The latest rumour reads like it’s August all over again, but it does have one particularly disappointing aspect. According to the source, the iPod touch camera will match the not-so-hot quality of the nano’s.

Here’s to hoping the engineers can somehow stuff the iPhone’s camera into an iPod Touch. Sure, there’s not much space to work with in the Touch, but we can believe. [The Examiner via 9 to 5 Mac]

The AVIC-F10BT isn’t just an in-dash satnav – it’s a complete in-car entertainment system. On top of its 7-inch touchscreen display, the AVIC comes with dedicated cables installed into your glovebox for connecting an iPod or USB device, a DVD player and SD card behind the screen and built-in stereo Bluetooth. There are so many different elements to this product that the only real way to review it is to break it down into sections.

Entertainment
In the glovebox of the car is an iPod cable. It’s quite long, so you could run it all the way to the back, although you probably wouldn’t. Once you plug in your iPod or iPhone, it starts charging and all control goes through to the AVIC system. And it’s a very familiar interface – you get most of the same menus as your iPod, album art and a big “clickwheel” (although it’s really just a big four-way button on the touchscreen that looks like a clickwheel. It’s not a complete translation of your iPod though – there’s no support for Genius or Genius mixes, which is a bit of a shame.

But that’s made up for by the fact that the AVIC supports video. Sure, for safety reasons it’s restricted to when you have the handbrake on, but just the fact that you can play back video from your iPhone on your display is fantastic. If you have rear screens in your car, you can use the AVIC to send video from your iPhone to the rear seats while you use the satnav.

Of course, there’s also the built-in DVD player which will do the same thing, as well as play back CDs (both audio and MP3). The SD card also plays back music, and although I didn’t get to test it, the specs say it’ll play back DivX and H.264 files via either the SD or DVD slots.

There’s also the ability to play stereo Bluetooth through the system, and if your car has steering wheel audio controls, you can get them wired up to control the AVIC, although the car I was driving didn’t have them.

Being a Pioneer car, the audio playback was pretty awesome, but most of that was the speakers. In terms of controls, the touchscreen managed most of it, although there are dedicated volume and track forwards and back buttons on the bottom of the screen.

Bluetooth
The Bluetooth functionality is a godsend. My last car had a Motorola Bluetooth hands-free kit installed that used the car’s speakers, and despite being valued at a few hundred dollars, it had nothing on the AVIC’s Bluetooth. For a start, the AVIC has a screen, which lets you see details a more traditional Bluetooth system could only dream of. Once you’ve paired up your phone, you can see your signal strength and your network on the screen. But the killer is the ability to copy your contact list from the phone over to the AVIC’s 2GB of internal storage, which means you can easily call anyone on your contact list with a few presses of the touchscreen. You also get missed calls, recent calls and a shortcut to your home number easily located on the phone’s main screen.

Considering the legal implications of using your phone while driving these days, this is almost worth the price of admission in itself. OK, not quite, but it’s still the best implementation of installed Bluetooth I’ve played with.

Satnav
There’s a lot to be said for navigation on a seven-inch screen. It’s easy to view, easy to control and, well, that’s pretty much it. Considering I’ve long been lamenting the fact that satnavs tend to be fairly stagnant in terms of new features that are actually useful, having a device with such a big screen was quite refreshing. It uses the latest WhereIs maps, which shows off things like golf courses on the screen as you drive past them. It’s also big enough that it can display your music track information (and album artwork) on the screen at the bottom, even with the satnav running.

There are a couple of other noteworthy aspects to the satnav – first off, it’s a learning device, so if you like to take a particular shortcut, it’ll start directing you that way when you next take that route.

The other big thing is a result of the device been installed – the device will actually track your position when you drive through tunnels. No beeps and messages about lost satellite reception. No confusion about underground exits. In other words, proper navigation wherever you are. And that’s awesome. It really is.

The AVIC-F10BT comes with SUNA traffic, although I have no idea where the TMC antenna is. It’s certainly not running along the bottom of your front windshield, and doesn’t need to be plugged in each time you want to use the satnav.

The Menu
The touchscreen interface is simple. The Home screen gives you the option of Music, Satnav or Phone. But if you press the home button again on the home screen, there’s a customisable page of shortcuts to key functions of the device. Things like navigate home or launching the FM radio. That means you’re no more than three presses from all the key functions of the device, and it doesn’t get much better than that.

There’s a dedicated button on the bottom of the unit that switches between satnav and music control. That may sound like an obvious inclusion, but it’s only when you’re using it that you realise how much sense it actually makes.

Verdict
This device costs $2999, plus installation. It’s the top of the range Pioneer AVIC system though, and offers the ability to control rear screens and audio output if you have a truly kickass speaker setup in your car. It also works with a reverse camera, which can be installed as an optional extra.

But despite all that, $3K still seems pretty steep. But there are a couple of things to consider – if you’re buying a new car, you’re likely to pay that much to get a satnav option, but you’ll probably miss out on the whole Bluetooth and iPod functionality. The other thing is that Pioneer have a cheaper option, which has a smaller screen and fewer functions, but maintains the core aspects of the device (iPod, Bluetooth and satnav) selling for under a grand (plus installation). Considering top of the line satnavs cost almost a grand, that’s incredibly good value. You do need a double DIN free in your car, but if you can spare it and the cash to get it installed, I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending this system. It’s a complete solution for most of your in-car needs, and well worth the price of admission.

[Pioneer]

Luckily, manufacturer Rihanna is working on this $US100 kitchen scale due out next year, complete with an iPod dock and 2W speaker (the speaker is hidden under the glass platform). Your iPod shows you the song while a black and white LCD displays the weights. I mean, does life get any better than this? [ADE via gizmag via UberGizmo]

I also don’t care because it just looks perfect as an iPod dock, using a “10-watt solid-state amplifier and a high quality Blaupunkt … coaxial loudspeaker with a massive ceramic magnet”. [Pete Verrando via Retrothing]

The thing has a 9-inch display, SD slot, 4GB of internal memory and USB connectivity. It’ll be $US300, which is expensive enough that you might want to get a photo frame, iPod dock and speakers separately. Those components will probably perform better than this all-in-one anyway. [Pr Newswire via Engadget]

According to Stuff.tv, the $US380 Heritage is well-built and produces sound far better than what you’d expect from a gadget looking as old as my parents. If you feel like spending nearly $US400 on a nice bedside companion then this could definitely satisfy your inner 60s child. I’m just plain gonna focus on keeping mine outta trouble. [Stuff.tv via Engadget via Unplggd]

What surprises me about these facts and figures — apart from iTunes skyrocketing again after the introduction of variable pricing — is the fact that CDs are not completely dead yet. They are clearly going down, but I had this mental image in which all of those round mirrors were destroyed, melting like Dali clocks in a desert of indifference. [Mint]

The neatest thing about this demo isn’t that 20 iPod touches have combined to make a giant touch display; the neatest thing is that the technology can scale.

Both the proof-of-concept video and the above illustration are by Japanese design house PROTOTYPE. Their giant hive display can begin a chain reaction when someone touches one iPod, or it’s even possible to “drop” some items between iPods (I don’t read that as full drag-and-drop capability).

Unfortunately, I have many more posts to write today, so I can’t calculate the size of a 16×9 display made up of the 50 million or so iPhone/iPod touch handsets out there. But I’m sure that someone in the comments simultaneously loves maths and hates their job enough to make this numeric factoid enter our existence. [Mongoose via technabob]

Apple Announces Over 100,000 Apps Now Available on the App Store

CUPERTINO, Calif., Nov. 4 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Apple® today announced that developers have created over 100,000 apps for the revolutionary App Store, the largest applications store in the world. iPhone® and iPod touch® customers in 77 countries can choose from an incredible range of apps in 20 categories, including games, business, news, sports, health, reference and travel. App Store users have downloaded well over two billion apps, continuing to make it the world’s most popular applications store.

“The App Store, now with over 100,000 applications available, is clearly a major differentiator for millions of iPhone and iPod touch customers around the world,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “The iPhone SDK created the first great platform for mobile applications and our customers are loving all of the amazing apps our developers are creating.”

“The App Store has forever changed the mobile gaming industry and continues to improve,” said Travis Boatman, vice president of Worldwide Studios, EA Mobile. “With a global reach of over 50 million iPhone and iPod touch users, the App Store has allowed us to develop high quality EA games that have been a huge success with customers.”

“With 10,000 downloads a day, worldwide customer response to our I Am T-Pain App has exceeded our wildest expectations,” said Jeff Smith, CEO of Smule. “The App Store has given us a unique opportunity to create and grow a very successful business, and we’re looking forward to an exciting future.”

Apple continues to improve search and discovery with new features including Genius for Apps, App Store Essentials selections, sub category listings and more valuable customer reviews. With the recently introduced iTunes® 9, it’s also now easier than ever to organize and sync your apps right in iTunes and they will automatically appear on your iPhone or iPod touch with the same layout.

The release of iPhone OS 3.0 this summer made over 100 new features available to iPhone and iPod touch users including Cut, Copy and Paste; MMS; landscape view for Mail, Text and Notes; stereo Bluetooth; shake to shuffle; parental controls; automatic login at Wi-Fi hot spots and Push Notifications. These new features have been incredibly popular with customers and there have already been more than two billion Push Notifications sent to apps available from the App Store. Additionally, the recently introduced In App Purchase feature for free apps means leading developers will now be able to offer customers the choice of buying content, subscriptions and digital services from directly inside their apps.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.

The dev says that only the iPhone 3GS and latest iPod touch have the CPU, GPU and OpenGL ES 2.0 support to possibly handle smooth N64 emulation. But the “top-notch” N64 games might not be available “just yet”.

Of course, the even bigger hurdle is a reasonable enough control scheme to make the games remotely playable to begin with. I had enough problems with the real N64 controller, so it’s tough to imagine the iPhone handling things with any greater success. [All Tech Related via Maxconsole]