We reviewed (and loved!) Logitech’s full-sized Wireless Solar Keyboard K750 for Mac ($60) that allows you to never worry about wireless keyboard batteries again. Logitech also announced a Wireless Keyboard iPad case last month ($129).

Logitech announced a smaller version of the keyboard today called “the K760”, which not only shrinks the footprint considerably by dropping the numeric keypad, but it also addresses the No. 1 issue our commenters had by adding Bluetooth. Adding some awesome to that, Logitech took our iPad/Mac/iPhone switching needs into consideration and created a button that allows the keyboard to switch up to three Bluetooth profiles manually, instead of having to re-pair each time we switch.

The K760 hits stores next month for a suggested retail price of $80. We will hopefully have a review up shortly.

The press release follows:

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As was reported last week, and subsequently verified by or sources at Apple (here and here), Tony Fadell’s Nest Learning Thermostat has hit the Apple Store.

After a several-hour international outage last night, the Apple Store came up briefly this morning and showed the Nest Learning Thermostat for sale at $249.95, which is a $.95 premium over its suggested retail price.

Fadell is known as the “Father of the iPod” for his role at Apple, where he brought the idea of a portable music player to Jobs’ attention. He then led the iPod division until his retirement a few years ago.

After leaving Apple, Fadell founded Nest, which builds a learning thermostat with an iconic interface that many compare to the original iPod due to its circular dial.

While the connection to Apple is there, there is no direct technology connection to Apple products, making it a bit of an oddball inventory choice. Sure, you can control the Nest from your iOS device or Mac, but you can also control it from any smartphone or PC. We are not expecting Apple to carry other thermostats or home heating, ventilation and cooling (HVAC) products in the near future.

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AOC E2251FWU 22-inch USB display

USB DisplayLink monitors are a relatively new breed of peripheral for Macs and PCs. The technology creates a virtual display on your Mac/PC, compresses it, and then sends it over USB 2.0 to a monitor that uncompresses it. You would think this could cause a lag, but the transfer is almost un-noticeable by the naked eye. It is basically an extra monitor that connects to your USB port and frees your monitor port for other uses.

A few years ago, the photo frame-sized displays started appearing as small external USB DisplayLink monitors. Then came 16-inch 720p monitors last year that thin clients could use as terminals for about $100.

This month, however, a company called AOC released an impressive 22-inch 1080p DisplayLink monitor for both Mac and PC. To put it in perspective, those are the same pixels and inches as the current, smaller iMac. It really is a lot of extra monitor for playing. The AOC retails for $200, but it is currently selling for around $160.

What is exciting about this monitor is that it is powered entirely by the USB port. There is no AC adapter on this monitor or VGA/DVI/DisplayPort/etc.—just one, thin USB 2.0 cable running from the computer to the back of the monitor. USB solely powers the 22-inch 1080p display. I have been using the AOC on a 2010 MacBook Air and was surprised that it was fully functional, even when the MacBook Air was not plugged into the AC adapter.

I set up my 2010 Air with a monster 30-inch 2,560-by-1,600 DisplayPort monitor and plugged in the AOC DisplayLink 1080p display for an absurd amount of pixels coming out of the Air. How did it fare?

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Update: We have what appear to be the real deal right here

The iPhone repair experts at iFixyouri have forwarded a nifty new part that entered their catalog. It could be the back plate for the upcoming new iPhone or one of the early prototypes. We are told the Chinese parts supplier is a reliable one (not a fly-by-night) and that they are actually selling these parts (do not worry, we have one on order).

From what we can see, the part does follow a lot of the rumors and speculation. For instance, you can see the smaller dock connector at the bottom and it appears thinner overall. We are told the extra space on the bottom is used by Apple to enhance the speakers that will be louder and of a higher quality than the current iPhone. The supplier said the back plate is just one piece anchored by an aluminium alloy (not liquidmetal).

Interestingly, the supplier also told iFixyouri that black and white would not be the only two colors this year. There were at least two other colors seen for the back plate that obviously might not make it into production if these parts are indeed real. Normally, we would scoff at such a notion, but these same parts suppliers were the first to deliver the news that the iPad would come in white.

Last month, I put the full-sized Logitech Boombox up against the Jawbone Jambox in a $150 Bluetooth speaker battle. I liked both devices, but they had separate strengths and weaknesses and were best suited to different tasks. For instance, I liked the portability of the Jambox, its speakerphone capability, and charging via USB. I liked the sound and simplicity of the Logitech Boombox, but I did not like the proprietary AC adapter.

After the review, Logitech got ahold of me and said if I liked the Jambox and the Boombox, they made another product that I would love called the “Mini Boombox.” Unlike Logitech’s full-size Bluetooth speakers, the Mini charges via Mini-USB, can fit in the palm of your hand (or cargo pant pockets), and it acts as a speakerphone for an iPhone. This one retails for $100, but it can be found for $79.99 at both Amazon (with $30 of MP3s) and Best Buy.

How did it stack up against the two $150 Bluetooth speakers mentioned earlier?

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Frankly, no one has really sold me on why Apple should build a TV aside from its portable set-top box called “Apple TV.” With 7-year upgrade cycles and razor-thin margins, it seems as if Apple would be hard-pressed to introduce something noticeably better than a current high-end HDTV coupled with its Apple TV box (sure, Siri and gestures could run through that box too).

Forrester’s James McQuivey, though, has a creative idea:

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Today’s IDC numbers show that iOS and Android continue to dominate the smartphone market. They now account for 82 percent of all smartphones sold when combined, which is up from just over 54 percent a year ago. Android accounts for 59 percent of Smartphones sold, while iOS more than doubled its raw sales numbers by gaining 23 percent of the market. Meanwhile, Symbian, Blackberry, and Microsoft (although the chart above incorrectly doesn’t note it) all fell.

With iOS and Android continuing to grow, and not much in the way of innovation coming from the competition, it seems the smartphone industry is heading toward the same type of duopoly that the PC industry saw over the past three decades.

From the report:

Android finished the quarter as the overall leader among the mobile operating systems by accounting for more than half of all smartphone shipments. In addition, Android boasted the longest list of smartphone vendor partners. Samsung was the largest contributor to Android’s success, because it accounted for 45.4-percent of all Android-based smartphone shipments. But beyond Samsung was a mix of companies retrenching themselves or slowly growing their volumes.

iOS recorded strong year-over-year growth with sustained demand for the iPhone 4S after the holiday quarter and the addition of numerous mobile operators now offering the iPhone for the first time. Although end-user demand remains high, the iPhone’s popularity brings more operational pressures for mobile operators through subsidy and data revenue sharing policies.

The full IDC press release follows:
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This week’s Fortune Magazine cover story penned by Apple watcher Adam Lashinsky is called “How Tim Cook is Changing Apple”, and it goes pretty deep into some of the high-level changes at the top of Apple since its late CEO Steve Jobs stepped down. Through a few anecdotes and observations, he noted how Cook inevitably changed Apple’s culture, which perhaps drives the company to a more normal structure and M.O.

One paragraph will surely scare some:

Elsewhere there are signs of Apple becoming a more normal company. When Adrian Perica, a former Goldman Sachs banker, joined Apple several years ago, he was the only executive whose sole remit was dealmaking. Steve Jobs basically ran M&A for Apple. Today Perica heads a department with three corporate-development professionals under him and a staff supporting them, so that Apple can work on three deals simultaneously. Indeed, the vibe, in the words of a former employee, is of an Apple that is becoming “far more traditional,” meaning more MBAs, more process, and more structure. (In point of fact, 2,153 Apple employees reference the term “MBA” in their LinkedIn profiles out of a nonretail workforce of nearly 28,000. More than half the employees who reference “MBA” have been at Apple less than two years.)

Some other tidbits:
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Image via Niilo Autio

Apple is testing multiple next-generation iPhones, and we have independently heard that at least one of these devices sports a brand new display.

Apple’s iPhone display went mostly unchanged from the first iteration of the iPhone to the third, but for the iPhone 4, Apple took the iPhone display to new heights with the incredible 640 x 960 Retina Display. The display has always been 3.5 inches measured diagonally and a 3:2 aspect ratio.  As we hinted yesterday, all of that is about to change…

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Apple is currently involved in an outreach program to new neighbors in its planned “Campus 2” area. A brochure was mailed this week to residents surrounding the new campus that provided information and invited feedback in a variety of ways. Although the project seems to be a big win for the city of Cupertino, some residents voiced concern about the added traffic and other changes to the area.

We obtained a letter from one of Apple’s new neighbors—here are the takeaways:

1. Campus 2, as it is currently called, will not replace the 1 Infinite Loop campus. Instead, it will provide “research facility” office space for an additional 13,000 employees, which is more than 3,000 than 1 Infinite Loop. There is also 300,000 feet of expansion space for future growth.
2. Campus 2 will attain LEED certification and will have no manufacturing or heavy industrial activity onsite. Apple has and will continue to take extra steps to reduce auto use by employees. Moreover, the roof of the main building is a huge solar array.
3. Campus 2 will not open to the public, so there is no museum or corporate store. :(
4. The “world class” auditorium located at the very southern tip of the new campus will host product launches and corporate events.
5. The corporate fitness center/recreation center will be located to the north west of the main circular building in a separate structure.
6. Infinite Loop will remain the official corporate HQ, so top executives will likely stay behind.
7. Apple intends to break ground as soon as Cupertino approves the changes (scheduled for later this year), with plans to start occupying the space in 2015.

Neighbors can fill out the postage paid response card or go to the Cupertino.org website with comments, questions, or concerns.

Apple’s late CEO Steve Jobs originally presented the idea of the campus in June (video below) during his last public appearance that  occurred a day after the 2011 WWDC.

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Digitimes today says Apple is planning a $799 MacBook Air for Q3 based on “sources from the upstream supply chain.”

Clearly, no one in Apple’s Asian supply chain knows Cupertino’s pricing strategies. Digitimes is— at best—working off Apple, perhaps building a spec-reduced model. From the context, it seems that it is making the assumption based on falling prices of surrounding Ultrabooks, which we know is a mistake.

Nevertheless, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt:

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Anand Tech has been busy this evening, not only showing Apple’s iPhone 4S vs. the Galaxy S3 benchmarks, but also with a small detail in the new iPad 2 that many have overlooked.

“The new iPad 2,” you might ask? Yes. When Apple released the new iPad with A5X processor and Retina display, it also released the “iPad 2,4.” It is mostly the same as the iPad 2, which Apple has sold for over a year. However, Apple traded a 45nm A5 processor for a new 32nm A5 in the iPad 2,4. It is the most efficient processor Apple makes, and it is likely to be the same 32nm die size as the upcoming iPhone’s processor. (The 1080P Apple TV also employs a 32nm A5 processor, but it is limited to single core.)

Anand got the iPad 2,4 from a Best Buy and noted most Apple Stores still sold the older 45nm version. For battery life, the new iPad 2,4 saw anywhere from 1.6 hours of additional time in Web browsing to almost three extra hours in some graphics and 3D video intensive tests. Those are significant gains.

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As you can see below, the processor is much smaller in the new iPad 2,4. It will be interesting to see if Apple updates its iPad 2 specs in the coming weeks and months to reflect the new battery life reality on its iPad 2s.
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