Well, OK, "stupid gimmick" may have been a bit hyperbolic, and yes, there are probably a few cases where a touch interface on a desktop/notebook class device might be useful, but I think it would be something that most users in most situations would not find genuinely useful. I can't think of any case where I would personally find it useful (but I don't do graphics related work), and, if buying a MBP or iMac, I really don't want to pay for something relatively expensive (relative to, say, an extra USB port that I might never need to use but am just as happy to have in case I ever need it) that I'd never use.
That is a good point! However, there is a thing called economy of scale-- look at the cost of DVD drives or Hard Disks (or even LCD Displays). Once they were a high-priced, specialty item, available as an option. The first Hard disk for a microcomputer cost $5,000 for 10 megabytes of storage-- now much smaller, larger-capacity, faster, more-reliable ones (for pennies on the dollar) are standard equipment.
If touch screens gain in popularity (and I believe they will) they could become the standard
From what I've been able to find, a big determinant in the cost of LCD displays is the size of the production run.
Quote:
Even for those like you who might find it useful at times, the ergonomics would not be good. It might be useful to have OS support for touch and allow users who need it to hook up touch capable displays, perhaps mounted into their desktops at a slight angle, or something like that.
Yes, things like a newscaster, a draftsman, a tele-strator (John Madden), a light table for manipulating images (e.g. the SI Swimsuit pictures), and the afore-mentioned graphic artist activities.
Quote:
I would also note that in the few anecdotal reports I have read from people with touch enabled Windows systems, they find it a fun thing for a little while, but that quickly wears off and they are soon back to using keyboard and mouse, essentially ignoring completely that they have a touch capable system. In most cases, it seems like it's just too much physical effort, and too awkward to pick your arm up, reach out to the screen and touch something to perform an action. Although, it's not like I'm reporting on something new here, this has been discussed many times on the forum.
That is also what I've heard. But the problem could be that the applications and OS do not properly use or exploit the touch interface to the point that it becomes second-nature to use it.
Touch existed on phones and other devices before the iPhone. Apple made it as natural to use as, well, "pointing your finger".
This, to me is the key: let us use whatever tools (including our fingers) that make sense-- enhance productivity, enjoyment and/or improve the user experience.
Some day soon, I hope that Apple will publish a Motion-like app specifically for the iPad
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
The MALI GPU isn't anywhere near as capable as even the 9400M, which is on the low-end for Motion work. The iPad won't have enough RAM either. Motion is also meant for integrating with video and you can't do any video editing on the iPad so there wouldn't be any point. There's also the issue of the video sizes - typically animations are saved uncompressed, which would take forever to save to mobile Flash memory and use up GBs of space. What you'd really need to do this is a hackintosh netbook with the 9400M chip and 2GB RAM or more.
I should have been more specific:
First: I didn't mean all the bells and whistles and full video integration-- I know that is beyond the capabilities of the device. Rather, some features for basic manipulation of the sort (size, resolution) of images and videos you would have on a device like that.
Second: I guess what really attracts me about Motion is its high-level interface-- "you just get in there and do it". You want to resize something, just do it! You want a mask, just draw one. You want an effect, just pick one.
Apple would need to remove/hide a lot of the low-level interface details, and skinny-down some of the options...
... but there is something that could be done, for the person who is out and about, say the kids soccer game, with a camera and an iPad.
Third: I routinely run Motion on an old Developer Transition System: 17" iMac, 1.83 GHz Core Duo, 2GB RAM RadeonX 1600 GPU. This is not a powerhouse but it runs fine along with Mail, Safari (26 Tabs) and a few other apps.
Give me something simple that runs on the iPad that satisfies the needs of the moment-- I will do the heavy-lifting, later, on more capable hardware and software.
I think Apple is running into a bit of a problem here. Their strategy of having a limited product range in each class has served them very well, but perhaps the time is coming when they have to consider separating devices such as the iPhone and iPad into 'home' and 'work' versions. An onboard camera will exclude the device from many work environments (including 1 Infinity Loop probably! ) whereas it is expected by customers who want to fill up Flicker with badly taken photos of their friends from unflattering angles. A separate 'pro' version would solve this dilemma, but it would require a change of thinking to bring it about.
... That is also what I've heard. But the problem could be that the applications and OS do not properly use or exploit the touch interface to the point that it becomes second-nature to use it.
Touch existed on phones and other devices before the iPhone. Apple made it as natural to use as, well, "pointing your finger"...
I think the key point is that with a phone or iPad, you are holding the device relatively close to you, and you are able to hold it in a position that makes manipulating it with a touch interface feel natural. With a desktop or notebook, you are sitting down, with the screen typically further away and relatively higher than it would be with a hand-held device, and holding your arm extended out and up for any period of time is just not comfortable.
I don't think this problem has anything at all to do with the implementation of the touch interface on various devices. As a test, get an iPad, attach it to the front of your monitor, sit at your desk and try working on it like that for an hour or so. I don't think you'll be quite so enthused about the idea after that.
Or more realistically, A4 for iPad is single-core 1GHz and the iPhone is single-core 800MHz.
Why would they put 4 ARM cores into a device they expect to get 10 hours of battery life from just so they can run the apps 16 times faster than the iPhone 3GS?
It's not going to be quad core, nor is it going to have 2GB RAM. It's a $500 iPod with a big screen. 1GHz Cortex A8 or A9 single-core with either 256MB or 512MB RAM.
Yeah but PhotoBooth is quite a quirky app. If you could take a photo of yourself and then manipulate it with touch, it would be fun for kids. Just smile, snap, add a funny nose, big ears, hat etc.
It's also easier for making avatars for forums, and games can incorporate it into the fun - not necessarily like eye-toy but even just mapping your face onto a character or something. Burnout does this - it takes your photo when you win a race and puts it on your game driving license.
I don't really see the point of putting a 960x640 display on a 3.5" display. You're not going to see much more detail. I can barely make out the pixels on the current iPhone screen and text is smooth. I guess if they can do it, why not but that will be one very high density screen. I'd rather just have an IPS LED backlit display at the same resolution.
The MALI GPU isn't anywhere near as capable as even the 9400M, which is on the low-end for Motion work. The iPad won't have enough RAM either. Motion is also meant for integrating with video and you can't do any video editing on the iPad so there wouldn't be any point. There's also the issue of the video sizes - typically animations are saved uncompressed, which would take forever to save to mobile Flash memory and use up GBs of space. What you'd really need to do this is a hackintosh netbook with the 9400M chip and 2GB RAM or more.
The Cortex-A9 power-optimized hard macro implementation delivers its peak performance of 4000 DMIPS while consuming less than 250mW per CPU when selected from typical silicon.
I really don't know much about it but is the key issue with development fragmentation across iOS platforms the actual pixel count or the screen ratio or both?
If you continue to have 2 ratios (3:2 and 4:3) is the actual pixel count so important? Shouldn't scaling be relatively easy? e.g. the iPhone apps could be 480x320, 720x480 or 960x640?
The choices would be to dev scalable apps for 3:2 and have them run letterboxed on iPad or 4:3 apps when it is specific to the scale of the iPad (e.g. iWork but not most games)
I understand its limitations however some believe this is going to replace notebooks. Clearly it isn't.
However its hard to say your Tablet is a powerful device when you are going to use the exact same chip which by the way is a 17.00 chip in your mobile phone. The A4 will make the iPhone rather power but it makes the iPad weak, at least weak for anyone looking for a notebook replacement which many says this is going to be.
The A4 is fine for what the iPad is, the A4 isn't fine for what some say the iPad is.
I think that it could easily replace a netbook for many people and possibly a notebook for mobile salesforce and the like. I do not expect it to run photoshop and handle converting video.
I believe many people may have a inflated idea of what it can do, but there are also people who think it is simply a large iphone.
I am working with a mobile entertainment company ( no not three strippers and a truck ) and we were talking about issuing a phone and netbook for each employee. When showing them what was possible with the iphone os on a 10 inch screen they have become very interested despite the $150 price difference.
I really don't know much about it but is the key issue with development fragmentation across iOS platforms the actual pixel count or the screen ratio or both?
If you continue to have 2 ratios (3:2 and 4:3) is the actual pixel count so important? Shouldn't scaling be relatively easy? e.g. the iPhone apps could be 480x320, 720x480 or 960x640?
The choices would be to dev scalable apps for 3:2 and have them run letterboxed on iPad or 4:3 apps when it is specific to the scale of the iPad (e.g. iWork but not most games)
Could someone with more knowledge comment?
Nobody has more knowledge then anyone else around here. Well, except for Gruber maybe, but he doesn't participate in these forums. He does seem to have real Apple sources.
Scaling is easy as long as the aspect ratio is the same. As in my other post, the key is legacy support.
If you increase resolution in a non square way, old applications can and will look crappy. If the new iPhone resolution is 720x480, legacy apps will look crappy because when you upscale old 480x320 apps to 720x480, 2.25 pixels will be in the same place as 1 pixel on 480x320 screen. It's really 1 full pixel + 0.5 pixel horizontally + 0.5 pixel vertically + 0.25 pixel in a corner. Fonts and graphics will look jaggy and blurry because the 2.25 pixels are trying represent what used to be represented by one pixel. We will notice something being half a pixel off. It's even worse then that as Apple may try to dither or whatever the term is those half and quarter pixels to smooth out fonts and lines and graphics. So, it's not really half a pixel, but it could be many pixels.
This will make apps look like crap. Apple doesn't do that. Pure Cocoa objects may upscale well, but I think those will be too few and too simplistic to matter.
960x640 at ~3.5 inches is a nice logical choice because it means there would be 4 pixels in the same place as one pixel in a 480x320 ~3.5" screen. All the pixel boundaries are preserved. Pixel doubling of apps will look really good and should be in-differential.
The pixel count is really important from a legacy app perspective. If Apple chooses a resolution that isn't an square upscale, legacy apps will look like crap. Changing aspect ratios would be another huge sin for legacy apps. Both of these will mean a lot of work for developers, and Apple has already dropped a load of work on them with the iPad.
If the next iPhone is 960x640, iPhone 960x640 apps will run on the iPad at 1x with the said letterboxing. 480x320 apps will run at 2x or 1x. iPad 1024x768 apps will run as well, iPad apps. When moving an iPad app to iPhone or iPad touch, the resolution doesn't matter much as the application UI would have to be redesigned anyways since the screen area is 8x smaller. App developers have to design a specific application UI for iPad and a specific UI for iPhone and iPod touch, regardless of resolution.
The biggest issue in all this is a 960x640 screen is a holy heck, 330 dpi screen! It could be really expensive to manufacture. I really don't know, but generally, I believe this to be true just purely based on there not be a lot of demand from OEMs for 300+ dpi screens. Dead pixels could be an issue. Cost can be an issue. Apple is generally conservative with OEM parts that could submarine one of their products. Don't know enough about LCD screen manufacturing to really say.
I've had thoughts where Apple will have to stay with 480x320 forever because those 150+ thousands apps, which are a huge marketing advantage, have become a prison and they have to stay with 480x320 forever. Apple had a near death experience with Mac OS Toolbox/Classic apps and transitioning to Mac OS X. Palm basically is near death as they couldn't bring their legacy apps with them. MS is slow as molasses because they have to manage all that Win32 cruft. 960x640 on a 3.5 to 4 inch screen is a wonderful solution if it can technically and economically be done.
If they go with 720x480, legacy apps will look like crap with 1.5 upscaling. Not the greatest solution for developers, and even worse for consumers. Some may stomach it, but it won't be a good situation.
I think that it could easily replace a netbook for many people and possibly a notebook for mobile salesforce and the like. I do not expect it to run photoshop and handle converting video.
I believe many people may have a inflated idea of what it can do, but there are also people who think it is simply a large iphone.
It probably can replace a netbook for a lot of people, but only because a netbook is an inappropriate tool for what they are doing. They really needed an iPad all along, but it didn't exist.
Apple has been slowly migrating towards resolution independence, but I have not heard much about it lately. 300+ ppi is going in that direction, but the benefits are lost on the iPhone's small screen. The likely possibility is that the camera will record in that res (perfect for iFrame, importing to iMovie), and maybe the power draw is less to output that res for playing back this video on an iPhone without having to process the down-scaling.
A front-facing cam is great for recording and taking pics while including yourself. Not so much for video chats - the angle is ridiculously low (no one is going to want to hold the phone up horizontally level out in front of their face for a video chat).
So, while the rumored specs may be true, it's probably for different reasons than we are imagining.
Apple has been slowly migrating towards resolution independence, but I have not heard much about it lately.
They had included it with the Specs for Mac OS X Tiger, or maybe Leopard, but then later removed it. The work on RI doesn't seem to have changed at all since Leopard. You can turn it on and test it with the following command (1 is the default value, 1.25 would be 25% larger and so on):
The forward-facing camera is to read hand motions, fellas. Go back a few patents. Yes, social networking chats will be featured, but think Tom Cruise sweeping stuff on and off the screen with gestures. Should apply to all macs, not just iPhone.
You got it right. HAND MOTIONS will be one of the new features. As for Social Network chatting, DON'T count on it. The bandwith just is NOT there YET!
In any case, Multi tasking and hand gestures are good but for those who want it we really need an ULTIMATE IPHONE EDITION
Comments
Well, OK, "stupid gimmick" may have been a bit hyperbolic, and yes, there are probably a few cases where a touch interface on a desktop/notebook class device might be useful, but I think it would be something that most users in most situations would not find genuinely useful. I can't think of any case where I would personally find it useful (but I don't do graphics related work), and, if buying a MBP or iMac, I really don't want to pay for something relatively expensive (relative to, say, an extra USB port that I might never need to use but am just as happy to have in case I ever need it) that I'd never use.
That is a good point! However, there is a thing called economy of scale-- look at the cost of DVD drives or Hard Disks (or even LCD Displays). Once they were a high-priced, specialty item, available as an option. The first Hard disk for a microcomputer cost $5,000 for 10 megabytes of storage-- now much smaller, larger-capacity, faster, more-reliable ones (for pennies on the dollar) are standard equipment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corvus_Systems
If touch screens gain in popularity (and I believe they will) they could become the standard
From what I've been able to find, a big determinant in the cost of LCD displays is the size of the production run.
Even for those like you who might find it useful at times, the ergonomics would not be good. It might be useful to have OS support for touch and allow users who need it to hook up touch capable displays, perhaps mounted into their desktops at a slight angle, or something like that.
Yes, things like a newscaster, a draftsman, a tele-strator (John Madden), a light table for manipulating images (e.g. the SI Swimsuit pictures), and the afore-mentioned graphic artist activities.
I would also note that in the few anecdotal reports I have read from people with touch enabled Windows systems, they find it a fun thing for a little while, but that quickly wears off and they are soon back to using keyboard and mouse, essentially ignoring completely that they have a touch capable system. In most cases, it seems like it's just too much physical effort, and too awkward to pick your arm up, reach out to the screen and touch something to perform an action. Although, it's not like I'm reporting on something new here, this has been discussed many times on the forum.
That is also what I've heard. But the problem could be that the applications and OS do not properly use or exploit the touch interface to the point that it becomes second-nature to use it.
Touch existed on phones and other devices before the iPhone. Apple made it as natural to use as, well, "pointing your finger".
This, to me is the key: let us use whatever tools (including our fingers) that make sense-- enhance productivity, enjoyment and/or improve the user experience.
I believe that touch will be a major tool.
*
John Gruber's comment on the iPhone HD name makes a lot of sense.
That was sly the way you mentioned someone and then linked to your own blog. I don't normally call people out on spam, but that was a sly move.
Some day soon, I hope that Apple will publish a Motion-like app specifically for the iPad
The MALI GPU isn't anywhere near as capable as even the 9400M, which is on the low-end for Motion work. The iPad won't have enough RAM either. Motion is also meant for integrating with video and you can't do any video editing on the iPad so there wouldn't be any point. There's also the issue of the video sizes - typically animations are saved uncompressed, which would take forever to save to mobile Flash memory and use up GBs of space. What you'd really need to do this is a hackintosh netbook with the 9400M chip and 2GB RAM or more.
I should have been more specific:
First: I didn't mean all the bells and whistles and full video integration-- I know that is beyond the capabilities of the device. Rather, some features for basic manipulation of the sort (size, resolution) of images and videos you would have on a device like that.
Second: I guess what really attracts me about Motion is its high-level interface-- "you just get in there and do it". You want to resize something, just do it! You want a mask, just draw one. You want an effect, just pick one.
Apple would need to remove/hide a lot of the low-level interface details, and skinny-down some of the options...
... but there is something that could be done, for the person who is out and about, say the kids soccer game, with a camera and an iPad.
Third: I routinely run Motion on an old Developer Transition System: 17" iMac, 1.83 GHz Core Duo, 2GB RAM RadeonX 1600 GPU. This is not a powerhouse but it runs fine along with Mail, Safari (26 Tabs) and a few other apps.
Give me something simple that runs on the iPad that satisfies the needs of the moment-- I will do the heavy-lifting, later, on more capable hardware and software.
*
... That is also what I've heard. But the problem could be that the applications and OS do not properly use or exploit the touch interface to the point that it becomes second-nature to use it.
Touch existed on phones and other devices before the iPhone. Apple made it as natural to use as, well, "pointing your finger"...
I think the key point is that with a phone or iPad, you are holding the device relatively close to you, and you are able to hold it in a position that makes manipulating it with a touch interface feel natural. With a desktop or notebook, you are sitting down, with the screen typically further away and relatively higher than it would be with a hand-held device, and holding your arm extended out and up for any period of time is just not comfortable.
I don't think this problem has anything at all to do with the implementation of the touch interface on various devices. As a test, get an iPad, attach it to the front of your monitor, sit at your desk and try working on it like that for an hour or so. I don't think you'll be quite so enthused about the idea after that.
Or more realistically, A4 for iPad is single-core 1GHz and the iPhone is single-core 800MHz.
Why would they put 4 ARM cores into a device they expect to get 10 hours of battery life from just so they can run the apps 16 times faster than the iPhone 3GS?
It's not going to be quad core, nor is it going to have 2GB RAM. It's a $500 iPod with a big screen. 1GHz Cortex A8 or A9 single-core with either 256MB or 512MB RAM.
Yeah but PhotoBooth is quite a quirky app. If you could take a photo of yourself and then manipulate it with touch, it would be fun for kids. Just smile, snap, add a funny nose, big ears, hat etc.
It's also easier for making avatars for forums, and games can incorporate it into the fun - not necessarily like eye-toy but even just mapping your face onto a character or something. Burnout does this - it takes your photo when you win a race and puts it on your game driving license.
I don't really see the point of putting a 960x640 display on a 3.5" display. You're not going to see much more detail. I can barely make out the pixels on the current iPhone screen and text is smooth. I guess if they can do it, why not but that will be one very high density screen. I'd rather just have an IPS LED backlit display at the same resolution.
The MALI GPU isn't anywhere near as capable as even the 9400M, which is on the low-end for Motion work. The iPad won't have enough RAM either. Motion is also meant for integrating with video and you can't do any video editing on the iPad so there wouldn't be any point. There's also the issue of the video sizes - typically animations are saved uncompressed, which would take forever to save to mobile Flash memory and use up GBs of space. What you'd really need to do this is a hackintosh netbook with the 9400M chip and 2GB RAM or more.
The power consumption, per core:
http://arm.com/products/processors/c.../cortex-a9.php
The Cortex-A9 power-optimized hard macro implementation delivers its peak performance of 4000 DMIPS while consuming less than 250mW per CPU when selected from typical silicon.
If you continue to have 2 ratios (3:2 and 4:3) is the actual pixel count so important? Shouldn't scaling be relatively easy? e.g. the iPhone apps could be 480x320, 720x480 or 960x640?
The choices would be to dev scalable apps for 3:2 and have them run letterboxed on iPad or 4:3 apps when it is specific to the scale of the iPad (e.g. iWork but not most games)
Could someone with more knowledge comment?
I understand its limitations however some believe this is going to replace notebooks. Clearly it isn't.
However its hard to say your Tablet is a powerful device when you are going to use the exact same chip which by the way is a 17.00 chip in your mobile phone. The A4 will make the iPhone rather power but it makes the iPad weak, at least weak for anyone looking for a notebook replacement which many says this is going to be.
The A4 is fine for what the iPad is, the A4 isn't fine for what some say the iPad is.
I think that it could easily replace a netbook for many people and possibly a notebook for mobile salesforce and the like. I do not expect it to run photoshop and handle converting video.
I believe many people may have a inflated idea of what it can do, but there are also people who think it is simply a large iphone.
I am working with a mobile entertainment company ( no not three strippers and a truck
I'd really love it if they had one >100 Gig so I could put my entire music collection on it and still have room for movies.
It's a main reason I'm waiting for Rev B of the iPad. I'll just have to make do with an OS X hacked netbook until then.
I really don't know much about it but is the key issue with development fragmentation across iOS platforms the actual pixel count or the screen ratio or both?
If you continue to have 2 ratios (3:2 and 4:3) is the actual pixel count so important? Shouldn't scaling be relatively easy? e.g. the iPhone apps could be 480x320, 720x480 or 960x640?
The choices would be to dev scalable apps for 3:2 and have them run letterboxed on iPad or 4:3 apps when it is specific to the scale of the iPad (e.g. iWork but not most games)
Could someone with more knowledge comment?
Nobody has more knowledge then anyone else around here. Well, except for Gruber maybe, but he doesn't participate in these forums. He does seem to have real Apple sources.
Scaling is easy as long as the aspect ratio is the same. As in my other post, the key is legacy support.
If you increase resolution in a non square way, old applications can and will look crappy. If the new iPhone resolution is 720x480, legacy apps will look crappy because when you upscale old 480x320 apps to 720x480, 2.25 pixels will be in the same place as 1 pixel on 480x320 screen. It's really 1 full pixel + 0.5 pixel horizontally + 0.5 pixel vertically + 0.25 pixel in a corner. Fonts and graphics will look jaggy and blurry because the 2.25 pixels are trying represent what used to be represented by one pixel. We will notice something being half a pixel off. It's even worse then that as Apple may try to dither or whatever the term is those half and quarter pixels to smooth out fonts and lines and graphics. So, it's not really half a pixel, but it could be many pixels.
This will make apps look like crap. Apple doesn't do that. Pure Cocoa objects may upscale well, but I think those will be too few and too simplistic to matter.
960x640 at ~3.5 inches is a nice logical choice because it means there would be 4 pixels in the same place as one pixel in a 480x320 ~3.5" screen. All the pixel boundaries are preserved. Pixel doubling of apps will look really good and should be in-differential.
The pixel count is really important from a legacy app perspective. If Apple chooses a resolution that isn't an square upscale, legacy apps will look like crap. Changing aspect ratios would be another huge sin for legacy apps. Both of these will mean a lot of work for developers, and Apple has already dropped a load of work on them with the iPad.
If the next iPhone is 960x640, iPhone 960x640 apps will run on the iPad at 1x with the said letterboxing. 480x320 apps will run at 2x or 1x. iPad 1024x768 apps will run as well, iPad apps. When moving an iPad app to iPhone or iPad touch, the resolution doesn't matter much as the application UI would have to be redesigned anyways since the screen area is 8x smaller. App developers have to design a specific application UI for iPad and a specific UI for iPhone and iPod touch, regardless of resolution.
The biggest issue in all this is a 960x640 screen is a holy heck, 330 dpi screen! It could be really expensive to manufacture. I really don't know, but generally, I believe this to be true just purely based on there not be a lot of demand from OEMs for 300+ dpi screens. Dead pixels could be an issue. Cost can be an issue. Apple is generally conservative with OEM parts that could submarine one of their products. Don't know enough about LCD screen manufacturing to really say.
I've had thoughts where Apple will have to stay with 480x320 forever because those 150+ thousands apps, which are a huge marketing advantage, have become a prison and they have to stay with 480x320 forever. Apple had a near death experience with Mac OS Toolbox/Classic apps and transitioning to Mac OS X. Palm basically is near death as they couldn't bring their legacy apps with them. MS is slow as molasses because they have to manage all that Win32 cruft. 960x640 on a 3.5 to 4 inch screen is a wonderful solution if it can technically and economically be done.
If they go with 720x480, legacy apps will look like crap with 1.5 upscaling. Not the greatest solution for developers, and even worse for consumers. Some may stomach it, but it won't be a good situation.
I think that it could easily replace a netbook for many people and possibly a notebook for mobile salesforce and the like. I do not expect it to run photoshop and handle converting video.
I believe many people may have a inflated idea of what it can do, but there are also people who think it is simply a large iphone.
It probably can replace a netbook for a lot of people, but only because a netbook is an inappropriate tool for what they are doing. They really needed an iPad all along, but it didn't exist.
A front-facing cam is great for recording and taking pics while including yourself. Not so much for video chats - the angle is ridiculously low (no one is going to want to hold the phone up horizontally level out in front of their face for a video chat).
So, while the rumored specs may be true, it's probably for different reasons than we are imagining.
Apple has been slowly migrating towards resolution independence, but I have not heard much about it lately.
They had included it with the Specs for Mac OS X Tiger, or maybe Leopard, but then later removed it. The work on RI doesn't seem to have changed at all since Leopard. You can turn it on and test it with the following command (1 is the default value, 1.25 would be 25% larger and so on):
defaults write -g AppleDisplayScaleFactor 1
The forward-facing camera is to read hand motions, fellas. Go back a few patents. Yes, social networking chats will be featured, but think Tom Cruise sweeping stuff on and off the screen with gestures. Should apply to all macs, not just iPhone.
You got it right. HAND MOTIONS will be one of the new features. As for Social Network chatting, DON'T count on it. The bandwith just is NOT there YET!
In any case, Multi tasking and hand gestures are good but for those who want it we really need an ULTIMATE IPHONE EDITION