first of all, a very happy chrirstmas to anyone reading this, and secondly, apologies for my 3 month absence on the site, its been a busy time with piano school and girls, but i promise to get back to my roots for 2011 << new years resolution right there.
well where to start, firstly there was an apple event back on the 20th of october which saw the introduction of ilife 11, which i'll go into a bit of detail for. the three apps updated are garageband, iphoto, and imovie, and i'll start with garageband. you've now got flexi time, which SHOULD allow you to sync up all your tracks if any are out of time, but this feature also wrecks some of your compositions, so its not for the faint hearted. theres also a clean up of the UI, but theres no star studded feature here, just minors.
the update to iphoto was welcome for many, but its been slated as some of the worst software apple have ever brought out on OSX. it was tooted to feature new card making options and the ability to run everything in full screen, and the promise of facebook integration. and while they've changed the feel of iphoto abit you'd expect minor changes like this to be free, its not worth your money. luckily, imovie also got an update, and i'm glad to say it got quite a few improvements. theres now the option to make movie trailers (which is pretty amazing) and audio adjustments are much easier, as are transitions and effects on video.
apple also showed of OSX 10.7, 'lion'. they only managed to show off a couple of features, which seemed general UI improvements and a new kind of expose, where your applications folder looks much more like your scrolling through an ipad (theres even folders). i was reminded by a friend of mine that bringing 'folders' to a computer is nothing too special. i'm clearly addicted to my apple pie. anyway, lion will be around next summer, so if your thinking of buying a mac, please wait till then, you'll even get a free ipod touch on your travels.
the macbook air was the 'one more thing', and it showed the inclusion of an 11.6" model aswell as the 13.3", so apple are dipping there fingers into netbook territory, but personally, if the ipads not a netbook, i don't know what is. clock speeds range from 1.4ghz-2.13ghz, and all come with that disappointing 2gb of ram. the nvidia 320m should help with on the go gaming and the inclusion of SSD'S throughout the new airs mean 13 second boot ups... its just silly, considering all this is in a 1cm casing, and it'll outperform my imac which is about 2 inches thick and 21 inches diagonally. yes, that annoys me.
so finally, i'll mention mr.jobs, who won the 'person of the year' award from the financial times. welldone.
i'm off for a quick session on resident evil 4 now, before some christmas lunch. one again, have a good christmas, and i'll see you in january for a facetime, USB packing, Retina iPad. minus the usb and retina ofcourse ;)
Friday, 24 December 2010
Wednesday, 15 September 2010
ipods, tv's, and a bag of updates
if i said my apple sense wans't tingling with excitement then i'd be lying... its been a fantastic couple of weeks for all of us apple fans, and i though i might aswell do a round up of whats been going on, so lets start with the ipods. the shuffle was the first to be updated, and for all you fans of actual buttons instead of voice control, you're in luck, because the new generation features both, thats right, both.apart from this, the only difference is that its a much more square design than before, and has a very handy clip to attach it to waits, wrists, and shirt pockets alike. the next ipod to be updated was the nano, and we finally got to see what apple's shipments of 1.5 inch touch screens are actually used for. they've basically sliced the click wheel off, and made the screen multi touch enabled. if you're like me, and you're wondering why a 1.5 inch screen has multi touch, i have no idea whatsoever. so its kind of a smaller ipod touch without a home button, so returning home is achieved by swiping from left to right. they've stayed with 8gb and 16gb storage, which i was a bit disappointed about, a 32gb nano would be a real media tool. its hard to describe the nano's looks, so head over to apple for some better descriptions. just a note, the nano doesn't have an app store...yet.
next up is the touch, which is easily describable, because its virtually the same as the third gen, but with an A4 chip, 2 camera's, (the back has 720p recording), and the precious retina display. this may seem great, but the camera lense isn't the same quality as the iphone 4, and the retina has no IPS, so holding it at absurd angles for no reason is out of the question. its also even thinner than the last model, so i think its a great time to buy the touch. storage is the same as the old model...
the final product shown on the 1st was the new apple tv, and i'm going to be blunt, apple has missed the mark with this one. there's no internal storage, so everything is streamed from your mac, or iOS device. this is great for someone in north korea who's on 50 billion mb internet, but for someone who has a megabyte, this is almost unusable, as films would take hours to buffer. i realise i might be jumping the gin on this one, so i'm going to buy one on monday and make another blog after i've tried it out. another problem is to stream from a mac it has to be on.... so your only choice is leaving it on all day, which has put me off even further. in terms of what the apple TV does, its the same as before.
in other news, iOS4.1 is out, with game centre (yes apple fan, you were meant to get that several months ago in 4.0) and something called HDR photo's. HDR photo's creates the effect of multi focusing, so you can get everything in your picture to be sharp, and as colourful as real life, and in some circumstances this helps. for example, standing against a wall and focusing on yourself would normally mean you'd lose the colour of the wall, but HDR stops this, which is cool.
apart from 4.1, jobs announced 4.2 for ipad, which will be available in november, and it brings folders, multi tasking, game centre, print management (YAY!), and all the other OS4 stuff which never made it to your pad. i'll have more on this nearer november.
P.S. my free case arrived, and its been doing a great job, thankyou apple for giving me a solution to a problem i never had :D
next up is the touch, which is easily describable, because its virtually the same as the third gen, but with an A4 chip, 2 camera's, (the back has 720p recording), and the precious retina display. this may seem great, but the camera lense isn't the same quality as the iphone 4, and the retina has no IPS, so holding it at absurd angles for no reason is out of the question. its also even thinner than the last model, so i think its a great time to buy the touch. storage is the same as the old model...
the final product shown on the 1st was the new apple tv, and i'm going to be blunt, apple has missed the mark with this one. there's no internal storage, so everything is streamed from your mac, or iOS device. this is great for someone in north korea who's on 50 billion mb internet, but for someone who has a megabyte, this is almost unusable, as films would take hours to buffer. i realise i might be jumping the gin on this one, so i'm going to buy one on monday and make another blog after i've tried it out. another problem is to stream from a mac it has to be on.... so your only choice is leaving it on all day, which has put me off even further. in terms of what the apple TV does, its the same as before.
in other news, iOS4.1 is out, with game centre (yes apple fan, you were meant to get that several months ago in 4.0) and something called HDR photo's. HDR photo's creates the effect of multi focusing, so you can get everything in your picture to be sharp, and as colourful as real life, and in some circumstances this helps. for example, standing against a wall and focusing on yourself would normally mean you'd lose the colour of the wall, but HDR stops this, which is cool.
apart from 4.1, jobs announced 4.2 for ipad, which will be available in november, and it brings folders, multi tasking, game centre, print management (YAY!), and all the other OS4 stuff which never made it to your pad. i'll have more on this nearer november.
P.S. my free case arrived, and its been doing a great job, thankyou apple for giving me a solution to a problem i never had :D
Wednesday, 18 August 2010
apple and its future
i was lucky enough to travel down to london yesterday, and while i was there i couldn't help but have a poke around the new apple store in covent garden. its certainly a showcase of what apple do best, show off. i'm not going to go into to much detail, but lets just say the lift alone was enough to go in and be impressed. there's also two big glass staircases, which are pretty impressive. the most interesting thing i learnt yesterday though was what apple seem to be doing at the minute, in terms of getting kids into macs. they had multiple tables set up with macbook pro's, all with imovie on, where kids could come and learn all the features of the program, and after not too long they made i short movie of whatever they wanted. what amazes me is, not only is apple getting into the heads of grown ups, with cash to spend on the shiny, glossy products. they're becoming a form of education, but in a very bad way. i can just imagine kids being wowed by all of the impressive polished features in OSX itself (as i am constantly), and then going to school the next day only to see a windows logo and an error message. how long is it before parents are forced to get their children a shiny new mac, and then how long before schools become overwhelmed with children wanting macs? sure, i might be getting ahead of myself on this one... but apple have really widened their audience to a very young age, and i think when ipads become more and more widespread, and ipods are given to kids at younger and younger and younger ages, they're going to notice that apple also make computers, and by apple educating youth with all of these strange programs to get them hooked onto OSX, i think we could soon see macs selling like hotcakes to parents who want to please their kids. is it really possible to think about a world with an even number of macs as windows computers? if your sane, then the answer is a sharp no. but if there's ever been a time where apple's got a shot at dominance, its right here, right now.
Wednesday, 28 July 2010
Apple's response to bad news
If you've been looking at google news recently, you'll see that apple have failed to make jailbreaking illegal. Now I assume this will lead to many more people jailbraking, and eventually, it'll become more sophisticated until the point were jailbraking may prove essential for many. Sadly, apple will probably put some form of 'black spot' on your phone, so that you won't be able to update (ever). And perhaps banning you from the app store 'shivers'. In response to all this disappointment on apple's part, they decided to flex their muscles and release a new iMac, new mac pro, and a shiny 27 inch cinema display. YUM :) the 21 inch iMac now features an i3, and all processors are either quad core, or 'virtually quad core'. While this doesn't improve standard program speed, it dramatically improves multitasking, perhaps up to 2x. There's also a 3.6ghz i5 option on the 21 inch. sorry, but that's epic. There's also quicker RAM (1333mhz) and an ATI graphics card as standard.
Next up, the mac pro... There's now 4,6,8, and 12 core options, all working on that faster RAM I mentioned, and the option to have spruced up graphics card. also note a 1ghz card is now available for the iMac :-D. The last update is the 27 inch cinema display, which runs at 1440p and it's 16:9. The most impressive part about this sharp looking screen is the subwoofer built in, and a total output of 50 watts. Watt ever way you put it, that's loud. Overall, they were some sweet updates. o, and there's also a magic trackpad, which is basically a MacBook trackpad but bigger. I might buy it to film a YouTube vid. So look out for updates to my YouTube channel. P.S. I'm eagerly awaiting my free bumper.
Next up, the mac pro... There's now 4,6,8, and 12 core options, all working on that faster RAM I mentioned, and the option to have spruced up graphics card. also note a 1ghz card is now available for the iMac :-D. The last update is the 27 inch cinema display, which runs at 1440p and it's 16:9. The most impressive part about this sharp looking screen is the subwoofer built in, and a total output of 50 watts. Watt ever way you put it, that's loud. Overall, they were some sweet updates. o, and there's also a magic trackpad, which is basically a MacBook trackpad but bigger. I might buy it to film a YouTube vid. So look out for updates to my YouTube channel. P.S. I'm eagerly awaiting my free bumper.
Thursday, 15 July 2010
iPhone 4 issues revealed?
Apple will be holding a conference in San fransisco at 6pm London time... THAT's LATER TODAY!
I assume jobs will come on and play peacekeeper between fanboys and antenna designers, and I'd guess he'll announce what the 'software fix' will do. To be honest, the small issue isn't going to put me off buying 1 in a few days time, and even with the few niggles it has I'm sure apple will provide a suitable (low cost) fix. I suspect jobs won't be recalling iPhones, nor will he be giving away crappy bits of useless plastic (bumper cases). I suspect he'll waffle on about new batches of iPhones which don't have any antenna problems, although the only way I can see the working is by adding some weird material onto the gap in the iPhone, so on second thoughts, a solution might not be available. This really is going to be an interesting event, because we really don't know what jobs will say. Anyway, I'd head to gizmodo or Mac rumours at 6pm, you wouldn't want to miss it. O, and for jail breakers out there who are on OS4 or less, be weary of 4.1. It's rumoured to have some strange anti jailbreak feature. But how many times have we heard that??...
I assume jobs will come on and play peacekeeper between fanboys and antenna designers, and I'd guess he'll announce what the 'software fix' will do. To be honest, the small issue isn't going to put me off buying 1 in a few days time, and even with the few niggles it has I'm sure apple will provide a suitable (low cost) fix. I suspect jobs won't be recalling iPhones, nor will he be giving away crappy bits of useless plastic (bumper cases). I suspect he'll waffle on about new batches of iPhones which don't have any antenna problems, although the only way I can see the working is by adding some weird material onto the gap in the iPhone, so on second thoughts, a solution might not be available. This really is going to be an interesting event, because we really don't know what jobs will say. Anyway, I'd head to gizmodo or Mac rumours at 6pm, you wouldn't want to miss it. O, and for jail breakers out there who are on OS4 or less, be weary of 4.1. It's rumoured to have some strange anti jailbreak feature. But how many times have we heard that??...
Tuesday, 22 June 2010
iphone 4 plus iOS4
wehey! if you haven't already heard then the iphone 4 was announced at the keynote last week, and i like what i see.
the predictions were pretty accurate, and the 720p video calling looks great :D facetime was abit unexpected, bit i'm sure it'll be a nice extra. the camera is the main reason i'll be upgrading, along with the retina display. fingers crossed it looks different from the 3gs!
iOS4 was also released recently, and i was lucky enough to get it a week in advance, which also included game centre (which isn't on the mainstream iOS4). multi tasking works a treat, provided developers pull their finger out and include it on their apps. and folders is pretty sweet too. in general the iphone feels much faster on 4.0 than it did on 3.1.3 which is great news for all you guys getting an iphone 4, i'd imagine it'll be blazing with the A4, (even if it is underclocked) imovie for iphone looks great aswell, i just hope it'll be ported to the ipad this fall, and i'm holding out for an ipad version of aperture aswell.
happy iphone 4 eve everyone.
the predictions were pretty accurate, and the 720p video calling looks great :D facetime was abit unexpected, bit i'm sure it'll be a nice extra. the camera is the main reason i'll be upgrading, along with the retina display. fingers crossed it looks different from the 3gs!
iOS4 was also released recently, and i was lucky enough to get it a week in advance, which also included game centre (which isn't on the mainstream iOS4). multi tasking works a treat, provided developers pull their finger out and include it on their apps. and folders is pretty sweet too. in general the iphone feels much faster on 4.0 than it did on 3.1.3 which is great news for all you guys getting an iphone 4, i'd imagine it'll be blazing with the A4, (even if it is underclocked) imovie for iphone looks great aswell, i just hope it'll be ported to the ipad this fall, and i'm holding out for an ipad version of aperture aswell.
happy iphone 4 eve everyone.
Sunday, 6 June 2010
iPhone predictions
New iPhone in 11 hours guys!
Thinking front facing camera... 5 mega pixel back camera with flash and 720p video recording... Separate volume buttons, another mic for better quality calls. And a 1ghz processor under clocked to 833 MHz? A new flatter back, made from a new less scratchy material? 32gb and 64gb memory? Tbh i think 64 gig a phone is a waste but that's what we might get! 1280x960 screen? That'd be nice... But I think it's eating into the iPad specs a lot, I'm also guessing a slightly smaller screen (3.2 inch) to stop the cost going above £500. Please don't disappoint me mr.jobs. Please.
Thinking front facing camera... 5 mega pixel back camera with flash and 720p video recording... Separate volume buttons, another mic for better quality calls. And a 1ghz processor under clocked to 833 MHz? A new flatter back, made from a new less scratchy material? 32gb and 64gb memory? Tbh i think 64 gig a phone is a waste but that's what we might get! 1280x960 screen? That'd be nice... But I think it's eating into the iPad specs a lot, I'm also guessing a slightly smaller screen (3.2 inch) to stop the cost going above £500. Please don't disappoint me mr.jobs. Please.
Saturday, 5 June 2010
Wednesday, 2 June 2010
Blogger!
Hello fellow bloggers!
Thought I'd set this up to give some opinions on things, get a few ideas out (giving me an excuse to talk about apple basically)
So welcome to the blog, and I'll hopefully have some news/reviews up ASAP!
Thought I'd set this up to give some opinions on things, get a few ideas out (giving me an excuse to talk about apple basically)
So welcome to the blog, and I'll hopefully have some news/reviews up ASAP!
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