Apple Archive

Good news for iPhone 4 owners - and good on Apple for taking care of this demographic.

Getting the update is easy indeed. There's a certain other mobile operating system that could learn a few things from that one.

The only Mac Pro review that matters. Still want one. Won't buy one - but want one.

This thing is so damn awesome. I don't need it, but I still want one.

Pretty cool. More on the Apple II can be found at the Computer History Museum's blog.

Since my contract renewal was up, I had the option to renew it and buy a new phone alongside with it. Since I have an unofficial policy of never buying into the same platform twice in a row, and because it has been a long time since I bought something from Cupertino, I decided to go with the newest iPhone, the 5S. I'm planning on a more thorough review sometime later this year after more thorough use, but here are a few short first impressions.

Leave it to the media to turn higher-than-expected demand for the more expensive model into bad news.

Insightful article by John Gruber.

As insightful as the article is, it does pivot on the assumption that Apple does, indeed, " a lead over its rivals" in design and quality. Design is largely a matter of taste, but as far as quality goes, Apple has, in my view, been surpassed in almost every aspect by Android - at least, when it comes to software. And let's not even get started on internet services, where Apple is a complete and utter joke compared to its competitors. As far as hardware goes, however, Apple's supposed lead is harder to debate - I've held a lot of phones and tablets in my hands over the years, and while many come close to Apple's, I've never held anything that outright surpassed it (save for maybe the HTC One which no one is buying).

Unsurprisingly, Gruber believes Apple does maintain that lead, and as such, arguing his point becomes relatively easy. However, if you ascribe to the view that Android has surpassed iOS in quality (and certainly in design, in my view), it becomes a lot harder to accept that Apple can, this time, avoid the trap it fell into in the '90s.

Now, before people will twist and turn this into me saying Apple is doomed - I don't believe for a second that it is. However, that doesn't mean a repeat of the '90s is somehow magically off the table - Apple has a lot of work to do in order to avoid it. As Tom Dale stated so aptly almost a year ago, "Google is getting better at design faster than Apple is getting better at web services". With Motorola and the Moto X, design might not be the only thing Google is getting better at faster.

I've been thinking a bit more about those iPhone 5C/5S weekend sales figures, and while it is certainly impressive, if you compare it to the iPhone 5's first weekend sales figures, it's actually quite a step backwards for Apple. The issue here - something many sites and even Apple itself doesn't want to focus on - is that the iPhone 5C/5S is available to a lot more people than the iPhone 5 was.

The iPhone 5 was available to 720 million people at launch, and sold 5 million units. This is a penetration of 0.69%. The iPhone 5C and 5S, however, are available to 2078 million people, and sold 9 million units, which constitutes a penetration of 0.43%. So, Apple has two new models to advertise and lure consumers with instead of one, and has a huge additional market (China) to address, yet it failed to capitalise on either of these two factors.

What this shows is that while the sales figure is still pretty darn impressive, it's not nearly as groundbreaking if you put it in perspective. Looking at it this way, the so-called record breaking 9 million figure can easily be explained away by Apple almost tripling its launch weekend audience, instead of an increasing popularity of the iPhone.

The only reason I'm writing this is to illustrate how numbers are entirely arbitrary, and it's easy to make silly comparisons and claim an arbitrary victory - or, change perspective a bit and claim arbitrary defeat, as I've done here.

While I won't shed a tear for Apple losing a patent lawsuit, this does illustrate once more why the system is broken.

Great interview with Apple's executives.

Quite true. If a fingerprint scanner and a 64bit ARM chip are innovation, time will tell, but for now, Apple is surely still atop of its game. The amazing load of iOS 7 application updates and the rapid adoption of Apple's latest is testament to that.

The only review of the iPhone 5S you'll need to read - AnandTech's.

It's a crazy world where the future of Apple becomes apparent not in its software, but in its hardware. The 5S looks like a significant step forward, and in my view, hints at a future where Apple's laptops and maybe even desktops will be powered by ARM, not x86. If I had the spare cash, I'd plonk it down for a 5S in a heartbeat - as it stands now, I have no way of testing iOS 7 myself.

Interesting site that compares iOS 6 applications to their iOS 7 counterparts.

A few things stand out. First, while I dislike the look of iOS 6 applications, they at least look a lot less confusing than their iOS 7 counterparts - easier to read, clearer buttons, better contrast in the colour palette, that sort of thing. Second, many of them, like iOS 7 itself, are quite bright. I'm used to the darker colours of Windows Phone and Android, and iOS 7 is a heck of a lot brighter. Three, there's a lot of Holo and Metro influences in there.

I have actually played with several of the iOS 7 betas, and found none of them particularly convincing. This look has a lot of growing up to do.

This seems relatively safe - but then again, only if you trust that government agencies don't have some sort of backdoor access anyway. This used to be tinfoil hat stuff, but those days are long gone.

I dislike the characterisation of privacy "hawks", though. It reminds me of how warmongering politicians in Washington are referred to as 'hawks", and at least in my view, it has a very negative connotation.