MacRumors

The Khronos Group, a member-funded consortium focused on establishing open standard application programming interfaces (APIs), has announced the formation of the "Compute Working Group" to focus on open standards for parallel computing across graphics processing units (GPUs) and CPUs. Apple, AMD (ATI) and Nvidia are amongst the initial members.

The group will specifically evaluate and establish Apple's proposed Open Computing Language (OpenCL) specification. OpenCL aims "to enable any application to tap into the vast gigaflops of GPU and CPU resources through an approachable C-based language." The press release gives us a broader overview of what OpenCL is trying to accomplish:

A widely available open-standard compute programming specification with high-performance, general computation support and robust numerics will complement existing solutions and further liberate GPU-based compute power from the realm of graphics-only applications and provide a multi-vendor, portable interface for coordinating all the many-core GPUs and multi-core CPUs within a system. Such capability will have broad applicability - including a central role in the Khronos API ecosystem by providing a powerful compute front-end to OpenGL and OpenGL ES, and a platform for accelerating tasks such as physics and image processing / recognition.

The Khronos Group is also responsible for OpenGL and OpenGL ES standards as well as many others.

At WWDC, Apple first announced its plans to introduce performance enhancing technologies into their next version of Mac OS X (Snow Leopard). The technologies included "Grand Central" and "OpenCL" which promise to improve computer performance by taking advantage of modern multi-core processors as well as the GPUs found on modern video cards.

According to the president of the Khronos group, this technology could be used in both desktop and handheld devices in the future.

Apple recently took the wraps off their first Apple Retail store in Australia and officially announced the date and time for the grand opening. The Sydney, Australia store will have its grand opening on Thursday, June 19th, 2008 from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. This means the store will be open in time for the Australian launch of the iPhone 3G on July 11th.

Located at 77 King Street, the three story building is expected to have about 1335 square meters of floor space. Two other Apple Stores are expected to follow: one in Melbourne, and another in Sydney.

Additional photo galleries of the new store can be found here: gallery one, gallery two, and gallery three (by Kenneth Nordahl).

AppleInsider reports that Apple detailed their use of a JavaScript framework called SproutCore at WWDC last week.

SproutCore is an "open source, platform-independent, Cocoa-inspired JavaScript framework for creating web applications that look and feel like Desktop applications". Apple also contributed to performance updates and added new functionality to the SproutCore framework, which serves as the basis for their new MobileMe web-applications. Apple describes the user experience for their new MobileMe web applications as Desktop class, providing features such as drag and drop, click and drag, and keyboard shortcuts (guided tour video).

Apple's interest in SproutCore is, in part, to reduce their dependence on Adobe's Flash player, which traditionally is used for more interactive content on the web. Being based entirely in JavaScript, any modern web browser can run these SproutCore based applications without any additional plugins.

Those frameworks offer prebuilt code that has been polished to work on all browsers, making it easier for the developer to concentrate on what their web page should be doing rather than repeatedly reinventing the wheel for various low level functions. In that respect, open JavaScript frameworks can replace Flash without requiring any secondary plugin runtime because they are simply open JavaScript that runs in the browser directly.

Apple has also notably resisted adding Flash support to the iPhone, and made significant efforts to optimize Javascript in future versions of Safari. These improvements should trickle down into the iPhone's mobile Safari as well. This being said, the functionality of SproutCore can not replicate many of the advanced functions of Flash (such as videos and advanced animation).

The article makes the leap that SproutCore represents "Cocoa for Windows" suggesting that Apple may use the tool to develop cross-platform web-versions of its productivity applications, such as iWork, but this appears to be speculative. In a related note, a new startup called 280 Slides has introduced a web-based PowerPoint/Keynote presentation application. 280 Slides was founded by two former Apple employees and also utilizes a Cocoa-inspired JavaScript framework called Objective-J/Cappuccino.

Roughly Drafted provides a birds-eye view of the key technologies coming in Mac OS X Snow Leopard. While Apple's press release and later comments by Steve Jobs provide hints of what Grand Central and OpenCL are planning to accomplish, this article adds a few extra details.

According to the article, Apple's Grand Central is a new thread management architecture which simplifies the developer's task to support multi-threading:

Snow Leopards Grand Central Dispatch does the same thing [as modern networking] for processes, packetizing tasks into Blocks and routing them to available processing cores as efficiently as possible. It can also manage the big picture for the whole system, adjusting how it balances its tasks as the performance load increases. This would be close to impossible for Individual developers to do themselves.

With the recent trend towards multi-core CPUs, exploiting multi-threaded designs is required to take advantage of today's processors. As expected, OpenCL will allow developers to also pass off tasks to the computer's Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). However, it appears OpenCL code will be stored as bytecode to allow for just-in-time compilation (same as Core Image) allowing applications to be specifically optimized to the graphics hardware it is being run on. Similarly, Grand Central will oversee OpenCL tasks as well, to optimally route code to the best available processor.

Apple expects to ship the final version of Mac OS X Snow Leopard in "about a year".

One reader has found references to an unreleased High Definition USB iSight in Apple's QuickTime system files. The line is specifically labeled "Next Generation USB iSight" in QuickTime's localizable.strings and also carries a reference of 'iSight HD'. We're not sure how old this reference is, but a quick Google search shows no previous discussion of it. Still, it remains possible that this could be an old reference to a project that is no longer planned.

The iSight was an external Firewire webcam that Apple sold between 2003 and 2006. Apple stopped selling the stand-alone iSight in December of 2006. Apple has since integrated iSight cameras into their laptops and iMac, but their external displays remain camera-less.

The iPhone 3G will launch on July 11th, and we've consolidated a few tidbits about launch day. In the meanwhile, readers are organizing regional meetups for launch day.

- iPhone will launch in 20 countries on July 11th: Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK and the US. (France and Belgium launches have been delayed)
- In the U.S., the iPhone 3G will be sold at Apple Retail or AT&T stores.
- iPhone 3G sales time is rumored to be 6PM on Friday, July 11th
- If all countries launch the new iPhone at the same local time (6pm), then New Zealand will be the first country where customers will have 3G iPhones in hand. This corresponds to 2am Eastern time on July 11th.
- Both Gizmodo and Engadget have posted FAQs which address the basic questions about the iPhone 3G.
- Reports of required in-store activation in the U.S. remain, but one unconfirmed tidbit we've heard is that customers with existing iPhones will be shunted to a separate line and will simply need provide the new IMEI number (printed on the outside of the box) from their iPhone 3G. Activation will reportedly then be completed at home after switching your sim card to the new phone and plugging into iTunes. If true, this would speed up sales for those upgrading their existing phones and also leave the iPhone 3G's packaging intact (to the relief of many).

We expect more confirmed details to emerge in the weeks leading up to the launch.

After each major event, MacRumors provides a wrapup of rumors to reveal the sources of the most accurate (or inaccurate) information.

iPhone 3G

As widely expected, Apple released the iPhone 3G at WWDC 2008 at $200 with 3G and GPS but no front-sided video camera. The specs for the iPhone had been well predicted, and, as we had warned, the evidence was weakest for the front-sided video camera.

From a spec perspective, both Engadget and Scott Mortiz of Fortune (and subsequently Cult of Mac/Kahney) accurately predicted a number of details about the new phone, including price point, flush headphone jack, case design and features. Their seemingly conflicting "thicker" vs. "thinner" case predictions could both be interpreted with some truth since the edges of the iPhone 3G are thinner but the center is negligably thicker.Fakes and Photos

iPhone case design leaks came frequently during this round of rumors, but it was the first iPhone case leak that turned out to be the most accurate. iPod Observer deserves credit for the first and most accurate case photo released.

Unfortunately, a large number of fake images were posted by a few over-eager blogs. With the increased attention surrounding Apple, sites have become quick to post even questionable photos, which comes at the cost of their future credibility.

Kevin Rose

Digg's Kevin Rose remains a wildcard with regard to Apple rumors. He was frequently the first to report on iPhone rumors during this round, and succesfully described the inclusion of GPS and a $200 price point for the new iPhone. However, he was also the first source for the video-conferencing rumor, which turned out to be inaccurate.

Import Records

One rumor that received a lot of attention came from ImportGenius, who claimed to have found international shipping notices documenting what was thought to be iPhone 3G shipments coming into the U.S. as early as March. As best we can tell, this intepretation was wrong. With a release date in July, it seems clear that the iPhone 3G ramp-up has only begun, as later reported by Barrons.

Snow Leopard

Both TUAW and Arstechnica provided accurate details about Mac OS X Snow Leopard, which was first announced at WWDC. Claims of a January 2009 release, however, were a bit ambitious.

Other Winners and Losers

XSKN, iDealChina: 3rd Party Cases - true
WeiPhone - More 3G iPhone Photos... Now in White - true
iPhoneClub.nl: More White 3G iPhone Photos - true
TUAW: .Mac Revamp - true
DaringFireball + MacRumors: Apple Buys Me.com - true

CNET: App Store to Launch at WWDC - false
MacScoop: No GPS in new iPhone - false
MacTalk.com.au: Australian Resellers Get Mysterious Boxes - hoax
Shaw Wu: Chance of Multi-touch Device at WWDC - false
Page 2: 3G iPhone Specs and Price - false
TUAW: Mac Fusion Developer Mac - false
CrunchGear: 3G iPhone with Video Chat - false

Looking Ahead

Some readers were disappointed by the focus on the iPhone during this year's WWDC, but few rumors had pinpointed any new Mac releases around this time. Intel is expected to launch the Montevina platform on July 14th, while the MacBook is expected to be revised in Q3 of this year (July-September). The fate of the Mac mini remains unknown, as it has not yet seen a revision, despite rumors of an impending update.

The most intriguing rumor remains the prediction that Apple will introduce a Mac tablet in the fall of this year.

The next major Apple event scheduled is Macworld San Francisco which takes place January 5th-9th, 2009. Apple, of course, may hold smaller media-only events in the interim.

Apple has seeded a second version of Mac OS X 10.5.4 to developers today. While the latest build (9e12) fixes a dozen more issues in Mac OS X Leopard, the biggest new feature to be supported will be Apple's recently announced MobileMe service. MobileMe is Apple's .Mac replacement service which will allow users to sync contacts, email, and calendar across various devices. It also provides advanced web applications to access your information anywhere with a web browser.

Apple has announced that MobileMe will be launched in early July. Apple's system requirements for MobileMe include Mac OS X 10.5.4 as well as iTunes 7.7, so we expect these two updates to also be released in early July.

Apple provides a Frequently Asked Questions document for existing .Mac customers who will be transitioning to MobileMe.

Update: The system requirements for MobileMe also list 10.4.11 as being compatible, but "some features require Mac OS X v10.5 and iLife 08."