It’s just the start of the year but Apple is already wrapped up in rumors for product releases, events and honors.

Prestige

To start things off, Jonathan Ive, Apple senior vice president of industrial design who was responsible for the iconic Apple products such as the MacBook, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad, was given the honor of “for services to design and enterprise” and named a Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (or KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II.  He will be officially anointed this year by the Queen.

This is not the first time Ive received recognition for his work, as in 2006 he was bestowed the title of Commander of the British Empire (CBE), along with other prestigious awards including Designer of the Year award from the Design Museum in London, the title Royal Designer for Industry from the Royal Society of Arts; and the prestigious Industrial Design Excellence Award in the U.S.

Rumors

This year’s Macworld|iWorld will be held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco on January 26-28.  This tradeshow is an event solely dedicated to Apple products, including Macs and iOS devices.  The event started in 1985, produced by the IDG World Expo, but in 2009, Apple announced that it would be their last year participating in the event.  But rumor has it, Apple will be reappearing at Macworld to unveil the iPad 3 or iPad HD, though another source states that the iPad 3 will be unveiled in February in time for the late Steve Jobs’ birthday.

But another source states that Apple will be holding its own event this month, though it will not involve the unveiling of the iPad 3 nor the Apple TV, but it would be more of a special media-related event led by Apple SVP of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue.  The said event will be held in New York.

Tech Innovation

Apple applied for the patent ‘Low Threshold Face Recognition’ to the US patent office to register facial recognition software.  Apple is aiming to phase out the need for passwords when unlocking your device, you just need to aim your front camera to your face and your device will unlock.  But unlike other facial recognition software, it doesn’t analyze the whole face but only a few focal points in the user’s face like the distance between the eyes, or between the eyes and the mouth etc.  Aside from that, users can set their own user profile on their iPads or other iDevices and when a user is recognized, it will automatically open the specific user profile.