The Apple Professor
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Posts by The Apple Professor
Zite Releases iPad Update – Codename “Sybil”
I love Zite. Let me say this again, I love Zite! I like many others was a little worried when CNN purchased Zite. It appears our fears were unwarranted. Recently a new version of Zite was released that brings a much needed feature to the iPad – user profiles. While these user profiles will only work in Zite, it still means that those families that share an iPad to read the news, no longer have to share the same feeds. They call this update “Sybil.”
Zite’s multiple personalities allows each user to have a different reading experience. If mom enjoys reading arts and entertainment, dad enjoys reading sports and little Johnny is really only interested in all things Apple; Sybil has your covered! Each person can create a user profile and then Zite will remember that individual’s preferences and reading choices.
Don’t know what Zite is? Have you been living under a rock? Zite is a personal news aggregator that learns what you like to read and show you more stories around those topics. Not only that, if you have a preference in what sources that news comes from you have control to see more or less from that content provider. With this release you can even completely nix a provider from your reading experience. (more…)
10 Year Old Girl’s Apple Dream Comes True
We all have dreams. As children they start small, typically only costing imagination. As we get older those dreams come with a higher price of sacrifice, compromise and often money. The rewards of seeing our dream, no matter how simple or silly, come true makes that which we give up seem less painful.
A 10-year-old girl in Utah taught a store full of Apple Store employees that lesson and in particular the store manager. So much so that the manager broke the rules just for her. In turn they both taught all of us a lesson or two.
According to the Girl’s dad, his story linked below, she had saved her nickles and dimes for nine months so that she could buy her very own iPod Touch. No small feat for a 10-year-old. (more…)
Thoughts On iCloud
Tonight I got into a rather heated debate with several of my buddies on a podcast we recorded (TechFan). The debate centered on iCloud and it’s functionality, or more to the point lack of functionality or working functionality. Mark Greentree, Dennis Freitas, Jeffrey Bradbury basically took the point of view that Apple just didn’t deliver on the promise of iCloud. My contention was that iCloud is a work in progress and what it does, it does well. What it doesn’t do, it will probably do in the next 6 to 12 months.
I can see why they were and are frustrated. The début of iCloud was met with huge demand. So much demand that Apple obviously couldn’t keep up. The demand to switch to iCloud also put more pressure on Apple servers as the move required no less than 3 major downloads: iTunes 10.5, Mac OS 10.7.2 & iOS 5. Each iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch needed its own independent download of iOS too. The smallest of the downloads was iTunes, but both 10.7.2 and iOS 5 were relatively large; and due to demand took many hours to download.
Once a user had the software download, they had to install the software and then run the update on their iOS device; which required checking into Apple’s over burdened servers. Ouch, that took some time. Once that was done, there was a conversion from MobileMe to iCloud that had to take place; again more pressure on Apple’s servers. For many the process took hours. I was spared this pain as I had a developer account and my wife opted to wait to do her upgrade until later in the weekend. So maybe that spared me the pain and kept me from being as jaded about the rest of the experience. (more…)
10/12/11 iTunes Terms & Conditions
If you are ready to read a novel, here are the latest “T’s” and “C’s” from Apple for iTunes. Good news, first few paragraphs are the summary. Bad news, this is one long document!
Terms and Conditions and Apple Privacy Policy
The changes we have made to the terms and conditions include the following:
• Update of iTunes terms and conditions and/or certain usage rules to reflect changes to available content types;
• Amendment of the App Store terms and conditions to account for the availability of free in-app subscriptions, and to explain where the subscriptions appear on devices after download;
• New terms have been added that govern your use of iTunes Match, whereby you may pay a subscription fee to access certain content remotely, subject to existing association rules and usage rules, and explain that such content may be accessed on certain devices that are not subject to existing association rules, with limitations; and
• New terms have been added that explain that use of iTunes Match requires collection of certain information from your iTunes library which shall be associated with your Account.
(more…)
iPhone 4S Reviews
On Friday the iPhone 4S goes on sale. Tomorrow, Wednesday, iOS 5 becomes available to the general public as a free upgrade for iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad & iPad 2 owners. Basically it’s a big week for users of Apple handheld mobile products. (Btw, if you haven’t already pre-orderd yours, you have at least a 2 week wait.)
Today it seems the embargo on talking about the iPhone 4S and iOS 5 was lifted. Many of the big technology columnists have already posted their iPhone 4S reviews. I’ve read them all and so far they are extremely positive. Especially when it comes to Siri.
The other thing many of them said was that if you own an iPhone 4, there isn’t a need to “rush” and buy the upgrade. iOS 5 will bring most of the new features; but not Siri. The other big new feature of the iPhone 4S is the camera. The still camera can shoot at 8 megapixles with a pretty wide open F-Stop. The video camera can shoot 1080p video. The samples I’ve seen so far are pretty amazing for a phone.
Take a look at the reviews below. I will add more reviews as they are published. I’ve also included two videos. One from Jason Snell about Siri, and another video from MG Siegler showing 1080p video.
- Walt Mossberg - AllThingsD
- MS Siegler - Techcrunch
- David Pogue - New York Times
- Brian Chen - Wired Magazine
- Jason Snell - Macworld Magazine
Here is the video from Macworld about Siri:
Here is the video from MG Siegler showing 1080p video (To see 1080p, remember to change video quality):
