Posts Tagged ‘Steve Jobs’

iPhone 4: Damn you, Gizmodo.

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

Hey all, this is an article I wrote for MediaKick about the iPhone 4, announced by Steve Jobs at yesterday’s WWDC Keynote Speech. I’m not totally sure what MediaKick’s feelings about me reposting articles I’ve written for them but if this post undergoes a swift exit you’ll know…

Keeping up his tradition of announcing a new iPhone at WWDC each year, the bespectacled Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the newest addition to their smartphone range, the unimaginatively named iPhone 4.

iPhone 4

To build up anticipation ahead of his official announcement (which was no mean feat considering Gizmodo leaked a prototype of this phone several months ago, to which Jobs made a sly reference when showing off the new handset’s design), Jobs described this new version as “the biggest leap since the original iPhone”.

The new iPhone departs from the casing style of its predecessor in the biggest way seen so far. As it does away with the slippery bevelled edges that caused many a drop-induced screen crack, replaced with a steel edge that nicely frames the handset. What’s more is that the stainless steel edges make up the band for the antenna system within the phone, fitting all standard connectivity medium antennas (GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, et al) in a feat of engineering that Jobs claims was worth sacrificing Apple’s traditional aversion to distinct lines in their products. The new edges also allow the phone itself to be notably thinner, reduced to an anorexic 9.6mm, with Jobs claiming it to be 24% slimmer than it’s past incarnations, making it the thinnest smartphone on the market today; which, to me, sounded like a challenge. The buttons on the edges remain more or less the same, volume rocker (but now with an added mute toggle) on the side, headphone jack atop and microphone beneath. Jobs referenced the Gizmodo leak by insisting that nobody had seen this before, to howls of laughter, none of which (I assume) were coming from Jason Chen.

The new iPhone 4 also packs a new screen, a 3.5 inch display with an 800:1 contrast ratio and a 960×640 pixel display, figures until now unheard of on a mobile phone. A new feature allows this called ‘Retina Display’, which, despite it’s cool-sounding name, is simply a quadrupedal increase in pixel density on the screen; meaning that text and displays will be far crisper even at close range as the ppi (pixels per inch) is increased to 326. Indeed, Jobs went into scientific detail explaining the working of the human eye and explaining that the limits of the retina is 300ppi and, with a display comfortably over that limit, text viewed at a longer distance should resemble a printed book. Arguably, this (pretty poor) comparison was in response to the critics of the iPad’s capabilities as an eBook reader as it uses a backlit screen, rather than the traditional eInk screens, and is less comfortable to read at length – surely if the problem doesn’t exist on the iPhone, people will be more confident about iPad purchases for it’s eBook functionality. After some technical difficulties in which the iPhone 4 seemed to lose Internet connection which caused Jobs to, paradoxically, request that the journalists in the room, promoting his product online, stop using the Wifi, the ‘retina display’ was further demonstrated through a wealth of comparisons between the iPhone 4 and the 3GS. Jobs reassured the assembled app developers that their existing apps, when used on an iPhone 4, would render in the sharp retina display, before rounding off his demonstration of the display by describing it as the “best window on the planet”, I can only assume he was excluding the human eye.

Eager not to leave out the major techies in the room, Jobs went under the hood of the iPhone 4 and for the first time in WWDC history we were shown the innards of the new iPhone, he started talking about the A4 processor, designed and built in-house by Apple; currently only available in the iPad, the A4 chip packs 1GHz of punch. The most noticeable thing within the new iPhone is the larger Li-ion battery, taking up a good 30% of the immediately visible back, accompanied by the usual unrealistic stabs in the dark estimations about battery life, claiming 6 hours of 3G browsing, 7 hours of 3G talk and an amazing 300 hours standby. Not to be outdone on the ecological front, Jobs’ next job was to fly the green Apple logo for a moment and explain how the iPhone 4 meets all the environmental standards that the users have come to expect from his products – good to know that the Apple is compostable. The phone also comes with 32GB of storage (though it’s pretty likely models with varying capacities will be available), dual mic noise suppression (using the back mic to identify noise and attempt to filter it out of the front mic input), support for 802.11n Wi-fi which has recently come out of draft and a fairly standard HSDPA connection speed.

Rather than bringing out their own gaming device, Apple has opted to infiltrate the gaming sector in the guise of an MP3 player as they touted, above anything, the gaming features of the iPod Touch. Now the gate is open for the iPhone to throw it’s antenna-edges in as, to go with the classic accelerometer and the oh-so-pointless compass, the iPhone 4 packs a gyroscope. This 3-axis addition gives a far more accurate representation of the device’s position and movement to make motion-controlled games even more immersive. The gyroscope, combined with the accelerometer, now give the iPhone a 6-axis sense of motion putting it at about the same as early PS3 controllers, this is the first time anything Apple has produced has been directly comparable to a gaming-specific product so it’ll be interesting to see if this will lead to any degree of competition between the large gaming companies and Apple. The iPhone 4 also comes with the proximity sensor that deactivates the touchscreen when, for example, the user lifts it to their face to talk, to avoid face-dialling (a word I just made up) and a light sensor.

In response to one of the biggest criticisms of the iPhone, a feature oft-rumoured but never vindicated, Apple has finally introduced a front facing camera to the iPhone’s otherwise unblemished front. Though the cameras are now 5 megapixel instead of it’s normal 3, Jobs insists that for image quality and professional photography the focus shouldn’t be on simply increasing the megapixels in a camera and one’s effort should, instead, focus on “capturing photons and low light photography”, to which Apple’s solution is a backside illuminated sensor. Other features of the camera includes a fairly standard LED flash and 5x digital zoom, but also continues the development of Apple’s ‘tap to focus’ feature which directs the camera to focus more on areas indicated by the viewfinder and less on other areas. A very interesting, but perhaps ultimately superfluous, addition is the camera’s ability to record video in high definition – a video quality of 30 frames per second at 720p quality, integrated with the iPhone’s antecedent video editing application (or a new development which I’ll come to later) and one-click sharing with major social media websites.

After gleefully announcing the introduction of iMovie for the iPhone, Jobs left the stage and ushered in Randy Ubillos, one of the people behind Adobe Premier, Final Cut Pro and now the new iMovie for iPhone. This new app incorporates the functionality of the original Mac application into a portable format, into which you can import recorded video and chop’n’change to your heart’s content; it even includes visual effects, transitions, sounds and geotagging to give you the full experience of a basic video editing package. The iMovie app can even allow you to export your edited creation into a variety of sizes and resolutions: 360p, 540p and 720p. Attempting to stuff so much functionality into one cramped, if well pixel-occupied, screen inevitably meant that the screenshots appeared to be quite cramped, but hopefully this will be resolved with later versions. The app will be available soon in the App Store for $4.99.

Steve took the stage once again to again request that the journalists, for whom this whole keynote is for, refrain from using the Wi-Fi and even requested that Wi-Fi cards be switched off as it was interfering with the smooth demonstration of the iPhone 4 features. His return was to talk about the iPhone OS 4.0 which will now, and forever more, be known as: iOS 4; this segment was little more than a rehash the new features of the iPhone OS 4.0 as he did in April: multi-tasking, unified inbox, etc. Jobs mentioned that the Safari search engine feature, which already houses Google and Yahoo! search engines will now also support Bing, and Jobs was surprisingly kind to his companies rival about how Microsoft have done with the introduction of Bing.

As with the iPad, the iPhone 4 will have a focus on eBooks as the app for this, ‘iBooks’, is added to iOS 4 – combining an eReader with a PDF reader to act as a pseudo-document management application as well as a bookshelf with the charming visuals for iBooks that we saw on the iPad demonstrations. Jobs also touted the ability to sync your eBook collection with all your Apple devices, saving the need for repeat purchase and syncing your place in a book and your notes, along with a heavy focus on interactivity within the text, such as finding word definitions with the in-built dictionary and searching the web for words, phrases or references within the book you’re reading.

A new feature within iOS 4 is the inception of iAds, the inclusion of advertisements within apps to, as Jobs explained here, to help app developers (and, no doubt, Apple themselves) earn money and, thus, encourage the development of free and low-cost apps. He demonstrated how these apps would seamlessly integrate with the app and, in fact, the overall effect was quite pleasing; the ad wasn’t distracting. Given the controversy that this move has been met with, Jobs assured the developers present that clicking an ad wouldn’t, thanks in part to the new addition of multi-tasking, cause the app being used to exit, nor would the developer be required to do any sort of hosting or management of the ads, all of which will be served by Apple servers. Apple already has a very wide range of surprisingly well-known companies signed up to advertise on iAds, collectively committed to pay $60 million; money which would come back (minus Apple’s fees of course) to the developers. Jobs delighted in explaining how this close communication between advertiser and platform owner meant that new ways of advertising where possible, and continued to demonstrate using an in-app advertisement for the Nissan Leaf.

Jobs then takes his audience back to 2007 when he demonstrated the first public iPhone call to Jony Ive, one of the lead Industrial Designers at Apple, and he says that he has the honour of doing so again. The large iPhone on the screen showing what Jobs’ handset shows flashes up with the normal outgoing call display to Jony Ive when suddenly a face fills the screen, a face belonging to Jony Ive himself. Now, Jobs and Ive begin a sort of double-act to introduce ‘FaceTime’: Apple’s new iPhone VoIP application, allowing video calling using the front or back facing cameras between any two iPhone 4s. Jobs was coy enough to mention that the app currently only works for “calling” over Wi-Fi, as they are still working on deals with carriers to allow this data-heavy service. The call to Ive came through very clearly with no palpable lag, even in spite of Steve’s Wi-Fi worries so it remains to be seen if this service can compete with Skype, which has recently moved into mobiles. My prediction is that, considering the high number of iPhone users and FaceTime’s video calling prominence (where Skype has, on mobiles, failed to bring that out yet), Skype should retreat – fast.

Wrapping it up, Jobs mentioned that they’d resurrected the white iPhone for it’s fourth iteration to co-exist, once more, with it’s black twin. Details of US pricing were much the same as in the past and there was, understandably, no mention of UK pricing [O2 will be announcing pricing in the coming days - Ed]; though it was mentioned that the UK was one of the first five countries the iPhone 4 will ship to upon it’s release on June 24th. Before signing off, Jobs pleased music-lovers and early iPhone adopters everywhere by announcing that iOS 4 would be available for past models of iPhone and iPod Touch, unfortunately it would be feature-limited on the 3G and not on the first generation Touch due to hardware capabilities.

With the keynote speech over, loyal Apple fans will go away happy that practically all their past demands have been met, if 2009 was any indicator then 2011 will probably be simply a minor variation on what we’ve witnessed now; but you can’t help wonder where Apple can possibly go next…

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iPhone OS 4.0 – Better Spam Integration

Saturday, April 10th, 2010

As if we needed any more evidence that Apple’s flagship smartphone, iPhone, was severely lacking in the most basic features – Steve Jobs has held another media-frenzy of press launch to announce a minor upgrade to the phone operating system – Version 4.0 – with over 100 new features. Mock them, though I do, for holding an entire press event for something so minor, I admit that I am going to propagate that by reviewing it, when I didn’t do so with my own phone’s OS upgrade last week – ho hum.

iPhone OS 4.0 Features

One of the very first things Apple have addressed is multi-tasking, with Jobs giving a piss-poor explanation about how they’ve developed their own way to do multi-tasking that doesn’t drain battery life – unfortunately their way is exactly the same way as the Palm Pre has done multi-tasking since it came out more than a year ago. In any case, the iPhone’s multi-tasking features simply involves allowing multiple applications to run at the same time, except when their exited they no longer function or update, which can be adapted using their new API to work with, for example, playing music while the app is open but not active. Double-pressing the home button brings up a list of running apps and will likely involve some sort of functionality within that list of each app, such as the list showing music controls on running music apps and so on. The Palm Pre does much the same, and always has, running multiple apps in a “deck of cards” fashion that allows you to scroll through running apps much like pressing the Windows Key and Tab does in Vista, except linearly, saving on battery life by having the applications stop updating themselves or running at full pelt when they’re not the foreground app, until the user specifically elects to close the app. The difference is that Palm have had this for a year, and haven’t had the device out for three years of development – so when Steve Jobs says they were working on this “So that’s what took so long” – I can all too quickly call bullshit.

As if Apple’s baffling desire to tout the iPod Touch as a gaming device rather than what it is, a music player, wasn’t bad enough, now the iPhone is getting a “Game Center” to turn the games in the app store into a socially competitive time-killer. Simply put, this involves better network play, leaderboards and acheivements, something already present in the games themselves quite often, but something Apple wants to usurp for themselves. The upcoming Windows 7 Phone will include integration with XBox Live, which will undoubtedly trump this attempt by Apple for serious gamers because the latter option actually has a high-end console rather than a pissy little handheld alone.

In a shameless display of lazy, ball-scratching capitalisation, the new iPhone OS comes, like it or not, with built-in spam by third parties, giving Apple a cool 40% of the revenue generated. “iAd” sticks adverts into apps which include interactive elements (as in those godawful shoot 5 iPads to win one) and videos – of course, none of these ads, as they do on the web, will run in Flash, instead his holiness has decreed that no ad shall enter his kingdom unless they are scripted in HTML5, which Jobs weirdly claimed was “industry standard”……..no Steve, no it’s not.

When asked if any of the devices in what I’ve just named Apple’s iRange will ever support Java or Flash, Jobs’ reply was a flat “No”.

iPhone OS 4.0

Other notable features include allowing background location apps to use triangulation instead of battery-behemoth GPS, which I hope will be an optional feature – some people are pedants for an exact location, something which bouncing signals randomly around nearby cell towers to give a vague idea of where you are can’t do – so that running things like FourSquare doesn’t kill your battery and making an available idea of your location ironically important as you have no battery left to call anyone if you need a lift.

Menu screen wallpapers, app grouping, unified e-mail inbox, bluetooth keyboard support and a feast of other new features paled into obscurity in the face of the announcement that the new iPhone OS will be able to run iBooks – Apple’s eBook store that was created around the announcement of the iPad and it’s eReader functionality. Tellingly, an update to my Palm Pre last week to allow support for paid apps saw the appearance of thousands of eBooks – none of which I have bought specifically for the reason that, if trying to read a book on an OLED screen wasn’t bad enough (*cough*iPad*cough*), reading on a screen so small would be insufferable – which renders the integration of iBooks on the iPhone completely pointless. Some will try, and they will suffer.

iPhone OS 4.0 will come to the iPhone 3GS and 3rd-Gen iPod Touch in the summer and to the iPad in the autumn. So far, no announcement has been made about the cost, if any, of this update but there’s been no indication that the update will come out for the original iPhone or the 3G – meaning there’s now an actual reason to buy a 3GS – Steve Jobs, you cunning fox!

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Talking out of his iArse

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

In 2008, Apple deity Steve Jobs damned the Amazon Kindle to the technological abyss by asserting on eBook readers, “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore. Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year.” Fast-foward to 2010 and chuckle with glee from your comfy desk chair as you watch his holiness make a u-turn with all the elegance of an agitated baboon as the iPad comes out, brimming with eBook reader features and plans to release books on the app store. But maybe Jobs wasn’t talking out of his iArse back then, as Google takes up hammers to nail down the coffin of the printed word, people are still reading – but Google want their own say on how they do so.

Google have been, for lack of a better word, prolific in their endeavours – rising from an obscure, oddly named search engine to a main player in almost every digital pie they can stick their grubby little fingers into. Having perfected and, with increasing speed, enacted the art of data collection, and having catalogued nearly every scrap of data, they’re moving on to the most old school of old school information distribution and are attempting to digitise books…

For around six years now, Google have been feaverishly cataloging books faster than a hyperactive librarian, meticulously scanning page after page and applying character recognition to create a vast database of books and their content, with a view to have search terms passed through the data and return books that contain information on your search term. The amount of content that you’ll get to see from results is, as of yet, undetermined, as Google are, as you’d expect, being put through the motions of copyright issues. The overarching concept is that, rather than searching to find websites with the information you need, or having to face the daring feat of going to your local library for books on the subject, you can get information the credibility of a book without the hassle and trauma of standing upright.

We’re missing the bigger picture here – Google have tirelessly worked to build what is essentially a global centre for websites, videos, shopping and anything that the internet can do. But there’s always been a divide (a ‘digital divide’ if you will) between information readily available digitally and what’s hard to obtain, but often more useful, in hard copy – once again, also, it’s a trade off between convenience and precision.

It’s not unlike Wikipedia, show me a single regular internet user who hasn’t used the editable encyclopedia in some capacity, it is used because it is a prolific and centralised hub of information. The problem with Wikipedia, as with any website, is that there is a big difference in how this information is moderated – although, despite the bad press it gets, Wikipedia is arguably a more reliable source than other sites as a whole, because it is moderated to a degree whereas the web is not – which means there is no guarantee that the information you see is correct. Getting a book published is another aquatic vertebrate teapot, however, as a manuscript, reseach and information is subject to detailed editing, proof reading and review before a publisher sinks it’s cash into bringing it to paper and print. Non-fiction, therefore, and in particular publications of a scientific or otherwise factual matter is heavily moderated and it’s content is, again arguably, of greater veracity. Google is using their technology to make an online encyclopedia of entirely moderated information, with a plethora of fiction to boot.

I’m usually the first, or at least the second, to bemoan how a new project or gadget won’t be a success for this reason or that reason – but for once the sneeringly cynical side of my brain is taking a holiday, because I think this is fantastic. Many have accepted the sad but ultimately inevitable fact that libraries and books aren’t the primary method of getting information anymore, as with everything the convenience of our ability to retreive massive volumes of information with little more than a few finger movements has lead to it’s downturn. However, if we can get the same availability from sources as reputable and scrutinised as books, plus Google’s ubiquity as an information source, the oft-quoted dystopian vision of a world built on unmoderated and inaccurate information can be shut down by the luddite morons that preach it.

If Jobs is to be believed, the printed word might be dead, but it lives on in another form, albeit an abstract and entirely non-physical form, almost like a spirit…it’s oddly poetic. Gah, that was sickeningly sentimental.

Oh yeah, and if anyone smugly declares anything about the printed word technically living on as eInk screens on eBook Readers they will receive a swift and precise beating with my Sherlock Holmes collection – which is a heavy motherfucker.

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Apple – “Come see our latest media circus”

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

Apple has cock-teased fanboys of the universe by sending out invitations for an event on January 27th to the US Press, emblazoned “come see our new creation”. Suggesting that (having thought themselves too good for CES) they plan to announce, unveil and, no doubt, parade a new tablet PC; complete with Steve Jobs seeking constant validation from the assembled journalists by saying “isn’t that cool?” every twenty seconds like an insecure parrot.

The reason that they are probably going to announce a tablet pc is because it’s been rumoured since Steve Jobs had hair and we’ve had so-called “leaks” of information suggesting they will do so. Despite the rumour persistence and it’s prior lack of grounding, the explosion of tablets, slates or any variation on that title suggests that now they want to get in on it. Tech websites have been inundated with “leaks” of details on the gadget, as well as (quite ironically) a leaked e-mail about their procedure in leaking details to titillate the geek proletarians. Furthermore, the exponential growth of the Malus-domestica empire (thank you Wikipedia) means that they won’t want to let a market open up without their input, letting another company build up the dominance that they have in the smartphone market in a, albeit delicious, rotation of bureau, wherein they now have to struggle to overthrow the tablet King.

However, for the purpose of merely playing the atheist-devil’s advocate, this is why they might not announce a tablet. Firstly, such a device will be nearly indistinguishable from an iPhone and, unless they find some sort of amazing new feature, they needn’t bother. Secondly, Apple have a habit of letting a new market settle down, look at the problems that the current devices have and then pull out a trump card. Before the iPhone, Windows Mobile owned the market and there was almost no alternative – now every Thomas, William and Harrison company has some OS or device out, ever since Apple started it off; yet none of them have usurped the leader of the crusade, who did very well first time. The leaks could easily be a way to throw people off the scent of their latest gadget, it seems very odd that Apple would enter a market this quickly, let alone with a brand new gadget. Rather than bringing out a Flip-killer, they stuck a camera on the iPod Nano. Rather than bringing out a games console, they promoted the iPod Touch more as a gaming device than a music player. History has shown that Apple usually has to ridiculously confident in their new product to release it as a whole new gadget rather than piggyback it on something they’ve already bought out. I think it’s reasonable to assume that they’re not simply gluing something new onto something old this time, due simply to the hype instead of waiting until MacWorld of WWDC as usual.

Now, it’s clear that Apple have worked up enough media hype that they have to follow through with something truly groundbreaking come January 27th. Whether or not Apple will manage to follow through remains to be seen, but past experience tells me they probably will. If it IS a tablet, then it has to be something truly remarkable to tell it apart from simply a fat iPhone, or any other Tablet PC announced last week, but if it isn’t then it has to be some equally, if not more, astounding to live up to the hype that they’ve created. Either way, this should be fun to watch!

Frankly, I’m still anticipating a new line of “Apple Toasters”.

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