Future iPhones May Have Interchangeable Camera Lenses

A patent filing uncovered by AppleInsider suggests that Apple is interested in making it possible to swap out different lenses for photography on your iPhone.

 

From the patent: "It would be desirable to provide a structure for a compact device that allows the end user to reconfigure the optical arrangement of the device while retaining the benefits of assembling the device using a pre-assembled digital imaging subsystem."

Steve Jobs had told Walter Isaacson before passing away that he wanted to reinvent the photography market.

Hated To Loved: 10 Facts About Bill Gates' Life

Bill Gates the computer wizard is known for his wealth and power. The owner of the largest personal-computer software company was earlier infamous for his temper and ruthless ways as a businessman. But he is now known as the generous giving man who has pledged his life to charity. Read on to know about Bill’s dramatic journey from being hated to being loved.

 
1. Gates’ early life:

 
Some people understand their life’s calling very early on. Bill Gates was one such man. He had started messing around with computers in his early teens. This was the time when computers were a lesser known machine and were not available in every household.

Bill’s first ever computer program which he wrote when he was in the eighth grade was a simple Tic Tac game that was to be played against the computer. The computer he was working on fascinated him with how accurately it executed every software code perfectly. He said, "There was just something neat about the machine.”

 

2. Gates and Allen meet:

 
Bill met the Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen when they were in ‘lakeside’ a boarding school. They became friends despite the two year age difference. They both shared the love for computers.

The tech duo dreamt of creating computers for everyone. They met the CEO of a computer manufacturing company with a proposal about a software program called BASIC. In reality they did not have any such program. The duo rushed and wrote one in two months. That is how Micro-Soft was born.

3. The crusader against the free software movement:

 
During the 70’s which was the early stage for computers, techies shared and freely pirated software such as Microsoft’s BASIC. Bill Gates was always against this piracy and believed that distribution of software without paying would "prevent good software from being written."

He was a visionary and the paid software made Bill a millionaire. Although he had faced widespread criticism during the 70’s techies around the world now support Bill’s ideas.

4. Bill a brilliant conniver:

 
Gates’ mother Mary Maxwell Gates introduced him to IBM chairman John Opel in 1980. Gates convinced IBM that he had an operating system on which the IBM PC’s could be run. In reality the OS was not Bill’s. He had licensed in from some other company.

He adapted the software for IBM but did not give them the source code. Bill being the visionary had anticipated that other companies would clone IBM’s PC and would want Microsoft’s operating system. He ended up earning millions because of this.

5. Gates not a good boss:

 
Bill Gates is known to be socially challenged. His temper is a menace known to all. He is infamously known for shouting matches with the CEO of other computer companies.

He was not much of a good boss either. Known to have insulted his employees he was abusive while talking to his managers during the meetings and calling their ideas ‘stupid’. This abusive manager style has become engrained in Microsoft’s management DNA. One of Microsoft’s earliest female employees even sued the company for gender discrimination.

6. A mean and unfair businessman:

 
Bill gates is also known for his shrewd and calculating ways. His company has faced numerous law suits ranging from Apple’s accusation of them copying the ‘look and feel’ of Macintosh to the lawsuit for unfair business practices. In 1998, the United States charged Microsoft under antitrust laws. Gates was evasive in court and Microsoft lost the suit.

and keeping other players from entering the market.

7. Gates the eligible bachelor:

 
Gates was never known to be much of a ladies’ man but his immense fortune and powerful standing made him one of the most eligible bachelors in town. His love affair with Melinda French started in 1989 and culminated into a beautiful marriage in 1994. The couple has two daughters and they live in a lavish 66,000 square foot property overlooking lake Washington.

for a reformed software baron.

8. The kinder and nicer Gates:

 
Melinda’s presence in Bill’s life brought a visible change in his attitude towards life. He became a softer and gentler person who wanted to do good for the society. In 1994, he gave up some of his Microsoft shares to set up the William Gates Foundation. In 2000 the couple combined three family foundations and the Bill and Melinda Foundation was born.

He also quit the CEO position in Microsoft and became the ‘chief software architect’. He has now given up the day to day functioning of Microsoft to devote time for charity.

9. Gates initiated the ‘give away billions’ club:

 
Bill Gates along with his best bud Warren buffet signed the ‘Gates Buffet giving pledge’ in 2010 according to which they would donate half of their wealth for charitable purposes. Gates also started to convince other billionaires into given away their money for charity. Mark Zuckerberg was the first to sign the pledge.

10. The new reputation- ‘a giving angel’:

 
The change in Bill’s attitude helped him reform his image which had taken a severe beating because of the anti-trust lawsuits. He is now known as the one with a heart of gold. His philanthropic efforts have earned him the respect of the world. In 2011, he appeared on Jon Stewart to discuss the eradication of polio in underdeveloped countries.

His transition from the heartless and conniving software wizard to the gentle and giving sole is an interesting saga.

5 Expert Tips to Improve Your Entrepreneurial Productivity

Building a startup is all about multi tasking and speeding up the process of development and marketing to the highest level. Some entrepreneurs are born multi-taskers and finish a set of work in a clean Swiss.  Mashable has dug up some expert tips for the entrepreneurs who want to speed up the process and build effective companies in small span of time.

 
Here are the tips that will lead you to a great startup in quicker time.

 
1.Three priorities a day

 
Multitasking, a highly misunderstood work is actually more about intelligent management and prioritization of work than just doing a lot of work at once and ending up with unfinished and haphazardly done job. So, it is advisable to choose a maximum of three things that you would like to concentrate on a particular day and work on them to the fullest extent.

2. Emails are important

 
Interaction with clients, investors and other important people around your business is important. It is noticed that entrepreneurs either completely neglect the factor or give very high importance to it and waste hours on interacting with investors and clients through emails. To cut a safe way out , what you can do is allot particular slots of about five to ten minutes in your daily schedule to read and reply to your mails.

3. Avoid long meetings

Usually entrepreneurs like having hour long meetings to sort out the business plans and lose out on a lot of time that they could have used for more productive cause. Schedule planned meetings, and brief the attendees about the agenda and the points to be discussed in the meet to keep them short and crisp.

4. The Head-start

You need to give yourself a mental or more precisely an analytical headstart everyday before you start the day’s proceedings. This would help you to keep a neck to neck match with all the issues, duties and key priorities that need to be dealt over the day and would allow you to act quickly around them.

5. Chill out

It is very important to relax yourself, both physically and mentally at the end of every day and perchance for about an hour in the middle of the day. Never compromise on the length of your chill out time for it would hamper your performance and the quality of time you are having in the enterprise.

Rumor: Apple working on standalone iSight camera?

The New iPad Buyers’ Guide published by iLounge this week included a piece that speculated Apple might be working on a standalone camera product. While the story discussed the possibility of Apple working on a point-and-shoot iSight camera, iLounge clearly labeled it as speculation and simultaneously noted it received a tip claiming Apple is working on the project.

Take special note of pages 152 and 153—“Making the case for a standalone iSight Camera.” I’ll share more on this topic shortly, but for now, I’ll say that this two-page spread very nearly had a different title. We were tipped that this project is actually happening at Apple right now, but we didn’t feel confident enough in our source to call it a certainty; it’s therefore billed as speculation. Still, there’s enough smoke to make us think there’s a fire.

It did not feel strongly enough in the source to run the story, but Jeremy Horwitz of iLounge sent out a tweet today noting once again that Apple is working on a standalone camera

Steve Jobs’ intention to reinvent the camera/photography business circulated in reports on several occassions after the release of Walter Isaacson’s official “Steve Jobs“ biography. In an interview, Isaacson said Jobs had “three things that he wanted to reinvent: the television, textbooks and photography.” In January, we reported Jobs apparently met with the CEO of photography company Lytro, Ren Ng, to discuss the business in his final months. According to Adam Lashinsky’s “Inside Apple“:

The company’s CEO, Ren Ng, a brilliant computer scientist with a PhD from Stanford, immediately called Jobs, who picked up the phone and quickly said, “if you’re free this afternoon maybe we would could get together.” Ng, who is thirty-two, hurried to Palo Alto, showed Jobs a demo of Lytro’s technology, discussed cameras and product design with him, and, at Jobs’s request, agreed to send him an email outlining three things he’d like Lytro to do with Apple.

There is no solid evidence that Apple is working on a standalone camera project, but Horwitz is the source of accurate reports from the past.

Apple CEO sees TV as area of

Apple Inc (AAPL.O) Chief Executive Tim Cook said technology for televisions was of "intense interest" but stressed the company's efforts would unfold gradually amid speculation the iPad and iPhone maker was on the brink of unveiling a revolutionary iTV.

In one of his more revealing interviews since assuming the helm of the world's most valuable company, Cook also said he hoped someday to see Apple products manufactured in the United States and outlined his approach to managing an organization long-associated with its late founder Steve Jobs.

"Another thing that Steve taught us all is to not to be focused on the past," Cook told this year's All Things Digital conference, an annual gathering of A-list technology and media executives in the upscale California coastal resort town of Rancho Palos Verdes.

Industry insiders and executives say Apple may unveil a TV-based device in late 2012 or 2013 that has the potential to shake up the cozy television content and distribution industry the way the iPod and iPhone disrupted music and mobile content, but Cook has steered clear of commenting on that issue directly.

"This is an area of intense interest for us," Cook said, referring to Apple's existing television set-top box product. "We're going to keep pulling this string and see where it takes us."

When asked specifically if Apple was making a television set, Cook said he was not going to answer that question.

Apple already sells a $99 set top box called Apple TV that streams Netflix and other content. Cook, who has previously said the Apple TV product had a hobby status inside the company, noted the company was sticking with it despite not being known as a "hobby kind of company."

"Here's the way we would look at that, not just at this area but other areas, and ask can we control the key technology?" he said in response to a question about how Apple thinks about improving the television experience for consumers. "Can we make a significant contribution, far beyond what others have done in this area? Can we make a product that we would want?"

Apple has been in negotiations with content companies for its devices. It began talks earlier this year to stream films owned by EPIX, which is backed by three major movie studios.

The company has a good relationship with content owners and doesn't see the need to own a content business, Cook said, adding he has met with several people in that business recently.

MADE IN USA?

In wide-ranging remarks, Cook said he would like to see more of the company's products assembled at home than in China and contain more U.S. components such as semiconductors.

Apple has been criticized for relying on low-cost Asian manufacturers to assemble its products and for contributing to the decline of the U.S. manufacturing sector.

Cook, who took the helm of the world's most valuable technology company in August shortly before founder Steve Jobs died, said manufacturing in the United States was difficult because of declining tool-and-die manufacturing expertise, among other things, but he was working on it.

"There are things that can be done in the U.S., not just for the U.S. market but that can be exported for the world," Cook said. "On the assembly piece, could that be done in the U.S.? I hope so, again, one day," he added.

Apple's final assembly is done through Asian contract manufacturers, particularly Taiwan's Foxconn Technology Group and its listed entity Hon Hai Precision. Cook noted that Apple does some component manufacturing in the United States, including the main microchip that runs the iPhone and iPad.

Apple makes the A5 processor in a 1.6 million square-foot factory in Austin, Texas, owned by Korean electronic giant Samsung Electronics (005930.KS).

Cook also said some of the glass for the iPhone and iPad is made in a plant in Kentucky.

The CEO talked about how the iPad was just in the "first innings," but declined to say what was in store for it next.

He reiterated his belief that many consumers will use the iPad more than computers. In response to a question about PC software-maker Microsoft Corp's (MSFT.O) efforts to enter the tablet market, Cook brushed off the threat.

"The more you look at the tablet as a PC, the more the baggage from the past affects the product," he said.

Apple released the iPad in 2010 and it has quickly defined the tablet computer market, selling more than 67 million units so far.

DOUBLING DOWN ON SECRECY

The 51-year old Cook said he spends less time focused on marketing and design as CEO than his predecessor, who Cook said spent "virtually all of his time on those two things."

At a company the size of Apple, Cook said, having a strong team is critical.

"You could have an S on your chest and a cape on your back and not be able to do everything," said Cook, who later cited Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr as well as Walt Disney Co Chief Executive Bob Iger as figures that he looks up to.

Cook also discussed efforts to make the company more transparent on certain issues, such as supplier responsibility and environmental matters, but stressed he was committed to preserving Apple's culture.

One Jobs legacy that Cook flagged is Apple's well-known penchant for going to great lengths to keep details of new products under tight wraps, noting that he planned to "double down on secrecy" on products.

But he suggested Apple would not be constrained by its past.

"I love museums, but I don't want to live in one," he said.

Apple's Tim Cook wins where Steve Jobs failed: On Java

Tim Cook has pulled a startling coup, getting Larry Ellison to start cooking -- if not eating -- his own dog food.

The headlines make it sound like Oracle, the inherited owner of Java, has generously stepped in to help protect Mac owners from infections like Flashback. There's an important backstory, though, that hasn't hit the headlines.

Although Steve Jobs tried for years to get out from under the Java ball and chain, last week Tim Cook finally coerced Oracle into supplying updates for its own software. It only took 700,000 infected systems to convince Oracle to handle Java on OS X itself.

Steve Jobs dropped Java for the Mac in October 2010, removing it as part of the standard OS X install. The Mac OS X Developer Library post for Oct. 20, says, "The Java runtime ported by Apple and that ships with Mac OS X is deprecated. Developers should not rely on the Apple-supplied Java runtime being present in future versions of Mac OS X." At the same time, Apple stopped accepting apps for the Mac App Store that relied on the Java Runtime Environment. Apple had never supported Java clients in its iOS.

On Oct. 21, 2010, the MacRumors forum said that Jobs replied to a concerned Java developer, claiming, "Sun (now Oracle) supplies Java for all other platforms. They have their own release schedules, which are almost always different than ours, so the Java we ship is always a version behind. This may not be the best way to do it."

Of course, Jobs knew at the time he was blowing smoke -- or perhaps a reality distortion field set in. With a few notable exceptions, Java's owner has never supplied versions "for all other platforms." Back when Java started, Sun supplied a version of the runtime for Linux because, as the "father of Java" James Gosling says, "there was no one else to do it." Every other distributor -- Microsoft, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Apple -- rolled its own version, based on Sun's reference code.

Java 1.0 for Mac OS 9 was released in 1996, the year Apple bought NeXT and Jobs returned to the Apple fold. Jobs knew full well that Apple was developing its own version of Java, just like all the other platform providers.

Microsoft started taking its version of Java far afield, adding its own extensions to the language, and Sun sued in 1997 to get its trademark back. A bitter, extended, and very public court battle ended in January 2001, with Microsoft paying Sun $20 million for its transgressions and Sun taking control of Java updates. Until this last week, Sun had released Java versions only for Linux and Windows. All the other platforms made their own.

The fact is that Jobs had been trying for years to get Sun, then Oracle, to take over Java releases for OS X. Back in 2007, Jobs is quoted as saying, "Java's not worth building in. Nobody uses Java anymore. It's this big heavyweight ball and chain." In 2010, when Jobs dropped Java like a hot cup of coffee, he tried to shame Oracle into supporting it. Since then, Java's been a neglected stepchild in the Mac world, completely shunned in iOS.

As Gosling says, "In the early days, they [Apple] were insistent on doing the port themselves. They put terrific energy into it. They did a good job. But then, as OS X took hold and Apple was able to convince developers to target their nonportable/proprietary environment, Apple's fundamental control-freak tendency took over and they put less and less energy into Java."

Oracle is now distributing Java SE 7 Update 4 for Mac OS X, and that will become the default version on Java.com starting May 1. Henrik Stahl, senior director of Java product management at Oracle, says, "Oracle's JDK and JavaFX release supports OS X Lion on any 64-bit capable Intel-based Mac. ... There are community efforts based on OpenJDK to build JDK 7 [and JVM on 32-bit machines] for other configurations, easily found using your favorite search engine. We applaud these efforts! :-)"

Oracle has announced full plans to embrace OS X Lion and later with new updates to the Java Standard Edition and Java Development Kit. (The JDK includes the Java Runtime Environment, JRE, which in turn includes the Java Virtual Machine, JVM. And you thought Microsoft's terminology was confusing!)

It's not clear if Oracle will be updating the Java runtime for earlier versions of OS X. That's particularly troubling because Dr. Web, the site that originally broke the story on the Flashback infections, now says that 25 percent of all Flashback infections come from Macs running OS X 10.5 Leopard, and 63 percent more are from OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. Only 12 percent of all infections are in OS X 10.7 Lion, and those are the only machines that will be patched with Oracle's Java SE 7 Update 4. Leopard and Snow Leopard users are left to the "community efforts." If either Apple or Oracle is concerned about the hundreds of thousands of customers left swinging in the wind, there's no indication I can find.

In contrast, Apple's two recent Java patches covered Lion and Snow Leopard. They didn't cover Leopard.

It seems that Jobs' desires have finally been fulfilled, with the Java monkey now on Oracle's back. Cook was at the helm -- perhaps actively involved? -- when it happened. Apple's now able to wash its hands of all Java's faults going forward. Oracle has responsibility for its own product. All it took was 700,000 infections.

This story, "Apple's Tim Cook wins where Steve Jobs failed: On Java," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.