Is the iPhone 4S Worth it?

In the aftermath of the iPhone 4S announcement, the general feeling was one of underwhelming enthusiasm.  People were happy that Apple finally released a new phone, but what they saw appeared to be nothing more than another iPhone 4.  People expected some radically new form factor, another game changing handset.  Instead, the iPhone 4S’ enhancements are all internal.  Outwardly, there is no way to tell the device from its predecessor.  So, should you drop the $200 to $400 on this new phone, given that it’s not the groundbreaking phone we were expecting?

It is important to first consider what people were expecting from this iPhone.  Believed to be the iPhone 5, the phone would sport the A5 processor, a larger screen, better cameras, a redesigned radio system, and a new aluminum unibody design meant to be impeccably thin.  A lot of this did not come to pass.  To be fair, I was always skeptical of the rumored design just because it seemed so ridiculously thin.  It would be hard to squeeze in the electronics and a decent battery.  A lack of significant 4G was also depressing.  However, we did get a large amount of these desired improvements.  The 4S has the A5, better cameras, and new radio gear.  So really, the only thing not delivered on was a wholly new package for all these features.

Many critics feel that Apple has been lazy in this choice.  The reality of the situation is that Apple invested a lot in the design of the iPhone 4, and it is today still one of the most precise and well-built phones on the market.  After a year it may seem old news, but you’d be hard pressed to find another handset on the market that is built with the same level of quality materials and precision design.  Much of the design choices also centers around the display.  Screen size is important because that is what determined form factor for this iPhone.

If we compared the iPhone 4S to a high-profile phone like the Samsung Galaxy S II, we find that the iPhone “loses” on screen size.  The GSII has a larger 4.3″ S-AMOLED+ display – arguably the best display technology available today in terms of color accuracy and vibrancy.  However, the resolution is 800×480, compared to the iPhone’s 960×640 resolution in the retina display.  Display size is the big question regarding the 4S.  A lot of people (including myself) were hoping for a larger 4″ screen, better for watching movies or typing.  However, this decreases the ppi of the retina display unless Apple boosted the display resolution again.  That’s a difficult thing for developers to cope with as they have to re-tune apps for the higher resolution.  So Apple believes  having retina display sharpness is more important than actual screen size.  I’m not saying that this gives Apple a pass, but it does offers some explanation as to their choice.  Next year Apple can boost the screen size and resolution as new displays reach the market in affordable amounts.

Since we are comparing the iPhone 4S to the Galaxy S II in screen size, let’s go ahead and size up the rest of their specs.  Both are dual core, both have 8MP cameras and a front camera, and both are impeccably thin (the GSII wins by a sliver).  In many ways, the iPhone 4S goes toe-to-toe with the best of Android.  Really, the only place I see logical complaint about the iPhone 4S is in that people are disappointed that it looks too much like the last generation.  Has Apple become lazy?  I don’t think so.  But even Apple can’t be expected to consistently, year over year, revolutionize the industry.  Apple’s great leaps come in waves, but there have to be lulls between these surges.

Honestly, I have a growing problem with comparing iPhones to Android competitors or Windows Phone etc.  The mobile phone market is not, and should not be, like the PC market, where we feel compelled to compare products together at whim.  The PC market, even Apple’s hallowed corner of it, is commoditized and homogenous.  Every PC uses an Intel processor or an AMD processor and an AMD graphics chip or Nvidia.  There’s very little room for great innovations in form factor or performance.  The smart phone market is approaching that existence but still has a few tricks up its sleeve.  OEMs can still push great innovations out with new phones.  Software is rapidly evolving and differentiating.  I have an issue comparing an iPhone to an Android phone because their software is different.  Yes, they can often run similar applications but I doubt anyone is complaining about the performance of Foursquare on either platform.  I only see the benefit in comparing devices of the same OS.  Mac OS X and Windows are far closer in design and application than iOS and Android.  With that in mind, the iPhone 4S is the best iOS phone ever released.  If you want to remain in the iOS ecosystem, this the the phone to get.

That said, should you get one?  This question needs to be answered for three types of people.  Person 1: the consumer with an iPhone 3GS or earlier.  Yes, you should get this.  The 4S is better than the 3GS in every possible way.  Person 2: the iPhone 4 owner.  Probably not, unless you are a huge user of camera phones or a major gamer that will take advantage of the extra hardware.  The iPhone 4 has a lot of the same end-user features of the iPhone 4S (minus the possibly game changing Siri).  The retina display, front camera, a form factor remain the same and that’s what will matter for most consumers.  Plus, the iPhone 4’s A4 chip still seems to hold its own on most tasks.  So if you have that extra year or 6 months of a contract left, let it run out and wait for the iPhone 6.  Person 3: the Android user wanting to switch.  Maybe.  Android and iOS are fundamentally different in many ways, from application accessibility to basic UI design.  Android has become quite good over the year (remember, Ice Cream Sandwich is coming up) but if iOS 5 and Siri have you excited, this might be the time to switch.  You can’t lose either way.

As a closing, AT&T announced that the iPhone 4S has just set a record of 1 million pre orders.  This thing will do just fine.

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XKCD on Steve Jobs

Sometimes Randal, you know just what to say with no words at all.

Steve Jobs: 1955 – 2011

This is a day I have dreaded since his first leave of absence in 2009.  Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Inc., has died at the age of 56.

I guess I just thought he had more time.  That’s the only thought I had in my mind as I walked home from dinner this evening after learning of Jobs’ passing.  We knew he was sick, that he had been struggling for years, that he could no longer function as CEO.  I just thought he could fight on a little while longer, given his penchant for stubbornness.  And yet here we are.  The tech industry is reeling from this news.  Blogs, analysts and news agencies are all launching their obituaries and condolences.  The internet tonight is dedicated to Steve Jobs.

I come at this from a very personal place.  Steve Jobs was an icon to me since I first became cognizant of his existence over a decade ago.  Any adjectives I can use to describe him seem to fall short of capturing who he really was, especially since I only know of him from his public appearances.  Suffice to say, he was a man of vision.  He saw a seemingly unattainable future of personal computing and has never stopped reaching towards that future.  Some call him a “master of the sales pitch”, the “reality distortion field” others say.  Apple fans ascribed to him a sort of prophetic quality.  His word was law.  His vision became reality.  Steve Jobs oversaw the development and release of the greatest personal electronics the world has ever seen.  The Apple II, The Macintosh, the iMac, the iPod, OS X, iOS, the iPhone, and the iPad are all his children.  These devices – simple amalgamation of metal, circuitry and plastic; bits and code – have had lasting effects on our world.  They have elevated the realm of computing from something utilitarian into something elegant and beautiful.  It was Steve Job’s vision of perfection, of a device without compromise, that lead to these groundbreaking products.

Steven Jobs started Apple Computers Inc. in 1976 with Steve Wozniak.  Their first major product, the Apple II, was built entirely by Woz and became one of the first truly successful personal computers.  In 1979, Jobs visited the XEROX PARC and saw the first use of a graphical user interface.  This was the future and for the next five years Jobs slaved away on the single most important product the computing world would ever see: the Macintosh.  With one fell swoop, Jobs had changed computing forever into something accessible for actual people.  1985 saw Jobs’ departure from Apple.  As remarkable as his products were, Jobs could be overbearing and violently stubborn in his managerial style.  It was too much for the company to take.

Jobs did not go quietly.  Instead, he founded Pixar Animation Studios and went on to head one of the greatest animation studios in the world.  He also started NeXT, a company that would eventually be his ticket back into Apple.  Returning to Apple when NeXT was acquired in 1997, Jobs found his company almost bankrupt and embarked on a quest to save it.  He ultimately did, never stopping in that quest until the day he died.  Today, Apple is the largest company in the world and has released in the past 10 years more industry defining products than any other company in consumer electronics.  This is owed to Jobs’ perfectionist style, his eye for simplicity, his desire to make computing accessible for everyone.

It is poetic that Jobs passed away the day after the announcement of the iPhone 4S.  I know he desperately wanted to be there to launch that phone.  While it remains to be seen, I think that Siri could be his final and more important gift to the world.  An artificial intelligence that can truly understand our requests.  How much more accessible does it get than that?  This industry that I love so dearly, that I am devoting my life to, is indebted to the efforts of Steve Jobs.  As am I. He made me care about technology.  To look at computers not just as tools, but as devices to enrich our lives.  The world owes much to Steve Jobs, more than is readily apparent.

Jobs is survived by his wife Laurene Powell, and their three children, a son and two daughters.  His other daughter, Lisa, from a previous relationship and for whom the Apple Lisa is named also remains to pass on his memory.  As does all of Apple.

My readers around the world: grab a drink and raise your glasses to Steve Jobs.  He’s off to the big iCloud in the Sky.

Below is the official announcement from Apple:

The Wait is Over: Apple Announces New iPhone

The long and winding road to the next generation iPhone is finally over.  After months and months of grueling speculation and rumors, we now have firm confirmation of the new device.  But was it worth the wait?  Sort of.  I give you: the iPhone 4S:

Fall Update

Thought I’d change up the appearance of the site for the autumn. Mystique was cramping my style (literally, the theme is kinda narrow). You guys like this?

FYI, Stage Three is still happening folks. I’m still working on some capital for hosting and trying to get some more technical talent on board to help me manage the site. Once the arrangements have been made, the transition should be seamless

Amazon Brings the Heat with Kindle Fire

Since the announcement of the iPad, manufacturers have scrambled to get a slice of the tablet market. Yet still, the iPad remains the only true success story. The Playbook was a bust, early tablets were poorly designed, and even Honeycomb, which I thought would be a strong contender against the iPad, has struggled to catch on. The iPad remains the sole product which defines the tablet space and Apple remains the market leader. The problem with gaining headway in the tablet market has been because there is no other company with a strong base like Apple. Customers have limited loyalty to Samsung over Asus or Acer or Motorola, they are all generic OEMs (even if some make far better products than others like Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1). The iPad has the Cult of Apple behind it in a way no other tablet manufacturer does. This may be why Amazon can succeed where others have failed, because they have generated a similar brand loyalty under the Kindle moniker.

Amazon has finally brought their answer to the iPad: the Kindle Fire. The new tablet is a 7-inch affair, sporting a dual core processor and heavily modified version of Android 2.3. The device is not meant to mirror the iPad, but compete more with specialized tablets like the Nook Color from Barnes and Noble.  The device is notably devoid of cameras, 3G or GPS, microphones at the like.  While spartan on extras like those, it has helped the Kindle Fire maintain a price of $199 At this price, the Kindle Fire is an insanely great deal for a well-rounded Android tablet. It’s not Honeycomb, but it doesn’t need to be.

The Kindle Fire runs under a heavily modified version of Android 2.3 meant to quickly integrate Amazon’s services. Kindle ebooks, the Amazon Music and Video store, and Amazon’s customized Android App marketplace are all quickly accessible on the device. Note that productivity software is depreciated (though I’m sure some Office suite will be released). Even the email client wasn’t mentioned during the conference. Amazon isn’t trying to make this a PC replacement, it’s not a post-PC device. It’s a pure media device and Amazon isn’t striving for anything more than that. The device has 8GB of local storage with free access to Amazon’s cloud services to back up purchases and files.

Speaking of the cloud, one of the Kindle Fire’s most unique features is its Silk browser. Amazon calls this a cloud browser. Some of the processing for webpages is done by the tablet’s internal hardware, but much of it is done by Amazon’s remote Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) servers. This by itself is not very novel — Opera Mobile uses server-side compression for webpages on mobile devices — but this framework is more intelligent by consciously selecting what content should be processed in what area. It’s a really cool idea though that should make web browsing an impressive feat on the device.

The Kindle Fire looks to be the first tablet since the iPad that really has a shot. Ironically, that was done by being a wholly different kind of device. It’s smaller, lighter, and more focused on being a device for media consumption. Plus, it’s at a rockstar price.

Also announced was a new basic Kindle for only $79 and two touch screen, e-ink Kindles for $119 and one with 3G for $149. Amazon has learned how to sell premium at a value price. I’m pretty excited for the Kindle Fire. Wait until November for its release.

Facebook is Changing Again!

Hooray!!  It’s time for everyone’s favorite internet game show: Change My Facebook Layout!  Yes folks, the powers that be (Mark Zuckerberg and Co.) have yet again implemented a series of changes to Facebook, annoying many and delighting few but mostly confusing all of us.  Some of these changes are, as always, controversial and perhaps unnecessary, but there is a lot of stuff on the horizon for Facebook that looks like it could actually improve the site’s functionality a lot.  So first, lets look at the changes are ready implemented.

The biggest thing Facebook has done is bring back networks, a feature the company said was defunct years ago.  This time, they’re back with a twist as they act a lot more like Circles from Google+, allowing you to categorize your friends into groups that act as filters for your posts.  It’s a good feature when you want to localize posts to a specific group.  However, in practice it can be clumsy because Facebook auto builds a lot of these groups.  For my summer job as a counselor, my camp goes by several names and so now I have three groups for the same network of friends and contacts.  It’s unnecessary and Facebook won’t let me merge them together.  Also, adding people to your groups has to be confirmed by the other person if it involves work or school.  Google’s Circles are all at your discretion, which I like better.  Even further, some of these groups come with caveats.  “Close friends” according to Facebook means “People you are obsessed with” and anyone in that group generates a notification for any activity.  That’s not what I was asking for, I just wanted to categorize my best friends together.

Facebook is also taking on Twitter with this last rash of changes.  Subscriptions are the new rage in passive-aggressive interactions with people.  If there is someone you want to get information on but don’t actually want to interact with, you can now subscribe to them.  I guess Facebook sees this as a way to get celebrities and organizations to get back on Facebook so people can follow them, but that’s what Pages were for.  Subscribing seems kind of creepy to me, since if I want to follow my friends, why not just friend them?  It’s redundant.

Speaking of redundant, let’s talk about the news feed.  It’s wonderfully confusing now.  At the top you now see the Top Stories since your last visit.  How Facebook decides what the Top Stories are I don’t know, but I can tell you their choices are not mine.  If Top Stories integrated with my Closest Friends group, then I’d be more happy.  Still, you can edit the Top Stories by telling Facebook what you’d like and not like to be listed there.  So it gets smarter over time.  Recent posts are located under Top Stories, but there is a quick link at the top of the page.  I’d rather have recent stories be a tab or something, just to make things more concise.  Tagging a long with all of this is a running ticker of real-time updates on the right side.  Honestly, I’d just prefer real-time updates in the primary feed, but the ticker is fine really and has a good preview engine, allowing you to float your mouse over a story to generate an in-depth look at what your friends are up to.  These updates to the news feed are, like all Facebook updates, varied in their reception.  But they are pretty superfluous compared to the big updates down the pipeline….

At Facebook’s f8 conference last week, the company debuted Timeline, a total reinvention of our profiles.  I’ve taken the liberty of getting access to the developer beta in order to test out the new profile design.  The verdict: I like it.  Finally Facebook’s design seems fresh and clean.  The top of the page has your opening “cover” of sorts.  You can select a picture to be on this first section, showing you in your natural environment with friends.  With this cover page comes thumb nails for your friends, pages, photos, likes, and locations, plus your basic information and access to your “about” section with more info.  Below this is the Timeline proper.  It’s split into two columns divided by the timeline which is in chronological order.  Posts appear on either side in a staggered order, either posts by you or posts from your friends.  It’s essentially a more well designed wall.  Updating your status now has options for “Life events” like getting a job or becoming engaged.  This runs with the new motif of having the Timeline tell your life story.  The Timeline gets more specific the more recent you, but it supports going all the way back to your very first posts on Facebook and gives you digests of each year of your Facebook life.  It’s kind of creepy to see that Facebook has been archiving every activity you’ve done since the beginning, but the site gives you a week to comb through your history and clean out anything incriminating…. how considerate.  Also on the creepy side is that you can really alter history.  Clicking on the timeline at any point allows you to insert a post at that date, meaning you can change how things went down in your digital life.

The Timeline is launching in the coming weeks.  While it’s an adjustment, my penchant for clean UI design makes me enjoy this update a lot.  It also treats us more as humans with a story to tell through our digital lives.  Maybe people will be more careful online now that Facebook is our digital narrative.

Read about Timeline here

Apple Announces iPhone Event October 4th

Apple says we should “talk iPhone” and I’m inclined to agree. Lord knows at this point what device or devices will be announced on that day. I’m just glad the company is finally ready to debut a new handset. It’s only a week away!

Why I Laugh At TechCrunch’s Debacle

As a member of the WordPress community, I try to stay plugged into the rest of the world using WordPress’ services. One of WordPress’ more successful sites is without a doubt TechCrunch, a technology industry blog owned by AOL. It’s a site filled with a talented base of writers with strong opinions, often making insightful comments on trends in the tech industry. Yet, over the past few weeks, TechCrunch has really fallen off the wagon. Founder Michael Arrington earned the wrath of Arianna Huffington, Editor-in-Chief at AOL, a few weeks ago when he announced he would start a Venture Capital fund called CrunchFund for start ups. Ms. Huffington was not too happy about this though, as TechCrunch is a blog that focuses much on start up news. A conflict of interest was unavoidable in Ms. Huffington’s eyes and Arrington had a hard choice to make: step down as the head of TechCrunch in order to make sure he wasn’t selling blog real estate to companies for personal profit, or not be a VC. He chose the latter.

The split between Arrington and AOL is not just a debate over journalistic integrity though. It really reveals the flaw in TechCrunch‘s design as a source for tech news. But if you want to have a discussion about journalistic integrity in today’s world, there may be no better case study than TechCrunch.

I laugh at this whole cluster-fuck of a firing because of what has happened to TechCrunch in the days following the departure of Arrington. The website has always relished is employing a team of strongly opinionated and grand standing writers. Some of them are, for all their sensationalism, still pretty good writers like M.G. Siegler – the voracious Apple fan he is. With Arrington out of the picture, we now see these unbridled authors spewing venom at their own kind. They’ve attacked the new Editor-in-Chief, threatened resignation, and pronounced their own site dead even as they continue to make a buck off such articles and publish upwards of 20 posts a day. The entire site is like a circus with out a ring master. Just visit the site and with little luck you’ll see evidence of the in-fighting.

This is what happens when you base your entire site, your entire business off the rantings of sensationalist journalists. Don’t get me wrong, TechCrunch can be a place of remarkable insight and high quality op-ed journalism. Posts on the site have at many times inspired me, as have the personal attitudes of many of the writers. But for every quality post, I see a lot of crud. The writers love taking shots not only at other websites (their assault on Engadget was one such example of Yellow Journalism) but at other writers on their site. It’s laughably poor.

Without Arrington, TechCrunch’s weaknesses have become apparent. Namely its gross subjectivity. If Arianna Huffington was really concerned with journalistic integrity, she would have looked into the problems with TechCrunch a long time ago. So as the site rips itself apart through the same mechanism that built it up, all I can say is that I’m not really surprised.  TechCrunch should have reigned in its writers a long time ago and taught them about objectivity.  Sure, outlandish posts and grand standing might “sell” but this same culture has turned the blog into a war zone.

And all I can do is laugh.

The Renaissance Continues: Unreal Engine 3 Coming to Mac

Last year, Valve software announced that the company’s Steam framework – an online store for digital game downloads and multiplayer interaction, was coming to the Mac platform.  The move was seen as a major boon to the Mac gaming catalog, long considered the butt of a joke in the realm of PC gaming.  Before Valve’s gesture — which included porting the Source engine to OS X — gaming on the Mac was a futile effort.  Almost no developers had any incentive to make games for such a small market, nor adapt to the Mac’s PowerPC technology.  Moving to Intel processors helped a lot, but Valve’s gesture removed a big hurdle: distribution.  Today, gaming on the Mac is still nowhere near as vibrant as gaming on the PC, but it’s infinitely stronger than it was.

And now it will get stronger.  Epic Games, one of the premiere game developers in the world and makers of the industry leading Unreal Engine, have decide to port said engine to Mac OS X.  It’s a pretty major move for the company, which has long solely supported Microsoft’s Direct3D graphics API.  Apple, of course, uses OpenGL.  Yet here we are.  The Unreal Engine is one of the most popular middleware engines in modern gaming, used in massively popular games like Mass Effect, Bioshock, Gears of War, and Batman Arkham Asylum.  Now, perhaps these games could grace the Mac.  Unreal Engine 3 is a major addition to the technology catalog needed for major games to come to Apple products.

In many ways, this is a long time coming.  Epic released a modified version of their Unreal Engine last year for iOS devices, seeing the opportunity the platform provided for entering the mobile space.  The first Unreal title for iOS, Infinity Blade, was a critical success.  Overall, the combined might of iOS and the growing market share of OS X means that developers can’t overlook Apple anymore.  Epic’s decision is a big step forward.  Now, on to Crytek…..