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It's the new Shuffle controller. Instead of the buttons on the headphone; you can now do swiping motions on the device.
 
My initial thought was trackpad but its way too small. It seems like it almost certainly is a touchscreen and not a solar panel, trackpad or anything less functional simply because it has two connectors, one for video and one for touch controls, just like an iPhone.

I'd say it was too big for a shuffle unless the shuffle is going to become a watch. Nano is more likely than Shuffle for me. TV remote is a possibility.
Someone else already mentioned it should have a home button to go with it somewhere. That also points to Nano for me, but I guess it could be moved to an edge for wrist mounting purposes.

Its certainly an interesting item.....
 
Is it not obvious?

It is the new shuffle.

This is too small and not practical for use as a remote (a remote has to be relatively bigger than that and easy to find around the couch).

I don't think anyone is suggesting this is the whole remote, maybe just a portion of it. Or multiple of these could be used for soft buttons in conjunction with standard hard buttons.
 
It's a new front facing display for the new Mac Pro. Displayed will be iStat type info. It'll also broadcast iSteve messages on a daily basis to remind you how much he cares.
 
AppleTV remote?
Car dashboard display?
Military touch screen for wrist based device?
iSpecs for stereo vision 3D for the next series of Macs?
 
Way too small for a remote.

New Shuffle Screen.

Remote SCREEN, although I am not sure everyone here is actually cognizant of the fact that it said 3 cm x 3 cm, NOT 3 inches. That makes it about the size of the screen of my mp3 player that plugs into my car DC receptacle. However, that is not a touchscreen.

Maybe this one is a touchscreen for such a device. With a 30-pin connector, it could be a player control to do away with the physical click buttons.

We should keep on guessing.
 
Honestly? Nothing I hope, it's far too small to be useful for anything.

Oh and for anyone saying "fat fingers etc" you said the same thing about the iPhone... People managed to live.
 
iScouter? iGeiger counter? with retina display and magnifier in your eyes... what am i saying LOL

200px-TurlesScouter.png


oh wait.. it should be transparent..
 
Prototype tester

The display connection in the 3x3cm screen is the same as on the iPhone. THe ribbon at the bottom is for a digitizer overlay.

My guess is that this was a prototype part used to test display technology, as to keep final device screen dimensions secret.

064134-2_201007091757271_500.jpg
 
I'm quite a Apple fanboy, and yesterday I was searching the web for news about a upcomming TomTom car-kit for the iPhone 4, when i suddently stumpled over this video. I know the title on the system menu says "iPod" but who knows?

It looks like apple are creating a car or sound system that's going to be using a new UI, which might just fit this little screen perfectly.

I'm really hoping that they'll create a car-kit, would be so awesome.


/ChristianLom

From responses to that video, it's the new iPod Out screen for a BMW.

adoorenbos 1 hour ago:
"this is new bmw ipod out function, this is the car screen which shows the conneced ipod"
 
I wonder if it has a Retina display? XD

I'd say it's for a new iPod Nano and/or iPod Classic.

I doubt it's the shuffle because the whole idea of the shuffle is that it is a small and simple device with no screen, designed to shuffle through your music randomly without (necessarily) telling you the song - adding this screen would defeat that purpose and make it in the same league as the Nano.

Somehow, I hope it is for a new iPod device that gets all its music from the cloud - from your iTunes library at home (owned/purchased tracks) or stream it from Apple's music store for free (Hulu), and the device would only need 1gb or even less of internal space. Hopefully apple will give it a one off cost and free service (like the Kindle) as opposed to a subsidized initial cost + a contract.

Tim
 
Why assume that they were planning on producing a product with it? Apple has labs, they do research, what's to say it wasn't part of a proof-of-concept or a prototype for something that may never be produced, or that will have changed radically by the time a product is eventually derived from it?

It's a lot less exciting than a lot of the ideas being thrown out here, admittedly, but seems almost as likely. 3cm x 3cm is really small for a touchscreen - I'd question the utility of something like that, unless they were going for very low touch resolution (e.g. 3 x 3 grid) and it was just for graphical buttons.
 
- New universal remote (play/pause/next buttons + swipe)
- touchscreen for iPod Shuffle (play/pause/next buttons + swipe)
- Watch to keep track of your iPhone. (like Sony Ericsson watches)

Pick one :)
 
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