everything like such as blah

Honest short review of the iPhone 4S

I have had the white iPhone 4S with 16GB for the past 3 months now and up until now I am quite positive about it. I’m not sure why I would be negative about it, but it’s worth noting that my previous iPhone 3GS fell apart 3 months after I purchased it and so I thought I’ll share my thoughts about the 4S.

White is a cool color despite what others say. My phone is still white and it hasn’t turned yellow. So this is good. The speed hasn’t been going down either and although I haven’t purchased any protective skins, the phone has only one scratch (which, sadly, is bang in the middle of the screen). While you think the 4S is delicate, it actually is quite robust if you handle it with some care.

Siri is quite so so. I was amazed at first. But it has gotten a bit dull. I use it for reminders and for calling people. These two things work so exceptionally well I would love to use it for other apps, like Maps, Whatsapp or Facebook. But, as you most certainly know, Siri works with Maps only in the US (seriously?) and third-party apps are not supported.

Now the worst part is actually the battery. I do text (with Whatsapp over 3G) and I check mails and Facebook. A lot. Though, having to charge my phone almost twice a day is ridiculous. You can’t make a “smartphone” and expect people to only phone with it.

So, overall. It is a good phone and I really like it. Do I love it like my MacBook Air, no. Just because of some design flaws though.

Honestly I just needed an excuse to write something. So here it was.

1 year ago

#review #macbook air #apple

Review of the new MacBook Air 13”

About a week ago I bought the new MacBook Air. I used to have the first generation MacBook Air as my primary computer. The first model, to put it plainly, was just about fine. These things s*#@$§ about it:

One USB port
Slow speed
Standard 80GB HD
Batterylife very very short

All of these things make the computer perfect for browsing, but as soon as you open iPhoto, the thing starts to heat up like a sauna and it basically takes you 10 minutes what takes you 1 minute to do on an iMac.

Buying the new MacBook Air I was incredibly relieved to finally have two USB ports. Dealing with one USB port for almost 2 years, it did seem rather surreal to sync an iPhone and an iPad at the same time. But that just on a side note. So connectivity is amazing.

Keeping my iTunes and iPhoto libraries on external drives, I am pretty much settled for enough disk space with the 256GB SSD. But even better, this SSD is lighting faaaasszzt. My quick benchmark was to geek-command Apple + Shift + A, Apple + A and finally Apple + O in the Finder. The result was beyond anything I had imagined: all applications were fully launched within four seconds.

Unlike the first MacBook Air, this new generation has it’s own graphic card. Along with the upgraded 2.13Ghz Intel processor and an added 2GB of RAM (totalling 4GB RAM), I should have enough speed to install Windows and play Mafia 2. Seems like the slow speed is fixed as well.

Though, the real stunner about this laptop is not it’s lightness or it’s thinness, it is the batterylife. Browsing, listening to music and maybe writing a few Word documents with display brightness set to around 50%, this tiny computer easily gets 8 hours out of a single full charge. Just wow!

I have been thinking hard to try and find a con about this laptop. But, there just don’t seem to be any. You don’t need a disc drive, nor do you need the backlight keyboard. Firewire is dead and you have stereo sound. You have a high-density display and a good camera. It’s out of durable aluminium and doesn’t have a glass-covered display. I just can’t think of any reasonable bad thing about this laptop without making the argument sound redundant or stupid. In other words, this laptop is perfect. It truly is perfect.

Connectivity: 10/10 (enough for daily purposes)
Speed: 9/10 (why no iCores?)
HD Space: 10/10 (enough and speedy)
Batterylife 20/10 (stunning)

So for those who have been skimming to read my conclusion, here it is: 10/10.

1 year ago

#keynote #apple

Maniacal Rage: Selected Notes From Watching Today's Apple Keynote Live Stream →

[Steve Jobs mentions the iPad will support the new HDR photos feature]

Me: Why did he just say HDR photos on iPad?

Me: There is no camera.

Shawn Morrison: Unless they’re bumping the iPad today too. Obviously the next iPad will have a camera.

Me: At least a front-facing…

1 year ago

#itunes #network #apple

Showing how my network is set up. Main function is undoubtedly to stream movies to the Apple TV and music to my speakers. Just because the MacBookAir only has one USB port. And a tiny HD. Nevertheless, it is rather delicious having everything wirelessly accessible; if only the AirPort could handle a bit more traffic.

1 year ago

#apple #magic trackpad

Apple Magic Trackpad

Apple introduced* the Magic Trackpad a few days ago. For rather obvious reasons the computer mouse is bound to be dead. There is no way to properly add multitouch capabilities to standard mouses without flexing and bending your fingers into the most awkward positions. Wrists are wrecked because optical lasers fail to work on the smoothest and most expensive gaming trackpad. Scroll wheels clog up within a week (and because mouses are glued and not screwed, the dust is not removable and so the mouse ends up being hammered into pieces). Besides only having one button and constantly getting dirty, Apple’s mouses are the perfect example for these unmistakable mishaps.

With trackpads on the other hand, you get the most fluent finger movements, lighting fast scrolling and responsive precision. Apple’s laptop trackpads provide that. Other trackpads tend to be a mixture of friction-rich rubber fitted into a tiny rectangle lowered several inches into the laptop with half of the already tiny surface reserved for scrolling - take a look at Dell laptops. Nevertheless, trackpads are the future. Mouses were perfectly fine at a time where you placed cursors in Word documents and played Minesweeper. Nowadays things need to be handled with your fingers as if they were on your desk.

It is a late and long overdue movement in the right direction and not a genius strike in bringing the laptop trackpad to the desktop computer.

Verdict: Order it if have a desktop.

* Apple doesn’t really introduce things anymore. It just places the produce somewhere on the website without mentioning it on the front page and the Hot News.

1 year ago

#apple #privacy

mnmal:

I felt I needed to repost this

1 year ago

#apple #mac mini #design

jayrobinson:

Apple’s redesigned Mac mini reinforces their trend of sweating even the smallest details. This thing is beautiful. Head to Apple.com/macmini to see more.

2 years ago

#apple #monopoly

Non-Apple’s Mistake →

mnmal:

Apple has “A nearly-total monopoly on [computing devices] designed with good taste”

— Alex Payne on Twitter

The author of the link posted above writes:

But, having cornered no markets, Apple is not a monopoly. Or is it?

I argue that Apple now has not one but two monopolies:

I) A nearly-total monopoly on computer (and pocket computer) systems designed with good taste.
II) A total monopoly on the Microsoft-free, hassle-free personal computer. [1]

Mr. Jobs is indeed starting to behave like that other convicted monopolist we know and love. Yet unlike the latter, Jobs did not engage in underhanded business practices to create his monopolies. They were handed to him on a silver platter by the rest of the market, which insists on peddling either outright crap [2] or cheap imitations [3] of Apple’s aesthetic. In order to resist the temptation this worldwide herd of mindless junk-peddlers and imitators have placed before him, it would not be enough for Jobs to merely “not be evil.” He would have to be a saint (and a traitor to his shareholders.)