Siri is a voice to text system that allows you to naturally ask Siri a question and most of the time Siri responds with a good or suitable answer. If Siri can’t help then it will suggest that you perform a web search.

What you first have to understand with Siri is that it has a limited vocabulary of around 5,000 words. Although this is a lot in terms of a voice to text system, it’s not a lot when you think that the Oxford English Dictionary contains words for over 170,000.

Siri doesn’t respond well to multiple questions.
If you provide Siri with limited information, it then asks you a second question, and you answer the second question, it seems to treat it as a new question. e.g. ask Siri where 1 Infinite Loop is in California.

Mixing words and numbers doesn’t go down well with Siri
Ask Siri something like what is the full price of the iPhone 4S in the UK and it seems to get a little confused with what you actually said.

Likewise if you ask it where 4 Bloomsbury Square in London is, it doesn’t understand the number 4

Ask Siri where you are and how to get home
If you tell Siri you’re lost, it says it can’t provide any maps or directions in the UK. It can provide them in the US though.

Apple repeatedly lose their iPhone’s in bars, so I thought I’d ask Siri what to do in the event of finding a lost or stolen iPhone.
So it seems Apple things if you find a lost iPhone you want to have a number of meetings about it.

Christmas

I decided to try Siri out to see what Siri knows about Christmas

Father’s day and Mother’s day
I quizzed Siri a week ago over when was Father’s day and Mother’s day. Although Siri came back with results, it came back with the US holidays and not UK holidays, even when using the UK voice.

Testing 1 week later Siri now doesn’t come back with any results on this question…

Siri can’t handle generic questions, it’s vocabulary isn’t wide enough
Siri simply cannot handle a generic question, although it will allow you to search the web.

First man on the moon?
Siri, who was the first man on the moon? Hmmmm, I don’t think so…

What Siri is good for?
Siri is spectacular at giving you people’s birthday’s. It can even create relationships, so if you ask it “When is mum’s birthday” it will lookup your mothers name and provide the birthday. That’s of course providing you have entered all the details in the contact record.

Siri is also good for finding out what appointments you have scheduled

Siri is also good at getting weather reports from Yahoo. Although sometimes Siri can get a little flustered, as though s/he has just been awoken from a deep sleep.

Likewise sometimes she can get the text completely wrong. I put this down to some beta bugs that need to be ironed out of the system at the server end.

Siri has been programmed to sometimes be vague or provide different answers to the same questions, e.g. in “What’s the meaning of life”.

Siri is great at playing music

Siri is great about finding out about products but isn’t quite as good at retrieving the latest news.

Sometimes Siri can get a bit pedantic and stuck in his/her way

What Siri will really get confused with is different meanings for a similar word. e.g. Soul (as in Soul Mate), Sole (as in fish)

So there you have it, Siri is still in beta so s/he will get some things wrong. If you really want to get the most out of Siri then try to use it on weather forecasts and anything to do with calendars or contacts on your iPhone. You can eve use Siri to create a reminder, although it will create it as a Task and not a reminder. I’m sure Apple can start to iron out some of these bugs and improve Siri. Although the UK voice for Siri was recorded about 5 years ago, and I suspect similarly other language voices may not be that new either.

Will Siri’s UK male voice be changed or will they have the same voice-over artist record additional strings? Ultimately it would be good to be able to choose a female voice for the UK. You can choose the US voice but then the amount of words it understands based on accent tend to drop percentage wise. I think Siri is a pretty good product as it stands already, it’s certainly better than the Android equivalent and hopefully will improve over time.

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

Looking at the price of the iPad and previous pricing, the iPad 16gb WiFi+3G goes for £499, the iPad 32gb WiFi+ 3G goes for £579 and the iPad 64gb  WiFi+3G goes for £659.

Now looking at the current iPhone 4 prices at Apple for

• iPhone 4 16gb – £510
• iPhone 4 32gb – £612

It’s most likely that Apple would be looking at something around the following…

• iPhone 4S 16gb – £499
• iPhone 4S 32gb – £599
• iPhone 4S 64gb –  £699

For the 32gb and 64gb models it’s possible they could go with something like £579 and £679 respectively.

Many millions of people worldwide were looking out for the announcement of the iPhone 5 and were left a bit deflated when there was no iPhone 5 but a newer iPhone 4 modeled on the same design of the iPhone 4.

Apple didn’t re-design the iPhone 4 because quite frankly, the iPhone 4 is the best looking and designed iPhone to date. It’s so good that Samsung and other companies are copying the design of the iPhone 4, like they did with the iPad and iPad 2 to increase their sales.

For anyone thinking there isn’t a lot of new features in the iPhone 4S, the iPhone 4S is evolutionary not revolutionary, here is a breakdown of the new features…

• iOS 5 – greatly overhauled to enhance speed, enhance notifications and a lot more
• Dual-Core  A5 chip, making the device much faster
• All new 8 megapixel camera with better CMOS (almost double the pixels over the iPhone 4′s 5 megapixel camera), f/2.4 aperture and face detection
• 1080P HD Video Recording as standard
• New Notification Message Center and iMessage
• iCloud support allowing you to have all your data in the cloud
• iTunes Match allowing you to have all your music in the cloud
• Siri. The intelligent assistant that helps you get things done. All you have to do is ask
• iPhone 4S supports ALL networks GSM and CDMA in a single phone
• AirPlay as standard
• iPhone 4S is the first phone to intelligently switch between two antennas to transmit and receive, so call quality is better. It also doubles the maximum HSDPA data speeds from 7Mbps to 14.4 Mbps. Which means faster connections, faster loading and reloading, and faster downloads.

The biggest enhancement that everyone will see on a daily usage is the A5 processor as Apple explain “Two cores in the A5 chip deliver up to two times more power and up to seven times faster graphics.2 And you’ll feel the effects. Fast. iPhone 4S is quick and responsive, which makes all the difference when you’re launching apps, browsing the web, gaming and doing just about everything. And no matter what you’re doing, you can keep on doing it. Because the A5 chip is so power-efficient, iPhone 4S has outstanding battery life.“

If you still doubt the A5 chip will enhance the iPhone 4S then “The dual-core A5 chip delivers up to two times more processing power, which makes iPhone 4S even more responsive. Pages load quicker. Gameplay is better. And everything just feels faster.“

So there might not be an iPhone 5 available this year, but these are significant enhancements over the iPhone 4, very similar to the enhancements seen from the iPad 2 over the original iPad.

To compare some of the iPhone 4S features, see the table below

Will many previous iPhone customers upgrade?  I think it will be similar to how many iPad 1 customers upgraded to iPad 2.  Eventually when your mobile phone contracts are up for renewal then many will go for the iPhone 4S.  The die-hard Apple fans will undoubtedly upgrade within the first 3 months of launch.  For anyone upgrading the main enhancements will be the Speed of the dual core processor, the enhanced camera and video recording and perhaps Siri.

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.

About a year ago, I was looking at an iPhone Alarm Clock dock to replace my ageing digital alarm clock in the bedroom.  I looked long and hard, most were well over £100.  I don’t mind spending that kind of money providing what I get is value for money and that it will last for a long time.

When I was looking about a year ago, the iPhone 4 was coming out, and none, I repeat none said whether they supported the iPhone 4 or not.  I still had an iPhone 3GS but I wasn’t about to purchase a dock over £100 and find that I get the classic “Accessory not supported” error or simply it doesn’t charge the iPhone.

A year on I had been taking a very extensive look at the current assortment of iPhone Alarm Clock docks and it still seems that nothing has moved forward in a year.  90% of all the iPhone Alarm Clock docks do not say whether they support the iPhone 4, be it on web stores or more importantly on the manufacturer websites.  You have to dive deeper into looking at customer comments on each webstore or reviews to work out which ones still don’t support the iPhone 4.  In a year my requirements have changed, no longer do I have a 3GS or a single iPhone, I have 2x iPhone 4′s, so I want an iPhone Alarm Clock dock that supports two iPhone 4′s.  I also have an iPad, but I’m not expecting any of these iPhone Alarm Clock docks to support the iPad, that would be just too much of a requirement.

Whittling down the iPhone Alarm Clock docks that have a dual charger facility and that support the iPhone 4 I came up with only two.  Actually there’s like a dozen, but the majority of these say that the left hand dock only sync’s and doesn’t charge and the right hand dock only charges the iPhone 4.  Or that one dock is for iPhone 4 and the other for a non-iPhone.  That unfortunately rules them out in my situation.

So back to the 2x I could find, one looked ideal and was just what I was looking for.  Unfortunately looking at the Apple Store comments, there’s about 50 reviews across UK and US Apple Stores online and pretty much they all say that within 12-18 months the unit dies.  Prices have come down a lot in the last year, but I’m not going to buy something with a high failure rate and especially outside of the 12 month warranty.  That reduces it to two iPhone Alarm Clock docks, both remaining ones don’t have a digital alarm clock on them (which is again one of my requirements to replace my ageing alarm clock).  So now I’m down again to a healthy 0 available for my current needs.

I’m amazed that with people either married or in relationships, that charging two iPhones in the bedroom is I would have thought it quite a necessity now days, yet there’s very few alarm clock docks that will actually allow you to do it.  Why?

I think one of the big problems is that most of the hi-fi manufacturers haven’t really embraced this technology yet, most likely because if they want a “designed for iPhone” or “iPhone Supported’ logo then they have to give Apple 30% of the revenue, which means either they make a 30% loss or they have to hike the price by 30% – incidentally that’s most likely the reason why these are usually over £100.  There’s one that was made from a reputable hi-fi manufacturer, JVC, but it didn’t have a large LCD alarm clock on it, and looked very large and bulky.

I really wish companies would stand up and take note that having one of these in the bedroom is a good thing.  I suspect another reason why companies aren’t making these is that they feel that each person has their own bed stand, so will want their iPhone close to them.  So that means going for a single iPhone Alarm Clock dock for each person, which also adds to their profits.

If you’re in the market for a dual iPhone Alarm Clock dock, then if you have an iPhone and an iPod then you’ll find lots of different docks, but if you want two iPhones or two iPhone 4′s to be supported, that’s when it starts to become tricky.

If you have found and are using a dual iPhone Alarm Clock dock, let me know which one you have and how it’s working and how long you have had it.

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.

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.

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.

The average iOS / iPhone user spends 84 minutes a day using their device with applications installed onto the device and only ten minutes on the web using web-based applications. Each iOS owner has on average, 108 applications installed on their device, 20 applications are shipped with the operating system and 88 are installed from the iTunes App Store.

Appsfire also suggests that 58% of installed applications are free, 23% are paid and 19% are the default apps on the handset.

Source: TUAW