By now I would expect that most everyone has heard of the antenna issues surrounding the iPhone 4; holding the phone in a normal manner results in your cellular signal going down dramatically. I’m not about to go over all the details again here, as it’s already been covered extensively everywhere else. I will, however, point out an interesting theory my brother-in-law told me.
If you go to Apple’s website that covers the details of getting your free bumper case or refund, you might notice that this special offer has an expiration date.
Now speaking from a business standpoint, the only reason why you’d stop offering the only thing that’s keeping your device working is because your are about to release a device that doesn’t need it anymore. Couple that idea with the knowledge that Apple has been hiring antennae specialists like crazy since “antennae-gate” hit the media and it makes you wonder if Cupertino has been working on getting a new hardware revision out to the masses.
If Apple could do this, I’d actually consider it a civil service! Then these people could stop trying to talk to me in person or posting to internet forums!
Just an FYI for any jailbreakers out there; iOS 3.2.2 for your iPad “fixes” the PDF vulnerability in Safari. As much as I love my iPad, I’m rather annoyed at Apple for putting time and effort into blocking my ability to jailbreak it into a truly wonderful device.
Dear Apple,
Please spend more time on getting iOS4 to me for my iPad so I can multitask and do awesome things, and less time on blocking me from jailbreaking. Everyone knows you just jailbreak our devices to gain additional functionality that will come with iOS4 anyway!
With a new federal decision that Jailbreaking your Apple device is completely legal, we now have a better way to do it as well! The fine folks at the iPhone Dev Team have made “Jailbreak Me 2.0 (Star)” which will unlock any and all iOS device with firmware 3.2 or greater. From there, it’s a hop skip and jump from performing a full sim-unlock and use your device on any carrier.
To unlock your phone, it’s a simple matter of being able to type a web-address and then have all the patience in the world. Point your Safari browser to http://jailbreakme.com and follow the one single instruction. Yes. That’s it. At least, that’s what people are telling me, because their servers are now so swamped with incoming requests that my phone can’t even see the site anymore!
UPDATE: After hitting retry for quite a many times, I finally found a way to get my systems to update.
I guess this could be considered NSFW, but just barely. It’s made of durable premium clear vinyl which is good quality for a sticker. Available from Etsy seller michaelxuereb.
Apple announced their iPad yesterday, a tablet-sized version of the iPhone. Other than the unfortunate name, it is an amazing little device. Considering how quickly we all got over the Nintendo Revolution becoming the “Wii”, I think we’ll forgive Apple soon enough.
If you remember my post Friday, I laid out some of the ways Apple could screw up such a product. I’d like to visit some of those points again and compare how they did.
I mentioned I was worried they’d try and use parts from the MacBook Air (system board, screen, chassis, battery). Thankfully they didn’t even try. The battery life is supposed to be able to play video for up to 10 hours, and standby is rated to last a month. To be sure, the thing was probably in airplane mode (with all radios turned off) and screen brightness was way down, but it’s still better than the 4 hours I get on my laptop.
On January 27th, 2010, Apple Inc is poised to introduce to the world the new iSlate which will change the computing world. Or it might be the iTouch. Or iTablet. Or iCostsomuchyouwanttopuke. We really don’t know. Of course, they were also “going” to do this last year too. The fact is, we don’t know what we’re getting, when we’re getting it, what it’ll do, what it’ll cost, or what it’ll be called. If it is a tablet (and most every market analyst is falling over themselves to say it is), it’s going to be big.
Head on over to Gizmodo’s collection of Apple Tablet Rumors to get a feel for whats being talked about.
My only worry is that Apple might make some of the same mistakes Microsoft made when moving to the tablet. I also worry they might try to hang to some of their existing hardware. Below is my list of ways Apple could possibly screw this up:
So, for those of you who didn’t know; Apple has a yearly sales seminar where they “announce” what will be coming out from the company for the coming year. In the tech world, it’s actually a pretty interesting event, as it lets us know what will be coming out RIGHT NOW from Apple. Many other companies (Microsoft, Intel, AMD) will often have an annual conference as well, but it’s to announce things they are working on. Some of those things may never hit the market and some might take forever to get there. With Apple’s, you know they’ve spent the last year secretly working on them and everything will be on sale as soon as the conference is over.
I, as you might expect, did not make it to the event. Not that I was invited anyway.
Allow me to bullet point everything that was covered here anyway. In my usual style, I may endlessly mock everything that was announced.
This is a follow up to my last post here. If it seemed like it was a little one-sided, that’s because it was. It was getting a little long in the tooth, so I split it into two separate entries. If you read one, and feel the need to comment, please make sure to read both.
At the end of my last entry, I sort of bashed on the iPhone unfairly. It’s not that I have an actual issue with the iPhone per se, but it was the best example of Apple’s “we can charge you extra for what PC user’s have had for years!” mentality.
In truth, where Mac OS shows everything that making a computer “idiot proof” can do wrong, the iPhone shows where “idiot proof” isn’t such a bad thing! (special thanks to my friend Robert, a Mac user, for the phrase “idiot proof”).
OK, just to be clear first and foremost; this is not to start a flame war. I am writing this about my own experiences and observations using computers and personal electronics. Not everyone knows computers to the same degree, so I’m going to simplify things as best I can without coming across as children’s programming.
I would tend to think that I have a little more expirience using a computer than most people. Not all people, mind you, but most. I own a Mac and a PC and use Windows and OS X (sometimes at the same time). I’ve had to teach myself how to recover from any sort of system crash in Windows, and that there isn’t really a way to recover from a crash in OS X (so don’t go screwing around in there). But it wasn’t until this last weekend that I think I might have hit upon the fundamental difference between an Apple and a PC.
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