Changes include

This update contains over 200 new features, including the following:

Notifications
◦ Swipe from the top of any screen to view notifications in one place with Notification Centre
◦ New notifications appear briefly at the top of the screen
◦ View notifications from lock screen
◦ Slide the notification app icon to the right on the lock screen to go directly to the app

iMessage
◦ Send and receive unlimited text, photo and video messages with other iOS 5 users
◦ Track messages with delivery and read receipts
◦ Group messaging and secure encryption
◦ Works over mobile networks and Wi-Fi*

Newsstand
◦ Automatically organises magazine and newspaper subscriptions on Home Screen
◦ Displays the cover of the latest issue
◦ Background downloads of new issues

Reminders for managing to-do lists
◦ Syncs with iCloud, iCal and Outlook
◦ Location-based reminders when you leave or arrive at a location for iPhone 4S and iPhone 4

Built-in support for Twitter
◦ Sign in once in Settings and tweet directly from Camera, Photos, Maps, Safari and YouTube
◦ Add location to any tweet
◦ View Twitter profile pictures and usernames in Contacts

Camera improvements for devices with cameras
◦ Double-click the Home button when device is asleep to bring up a camera shortcut on iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS and iPod touch (4th generation)
◦ Volume Up button to take a picture
◦ Optional grid lines to line up shots
◦ Pinch to zoom in the preview screen
◦ Swipe to camera roll from preview screen
◦ Tap and hold to lock focus and exposure; iPad 2 and iPod touch (4th generation) only support exposure lock

Photo improvements for devices with cameras
◦ Crop and rotate
◦ Red-eye removal
◦ One-tap enhance
◦ Organise photos into albums

Mail improvements
◦ Format text using bold, italic or underlined fonts
◦ Indentation control
◦ Drag to rearrange names in address fields
◦ Flag messages
◦ Mass mark messages as flagged, read or unread
◦ Customise mail alert sounds
◦ S/MIME

Calendar improvements
◦ Year view on iPad and new Week view for iPhone and iPod touch
◦ Tap to create an event
◦ View and add event attachments

Game Center improvements
◦ Use personal photos for your Game Center account
◦ Compare your overall achievement scores with your friends
◦ Find new Game Center friends with friend recommendations and friends of friends
◦ Discover new games with custom game recommendations

AirPlay Mirroring for iPad 2 and iPhone 4S

Multitasking Gestures for iPad
◦ Use four or five fingers to pinch to the Home Screen
◦ Swipe up to reveal the multitasking bar
◦ Swipe left or right to switch between apps

On-device setup, activation and configuration with Setup Assistant

Software updates available over the air without tethering

iCloud support
◦ iTunes in the Cloud
◦ Photo Stream
◦ Documents in the Cloud
◦ Apps and Books automatic download and purchase history
◦ Backup
◦ Contacts, Calendar and Mail
◦ Find My iPhone

Redesigned Music app for iPad

Hourly weather forecast

Real-time stock quotes

Wireless sync to iTunes

Keyboard improvements
◦ Split keyboard for iPad
◦ Improved auto-correction accuracy
◦ Improved Chinese and Japanese input
◦ New Emoji keyboard
◦ Personal dictionary for auto-correction
◦ Optionally create keyboard shortcuts for frequently used words

Accessibility improvements
◦ Option to light LED flash on incoming calls and alerts for iPhone 4S and iPhone 4
◦ Custom vibration patterns for incoming calls on iPhone
◦ New interface for using iOS with mobility-impairment input devices
◦ Option to speak a selection of text
◦ Custom element labelling for VoiceOver

Exchange ActiveSync improvements
◦ Wirelessly sync tasks
◦ Mark messages as flagged, read or unread
◦ Improved offline support
◦ Save a new contact from a GAL service

More than 1,500 new developer APIs

Bug fixes

Products compatible with this software update:

• iPhone 4S
• iPhone 4
• iPhone 3GS
• iPad 2
• iPad
• iPod touch (4th generation)
• iPod touch (3rd generation)

* Normal carrier data rates may apply. Messages will be sent as SMS when iMessage is unavailable; carrier messaging fees apply.

For information on the security content of this update, please visit this website:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222

I have 2x New Trent 5000mAh battery chargers and 2x Philips SCE4430/05 battery chargers.

The New Trent 5000mAh will give me about 40% extra power on my iPad (which already enjoys a massive 10 hours battery power), or I can get around 3x full charges of my iPhone 4.

The Philips SCE4430/05 which I have previously mentioned here and here, will give me around 1x full charge of an iPhone 4. I actually do have 3x of these and not 2, although one requires a reverse adapter (which I conveniently forget) so I tend to not use this one so much.

So in essence if I take all 4x battery chargers out I can get a massive 8x full charges of an iPhone. For the most part I never usually have to charge up my iPad as I’m never away for more than 10 hours from an electrical plug socket, but it’s nice to know I have some power on tap if I need it.

For the most part if I’m only out and about for a few hours then I’ll take my Philips SCE4430/05 with me, or if I’m out for 5+ hours then I’ll carry around the New Trent 5000mAh charger. I usually keep at least one in the car, so if I need to I can run back to the car to get additional juice.

The great thing I like about both of these battery chargers is they have a standard USB socket on them, so pretty much any USB cable you have for a phone or gadget will connect into these devices. So no real need for these attachment bits that some chargers come with (and that you always happen to lose).

The Philips SCE4430/05 is great for putting into your shirt pocket with ease, the New Trent will fit into your shirt pocket and it’s the same dimensions of the iPhone 4, but a little heavier, so although you could put your iPhone 4 and New Trent charger into the same shirt pocket, it does look a bit on the bulky side.

I always pack at least one of the New Trent 5000mAh battery chargers into a bag I carry whether it’s an iPad bag, gadget bag or even my Messenger (over the shoulder) Laptop bag or rucksack. That way I always have something available fully charged and ready to go just in case I ever need it. You’d be surprised the amount of times you think, I’m running low on battery or I need a quick top-up. Whether it’s in meetings where you might have plug sockets but no charger plug lead to being out in the street, out on location photographing something or at a friends house.

Before I get flamed by a bunch of Android users, let me say that I have both iOS and Android devices. The first reason is that Apple had a head start. Apple is an innovator and although it wasn’t the first to create a tablet, it was most certainly the first to create a tablet that just worked out of the box, with a complete ecosystem.

Apple have the right ecosystem, they have 400,000+ apps at time of writing this, Android have around 200,000 apps and Apple had a head start in the tablet arena over Google.

The biggest thing after talking to both Apple and Google fans that everyone seems to want is a device that’s upgradable. This is one thing that Apple gives all customers for a good 3-4 years. If you take a look at the iPhone 3G it’s still popular and upgraded to iOS 3, iOS 4. Okay, maybe it won’t be supported by iOS 5 perhaps, but there’s a good 3 years usage out of the device. Now take a look at Android. Samsung botched most of their upgrades for the Samsung Galaxy S, most customers couldn’t upgrade their devices because you had to connect it to Samsung Kies PC software, which just didn’t work properly.

Take a look at Sony Xperia devices, most of these wouldn’t see the light of day for an upgrade. Likewise some HTC devices although more lately have been upgradable, it’s only been because of customer pressure. HTC weren’t going to upgrade some of their phones to Gingerbread until customers forced them.

People want a device that isn’t going to be a brick or die of death in a year or two. Although people change their devices they still want to be able to use them or sell them and get a good return. This is the big problem so far with Android, it’s down to the manufacturer and sometimes not even the manufacturer, sometimes it’s down to both the manufacturer and the mobile operator. Where some customers see upgrades in some countries for a given device but not in others, or sometimes some in the same country get an update where others on another network don’t.

Another good reason as to why Apple have such a good run at the tablet market is if you take a look at other manufacturers, Microsoft still after all these years haven’t produced a single tablet (well if you exclude the WinCe devices), and look at HP, they’ve been in this market space several times in the last decade and pulled out. Palm although they weren’t yet competing in the tablet market, were in the mobile market with WebOS which was then bought up by HP, HP then decided to take part in the tablet industry (again), and have now recently decided it’s going to pull out of the tablet market.

Customers also want a device that’s going to work out of the box, not be complicated to use. Apple have this down to a tee. Likewise if you have previously owned an iPod Touch or iPhone then there’s a zero learning curve if you go to the iPad. With Android however, although it works out of the box, there’s a lot of customisation that can be done, things that can be accidentally turned on and off, or from a user perspective (broken) and that also puts off the non-technical users.

Apple have aimed their sales not at the technical user, but the non-technical user, where Android manufacturers seem a lot of the time to be targeting their products at the self confessed techy.

The other thing to think about is it’s fine to provide a device for every single kind of person out there, but this creates massive fragmentation in the operating system. That in turn makes games and apps break, not just once or twice but regularly. Bad news spreads quicker than good news, and although Apple don’t provide things like flash, the average person out there believes the devices tend to be more stable.

It’s also interesting to see how tablet manufacturer’s try to advertise their product. I have to smile when I keep seeing this advert for the Asus Eee Transformer where they actually show the tablet on the TV advert running out of battery. No worry, just plug it into the keyboard to restore some power. If you have a tablet that is capable of something like 10 hours battery power like the iPad, why would you even want to think about advertising that it WILL run out of battery power? That immediately puts me off buying the Asus tablets and I’m sure it puts off a lot of other people too.

At some point the eco seesaw will change, and it may tip in Googles favour or other manufacturers favour, but currently it’s still tipped towards Apple.

The suggestion is that Apple will out iOS 4.3.1 sometime in the next couple of weeks, it’s suggested that Apple will address the following issues:

• Baseband update for the 3GS and iPad (original)
• Fixing memory hangs that results in memory corruption when reading large files from USIM filesystem
• Fixing problem with NTLM authentication in apps and on websites
• Fixed issue with the Springboard and 3rd party apps not recgonizing the gyroscope on the iPad 2
• Fixed iPad 2 jailbreak vulnerability

I’ve just purchased it for the Mac, I’ve resisted all this time to put Angry Birds onto my MacBook Air as I have it on the iPhone and iPad, but decided finally to succumb to the pressure.

The story for Angry Birds Rio is that birds are kidnapped and caged by evil smugglers and are even angrier! Once the angry birds are released from their captors, they are on a mission to save Blu and Jewel – two rare macaws and stars of the upcoming Fox motion picture, Rio.

Features include:-

• Two fantastic episodes with 60 exciting levels!
• Completely new achievements!
• Special Hidden fruits – discover them all!

There are three version available, Angry Birds Rio for iPhone and iPod touch, Angry Birds Rio HD for iPad and Angry Birds Rio for Mac.

Still no app/game support for iOS for Apple TV, but if/when that is made available by Apple, playing Angry Birds on a large LCD TV screen would be awesome.

Price wise, here are the prices set out by Apple.

There’s a price drop on each iPad model whether you go for the WiFi or 3G, although bear in mind Apple have recently reduced the prices of the iPad 1 knowing the iPad 2 was coming out, to try and reduce stock levels of the previous model.

Will you be buying or upgrading to the iPad 2?

You’re probably reading this because you’ve been Googling and have a problem getting your Zinio mags and aren’t finding any help. The simple answer is if you’re reading this in early March 2011 then it’s because Zinio has a massive outage.

I started these blog posts and tweets because Zinio wasn’t communicating with their customers. A 48hr outage then a few days uptime then another 48+hr outage meant very little communication coming from Zinio. This is not designed to be anti-Zinio and Zinio do understand that, but it’s born out of frustration both from myself and many other thousands of Zinio customers not receiving any information about the service they have invested in.

Here’s a quick summary…

What’s gone wrong?
Zinio have a major outage and are working to restore the service. Zinio will publish information on what went wrong after the event and what they will do to resolve this I am told.

Why is it taking so long?
It’s a complicated issue, it’s not just a hard drive crash in a RAID array as I understand it. They are also working on reinstalling the platform to restore service more quickly.

How can I trust Zinio again?
Zinio have a good 10 yrs of service in this area and are not a new startup. Typically most companies have a good run then hit into problems at some stage. Zinio are now in this phase and I am told they will do their best to ensure that this and other problems don’t happen again once they have restored service.

Why haven’t they updated their home page? It says will be back shortly…
Their maintenance message was really only designed for planned maintenance. This is very unplanned and they are locked out of modifying the page unfortunately. They have setup a blog at http://zinio.wordpress.com.

Why weren’t we told as customers what was going on?
Zinio were undoubtedly trying to reduce the PR nightmare as many companies would in this situation by trying to restore service quickly and trying to reduce bad PR and that ultimately meant not communicating with customers admitting the problems. This isn’t new, most companies on their first major outage fall into this. The key is to communicate with customers, it’s not good PR to tell people that service is down because media outlets get hold of this and make a mountain out of a molehill, however communicating with paying customers to keep them on side, to not lose the business that has been built up is key. Zinio understand this now and are communicating much more on their blog which is what I was trying to achieve from these updates.

When will service be restored?
Zinio are hoping for Saturday 5th March in the morning EDT (East Coast US time). With the nature of the problem anything could affect this window, but Zinio are hoping to restore service around this time. If complications set in then it may take longer.

Will I be compensated?
Zinio do understand that their customers are key, it’s what has built their business and that without you as a customer their business wouldn’t be what it is today. Although I can’t say what level of compensation will be provided, yes I have been told by Zinio that they will be trying to put it right with customers affected by the service outage. What that will be I don’t know, that will be down to Zinio to decide. Whether it means extensions to your existing subscriptions, additional complimentary subscriptions of your choice or refunds will be down to Zinio. I think due to the level of outage that maybe it should be a combination of all three, but that’s based on a feeling as a customer.

Was Zinio hacked, have they gone under?
No, that has been the unfortunate perception by some because of the lack of communication. Zinio have also put an answer to this on their blog. They did also have an unfortunate outage on their phones but these are back operational.

I want to read the magazines I have, what should I not do?
Okay, don’t uninstall the Zinio app or delete your magazines, otherwise you won’t be able to access them throughout the outage. Also try not to restart your iPad or iPhone because this will also log you out of Zinio to authenticate you. Hold tight and hopefully you can still read what offline magazines you have on your device and you will receive all your magazines once Zinio is restored. Any issues that should have been sent out to you through this outage you will still receive when service comes back.

What happens when service is restored?
The first thing is that you might see the service restored then it goes back offline again. This can happen when trying to restore any kind of service, it might be that it comes back online but configs or service packs or other items need to be applied to servers to ensure stability. So if you do notice it goes down soon after for a little while longer, please understand this. This isn’t something Zinio have mentioned to me but it’s something through my experience of managing servers can and will most likely happen.

More information is available at their blog but I will keep you updated here in the event that information does dry up whilst trying to restore service.

Although the situation is no doubt complicated with regards to any kind of technical outage, they’re trying to bring back and restore the service as quickly as possible. This obviously can bring further complications when it comes to technology but Zinio are hoping to restore service early on Saturday morning US time. Obviously with any kind of technical outage like this it’s not possible to guarantee or pinpoint a day/time, however Zinio are hopeful Saturday AM will be an achievable target if everything goes smoothly.

Zinio have provided an updated status page at http://zinio.wordpress.com and have asked me to pass this along to anyone reading this. Zinio understand their customers frustration and will try to provide more updates to customers. This is the first major outage for Zinio in their 10 years of service. Zinio will continue to update the status page link above and try to engage with customers over Twitter and Facebook to provide regular status updates.

Our sincerest thanks from Zinio
We realize that this is not the level of service that you expect from Zinio. We are working tirelessly to return the quality of service you have come to expect from Zinio over the past 10 years. Please bear with us during this time.

The first outage was caused by a power failure according to Zinio

To have two outages in less than 3 days isn’t uncommon, but to have 2 major outages, the first lasting just under 48 hrs and the second lasting 34+ hrs and rising is very unusual.  To have a second power outage is extremely unlikely and it seems that Zinio are being plagued by faulty hardware or corrupted databases.  Any power utility company would have restored power within a matter of hours.

The only message thousands of loyal customers are receiving from Zinio is

With no proper communication from Zinio or their Marketing team, this is turning into a PR nightmare for Zinio. Many customers have subscribed to several hundreds of pounds / dollars of magazines, personally I have spent over £1000 with Zinio.

As a once loyal Zinio customer I have now had to pay additional money to Apple to get my magazine subscriptions through Apple due to Zinio not being able to provide my PAID subscriptions.  I’m sure Zinio will not be refunding me for these purchases, and to be honest I don’t care now.  I just want access to my magazines and as Zinio have proved they cannot provide that and cannot provide a reason for the down time or an estimate on when the service will return, there’s only one thing most of us are thinking.  Have Zinio gone under and not able to pay their bills?

I’d just like to take this chance to apologise to anyone that has subscribed to Zinio on my recommendations (from emails I’m receiving I know that’s a lot of people). I feel your pain too with the amount I have invested in Zinio and am truly sorry that we are all suffering from the lack of service and communication coming out of Zinio.

If Zinio ever recover from this they will have lost a very large percentage of their customers.  Customers are voting with their feet and 38% of Zinio customers have now rated the iPad app as 1 star.  If Zinio don’t want to lose their customers they need to turn this around and be honest with their customers and tell them what’s going on.

So with the ability to do full 720p video recording at 30 fps with the rear facing camera (yes there’s two…one front and one back).  The rear camera will also do up to 5x digital zoom and the front facing camera (solely for FaceTime use) will record at standard VGA resolution (640×480) but still at 30fps.

The new covers don’t really win me over but the screen to reduce fingerprint and glare will along with a dual-core processor doubling the speed of processing making games and the general operating system much more responsive.

Not forgetting that the iPad 2 will be 33% thinner and just over 600g, this makes it a much more desirable device.

I currently have the 64gb model and to be honest I’ve never filled it up, I’m usually around 35gb used which means I couldn’t go for the 32gb model otherwise I would be continuously out of space.  Now I’m left wondering whether I do buy an iPad 2, and then what do I do with my existing iPad?  Sell it or keep it?  Apple is becoming an expensive past time with their annual releases!

Unfortunately last weekend Zinio had just under a 48 hour outage and 3 days later they’re into another 12+ hour outage of service.

The service outages means that customers who have paid for their magazines cannot access the Zinio service to download the paid content.

The email from Zinio in the first outage to customers…

I wanted to reach out to you personally to thank you for your patience this past weekend and check to make sure your Zinio access was working properly. As you noticed, Zinio experienced some systems problems that impacted your ability to shop and read your magazines. These have now been fully resolved. On behalf of the entire Zinio team, I wanted to apologize for any inconvenience this unfortunate outage caused.

Zinio was able to restore service on the first outage approx 48 hrs later. However, Zinio’s down again 3 days later and has not been able to provide it’s service for over 12 hours.  It seems like there’s no out of hours coverage at Zinio for it’s service due to the downtime over the weekend and overnight all being outside of core business hours which doesn’t bode well for Zinio. Zinio has been around for a number of years (since 2001) but there are more companies coming onto the scene to compete with Zinio. Apple more recently started selling Magazine subscriptions for the iPad through iBooks and a number of magazine companies have already started offering their magazines through iBooks or through their own apps on the iPad.

I’m an avid Zinio supporter and have spent well over £1000 on magazine subscriptions with Zinio so hopefully that shows my level of commitment to Zinio! However, Zinio being down twice in 4 days for a serious amount of time has now put me off making two further magazine subscriptions with Zinio and I’ve just given Apple the money for these. After the first 48hr outage I purchased some additional magazine subscriptions and I haven’t been able to download these new magazines because Zinio’s service has gone down a second time. Zinio also offered me some complimentary free magazine subscriptions on top of this due to the last outage, but again they weren’t showing in my account just prior to the second service outage.

It’s one thing being bad for Zinio’s customers seriously making them look elsewhere for magazine subscriptions but it’s more serious for the magazine companies that partner with Zinio because new customers can’t purchase magazine subscriptions resulting in loss of sales.

I really sincerely hope Zinio can rectify these outages and improve the level of service to it’s customers and magazine partners and pull through this.

In the past year (2010) Apple has sold nearly 15 million iPads and a staggering 100 million iPhones.  Compared to Apple’s closest competitor for iPad clones, this is a staggering amount.

The new iPad 2 is one third (1/3) thinner, comes in white or black (yes white!) and shipping March 11th 2011. It comes in familiar models, same storage, same price as original iPad:-

Battery
The iPad 2 has the exact same battery duration as the first edition iPad, basically 10 hours of battery life or 1 month standby time

Display

• 9.7-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen Multi-Touch display with IPS technology
• 1024-by-768-pixel resolution at 132 pixels per inch (ppi)
• Fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating
• Support for display of multiple languages and characters simultaneously

Performance
The iPad 2 comes with the new A5 processor that is twice as fast as the original iPad.

Two powerful cores in one A5 chip mean iPad can do twice the work at once. You’ll notice the difference when you’re surfing the web, watching movies, making FaceTime video calls, gaming, and going from app to app to app. Multitasking is smoother, apps load faster, and everything just works better.

Superfast graphics with up to nine times the graphics performance, gameplay on iPad is even smoother and more realistic. And faster graphics help apps perform better — especially those with video. You’ll see it when you’re scrolling through your photo library, editing video with iMovie, and viewing animations in Keynote.

Covers
The iPad 2 will come with “Smart Ocvers” which bends and wraps around the iPad and allows you to use the iPad 2 as a typing stand. Smart Covers come in five polyurethane colors for $39 plus five leather colors at $69.

iOS
iPad 2 will ship with iOS 4.3 (not iOS5 like some people were suggesting). Enhancements include improved Safari performance with Nitro JavaScript that sits on top of iOS. iTunes Home sharing of videos straight to the iPad or iPhone using it as a video playback device with streaming via AirPlay.

Video and Cameras
Video out support for full HDMI output at 1080p will work with all apps. Two cameras (front and rear) the rear camera can shoot 720p video.

• Back camera: Video recording, HD (720p) up to 30 frames per second with audio; still camera with 5x digital zoom
• Front camera: Video recording, VGA up to 30 frames per second with audio; VGA-quality still camera
• Tap to control exposure for video or stills
• Photo and video geotagging over Wi-Fi

TV and Video

• Video mirroring and video out support: Up to 1080p with Apple Digital AV Adapter or Apple VGA Adapter (cables sold separately)
• Video out support at 576p and 480p with Apple Component AV Cable; 576i and 480i with Apple Composite AV Cable
• Video formats supported: H.264 video up to 720p, 30 frames per second, Main Profile level 3.1 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps per channel, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; Motion JPEG (M-JPEG) up to 35 Mbps, 1280 by 720 pixels, 30 frames per second, audio in ulaw, PCM stereo audio in .avi file format

Shipping

• Shipping March 11th!

That’s a lot to live up to! Let’s see how well The Daily has done in living up to it’s claim.

So how good is it?

Well, the first thing I need to tell you is that it’s only available in the United States of America. Anyone outside of the US of A will not be in much luck. You can get around Apple’s bureaucracy and create a US iTunes store account, login and then download but that’s a lot of hassle for the regular person.

I gave The Daily a try to see what all the hype was about and you can see in the screenshots below what it looks like.

Opening The Daily you’ll see the following for the first time

So far so good until you now start to try and actually do what they want you to do and that’s read the newspaper…

Unfortunately as you can see from the above screenshots you most of the images don’t load for each article, and you might as well be reading The Daily in plain text in a text editor. In-fact you would be much better and have a much richer content by just opening up Safari and going to the web to read an article on a news website.

Getting past the “We’re only going to provide it to US customers” which is a big hurdle to overcome, I can really on say so far that trying to read the articles is troublesome at best. The navigation (carousal) that you can spin to get to the next news article is slow, the animation is very jerky and makes you long just to have an index page where you can just tap a photo that doesn’t try to over do the animation.

That said, if I could get past the above problems, there’s then the other problem of the news content is only updated on a daily basis (like a newspaper). I’m sorry but that’s not good enough. If I want to read a newspaper then I would go out and buy one. When it comes down to news you want to get the up to the minute news, so for me Twitter, blog sites and news websites are still going to be my main focal point in getting the latest news.

All in all with not being able to read The Daily as you’re supposed to, I’m glad News Corp have provided The Daily free as a trial. I really can’t see many people signing up for the subscription model unless they sort out these problems.  People crave news now, they want it when they want it.  This is why there is a decline year on year for newspaper sales, and I think it shows that News Corp just don’t understand this theory and why they’re publication circulations are down year on year.