So tomorrow Apple are planning a press event to talk about iPhone 4. There’s no word as to what they’re going to talk about but it’s certain to be about the much-discussed ‘antenna issue.’
I put that in quote marks as I don’t have an issue. If I hold the iPhone in a ‘death grip’ style squeeze, it does drop bars. But I don’t hold it like that! Simple.
There’s a number of things that can happen tomorrow, I call it BURRN. Bumpers, Update, Recall, Returns and Nothing.
Bumpers: Apple have already suggested to buy a Bumper if you want to help with any signal issues, would they give them away? I think so, why not? Last time I was in the Regent Street Apple Store, there were hundreds of Bumpers dotted everywhere. Literally, every display desk had a case of them on and there were hundreds hanging with the iPhone accessories. Two days later, they were all gone… A follower on twitter reported that they didn’t have any at all. How odd… Maybe they’re saving them all to send out to any iPhone 4 owners who’d like one… A simple form to give your address and IMEI would be a nice easy way to give out free Bumpers.
Update: iOS 4.01 is rumoured to sneak out later today and possibly tomorrow. iOS 4.1 has been pushed out to developers.
There are several features added to 4.1 and first up, Game Center is back!! (More on that another day) but the main thing that’s changed are the bars. The signal indicator formula has changed and your signal is now shown more clearly and accurately. It’s a software update though and it doesn’t do anything to the real issue.
It you squeeze the iPhone, it still loses signal. If anything, it does take longer to drop all signal so it has improved slightly.
Recall: Never. There are around two million iPhone 4′s in the wild and no company would ever recall that many products. Unless it’s deadly (like a Toyota say) and the problem with the iPhone 4 (as far as I know) isn’t deadly.
Returns: Apple have always said if you’re unhappy, you’ve got 30 days to return it. That’s true if you bought it from Apple, but most networks don’t have a returns policy like that. With O2, you even had to sign a return waiver that by upgrading early, you had NO returns policy. I think Apple may keep this open for customers at their stores, maybe extending the 30 days some.
Nothing: From time to time, Apple have commented on the issue that everyone’s going on about but really, they’ve always said, there isn’t a problem. They may bring out a load of stats, specialists and PR experts to put a stop to all the concerns. They’ll release the iOS update and that will be the end of it.
By inviting ‘high level’ press to the event they’ll make sure they get the publicity they want whatever they decide to do. I’m hoping for bumpers because I’d like to try them but I’m really not concerned about the issue. I haven’t had much difference in dropped calls and if anything, I get better signal in most places.
Only a quick one as I wanted to share my thoughts on FaceTime.
OK, so everybody did it the first day they got their iPhone 4 and so did I. You FaceTime the person you just got back from the store with! Over the next few days, you find everyone you know who has an iPhone 4 and even if you’re on the same WiFi network – You call each other to test it. It’s great fun!
Then you think it ends… It’s a fad that’ll pass and something fun to use, once in a while at best.
OK, this is kinda extreme!
This weekend, I got to use FaceTIme a lot and I have to say, I love it. My better half was in Spain for the weekend and spent a while figuring out the cheapest way to keep in touch, bearing in mind the roaming charges.
Luckily, the hotel she was staying in had free WiFi. We spoke over FaceTime I think four times in total and every time had a different meaning and a different reason. Apart from the stuff I’m not gonna bore you with, the best experience was when speaking to a couple of people at the same time. Imagine trying to do that talking on the phone… It wouldn’t happen!
The greatest thing that happened was on Sunday night… The World Cup final was interrupted whilst I jumped on FaceTime to say hello, whilst talking I heard something in the distant… I remembered that Soraya was in Spain… Watching Spain in the World Cup Final. She held the phone out and I could hear chanting and chearing!
In the end, it was great seeing each other, even though we were in different countries! Yes you’ve gotta be in WiFi but the quality was perfect! I understand why you have to be in WiFi and it’s fine! Try it, spend some time apart and get on FaceTime… I’m intrigued to see where this goes.
Remember what Steve said… “Apple will ship 10′s of Millions of Face Time devices in 2010″ – Why say devices if you just meant iPhones…?
In advance of my full review of the iPhone 4, I thought I’d share some HD videos I shot over the weekend whilst I was in London.
These were all shot on my iPhone and edited using iMovie for iPhone. These are just simple videos with one or two clips in each, so I’ll be testing more features soon. Such as including photos in videos and hopefully using my own music.
A Walk In The Park
Apple Store, Regent Street
London Underground
Click through for HD versions of the video and leave a comment to let me know what you think!
So the iPhone 4 became available to pre-order today but only through the online Apple Store (and AT&T if you’re in the states.) The store was up and down all morning and there was plenty of anticipation to see if any of the networks would start theirs… They didn’t.
This evening, I spotted that the due date when pre-ordering had changed from 24th June to 2nd July!
After poking around a few minutes, I found where to reserve an iPhone to collect in store. New contract and upgrading customers can also reserve from Apple… Interesting!
Until I see the model I want (32GB) is unavailable… Gutted.
S got hers reserved but I’m gonna wait. I’ll wait to see if O2 or Carphone Warehouse allow you to pre-order for collection. I don’t want to wait for delivery, I hate waiting for couriers. If it comes to it, I’ll get up early and hunt around town until I find the model I want!
So I’ve been sharing a link around for e past few days and thought I’d just crack on and do an article myself.
Anybody running Mac OSX is able to get iOS 4.0 on their iDevices NOW! No need to wait for the 21st June, no need to register as an iPhone developer and no need to install X Code on your machine.
Apple may change things, so please make sure you backup and please don’t blame me if anything goes wrong. All you need to do is update iTunes to 9.2, download the iOS 4.0 ipsw package and the GM is the same version that’ll be pushed as a software update in two weeks.
How do I do it?:
1. First things, first – Download and install iTunes 9.2 (Mac only, download links here, here, or here).
2. Now download the iOS 4.0 Golden Master, making sure you get the right pakage for your device:
And finally if you have the iPod Touch 2G, download this.
3. How to install iOS 4.0:
Plug in your iOS device, and open up iTunes. Let it sync one last time and make sure you backup.
In iTunes, alt+click on the ‘restore’ button (for those that asked, ALT is the key to the left of COMMAND/APPLE), and then when asked to locate the file, select the IPSW file we just moved to your desktop.
iTunes will now install iOS 4.0 to your iPhone or iPod Touch! You can start fresh or restore that backup you just did.
That’s it. iBooks is slowly being pushed to 4.0 users, so be patient and you’ll have that soon.
Also, Apple are now allowing 4.0-compatible updates to be submitted to the App Store. So shortly, we’ll start seeing apps taking full use of the new API’s including multitasking!
Once the update is pushed to users on the 21st June, you probably won’t have to update. This is the same copy. Finally, please remember that I’m just sharing this information. Don’t blame me if something goes wrong. The best option if you brick your device is just go to an Apple Store, tell a Genius you don’t know what went wrong, and they’re likely to swap it for you. (This happened to me last year with 3.0 and they kindly swapped iPhones).
Enjoy, have fun and share your findings with me here, twitter or facebook!
There’s only hours to go until Steve Jobs takes to the stage at this year’s WWDC in San Francisco.
As usual, there are a lot of rumours and a lot of mystery about what is going to be announced. I’m only certain on a few things, and a lot I’m pretty sure about. The rest, well, the rest are things that ‘would be nice’.
iPhone
First up is what everyone’s been waiting for… A new iPhone. A lot of people have been calling this ‘iPhone 4G’ – Well that certainly isn’t going to happen. Firstly, all networks internationally are yet to agree on what ’4G’ actually is! Sprint (USA) currently have a partial 4G network, but AT&T don’t and the iPhone is still exclusive to AT&T in the US. There currently isn’t a 4G network provider in the UK!
You could call it the G4 as it’s the fourth generation of the iPhone, but I’m pretty certain it’s going to be named iPhone HD - It’s a hunch, but the spec of the screen and camera (for 720p HD recording) indicates this is the way Apple are going.
We’ve all seen the leaks from Gizmodo (who subsequently are actually banned from this year’s WWDC) so I’m not going to bore with repeating the spec but I’m excited about this! I’m certain they’re not gonna release the iPhone tomorrow. So certain that I haven’t started getting my iPhone ready to sell! I expect the iPhone HD to be released on June 22nd but any delays in manufacturing the thing could push it back to late July.
iPhone OS 4.0
Don’t expect to be getting a software update any time tomorrow. The Golden Master version of the beta hasn’t been released to developers (me) yet and this is what will be announced tomorrow. The fourth beta has come in leaps and bounds in stability, and I never have a crash on my iPhone. This final beta will be released to developers tomorrow (so everyone can get their apps ready) and then the 4.0 update will be released when the iPhone HD is out.
Safari 5
Safari 5 is going to be showing it’s face too. With fast loading times, pre-DNS fetching, smarter address bar, ‘private mode’ icon and a new ‘Reader’ mode which is kinda like Readability. I was hoping for the official release of ‘extensions’ as well, but apparantly that’s not gonna happen.
Apple TV
There’s also a fair bit of murmour surrounding Apple’s ‘hobby’ Apple TV. Now I’ve been an Apple TV user for a few years now and I still regularly use it. It’s a shame it can’t do more as I don’t buy that many Movies or TV Episodes from iTunes any more. It’s great as a remote speaker to my iTunes library on my MacBook and watching podcasts is great, but that’s about it.
There’s rumours that it’ll be a new device, running a similar getup as the iPhone OS. Or just an app on the iPhone HD and iPad. Who knows? I hope it’s not a new device, as I like the look of mine and don’t wanna see it go to waste.
MobileMe
Finally, there’s MobileMe. Apple’s premium service which gives you email, calendar, contacts, ‘Find My iPhone’ and a few other features that you can find elsewhere totally free. I let my membership expire a long time ago and the rumour is, it’s gonna be free. There could also be a tier-based membership system which gives more features or access if you pay a small fee.
Will Steve have ‘one more thing’ for us at this morning’s keynote? Or will we just get sales updates and iPhone talk? I’d be happy with just that, it seems that Apple are focusing on their biggest selling devices right now. Mac’s sales aren’t slumping, they just ain’t as high as iPhone OS devices.
The day I got my iPad, I rushed home to get playing. First thing’s first though, I needed to sync it. So I setup my MacBook with the iPad Dock and started to sync.
I started to notice the screen flickering, it was changing brightness just like when you start to charge the battery. The LED on the Mag-Safe connector was flickering too. Green, amber then green again just like it was trying to charge but failing every time.
It was a race to sync my iPad! The battery was draining as iTunes chucked everything it could onto the iPad and it didn’t help that the iPad was trying to charge from my MacBook! It can’t, so I don’t know why it tried but it certainly made a difference to the battery comsumption. After just over an hour the sync had finished, although I had to forego all my photos as they were taking way too long.
I ran the usual diagnostics, resetting the PRAM, NVRAM and the SMC with all not making any difference whatsoever. I took the battery out for a while and left the MacBook shut down (well I had no choice!) and after 30 minutes, I gave it a try. It was charging!
Not for long though, day in day out the adapter was being temperamental. I couldn’t figure out if it was the battery or if it was the adapter. There was only one thing for it, I had to make an appointment to see a Genius.
In typical computer fashion, the fault didn’t re-occur at the Genius Bar. I opened every app on my dock, started syncing with my iPhone and the iTunes store was downloading some podcasts and the adapter was charging the battery without a problem! Until the Genius started playing with the wiring and BOOM! It started to flicker again.
£49 and a new MagSafe adapter later, my MacBook charges fine! I like the new design too. It feels a lot more secure when charging now. Phew! After spending so much on my iPad, I couldn’t handle my MacBook dying… I guess that shows that the iPad isn’t here to replace a Mac anytime soon.
