iPhone 5S vs 5c + iPhone 5S Trailer – Fingerprint technology?!

 

I always enjoy seeing new technology updates, especially when it’s something that I’m likely to buy… I thought that this article did a good job of explaining this new phone. Having the limited knowledge that I do have about this compared with the experts I’ll just leave you to the video and the article below. Enjoy!

 

 

The iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c: What you need to know

By Macworld staff, Macworld

• Sep 11, 2013 11:45 AM

We’re now in that funny in-between time: On Tuesday, Apple announced the new iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c, providing some information about both. We had a brief hands-on session with both of them. But now we have to wait a week and a half before we can actually get our own new phones and find out everything we want to know. In the meantime, here are our answers to some of the most pressing questions about the new smartphones, based on what Apple has told us and our own investigations.

The basics

When can I get the new iPhone models?

You can pre-order an iPhone 5c starting on Friday, September 13; the 5c will actually be available on September 20. The iPhone 5s will also be available on September 20, but Apple isn’t taking pre-orders for that model. These dates apply to the US, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Puerto Rico, Singapore, and the UK.

How much do the phones cost?

The iPhone 5c costs $99 for 16GB of storage or $199 for 32GB with a new two-year contract. Unlocked versions—without a contract—will cost $549 and $649, respectively. With the unlocked version, you can choose one that ships with a T-Mobile SIM card, or one without a SIM card at all. Both unlocked options work only with GSM networks.

The iPhone 5s costs $199 for 16GB, $299 for 32GB, or $399 for 64GB of storage with a new two-year contract. Without a contract, those same phones will cost $649, $749, and $849, respectively. As with the 5c, you can get the unlocked model for use with T-Mobile. (Apple’s site doesn’t currently list a no-SIM option for the 5s.)

Which carriers are offering the iPhone 5c and 5s?

In the U.S., your contract-carrier choices are AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon. As mentioned above, no-contract versions are available for use with T-Mobile or other GSM providers.

How much will it cost me to upgrade from my existing iPhone?

That depends on the carrier and type of contract you have. You can check your upgrade eligibility via Apple’s website.

How they compare

How does the 5c compare to the iPhone 5?

From a hardware perspective, the 5c is very similar to the iPhone 5: It uses the same processor (Apple’s A6), the same graphics circuitry, and the same screen. The main differences are that the 5c includes a slightly more capacious battery, compatibility with more bands of LTE, and an updated FaceTime HD camera that features larger pixels and a better backside-illumination sensor.

Apple says the performance of the 5c will be similar to that of the iPhone 5, except that the FaceTime HD camera offers better images. Indeed, in our brief hands-on with the iPhone 5c, the phone felt exactly as snappy and responsive as the iPhone 5 units we’ve been using for the past year. (We’ll of course be putting the 5c and the 5s through more rigorous testing when we get them.)

The 5c is also close to the same size and weight as the iPhone 5, but the 5c uses a very different exterior. Instead of an aluminum enclosure, the iPhone 5c features a plastic unibody design reminiscent of the old white-plastic MacBook. This body is molded from a single piece of polycarbonate that gives it a solid, rigid feel (part of that also stems from the steel frame that Apple uses inside). Even the volume buttons, mute switch, and Sleep/Wake button on the 5c are plastic. “Unapologetically plastic,” as Apple puts it.

How does the 5s compare to the 5c and the 5?

Apple calls the 5s its most “forward-thinking” phone. Though its aluminum body is almost the same as the iPhone 5’s, there’s a bunch of new hardware inside. Most impressive is the new A7 processor, which Apple touts as the first 64-bit processor available in a phone. The iPhone 5s also includes a new M7 “motion coprocessor”; some big camera upgrades and capabilities; and the Touch ID fingerprint-authentication system. (More on these below.)

Other improvements over the iPhone 5 include a slightly larger battery, expanded carrier support, and a new color. Speaking of which…

What colors can I get?

That depends on which iPhone model you purchase. The lower-cost iPhone 5c, constructed of hard-coated polycarbonate, will be available in candy-like light blue, light green, pink, yellow, or white. Each—including the white version—has a black bezel surrounding the screen.

There is one tiny—and we mean tiny—difference between the iPhone 5c models: On the blue, green, yellow, and white models, the Ring/Silent switch shows an orange line when flipped to the Silent position. On the pink model, the line is white. Details, people.

If you splurge on the aluminum-body iPhone 5s, your choices are different: “space gray” (with a black screen bezel and back trim), silver (with white screen bezel and back trim), or gold (also with white screen bezel and back trim). The gold is subtler than it sounds; it’s more of a champagne color. A nice touch on the 5s is that the metal ring around the Home button on each phone matches its main color: gray, silver, or gold.

I hear Apple also makes cases for the new phones?

Yep, Apple is also offering offering two lines of cases, one set for the 5c and one for the 5s.

The $29 iPhone 5c case, available in the same five colors as the phone plus a black version, is made of silicone with a microfiber interior lining and sports a pattern of 35 circular holes on the back that let your iPhone’s own color peek through. You can match your phone to the case or opt for something a bit more interesting like, say, a white phone with a blue case.

The $39 iPhone 5s case is made of leather with a microfiber interior and is available in brown, beige, black, yellow, blue, and Product(Red) red. The case is molded over the Sleep/Wake and volume buttons, with openings for the Ring/Silent switch and back camera and flash.

The iPhone 5s

What’s this about a new processor and a coprocessor?

The A7 inside the new iPhone 5s is unquestionably the most powerful chip Apple has ever put in a mobile device. It’s also the first one that uses a 64-bit architecture—usually found only on laptop and desktop computers. The implications of that architecture might not be immediately apparent, because apps have to be written to take advantage of it. But down the road, the new chip will offer some exciting possibilities for expansion and power.

The A7’s support for the latest OpenGL ES 3.0 standard means better graphics performance, too. In fact, Apple claims that the new A7 processor is twice as fast at both processor-intensive and graphics-intensive tasks as its predecessor. We’ll see about that when we test the 5s.

The iPhone 5s also includes a separate processor, called the M7, that handles sensor data.

What’s this M7 thing good for?

The M7—which Apple calls the motion coprocessor—is a brand-new chip inside the iPhone 5s that complements the A7 by handling data from the device’s many sensors, including the accelerometer, gyroscope, and compass. Why a separate processor for all that? The key to the M7 is that it can log data from those sources without waking the full A7 processor. This means that not only can fitness-tracking apps more easily run in the background, but they’ll also chew up less of your precious battery power. And using the new CoreMotion API, third-party apps can use real-time location and motion information—like, say, whether you’re walking or riding in a car—to determine how the app behaves, without dramatically affecting battery life.

Is the iPhone 5s camera really that much better?

We haven’t yet tested the back camera on the 5s; we’ll give it a thorough evaluation once we get a couple iPhone 5s samples in-house. But if Apple’s specs and feature list are any indication, that camera should offer noticeably better performance, along with some useful new capabilities.

For starters, the 5s uses a new, five-element lens that Apple designed specifically for the new iPhone. This new lens offers an f/2.2 aperture, a 15-percent-larger area than the iPhone 5’s lens, and 1.5-micron pixels—larger than those on the iPhone 5 and other smartphones.

The phone also includes a new dual-LED True Tone flash that Apple says is the first of its kind on a phone or a standalone camera. One flash is cooler white, while the other is amber with a warmer color temperature. The phone monitors ambient light and then fires the two flashes together to match that light. Together, Apple says, the two flashes provide more than 1000 unique light combinations, for flash lighting that’s brighter and more natural.

But iOS 7 also includes a bunch of software specifically designed to take advantage of the improved camera hardware. For example, before you take a photo, the phone automatically adjusts white-balance and exposure to create a tone map for better highlights and shadows; it also performs auto-focus matrix metering for improved sharpness. When you take the photo, the phone actually takes multiple images, analyzes them in real time, and then shows you what it thinks is the best one.

The 5s also includes image stabilization in software: In situations—such as low lighting—where you’d normally end up with blurry images, the phone takes multiple photos with a single shutter press, and then it blends them together into a single, sharp image. And a new burst mode captures ten full-resolution frames per second for as long as you hold down the shutter button. But unlike most burst modes, on an iPhone 5s, the phone automatically filters out bad shots to show you only the “best” ones. (You can choose others manually, if you like.)

When taking video, you can capture 720p video at 120 frames per second, slowing it down later for true slow-motion video. (You can do the editing in your favorite video app, or you can choose, right in the Photos app, which section of the clip to view in slo-mo.) And Panorama mode now lets you adjust exposure as you pan.

Many times during the iPhone event, Apple pointed out the advantages of making both hardware and software, combining them to best take advantage of both. The iPhone’s camera features are one of the best examples of this philosophy in action.

So, this fingerprint-sensor thing, Touch ID: how does it work?

It’s a capacitance-based (as opposed to optical) scanner built into the iPhone 5s Home button. The “capacitance” part means that instead of taking a visual scan of your finger or thumb, the scanner detects minute differences in electrical charge caused by a fingerprint’s whorls, loops, and curves.

The phone then produces a digital template (again, not an image) based on that scan. In other similar systems, software then runs such a template through a cryptographic hashing process, making it virtually impossible to recreate the original print from the template. If that’s how Touch ID works, the hashing process should make it harder—if not impossible—to spoof your prints. For further security, your fingerprint is never stored in the cloud or anywhere in the phone’s memory—only in a secure area of the A7 chip itself.

We don’t yet know all the details about how iOS 7 will use the fingerprints it detects. But we do know that it will let you bypass the lockscreen passcode. (Youdo have a lockscreen passcode, right?) It will also let you authenticate with iCloud and the App Store using your finger.

With all this new technology and speed on the iPhone 5s, is the battery life worse than that of the iPhone 5?

Apple claims that the iPhone 5s offers battery life equal to or greater than that of the iPhone 5. Specifically, the company says the iPhone 5s offers 10 hours of 3G talk time, 10 hours of LTE or Wi-Fi browsing, or 250 hours of standby time. Compare that to Apple’s claims for the iPhone 5 when that model was released: 8 hours of 3G talk time, 10 hours of Wi-Fi browsing, or 225 hours of standby time.

Apple says that the iPhone 5c’s battery life is identical to that of the iPhone 5s. We’ll of course thoroughly test each model’s battery life in the coming weeks.

Accessories and apps

Is the 5s exactly the same size as the 5? Will my existing accessories and cases work? What about the iPhone 5c?

The iPhone 5s is indeed exactly the same size as the iPhone 5, so existing iPhone 5 cases will fit the new iPhone 5s. However, the camera and LED flash on the iPhone 5s differ in size and position from those on the iPhone 5, so existing cases may partially obscure the lens and/or LED—or may be close enough to obscuring them that the case affects flash or photo quality. If you want to use a case not specifically made for the iPhone 5s, be sure the opening(s) for the camera and flash are large enough to avoid this problem.

Cases aside, existing iPhone 5 accessories—docks, speaker docks, chargers, and the like—should all work with the iPhone 5s. Similarly, with the exception of dock cradles custom-fit for the iPhone 5s, most of these accessories should work fine with the iPhone 5c.

Of course, cases for the iPhone 5 and 5s won’t fit the iPhone 5c, due to the latter’s different dimensions and slightly different shape.

We’ll be testing many accessories once we get our hands on the iPhone 5c and 5s, and we’ll publish our findings here on Macworld.com.

Apple says it’s making Keynote, Numbers, Pages, iMovie, and iPhoto for iOS free “for new devices”? Does that include the new iPhones? What about current iPhone owners?

Apple’s webpage about the iPhone 5s built-in apps (and the similar page for the iPhone 5c) lists iMovie, iPhoto, and the iWork suite, but they don’t actually come pre-installed.

Instead, any iOS 7-compatible device activated on or after September 1, 2013—regardless of when you purchased it—is eligible for free copies of these apps. If your device came pre-loaded with iOS 7, you’ll be prompted during the setup process to download the iOS versions of Keynote, Numbers, Pages, iMovie, and iPhoto. If your device didn’t come with iOS 7 pre-installed (but, again, you activated the device on or after September 1), once you install iOS 7, you’ll be prompted during the iOS 7 setup process to install the apps. You’ll need an Apple ID, but you won’t have to pay for the apps—they’re free with your new device.

Note that this offer isn’t limited to the iPhone 5c and 5s—it includes any iOS 7-compatible device activated on or after September 1, including the iPhone 4 and 4s, the fifth-generation iPod touch, and recent iPads (see the list of compatible devices at the bottom of this page).

If you’ve got a device activated prior to September 1, 2013, you’ll still be able to purchase the apps on the App Store, but you won’t get them for free.

 

 

GoogleTalks: Stephen Colbert – “America Again: Re-Becoming the Greatness We Never Weren’t”

On January 16, 2013 I had a ticket to attend The Colbert Report, and Stephen Colbert being one of my heroes I was completely ecstatic… I also somehow got a ticket at the last minute to go to a taping of Late Night with David Letterman, who is another one of my heroes, on the same night… Unbelievable I know! Well, Letterman tapes just before Colbert so I attempted to go to both, and sprint several blocks through New York City traffic to pull it off. On my voyage there were some exceptional highs, and surprising lows. I ended up getting to talk to David Letterman before the show, and he referenced me/my home town on the show, putting my face on TV. It was completely surreal, and whenever I play 2 truths and I lie from now on that will be one of my amazing truths. After leaving The Ed Sullivan theater (where the Beatles were first introduced to The United States!) I sprinted as fast as I could and was checked into the line to enter Mr. Colbert’s show. After talking with other patrons for about 10 minutes about how this was the best night of my life a few of us at the end of the line were approached by a nice young lady with an iPad who told us that they overbook to ensure a full audience, and that we would not be attending that nights show… It was tough news, and I was mildly devastated and simultaneously still elated from my Letterman experience. They promised me tickets for the next time I would be in town (hopefully soon), and I went on my way. I admire Stephen Colbert (the man, not the character) a great deal, and I can’t wait until the day when I hopefully get to meet him. Until then I’ll just have to watch YouTube videos like this. I really love watching him break character.

I don’t usually buy these history/satire books because I have a hard enough time following along when I’m reading for fun with less challenging material, but I plan to buy this book after hearing this talk. At this point I’m only debating between getting it on my kindle or getting a real book… I just don’t know if it is designed to sit down and just read straight through. Either way I’m buying it, and if you’ve already read the book I’d love to hear what you think.

 

Imagine Playing iPad mini – YouTube

Imagine Playing iPad mini – YouTube.

I just watched the iPad Mini keynote, and I’m planning to post it when it hits YouTube, but until then here is a video of what it looks like.

How to Share Calendar Events on iPhone and iPad

I have started using this, and it’s pretty awesome… You need to have an email address for the person who you’d like to invite to an event, and so far I don’t think that facebook email addresses work. Give this a shot, and let me know if you figure something out that I might enjoy.

 

 

How to Share Calendar Events on iPhone and iPad

When iOS 5 came out in October 2011, it came with iCloud integration. In Apple’s attempt to highlight key features of iOS 5, some of the areas where iCloud shines have not been mentioned. iCloud offers a fantastic wireless syncing service which can also be linked between two people. Apple has not fully developed iCloud to share documents or photos but Apple has been able to achieve this with calendar and reminders. For example, if you are going out for dinner with friends you want yourself and your friends to have the same copy of the calendar event, which synchronises the event to both calendars. iOS 5 and iCloud can allow you to share calendar events on iPhone and iPad.

Just set up a normal event within the calendar application, registering details such as time, date and location. To invite people to the event, there is an ‘Invitees’ tab, located underneath ‘Repeat’ – exclusive toiOS 5. When selecting an email address in the ‘Add Invitees’ tab, select the invitees’ Apple ID/iCloud ID email address. If you are unsure of your friend’s Apple ID, ask them to go to Settings -> iCloud. At the top, their Apple ID/iCloud ID will be stated. Once you have selected the email and pressed done, iCloud will transfer the data to your invitee’s iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. You can add as many email addresses as you like.

The invitees will shortly, in approximately 5 minutes, receive a notification on their device which informs them of the invite. On their device, the calendar application will also show a red badge. When the calendar app is next opened, there will now be another red badge in the bottom right-hand corner. When this is pressed, a tray revealing invitations will appear. When they have clicked on the new invitation, they will see to an expanded view of event details. This includes; date, time, location, the host and others the invitation has been sent out to. The recipient will have options, located at the bottom, to submit whether they are available for the event.

When they have decided to either accept, maybe or decline the host will be able to view people attending by selecting the event in the calendar app. From here the host will be able to see how many people haven’t replied yet, how many are attending, unsure or declining. If the host was to make changes you make to the event, such as adding to the notes, all invitees who have accepted the invitation can view changes to the event by selecting the appointment in the calendar application.

This is the only official way to share calendar events on iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. The system could be smoother and I hope Apple add notifications of an update to an event in future software releases. It is a very handy feature to have in iOS 5 but Apple’s iCloud integration still needs some tweaking and perfecting.

via How to Share Calendar Events on iPhone and iPad.

New iOS 6 Loses Google Maps, but Adds Other Features – NYTimes.com

I know that I’ve been blogging about the iPhone and Apple quite a bit lately, but it’s because I’m excited about the new iOS 6, and the iPhone 5. I’m writing this as my phone updates actually, so I’m still not sure what I’m getting into here. I think I’m most excited about the Maps changes, but we’ll see if leaving Google is for the best or not (I kind of doubt it will be in some important ways, but I love that it’s a GPS now).

 

 

New iOS 6 Loses Google Maps, but Adds Other Features

The arrival of the iPhone 5 isn’t the only big news for phone fans this week. Wednesday, Apple is also making iOS 6 available to anyone with a recent iPhone (3GS, 4, or 4S), iPod Touch (fourth generation) or iPad (2 or 3). It comes installed on the iPhone 5 and the new fifth-generation iPod Touch.

(Caution: Not all features are available on the older models. I’ve noted the biggest such exceptions below, but you should check here for full details.)

Apple’s Maps app for iOS 6.

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The challenge in creating a new operating system is always this: How do you add features without adding complexity?
On a tiny phone screen, that challenge becomes even more difficult. The answer, of course, is, you can’t — but few companies try harder to minimize the complexity than Apple. In iOS 6, for example, Apple counts more than 200 new features, but you’d know it with a quick glance.

Here’s the best of what’s new:

Maps. Apple, as you may have noticed, has been quietly dismantling its relationship with Google. In iOS 6, for example, there’s no longer a built-in YouTube app (Google owns YouTube); fortunately, YouTube offers a new app of its own.

And now Apple has replaced the iPhone’s longstanding Google Maps app. Apple says that Google had been steadily improving its Maps app — but only for Android phones, leaving the iPhone in the dust. For example, the iPhone app didn’t have spoken turn-by-turn directions. And on Android, the maps are composed of vector art—smooth lines generated by the computer — rather than the square tiles of pixels that you saw on the iPhone.

In any case, the new iOS Maps app offers those features — spoken navigation, vector maps — and more. You can just tell Siri where you want to go (“Give me directions to LaGuardia Airport”), and let the app start getting you there with one of the cleanest, least distracting navigation screens ever to appear on a GPS unit. The visual cues are big, bold and readable at a glance, and the spoken cues are timed perfectly so that you don’t miss a turn. You can even turn the screen off and let the voice alone guide you.

Real-time traffic and accident alerts are built in — no charge, courtesy of crowdsourced speed and position data from millions of other iPhone owners out driving.

Not all is rosy in Mapsland, though. Apple’s database of points of interest (stores, restaurants, and so on), powered by Yelp, is sparser than Google’s. There’s no built-in public-transportation guidance. For big cities, you get Flyover, a super-cool 3-D photographic model of the actual buildings — but losing Google’s Street View feature is a real shame.
During navigation guidance, you can’t rotate the map with your fingers or zoom in by more than a couple of degrees—to see your entire route, for example. Turns out you have to tap the screen and then tap Overview to access that more detailed, zoomable, rotatable map.

Flyover and the vector maps require a fast Internet connection, by the way. When you’re not in a 4G cellular area, it can take quite awhile for the blank canvas to fill in. (Navigation and Flyover don’t work on the iPhone 3GS or 4, the original iPad, or pre-2012 iPod Touches.)

Call smarts. These are some of my favorite new features. If you’re driving or in a meeting when a call comes in, you can flick upward on the screen to reveal two new buttons: Remind Me Later and Reply With Message. The first button offers choices like “In 1 hour” or “When I get home” (a message will remind you to call back); the second offers canned text messages, like “I’ll call you later” or a custom message, that let your caller know you can’t take the call now. Excellent.

Do Not Disturb is also incredibly useful. It’s like Airplane Mode — the phone won’t buzz, ring or light up — except that (a) it can turn itself on during certain hours, like your sleeping hours, and (b) it can allow certain people’s calls or texts through (people on your phone’s Favorites list, for example). You can sleep soundly, knowing that your boss or family can reach you in an emergency, but idiot telemarketers will go straight to voice mail.

(Similarly ingenious: The option called Repeated Calls. If someone calls you twice in three minutes — possibly someone who needs to reach you urgently — that call is allowed to ring during Do Not Disturb.)

Siri. Siri, the voice-activated servant, now understands questions about movies (“When is the next showtime of ‘Finding Nemo 3D?’” or “Who directed ‘Chinatown?’”), sports (“Who won the Yankees game yesterday?”) and restaurants (“Where’s the closest diner?”). In each case, Siri’s responses are visual and detailed—for restaurants, you can even make a reservation with one tap, courtesy of Open Table.

You can also speak Twitter or Facebook posts (“Tweet, ‘I just broke my shin on a poorly placed coffee table’”) and—hallelujah!—open apps by voice (“open Camera”). That’s a huge win.

Siri is also available in more languages and on more gadgets (the new iPod Touch; the iPad 3).

FaceTime over cellular. FaceTime is Apple’s video-chatting feature — and until today, it worked only in Wi-Fi hot spots. Now, at last, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5 and cellular iPad 3 owners can make video calls (to other iPhone, iPad, Touch and Mac owners) even when they’re out of Wi-Fi range, out in cellular land. When the signal is decent, the picture looks great. (AT&T doesn’t let you use FaceTime over cellular unless you have one of its complicated and expensive shared-data plans.)

Camera panoramas. You can now capture a 240-degree, ultra-wide-angle, 28-megapixel photo by swinging the phone around you in an arc. The phone creates the panorama in real time (you don’t have to line up the sections yourself). Available on iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, and iPod touch (5th generation), and very welcome.

Passbook. This app collects and consolidates barcodes: for airline boarding passes, movie tickets you bought online, electronic coupons and so on. The feature hasn’t gone live yet, so I couldn’t test it except with phony coupons and boarding passes supplied by Apple to reviewers. But the apps for Delta, American, Starbucks and Fandango will be Passbook-compatible almost immediately, and that should be a great time-saver—your boarding-pass barcode appears automatically when you arrive at the airport (thank you, GPS), even on the Lock screen.

Safari browser. You can now save a Web page to read later, when you don’t have an Internet connection, and in landscape mode, a full-screen browsing mode maximizes screen space by hiding toolbars. (I don’t think the third new Safari, feature, iCloud Tabs, will be as useful. It lets you open up whatever browser tabs you left open on your Mac or iPad—if, that is, they’re all signed into the same iCloud account.)

Shared photo streams. You can “publish” groups of photos to specified friends; they can view the pictures on their Apple gadgets or on a Web page. They can add comments or “like” them.

Mail. In Mail, you can indicate the most important people; they get their own folder in the Inbox, helping to lift them out of the clutter. And at long last, you can now attach photos to a Mail message you’re already writing, instead of having to start in the Photos app — better late than never, I guess.

Miscellaneous. The option to publish utterances, photos or other bits to Facebook pops up in a bunch of different apps. In the Weather app, you now see an hour-by-hour forecast for today, in addition to the five-day outlook. A new Privacy settings page gives you on/off switches for the kinds of data each app might request (access to your contacts, location and so on). Tweaks have been made to the App Store app, Reminders, Videos and other apps.

And you no longer have to enter your Apple password just to download an update to an app you already have. Hosannah.

In the end, iOS 6 is to software what the iPhone 5 is to hardware: a big collection of improvements, many of which are really clever and good, that don’t take us in any big new directions. Lots and lots of nips and tucks — that’s Apple’s motto lately.

Unlike the iPhone 5, however, upgrading to iOS 6 doesn’t cost anything. It’s free and available now. In general, you should go get it—and you sacrifice very little (a few Maps features) and gain a lot.

iPhone 5 Full Apple keynote September 2012

iPhone 5 Full Apple keynote September 2012 – YouTube.

My blog is usually about things on my mind, which usually has to do with current events/politics. So, when I recently decided to blog about the iPhone 5 and I had an overwhelming viewership response it was one of those moments where I am faced with the reality of what people are most interested in, and a lot of times it is not what I’m most interested in. And I’m okay with that, I understand that a lot of people feel helpless about a lot of the problems in the world, and worrying about all of our problems just feels like too much.

With all of that being said I’m going to continue to blog about politics (especially the Presidential race during this fall), but I want to make sure that I do my best to find what is relatable in these stories, and I’m going to try to simplify a lot of the important information that I know people would like to hear if it weren’t so difficult to find among the 24 hour news cycle. I’m inspired by how much people move towards a good product like the iPhone – Apple has done amazing things over and over, and I feel that we should make note their achievements. In the same way, I hope to (with this blog) help people remember to make note of justice and compassion in the world. I realize that a lot of people who might have come across this message are way more interested in the video, but feel free to give me feedback if you care to.

Ok, now for the keynote address. I think that people are too critical in the world. Why do we all feel like we have to be critics? I don’t know the answer, but I’m about to be a little bit of one. This might sound expected, or like an easy critique to make, but the people making presentations during this keynote lacked the charisma and confidence of Steve Jobs. I am not trying to pile on, but it’s just one of those moments where we can remember how good he was at relating to what people wanted. They did stay rather true to his style of presentation however. I think that when it’s all said and done the presentation was fine, but more than that I liked the phone.

*Warning: this is a spoiler alert for the keynote presentation for the phone

Now my thoughts on the Keynote Address:

• The Screen is bigger (which means updated functionality)
• Better processing chip (A6)
• Better battery (even though they’ve increased the speed and ability of the phone)
• The Camera is better (I don’t care that much, but I know a lot of people do) – But Panorama is going to be an option
• Noise cancellation speaker
• New Connector Piece, which means you’ll have to get rid of old chargers, but it makes more room for speakers, and it’s reversible
• iOS 6 – Maps is like a GPS (turn by turn) and has Yelp, and a 3D flyover view.
• Safari is synced with iCloud, and you can pull up any website that’s open on any of your devices.
• The is a folder in the email box for VIP email contacts
• PassBook is a new app that saves information like boarding passes (and apparently a lot more).
• Facebook & Twitter are now very integrated in everything that iPhone does, so it’ll be easy to post things (people will pretend like they don’t care, but this will probably be the most used update…)
• Siri knows more about sports and restaurants

There is more information, but for the people who want the dumbed down version, that’s what I picked up front he talk. They also announced some changes to iTunes, and it is intended to be much more interactive and in the social media world. Ping failed at accomplishing what the update to iTunes seems to aim for. The new iTunes is coming in October.

The new iPod Nano is pretty cool, and I don’t think I can even explain it very well, so I thought I’d just post a picture:

And as for the iPod touch, it’s almost as thin as the Nano, but other than that it’s a lot like the iPhone, as the iTouch usually is. The “Clumsy Ninja” game that he played looked like a big waste of time, but a fun waste of time…

There wasn’t too much to see after that, but the Foo Fighters played a little bit at the end of the presentation, which I thought was a little random, and out of the Steve Jobs model… Oh well, we move forward, it just seemed a little desperate. I hope that they are confident in what they’re selling, and it looks like they should be. If you decide to watch the video I hope that you enjoy it.