So sad. We all hoped he would beat his illness, but alas. Steve made an impact on so many, and for that we are thankful. My thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends.
Linked
Link Posts
Why Is There No iPhone 5? →
Intelligent (as always) answer from Horace Dediu. In short, the market has less want of an “iPhone 5” this year than it will next year.
The New Home Page for the iPod nano →
Two classy touches to the nano’s home page: (a) The Mickey Mouse watch face is animated and shows the correct time and date; (b) Matt Kearney’s fantastic album, Young Love, is featured.
The Carrier Question →
News to me: AT&T is the only network in the U.S. currently supporting the 14.4Mbps down that Apple mentioned yesterday.
(And speaking of carriers, if you’re not eligible for your upgrade yet, Ben Brooks did some math and discovered it may be cheaper to switch carriers than pay the higher upgrade costs (assuming you want the 4S on day one rather than waiting until your upgrade pricing becomes available).)
Unicorns and Wheels: Apple’s Two Types of Products →
Great post by Jason Kottke. Not every iPhone update can be the first iPhone again.
Apple’s “Let’s Talk iPhone” In 90 Seconds →
The tl;dr version. Also, “squirrel”.
Siri Understands Accents →
MG Siegler:
Siri didn’t work for me when UK English was turned on. When I switched to US English, it worked perfectly.
Why Siri Just Might Work →
A great article by Paul Miller looking at Siri and its pros and cons as we know them so far.
Miller raises a question I have as well, and that is regarding text input for Siri. From the looks of it, Siri will only accept voice input. For the times when you cannot or do not want to speak out loud to your iPhone, it would be much easier to type in “Remind me to call my mom when I leave work” than it would be to go to the Reminders app, create a new reminder, and then edit that reminder, select a location and choose for it to remind you when you leave.
And so, I hope this closing statement from Miller is not something we find ourselves revisiting in a few weeks:
For AI to be more than a gimmick, it has to be treated like more than a gimmick. Until it’s vital and essential to an entire device experience, it’s only going to be a cool party trick.
Live Demo of Siri →
Looks very easy to use in real life. But I’m curious how it will work with non-scripted use cases, such as: “remind me to get AA batteries next time I’m at Walmart.” I guess if Siri can learn where Walmart is (the same way it can learn who your spouse is) then my use case would work just fine.
Also, here’s the clip of Scott Forstall demoing Siri at the Apple event today.
“From $0” →
Apple’s side-by-side comparisons of the three different iPhones they’re selling.
It’s interesting that the iPhone 4S, though it has an extra hour of 3G talk time, has 100 less hours of standby time. Is that true, or is that a typo? If true, what does the iPhone 4S have that is draining the battery so much in the background, but not when in use? The A5 chip? The new antennas? Siri?
Check Your iPhone Upgrade Eligibility →
I’ll be in line on the 14th because that’s half the fun.
Apple iPhone 4S Event Video is Up →
Finally.
Sell Your Old iPhone Back to Apple →
My black, 16GB iPhone 4 with its light scuff on the top-left edge of the casing will earn me a $125 Apple gift card. Not bad, but I bet I could get twice that on Craigslist.
Apple’s 1987 Knowledge Navigator, Only One Month Late →
Siri, insert a sarcastic “finally” joke right here.