iPhone 5

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iPhone 5 Apple's event has just concluded. This is what was announced. Links are up on Apple's website: Promo Video
Features Highlights Features the following: * 7.6mm thin, 18% thinner * 112 grams, 20% lighter (the iPhone 4S weighed 140 grams by comparison) * Taller screen, 1136 x 640 pixels. Increased from a 3.5 inch to a 4 inch display. Room enough to fit another row of icons and have apps and movie be "wide screen" when rotated on it's side. * The screen itself has 44% more color saturation, as it is now a true sRGB screen. The touch sensor is built directly into the screen now instead of resting behind it. This means the phone was able to be more compact. * True 4G/LTE networking on Spring, AT&T and Verizon. * Faster Wifi. Dual-band 5GHz 802.11 a/b/g/n 802.11n in both 2.4GHz and 5GHz. Wifi speeds now up to 150 Mbps * New A6 CPU. 2x faster processor. 2x faster graphics. * Matched or exceeds the battery life of the iPhone 4S depending on how you use your phone. On the low end, 3G talking, or 3G/LTE web browsing can expect 8 hours of battery. On standby 225 hours. Video & wifi browsing can expect 10 hours. Music playing can go for 40 hours. * Camera is better. Still an 8 megapixel sensor with resolution up to 3264 x 2448. Backside illumination. Hybrid IR filter. Five-element lens. f/2.4 aperture. New dynamic low light mode. * With the new CPU it takes photos 40% faster. * New photo feature: Panoramic photos. Hit a single button and rotate your phone through the air. Automatically builds a panorama for you. (Looked kickass in the demo). * Video: 1080p HD, Improved video stabilization, Face detection, Take photos while recording * You can now do FaceTime over your cellular network as well (used to be Wifi only). * Audio improved: 3 microphones. Front, back & bottom. Speakers have 5 magnet transducers (old ones had 3). Earpiece now includes noise canceling on your own audio out. * Wideband audio: Fills up more frequency spectrum to make call audio sound better. * New dock connector called "Lightning". All-digital, 8 signal design. It is reversible (able to be inserted up or down). Improved durability. * They are selling an adapter that you can buy to make your old accessories work with it until you have a chance to replace them all. * iOS 6: I won't rehash the details here as they were already covered at the June WWDC event. But the iPhone 5 ships with the new iOS version too. * iOS 6 gets released to existing iPad and iPhone users to download, for free on September 19. Now for sales options & info: * Two colors, White & Black. The black is ALL black, even the edges. The white has a brushed aluminum edge. * iPhone 5 comes in 3 sizes, 16GB, 32GB and 64GB (same as the iPhone 4S) * Three pries, $199, $299, and $399 (same as every iPhone - nothing changes year to year). * Pre-orders start September 14th (Friday) and it ships to customers on September 21st (next Friday). Customers can also line up at stores on Sept 21 as well. In addition to the iPhone announcements, Apple had a big music related announcement: New version of iTunes coming out that is deeply integrated with iCloud. Completely redesigned the interface of the application (finally!). Easier to browse your music & other content now. The new iTunes version will come out in late October. Other announcements: iPod shuffle: $49, 2GB New iPad nano: * Small iPod with a tiny color touch screen. * 5.4 mm thick. * 2.5" screen * It has Music, Video, Fitness, Podcasts, Photos and Radio as its apps. * Comes in 7 colors: Silver, Black, Purple, Green, Blue, Lime, and Red. * FM tuner integrated. * Widescreen video * Built-in pedometer for working out. * Bluetooth * Uses the new Lightning connector. * 30 hours of music playback on a single charge * $149 price, 16GB New iPod touch: * 6.1 mm thin * 88 grams * Same 4" Retina display from the iPhone 5. * Will get the A5 chip (same processor as the iPhone 4S) * 40 hours of music playback, about 8 hours of video * 5 megapixel camera, hybrid IR filter, five-element lens, f/2.4 aperture * Bluetooth 4.0 with LE, * 802.11 a/b/g/n * 802.11n 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz * Up to 150 Mbps * AirPlay mirroring * Gains support for Siri. * 5 colors * Support for a "loop". Attachable wristband for kids. * $299 32GB, $399 64GB (Colors) New earbuds, called "EarPods": * They made 3D scans of hundreds of ears to come up with a new design. * New noise canceling technology. * Should be more comfortable. * Better microphone

Bottle Cap Blues

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Check out this great video. Chris Sumers writes:

This is a short film that I was a part of for Adam Young's solo Art Show at Common House Gallery entitled: Songs of the Early Riser. Adam had a concept for a video installation. I took his concept and put it into a video. We originally had 4 different edits looping at the show in his installation, but this edit is a compilation of my favorite clips from the three day shoot. This has been the most fun project I have been a part of to date. Sitting around with your friends killing a couple of six packs of beer trying to think of different means to open your next drink is pretty fun. I encourage you to try it.

Cosmo, the Hacker ‘God’ Who Fell to Earth

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Mat Honan, at Wired's Gadget Lab:

“I called Netflix and it was so easy,” he chuckles. “They said, ‘What’s your name?’ and I said, ‘Todd [Redacted],’ gave them his e-mail, and they said, ‘Alright your password is 12345,’ and I was signed in. I saw the last four digits of his credit card. That’s when I filled out the Windows Live password-reset form, which just required the first name and last name of the credit card holder, the last four digits, and the expiration date.” After Mat fell victim to similar social engineering miscreants weeks ago, he has begun investigating how widespread this issue is. What he has found, through a goldmine source, is that this sort of thing is prevalent within the industry. This is a must read article. I applaud Mat for exposing these security issues and hope the MANY companies mentioned in this article will take action to close these vulnerabilities within their systems.

JP Morgan Estimates That New iPhone Could Boost GDP By 0.5 Percent

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Call me skeptical given that it comes from JP Morgan (I distrust any mainstream Wall St. analysts given their track record) but if this is true, that would be crazy. Tim Reid, at Reuters:

Feroli laid out his math. J.P. Morgan's analysts expect Apple to sell around 8 million iPhone 5s in the fourth quarter. They expect the sales price to be about $600. With about $200 in discounted import component costs, the government can factor in $400 per phone into its measure of gross domestic product for the fourth quarter. Feroli said the estimate of between a quarter to a half point of annualized GDP "seems fairly large, and for that reason should be treated skeptically." But, he added, "we think the recent evidence is consistent with this projection." Again, that's crazy - but cool if true.

NBC News' Fear-mongering Regarding Leaked Apple Device UDIDs

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I always enjoy when non-tech reporters write about tech stories and get just enough of the details wrong to make it seem to the average user that the story is true while the story actually perpetuates falsehoods. Keyy Sanders and Bob Sullivan, at NBC News:

The UDID -- which stands for Unique Device Identifier -- is present on Apple iPads, iPods and iPhones, and is similar to a serial number. During the past year, researchers have found that many app developers have used the UDID to help keep track of their users, storing the data in various databases and often associating it with other personal information. When matched with other information, the UDID can be used to track users' app usage, social media usage or location. It could also be used to "push" potentially dangerous applications onto users' Apple gadgets. The way this paragraph is written, it would lead the average reader to believe that any of the leaked 12 million UDIDs could be used to push malware onto the respective iOS devices they belong to. This is a blatant lie. In order for something like this to happen, the culprit would have to register 120,000 Apple Developer accounts, paying $99 each for them which would cost a total of $11,880,000. Then someone would have to manually enter each UDID into Apple's Developer portal. Then and only then would someone have to make some sort of iOS app (that Apple could kill easily by deactivating the offending developer account) and add that app to each of the 120,000 developer accounts they've made in order to be able to generate a link or share a file that users would have to drag into their iTunes or use a service like Testflight to receive over the air (most if not all Testflight users are developers themselves.) As you can see, this is a near-impossible scenario. Yet if you read the quoted paragraph, NBC would like the reader to believe that they are possibly in grave danger of having malware "pushed" to their devices. ::eyeroll:: The question is - did these two reporters not understand how this works or did they intentionally attempt to mislead their readers to make the story juicier?

What Bill Clinton Wrote vs. What Bill Clinton Said

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Dashiell Bennett, at The Atlantic Wire:

If you were following any journalists on Twitter last night, one of the most remarked upon aspects of Bill Clinton's nomination speech was how liberally he deviated from the prepared text. What was handed out to the media was four pages of single-spaced, small font text, but — as an exasperated TelePrompTer operator found out —that was really just a guideline to what Clinton actually wanted to say during his 49-minute address. We decided to compare the two versions to see how one of the great speechmakers of his era goes about his business. You really have to take a look at their transcript which clearly shows which was removed, added or left the same from the text vs what he said. Amazing speaker.