Gizmodo: renders

The Future of Apple, According to Its Biggest Fans

John Herrman — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:46:31 EST

Also known as the entire technology press amirite? Ha? In all seriousness though—Maclife asked various bloggers, journalists and tech personalities what their dream Apple products would be, and mocked them all up in detailed renders. Here's what happened:

Veronica Belmont, of Tekzilla/Mahalo/BOL fame/general video on the internet fame, sees Apple finally going ahead with that Courier concept Microsoft keeps dragging their feet on. Or, Apple subsumes Microsoft entirely. What do you know, Belmont?

BoingBoing's/MAKE's Mark Frauenfelder goes as DIY-y as is humanly possible, and projects a future in which Apple is just a bunch of dudes with Arduinos and a pair of pliers. You see, we'll just buy Apple's designs, and your iMake object printer will print them out.

Brian Lam, Man With Hat, just wants his iPhone to get reception in San Francisco, for once. Hence, bunny ears.

There are a couple more, and they're all in the same whimsical, not-quite-serious vein. Check them out at [Maclife]

Computer Screen Glitches Can Be a Beautiful Thing

Danny Allen — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 12:10:00 EDT

Appreciating the look of garbled images isn't usually the top priority if your monitor or TV freaks-out (unless it's scrambled porn). But the new book, Glitch: Designing Imperfection, celebrates artists who manipulate these short-lived disturbances. Take a look:

Glitch took four years to come together, and the 200 or so artists it profiles were pulled from over 900 submissions. The images are grabbed, composited, and sometimes shaped into something altogether different, but always derived from malfunction.

Kinda trippy, and definitely techy. I'm using the first example below as my new desktop background—it sorta reminds me of an Amon Tobin album cover. The book comes out in September, and you can pre-order at: [Design Imperfection via PopSci via ffffound]

New Zune HD Renders Surface: Fake Fan Art or For Real?

John Mahoney — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 09:30:00 EDT

These lack the polish and Zune-y color styling of the last leak, which leads me to believe these very well may be the work of a frothing Zune-guy-in-training. But the production levei is high.

The shots surfaced on WM Power User with no real certificate of authenticity. And the accompanying specs carry the scent of fandom—with built-in HDMI, HD radio and integration with Xbox Live Arcade games in "3D". Still, despite some funky overlapping graphics on the screen and some pixelation here and there, whoever made these did a good job interpreting the concept art we saw from a different angle. [WM Power User]

GPS Coin Is Spare Change That's Actually Worth Something

Mark Wilson — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 16:40:00 EST

I dislike dealing in cash, mostly because it inevitably leads to a bunch of coins that rattle my pocket and nerves alike. But if those coins had superfluous GPS functionality, I'd reconsider my stance.

Dubbed the Inbi-Out, this concept coin can be flipped to add some spontaneity to coming adventures. Where should I go next? Flip. Oh, the Kitten-mart. Fantastic. (And a good thing too, as all those happenstance outings to Bear Mart have left a nasty layer of scratches on my hall tree that I'll have to sand out, plus my security deposit is pretty much a wash.) [Yanko Design]

Nokia N96 Rendering Looks Fake, But Interesting

Jason Chen — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 18:40:27 EST

GSMhelpdesk.nl has some renders of what could possible be (but probably isn't) the Nokia N96. These renders show a 3.2-inch, 16 million color touchscreen display, a dual-sliding QWERTY keyboard, and a one-way sliding dialpad keyboard. There's also a 6-megapixel camera on board, with 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth 2.0. What's really cool about this rendering is the dual-sliding keyboard—the major thing that's missing from the current Nokia N95 models. (Notice it works upside down? Guess there's theoretically an accelerometer in there for direction sensing.) [gsmhelpdesk via Esato via Mobile Mentalism via Switched]

Rumor Smashed: Meizu Didn't Rip Off Artist For Phone Renders

Jason Chen — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 16:00:13 EST

Despite making a Meizu phone that looks way too close to the iPhone to be a coincidence, the latest news about Meizu ripping off an artist to pimp their work is off-base. It's true that someone placed Deviant Art artist Lithium Picnic's photo onto a Meizu M8, but it turns out that the image was actually rendered by a fan on Meizu's forums. Not that it makes things any more legit, but Meizu themselves aren't to blame for this round of appropriating someone else's work and calling it their own. [Meizu]

HTC Omni Revealed: UMPC-Like, But Runs Windows Mobile 6

Jason Chen — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 11:40:35 EDT

We're personally looking forward to the Vista-capable HTC Shift for our UMPC-from-HTC needs, but this HTC Omni seems quite nice from the renders. It has WM6, 3G UMTS/HSDPA, a 4-inch 800x480 display, TV/VGA out, 256MB ROM, 128MB RAM, microSD expansion slot, 802.11b/g, Bluetooth, GPS, a large QWERTY and a size of 130 x 81 x 16mm.

No other specs or details, but we're looking forward to what HTC decides to do with this one. The flip-open gloss face looks nice, even if there is a lot of unused space on the inside of the cover.

HTC Omni pics and specs [UnwiredView]

Opus Operis Windows Mobile 5 Phone In November?

Jason Chen — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 14:14:08 EDT

We've seen sexy renderings of phones before, but we've yet to see anything we can actually touch with our own two hands. A company called Zenum has a similar promise with their Opus Operis WM5 phone—slick, but vaporware as long as there are no real photos.

The specs: WM5, tri-band GSM, OMAP 750 processor, 64MB RAM, Bluetooth 1.2, 802.11b/g, 2-megapixel cam, 2.5-inch QVGA screen, and miniSD slot. Zenum is claiming a November launch, which seems, well, unlikely. – Jason Chen

Product page [Zenum via Engadget Mobile]