The new iPhone announcement is certainly an exciting industry events. As usual, Apple didn’t allow any live video streaming, so if you want to appreciate the whole demo on stage in its original glamor, please, join in.
I’ve certainly seen better quality clips from past year keynotes, but perhaps it’s just my connection to blame. See for yourselves.
Today’s announcement was one of the most hotly anticipated industry events. I waited and waited, ready to be wowed. But now that it’s over, I have bad taste in my mouth (and it’s not the Chinese I had for dinner).
These few past months I followed the iPhone leaks as closely as possible and during all this time I just hoped there will be more to the new iPhone than they suggested. Well, unfortunately, that was it. Even Samsung made a better job of keeping their Galaxy S III under wraps before it was ready for announcement.
The upgrades are easy to spot. The new iPhone is impressively slim and light and it comes with Apple’s next gen A6 processor, which is up to 2 times faster. The iPhone 5 has a single radio chip supplying GSM, HSDPA, CDMA and LTE communication while going easy on the battery. At 4 inches, the screen is certainly bigger and has a more movie-friendly aspect ratio. I’m not going to get into all the iOS6 specific features since those are coming to the iPhone 4S anyway.
On the negative side, the iPhone 5 screen is only 4 inches big, and not only this, but only height was added. The camera is mostly the same as on the 4S, and LTE connectivity in Europe is still as scarce as water in the Sahara to be really worth it. Finally, the new sleeker connectivity jack renders all previous docking accessories obsolete.
Honestly, I’m already tired of hearing Apple’s stale remarks how the new iPhone or the new iPod was Apple’s best thing so far. What I wanted to see today on stage was pure innovation, something that would again open new doors and make other manufacturers lose their breath in trying to catch up.
Instead, what I got was a predictable phone with unexciting specs; a phone that I would hardly call cutting edge, top-of-the-line, and all those labels that usually go hand in hand with Apple’s latest. After all, the iPhone has always been the most expensive SIM-free smartphone on the market.
Sure, people will probably continue to buy it in millions, since once it’s out, it would be the most sensible buy, if you are after an iPhone. But I still have that bad taste in my mouth. The iPhone 5 failed to meet my expectations. I didn’t have a feature wishlist, except perhaps a seriously bigger screen. But most of all, I expected to be surprised. Well, none of these two things happened. And I wonder, who’s to blame? Is it me, or is it Apple that’s changing into a conservative phone maker, who likes to play it safe like Nokia used to before it became clear it’s not getting them anywhere.
I’m more than sure that somebody in South Korea is having a big party right now. More than anything, it feels like this year’s iPhone is Apple skipping a turn a second year in a row all the while Android and Windows Phone have been seriously upping their game moves.
Celebrated novelist Philip Roth has a problem: Even though he knows the true origins of his book "The Human Stain," Wikipedia refuses to correct its version of events on his say-so alone.
As almost everyone on the Internet is no doubt already aware, Wikipedia is an impressive tool and treasure trove of information, put together in such a way that makes crowdsourcing an encyclopedia seem like not such a bad idea after all. After all, who can fault the idea of requiring secondary sources to back up every important fact inserted into a specific entry? Well, Philip Roth, as it turns out; the award-winning author has found out that he can’t correct a misconception about one of his novels due to the way Wikipedia works, and has taken to the Internet to explain his case.
Roth posted an open letter to Wikipedia on the New Yorker’s website after reading the Wiki entry about his novel The Human Strain, and finding it to be incorrect. Unfortunately, because of the need for multiple sources when it comes to correcting information on a particular entry – especially when said information has itself been cited by multiple sources – he found that it wasn’t as easy as contacting the site, saying “Actually, that’s my book, so I am kind of the last word on this kind of thing” and then watching as the entry gets corrected.
“Yet when, through an official interlocutor, I recently petitioned Wikipedia to delete [the incorrect assertion] along with two others,” Roth explains in the letter, “my interlocutor was told by the ‘English Wikipedia Administrator’—in a letter dated August 25th and addressed to my interlocutor—that I, Roth, was not a credible source: ‘I understand your point that the author is the greatest authority on their own work,’ writes the Wikipedia Administrator—’but we require secondary sources.’”
The problematic statement in the Wikipedia entry revolves around the origins of The Human Strain. According to Wikipedia, the book was “allegedly inspired by the life of the writer Anatole Broyard,” something that Roth denies, pointing out instead that the novel “inspired, rather, by an unhappy event in the life of my late friend Melvin Tumin, professor of sociology at Princeton for some thirty years.” Going on to point out the similarities between Tumin and Coleman Silk, the novel’s protagonist, Roth continues his letter by pointing out the many ways in which Silk could not have been inspired by Broyard. “To be inspired to write an entire book about a man’s life,” Roth explains, “you must have considerable interest in the man’s life, and, to put it candidly, though I particularly admired the story ‘What the Cystoscope Said’ when it appeared in 1954, and I told the author as much, over the years I otherwise had no particular interest in Anatole Broyard.”
At time of writing, the Wikipedia entry for The Human Stain still maintains that Broyard was the inspiration for the book, although it notes that “Roth has repeatedly said these opinions are false,” and even cites the New Yorker open letter as proof of this. Clearly, he needs to write a second open letter, and claim that one as his secondary source.
An iPad 1 and an iPad 2.
It looks like the long-rumored iPad Mini will arrive just in time for the holidays. Apple will hold two events this fall: one for the iPhone 5 in September and then another one for the iPad Mini in October, AllThingsD first reported over the weekend. ABC News’ own sources have corroborated the widely cited report of Apple’s plans to hold two events.
While Apple hasn’t yet confirmed, the company is expected to hold a launch event for the next iPhone, or iPhone 5, Sept. 12 in California; the phone is expected to start shipping on Sept. 21. The launch date for the smaller iPad would come close to a month later in October.
According to previous reports, the smaller iPad is expected to have a 7.85-inch display, be less expensive than the current iPad, and have a smaller charging port. Although Steve Jobs had expressed that the smaller tablet category was “dead on arrival,” an internal Apple email revealed in the Apple v. Samsung trial revealed the Jobs had warmed up to the idea before his passing.
“I believe there will be a 7-inch market and we should do one,” Eddy Cue, Apple senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, wrote in an email to Apple CEO Tim Cook and other senior Apple executives on Jan. 24, 2011.
“I expressed this to Steve several times since Thanksgiving and he seemed very receptive the last time. I found email, books, Facebook, and video very compelling on a 7-inch. Web browsing is definitely the weakest point, but still usable,” Cue said in the same email.
The competition in the 7-inch tablet market has heated up significantly in the last year. Amazon’s and Barnes & Noble’s respective 7-inch tablets have been some of the more popular Android tablets around and in June Google released the 7-inch, $200 Nexus 7 tablet. Amazon is expected to release a new version of its Kindle Fire tablet during the first week of September at an event in Los Angeles.
Apple didn’t immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
