which ordinarily sells for $29 on Apple’s website, is now selling for over $100 on eBay. The reason is that the item is backordered on Apple’s website, and iPad owners seem to prefer paying an extra $70+ dollars instead of waiting 3-4 weeks.

The prices should plummet once Apple catches up and when 3rd-party kits start showing up on eBay from Asia.

(via Engadget)

We reported yesterday that Adobe had launched a “Freedom of Choice” ad campaign against Apple, the latest shot in their ongoing battle over Flash. The above nerd joke is supposed to show what it might look like if Apple responded to Adobe with their own advertisement.

(via Laughing Squid)

Image credit: Graphic by @issaco

The tech war is on between Apple and Adobe, and it’s starting to sound political. What’s fairly interesting is how Adobe’s been running “We [heart] Apple” as well as “We [heart] Choice” ads, suggesting that this tech war is all about word choice — or perhaps the word, “choice.”

The lack of Flash on Apple mobile devices has been a growing issue, especially since the release of the iPad. Apple’s omission left a lot of creatives, including photographers, scrambling to find a substitute for Flash-based sites.

A few weeks ago, Steve Jobs published his thoughts behind Apple’s movement away from Flash capabilities in mobile products.

Today, Adobe’s co-founders Chuck Geschke and John Warnock  responded in an open letter that was published in newspaper ads and on its website, titling it “Our Thoughts on Open Markets.” The letter launched alongside a new section on Adobe’s site called “Freedom of Choice.”Adobe also published a page titled “The truth about Flash,” which responds point-by-point to most of Jobs’ arguments.

Jobs had ended his letter with a stab at Adobe, saying:

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

Adobe responded:

We believe that Apple, by taking the opposite approach, has taken a step that could undermine this next chapter of the web — the chapter in which mobile devices outnumber computers, any individual can be a publisher, and content is accessed anywhere and at any time.

In the end, we believe the question is really this: Who controls the World Wide Web? And we believe the answer is: nobody — and everybody, but certainly not a single company.

So far this seems to be a war of words; Apple and Adobe are fighting over ownership of what “open,” really means and what the future of the Internet (and your portfolio) will look like.

Let us know where you stand on the issue in the comments.

The big news in the tech/gadget world is that an Apple iPhone 4G prototype was found lost in a Redwood City, California bar, disguised in a plastic case to look exactly like an iPhone 3Gs.

It found its way to gadget blog Gizmodo, who then proceeded to photograph it and disassemble it. Their conclusion? It’s real.

What’s neat is that Apple has introduced quite a few new photography features in the yet-to-be-announced iPhone. It boasts a front-facing camera, an improved rear facing camera with a larger lens, and a built in flash on the back of the phone.

The camera also has a larger sensor, and new physical volume buttons that suggest the camera can be controlled with a physical shutter button. It’s pretty clear Apple realizes that the iPhone has replaced compact cameras for many people, and is therefore delivering features people expect in a camera for casual use.

For more on the non-photography related developments, go read the post on Gizmodo.

What do you think of these new features?

A common gripe about the iPad is that it doesn’t contain a built-in camera. Developer Yusuke Sekikawa saw this need, and wrote two applications that allow an iPhone 3GS to be used as an iPad camera.

Here’s what you need to do: download the CAMERA-A app ($0.99) onto your iPad, the CAMERA-B app (free) onto your iPhone 3Gs, connect the devices via Bluetooth or WiFi, open the apps, and voila! The iPhone should be function as an external camera for your iPad, allowing you to take photos using your iPad.

If you have trouble with the link, try disabling Wifi.

Camera for iPad is another app set that uses an iPhone as an iPad camera. While the $0.99 app will allow you to use a non-3Gs iPhone, it doesn’t capture images on the iPad directly, but transfers them to the iPad when taken.

Future apps might use this same iPhone/iPad setup for video chatting — something that wasn’t possible with a non-forward facing built-in camera.

(via Gizmodo)

Image credit: Shoot iPad Photos Using iPhone by Photo Giddy

As more and more people are ditching compact cameras for their camera-equipped phones, it’s clear these hybrid devices will be playing a big role in casual imaging in the years to come. One of the leaders in this space is the Apple iPhone, which boasts countless applications that improve and customize the photography that can be done with it.

Some recent events have shed a little light into the direction Apple may be headed.

The first clue is a recent job posting on Apple’s website with the job title “Performance QA Engineer, iPad Media”:

The Media Systems team is looking for a software quality engineer with a strong technical background to test still, video and audio capture and playback frameworks. Build on your QA experience and knowledge of digital camera technology (still and video) to develop and maintain testing frameworks for both capture and playback pipelines.

Given that the iPad does not currently offer any kind of photo or video capture, this suggests that camera(s) may appear in the next iPad.

Furthermore, Electronista is reporting that sensor corp OmniVision may play a role in future Apple devices:

OmniVision executives today gave JP Morgan analyst Paul Coster hints that they may have deals for cameras in next-generation Apple devices. After a discussion, Coster understood that ‘top-tier smart phone companies’ would move from three-megapixel cameras to five in the second half of the year. He added that OmniVision was “well-positioned” to provide camera sensors for both the new iPhone and even the next iPad, which in its initial form doesn’t have any cameras.

At the beginning of the year, we reported that OmniVision had developed a 14.6 megapixel sensor for cell phones that is also capable of high-definition video recording.

The iPad is a bit to big to be a carry-around point-and-shoot replacement, so any camera that appears on it might be more geared towards video chatting, while we might see the quality of iPhone photography skyrocket in the near future.

Image credit: iPad Girl by ajstarks

Over the weekend Apple finally made the iPad Camera Connection Kit available for pre-order. The kit, which will ship “late April”, includes two connectors: a USB connector and a SD Card reader. If you use some other memory card, you’ll need to plug your existing card reader into the USB connector. So how much do these connectors cost? A mere $29 plus tax.

Any guesses as to how much it costs to manufacture these little connectors?

Easy Release is a new iPhone app designed to make it easy for you to secure model and property releases.

It was designed by Robert Giroux, a photographer of over 24 years who spent eight years on the staff of Getty Images, and uses the same format and legal language as the release forms used by major photo agencies.

The application replaces traditional paper based releases you would otherwise have to carry around with you by packing all of the forms and required fields inside an iPhone application. All the necessary fields are presented in a step-by-step wizard-style interface, and the signatures are entered directly into the application via the touch screen.

Once the release forms are completed, you can email a PDF or JPEG version of the form to yourself.

The app is available from the iTunes Store for $9.99.

(via PhotographyBLOG)

This morning Apple introduced the latest version of their photo editing software: Aperture 3. The $199 program ($99 for existing users) adds over 200 new features to the previous version, including the Faces and Places features that were popular in the latest release of iPhoto. In addition, there is now a Brushes feature that allows you to “paint” adjustments onto photographs, much like the feature that was added to Adobe Photoshop CS4. The new version will also run in 64-bit mode, which Apple claims will allow it to run an “order of magnitude” faster.