According to numerous readers and grapevine-lurkers who’ve looked under the hood of the new 2.2.1 iPhone OS firmware, it contains multiple references to a new iPhone — version “2,1” in the terminology used by Apple in all its operating system/firmware variants — better known to some as the “iPhone Pro.”
Given how soon a new iPhone would have to be introduced for it to make any sense at all to include references & support code inside as minor and early-in-year of a release as 2.2.1….we don’t think that this is a replacement for the 3G model. Rather, it is a complementary model intended to broaden the range of options that iPhone adopters have when they decide to purchase one.
Since the 8GB 3G is already as low as $199, we think that this “iPhone 2.1” (not to be confused with the “2.5G” 1.0 or “3G” 2.0) will instead be a high-end model similar to the iPhone Pro we’ve reported on previously, with some or all of these enhanced features:
*Major overhaul/upgrade of the ARM based system mainboard which handles almost everything but the functions dedicated to the “iPod” and “Phone-Modem” chips which are unto themselves nearly complete system boards….those chips will most likely remain unchanged, but the ARM based mainboard will most likely be upgraded to something similar to, or faster than, the ARM Cortex A8 used in the Palm Pre. Read more
October 20th Apple Event preview
Steve Jobs will once again take to the stage tomorrow, Wednesday October 20th at the “Town Hall” on Apple’s Infinite Loop campus in Cupertino, California to unveil a new round of products and technology previews with his infamous headline-grabbing presentation style. What will be announced? Grapevine consensus appears to have a firm grasp of the big picture, but as to the details….
With a few notable exceptions (the small number of people working on certain projects within Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion,” internal code name ‘Barolo,’ force us to sit on details of those projects until after the Event when even if those projects aren’t mentioned during the Event, they will be known to a wider group within Infinite Loop and leaks can no longer be tied so easily to our sources), what we’ve been told by some of our oldest and most reliable contacts in Cupertino comports very closely with the grapevine’s consensus of what to expect tomorrow:
*Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion” as hinted by Apple’s logo for the Event:
….Lion is a collection of long-standing projects, many of them held back from the Leopard and Snow Leopard development cycles because they were too ambitious and too out of sync with Apple’s priorities at the time to make the cut for those releases. Read more