Amazing that this still happens after all these years.
At Apple’s store on Fifth Avenue in New York, police officers put up barricades as the line stretched more than 10 blocks and the crowd cheered continuously for the 15 minutes before the phones officially went on sale.
Product Loyalty? Brilliant marketing? Whatever the cause, this is something that Microsoft and Samsung can only dream of.
This is a nice little collection of tidbits highlighting new functionality that comes with iOS 8.
One of my favorite additions that came with iOS 8 is Siri’s ability to pick out a tune. This is, presumably, a direct result of Apple’s new deal with Shazam.
To try it, press and hold the home button and say “Name that tune”. Siri will listen and will attempt to name the song you have playing. If the song is available in the iTunes Store, Siri will name the song and put up a “buy” button.
Joshua Brustein wrote an inflammatory piece for Businessweek, called Hey, Android Users, Don’t Buy the New iPhones. In a nutshell, the basic premise is this: Although the new iPhones are the best phones on the market and superior to the larger screen Android devices they are replacing, it’s just too hard to switch ecosystems, so stick with Android.
I struggled with a reply to this. And then I read John Gruber’s response on Daring Fireball. Spot on. Go read it.
[VIDEO] Professional photographer Austin Mann teamed up with The Verge to field test the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus cameras in the Icelandic countryside. They took along an iPhone 5s for a side-by-side comparison. Brilliant work.
There’s a lot to enjoy here. For starters, Mann really pushes the cameras to the limit with some extreme low-light shooting. Good to know the iPhone 6 series cameras can handle such low light, and it does help showcase the difference between the 5s and 6 series cameras.
My favorite shot was the Focus Pixels test, towards the bottom of the page.
Focus Pixels are all about autofocus. They enable phase-detect focusing on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, which makes switching subjects in your frame both smooth and fast. It works well in stills, helping you always keep your subjects in focus, but it’s most useful when you’re shooting video.
Words don’t do this justice. Watch the video.
iOS 8 is an incredibly rich upgrade. Stepping through these pages will give you a sense of the major new capabilities so you can take advantage of them.
When you upgrade to iOS 8, most of the options are ones you’ve seen with past upgrades. But one option, asking if you’d like to upgrade to iCloud Drive, is new, and the choice you make here matters.
This is a beast of a review, lots to digest.
As you make your way through the various reviews, keep in mind that the best of iOS 8 is yet to come. As developers wrap their heads around what’s possible, clever bits of code that leverage your iOS experience will start to emerge. That’s when the true value of iOS 8 will become apparent.
In a nutshell, you now have the ability to restrict an app from accessing your location data while running in the background.
[VIDEO] Last week, Tim Cook did a two hour interview with Charlie Rose. The editors split the interview into two halves, running part one last Friday evening (here’s a link, if you missed it). Part two is embedded below. Fantastic interview. I found it riveting.
Wallet Hub put together a cell phone contract calculator, then used that calculator to analyze the cost of owning an iPhone 6 on various carriers, both with an without a contract.
If you find the numbers a little hard to understand, this article by CBS Money Watch’s Kathy Kristof does a nice job of explaining the implications.
Start by reading Jim’s review, then move on to these.
Arlington County is one of the largest counties in Virginia in terms of population. In a nice win for Apple, the school board announced that every single student in the county will be receiving a brand new MacBook Air. The rollout will start this year, with laptops provided to all 9th graders.
As it turns out, 9th grade is when the Computer Science track starts in Arlington, a good year to make sure that every student has equal access to the technology required to learn programming. The current curriculum is based on older Windows machines.
Nick Pierno is a longtime Android user. What would make him even consider switching?
It just kinda bums me out how mediocre all my photos and videos are. Not to mention all the missed opportunities from slow autofocus, bad low light sensing, etc. I know, I know.. woe is me. But if I can, I’d like to look back on the next 5 years with a bit more fidelity.
I’ve also been stricken with a bit of a bum rap this past year. I have an illness that has kept me stuck at home and in beds/bathrooms/waiting rooms/etc. a lot more than usual. This results in increased phone use, and of course, battery drain. Well… turns out the Nexus 5, despite being a truly outstanding phone, isn’t a champion of endurance.
There’s a lot more to this piece. Interesting to see how an Android user views the iPhone. One thing that is quite clear is that the move to a larger screen has opened up the potential audience for Apple.
Ever since the announcement, I’ve been wrestling with which new iPhone to buy. I’m at the end of my existing contract, and I’ve already got the funds set aside. The question is purely one of size. I dug through Apple’s site, trying to find an image comparing the iPhone 5 to the newer models.
I ended up rolling my own, using images from Apple’s site. Print and cut and you’ll have something you can use to see if your favorite model fits in your pocket.
New York Times blogger Brian X. Chen asked Tim Cook about the Apple Watch and battery life. Read the main post for Tim’s reply and more commentary.
From last week’s Apple press release:
Healthcare providers can now monitor the data their patients choose to share through apps such as Mayo Clinic or Epic’s MyChart app that will be used by Duke Medicine and Stanford Children’s Health/Stanford Medicine, among others.
Details are now starting to emerge on the Duke and Stanford efforts.
[VIDEO] This is a fun read. In today’s Monday note, Jean-Louis Gassée explores the creation of and reaction to the Apple Watch. Most interesting to me was the discussion of the potential role that Apple’s newly hired designer Marc Newson, a longtime pal of Jony Ive, played in the design of the Apple Watch.
The video embedded below is a few years old and has been making the rounds since word of Newson’s hire by Apple got out. It shows Newson lovingly, even wistfully, paging through his watch design portfolio. If you have not yet seen this, take a few minutes to watch. You’ll get to know a bit more about Marc Newson and, I think, you’ll be struck by how much the Apple Watch inherited from these designs.
Apple’s market cap pushed back over the $600 billion mark. Second place is Exxon Mobil Corp at $412 billion, then Google at $397 billion and Microsoft at $386 billion.
[VIDEO] A few days ago, fresh from the iPhone 6, Apple Watch, Apple Pay launch, Tim Cook appeared on The Charlie Rose Show. The show edited and released the first half of that interview Friday night. The complete video is embedded below, courtesy of Hulu.
I love Charlie Rose’s interview technique. He’s laid back, draws his subjects in, let’s them unburden themselves. He has a collection of issues he wants to explore, but does so so softly, you might not realize he’s even steering.
There’s a lot to enjoy here. Charlie gets hands on with the new iPhones and a look at the Apple Watch on Tim’s wrist. Interestingly, Tim wore his watch, but controlled it himself, saying “I may have some things on here that you shouldn’t see just yet.”
Charlie talks IBM partnership, Beats acquisition, product design philosophy and a lot more.
Tim talks about Steve Jobs with great reverence. He tells the story of Steve telling him he was going to be Apple’s new CEO, getting the sense that Steve was not going to bounce back.
Thoughtful interview, well worth watching.
Ordering a new iPhone? Got one to sell or trade in? If so, take a look at the linked article. Apple Insider takes a look at nearly a dozen big-name buyback services and retailers and gives a sense of the going trade-in rate and the trade-in process.
Nice reminiscences from the LA Times. Includes video of Steve Jobs doing the original iPod announcement.
A whimsical post with a valid message at its core. One value of the Apple Watch becomes evident when you receive a call or text and your hands/arms are busy/full:
To check that message or call all I have to do is lift my wrist and the gyro kicks in, turning the display on. Then I can simply glance at my wrist, rather than stopping the dogs to fish out the phone, to see if the message is important enough to drop what I’m doing. And I can then respond through the Watch rather than having to dig for the phone.
Exactly.
As the clock ticked midnight in California, Apple fans around the world made their way to the Apple Store web site and app, as well as to many telco sites, in an effort to get their hands on an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus. There were problems on many fronts, as demand trumped availability.
If you are considering one of the new iPhones, spend a minute walking through this carrier-by-carrier list of deals.
I love a good engineering effort. Paul Sprangers uses known numbers and some images from the Apple Watch site to build a more complete picture of the various Apple Watch dimensions. Be sure to read the comments, too.
A nice tip, just in case U2 is not your cup of tea.
On Wednesday, Apple told China’s three big state-owned mobile service providers that it would not release the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus in mainland China on Sept. 19, when sales start elsewhere. The carriers had already booked advertising campaigns for the phones.
Last year, Apple released both the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c in China on the same day it was released in the US. It’s not clear how long the lag will be for the iPhone 6 release.
[VIDEO] These new ads are unfocused and mean-spirited. I’m struggling to make sense of them. Where’s the clever?
JPMorgan Chase put out a mass mailing this morning trumpeting their newly announced Apple Pay partnership.