Tag Archives | Apple. iPhone

Wait, Isn’t the iPhone 4S Supposed to Be a Disappointment?

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 10, 2011 at 1:27 pm

Boy, does Apple’s iPhone 4S event feel like it happened a long time ago. In fact, it was less than a week ago, and as you may recall, many observers declared the new phone to be a disappointment. But now Apple has released pre-order data, and it seems to suggest that real folks are excited about the 4S. A million people pre-ordered in the first 24 hours, breaking the iPhone 4’s record of 600,000 in the same period.

Why the disparity in reactions? I can think of a few reasons.
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The Best iPhone 4S Plans by Carrier

Posted by Doug Aamoth on October 10, 2011 at 2:58 am

With three carriers now selling the iPhone, your options have gotten a bit more complex as far as monthly service plans go. We’ll take a look at which carrier’s plans are best for cheapskates, big talkers, big texters, and those who want it all—voice, data and text messaging.

Before we start, some constants between all three carriers:

The iPhone 4S starts at $199 with a two-year contract.

Voice plans include unlimited minutes to people on the same network, so even if you have the 450-minute plan on Verizon, for instance, you won’t use any minutes when calling other Verizon customers.

Apple’s new iOS software features “iMessage,” which lets you send and receive free text messages (for now, at least) between other Apple devices that have the iMessage feature turned on as well.

And with that, let’s get started.

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A Strange Sort of Prison, a Strange Sort of Freedom

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 9, 2011 at 5:19 pm

Free software advocate and GNU creator Richard Stallman has blogged that he’s glad Steve Jobs is gone. That’s, um, gauche. But it’s not why I bring up his post. He also calls Jobs “the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom.”

Apple products? Jails. Cool ones. Apple fans? Jailbirds. Foolish ones. Got that?

Eric S. Raymond, also a free software advocate, has also written about Jobs’ passing. He’s more dignified about it, but the gist is similar. He says:

What’s really troubling is that Jobs made the walled garden seem cool. He created a huge following that is not merely resigned to having their choices limited, but willing to praise the prison bars because they have pretty window treatments.

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And So the iLine Begins Again

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 7, 2011 at 8:43 am

Having trouble <a href="pre-ordering an iPhone from AT&T, Verizon, or Sprint Hop on a plane and head to Tokyo. I'm still here, and the iPhone 4S, as in the U.S., has gone on preorder. It's available from wireless carrier SoftBank, and as I strolled around Harajuku and Shibuyu this past evening, the hoopla was underway and the crowds were forming, presumably to place orders in person.

A few photos after the jump. (The signs are hard to read, but they all make reference to the 4S.)

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Your Last Chance to Read, Rate, and Spread Rumors About the Next iPhone

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 3, 2011 at 10:46 pm

Twelve hours from now, someone–most likely new Apple CEO Tim Cook–will be standing on a stage in Cupertino, well into the company’s “Let’s Talk iPhone” event. Normally at this point, it feels like we have a pretty decent sense of what the company is about to announce. Not all the details–which is fine with me, since I like surprises–but two-thirds of the broad strokes.

This time? Things are surprisingly blurry. If there’s no Sprint iPhone of some sort, and no iPhone with ambitious voice commands based on the Siri technology Apple acquired, I’ll be startled. But we don’t really know whether there will be one iPhone or two. We don’t know if there will be a radically new iPhone 5 or one that’s a near-twin of the iPhone 4. We’re not sure if the screen size will change. Basically, most of scuttlebutt of the past few months is still in play.

So here’s a roundup of some of the major rumors. In each case, I’m linking to an article that spreads a rumor–and one which quashed it. If you need to refresh your memory, read any or all of ’em. And then–assuming you’re reading this before 10am PT on Tuesday–vote in our silly little poll. (I’ll report on the results once the news is out.

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Live Coverage of Apple’s iPhone 5 Event

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 3, 2011 at 12:06 pm

I’m not going to be at Apple’s iPhone event on Tuesday at 10am PT. (I’m in Tokyo attending CEATAC and participating in one of the keynote sessions.) But I will be tuning into Macword’s live coverage–and the Macworld folks were nice enough let me embed it on Technologizer at technologizer.com/iphone5.

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It’s Official: Apple’s iPhone Event is Next Tuesday

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 27, 2011 at 8:20 am

Sooner or later, Apple rumors narrow in on the truth. Apple is indeed holding its iPhone event next Tuesday, October 4th. It is indeed doing so at its Town Hall auditorium on its own campus rather than in San Francisco. (That’s understandable: Oracle’s Open World conference will be pretty much commandeering the entire city that day.)

Apple isn’t bring too coy this time around: Invites for the event say “Let’s talk iPhone.” One big question is whether that’s iPhone singular or iPhones plural. We’ll know soon enough.

I won’t be there in person this time, but I have a good excuse: I’ll be on a long-planned journey to Tokyo to cover CEATEC, the big consumer-electronics conference. But I’ll be watching from afar–and I suspect I’ll be back in the States before the phone (phones?) hits store shelves. More thoughts to come…

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Assistant: The Best Reason to Buy an iPhone 5?

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 26, 2011 at 10:19 am

Back in April of last year, Apple bought a very young, very neat startup named Siri. 9to5 Mac’s Mark Gurman says that Siri’s voice-controlled semantic search features are going to be built right into the iPhone 5:

Assistant taps into many aspects of the iPhone, according to people familiar with the feature and SDK findings. For example, one can say make appointment with Mark Gurman for 7:30 PM and Assistant will create the appointment in the user’s calendar. On noting events, Assistant also allows users to set reminders for the iOS 5 Reminders application. For example, a user could say “remind me to buy milk when I arrive at the market.” Another example would be integration with the iOS Maps application. A user could ask: “how do I get to Staples Center?” and Assistant will use the user’s current location via GPS and provide directions.

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Did Case-Mate Just Reveal The iPhone 5 Design?

Posted by Ed Oswald on September 16, 2011 at 9:51 am

What’s a day without an iPhone 5 rumor? What your looking at here is one of the images of apparent iPhone 5 cases that was posted to accessory maker Case-Mate’s site briefly on Thursday before being pulled.

The company says its “inside resources” claim Apple would indeed be launching two phones in early October, the iPhone 4S and the iPhone 5. I don’t know why Case-Mate is jumping into the rumors game, as that’s our job, but I do digress…

BGR reports though that the page we’ve linked to here is different from a page they saw, which included a gallery of case images that has since disappeared. Either way, the now ever-more rumored tapered design akin to the iPad 2 seems to what Case-Mate is basing their case designs on, and it does appear noticeably wider.

Now this just could be Case-Mate reacting to the increasingly more frequent rumors of a wider and thinner iPhone 5, or they actually could have inside information. Personally, I’m hoping that either way, they’re right.

I’m no fan of the iPhone 4 design, and I remember in the days after that infamous Gizmodo leak saying “I hope this isn’t it.” But alas it was, despite my (and some others’) belief that this was way too utilitarian in design to come out of Apple. Thus, I’m happy to see Apple return to a sleeker design with the iPhone 5.

Either way Apple, could you hurry up? This iPhone 3GS is getting long in the tooth, and I’m getting impatient. If I have to wait any longer I may have to go to the dark side (Android, that is)! Perish the thought.

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