Tag Archives: news

iPad Mini: Media Event

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Here is a transcript of the recent Apple event in order, any remarks posted here are directly copied from hearing the event and is not a personal opinion. All links are located at the bottom.

iOS6 & Mountain Lion:
In under a month 200 million iOS Devices are running iOS6. (fastes software upgrade rate in history, apples words).
125 million documents stored in iCloud.
iMessage, since last year customers have sent over 300 billion messages, 28,000 messages a second.
Game Centre has over 160 million accounts
Photo stream: Customers have shared over 70 million albums so far.

App Store:
275,000 iPad apps, 35 billion apps downloaded so far, Apple have paid out over $6.5billion to developers

iBooks:
1.5 million books ready to download, 400 million books downloaded, new continus scrolling theme(allows you to scroll through a book), books are now in iCloud and you can download them again at any point, tap and share any favourite quote to facebook, twitter, email or you can copy, Now supports 40 different languages.

Mac:
Mac growth Year-on-Year 15%; out growing the PC Market by 7x and for the last 6 years; reason for this is that it has been #1 in customer satisfaction and reliability, #1 desktop and Notebook in the US.

MacBook:
Best selling MacBook is the 13″ MacBook Pro, new 13″ MacBook Pro; 0.75 inches thin(20% thinner); 3.57 pounds in weight(almost a pound lighter); No Optical Drive; I/O Ports Left(Magsafe 2, 2x Thunderbolt, USB 3/2, headphone, dual microphones) Right(SD Card Reader, HDMI Out, USB 3/2); Retina Display 13.3″ Resolution 2560×1600; Facetime HD Camera 720p(30 fps); Backlit Keyboard; Glass Trackpad; Under the hood: (Dual Core i5 or i7 Ivy Bridge Processor, Intel HD 4000 Graphics, 8GB Ram, WiFi & Bluetooth, up to 768GB of Flash Storage, 7 Hour Battery); Shipping with: (2.5GHZ Dual Core i5, 8GB Ram, 128GB Flash Storage); Prices Start from $1699 and Ships from 23rd October.

Mac Mini:
I/O: (Gigabit Ethernet, Firewire 800, HDMI Out, Thunderbolt, USB3/2, Audio in and out, SD Card Reader); Under the Hood: (Dual or Quad Core i5 or i7 Ivy Bridge Processor, Intel HD 4000 Graphics, Up to 1TB HDD or 256GB SSD, Up to 16GB Ram, WiFi and Bluetooth); Shipping with (2.5GHZ Dual Core i5, 4GB Ram, 500GB HDD); Prices start from $599 and Ships from 23rd October.

iMac:
5mm edge(80% thinner); Display 5mm thinner(45%); No Optical Drive; 2 Screen sizes(21.5 inch and 27.5); Fully laminated design; Plasma deposition process; 75% Less Reflection; Facetime HD Camera(30 fps); Dual Microphones; Under the Hood: (Intel Quad Core i5 or i7 Processor, Nvidia Kepler Graphics, Up to 32GB Ram, Up to 3TB HDD, Up to 768GB SSD, WiFi and Bluetooth); I/O Ports: (headphone, SD Card Reader, USB 3/2, 2x Thunderbolt, Gigabit Ethernet); Apple Fusion Drive: 128GB SSD, Fused together into one volume, Faster Reads and Writes, Works automatically, Faster Performance, 3x faster; Wireless Keyboard and Magic Mouse; Shipping with: (21.5″ Display, 2.7GHZ Quad Core i5, 8GB Ram, GeForce GT 640M, 1TB HDD); Prices Start from $1299 and Ships from November; 27.5″ iMac Ships December.

iPad:
100 Million iPads Sold in 2 and half years; iPad Counts for 90% of Web traffic on a tablet; iBook Textbooks are available to 80% of the High School core US curriculum; iBook Textbooks in 2500 US classrooms; iBook Author has new Fonts and Templates; 94% of the Fortune 500 companies are using or deploying iPad.

iPad(3rd Gen):
A6X Chip(2x faster than A5X); 2x Graphics Performance; Next Generation of IPS; 10 Hour battery Life; Front Facing Facetime HD camera 720p(30 fps); Cellular version supports LTE; 2x Faster WiFi Performance, 2.5GHZ and 5GHZ; New Lightning Charger; Black or White;

iPad Mini:
Silver and Black, 7.9″ Retina Display, A5 Chip, 5MP HD Rear Camera and Front Facing HD Camera; Same as above but Different display and colour options.

iPad Mini Options:
Wifi: 16GB($329), 32GB($429), 64GB($529); WiFi+3G: 16GB($459), 32GB($559), 64GB($659).

Pre-orders start from October 26th and Ship from November 2nd.

Apple iPad Mini Event Video
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Mac OSX Software

iPhone 5: Want Vs. Need

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Today the Apple iPhone 5 goes on sale and as always the usual fans are itching to get their hands on the device. This year Apple claim this is “the biggest thing since the launch of the iPhone” and that you can do so much more than you have ever done before.

The New Specs include:

4 inch Retina Display
A6 1-1.20GHZ Dual Core Processor
4G LTE (on supported carriers)
8MP Rear Camera – 1080p up to 30FPS
1.2MP Front Camera – 720p up to 30FPS
Storage Choices 16, 32 and 64GB
New Overall Look in Black/Silver or White/Silver
Battery Life:
8Hrs Browsing Time – WiFi 10Hrs
8Hrs Talk Time
10Hrs Video Playback
40Hrs Music Playback
All New 30 Pin Lightning Power Adapter

The starting price for the iPhone is £529 ranging up to £699 depending on what storage you require.

Do You Really Need to Upgrade If You Have The iPhone 4S?
The short answer to that is No and the only reason for saying that is because there are not many differences between the phones. You will still be able to use the iOS 6 software along with all it’s new features, minus a few features that are only dedicated to the iPhone 5 handset.
If you decide to keep your iPhone 4S handset you can choose a cheaper option by either purchasing Apple Care or Suitable Mobile Phone Insurance. Apple Care will cost you around £61 for 1 year protection and this will cover hardware and labour costs but this does not cover accidental damage or theft. Personally I would suggest getting mobile phone insurance as this will cover all costs including damage, theft, hardware and labour but bare in mind each insurance broker will have excess fee’s and limitations per year to each policy. Mobile phone insurance will set you back around £5.99 a month with an excess fee of £100 per claim with a maximum of 4 claims a year or some will let you pay yearly to get cheaper costs.

What will an iPhone 5 cost?
If you are on Pay As You Go you will need to pay the full price for the phone along with your monthly top up amount.
If you was on Pay Monthly you would need to pay a small fee for the phone depending on which monthly service you choose, here in the UK to get the iPhone free you would need to pay £66 a month for 24 months which will you back in total £1,584 over 2 years (price of 3 handsets), bare in mind this will cover the cost of the phone plus your service plan.

Overall the iPhone 5 is a good phone but to be honest Apple did not make many changes and most of the changes were just cosmetic. To the average consumer this won’t make any difference to their experience and wouldn’t really care about a tiny upgrade.

In the end it is users choice but with anything it is Need Vs. Want.

Netflix Killing Nickelodeon Ratings

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According to analysts Netflix is killing Nickelodeon ratings because of the increase of users watching their content via Netflix. Nickelodeon is part of the Viacom Group which is made up of popular channels such as MTV and Comedy Central. The chief officer Ted Sarandos spoke out last week and believes Netflix has not contributed at all towards the decline in Viacom ratings.

In reality Netflix is mostly streaming old content mixed with new content but with most users choosing to watch the older content. As most people know popular broadcaster will check their schedules regularly to coincide with ratings to give you the best viewing experience possible but at times these broadcasters chuck out content that users want to watch and this is where third-party providers like Netflix fill the gap.

This news from analysts seems to miss a lot of points and hasn’t really looked at the bigger picture but maybe this will be an eye opener for Viacom because a lot of users do prefer the older content.

Google Searching for Innovation

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Google has come on so much since their launch in 1998. Over the years they have transformed the search engine industry that exceeded many expectations and amazed many people with how their search engine worked.

Today Google are more than just a search engine they make new technologies for smart phones, 3D Glasses and motor vehicles. The most recent project to date is the self driving car which is self-explanatory on what it can do.

If we look in terms of search engines google is the number 1 ranked in the world with many others trying to knock them off the top spot. Even though google ranked number 1 would you believe some users actually prefer other search engines like bing, yahoo and ask? These users highlight that google does not always return what they are looking for and the other engines return more related results.

In terms of technology I believe google are doing incredibly well and I also believe they have many great innovations to come but are google losing track on their search engine goals?

New innovations and ideas are key for any technology company and at some point even big giants like google will hit a brick wall and fail to produce new ideas.

This won’t mean the company will fail but they will be constantly looking for ideas to make the next big thing.

Facebook IPO will it be Risky?

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The news of Facebook issuing stock options has been widely known for sometime and their plans to raise $5B in first public offerings.

According to many news sources Facebook public offerings will start from May 17th 2012 at $35 a share (Nasdaq: FB). All dates and pricing above are all based on multiple news reports, these are subject to change.

Like any public offerings you take some sort of risk but will Facebook be a bigger risk to investors than normal? Facebook has always hit a backlash from a percentage of their users because of changes they make and a tiny percentage of users stop using their service and move to rival social networking sites.

Since Facebook launched in February 2004 they have always stated their service will be free but will this change in months ahead as the public offerings go ahead? The whole rumour of Facebook becoming a paid for has been rumoured for sometime by thousands of users but thus Facebook have yet to put anything like this in place.

If Facebook was to become a paid for service there could be a couple of issues that arise from this, one users will not pay for social networking and two will Facebook remove ads if you pay a subscription fee.

Facebook are like any company, they are trying to offer the best service possible with a minimal impact to their large user base and sometimes the options some people would like to see wont always be realistic for the company to stay profitable.

Needless to say if the offerings pay off in the long run Facebook will have a brighter future. Always remember when buying any stock options you are taking a risk, always do research before investing because you might lose money instead of gaining.

CISPA Law End of Freedom

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Many worldwide governments are trying to pass a new law to allow them to watch emails, texts and calls. First of all let me point something out any government with the proper resources could do this without you knowing anyway and just makes this law pointless because if they are going to watch you then they will find a way.

Months ago governments wanted to pass two laws that were identical to CISPA, these laws were called PIPA and SOPA. In a practical world these laws would never pass because it breaches human rights, anyone has the right to keep things private and this includes emails, texts and calls.

If it becomes a legal requirement to hand out access to this information then the human right laws are pointless. I doubt CISPA would pass and if it does we might as well hand over everything to our local governments because from this point it means you have no privacy or freedom.

Six Degrees of Freedom

Ball Bearing Robotics

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Many months ago I was researching robotics and after many hours of watching stanford university lectures I started to draw up loads of diagrams of skeleton stick man who I could use to show my theory of ball bearing robots. This theory works off the Six degrees of freedom (6DoF) which are backwards, forwards, up, down, left, right, pitch, yaw and roll.

Six Degrees of Freedom

Six Degrees of Freedom Picture Credit Wikipedia

If you interlink a robot with ball bearings you will end up with many degrees of freedom because each ball bearing point will contain the Six Degrees of Freedom, this will allow the robot to become very flexible. When we bend our fingers we only have a certain amount of freedom where as a robot built with small ball bearings could in theory curl its finger joint and is able touch behind the knuckle joint.

The diagram below demonstrates how it is possible to use ball bearings to touch the back of a finger.

Ball Bearing Robotic Finger Compare

Ball Bearing Robotic Finger Picture Credit Marc Corn

In reality this is a simple concept but it will take some engineering to make it happen, let me know what you all think in the comments below.