MacTheNews
iPhone 4S — your new best friend
Written by Matthew JC Powell Wednesday, 05 October 2011 04:51
The iPhone 4S, launched at this morning's "Let's Talk iPhone" event in Cupertino, probably disappointed some observers who were hoping for a radical redesign of the iPhone 4. Indeed, even the fact that it's still "4" rather than "5" seems to have hit a sour note. However, the sameness is only skin deep. Underneath it's quite a different beast.
OK, it looks basically identical to the iPhone 4. It's not in any new colours, just the same black and white (hint: purple, folks). The retina display is the same and the front and back "glass" is the same. Even the much-lamented antenna is still the same — or at least it looks that way.
In fact, the antenna has been redesigned, and now incorporates two antennas for 3G communication, intelligently switching between them for sending and receiving. The effect of this change is, according to Phil Schiller, better and clearer signal reception as well as faster data downloads — up to 14Mbps according to Schiller. Obviously that's going to vary according to your network and the vagaries of wireless on any given day in any given place. But theoretically that's pretty respectable speed.
At its core, the iPhone 4S has a faster processor — the same A5 processor found in the iPad 2. Schiller suggested that performance in most tasks could be twice as fast as on the iPhone 4, while graphics performance could be as much as seven times faster. In spite of that, Schiller claimed the 4S has longer battery life than its predecessor — though again this will depend on your usage.
The camera has had a major boost, from five megapixels up to eight, with three independent sensors, an intelligent IR filter and "backside illumination sensing" that is meant to help the phone take better shots in low light. The camera app has been massively improved with face detection and exposure setting, and the camera is said to be able to take photos .5 of a second apart.
For video, the camera supports 1080p HD recording, and has image stabilisation built in while recording rather than having to "fix it in post" using the sometimes-unreliable iMovie. The display can be mirrored to the Apple TV (newer version) using AirPlay.
By far the biggest news was Siri, the voice-recognising "personal assistant" technology that Apple recently acquired when it bought its developer, Siri. Siri parses plain language (at launch it will support US, UK and Australian English as well as French and German) and responds "intelligently". Ask it whether you should wear a raincoat, and it finds you a weather forecast. Ask it for directions, it finds a map. Ask it a more general question, it searches the web for an answer, with links to Wikipedia, Wolfram Alpha and others.
As well as all that, you can use it to compose emails or text messages or longer documents — anywhere you see a keyboard on an iPhone 4S, you will also see a microphone icon for dictation. (That's right, only on a 4S — it is dependent on the hardware.)
Clearly there are a great many hilarious ways that Siri can and probably will go wrong, but today's demos looked impressive.
And how much will all this cost you? So far Apple has set pricing at $A799 for the 16GB entry-level model, $A899 for the 32GB and $A999 for the top-end 64GB model. iPhone 4 pricing meanwhile, has been reduced to $A679 with only the 8GB model presently available.
iPhone 4S will be available to pre-order on 7 October for delivery on the 14th. Initially available in the USA, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Japan and Australia, it will roll out to another 22 countries on the 28th.
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iOS 5, iCloud, new apps to arrive 12 October
Written by Matthew JC Powell Wednesday, 05 October 2011 04:45
At this morning's "Let's Talk iPhone" event in Cupertino, Apple again demonstrated new features coming to iOS 5, most of which we'd seen before, as well as integration with iCloud, which we hadn't, and announced updated iCloud-aware versions of its iWork apps for iOS. All of these things are going to arrive on the 12th of October.
Apple clearly has a great deal of faith in its ability to roll out data on that kind of scale — faith clealy not founded in the debacle of the App Store/iPhone 3G/MobileMe launch a few years ago. Lessons learned, one hopes.
iCloud will do everything MobileMe does — synchronise contacts, calendars and mail between your Mac and other devices — and more. You can also keep photos, documents, App Store and iTunes purchases synchronised between devices. It also includes a backup service so you can keep your iOS device backed up without having to connect it to a Mac at all — and restore it if necessary, including all your apps and songs.
With iCloud-enabled apps, you'll be able to work on a document on one device, then go to another synchronised device and start working on the same document exactly where you left off. Apple's iWork apps for iOS will be the first to support this, but expect it to be rolled out in the near future on other apps.
A few new tricks have been added as well. Find My Friends is similar to MobileMe's Find My iPhone, except that it allows you to broadcast your location (via your phone) to select contacts so that they can (for example) find you in a crowd or on a beach. You can do this constantly (so your buds can always track you down) or temporarily (just while you're at Dream World and don't want to misplace the kids — assuming they have iPhones too. They do, right?)
Photo Stream, another iCloud feature, keeps photos you take on your iOS devices (such as with the snazzy new camera on the iPhone 4S or the exceedingly non-snazzy camera on the iPad 2) synchronised across devices. Take a photo on the iPhone and edit it on the iPad's more generous screen, for instance, without particularly having to do anything.
The other difference between iCloud and MobileMe is the price, or rather lack thereof. iCloud is free for a relatively paltry 5GB of storage, though paid upgrades are available (Australian pricing not available yet). If you're a MobileMe member you'll be able to transition your account over (noting that you lose access to iDisk) or stay with MobileMe until June next year when it's shut off.
In the meantime, the 12th of October ought to be a fun old time. Given the apparently overwhelming burden placed on the internet by people wanting to follow this morning's event (followed by the collapse of apple.com for some minutes) all the downloading of iOS and apps might just be too much.
BBEdit 10 ships with 10^2 new features
Written by Matthew JC Powell Wednesday, 20 July 2011 02:55
BBEdit, long the preferred tool for "serious" HTML coders (WYSIWYG? We don't need no stinking WYSIWYG) has turned 10, with a major overhaul to its users interface and performance tweaks to boot. All up Bare Bones is claiming over 100 new features for its flagship product.
The most obvious tweak to the interface is a switch to sidebars instead of drawers for handling documents within a project. This makes related documents easier to find, as well as bringing the app into line with more current OS X interface trends and setting it up for operating in full-screen mode when OS X Lion ships.
Oh yes, it fully supports Lion — but don't worry, it won't require it. Not for a while, anyway.
The other really obvious change is the addition of palettes for quick access to commonly-used markup devices. Previously these required accessing menus or, of course, manually typing in tags. Naturally, typing things in is still a fully-supported option, but if you want a little bit of convenience the palettes mght save some people some time.
It's a step towards WYSIWYG, but don't panic — this isn't InDesign.
A less-obvious but nonetheless jaw-dropping additional feature is an extension of BBEdit's ability to search within zip archives for documents without having to uncompress them. In BBEdit 10 you can not only search within zips, you can edit documents within the archives and save your changes — all without ever cluttering your hard drive with decompressed detritus.
And there is more — way more. Syntax colour schemes (a feature suggested by John Gruber of Daring Fireball) allow flexibility with the way you view your code. Inbuilt Dropbox support marks a move towards the cloud for mobile coders. Auto-saving not only of your documents but of the application's state so that when you restart all your documents are right where you left them. And more to boot.
And all of this with a significant price cut. Formerly $US99.95, BBedit will now retail for $US49.95 via the Mac App Store. Upgrade pricing for users of any commercial version of BBEdit will be $US39.95 if you go directly through Bare Bones. The application will be sold for a short time at the reduced price if you've previously bought directly through Bare Bones and want to switch your licence to an App Store one. That will only last three months though, so get in quick.
BBEdit 10 ships with 10^2 new features
Written by Matthew JC Powell Wednesday, 20 July 2011 02:55
BBEdit, long the preferred tool for "serious" HTML coders (WYSIWYG? We don't need no stinking WYSIWYG) has turned 10, with a major overhaul to its users interface and performance tweaks to boot. All up Bare Bones is claiming over 100 new features for its flagship product.
The most obvious tweak to the interface is a switch to sidebars instead of drawers for handling documents within a project. This makes related documents easier to find, as well as bringing the app into line with more current OS X interface trends and setting it up for operating in full-screen mode when OS X Lion ships.
Oh yes, it fully supports Lion — but don't worry, it won't require it. Not for a while, anyway.
The other really obvious change is the addition of palettes for quick access to commonly-used markup devices. Previously these required accessing menus or, of course, manually typing in tags. Naturally, typing things in is still a fully-supported option, but if you want a little bit of convenience the palettes mght save some people some time.
It's a step towards WYSIWYG, but don't panic — this isn't InDesign.
A less-obvious but nonetheless jaw-dropping additional feature is an extension of BBEdit's ability to search within zip archives for documents without having to uncompress them. In BBEdit 10 you can not only search within zips, you can edit documents within the archives and save your changes — all without ever cluttering your hard drive with decompressed detritus.
And there is more — way more. Syntax colour schemes (a feature suggested by John Gruber of Daring Fireball) allow flexibility with the way you view your code. Inbuilt Dropbox support marks a move towards the cloud for mobile coders. Auto-saving not only of your documents but of the application's state so that when you restart all your documents are right where you left them. And more to boot.
And all of this with a significant price cut. Formerly $US99.95, BBedit will now retail for $US49.95 via the Mac App Store. Upgrade pricing for users of any commercial version of BBEdit will be $US39.95 if you go directly through Bare Bones. The application will be sold for a short time at the reduced price if you've previously bought directly through Bare Bones and want to switch your licence to an App Store one. That will only last three months though, so get in quick.
BBEdit 10 ships with 10^2 new features
Written by Matthew JC Powell Wednesday, 20 July 2011 02:55
BBEdit, long the preferred tool for "serious" HTML coders (WYSIWYG? We don't need no stinking WYSIWYG) has turned 10, with a major overhaul to its users interface and performance tweaks to boot. All up Bare Bones is claiming over 100 new features for its flagship product.
The most obvious tweak to the interface is a switch to sidebars instead of drawers for handling documents within a project. This makes related documents easier to find, as well as bringing the app into line with more current OS X interface trends and setting it up for operating in full-screen mode when OS X Lion ships.
Oh yes, it fully supports Lion — but don't worry, it won't require it. Not for a while, anyway.
The other really obvious change is the addition of palettes for quick access to commonly-used markup devices. Previously these required accessing menus or, of course, manually typing in tags. Naturally, typing things in is still a fully-supported option, but if you want a little bit of convenience the palettes mght save some people some time.
It's a step towards WYSIWYG, but don't panic — this isn't InDesign.
A less-obvious but nonetheless jaw-dropping additional feature is an extension of BBEdit's ability to search within zip archives for documents without having to uncompress them. In BBEdit 10 you can not only search within zips, you can edit documents within the archives and save your changes — all without ever cluttering your hard drive with decompressed detritus.
And there is more — way more. Syntax colour schemes (a feature suggested by John Gruber of Daring Fireball) allow flexibility with the way you view your code. Inbuilt Dropbox support marks a move towards the cloud for mobile coders. Auto-saving not only of your documents but of the application's state so that when you restart all your documents are right where you left them. And more to boot.
And all of this with a significant price cut. Formerly $US99.95, BBedit will now retail for $US49.95 via the Mac App Store. Upgrade pricing for users of any commercial version of BBEdit will be $US39.95 if you go directly through Bare Bones. The application will be sold for a short time at the reduced price if you've previously bought directly through Bare Bones and want to switch your licence to an App Store one. That will only last three months though, so get in quick.
