Appletell

The US Patent and Trademark Office published several of Apple’s patent approvals today, all of which relate to different aspects of the iPhone’s functionality. The first patent that has been approved deals with organization of the iPhone’s interface, mainly to reduce the clutter of adding too many visual elements to a document. The patent indicates the use of nested interface elements, for example, clicking a button to bring up a menu with operations that the user may perform.

The second patent approved by the US Patent and Trademark Office demonstrates user input on the iPhone’s touch keyboard and how the iPhone highlights the letter that is pressed, as well as how long the button stays highlighted.

The third patent relates to touch gestures which can select, as well as delete items using the iPhone’s touch screen. The process recognizes gestures in the order of first editing a list, selecting an item for deletion, and then finally being prompted on whether or not to delete the item.

Check out the three iPhone patent applications at MacNN.

Visitors of the Airport Express Page on Switzerland’s online Apple Store may notice that they are greeted with a description of the Airport Express that clearly identifies it as a new model, as reported by MacGeneration.

“Connect to the Internet, print, and share music from iTunes with any room in the house. Everything without wires. Now with 802.11n as standard,” the description (which has now been removed) read, translated from its original French.

Apple promises as much as five times the speed as the earlier 802.11g standard with the new Airport Express, which is used by the current model for sale from Apple. The price, core USB printing, and disk sharing features also appear to be the same as the older model.

Apple is not known to make mistakes on any of its online stores, and while this possible leak is potentially real, it can also be some sort of joke or error on Apple’s part. Apple has now removed most of the “leaked” information, meaning that they might not have meant to display it in the first place.

The (accidental?) slip has not appeared on any of Apple’s other international online stores but would signal the likely change of the Airport Express hardware, which has remained the same since it was introduced by Apple in June 2004.

As the rumors predicted, the Apple Store was down this morning, and new MacBooks were announced. The MacBooks now use Intel’s latest Core 2 Duo (Penryn) chipset, and have been upgraded across the board. While prices remain the same, the processors have been bumped up from 2.0Ghz and 2.2Ghz to 2.1Ghz and 2.4Ghz respectively. Also, the two upper end MacBooks now come with 2GB of RAM standard, and the whole MacBook line has been updated to 3MB L2 cache.

Click for the full tech specs after the break.

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If you are in the market for a new iPod, because your old one is dying on you, Apple has had a deal for quite awhile now, that allows you to save 10%. All you have to do is bring your old iPod into the Apple store and trade it in for a new one at 10% off. Not bad. Mind you, if you are the least bit technical, you can probably sell it on eBay for more than you would save from Apple. However, it is a nice service that Apple offers, and helps to give us a greener earth, and of course, a greener Apple.

Via [TUAW]

Today was a very exciting day for all Apple fans all over the world, but also a sad day. The original iPod which we just called “iPod” is no more, it is now suffixed as the “iPod classic.”

The latest update to the classic was announced today. The device is now available in only silver and black metal casings. Seems like Apple is tossing the “glossy” look on a lot of products lately.

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Looks like those rumors that have been flying around these last few weeks have been true, with the announcement of the new “fat” nano’s during today’s stevenote. The new nano line does not only contain a new body, but many other features.

First, the new nano includes a larger screen. The screen has moved up from a tiny postage stamp sized screen to a large 2.0” display, only 0.5” smaller than the iPod video screen. But the best part is, there is no loss in display quality with the small 2.0” screen pumping out an iPod-video resolution of 320x240 pixels.

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Along with todays event came an update to Apple’s iPod Shuffle line. The update includes the addition of new colors to the lineup, as well as a “(PRODUCT)Red” iPod shuffle.

The old color lineup consisted of Silver, Blue, Green, Orange, and Pink. The latest color refresh includes the original silver, red, light-green, purple, and a light-blue (almost teal).

The color refresh has left a lot of people discouraged, such as myself. I’m still waiting on a black iPod Shuffle.

iPod Shuffle [Apple.com]

There have been a lot of rumors circulating lately over the redesign of Apple’s iPod Video as well as the iPod nano. A picture appeared today on the brokenflicker blog portraying what is said to be the new iPod nano.

The device shown looks a lot like images shown in previous rumors, and features a Beatles album on the cover. It should be interesting to see how this pans out, and only time will tell if this really is the new iPod nano. Looks like we’ll have to wait until Wednesday to find out if this is true or false.

On a personal note, I’m actually a lot more excited about the 6th generation iPod coming out.

Via [Broken Flicker]

Apple has released a new line of iMacs, with a new look as well. The new machines come in three models, low end 20”, high end 20”, and 24”. The new, thinner iMac uses glass and aluminum, and sports a glossy display. Inside, the iMac has a (up to) 2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo processor, up to 4GB of memory, up to 1 TB of HD space, and 802.11n and Bluetooth 2.0.

The low end 20” model comes with a 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 1 GB of RAM, a 250 GB HD, an 8X SuperDrive, an ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT, and the new Apple keyboard, all for $1199. The high end 20” model comes with a 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 1 GB of RAM, a 320 GB HD, an 8X SuperDrive, an ATI Radeon Hd 2600 Pro, and the new Apple keyboard, all for $1499. The 24” model comes with a 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 1 GB of RAM, a 320 GB HD, an 8X SuperDrive, an ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro, and the new Apple keyboard, all for $1799.

The new iMacs come with iLife ‘08, and are shipping soon.