It seems that everything happens when I’m on vacation, firstly the announcement of the iPhone 4S and secondly and more recently, Steve Jobs passing away. I had put together the following information and thoughts on the iPhone 4S announcement, I was just about to post them when I heard the sad announcement of Steve Jobs passing away.
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.
When I’m out with friends, many have their phones or gadgets die just when they want to use them, and mine are always fully charged. I always get asked how come I have so good battery power on my gadgets? It’s quite simple, I have a host of battery chargers I use.
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.
This is a common question I receive a lot from people that ask me by email or in person. I converted from PC to Mac a little late, about 9 months ago to be exact. I decided at a whim to suddenly try the other side as grass is usually always greener on the other side of the fence you sit on, even though many friends had tried to convert me to the Mac OS for a number of years. I think the first suggestion was around 2001 and 10 years later I finally made the jump (or is it a leap?).
What should you look at when buying a Mac? Don’t go for the entry level model. When you look at prices you’ll say “£1000+ for a laptop? I can get a PC Laptop for £399!”. Yes you can, but it’s an entry level laptop. It might be a 15″ or 17″ laptop but it’s running a slower processor, less RAM and the build quality is probably pretty plastic. MacBook Air’s and MacBook Pro’s are much more robust, build quality is superb in a single aluminium unibody (single block of metal hollowed out). Take a look at a windows based laptop for around £1000-£1300 and then compare those specs to the Mac’s. If you’re not looking to pay £1000 then quite simply you’re not looking at a high-end laptop, so the Mac’s may not be for you (likewise the better higher-end Windows laptops aren’t for you either). If you’re okay with paying this amount of money for a laptop then you’re going to get a good laptop. Get the best processor and RAM you can afford, ensure you get a laptop with an SSD (Solid State Drive) and one that’s the largest your an afford (yes you will need it).
The Mac’s with Snow Leopard have the AppStore as a download, Lion now has the Mac AppStore integrated fully into the Operating System. The Mac AppStore is similar to what you would see on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, which offers a lot of inexpensive applications (and games), and is a good first check to kitting out your Mac’s. Apple do take 30% cut from developers through the AppStore, so you some developers still prefer to do a slightly cheaper version outside of the AppStore and to make a little more revenue per sale. However then you have to know how to install DMG files (which the Mac AppStore is just plug and play), tap on something, purchase it, it downloads and installs automatically without having to do anything else).
I think I have done a pretty good job in my standards of avoiding the Google Street View Car over the past couple of years, but that day had to come where it would make the pounce and I couldn’t avoid it.
More recently on a trip up into the Highlands in Scotland, unfortunately I wasn’t able to escape the evil grasps of the Google Street View car. I was traveling up through GlenCoe and low and behold what appeared coming towards me at lightening speed was the Google Street View Car….DARN! It got me!
SSD’s are the newt way forward, they’re Solid State Drives, e.g. no moving parts. No latency on having to spin the disk up to speed, e.g. 7200 rpm (revs per minute) and then having to have a head (needle) touch the disk (which can sometimes scratch the surface and damage it under movement/shock).
SSD’s aren’t all that rosy though. They’re still new for one thing, there’s still no average as they’re new on how long they’ll last. Most manufacturers of SSD’s claim that they will most likely last less than a regular Hard Disk Drive. Likewise if they start to die, the suggestion is they will die quickly as opposed to a spinning Hard Disk Drive, although I’m not too sure of that. On average I find my hard drives in laptops last around 2 years or less, so if an SSD were to last 18 months, then I would still be happy if I could get the speed gain that I really crave as a power user.
Now both my MacBook Air run an SSD and my 
I added the word ‘good’ to the title of this post because there are dozens of iPhone Alarm Clock docks available.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Thanks to the MacBook Air and iPad 2 making the work load a lot easier, and my trusty Canon EOS 550D 
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