Apple on Tuesday officially announced that its iWork productivity applications, including Keynote, Pages, and Numbers, are now available for the iPhone and iPod touch. Apple has completely redesigned the applications to take advantage of iOS’s multitouch features. “Now you can use Keynote, Pages, and Numbers on iPhone and iPod touch to create amazing presentations, documents, and spreadsheets right in the palm of your hand,” Philip Shiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, said. “The incredible Retina display, revolutionary multi-touch interface and our powerful software make it easy to create, edit, organize, and share all of your documents from the iPhone 4 or iPod touch.” The applications offer improved document management and a tools button in the toolbar for quickly sharing documents without closing the application. Keynote, Pages, and Numbers are available in the iTunes App Store now for $9.99 each. Existing iWork for iPad users can upgrade for free, and the Keynote Remote is available for $0.99. Hit the jump for the full press release.

Apple iWork Now Available For iPhone & iPod touch Users

CUPERTINO, California—May 31, 2011—Apple® today announced that its groundbreaking iWork® productivity apps, Keynote®, Pages® and Numbers®, are now available for iPhone® and iPod touch®, as well as iPad®. Created for the Mac® and then completely redesigned for iOS and Apple’s revolutionary Multi-Touch™ interface, Keynote, Pages and Numbers allow you to create and share stunning presentations, beautifully formatted documents and powerful spreadsheets on the go. iWork apps are available on the App Store™ for $9.99 each to new users and as a free update for existing iWork for iPad customers.

“Now you can use Keynote, Pages and Numbers on iPhone and iPod touch to create amazing presentations, documents and spreadsheets right in the palm of your hand,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “The incredible Retina display, revolutionary Multi-Touch interface and our powerful software make it easy to create, edit, organize and share all of your documents from iPhone 4 or iPod touch.”

Keynote, Pages and Numbers import and export documents from iWork for Mac and Microsoft Office; print wirelessly using AirPrint™; and include beautiful Apple-designed themes and templates. All iWork apps now include improved document management with thumbnail images that let you find your files quickly, organize them and group them into folders using intuitive gestures. From the Tools button in the toolbar, you can easily share any presentation, document or spreadsheet without leaving the app.

Keynote makes it easy to create impressive presentations, complete with animated charts and transitions. You can play your presentation in Full Screen view on the stunning, high-resolution Retina™ display or connect to a projector or HDTV for a large audience. Available separately, the Keynote Remote app allows your iPhone or iPod touch to control a Keynote presentation on any iOS device or Mac.

Pages is the most beautiful word processor ever designed for a mobile device and has everything you need to create amazing documents. Pages takes full advantage of the high-resolution Retina display on iPhone 4 and iPod touch so you can see all the detail and richness of your documents. To make working with text easy on iPhone and iPod touch, Smart Zoom automatically zooms in to follow the cursor while you’re editing and zooms back out when you’re done.

Numbers uses Multi-Touch gestures and an intelligent keyboard to help you create compelling, great-looking spreadsheets with over 250 easy-to-use functions, flexible tables and eye-catching charts. Just like Pages, Numbers takes advantage of the high-resolution Retina display and Smart Zoom to make working with text and cells on iPhone 4 or iPod touch easy.

Pricing & Availability
Keynote, Pages and Numbers are universal apps that run on iPad and iPad 2, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4, and iPod touch (3rd & 4th generation). Keynote, Pages and Numbers are available from the App Store for $9.99 (US) each for new users, or as a free update for existing iWork for iPad customers. Keynote Remote is sold separately via the App Store for 99 cents (US).

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced iPad 2 which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.

That’s what it’s looking like according to a leaked image from Apple.pro, a site that has in the past leaked details and images on Apple products before their announcement and release. From what we can see, the seventh generation iPod nano would keep the same form factor as the existing model, though would add a relatively large camera sensor to the back of the small multi-touch music player. We’re betting that we’ll see the new iPod nano with camera appear at one of Apple’s traditional fall music events later this year.

[Via 9to5Mac]

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Following news that iOS 4.3 beta 1 has been seeded to developers, Apple’s servers are no doubt being hammered by anxious developers looking to explore all the new features. We pinged a few of our dev friends for feedback on new additions they’ve found and here’s what we have so far:

• Personal hotspot capabilities for GSM devices — as we exclusively reported earlier today
• AirPlay support for third-party native apps and third-party Web apps
• Redesigned FaceTime icon
• Multi-touch gesture support for iPad — “This beta release contains a preview of new Multi-Touch gestures for iPad. You can use four or five fingers to pinch to the Home Screen; swipe up to reveal the multitasking bar; and swipe left or right between apps. We are providing this preview before releasing them to the public to understand how these gestures work with your apps.”
• Configurable slide switch for iPad — users can now decide whether the hardware switch above the volume rocker on the iPad controls mute or rotation lock
• iAd full screen banners on the iPad — bigger ads… just what iPad users have been clamoring for

Interestingly, iOS 4.3 appears to also have dropped support for Apple second-generation iPhone — the iPhone 3G — and its second-generation iPod touch. This could make the current build Apple’s final software release for these devices.

UPDATE: Several readers have emailed us to point out that enthusiast blog iSpazio may have uncovered a little gem. References to the following effects have been found in the iOS 4.3 code, and they might be introduced as live video effects for video capture and FaceTime calls:

• Thermal Camera
• X-ray
• Kaleidoscope
• Normal
• Tunnel of Light
• Collapse
• Turbine
• Enlarge

Apple blog Patently Apple is reporting that Cupertino’s fruit company has filed two separate lawsuits against Motorola for patent infringement, specifically around multi-touch IP. The infringing products? The Motorola DROID, DROID 2, DROID X, CLIQ, CLIQ XT, BackFlip, Devour, Devour i5, and Charm 1. That is just about every Android Motorola handset in the United States. Apple’s lawsuits cover six specific patent infringements, and we have them listed out after the break. Someone needs to tell all these tech companies to hide their kids, hide their wives, and hide they husbands, too, ‘cuz everybody gettin’ sued out here.

[Via 9to5Mac]

One: Apple, Inc patent titled: Ellipse Fitting for Multi-Touch Surfaces: Patent Abstract: Apparatus and methods are disclosed for simultaneously tracking multiple finger and palm contacts as hands approach, touch, and slide across a proximity-sensing, multi-touch surface. Identification and classification of intuitive hand configurations and motions enables unprecedented integration of typing, resting, pointing, scrolling, 3D manipulation, and handwriting into a versatile, ergonomic computer input device.

Two: Apple, Inc patent titled: Multipoint Touchscreen: Patent Abstract: A touch panel having a transparent capacitive sensing medium configured to detect multiple touches or near touches that occur at the same time and at distinct locations in the plane of the touch panel and to produce distinct signals representative of the location of the touches on the plane of the touch panel for each of the multiple touches is disclosed.

Three: Taligent, Inc patent titled: Object-Oriented System Locator System: Patent Abstract: A method and system for adding system components (documents, tools, fonts, libraries, etc.) to a computer system without running an installation program. A location framework is employed to locate system components whose properties match those specified in search criteria. The framework receives notification from the system when system components whose properties match the search criteria are added to or removed from the system.

Four: Apple, Inc, patent titled: Touch Screen Device, Method, and Graphical User Interface for Determining Commands by Applying Heuristics: Apple’s invention generally relates to electronic devices with touch screen displays, and more particularly, to electronic devices that apply heuristics to detected user gestures on a touch screen display to determine commands.

Five: Apple Computer, Inc. patent titled: Method and Apparatus for Displaying and Accessing Control and Status Information in a Computer System: Apple’s invention generally relates to the field of computer systems; particularly, the present invention relates to displaying a status and control function bar or window to enable access of user selected indicia to a computer system user.

Six: Apple Computer, Inc. patent titled: Support for Custom User-Interaction Elements in a Graphical, Event-Driven Computer System: Apple’s invention relates to graphical, event-driven computer systems, more particularly to custom interactive user-interaction elements in a computer system having a window-based graphical user interface.

Apple is asking for an injunction, damages, royalties, and legal costs for the lawsuits.

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A product listing for a multi-touch mouse, dubbed the Arc Touch, from Microsoft has made its debut at several European online retailers. Details are sparse but the branding suggests that this new mouse may be the next generation of Microsoft’s current Arc mouse which offers a comfortable, curved shape but lacks multi-touch. Further adding a dose of credibility to the rumor is the fact that the domain name “arctouchmouse.com” was registered by Microsoft in March and points to Bing as a placeholder. Windows 7 users with a need for a mouse and a desire for multi-touch may want to hold off on buying that cheap $10 mouse from the big box retailer down the street and give Microsoft some time to possibly make this mouse official.

[Via istartedsomething]

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As with any leak, we suggest you approach this with a healthy amount of skepticism, but if a post made to PConline is to be believed, this upcoming Windows Phone 7 handset from HTC — the HD3 — is going to be an absolute beast. We mean, take a look at the purported specs:

• 4.5″ WXGA Super AMOLED multi-touch display
• 8 megapixel camera with dual-LED flash
• 720p HD video recording
• 1080p HD playback
• Wi-Fi / Bluetooth
• 3G / 4G connectivity
• 32GB microSD support
• 1GB RAM / 1GB ROM
• 1.5GHz Snapdragon processor
• 1800 mAh battery
• 115mm x 65mm x 10mm

Like we said, this is strictly a rumor, but how great would it be if it all came true?

[Via Gizmodo]

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According to one of LOOPRumors’ sources, Apple will sometime in the next 60 days host a special event gathering to introduce a refreshed iMac. No ordinary iMac, it is alleged that the new model will feature “a touch interface” meant for running iOS which seems to indicate the presence of a Multi-Touch display. It’s said that this move will not only allow Apple to gauge how consumers react to a touchscreen desktop, but also aide developers with the creation of iOS applications. Anyone think there’s something to this?

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Rumors of a multi-touch trackpad for desktops Macs have been along for ages, but the last time we really heard of them was last October. Since then it’s essentially been relegated to the annals of Apple rumor history, but oh look! Just hours before Steve Jobs & Co. are to take to the stage at Moscone Center for the WWDC 2010 keynote, a trio of photos said to be of the mythical multi-touch accessory have surfaced by way of Engadget. The images look extremely convincing, but let’s try to not lose our heads over a rumor this early in the morning. We’ve got a long day ahead of us.

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What you see above might just be the entire spec sheet for that mysterious Android slider from Motorola we caught a glimpse of the other day. Allegedly known as the Twist, the strange smartphone is said to measure in at 67mm-squared and 15.8mm thick, and possess a rather underwhelming feature set which includes a 2.8″ QVGA multitouch display, 3 megapixel camera, aGPS, Wi-Fi, dual-band HSPA (850/1900MHz), 700MHz OMAP 3410 processor and 512MB ROM / 256MB RAM. The slide mentions the Twist as running Android 1.5, so unless the information is badly outdated, it looks like those rumors of the device running Android 2.1 in conjunction with MOTOBLUR were wishful thinking. That is if any of this is even real.

[Via Android Central]

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P.S. We’re just snapping some pics and giving the thing the once over, so expect an initial hands on very shortly. We’ll put up a full review once we get to spend some alone time with the thing.

Motorola DROID users as a whole are a pretty happy bunch, but after finally getting their first taste of official multi-touch, we can’t help but blame them for wanting a whole lot more. The good news on this front is that Android 2.1 for the DROID will be made available next week, according to Motorola’s Facebook page. Motorola has not detailed what the update will encompass, but here’s what Engadget has been told:

• The current test build is Android 2.1 version 1
• The browser will have multi-touch
• Google Googles is pre-installed
• No visual changes to the homescreen or app drawer
• Active wallpapers aren’t included, but the fancy widgets that made their debut with the Nexus One are

Most of us probably agree that things like multi-touch in the browser are big news, but we can’t help but eagerly wait to see what all the Negative Nancy’s out there have to say about some of the nifty features that will allegedly be left behind. Regardless, we’ll be sure to give you all a shout as soon as the update starts trickling out.

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It might have legal issues galore thanks to Chandra Rathakrishnan’s legendary row with Michael Arrington, but the internet tablet formerly known as the CrunchPad has finally entered into production and should begin shipping later this month. To retail for $499 USD, the JooJoo features a 12.1″ multi-touch capacitive display with native resolution of 1366 x 768, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g, 4GB SSD, front-facing camera, accelerometer, support for Flash (HD Flash will be all systems go when 10.1 comes out of beta) as well as a bunch of givens like integrated speakers, a 3.5mm headphone jack and USB port. Also announced today is Fusion Garage’s intent to open an app web store in which JooJoo owners will be able to grab whatever developers can make using some proprietary “but standards driven” APIs. Rathakrishnan et al are rather confident that their device will be able to take on competitors such as the HP Slate and Apple iPad, even going so far as to say of the later that the JooJoo is bigger, fully supports Flash (the real internet) and will beat its major competitors to the market, but one has to wonder what it’s all for in a day and age where most people are brand-conscious to the point where they’ll often turn away from something far better. We guess you have to start somewhere.

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• The tablet’s multi-touch gestures are “out of control.”
• It’s powered by an incredibly fast ARM CPU
• It runs on the iPhone kernel.
• The internal model number is K48AP.
• There hasn’t been an updated iPhone OS build because there’s too much tablet-related code/references in the OS and Apple obviously didn’t want that to leak. Oops.
• The tablet is basically an “iPhone on steroids.”

That’s all we’ve got for now!

With Apple tablet rumors mounting and anticipation causing its market share to rise, it looks like there is still more innovation to be uncovered. Apple filed a patent application called “Keystroke Tactility Arrangement on a Smooth Touch Surface” which entails a dynamic surface that changes depending on how a user interacts with it. In order to keep a smooth surface while pointing and swiping, like on the iPhone, and getting some ridges or bumps on the surface for typing, the surface of the screen would have to physically change depending on use. So, when you’re just pointing on the screen, there are no bumps — type on the screen and bumps appear.

Another patent application called “Multipoint Touch Surface Controller” will allow greater flexibility with multi-touch systems. The patent says:

While virtually all commercially available touch screen based systems available today provide single point detection only and have limited resolution and speed, other products available today are able to detect multiple touch points. Unfortunately, these products only work on opaque surfaces because of the circuitry that must be placed behind the electrode structure.

Apparently, removing the limitations of an opaque surface would allow for better speed and accuracy, as well as the ability to detect more contact points on the screen. So, with better multi-touch technology and possibly a surface that reacts to how you use it, future Apple products, like a tablet, could see a huge leap forward with regards to how we interact with touch screen devices today.

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We try and steer clear of Apple tablet rumors as best as we can, but the latest is too good to pass up, especially considering that it flies straight in the face of a rumor we ran with nearly one month ago. According to Oppenheimer analyst Yair Reiner, Apple is almost ready to give its Chinese manufacturing partners the green light to begin mass production of the oft-rumored tablet that is believed to feature a 10.1″ Multi-Touch capacitive display. If all goes well, Reiner believes that the tablet will be available as early as March provided Apple is able to stockpile enough units in order to minimize any potential shortages. So how many units are we talking? Based on an average retail price of $1,000, Reiner predicts Apple could sell as many as 1.5 million tablets in the first quarter. As for content, it’s believed Apple is aggressively going after publishers by offering them the same 30/70 revenue sharing deal as currently exists within Apple’s iTunes App Store. To give you an idea of how attractive the offer will be, Amazon is believed to ask publishers to evenly split revenue on non-exclusive content to its Kindle

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