Apple’s retail “experts” — a new position that will serve as a roaming counterpart to existing “geniuses” at brick-and-mortar locations — are expected to debut in stores in a matter of weeks, people familiar with the matter have told AppleInsider.

Interviewing for the expert position is said to start this week at the company’s retail outlets, and Apple plans to debut the new personnel in about two weeks. Originally, the “expert” title was only available to current Apple Store employees who sought a promotion within the company.

Apple has referred to the experts as “Family Room expertise out in the Red Zone.” The “Family Room” at an Apple Store is known to customers as the Genius Bar. The “Red Zone” equates to the sales floor.
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Samsung, has announced a new 64GB memory moviNAND that could be used in next-generation iPhone that may be arriving in the summer like every year.

The new chip measures 1.4 millimeters in height, composed of 16 30nm-class 32Gb MLC NAND chip and a controller. Each presentation of an Apple iPhone has always doubled the size of the maximum capacity. We expect, therefore, that the next generation iphone will have a 64GB model and these could be the chips that could be used.

Toshiba, meanwhile announced the upcoming release of 64GB NAND chip, so Apple will have the opportunity to choose between the two. We’ll see!

[Via ispazio.net] Translated by google

Clues on Apple’s forthcoming tablet continue to surface as the device is expected to debut this month, with a new report referring to the device as an “iPhone on steroids.”

Citing a close contact within Apple, Boy Genius Report on Wednesday issued a report with alleged new details and specifics on Apple’s 10-inch touchscreen device. The source said the device has an internal model number of K48AP and sports an “incredibly fast” ARM-based processor.

What kind of ARM chip remains unknown, though many have speculated that the reference Cortex-A9 design would be a likely candidate for any new hardware. However, one analyst recently claimed that the device would sport a Cortex-A8-based chip with a speed of about 1GHz. Read more…

Apple may have pre-ordered the entire available supply of 10.1-inch multi-touch display LCD and OLED screens for its upcoming tablet, according to TGDaily.

“We were designing a product for a customer and we needed 10 inch screens, but we’ve been trying for months and can’t get one from any of the Asian suppliers,” an anonymous designer for a firm wishing to remain nameless told TG Daily.

“We were told that Apple pre-ordered them all. All 10 inch LCDs, and all 10 inch OLEDs too,” their source continued, redundantly adding “it’s for the Apple tablet.”

[Via iClarified.com]

KT, the second largest mobile carrier in South Korea, indicates that Apple may launch its fourth generation iPhone as early as April.

The KoreaTimes has heard that talks over sales volumes are underway and that KT is set to sell the new devices to its bigger local corporate clients as a “litmus test” in April. It plans to provide the new iPhones to local distributors in June.

“We don’t see any bigger hurdle to introduce 4G iPhones here, as legal issues were completely cleared. It’s possible to launch the devices within the first half,” a high-ranking KT executive told The Korea Times, asking not to be identified. Read more…

The company whose graphics processing units have powered every iPhone unveiled its new chip at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Friday. The HD-capable PowerVR SGX545 GPU has full support for both OpenGL 3.2 and OpenCL 1.0 and can render 40 million polygons per second at 200MHz. Speculation has already begun that this will be the graphics engine used in the fourth-generation iPhone expected this summer.

The graphics on the iPhone – which have garnered praise over the years – are widely considered overdue for an upgrade: the iPhone’s 320 × 480 display pales in comparison to the Motorola Droid’s 854 x 480 pixel screen. An HD-capable iPhone would be a logical next step for the device. Read more…

The content of Fingerworks.com has been removed this week after remaining online for nearly 5 years after the acquisition of the company by Apple. The removal seems to correspond with the impending announcement of an Apple tablet later this month. One possible explanation is that Apple will finally be implementing many of the same advanced multi-touch keyboard gestures that were originally pioneered by Fingerworks.

Up until last week, Fingerworks.com retained photographs and details about their multi-touch keyboards and gesture pads they released for Macs years ago. In fact an old press release describes the benefits of their Multi-Touch system in a combination keyboard/touchpad: Read more…

DIY Touchscreen Analysis from MOTO Development Group on Vimeo.

In a report published late last week and gaining significant attention today, MOTO shares the results of some simple testing conducted on the iPhone, Motorola Droid, HTC Droid Eris, and Google Nexus One, assessing the accuracy of the touchscreens on the devices. According to the study, the iPhone’s touchscreen performs relatively well, offering precise straight-line tracking under both light and medium pressure, although it does exhibit loss of sensitivity at the screen’s edges.
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