Apple : Analysis: How did Tim Cook do? |
- Analysis: How did Tim Cook do?
- In Depth: iPhone 4S vs iPhone 4 vs 3GS
- Apple launches Micro-USB adapter for iOS devices
- Apple iPod classic survives suspected cull
- Gary Marshall: iPhone 4S: Apple's getting Siri-ous
| Analysis: How did Tim Cook do? Posted:  Stepping into Steve Jobs' magic sneakers would be a big ask for anyone - so you can imagine how new Apple CEO Tim Cook felt when he stepped up on stage at Apple's Cupertino HQ last night. The affable Alabamian certainly looked the part. Dressed in jeans and a black shirt and trainers he looked every bit the Apple executive. But instead of the whizz-bang theatrics we're used to, we got a rather pedestrian run-through of Apple's recent successes along with a smattering of new product news, much of which had been previously trailed by Apple itself or reported on by Apple rumour sites. Unfortunately Tim's laid-back southern drawl didn't really help. At times he sounded like he chatting to friends over mint juleps in his drawing room rather than giving the speech of his life: "I want to especially welcome you to this campus. This campus is like a second home to many of us. Inviting you here is like welcoming you into our home. In particular I want to welcome you to this room that we call the Town Hall..." See? The other thing Tim Cook did was to let other Apple executives hog much of the limelight - which may be just as well. He turned the presentation about IOS 5 and iCloud over to iOS senior vice president Scott Forstall (makes sense) but then turned the climactic iPhone 4S announcement over to Apple SVP for worldwide marketing, Phil Schiller - something Steve Jobs would never have done at his peak. To be fair, Tim Cook was partly echoing what Steve Jobs has done himself in recent years - trying to place less emphasis on the presence of a charismatic figurehead and more on an executive collective that's at the top of its game, but it also denied Tim Cook the chance to surprise us all with a 'one more thing'. Steve Jobs loved his 'one more thing': For Tim Cook, things can only get better, of course. His presentation skills are likely to improve as he steps out of Steve Jobs' shadow and becomes his own man - although some chutzpah would help too. He certainly needs to hurry up and grab some quick, if the performance of Amazon chairman and CEO Jeff Bezos at the Kindle Fire launch last week is anything to go by. Bezos has already been declared the new Steve Jobs in some quarters, even if he lacks the former Apple CEO's considerable charisma: Jeff Bezos had learned from the presentation techniques seen in Steve Jobs' iconic keynotes - right down to the moody stage lighting, use of minimalist slides and meticulously rehearsed timing: Mind you every time we see Bezos do his thing, we can't help but be reminded of this guy, a certain Dr. Evil: So lacklustre it may have been, but there's one positive note to take away from Tim Cook's inaugural keynote last night. He least he managed to avoid making himself look like a complete idiot like a certain other CEO once did: and Tim Cook also has plenty of aces up his sleeve. He was personally selected by Steve Jobs to take over the high profile role of Apple CEO, suggesting Jobs and the board have full confidence in him. Tim Cook's appointment has also been well received by Apple investors and shareholders. What Tim Cook needs to do now - and in the future - is prove that he can measure up to the faith that has been placed in him. |
| In Depth: iPhone 4S vs iPhone 4 vs 3GS Posted:  iPhone 4S vs iPhone 4 vs 3GSThe iPhone 4S is here - read our Hands on: iPhone 4S review - so we've taken an in-depth look at the key specs and seen how it compares to its year-older sibling, the iPhone 4 and two-year old iPhone 3GS – still going and now the budget handset of the pack. The iPhone 4S has a UK release date of 14 October, but is it worth upgrading? Let's look at the differences between the three handsets. Processor and memory The iPhone 4S boasts the same dual-core processor as the iPad 2 – the Apple A5 which is based on the ARM Cortex-A9 microarchitecture. Apple says it has twice the speed of the Apple A4 chip in the iPhone 4. The 3GS had an ARM Cortex A8-based processor running at 600MHz. System memory The 4S now has 1GB of system memory, double that of the iPhone 4. The 3GS has 256MB. Storage The iPhone 4 is still available at capacities of 16 and 32GB, but the 4S ups the ante here with a 64GB model. As of summer 2010 the iPhone 3GS regressed – from being available with 16 and 32GB, models produced from then on had just 8GB of memory, as befitting the budget handset of the range. Size and weight iPhone 4S uses the same chassis as the iPhone 4 - 24 per cent thinner than the iPhone 3GS at 9.3mm instead of 12.3mm. It's also ever so slightly wider by 3.5mm. In terms of weight, the 140g 4S is slightly heavier than the 137g iPhone 4, which in turn is slightly heavier than the 135g iPhone 3GS. Voice control Both the 3GS and iPhone 4 support basic voice control, but the 4S ups the ante with Siri, a voice assistant that means you can compose messages, set reminders and ask questions. You can also dictate to your handset. We're not sure how useful it would be, but we'd love to try it out. Sadly it's not part of the iOS 5 update for the older handsets. Camera(s) The iPhone 4 was quite limited in its photography. Still, against the 3GS it seemed positively brilliant, with 5 megapixels instead of 3 megapixels and the addition of an LED flash (which can also be used for the video) as well as a front-facing cam for video chat. Apple would like to think you would use FaceTime for this, but who does? However, Apple knew the camera was becoming a really weak point of the iPhone line, so it has given it some serious beefing up in the latest model. There's a five element lens in the 4S instead of the four element in the 4, face detection and an 8-megapixel sensor. There's 60 per cent more pixels, a larger f/2.4 aperture and an advanced hybrid IR filter that produces sharper and brighter images. The Camera app has also been improved and the shot to shot capability is twice as fast according to Apple. Video Instead of the 3GS's VGA quality video recording and the iPhone 4's 720p HD, the 4S is capable of Full HD 1080p video, while there's also video stabilisation built-in too. You can also mirror the display to an HD TV using AirPlay. Display The 3GS 480 x 320 display now looks completely outdated – the iPhone 4 and 4S have the same high-resolution retina display with 960 x 640 resolution and a pixel density of 326ppi. Compare that to the 163ppi of the iPhone 3GS. While the screens aren't OLED as with some other smartphones, Apple says its IPS display tech is better Wireless and data In terms of Wi-Fi, iPhone 4S and 4 have 802.11n Wi-Fi, while the 3GS is stuck with the older 802.11b and g standards. This won't matter unless you connect it to an 802.11n router, of course. iPhone 4S has an upgraded version of Bluetooth – 4.0 instead of 2.1 in the other handsets. The 4S also boasts both GSM and CDMA capability, meaning it can be used on virtually any network across the globe. Data speeds have also been improved in the new handset, with 14.4Mbps downloads now possible. Power and battery The iPhone 4S has a slightly better battery life than the iPhone 4: up from 7 hours talk time on 3G to 8 hours - and much better than the 5 hours on the 3GS. Standby time is a cited 300 hours for the iPhone 4 and 3GS but strangely this is 100 hours more than the 4S. Is Apple being more realistic, or is it due to the notification strain in iOS 5? Location and hardware All three handsets boast accelerometer, aGPS and compass while the 4 and 4S have a six-axis gyro for greater accuracy of movement with apps and games. Colours The 3GS remains only available in black (the while model was discontinued in 2010), while iPhone 4 and 4S both have black and white variants. |
| Apple launches Micro-USB adapter for iOS devices Posted:  Amid a host of high profile Apple launches on Tuesday, the company quietly outed an official adapter to allow iOS devices to be charged using a Micro-USB cable. The £8 add-on arrived on the UK Apple Store when it came back online following the launch of the iPhone 4S and refreshed iPod touch and nano models. The tiny accessory simply pops onto the end of your existing Micro USB cable, and will be shipped on the same day as the iPhone 4S - October 14th. Setting the standardThe quiet launch of the accessory comes a couple of years after Apple pledged to abide by European standards and cater for Micro-USB charging. There have been several third-party solutions available for quite some time now, but this is the first time Apple has launched an adapter of its own. Although it's listed as £8 on the website, we'd hope that Apple would be kind enough to bundle one of these guys in with the iPhone 4S. |
| Apple iPod classic survives suspected cull Posted:  Apple will continue to sell the iPod classic, despite widespread fears that the company would put the iconic, click-wheel music player out to stud. Prior to Tuesday's iPhone launch event, speculation had been rife that Apple would wave goodbye to the famous device after ten glorious years. Those suspicions looked to have been confirmed when Apple announced a tweaked iPod nano and a white iPod touch and displayed them as a family alongside the iPod shuffle. The iPod classic was nowhere to be seen and, with the Apple Store down, there was no way of telling whether it would reappear when the online shop came back online after the event. The grandfather stumbles onThankfully, for fans of the 160GB device, the grandfather of the family lives on and can still be bought for £199. Rumors of the iPod classic's death were partly due to Apple's perceived distaste for the chunky hard-drive. The iPod nano and iPod touch use super-thin flash memory, but the highest capacity device is the 64GB touch, leaving fans with masses of music out in the cold. So, the iPod classic gets a stay of execution. It's like the old relative that lives in the granny flat away from the rest of the family that no-one really talks about. |
| Gary Marshall: iPhone 4S: Apple's getting Siri-ous Posted: The internet, and the stock market, is disappointed: rather than unveil an iPhone 5, Apple merely made the world's most popular smartphone much better. It seems that I'm in a minority: I much prefer the iPhone 4 design to any of the iPhone 5 mockups I've seen online, and every change Apple announced suits me just fine. In my head I know that the Siri personal assistant will be a bitter disappointment - my accent, a mix of Scottish, Irish and English, is guaranteed to flummox any voice recognition system - but my heart's already ignoring the screams of my bank manager and wondering how many days I can go without food in order to afford an upgrade. A better, faster camera addresses one of the things that annoys me about the iPhone 4. Better battery life is always handy. And more storage never goes amiss. But the interesting thing here isn't the iPhone 4S. It's the 3GS. Shiny new thing joyIt's easy to get caught up in Shiny New Thing Joy, but the 3GS is only two years old, works just fine and will run iOS 5 - and now, it's free (on contract, anyway; SIM-free it's a "how much?" £319) while the new 8GB iPhone 4 will be a pretty reasonable $99 on contract. The combination of up-front costs and hefty monthly fees exclude a lot of people, so free/cheap iPhones with low contract prices could mean significant sales in sectors where Apple isn't currently playing. Meanwhile at the top end, the iPhone 4S addresses the key criticisms of the iPhone 4 (camera, processor, storage, battery life), adds a sprinkle of iOS 5 goodies and gets the impressive-looking Siri too. So there's an iPhone for the early adopters, one for the "I'll wait until the price comes down" crowd and one for people who fancied an iPhone but couldn't justify the cost. That's a lot of market coverage. What's happening here is history repeating. Ten years ago, there was just one iPod, and rivals cackled: "Haha! Our MP3 player is smaller!", "Haha! Our MP3 player is cheaper!", "Haha! Our MP3 player has an enormous hard disk!". And over time, Apple launched iPods that were smaller, iPods that were cheaper and iPods with enormous hard disks, not to mention a whole new kind of iPod that nobody else was making, the iPod touch - now, according to Apple, the world's most popular portable games device. In 2007, there was just one iPhone. "Haha! Our phone is cheaper!" "Smaller!" "Has a better camera!"... you get the idea. Now, there are three iPhones spanning most of the market, and come next year there'll be an iPhone 5 too. Factor in the iPod touch and the iPad 2 - and next year's iPad 3 - and Apple's quarter-billion iOS device sales could just be a warm-up. |
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