First Takes On the iPhone 5 IOS 6 (before seeing it in person)

I am impressed by iPhone 5 hardware, but I am also very much looking forward to the great many new software features from IOS 6.

First, a problem/hesitancy: I am concerned about problems related to greater facebook integration and do not intend to enable such integration until time shows that they have been overcome.

Here is a list of features I am interested in or have a comment about:
App loading:

• If you already own it, you do not have to type in your password again.  Finally!

Maps:

• The new road maps by Apple are vector based and should scale nicely (as opposed to be being based on tiles) for zoom.
• built-in turn by turn verbal navigation with traffic assistance will be nice.  I will compare that to waze.
• Flyover - a rendered image of areas may be very nice to use.
• Siri in my maps - I think this during a solo drive might prove very useful indeed.
• Local Search - what we are used to.

Siri:

• I do not yet have Siri.  Further Siri integration is very welcome.'
• Siri Open Table integration sounds great!

Shared Photo Streams:

• I have been wanting this feature since photo streams first became available.  I have relatives with whom I sometimes share some photos, but not all photos.  This is a very welcome change.
• Having a web view of photos in icloud only makes sense!

Passbook:

• I'll have to try it to have deeper thoughts.  I already use the Starbucks app and Apple store app.  I'm ready to try. 

Phone:

• Decline call with text message back - that is what I've always wanted!
• Do Not Disturb setting - I want to know more!

Web Browsing/Safari:

• Tabs in the cloud... I already share bookmarks with my desktop.  It is unclear how helpful this is going to be.

Camera:

• Panorama photos: I like to take some panoramic photos and greatly welcome this feature.  With the gyroscopic features in the iphone it should be easier for the system than in any other camera I have used to stitch together panoramic shots.
• Better image stabilization: always a good feature
• 40% faster picture taking - we NEED this!
• Face detection in video
• Take pictures during video capture!  Do you ever find yourself shooting video when you mean to be taking a picture?  I think this could save me from myself.
• Better noise reduction and low light performance - always good

Find My iPhone and find my friends:

• A new lost mode lets you track it!
• Track a child as they go home from school

Email

• Add photos and video to emails - FINALLY!  I do not have to start in the images app to get a picture into an email.  And it sounds like we will be able to attach multiple photos as well.

Music

• UpNext:  It sounds like the current playing list of songs is a separate always-there playlist.  You can add a playlist to it, and while listening to that playlist, add another song to play, and go back to your playlist.  I have often wanted to briefly switch to another song and this will let me do what I want to do.

First Takes On the iPhone 5 hardware (before seeing it in person)

I'm an iPhone 4 user at the moment.  I held off on an iphone 4S purchase as the improvements were too incremental to get me to buy a new phone out-of-band (when not subsidized by the phone company when if I waited a year it would be cheaper).

I have family that asked my opinion, before the iPhone 5 event, of what was likely to happen after the iPhone 5 event.  I have said that based on past experience:

• The phone is likely to have many innovative features that are attractive to users.  
• Some media folks would croon over the phone and love it
• Some media folks would surely state that the features are "old" and that some android phone or phones have had such features or better for a while and that the iPhone 5 is out-of-date and android is better and... (it can go on and on)
• The stock might take a bit of a dive.
• Sales of the new phone would be huge, and this would drive the apple stock price up.

Well, the stock price is already up prior to the start of sales for the phone.   The rumor is that the phone has been selling very well - sold out (delayed shipping) within 1 hour?  And, it sounds like the release actually went well.  There were some reports of slowness and problems with integration between Apple and cell companies (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint) in the US, but these reports were few and reports of people buying phones were many.  That bodes well for Apple.

I've sifted through hardware differences:

• 20% thinner, same width, taller - 4.87" (the thinnest smartphone)
• They made it taller but also lighter?
• The new height is supposed to improve the antennae quite a bit.
• 12% less volume
• About 20% lighter
• A new core CPU that is more energy efficient while being 2x faster (it is rumored to be the first truly Apple-designed CPU and is also rumored to run at 1Ghz instead of being "underclocked" to 800Mhz)
• 1Gb RAM (double the previous generation)
• somewhat better battery life with that smaller size and lighter weight
• 4" screen (instead of 3.5" screen) with 16:9 ratio (like a big-screen movie screen)
• 44% deeper color saturation
• the first cell phone to meet the sRGB (see Macrumors sRGB article) - movies will accurately have the colors as chosen by movie makers.
• Thinner without a separate touch layer and offers less glare than ever.
• 3 microphones = better noise cancellation
• Camera changes: (Digital Trends iphone 5 camera article)
• rear camera will use a sapphire crystal to be scratch proof, and is smaller while not losing quality
• front facetime camera now up to HD!  From .3 megapixel to 1.2megapixel.
• Support (in one small efficient chip) for newer faster cellular
• network technologies - mainly LTE - which can be VERY fast (often a touted android feature)
• Support in that same chip for better WiFi technologies - finally 5Ghz 802.11n with up to 150Mbps - this Macworld article says it well.
• newer better headphones - here's a link to a decent Macworld earbud article
• lightning connector - the new cable plug is small, and has the advantage of being able to be plugged in either way.  Many are panning the new cable for a variety of reasons (expensive adapters, not adhering to the standard of using micro usb).  I will wait and see what comes of this.

The main trend I see is this:  Apple is truly innovating and trying to provide hardware that will delight, amaze, and provide long-term value to users:

• Apple refused to support LTE and 5Ghz WiFi until chipsets supporting low power use were available.
• They made their phone thinner and lighter out while also making it better!
• The new manufacturing process fits the best parts from among over 700 together.  That's picky.
• iPhone materials hold up over time.  Even a 4+ year old iPhone 3 feels pretty good, and Apple chose to move away from a plastic case long ago.

Later I'll preview iphone 5 with IOS6 features.

new macbook pro retina and other updates very welcome indeed

These are my opinions and speculations about recent Apple hardware releases.  Apple recently released new versions of apple macbook air and macbook pro.  Several folks I work with have already ordered macbook pro retina systems.

I would welcome USB3, larger RAM, larger SSD/flash storage, and better CPUs available across the board.  I'm expecting that an updated thunderbolt display with USB3 will become available as part of the natural progression of things.

The new retina-display macbook pro with up to 16GB RAM, 4-cores of CPU, and up to 768GB of SSD/flash (not to mention 2 thunderbolt ports) is definitely interesting for reasons other than the display.  I have employees who compile code and run multiple intensive apps and do sometimes complain about needing more CPU power and RAM.  These types of users are indeed rare.

I would wait for a laptop with a retina display until there is more ubiquitous support from other applications.  If I could do away with a separate large display in the future, the retina display could well be worth the cost.  I'll try it out when co-worker's system becomes available.

iPad wins for heavy iTunes and iPhone app users over other tablets

thoughts about alternatives to the iPad and my iPad experience continued...

I use iTunes for music, movies, and ibooks.

Copying music (and music in the cloud), movies, and ibooks to an iPad is a no-brainer.  The networked iTunes experience enables me to play any movies on my computer with iTunes on my iPad as well.  I recently did use this on a family vacation.

My least happy experiences with the iPad have been when I tried to cobble together a solution - using BOX and iannotate.  This "worked" but was not a pleasant smooth experience.

If I were to use a MS windows tablet or an android tablet, I believe such experiences of "cobbling together" solutions would become common place.  I would have the freedom to do everything except what I want to do - just have things work out-of-the-box with the media as I have as I have it.

If you have not bought into iTunes media, you might not feel so locked in.  I do feel locked in to a really good experience with my media and even my existing iPhone apps which I can copy to my iPad.

Any MS or Android tablet I would have to buy apps for again.  I would have to learn a whole new ecosystem of apps and how they work, when and how they can be trusted...  Ugh.

My work has a mobile device management system that works for iPad.  It will soon work for some Android tablets but does not at this moment.  I have not even heard the MS tablet OS will ever be supported.

In short, I have reasons to use the iPad.  I am extremely dis-incented to use anything else.

ipad 1 experience:

I recently acquired an iPad1 for work.  I have not been on the iPad "bandwagon" - with a macbook air and iPhone I have not felt a need for an iPad before.  However, I have been in a class with voluminous documents.  Those documents happen to be available via PDF.  I borrowed the iPad 1 to test the utility of an iPad for PDF use in place of the exceedingly heavy 3-ring binder I was using.

I ended up using iAnnotate to read the PDFs.  That meant I could annotate/mark up the PDFs.  Ibooks does not let you annotate PDFs like it does normal ibooks.  I used BOX to copy files from my computer to iAnnotate.

All-in-all I found it usable but a bit of a pain.  It was not a home run experience, but did make it so that I did not have to travel with a thick 3-ring binder.

If I just want to read PDFs in ibooks, the iPad is a much better experience - not so much "fiddling around".

I find the iPad 1 to be perfectly usable for this use even as the "new" iPad retina is available.

Apple Networking Gear

I have found that networking equipment, specifically wireless networking, fails in 9-15 months in my house.  I have previously used linksys and netgear equipment.  They were cheap, feature rich, and not long lasting.

I strongly wanted to enable wireless backups for my apple machines in my home.  I also want to try to have equipment that might last longer.  Trying another brand was in order.  I have also seen a proliferation of wireless networks near my home - at times I have seen 15 or more other networks!  I know professionals recommending Ruckus wireless networking equipment.  I decided that for now Ruckus is out of my price range.

I have also found that there are portions of my home which are not covered by a single wireless router.  I decided to finally attempt to work on that issue.

I bought an Apple Airport Extreme to be my primary firewall/NAT/Wireless access device, and an Apple Airport Express.  Total outlay: about $300.

Many may decry the cost.  I have also heard that getting an Airport Extreme with USB 2 provides much slower disk access for network-accessible disk than a Time Capsule.  Having had a bad experience with a time capsule in the past and wanting more flexibility, I decided to stick to my plan.

Prior swapping my network equipment, I downloaded the Airport utility for my laptop via an ethernet cable (wireless was not working reliably).  After swapping my prior wireless router for the airport express, things did not work.  It was set as a repeater, not as my primary unit.  In advanced settings, I set it up with the same internal address space and security setting as my prior router an voila  - everything worked!  I have numerous devices in my home - Wii, Tivo, a printer, and more.  They were all able to connect.  It was very easy.  Having downloaded the software first was critical.

I downloaded the Airport Utility software for my iPhone as well at this point.  It works quite nicely.  Some spots in my house are still a bit problematic however - the coverage does seem better than before.

Next I added in the Airport Express.  Bam - those holes in coverage are now gone!  I have full access to my wireless network throughout my home.

I added a powered USB hub to my Airport Extreme and added a couple USB drives.  One for backups of a couple laptops, and one for media data.  I back up my iTunes as a separate job from time machine for my own reasons, and backups to this drive work find.  I have a laptop backing up fine as well.  I was unable to make the time machine backup encrypted via airport extreme.  I was also unable to start the time machine backup via a local hookup to the laptop and then moving it over the network to continue backups.  It forced a fresh entire backup.  So I wiped the time machine backup disk and it is working fine (I did not need the old backups).

I am also trying out the Airport Express hooked up to a mini-stereo system.  It works great.  The greatest drawback is that if you set iTunes to use the Airport Express, then the next time you play music that is the default and you may not intend to blare music through those remote speakers...

So I'm very satisfied with my solution so far.  There are drawbacks, some outlined above.  The other main drawback:  There is no easy way to get data about traffic going through my internet connection.  I cannot easily see what internet accesses are happening as is a feature on all other wireless routers of this type.  That is annoying. I have found instructions online to hack into the Airport Extreme to change this - I do not want to do this, I just want things to work.

Update:  I have been using this gear for about 3 months.  I have had no new problems; things work solidly other than having to reboot the extreme box a couple times (it was not responsive to remote management).

The Smartphone Personal Data Conundrum

There have been numerous reports about applications on both the iPhone/IOS and Android platforms.
Android issues:

• Recent PCWorld article about Android permissions problems

iPhone issues:

• portfolio.com iPhone PDF vulnerability article
• Guardian UK article about iPhone address book and inbuilt location database problems
• New York Times photo data available with location data permissions

• Siri if allowed from a locked iPhone would let someone with physical access to your locked phone access all of your personal data - data in your address book, for example.

There are characteristic differences between these sets of problems.   Android leadership generally says things that imply the Android model does what it should.  It appears however that the lack of updates for most platforms and the change in model over time leave most Android users vulnerable.  There are no contrite user-caring actions from Google.  Apple patched for the PDF problem.  They are working on pushing app developers to be clear as required in the developer agreement, and many app developers have updated their code to make data use clear.  Apple is trying to do something about it, has done things about it, and cares.

I'd rather have Apple behind me on this one.