Some Siri Video To Help Wet Appetite While We Wait For Our 4S

I think my iPhone 4S shipment notification probably got lost in the mail.  Otherwise, it cannot take this long for Apple to ship mine out.  I live in California, for goodness sake!

Anyway, here is a Siri video that ought to hold us over until Friday (I hope).




Source: TUAW.

Will iOS 5 Automatically Update Your App?

We are less than 48 hours from Apple unleashing iOS 5 on our unsuspecting iPhones and other iOS devices. Very excited.

However, I am wondering about a feature you might have heard about but haven't yet seen an update to since early June.

Back in June, some wording within iTunes suggested that auto-updating OTA was not only coming to the OS but also to the apps as well.

That might be a cool feature to have for most folks but not so in some minor situations.

For instance, my updated iOS Slingplayer app will not work with my Slingbox but the earliest version from 2010 will.

It's weird. I know and I have seen anything that might suggest why.

So you can see why I would not want my iPhone or iPad to go to iCloud and pull down an update.

Question: does anyone know whether auto-app update is an iOS 5 feature and, if so, can it be disabled?


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

iCloud: How iCloud Sync Files And Who Has Access

Here's a simple write-up from TUAW that explains just how iCloud deals with files and how it syncs them to all your devices.  It's worth a read if you're concerned about how your files will be treated.  More specifically, which versions of updates win out.

Siri - If We Can Only Rename Our Assistant

The key to iPhone 4S is Siri, our personal assistant who won't judge us and lives to serve us.  But while Siri is an unique name,  I would like to be able to rename it.

I'm sure this feature along would wow the next Apple keynote event, be it for the iPad 3, WWDC, or just bring Siri to the Mac.

So, how about it, Apple?  Give us that personal touch - let us name our Siri.  I'm also interested in the ability to customize the voice for Siri.

iPad: Facebook App Is Here - Who Cares?

The Facebook app for the iPad is here.  Does it matter?  Maybe if you use it a lot and wanna waste more of your time away on it, then okay, this is a big deal.

Here are a couple of screen shots I took from the iPhone 4.

I think the gaming that the app brings is very interesting from a curiosity standpoint and how "HTML 5" this all really is.  Supposedly, this is all based on a new gaming and Web platform that Facebook has been working on with Apple's help.

What else do you get?

• Higher rez pics
• Better navigation (we'll see)
• Ability to spy on your friends (I've got Foursquare for that).
• Again, gaming...most interesting addition.

What I don't see is better privacy but coming from Facebook, that'll never happen.

If this is your cup of tea, its available in the iTunes store or your app store on your iOS devices now. For the rest of us, it's "meh" update.  

Acer Acer's S3 Ultrabook: How Not To Compete With Macbook Air

The brand new Acer competitor to the Macbook Air is $100 less!  Really?  That's all you can bring to the game, Acer?  I'm sure the specs and everything else is better, right?  Sacrificing margin to compete, no?

Wrong.  According to Electronista, this Acer ultrabook is, again, $100 cheaper than the lowerest priced Macbook Air.  But it's not a fair comparison because this UB, Acer Aspire S3, has a 13" screen.  The 13" Macbook Air starts at $1299, which is $300 more than this UB from Acer.

Go for the Acer, right?  Definitely not. Remember a few months ago when Intel was pushing the ultrabook to compete with the Air?  Well, the PC makers revolted, saying that Intel would need to lower its chip prices in order for them to compete with Apple.  I reckon at the time that Intel was not likely to make enough of a sacrifice to allow the PC makers to compete with Apple.

Hence, the PC guys would need to make their own compromises.  And these compromises in the S3 shows.

Intead of a 1440x900 resolution like the Air, the S3 has a 1366 x 768 resolution.  Instead of a 128 MB SSD, it opted for a 20 GB SSD.  However, it does make up for the smaller SSD with a 320 GB regular hard drive.

Instead of 7 hours of battery life, the S3 will sport 6 hours.  However, Apple and Acer have vastly different battery life standards.  For instance, in my 11" Macbook Air, I can get up to 8-9 hours of battery life if I use it in the way PC makers measure their own battery life.  That alone would blow the doors off this S3's battery life.  So, we are not talking about Apple-to-Apple comparisons here.

Furthermore, the Air has the new Thunderbolt port, better audio, BT 4.0, and runs OS X along with iCloud integration.  and back-led keyboard.  And first impressions of S3 from blogs showed that the compromises Acer is known for showed on the UB as well.  When bloggers are using words like "trade-off" and "plasticky", it's not a good start.

As usual, Acer is leading the way with "good enough" and "hope customers won't notice too much" attitude when it comes to competing with Apple.  Perhaps, if Intel really wants to push the ultrabook as a Macbook Air competitor, maybe it should take a book out of Google's page.

Google has its own line of Android devices, the Nexus phones. that serve as templates for other device makers to follow.  Intel and Microsoft should consider doing the same thing.  

Form Factor Changes – I Don’t Think We’ll See Much More

I think there is a race to go thinner and lighter.  I think that’s all great but it is really coming at a sacrifice of the mobile experience and performance.  Ideally, we want our mobile devices to half as thin and nearly weightless in our hands.  All that without sacrificing the speed and battery life.  Then after that we want them to be even thinner yet again.

Fine, someday.  That day will come.  With the speed of tech advancements today, it’ll probably come sooner rather than later.  However, there is a threshold that each company like Apple, Nokia, and Samsung pushes up to each time and will not be able to exceed until the following year until technology advances enough for them to push that envelope again.

But within that threshold, there is only so much they can do.  Check out where we were and where we are today.

It reminds me of when role playing gamers create their characters.  They have points that they can assign to different attributes or skills. Strength, guile, attack, ability to cast magic spells, or some other specialty skills.

I reckon it may well be something similar in tech.  You can make your device thinner or you can make the battery life longer but not both.  You can make it faster or you can make it lighter but not both.  Obviously, in between those choices, there are degrees with which engineers can mess around with until they find an acceptable balance.

Wanna bigger screen?  Then you’ll need to change the body, obviously.  That could also mean you have more room to play with but it also means it’ll be heavier and cost more.  Will your customers accept that?  Or will you lower your margins?

What about using glass or simply good-old plastic?

It’s not easy.  Otherwise, every single device out there will be an iPhone or Galaxy S II, two of the arguably best mobile devices on the market.  For those who are chastising Apple for making the iPhone 4S look exactly like the iPhone 4, you try to do better.  Or for those who say that Samsung is copying Apple’s look and feel, you try to do better.