Apple – Page 2 – The Daily Opinion

Video of the Week: Showing the iPhone 4S to Public and Telling them it’s the 5

We wouldn’t make any accusations about the IQ of Apple fans like some other places, although Apple’s Marketing Senior Vice President Phil Schiller might, suggesting that wireless charging isn’t in the iPhone 5 because Apple users aren’t smart enough to use it:

“Having to create another device you have to plug into the wall is actually, for most situations, more complicated,”

Nimbly sidestepping the point that a traditional charger also plugs into the wall, but wireless charging means you don’t have to fiddle with that cord to plug into the phone in the dark, and wireless charging means your phone can charge while sitting on top of the speaker playing music wirelessly with NFC. And, thanks to wireless charging pillows being available in myriad places soon (including Coffee Bean), users don’t have to worry about carrying a charger around to ensure they have enough juice to last the day.

But Jimmy Kimmel had someone take to the streets with an iPhone 4S and told people it was an iPhone 5. Including people already owning and holding the 4S.

Apple Mobile and Music refresh 2012 a.k.a Let-Down of 2012

Last week, Nokia announced its new flagship mobile phones – the Lumia 920 and 820. Although the hype was certainly there, the interest was not and Nokia’s stock continued to drop. Tonight, Apple showed off its newest iPhone and musical device/software refreshes. Hype was certainly there, interest and wow factor…not so much and the really annoying thing is, I predict its stock will still keep rising.

Tim Cook and iPhone 5

Led by new CEO Paul O’Grady…I mean Tim Cook (seriously they really do look like each other), Apple’s September event kicked off as usual with some statistics on how well the fabled glass and metal products are selling around the world. Awesome. A few minutes in and the iPhone 5 was unveiled. The naming of the device is totally logical seeing as it is the sixth iPhone and therefore iPhone 5 is the obvious name for it. To those of you that saw the leaked images and rumored designs of this new device, it is exactly the same. Like with every iDevice launch, there is little to no surprise as with the help of the Internet everyone knows exactly what to expect. The non-surprises don’t end there; the new iPhone has a 8-megapixel camera that improves on the one found in the 4S with some new technologies that make shooting in the dark or finding the nice bokeh background easier; it certainly took me by non-surprise. The new iPhone also has LTE capabilities, meaning a faster 4G antenna. For those of you who aren’t familiar, 3G was like broadband for the mobile phones, 4G/LTE is like fiberoptics allowing a very quick data connection to your mobile when you are in a supported area. The iPhone 5 will also have Bluetooth 4.0 and of course iOS 6, the features which were covered in one of my previous articles. Oh and a quicker A6 processor. All these updates seem a bit dull and expected but wait! There are a few new things the iPhone 5 offers that lift it a step up from dull to mundane.

Insert here.

The new iPhone 5 has a redesigned dock connector. Gone are the days of the nine year old (seriously that long ago?!) 30-pin iPod connector and in is the new “Lightning” connector. The cable still uses USB but one can probably assume that it will be 3.0 with the possibility of there being a Thunderbolt alternative. Given the naming of the new connector, I reckon this is very likely. The new connector is also reversible meaning that it is the same when rotated 180 degrees reducing the possibility of a broken port when fumbling around the charger in the dark after a night out.

One plays basketball...

And finally, the iPhone 5 has the long rumoured and debated larger screen. Measuring in at 4 inches diagonal, it is still one of the smaller screens in the world of touchscreen smart phones. Apple’s reasoning being this is that it wishes to preserve the fact that a phone should still “fit” in ones had. In order to maintain the iPhone 4’s Leica-Camera-like form factor, the iPhone 5’s display is merely longer with 1136 pixels across as opposed to 960. Still shy of the 720p displays that many smartphones are now sporting. Heck the Lumia 920 has a whopping 1280×768 in a 4.5″ display. That’s 35% more pixels. The display is now 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio and many apps are being updated to support this new size. It seems that this time round, Apple was more focused on the form factor because the iPhone 5 has a metal back and is much thinner than the 4/4S but at what cost? Is the 4 inch display really enough to rival the competition?

Simple is better?

After the iPhone 5 came iTunes. iTunes has been updated to version 11 with a redesigned user-interface, a simpler store that is the same across all Apple devices and more social integration. By that I mean there is a “Like” button attached to almost everything. The new iTunes needs to be used rather than described as it is more about the interface rather than features. The only actual new feature seems to be the iCloud integration for those into backing stuff up in the sky and even that isn’t very new as everyone knew it was coming anyway.
Bit of discrimination?
Another non-surprise was the iPod Touch. With every release of an iPhone, the iPod Touch models also get an update to keep up with the apps that will be inevitably developed with the iPhone as a priority over the iPod. This time was no different. The new iPod Touch models are updated with the new 4 inch display and better cameras front and back. The processor has also been updated to the A5, a step down from the A6 in the iPhone 5. And like it’s mobile bigger brother, the iPod Touch sports the new Lightning connector. It comes in various colours and has a pop out bit to tie a strap to much like a pocket camera.

I hate round icons...

Finally, two refreshed products that I genuinely did not see coming. First the iPod Nano. Completely redesigned and now looks like someone nicked an iPod Touch from Tinker Bell. It has a 2.5 inch touch screen and also a home button not dissimilar to the one on the iPod Touch. The display is also multitouch. For the first time, the iPod Nano gets Bluetooth 4.0 which means better handsfree capabilities whether in the car or the gym. Aesthetically, the Nano looks shockingly like the Nokia Lumia range:

lumia — Will Nokia sue Apple for copying its design like Apple sued Samsung?

The last product was the Apple earPods. Redesigned earphones that will ship with all new iDevices.

So Apple has announced its new products and every year, my hype and excitement decreased. Probably because the smartphone market is so saturated and innovation is dwindling. It is hard to come up with something new without it being copied or ridiculously useless. The iPhone 5 was everything I expected and nothing more. When the iPhone 4S receives the iOS 6 update, it will be the same phone, just shorter. Frankly the only thing that grabbed anything that resembled my attention today was the iPod Nano getting Bluetooth. The iPhone still lacks NFC, the hardware has not improved to play audio at a remotely acceptable level through the speakers, the recording capabilities have not improved, the camera is much the same except for improved low-light conditions (which was absolutely necessary). Compared to the Nokia Lumia 920, which has PureView, PureMotion HD+ screen that can be used while wearing gloves, and Rich Recording that can record up to 140 dB without losing clarity, it’s clear where the real innovation lies.

People will naturally queue to get their hands on the iPhone 5 but I have a feeling that the numbers will not compare to when the iPhone 4 launched. A month or two ago, I stated that Apple had better pull it out of the bag or my next phone will be something different, thus severing my last tie with Apple. I am due an upgrade in November, guess it won’t be an iPhone anymore.

Apple vs Samsung. And the winner is…Windows Phone

As of this week, Apple is walking away with a ruling that dictates Samsung copied many aspects of the iPhone. Samsung is set to pay out over $1 billion in what boils down to way over-inflated patent infringement. Now Samsung will of course appeal and attempt to have this decision mitigated as much as possible in order to save a few quid and its own backsides. However over inflated, out of proportion this whole fiasco was, one can be certain that somewhere in the corner of the court room, Microsoft and Nokia look at each other, nod their heads and smile.

What the general public now will “learn” from the past events will be various interpretations of “Android Copied iPhone”. It isn’t just Samsung though, so shouldn’t that also apply to HTC phones as well? The answer is simply yes, however, as the lawsuits Apple and Samsung filed against each other involved hardware as well, this battle was between the Korean Giants and Cupertino Fruits. There are two likely reasons why it was Samsung who were in court, not another Android OEM. The first one is that at any given time, only one Android maker is making profits. That was HTC at one point, but is currently Samsung. That makes it a prime target for Apple, as when Steve Jobs said he was prepared to go nuclear on destroying Android, it’s wise to choose the company with the biggest public perception. Secondly, whereas HTC has its own designs, as do LG and Sony, Samsung was dumb enough to copy the hardware aesthetics of the iPhone:

iphone4-vs-galaxy-s-head — The main difference is that Samsung’s offering is slightly taller, and the Home button is rectangular rather than a circle. The dock even mimics the colours of the iPhone’s. Worse still, Samsung applied this look to many of its phones.

The mobile industry is heading in a single direction and has been since the first iPhone came out. The large touch screen interface, generally easy to use OSes and UIs, push email and installable apps were bound to emerge on any platform as technology advances. The importance is who gets their stamp on an improved existing idea first; and that person (company) will then become the school child in a playground who thinks he’s reinvented how to build a sand castle and will challenge anyone who says otherwise.

So where does Windows Phone stand then? For the past 18 months, every Windows Phone review has noted the radically different UI and the way things work. However, beneath the surface, all is still the same – easy to navigate UI, touch screen interface, apps. I’m not for a second saying that any of the items on WP are copied from any other company. I’m merely highlighting that the same functions can be integrated well into a phone OS without infringing anything, and Apple noted as such during the courtcase. The simple rule of thumb is just to be original, something many companies, technology or not, seem to be severely lacking these days.

Does Windows Phone have an advantage now? I would say a profound yes. While Apple and Samsung now tread very carefully, which means development will slow, Microsoft has a clean slate to push out as many new and exciting features and devices as it can. Plus for customers like me who do see the similarities in Android and iOS, it may be refreshing to actually change to a new phone OS in Q4 2012. The ruling against Samsung may even make the Korean technology company to spend more time on its Windows Phone 8 offerings; although it has released some Windows Phones already, Android has always been its main focus. However, knowing that Apple isn’t on a witchunt for Windows Phone may be a key incentive for it – but it will have to think up some new hardware designs.

The first round of the battle in the ever-growing smartphone wars has been fought. Apple emerged victorious, Samsung lost in court, but the true winner to me looks to be Microsoft.

The Sins of Proprietary: Retina Display MacBook Pro totally upgrade proof.

Thinking of buying that shiny new 15 inch MacBook Pro with a Retina display? Are you slightly short of cash at the moment so planning on going for the lower spec with smaller RAM and HDD and then upgrading those down the line? If you answered yes to both then proceed to my third question, for which the answer will be the same as the last two: Are you going to be kicking yourself when you realise that Apple’s new flagship portable device is the least upgradable notebook of any in kind?

The kind folk over at ifixit performed their extensive teardowns they do with most electronics that have come to the market. Their findings are pretty disturbing. There is basically no way that the average consumer can upgrade this laptop in any way or shape. At all.

So what can’t be upgraded that could have been in the previous versions? Well the MacBook Pros have always been pretty open giving consumers the ability to add more RAM and hard drive space and more seasoned computer “fiddlers” may have also replaced their optical drive with another hard drive. None of this can be done now, especially the changing of the optical drive as, well, there isn’t one to replace.

As you can see above, two rows of memory chips, plus an additional two rows which are on the reverse, are all soldered onto the motherboard. Planning on getting 8GB and upgrading to 16GB yourself when you need it? No happening. This also spans to the storage space. SSD as standard is great but what happens when you start running out of the 256GB of space on it? With the previous MacBook Pros you just get a bigger SSD, stick it in, and clone from your Time Machine backup and you are up and and running again. Not here.

From what we can see in the photos, that thin strip of chips that is being lifted is the SSD. Some good news is that it is not soldered which means that it can be swapped. Bad news: swapped with what? What looks like an mSATA connection is actually a proprietary slot that only exists in the Retina MacBook Pro so your upgrade options are only viable if you own another Retina MacBook Pro and you want to swap drives with that or have a friend with one who wants a smaller drive. Possible? Sure. Likely? Probably not. And then we come to the battery. The 2009-2010 edition MacBook Pros had removable batteries. The later models had them locked inside of the chassis but they were still replaceable. The batteries on the Retina MBP? Glued.

That’s right, ifixit found that all six cells are glued to the system and any tampering will likely void your warranty.

And finally, we come to that beautiful screen. Surely if there was a dead pixel or some kind of error with the display, all Apple would have to do is remove the lid, open up the display swap out the panel right? Right…? Wrong. The panel is sealed shut inside the display assembly. But that’s not too bad, I hear you say…this also means that if something goes wrong with your iSight camera, WiFi or Bluetooth, then you’d have to replace the whole display assembly as well. Ah. Why? Because the antennas and the camera module are all sealed inside that display assembly. Imagine you just ran out of warranty, and then your iSight camera packs it in or your WiFi stopped responding. On the old MacBook Pros, you’d take it in and they’d charge you for a new camera or some antenna cables. Now, they’ll probably charge you for a whole Retina Display assembly. Ouch.

To conclude, what does all this mean for the consumer and the rest of the world? Well first of all, if you are planning to buy one of these then you need to be thinking far, far ahead and wondering if you would ever need more than what you are configuring your system with now. Oh and did I mention if you didn’t need the quicker processor and opting for the 2.3Ghz one, you then don’t have the choice of the bigger SSD, you are stuck with the 256GB on? This forces you to dish out all the dosh for the higher end model with more configuration options which you don’t need just because you want the larger storage space. This is a classic marketing ploy; giving customers what looks like choice but actually, if they want one small upgrade, they have to take the lot and pay for it.

The new MBPs are also worse for the environment now. With the introduction of the unibody design, the 2009-2011 MacBook Pros were crafted in highly recyclable aluminium and glass. Good. Now that aluminium is glued to the glass, it creates all kinds of difficulties for the recycling industry.

So. The new Retina Display MacBook Pro. A step forward in technology. A step forward in profit. And a big step forward in greed.

Another Year and Another WWDC

Every year at the beginning of the summer, Apple shows off to the world what it has been working on. This year has been no different with hardware refreshes, software updates and product launches.

iOS 6

WWDC kicked off with an introduction to an update to the iOS mobile operating system. iOS 6 promises a host of new features for iDevice users such as Guided Access. Like Parental Control, Guided Access allows the users to lock down some of the UI elements on their devices such as Mail or Contacts to prevent accidental deletion in the hands of children, babies or cats (maybe). A new feature that improves organisation is “Passbook”. We are in the second decade of the 21^st century and all tickets, cards and passes have gone digital, it is hard to keep track of all of them and this is where Passbook comes to play. It is essentially your all-in-one breast pocket; an app where you can store and retrieve digital e-tickets for movies, football games and also reminds you of your flight time. It seems an incredibly simple solution and it is amazing that no one thought of it earlier. However, like Newsstand, it is targeted towards a specific group of people and for those that won’t use such features, it is just another useless icon.

In terms of the cloud and social networking, iOS 6 allows users to utilise the iCloud service and synchronise their photos across all their Apple devices. Photos Streams can be shared with friends and also be commented on. Beyond that, one of the most common reasons why iPhone users would “jailbreak” their devices was to install a third party plugin allowing FaceTime over 3G and not be limited to WiFi; with iOS 6, FaceTime is now fully supported over 3G. iOS 5 brought Twitter integration and iOS 6 brings…you guessed it, Facebook integration. This time Apple has gone all out with extremely deep integration linking Facebook to all aspects of your iPhone from the simple Notification Centre to Maps, Photos and even the App Store. Users and Friends now can see, share and “like” apps with each other.

Siri has now also been updated to support new languages as well as being pushed to the third generation iPad (the retina one). Apple has stated that it will be getting other features such as sports updates in the coming months. With the included Facebook integration, Siri now also has support for Facebook allowing voice commands for status updates etc.

Finally, probably the biggest iOS news this year is Apple’s decision to drop Google Maps in favour of its own Maps APIs. Apple claims its new Maps app is its own creation however some of the data is provided by third party sources. Apple recently acquired C3, the company behind Nokia’s 3D maps and it is likely that they help provide Flyover mode – which allows users to view buildings and landscapes in 3D similar to what we saw when Google demonstrated its own 3D maps just prior to WWDC. Over 100 million business listings are already included should a user wish to search for one. The most prominent feature of Apple Maps is turn-by-turn navigation with traffic and accident updates also present. This data is being supplied by partnering with TomTom. Naturally, the app will intelligently calculate the best route depending on traffic. And of course there is Siri integration including the ability to ask Siri “Are we there yet?” to which it will reply with a fairly witty comment plus an estimate of how long your journey will take. Google recently also released similar services on its own mobile operating system however it pales in comparison to Nokia Maps which offered the first turn-by-turn navigation of any kind on a phone and also has offline support, something that Google Maps is severely lacking. How will Apple Maps stack up against the competition? Time will tell.

The removal of Google Maps means that the only Google features left in Cupertino’s mobile operating systems are the YouTube app and Google Search in Safari; the latter can also be changed to something like Bing, not that anyone would, would they? However bold the move is, the question still remains whether it was the right decision to make. Is the new iOS that innovative or is it wrapping other company’s ideas into its own shell? Several features of Windows Phone 7 are mirrored in iOS such as lock screen camera and Facebook integration. Apple Maps is in its infancy and how will it compare to Nokia Maps with features such as offline use and fairly robust turn-by-turn navigation? It can be argued that the smartphone market is headed in the same direction hence innovations are converging and the only way to stand out is to take the same idea and execute it your own way. Will Apple’s new Maps app be able to rival Google’s? Maybe. Will the turn-by-turn navigation cause untold misery? Probably not, but it is still too early to tell.

The MacBooks

Apple presented some refreshes to its MacBook line the same evening. With Intel’s third generation Ivy Bridge CPUs having been released a month ago, it makes sense that Apple would refresh its line-up with these. The MacBook Air range can now be configured with i5 or i7 Ivy Bridge processors. The new models now come with USB 3.0, up from 2.0 (and still backwards compatible), a better FaceTime camera capable of HD 720p, 8GB of RAM and 512GB of flash storage. The MacBook Pro models have also been refreshed with Intel’s newest silicon. Apple has also decided to move back to Nvidia to provide its notebook graphics. The graphics have been changed to Nvidia’s GT 650m Kepler GPU. Despite being Kepler, this GPU is a mid-range performer and cannot rival some of the other notebook graphics cards on the market. More capable GPUs such as the GTX 660m come as standard on machines from Alienware and MSI, both of which are cheaper than a similarly configured MacBook Pro. One consideration though, is that the laptops from the aforementioned companies are also much thicker and bulkier than any current notebook from Apple.

Along with the hardware refreshes on existing notebooks, Apple was proud to present its flagship MacBook – the MacBook Pro with Retina Display. This new model, although having only a 15 inch screen, will replace the 17 inch MacBook Pro of yester-gen and sit on Apple’s notebook throne. The laptop is much slimmer than the other MacBook Pros, being only a few millimetres thicker than the thickest end of the MacBook Air. The 15 inch display is made up of 2880 x 1800 pixels – more than in Apple’s 27 inch Cinema Display and 27 inch iMac, both of which have 2560 x 1440 displays. The highest HDTV resolution is “only” 1920 x 1080. The internals of the MacBook Pro with Retina Display are similar to the other MacBook Pros such as Ivy Bridge CPUs and the same GT 650m Kepler graphics. On the outside, things are very different – like the Airs and iPads, most of this new MacBook Pro is made up of battery and to achieve this, Apple has done away with the optical drive. That’s right, no DVD or Blu-Ray on this machine, all data now comes from external drives or plucked from the sky. There are now two thunderbolt connections, USB 3.0 on either side, HDMI out, SD card reader, headphone jack and a redesigned MagSafe jack (because the older one was too thick to fit). The main question is whether there is enough horsepower under the hood to be able to drive that super high definition screen (disclaimer: super high definition is not an official term) especially in games where many high-end desktop graphics cards struggle to cope with similar resolutions. One thing is for sure: there is no other laptop out there like it at the moment, but can users looking for a larger screen as opposed to higher resolution forgive Apple for axing the 17 incher?

OS X Mountain Lion

The folks at Cupertino have also been extremely busy with their newest operating system. Now at version 10.8, Mountain Lion follows the same trend of Apple naming every operating system iteration after a very large feline. Recently, it seemed that Apple has decided that when the name is a change in feline species, it highlights a very large operating system overhaul; this was seen in the move from “Tiger” to “Leopard” and “Snow Leopard” to “Lion”. However, if there is no change in species but more of a change in habitat such as “Leopard” to “Snow Leopard” and, as of WWDC, “Lion” has now become “Mountain Lion”, it means more subtle changes and more optimisations. This new version of OS X contains some updated features such as iCloud integration and a brand new Safari which is not only faster but also has some interesting features such as iCloud Tabs, allowing users to synchronise their web usage across all their iDevices, and Tab View, which allows the exact same tabs a user was browsing through on their laptops, to be transferred to their iPad so they can carry on immediately, smells a bit like Sync for Firefox, oh wait this is Apple so it is innovative and original. The address bar is now also the search bar similar to the Chrome browser. Like Windows 8 with Xbox Live integration, Apple has also taken its Game Centre system found in iOS and stuck it into the new OS in an attempt to promote cross platform game development as users can now compete across a range of iDevices. Seeing a trend here?

One of the new features in Mountain Lion is “Power Nap” – it is essentially a background scheduler that fetches email, performs software updates, iCloud syncing and Time Machine backups when you aren’t using the computer. And finally, Siri comes to the Mac in the form of Dictation where users can have their speech transcribed to text in almost any app. Although not on the same “personal assistant” level as Siri is in iOS, it is definitely a start. There are some interesting new features added to Apple’s operating system but perhaps not enough to warrant a change in feline species hence “Mountain Lion”. The whole world is wondering what Apple will chose for its last “X” operating system (10.9) with the last big cats Lynx and Ocelot having been used for other tech products. Favourite at the moment seems to be Sabertooth Tiger, although it is extinct. Maybe if Apple decides to stop Mac OS completely, it could name its very final version that as an allegory.

Wrap-up

There have been some new and exciting things on show at WWDC with some new concepts and some things that seem to have been copied but executed by Apple, which according to Apple means they came up with it. Some updates did not make it to the stage such as Apple’s new AirPort Express now with dual-band WiFi and a new form factor as well as some new processors for the Mac Pro. There has been no news on any iMac refresh and of course anyone’s guess on anything to do with the new iPhone is as good as mine.

News in Briefs 08/04/12

Well last week was obviously a case of much ado about nothing as all the panic and fear has just collapsed into irrelevance. I can guarantee that all of those people who looked around for hours for fuel are now feeling like absolute fools. But, still, there’s nothing you can do when total idiots and panic come together, is there? Anyway, on to this week’s news!

Political Oops of the Week

Continue reading News in Briefs 08/04/12