Posted by John Patrick on Jun 25, 2010 in
Gadgets,
ipad,
iPhone,
Mobile,
People,
Travels,
WiFi 
The honeymoon is still underway — the iPhone 4 is extraordinary from my perspective. Apple sent an email inviting iPhone 4 owners to make a FaceTime call to one of their representatives. I placed the call at 10 am Friday morning and it was answered promptly. The rep asked if I had WiFi and then had me check a couple of settings on the phone. He asked me to hang up and he called me back via FaceTime. The phone rang and when I hit the accept button a nice young man in Austin, Texas appeared on my iPhone 4 display. The clarity was stunning. The screen is small but being relatively close to the eyes, this total stranger seemed right there in the kitchen with me. He showed me how to move the window-in-window containing me around in case it was in the way and then suggested I press the other icon which changed cameras and enabled him to see the kitchen instead of me. I took him on a tour out to the terrace and showed him a bit of Connecticut. The FaceTime “call” was a first time experience for me and when you get to try it you will be highly impressed. I can’t wait to learn of someone I know getting their iPhone 4. Maybe even one of my four children — two of which have our grandchildren. I have a hunch children and grandchildren will be the most viewed FaceTime participants. The 1969 PicturePhone had very few users — FaceTime will have tens of millions. I hope to meet #2 soon so I don’t have to call the guy at Apple again.
The most asked question to me so far has been “is it really different than the iPhone 3GS”. Answer is a categorical yes. In addition to the new industrial design and the dense cool way it feels in your hand the big difference is the Retina display. With four times the pixel count of previous iPhone models, it is truly the sharpest, most vibrant, highest-resolution screen I have ever seen. The fact that the pixel density is so high that the human eye is unable to distinguish individual pixels makes text amazingly crisp and images stunningly sharp. Apple calls it “resolutionary”. The 78 micrometre wide pixels — 326 pixels per inch — make text and graphics look smooth and continuous at any size. The Retina display uses technology called IPS (in-plane switching) which in practical terms means that you can hold the iPhone 4 almost any way you want and still get a brilliant picture. The display also has four times the contrast ratio of previous models, so whites are brighter, blacks are darker, and everything is more beautiful. Apple says the display glass is made from the same materials used in helicopters and high-speed trains, that it is chemically strengthened to be hard, scratch resistant, durable, and features an oil-resistant coating that helps keep the screen clean. If all that is not enough, the Retina display also includes LED backlighting and an ambient light sensor that intelligently adjusts the brightness of the screen for optimal viewing and battery life. When you lift the iPhone to your ear for a phone call, a proximity sensor immediately turns off the display to save power and prevent accidental dialing. Yes, the iPhone 4 is different than the prior models. The technology used comes from many vendors and is available to any competitor. The advantage Apple has enjoyed so far has been the way they smoothly integrate the features, hide the complexity, and execute brilliant marketing programs to maintain their lead. I am glad to see the Android phones offering strong competition that will keep Apple on it’s toes.
Other iPhone 4 Thoughts
Other iPad Thoughts
Tags: amazon, apple, apple store, back lighting, ebay, facetime, gadget, gazelle, ibooks, in-plane switching, ipad, iPhone, iphone 4, iphone4, Kindle, lcd, micrometer, micrometre, mobile display, patrickWeb, proximity sensor, retina, retina display
Posted by John Patrick on Jun 24, 2010 in
Gadgets,
ipad,
iPhone,
Mobile,
People,
Travels,
WiFi 
The temperature here in New England is in the 90s today, but there are some other places that are also hot — in a commercial sense that is. After stopping by the
Danbury Fair Mall on an errand I happened to walk by the Apple store. It may have been short compared to those in Manhattan or San Francisco, but for this part of the world, it was quite a long line (see
pictures here). We’ll have to wait to see the results, but I suspect there will be more then one million
iPhone 4′s sold today.
Another hot item will be the newly re-priced Kindle. It was doing quite well at $259, and at $189 it will surely attract many more buyers. The iPad is very nice for reading books, but the Kindle excels for reading them in sunlight, and is adored by millions who don’t really want another computer — they just want an efficient and fun way to devour books. I suspect a new Kindle will be coming out this summer but at $189 you can’t go wrong. See link in patrickWeb store.
I have not seen any data to validate how hot or not it is but Gazelle claims to have a unique and proprietary model which predicts the current and future market value of electronic gadgets. There are fifty million iPhones out there and many users will want to sell them and upgrade to the iPhone 4. eBay is a logical way to do this but Gazelle provides another approach. After answering a few questions about the condition of your gadget, Gazelle instantly gives you a market price good for thirty days. If you like the price and don’t change your mind — there is no risk to you — you send your gadget in the prepaid box provided by Gazelle and they send you either a PayPal credit or an Amazon credit. If you choose the latter they add 5% to the guranteed amount. I made my Gazelle inquiry on June 9 and was given a price of $304 (plus $15 extra when I selected the Amazon credit). When I checked yesterday the price had dropped to $212 and it will, of course, continue to drop as iPhone 4 supply ramps up. I was surprised at the high price I got. Could be that they take the initial returns and sell them overseas where prices are higher. I have been an early adopter for decades and have found that staying on the leading edge and buying early is not that costly if you act quickly to sell the “old” gadget you are replacing. My iPhone 3GS left Connecticut via USPS Priority Mail yesterday. I did a hard reset first but Gazelle claims they do a data wipe for all devices they receive.
Tags: amazon, apple, apple store, ebay, facetime, gadget, gazelle, ibooks, ipad, iPhone, iphone 4, iphone4, Kindle, patrickWeb
Posted by John Patrick on Jun 22, 2010 in
Gadgets,
ipad,
iPhone,
Mobile,
People,
Travels,
WiFi 
The Fedex delivery man pulled up at 10:30 this morning with an iPhone 4 in his hand — there were 15 more on his truck. The packaging is elegant and simple to open. After syncing the iPhone 3GS and Stainless Shuffle to be sure iTunes was up to date, I connected the iPhone 4. The first screen to appear showed my mobile phone number and asked me to enter my zip code and last four of the social for authentication. After agreeing to the Apple and AT&T terms and conditions the phone was activated and the copying of apps plus thousands of songs and music began. I went out for an errand and when I got back the iPhone 4 was loaded with my data. The next step was to set up the Google accounts for over-the-air syncing of my 1,500 contacts plus all the calendar entries and gmail. Minutes later I was good to go. It doesn’t get much simpler than that.
One should not judge a book by it’s cover but when it comes to gadgets, first impressions matter. When it came to the iPhone 4 that impression was very positive. The industrial design is elegant. The weight is about the same as the iPhone 3GS but the 4 is thinner and flatter and hence feels more dense and substantial. It has a more contemporary look to it and it is a delight to hold onto. The only physical thing to critique is that when the phone is in your pocket you can’t reach in for it and tell which side is up like you could with the 3GS. No doubt getting familiar with where the buttons are and correlating that to how to grab for the phone face-up will be easy to learn.
Under the covers there are a number of enhancements in the iPhone 4. One reviewer claimed the new battery lasted 31 hours for him. The processor has been upgraded to Apple’s new super-fast A4 processor. A half-gigabyte of memory will also enhance the performance. The iPhone 4 specifications would be mistaken for a supercomputer not that long ago. The addition of a 3-axis gyroscope will enable developers to create some amazing games and along with the GPS there will no doubt be some undreamed of navigation apps coming. The new Retina display is truly brilliant. Icons have no rough edges and photos look like glossy prints. The two cameras and video capability are being raved about. I am not much of a photographer nor do I know much about video editing but it sounds like you can now create candidates for the Cannes film festival on your phone. If photography and video are of interest I would highly recommend reading the review done by Joshua Topolsky over at Engagdet. There are some really good YouTube videos included. As they say a picture (or YouTube clip) is worth a thousand words.
Of most significance to me is the software aspect of the iPhone 4. The upgrade to iOS 4 is available for the iPhone 3GS but the added power of iPhone 4 is able to take much more advantage of the software advancements. The breakthrough is multi-tasking which enables the iPhone to do more than one thing at a time. Not technically exactly really but we won’t know the difference. The best example is that you can start Pandora and select your music and then press the home button again and begin reading your email while you listen to the music. You could do this with the iPod app but not with Pandora. You can stop working on something in an app and switch to a different app and return to find that the prior app is running. For example you can be downloading a large file, go work on something else, and return to find the download completed, all while listening to Pandora. A double press of the home button brings up a new task manager which shows all the apps that are running. You no longer have to push the home button in between apps. I can’t wait for multi-tasking on the iPad — expected in the Fall.
Another breakthrough is FaceTime video chat. To put it in perspective, take a look at the AT&T PicturePhone product of 1969. The FaceTime uses the front camera to capture your face — or that of a grandchild. This could be the feature that gets reluctant grandparents to sign up for an iPhone. At this stage it only works between two iPhones although Apple is releasing specs to make it possible for others to interoperate. I have no doubt that a creative Android developer will implement the feature post haste. The other immediate limitation is that FaceTime video calls are only possible using WiFi. I don’t see that as a problem given the wide availability of WiFi. I think the potential for FaceTime to change the way we communicate is significant. Once multiple participants can be part of a video conference it will change how we think of a “meeting”. For now, I wish I knew someone who had an iPhone 4 so I could try FaceTime instead of just envisioning it!
Another feature that I have envisioned since I got the first iPhone is folders. It took Apple a long time to implement what I consider an essential capability. I have roughly 100 apps. It is amazing how the human brain can remember the content, color, and location of an icon but a way to organize the apps is a superior idea. If you drag a CNN icon onto the top of a BBC icon, the iPhone combines the two into one folder and names the folder “News”. You can drag up to 12 into a folder. Be nice to have more but a dozen is a good start and can allow organizing things into news, weather, sports, utilities, finance, games, etc. This is another feature I can’t wait to get for the iPad.
The iPhone enables you to use whatever email system you want but personally I don’t know why everybody doesn’t use gmail. I am actually glad everyone does not use it because then there would not be enough competition and the governement would step in and shut down Gmail! Whatever mail you use, it is now easier on the iPhone 4 as it has added threaded mail and an integrated inbox. This is yet another feature badly needed on the iPad but for which we have to wait for iOS 4.
The iPhone now has iBooks and syncing of bookmarks between the iPad and iPhone. This is a good thing but I still believe Amazon is ahead in this area. With the new pricing aggressiveness for e-readers I believe the “single purpose” devices will have a place and I look forward to getting the next Kindle this summer. Sunny day reading this summer at the Lake with the iPad or iPhone is not going to happen. The Kindle loves sunny days!
All things considered I am more than pleased with the new iPhone 4. I am sure there will be some things that may disappoint but so far it looks like the winner I expected. The Android phones are going to give Apple a big run for the money and that is exactly what we all want. In the short term the Android will attract techies, those that have poor AT&T coverage and want Verizon, and those that have an aversion to Apple and their high prices and proprietary ways. Over time Android will get better and better as their base of developers grows but for now Apple has a big head start. The only rock they have to drag is AT&T. Their network is not available to many and to many who have it they don’t like it. AT&T is making big investments to improve things and the new iPhone 4 has an improved antenna which some reviewers are saying make dropped calls much more rare. I have not been out of the house with the new iPhone yet but so far it is at least as good as the 3GS. Bottom line for me is that the first impression is a very happy one.
Other iPhone 4 Thoughts
Other iPad Thoughts
Tags: A4, amazon, android, apple, at&t, battery life, design, facetime, fedex, gmail, gps, gyroscope, ibooks, industrial design, ipad, iPhone, iphone 4, iphone4, Kindle
Posted by John Patrick on Jun 2, 2010 in
Gadgets,
ipad,
Media,
Mobile 
Everyday I learn more about the iPad. While at the Lake over the holiday weekend there were two new lessons. Both support previous views that the Kindle is not only a keeper but also a continued necessity. First is that when three grandchildren get their hands on the iPad there is not much chance of getting it back to read. The one year old didn’t quite get it — actually he wanted to eat it — but the 7 and 12 year old grandkids took to it like they had grown up with it. Instantly skillful in new games, drawing apps, music and educational apps, and two handed operations. No training required. Totally intuitive. It is profound in a way to think that they were all born *after* the Internet and the web had been around for years. They have never known an offline world.
The other lesson has to do with the sun. The weather today is near perfect. Blue sky and sunny. I parked myself on the deck and continued reading the autobiography of Edward Gibbon with the Kindle app on the iPad. It went well until the sun reached where i was sitting. The backlit screen got harder and harder to read — had to continually angle it to avoid the glare. Then came the surprise. A temperature warning. The iPad was too hot to function. I knew it was location aware but did not know it also knew the ambient temperature surrounding it. I picked up the Kindle and turned it on. It asked if I wanted to continue reading where I had left off on the iPad. After it synced to the right place I continued reading with joy. The more sun and light the better my eyes can read and the Kindle is as happy as me.
iPad stories on patrickWeb
Other gadget related stories on patrickWeb
Tags: book reader, books, e-reader, ibook reader, ibooks, ipad, Kindle, nook, Sun
