Tech Tuesday: More iPhone rumors
BY ROBERT EVATT World Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
1/22/13 at 6:54 AM
Everyone brace yourself. It's time for yet more crazy rumors and speculation about the iPhone.
Apparently it's never too soon to try to read the tea leaves about what the next iPhone will bring, and this cup of Chinese Breakfast Blend is predicting three different models.
A report from China Times claims that an updated iPhone 5 will launch in June, along with a device sporting a 4.8-inch screen called "iPhone Math" - either that's a mistranslation or someone is a serious fan of "Adventure Time."
That would be an odd move, since Apple Inc. already has stretched the screen with the iPhone 5 and we've just gotten a round of rumors that Apple is trying to make the iPhone smaller and cheaper.
Then again, makers of Android phones keep beefing up their screens and seeing their products getting more popular. Plus, Apple released a smaller iPad in an Android-style 7-inch size, and it's selling like crazy after years of Steve Jobs saying we didn't want a smaller iPad.
An even odder move would be the third iPhone mentioned by China Times, which would come out for next Christmas and feature a 12-megapixel camera. Would an update that minor be enough to spur sales?
For those who doubt any big changes are on Apple's immediate horizon, remember that the company refreshed the iPad after just six months, and that plenty of Android manufacturers have been churning out sequels so quickly they're hard to keep up with.
Added to all this is the report that Apple is cutting in half the parts orders for the iPhone 5 because of weaker-than-expected demand.
Is Apple trying to renew interest in a struggling brand? Maybe not. Multiple analysts now are saying the iPhone 5 is still selling great, and that the reduction in parts orders is due to manufacturing improvements that have lowered the number of defective parts.
After looking at all those wild, contradictory rumors and speculation, I'm confident enough to say that Apple is a company that exists and will release products of some kind.
Programmed profanity
The quest to create truly human-like artificial intelligence just hit a hilarious roadblock.
Watson, the IBM supercomputer most famous for defeating Ken Jennings in Jeopardy!, is continually fed new information to help it pass the Turing Test - in other words, so it can communicate with anyone in any given situation and fool them all into thinking they're talking to a human being rather than a machine.
One wrinkle is that we don't always talk in the Queen's English - we pepper our speech with all kinds of slang, and our text with netspeak.
Recently, someone at IBM got the great idea to upload the crowd-sourced and rowdy slang website Urban Dictionary to Watson's memory. The result? IBM created a supercomputer that wouldn't stop swearing at them.
The company's researchers wiped Urban Dictionary from Watson's memory and chained him with a profanity filter. Which is a shame, since tackling how normal people use and abuse language really is a complex problem to overcome if we're going to build a bona fide faux person.
Plus I'd love to hear HAL 9000 say, "I'm sorry Dave, I can't (bleep)ing do that."
Original Print Headline: A new iPhone 5? Competition gets intense
Associated Images:
The iPhone 5 already has a bigger screen than its predecessor, so why would Apple be considering an upsized display? Then again, manufacturers of Android phones are making them quite large — and they're selling like crazy. Associated Press file
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