Tagged: apple

iPhone 4S launches October 14, 2011 with the best smartphone camera, will it kill point and shoots?

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Many felt Apple’s announcement of iPhone 4S yesterday was a let down. The rumours on the web hyped the event to a degree where most people I spoke to believed an iPhone 5, totally revolutionary new iPhone, was about to be launched. Apple’s tick-tock refreshes aren’t new, and it’s so effective even Intel has adopted it in its recent roadmaps. So why beat yourself up about it?

It’s not all “bad” news, the new camera in the iPhone 4S is incredible for its form factor.

The new iPhone 4S camera consists of the following:

  • Sensor:
    • 8 megapixels (3264×2448 resolution)
    • Backside illumination (BSI)
    • Hybrid IR filter
  • Lens:
    • 5 elements
    • f/2.4 aperture
    • 4.3 mm focal length (35 mm equivalent of exactly 35 mm)

Apple was also able to utlize the Apple A5 SoC to process images, created what they dubbed as Image Signal Processor. Coupled with the new sensor and lens the iPhone 4S allows for 60% more pixels, 73% more light, 33% faster capture, 30% sharper image, 26% better white balance, better colour accuracy and uniformity, face detection.

When a video is being taken, the iPhone 4S can utilize its gyroscope to provide video stabilization.

Judging from the EXIF data from the iPhone 4S keynote photos, the camera can achieve ISO 64 without any problems, it’s likely able to shoot in ISO 50 at the lowest range. The exposure and shutter are fully automatic with the built-in app so it’s hard to tell exactly what you can do until someone gets one and tries it with Camera+.

If the recent Flickr camera usage data is of any indication, the point and shoot cameras marketshare may take an unhealthy dip in the coming year.

WWDC 2011: Mac OS X Lion, iOS 5, the ecosystem and Apple’s legitimization of piracy

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Twitter’s kind of taken over my news sharing lately, but sometimes I still feel like writing a lengthy feature about important technological milestones. Apple’s WWDC 2011 keynote topped the technology news today and there are some very important things worth mentioning. 

Mac OS X Lion part of the keynote was not a big surprise. There’s been multiple developer preview releases already, so most of the announcements were really just confirmations that makes developers feel better about spending the last 2 months re-writing their apps to be Lion-ready. 

Mac OS X Lion will released via App Store only. Recovery is now built-in to a partition on disk. I assume this means the 200 MB EFI partition that currently stores nothing will finally see some use. I hope the recovery function can be duplicated onto a USB drive in case of complete system failure. 

Autosave is long overdue for a major desktop OS, versioning is now a standard feature. AirDrop will do p2p over Wi-Fi, auto discovers and sets up ala Boujour (presumably). System wide multi-touch gestures, fullscreen apps, Launchpad (copying Springboard from iOS) and Mission Control have all been revealed before. 

Perhaps the biggest impact from the Mac OS X Lion announcement was its pricing. $29.99 is all you pay if you already run Snow Leopard. Must have Snow Leopard to access App Store so I assume Apple will rack up Snow Leopard upgrade sales concurrently. What is Microsoft going to do with their pricing model now that Lion is $29.99 for everyone? There’s probably a panick in Redmond right now, Ballmer may needs to spend another billion to feel complete. 

iOS 5 is perhaps the bigger news. But I noticed most of the top 10 features in the keynote were copying, or if I put it nicely, catching up to Android. A new notification system, system-wide Twitter integration, Newsstand (why can’t iBooks also look like this?), new camera controls, simple photo editing, wireless updates is now extended to the OS level, finally you don’t need to sync an iOS device with iTunes when you unbox it. 

The real feature that Android doesn’t have is still a copycat. This time from RIM. iMessages will be built into the current Messages app and will support real-time notifications while messaging, just like BlackBerry Messenger. LiveProfiles, Ping, Kik, WhatsApp, and every other BBM clone just rolled over and died, and for good cause too. The market was too saturated with messaging apps. It’s nice to get something official from a major OS developer. 

The video mirror feature that is currently iPad 2-only will do away with cables now if you have an AirPlay compatible display, or an AppleTV. Just join the same Wi-Fi network and AirPlay to the output device. 

Steve Jobs can rest easy now. Apple fulfilled their “Post PC” promises with iCloud integration. Wi-Fi sync for any traditional iTunes content. iCloud will store all iTunes purchased content for you, plus 5GB worth of storage that is used for emails, and anything else and 30 days worth of photos. 

One last thing: iTunes Match will upgrade your ripped songs to 256 kpbs AAC DRM-free for a $24.99 yearly subscription! The terms and conditions states a limit of 25,000 songs, still better than none. Unmatched songs will be uploaded, but not upgraded to 256 kbps AAC. Still forthcoming is whether or not the iTunes matched songs will be made available after the subscription expires, or if you must keep the subscription active for matched content. Either way piracy is now legitimized.

Apple is likely not stopping with just music. iTunes already sells movies, books, etc. Whether or not this will extend to all media sold in iTunes is yet to come. 

iOS 4.3 now allows FaceTime from iPhone 4 to email address

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Back in iOS 4.1 release the iPod touch was first given the ability to initiate FaceTime through email addresses. Then FaceTime for Mac came out of beta and it functioned the same. Then iPad 2 announcements came about, once again FaceTime was initiated through email. Finally after iOS 4.3 release the iPhone 4 (GSM model) now allows for the same FaceTime functionalities. 

I didn’t see this mentioned anywhere, felt like sharing. 

iPad 2 is basically iPad with new SOC (dual-core), dual cameras, gyroscope, thinner, lighter

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The new iPad 2 technical specifications are out and it’s not half bad. The new Apple A5 system-on-chip is basically a dual-core ARM chip (CPU) paired with a better PowerVR chip (GPU), no RAM specification reveal but iFixit will have a teardown shortly after the March 11 US launch date. 

I was hoping for a simultaneous worldwide release this year. At least Apple was able to set a target date for the 2nd batch. So the US gets iPad 2 on March 11, rest of the developed world (note: Canada, Japan, Europe Union) gets it on March 25. No target date for the Southeast Asian or Middle East regions yet. I assume there will be mass grey market shipments from Japan to other Asian countries and the Middle East can dip into the EU shipments earlier. Price premiums be damned. 

There are some disapointments too. Where is the Retina Display? I guess IPS screens are still expensive and the amount of pixels that is required to power a “Retina Display” is not yet energy efficient enough. Same goes out to the Thunderbolt rumours. Having an direct input/output port on the iPad is not realistic yet, the controller Thunderbolt requires will probably make the iPad 2 twice as thick. 

I do like the fact that Apple is making a new dock adapter that will output to HDMI. $39 is hefty for an adapter but the pro-HDMI haters can finally be quiet about it. The new “Smart Covers” are meh. 

New free iPad-only apps include FaceTime, Photo Booth. Looks like FaceTime will finally switch to a different way of initiating calls. Too bad Apple is charging $0.99 for the Mac version. 

iMovie for iPad and GarageBand for iPad are nice, if you need them. Is it me or does Apple seem to refuse to adopt universal binaries for their own apps? I would like to pay $4.99 for iMovie once and have it work on all iOS devices please. It appears that I was wrong, iMovie will be universal. Yay! GarageBand probably requires the screen real estate like Pages, Numbers and Keynote, therefore is iPad-only. 

To be honest I am more excited about the fact that Random House is now on iBooks than the iPad 2 announcements. At least I have iOS 4.3 to look forward to come March 11.