Andy Gapin

Just like I said I probably would, I went ahead and bought an iPhone 4S on day one. However, it did cost me quite a bit more than the $100 that I figured it would cost since I decided to go all out and get the 64GB model. That much storage can’t even come laughably close to storing all of my music, but it can store enough that I can ditch the iPod and stream the what doesn’t fit via AudioGalaxy. The music I listen to regularly will fit and everything else will stay easily accessible. It’ll be good enough and to be able to go from three gadgets to one was a pretty good proposition for me.

I’m not going to go into a full review of the iPhone 4S since I did a full iPhone 4 review last year and this is mostly a spec bump, but after a few days with the device, I thought I’d post my thoughts.

The phone still looks the same (though I went with white this time around), but that doesn’t change the fact that there is still nothing else on the market that can touch it as far as design and build quality goes. That’s actually kind of crazy when you think about it considering that this design has been in the wild for 16 months. That being said, the phone still has two slabs of glass making up most of the surface so it remains as breakable as ever.

While there was a lot of disappointment in the iPhone 4S’s announcement, after using this thing for a few days, it seems that much of that disappointment is missing the point. The iPhone 4S is mostly just a spec bump, but its bump is just enough to finally put it over the top. Where the iPhone 4 was very good, the iPhone 4S is great.

The iPhone 4S finally reaches a point where the device and the software melt away and you’re just left with content and things you want to do. Nothing stands in your way now.

Most of the time, the added speed of the A5 processor isn’t a night and day difference, but sometimes it is. Apps open significantly faster and while the iPhone 4 was snappy and definitely no slouch, the iPhone 4S makes moving around in apps a much improved experience. There is no lag, even in places where I could always count on my iPhone 4 to hang up for a second or so. Everything is much smoother and snappier in a tangible way.

The data speeds are supposed to be faster on the iPhone 4S (for AT&T at least), but in a few rounds of Speed Test, there was no change. However, in practice, data seems to come down insanely faster. Much of it is probably due to the A5 processing things faster, but websites load tons faster (and Javascript executes much quicker). Twitter pulls the latest tweets down almost instantly. Facebook too. Every app, really. The content you’re trying to get to is put up on the screen almost as fast as you ask for it. Considering that LTE is not on board, this is impressive. Impressive enough that not having LTE (which any sane person shouldn’t have expected from Apple this year anyway) doesn’t feel like a problem right now.

All of this added speed means iOS now keeps up with you. You’re no longer waiting for it, it’s waiting for you. Simply put, where iPhone 4 was close, but the iPhone 4S is there.

The iPhone 4 camera was still the best camera you could get on a phone up until just recently. Hell, some probably still consider it to be the best. But it was just barely not enough to justify ditching a point-and-shoot altogether. More than half the time, yes, it was enough, but I always kept my point-and-shoot near the door. The iPhone 4S changes that. It is sharper, has better dynamic range, better color, more pixels, and significantly better low-light performance. My DSLR won’t see any decrease in usage, but my point-and-shoot is going in the desk drawer upstairs and may never come out again. The photos and videos that iPhone 4S can take are stunning. Unless you need a superzoom, you won’t need a point-and-shoot while you have an iPhone 4S in your pocket.

I’ve posted some very quick sample shots at the bottom of the post. These were taken quickly without any attention paid to composition, but they should give you an idea of what the camera is capable of. None of them have been processed in any way except to reduce their size.

Siri has been the most talked about feature of the iPhone 4S since it was announced and for good reason. Before using it or seeing a demo, it’s easy to dismiss it as another voice control feature that you’ll never use. I almost did myself. But when you actually use this, you realize it’s so much more. This is the start of the future. This is the point where we’ll look back and pinpoint as the beginning of being able to truly have conversations with your technology and have it do things for you.

If you’ve been on the internet at all since Friday, you’ve probably already seen much of the fun people have been having with Siri. I’ve had a lot of fun testing her out and seeing how she’ll respond to things. She’s fun, but I’m not going to add another post on the internet about how if you keep bugging her about the meaning of life, she’ll say “42, are you happy now?” She’s full of countless snark and provides a lot of fun. She has an attitude and that’s important. She responds almost like a person would and that makes it feel real. It makes it feel like she’s a real person and that she can truly understand you. It’s unlike anything else you’ve ever used because it’s unlike anything else that has ever existed. This is the real thing.

That attitude is coupled with the fact that she can hold a conversation. She is smart enough to understand what you say even if you say it differently. She gets context. I can say “remind me to email John Smith about the concert this weekend when I get home” and she will create a reminder that will go off as soon as I get to my house. The reminder will say “Email John Smith about the concert this weekend” because she understands that that was what I wanted the reminder to say. I can say “tell my wife that I’ll be late” and she’ll text my wife telling her that I’m going to be late. “Take me to the mall” gets me the same thing as if I say “I need directions to the mall.” She just gets it.

You can tell her to do things the way you would tell a real person. And that’s why she works. That’s why Siri will actually get used. Because she can understand you so well, she can actually do things faster than you can on your own. It’s not a gimmick. You probably won’t use her too much in public, but thanks to the ability to have her automatically kick on when you put your phone up to your ear, you might actually use her while walking down the street or in the store. It’ll look just like you’re having a conversation with someone on the phone.

I’ve noticed that because she has to send everything to Apple’s servers, sometimes she takes a few seconds to respond, but it’s generally not bad. Everything going to Apple’s servers is a good thing though. Apple says she’ll learn from you and from the user base as a whole. With Apple knowing how people are using it, they can adapt it even more to the real world. This is the beginning, but she will get so much better. It won’t be long before you can say “how are the Eagles doing” and she’ll give you the score of the game.

Is Siri enough to justify buying an iPhone 4S if you already have an iPhone 4? I don’t know, that’s tough, maybe not. But if you’re on the fence already, she should push you over.

That about covers the big changes from that the iPhone 4S brings to the table. There are smaller ones like a better antenna design which seems to work as advertised, but I never had much of a problem with my iPhone 4 in most places. There’s also a new vibration motor which sounds like a silly thing to mention, but you can feel (and hear) the difference. This one is smoother and actually feels a little more luxurious. It’s an added thing that helps to make the device feel high-end.

The iPhone 4S isn’t perfect for what it is though. The battery life is noticeably worse than my iPhone 4. It’s not terrible, I can still get close to two days from a charge, but it is less. However, the battery life feels similar to what I was getting from my iPhone 4 after upgrading to iOS 5, so that may be part of it. I have the notifications set to display my email on the lockscreen so every email I receive turns on the display for a few seconds. That probably accounts for a large chunk of it. It also seems like the battery depletes faster when using Siri. Either way, the battery life is still good enough that it won’t be a problem. That’s the major complaint though, I still have some issues with iOS and I’m hoping that iOS 6 will fix much of them, but we’ll see. For now, the iPhone 4S doesn’t fix them, but Siri does actually make a few of them easier to live with. Any other hardware complaints would simply be highlighting choices that Apple made (e.g. not doing a larger screen), not design flaws.

As you’ll hear everywhere else, if you have an iPhone 3G or 3GS, upgrade now. Just do it. If you have an iPhone 4, it’s tough, but this device is good enough to reduce three gadgets you may already use down to one and the speed will save you a lot of time throughout the day. If those things mean something to you, upgrade. If not, hold out another year. If you aren’t currently an iPhone user and are thinking about becoming one, this is the phone to get. And if you don’t have a smartphone at all yet and are looking to get one, I’d recommend this over anything else. I’m not going to say iOS is better than Android, I think they are both great in their own ways, but if you don’t already have a smartphone at this point, you’re likely to fall into the camp of people who will enjoy iOS’s way of doing things more.

For me personally, I’m finding the iPhone 4S to be a worthy upgrade. I’m happy with my decision so far.

Yes, there’s a good chance that I’ll get an iPhone 4s. And I don’t mean that I’ll probably buy it months down the line, I’ll pre-order it on Friday to get it at launch. The short answer as to why I’ll do this is because I’m a sucker, but there’s a bit of a longer answer if you care to read on.

Disappointment

I guess the first thing to clear up here is why I, like so many other tech nerds, are so disappointed with yesterday’s Apple keynote. There’s a lot that goes into it and on the surface you can say that it was because Apple took four months longer than usual to refresh the iPhone or that it looks exactly the same as the iPhone 4. You’d be right to a certain degree. We’d been expecting a true iPhone 5 all year, one that was radically redesigned and with a larger display. If you’re not interested in tech in any way, this probably doesn’t matter to you, but some of us like shiny new toys. Some of us are basically children.

For me personally, the one thing I really cared about getting was a bigger screen, say 4″. I didn’t care that much if the device looked the same, but over on the left here, you’ll see the design that I was really pulling for. It’s a beautiful design and does away with the excess bezel at the top (which is the only part of the iPhone 4 design I’m not crazy about). Most importantly, it’s got a huge screen that takes up most of the front. It’s slick and a piece of art, just like the iPhone 4 was.

I didn’t care about real 4G (read: LTE) because I didn’t expect it in a million years. Apple wouldn’t put LTE into an iPhone with the current chipsets available and completely kill the battery life (or make the device thicker). That’s fine, I’m an AT&T customer and they barely have an LTE network right now. I wouldn’t even be able to use an LTE iPhone right now. No disappointment here for me.

Finally, throw in NFC and you’ve got everything we thought we might get in an iPhone 5 this year. NFC (mobile payments via your cellphone) would be really nice, but like LTE, the infrastructure to use it isn’t really in place yet so this isn’t a huge surprise either. Hopefully when Apple finally does do NFC, I’d bet on this for next year, they piggyback off what’s currently being deployed. But since we didn’t get it, that’s not important now.

Okay, so a larger display, a new physical design, NFC, and LTE. That’s all that we didn’t get on the hardware side. LTE wasn’t even expected, so we can cut that down to just the first three. That doesn’t really sound like a lot and, of the three, I really cared most about that display, I’d like something bigger for reading and typing on. Still, since we all like shiny new things, a physical redesign would have gone a long way all on its own…for everyone, not just me.

All of that is just the surface of why we’re disappointed though, the real disappointment isn’t really the absence of these three (or four) features.  The real disappointment is…

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Apple is one of the biggest names in tech and they’re a leader in the industry. Everyone looks to Apple to see what they’re going to do, the proof is right there in the amount of coverage that they get on tech (and even non-tech) sites. It’s pretty insane how much attention Apple gets just for rumors, let alone actual products. We look to Apple to constantly innovate, wow, and set the bar higher. Apple leapfrogs the competition and sits back and lets everyone catch up until they’ve inched just past them, then they leapfrog again. You can debate this anyway you want, but the iPhone itself is a great example of this. Look at smartphones before the iPhone 2G and look at them now. Every smartphone now is more like the iPhone than it is like any smartphone before the iPhone, at least in terms of how we use and interact with it. You may think Android does it better, and that’s fine, Android is great, but Android wouldn’t be what or where it is today without the iPhone.

So we expect a lot from Apple, usually too much, but they deliver to some level and make the products to beat. If you’re going to make the products to beat, you’ve got to be the best or be damn near close to the top. To date, Apple has done a great job with that.

But, and here’s where the letdown is, the Android competition right now is fierce. The iPhone 4 managed to stay competitive because it provides an amazing user experience and a solid ecosystem, but with the exception of the display, it’s out-specced in almost every way by Android phones that have already been on the market for months. We expected Apple to leapfrog and say “here’s where the bar is now, beat this.” They didn’t. They caught up and stopped. This isn’t like Apple on the mobile front. We had expectations based on the way Apple typically behaves and they didn’t follow through on that. We need to come to terms with that.

The iPhone 4S is a good phone, but it competes with what’s already on the market and Apple has long product cycles. Even assuming that Apple goes back to a 12-month cycle for the iPhone (or even drops the iPhone 5 in June 2012), most Android handset makers will put out two generations of products in that time and that’s on top of the fact that they each make many different models.

Apple doesn’t play the spec war game and only talks about specs when they enhance the user experience. They also only add features when they think they’ve done the right and better than everyone else. Normally, that works fine for them, but in the face of what Android has coming, they should be doing a little more this time around. Even if Android still won’t be able to match the overall user experience with its upcoming Ice Cream Sandwich build of Android, Apple’s “magic” is starting to stretch very thin.

Next week, it is likely that the Nexus Prime (or something with a similar name by Samsung) will be announced. This phone will be the one that sets the bar higher. The same bar that Apple just yesterday reached. And they’ll not just set it higher, they’ll set it much higher. Apple will be left with nothing to match it until at least 2Q 2012, most likely Q3. That’s a long time in the fast-moving smartphone game.

Essentially, the disappointment is that Apple didn’t announce next year’s specs yesterday, they simply delivered this year’s. They chose not to lead the pack this time around.

We can all speculate about why this is, but my true feelings are that Apple had an iPhone 5 in the works, one that was what we wanted (minus LTE). But they went too aggressive and couldn’t get it up to their standards. Rather than releasing a product they weren’t fully happy with, they did a simple update to the iPhone 4 and called it a cycle. I think this is why there was an extra four months before a refresh. Apple was either trying to work it out or they needed time to switch gears to the iPhone 4S. And with all of the software changes and iCloud, they embraced the extra time and decided to make the software the star. The software gave them an out and a way to put spin on this, even if we may see right through it.

Even though our expectations were lowered leading up to the event as more information leaked and there was no sign of an iPhone 5, many of us had a glimmer of hope that Apple would pull out a surprise. That would be very Apple-like. In the end, we got what we knew was coming, but nothing more. That disappointed us like a child Christmas morning when they don’t get that impossible-to-get, must-have toy of the year even after his parents told them not to expect it.

What makes this decision perfectly acceptable to Apple is that they’re still going to sell a ton of these things. The iPhone 4 has been on the market for 15 months and is still the number one selling smartphone. Apple is cleaning up, maybe not in mobile OS market share, but in device market share (no one sells more smartphones than Apple). Apple knows this. And Apple knows that this isn’t going to stop. The kind of people that write blog posts and articles like this aren’t the people Apple cares about for the iPhone. The people they care about are the millions who will actually buy the iPhone 4S. In that regard, the iPhone 4S will be massive success.

Tim Cook stepped out on the stage yesterday with ability to essentially say, “you people keep buying these things and we know you won’t stop even if we let up for a cycle, so we’re going to just give you this iPhone 4S and collect your money.” Those of us that are criticizing Apple for not releasing an iPhone 5 yesterday are wrong and completely missing the point. The iPhone 4S will sell even more than the iPhone 4. As insane as it is, it’s true.

Why I’ll still buy

Despite being this year’s technology and not next year’s, I’m still likely to rush out and buy the iPhone 4S. Yes, I’m a sucker. And yes, next year, I’ll upgrade again. Since I got the iPhone 3G, I’ve upgraded each year. I’m just a gadget nerd like that. I like new toys…even if they look the same.

Also, I’ll state right now that I’m eating the words I posted on Google+ two days ago when I said I wouldn’t upgrade without a larger screen.

I’ve looked online and I can sell my iPhone 4 for around $250 and, if I get the 32GB model, the cost of the iPhone 4S should be $350 according to what AT&T says. That’s $100 out of pocket and I’m stock with AT&T for another 2 years. $100 is practically nothing (in this context) and I’m not leaving AT&T any time soon anyway — not because I love them, but because I’m grandfathered into an unlimited data plan.

So for $100, yeah, I’ll upgrade. For me, the camera improvements alone are worth it. I take a lot of photos, if you haven’t noticed. Starting with my iPhone 4, I’ve stopped carrying my point-and-shoot as often as I used to. I either have my DSLR with me or I use my phone. But the iPhone 4 isn’t a complete point-and-shoot replacement. It’s close and its low-light capabilities are very good for a phone, even by this year’s standards, but it’s not quite enough. The camera improvements (still and video) in the iPhone 4S will be enough to put it over the top to make it enough. My point-and-shoot will go in a drawer and never come out again.

The camera leads into my next point, I screwed up by getting a 16GB iPhone 4. I felt that way from day one. I wish I had more space for photos/video and music. I have an iPod Classic that I keep a large chunk of my music on (less than a third actually fits), but I’m getting sick of carrying that around and having to update that. With iTunes Match and AudioGalaxy, I can ditch the iPod Classic and just stream/download what I need. But since streaming can suck a lot of the time and downloading is annoying, I’ll still find the desire to keep much of the “essentials” on me at all times. A 64GB or 32GB iPhone will provide enough space that I can keep enough of my favorite music on there at all times so I can ditch the iPod Classic. And, I’ll have space to keep more photos and videos. As it is now, I have to delete most videos as soon as I dump them to my computer. On more than one occasion, I’ve had my phone stop recording a video mid-way through because it ran out of space.

In a way, I’m going to be paying for my mistake from last year on this front and I could continue to live with 16Gb with the help of the new iCloud features, but being given an opportunity to upgrade to more space is worth considering. Again, for $100, why not?

The iPhone 4 is no slouch in terms of speed and I don’t play any graphically intense games, but the boost from the A5 processor will be a nice perk to come along with that camera. I wouldn’t upgrade for this alone, but it’ll be nice. We don’t know if the phone has been upgraded to 1GB of memory or not, but with 1080p video recording and iMovie, I’d imagine that it has been. We’ll find out on this one. Again, this would be a nice perk, but I never felt limited by 512MB of RAM in my iPhone 4.

Siri is cool and I might even use it based on the hands on reports from yesterday. It appears to be very good. It won’t be a lot, I still think this kind of thing is gimmicky, but if it’s really that good, I could see using it to pull up directions while driving or for checking the weather while I’m getting ready in the morning. Those kinds of simple things. I definitely can’t see using it in public. We’ll see about this one, but again, not nearly enough on its own.

I’m not putting much weight in the 14.4Mbps data speeds, from what I’ve read, I probably won’t see them much on AT&T (Sprint and Verizon won’t see them at all). But if I see them even a third of the time, that will be yet another perk that I’ll gladly take.

As I’ve said many times, I’m a gadget nerd and I like new toys. Even though the iPhone 4S is mostly just an iPhone 4, I can get it in white and it’ll at least feel like a different gadget to me. Somewhat. Despite being little more than a bunch of minor upgrades to the same thing I already have, the iPhone 4S actually pushes itself up just enough to fully replace two gadgets that I have long since grown tired of carrying around. The added convenience and minor simplification of my life (I’ll come right out and say it’s simplifying first world problems that I have created for myself) is compelling to me. Plus, I’ll get a fresh battery.

I keep saying it, but if I can upgrade for a total cost of $100 (for 32GB), it’s not a bad deal. For simplification, a slightly snappier user experience, and a bunch of perks, it’s worth it…for $100. If I were to drop $400 or $500 out of pocket just for this upgrade, hell no.

PS: I’m not a fanboy

This isn’t a fanboy thing. Really, it isn’t. I’m a big Apple fan, but I’m not a fanboy. I buy Apple products and I love them because I think they’re the best products out there right now. When someone else starts doing better, including design, user experience, and build quality (the three aspects that no one else can yet match all at the same time), I’ll buy their product. For a long time, I wouldn’t touch an Apple product, but that changed when Apple started providing better answers to what I wanted than anyone else could. They won’t be the best answer forever though and when they’re not, I’m going to fair-weather friend the hell out of them and jump ship.

So I got myself an iPad 2, a nice fully loaded 64GB black one with 3G thanks to my fiancée and I having hit our wedding savings goal six months early. We’ve been wanting to get one to share for a long time now, but I was insistent on waiting for the second generation. After playing with it for a couple of days, I think I’m ready to type up a review…and I promise I’ve got some complaints down there.

Getting One
Since Apple didn’t do a preorder, the only way to get one before the weekend was to wait in line…and that’s what we did. Throughout the course of the day on Friday, I did my best to try to monitor the lines at Apple Stores around the country via Twitter, but I really couldn’t get a good read on the local situation. Some stores seemed to have crazy lines while others had nothing.

When it was finally time to head over to the store at 4pm, we really had no idea what to expect. We went to the store in the Bridgewater, NJ mall and when we walked in and started to head down to the first floor, we immediately saw an intense line. Hundreds deep. No one knew how many iPads were going to be in stock when 5PM finally rolled around and they opened up the doors so I was petty worried that we weren’t going to get one. I decided to increase our odds and ran across the street to Best Buy while the fiancée stayed in line at the Apple Store. The Best Buy line was much shorter, I was somewhere in the 60-70 range when I got there. I claimed my spot in line and waited. It had been announced that Best Buy would start handing out tickets at 4:30, but they didn’t. This process didn’t start until 5. Until then, the line continued to get longer as other people decided to come across from the mall and see what Best Buy could do for them.

When Best Buy finally started handing out tickets, they quickly ran out of the exact model that I wanted, a fully loaded model in black, 64GB WIFI+3G for AT&T (a little faster data than Verizon and useable overseas with a prepaid SIM card from a local carrier). This was apparently one of the most popular models. After this news broke, a few people left, but I decided to stay and see what they still had when the all-mighty ticket-giving guy got down to me.

Meanwhile over at the mall, my fiancée was being told by Apple employees that it was unlikely she would be able to get one considering where she was in line. Things were looking pretty unsure.

Eventually, Mr Ticket-Giver finally got down to me and still had a sizable stack of tickets left. I was pretty psyched that I’d be able to get one, but I knew I’d be getting my second choice. No worries, I’d just get what I could get and see how the fiancée made out. I actually could have gotten the model I wanted in white instead of black, but I’m just not feeling the white. I decided to go with the 64GB black Verizon model. I got my ticket and could barely have been happier (an AT&T model would have been the only way). I texted the fiancée and let her know we got one, but to still stay in line until I got over there to pick her up. Anyway, I was a bit surprised at how many tickets they still had, it turned out that the last person in line (maybe 130ish?)  got the very last ticket. Worked out pretty well.

Once I had my Best Buy ticket, I still had to stay in the line outside as they only let five people in at a time to actually buy their iPads. It wasn’t too much longer at this point though and once I got my our iPad, I hopped in the car and drove across the street.

I met my fiancée in line over at the Apple Store. She had about five more people ahead of her (remember, she was somewhere around 200-300 in line and I was only 60-70 at Best Buy with about a fifteen minute window from when I got mine in hand to when I got over to her). Once we got up to the front, we were informed that they too were sold out of the AT&T model. So instead, we picked up a 16GB white WIFI only model for my buddy (we had a reciprocal deal worked out for whoever was able to get their hands on them first).

When we left the Apple Store, there were still a couple hundred people waiting. I have no idea if everyone got an iPad or not.

First Impressions
Alright, so with what went into actually getting one into my hands out of the way, let’s talk about the iPad itself.

This thing is insanely thin. You really can’t get a sense for how thin it is until you hold it yourself. It’s thinner than my iPhone and even with the Smart Cover on, is just a hair thicker. It’s like holding a (heavy) clipboard. And this thinness actually makes a difference. Even though the device is a bit heavy (despite being slightly lighter than its predecessor), the thinness almost makes the hardware disappear while you’re using it. You forget you’re using a device and you just sink right into what you’re doing. It’s truly amazing and I realize what it sounds like to say something like that, but it really is true, this is unlike any other computing experience.

Hardware
The iPad 2 has a great feel to it. The workmanship and  design easily best any other tablet on the market right now, including both the original iPad and the new Motorola Xoom. The aluminum backing makes the device feel super sturdy and from an aesthetic standpoint, the device just looks great. The only real knock here is that the iPad is still a little heavy (though not when compared to competing tablets of the same screen size), at first you’re not quite sure the best way to hold it to keep your arm from getting tired, but you figure it out pretty quickly. The weight lets you know this isn’t a toy, this is a real computing device.

The screen is very good, but still not a Retina Display. The viewing angles on this thing really couldn’t get much better, the colors never wash out. It’s plenty bright as well. That being said, if you’ve used an iPhone 4, you will notice the difference in the pixel density. The display isn’t quite as crisp, however, this difference isn’t anything like when I pick up my fiancée’s iPhone 3GS. The iPad is crisper. Now, to be fair about this point, that’s when holding the devices at the same distance. You don’t hold an iPad as close to your eyes as you do a phone. Under actual use, the pixel density is a complete non-issue. You only notice it in comparison, not on its own.

Battery life is outstanding. The device comes charged to something like 75-80%. Other than while it was plugged into a computer to sync stuff a few times, we didn’t plug it in to charge until today and it has been in use almost constantly since we got it out of the box. We can’t put it down. Battery life will never been something anyone could complain about on this device. Ten hours of real world use will be no problem. I’ve seen some of the battery rundown tests from a few gadget sites and their tests are getting about 10.5 hours of life with tests that are probably a bit more intensive than your average usage. I’d say, expect more.

Put bluntly, the cameras are the weakest part of the device. The front camera is VGA and the rear one isn’t even 1MP for stills (takes 720p video). That’s pretty low-end. I would imagine that this choice was more of a size issue than a cost issue for Apple. Higher quality cameras wouldn’t have fit into a device this thin and I’ll take the thinness over the higher quality cameras. The quality is fine for video chatting, but you’re not going to be taking stills with them. And you know what? It doesn’t matter. Really. Even if the cameras were as good or better than an iPhone 4, holding up a 10″ device to take a photo is just all kinds of awkward. A tablet is never going to be heavily used as a camera, it just doesn’t fit the form-factor of the device. Besides, I don’t know about most people, but I will never have this thing with me and not have my phone which takes excellent photos just as close. It’s a non-issue.

The speed on this thing is redonkulous. I’ve never actually typed “redonkulous” before, but it feels appropriate. It just flies. Everything is so smooth, it makes my iPhone 4 feel slow and that takes a lot for a mobile device. iFixit’s teardown of the device actually showed that the A5 processor (built on a Cortext A9 dual-core chip) is actually not even running at a full 1GHz, it’s underclocked to around 900MHz. On paper, the A5 compares pretty evenly with Tegra 2 chips that run the Motorola Xoom and benchmarking puts CPU performance neck-and-neck. But in actual use, the iPad 2 just responds so much more smoothly than the Xoom, in my opinion. Graphics processing on the other hand, the iPad 2′s A5 smokes the Xoom’s Tegra 2. Games on this thing will fly. Existing iPad games already run much smoother, but once developers start taking advantage of this hardware, it’s going to be ridiculous. I’ve read a bit about the benchmarks for the graphics processing and the general consensus of all the articles and reports I’ve read is that it’s not even fair to put the two platforms on the same graph, the iPad 2 pretty much embarrasses the Xoom.

Okay, so that was a bit of nerding out, let’s talk actual real world performance…it’s nuts. The iPad 2 is a workhorse. The device runs incredibly smoothly. Apps launch instantly and run with no limitation, they just do their thing with no holdups from the hardware. I was reading some tweets by the developer of Filterstorm and he’s finding that he can drop full resolution RAW files from a DSLR into his app and work with them like it’s nothing. Nuts. This better mean that Adobe gets on the ball to get a Lightroom app into the App Store and, better yet, into my face.

The iPad 2 has 512MB of RAM which is twice as much as the first iPad, but only half as much as the Xoom and other competing tablets coming out soon. In practice, this doesn’t seem to limit anything, I dumped a bunch of RAW photos from my camera and could swipe through them like they’re nothing. Apps don’t seem limited at all. We’ll see what happens, but it seems like enough.

Simply put, on the hardware side, wow.

My only hardware complaint besides the display, which really doesn’t even lack in actual usage, is the lack of an SD slot. I got the camera connection kit and I don’t mind the $29 cost of it that much, but it’s just another dongle to try not to lose and make sure that I always have with me. I plan on using this a lot with my camera to dump photos to and maybe even be able to start editing some before I get home so having a built in SD slot would have been pretty solid.

Software
On the software front, we get basically the same old iOS that we’ve been play with since June of last year. My personal preference is iOS over Android (that’s a discussion for another day), but I do like Android and what it brings to the table a lot. iOS is a clean and smooth mobile operating system that likes to keep things very closed up, but this attitude is what makes the device not only “just work,” but just work smoothly and quickly.

iOS is great, but there are some big issues that I have with it that seriously better get fixed in iOS 5. I actually had two basic complaints, but now that I’ve been using this, I’ve got a third. One of the initial two complaints is much less apparent on an iPad than on an iPhone and the other is the opposite. Firstly, the damn notification system. It’s awful. There’s not much else you can say about it. Luckily, there are less notifications to get on an iPad than on your phone so this is a little less of a problem, but if you’re still planning on using a lot of push notifications, you’re going to find this just as annoying as on an iPhone. iOS is the only modern mobile OS that still hasn’t gotten notifications under control, Apple must fix this.

The second complaint, and this is the one that’s really apparent on an iPad, is that there are no widgets. I don’t want much, but I would like to be able to see calendar events and weather and such right on the homescreen without going into an app. The homescreen looks nice and clean without it, but this slight break in cleanness would be worth the usability. Besides, you know if Apple were to add this, they’d make it look all nice like.

The wildcard complaint, the new one, is that Apple hasn’t yet built in a nice way for iDevices to work together. Before the iPad, this wasn’t really an issue, but it would be really nice to be able to send links/files/apps/photos/videos/whatever back and forth wirelessly without another app or anything. I just want the devices to know the others exist and communicate with each other. I’d also like this from my Mac as well, please. This isn’t a dealbreaker, photos and videos can be transfered from an iPhone to an iPad with the camera connection kit and Bump can also move some stuff between the two, but why should this require a third-party app? If third party developers can make it happen, Apple should be able to build it in.

Alright, so anyway, iOS 4.3 is what we’ve got for not and despite those complaints, it runs great and gets the job done. It’s reliable and it’s clean. I’m a fan. I don’t miss Flash. I really don’t. Most video on the internet is HTML5 by  now and Flash is a crappy resource hog…even on a computer.

Photobooth is kind of pointless and I haven’t installed Garageband or messed around with iMovie yet so I can’t comment about them myself, but the reviews I’ve read are full of praise. I also haven’t tried FaceTime yet…in fact, I’ve only used it exactly once on my iPhone so I probably won’t be using it on the iPad anytime soon.

I’m still checking out more third party iPad-optimized apps, but I’m really digging Air Display which lets you use the iPad as a second display for your computer. It works via WIFI and is really good. There is some noticeable lag, but it’s very minimal. You can’t play video (well) or games on it, but for just having other things visible, it’s great.

Oh, and I enabled the extra gestures that make the home button unnecessary and I’m digging them a lot. I’d suggest it if you have one.

Smart Cover
This is pure genius. It’s not an entirely brand new idea to have a cover that can also be a stand, but the way that it can fold into a stand for two different positions is great. Attaching it is quick and easy too. There really is no fuss to this, the magnets pull it right into place and it’s perfectly lined up every time. It’s the easiest to attach case that’s ever exist for a gadget, hands down. And it stays on too. The magnets are stronger than you think.

Opening the cover wakes up the iPad without the lock screen and you’re good to go. Closing it puts it to sleep. It just happens…like the refrigerator light. It’s well thought out and a great addition to the device.

Other Thoughts
I didn’t  have an iPad 1, so the actual owning a tablet thing is new to me, but I have used others here and there to try out. So far, I’m finding that typing on this thing is much easier than I thought. I’ve got a good one handed thing going on with it and when putting it down and typing with two hands, it’s not too bad. I wouldn’t want to type a book on it and I only got through part of this review on it before wanting to switch to a real keyboard, but it’s more than good enough to get the job done.

A lot of people still question the need for tablets and I get that, but I also do agree that they are the future for most computer use. They won’t be great for everything, but general/casual computing actually feels better on a tablet than on a traditional computer. I’ve found that web browsing and social networking is a more comfortable and informal experience on an iPad. I can sit back on the couch and find a comfortable position without needing to worry about placing my computer on my lap. It really is ideal when you’re not typing a whole lot.

Compared to the Motorola Xoom
I had a few minutes to play with a Motorola Xoom today and I’ll be honest and say that it’s pretty a nifty and overall solid device. However, when you compare it to the iPad 2, it just doesn’t hold up. The Xoom’s Honeycomb version of Android is nice and the widgets and various things on the homescreen are useful, but they seem to make it feel cluttered and messy. iOS just feels cleaner. The Xoom also seemed decently powerful, but at the same time it wasn’t nearly as responsive and fluid. Despite having a solid notification system and a nicer app-switching UI, Honeycomb is lacking that smoothness and polish that the iPad has. The Xoom’s cameras are definitely better, but it was awkward holding the device up to take a photos with them. Like I said, non-issue.

The Moto Xoom seems to do a lot well, but but it also lacks in a lot of ways and in the end loses out to the iPad 2, in my opinion.

Photos

For many, Apple is a love ‘em or hate ‘em company. Some don’t like their closed systems and some still think there’s an Apple tax (there isn’t, but that’s not a discussion for right now). Many, including me and my fiancée, really just enjoy their products and find them to beat the competition for overall experience and what we’re looking for. That’s not what this post is about though. This is about something else.

Two days ago, my fiancée’s iPhone 3GS decided to go swimming. Okay, in reality, it was her fault 100%. She accidentally left it in the pocket of her jacket when she put it in the washer. She quickly realized and pulled it out, but it had already been mostly submerged by this point. Acting quickly, she threw it in a bag of rice and when I got home shortly after that, I took the phone apart to speed up the drying process and put it back in the rice. We were hopeful that we had saved it, but we both knew that the phone probably wasn’t going to make it. I could clearly see all of the liquid detection indicators inside had been tripped.

We let the phone sit for a day and a half in the rice before I put it back together and tried to turn it on. The next couple of hours were spent trying to get the phone out of an endless boot cycle. It wasn’t completely dead, but wouldn’t fully turn on either. We got nothing but the Apple logo on a very clearly waterlogged screen that at least still worked if you didn’t mind the water swirls. I plugged it into my computer to try and see if I could do a restore and, to my surprise, iTunes recognized the phone and would sync it and back it up (I was sure to only backup on my computer and not hers to avoid any chance of corrupting her backup and losing stuff forever). I ran the restore process successfully, but the phone still would not boot.

After being stuck in the endless boot cycle for a while and restoring a couple more times, I gave up. I took the phone apart again and threw it back in the rice. I knew that if there was still moisture, everything I just did probably sealed the phone’s fate and letting it dry more wasn’t going to do anything at this point. Still, I figured it couldn’t hurt.

Today, we made an appointment at the Genius Bar at the local Apple Store. After work, we came home and I put the phone back together so we could bring it over there. This time, the phone wouldn’t turn on at all. It seemed completely dead.

Now, I explained all that because this is exactly what I told the Apple genius. I was completely straight about it. The phone had water damage, it was our fault, and I even took it apart (which would have voided the warranty if it was still covered). Why beat around the bush? They can tell if a phone has water damage and lying wasn’t going to help anything. At least, if he knew what happened, he would know what steps to take.

He plugged the phone into a computer and it seemed like the battery was just completely dead. We let it charge for a bit and he restored it, but the phone still would not boot. While we were waiting, I asked him what our options were and I was frank with him. I told him that we really didn’t want to sign another two year contract with AT&T and buy an iPhone 4 more than half way into its lifecycle. He totally got that and basically agreed that if that was our thought process then it made sense for us not to.

Coincidentally, the genius that helped us had actually seen that same phone before. I remembered him from a while back when the screen was acting funny and we took it in. It turned out to just be a cable that had come unseated inside and he fixed it in about two minutes. After he explained what it was, I asked if he wouldn’t mind double checking the cable on my phone (I still had a 3GS at the time) just in case. He had no problem taking a look for me and didn’t even care that my phone was jailbroken–he just reminded me that if I had a problem, I’d have to restore and unjailbreak before bringing it back. Anyway, I mentioned that to him and we chatted a bit.

Back to the point, he looked up my fiancée’s account and came back and said “I’m just going to replace this for you.” I was pretty shocked, we had prepared ourselves for re-upping with AT&T and plunking down $200 for a new iPhone 4 (this would have also killed my iPhone 5 upgrade plan since I had the idea of taking her upgrade and giving her my current iPhone 4, a plan she was okay with). I was hoping it wouldn’t come to all that and we could at least just buy a 3GS refurb cheaply or something. So when we were told that they were going to take care of us, I was pretty stoked. The guy simply said that he’d rather see us leave happy than have to decide if we wanted to sign a new 2 year contract with AT&T and get an iPhone 4 halfway through it’s lifecycle.

What other company would do this? Seriously? Companies don’t replace water damaged products, nor should they. A water damaged product is clearly the user’s mistake, not theirs. Apple didn’t need to do this, but they did…and it was their idea. The entire time, the genius was very friendly, happy, and kept small talk with us. There is nothing else we could have asked for from the experience. Actually, they could have done a lot less and we still would have been happy.

This is one of the reasons why Apple will continue to get my money. I’m no fanboy, but despite their flaws, they just do most things better.

It’s been happening more and more lately, but I had to skip out on the radio show last night. The Funhouse kids, CJ and Dan, that generally follow The Playlist these days covered the extra hour. Maybe the fact that this is happening more often now should be a good indicator that it’s time to move on. I enjoy doing the show–once I’m actually doing it, anyway–but it seems that a lot goes on on Wednesdays that I have to skip out on because of it.

Anyway, I ran a 5k in Downtown Westfield last night instead of doing the show. It was humid, but luckily, the heat died down a little before the race started. I found that, just like the 4 mile race I ran on the Fourth of July, the humidity killed me. I had trouble breathing and felt like I was going to throw up for the last mile. It was not my best race, but I beat my time from the same race last year by about 15 seconds and it was my third fastest 5k ever. I should probably be pretty happy about that. Though races like this make me ask myself why I do them and why I like to run, but that’s for another post that maybe I’ll make soon.

I’m not really sure where I’m going with this post, but my iPhone 4 battery life was seriously impressive last night. I got home with 33% left after having the phone away from a charger for 15 hours. My usage over those 15 hours breaks down something like this:

• About 3.75 hours of reading articles on Google Reader, using Twitter/Facebook, reading other websites. About 80% of this was over 3G
• About 30 minutes of GPS use during the race to track my progress and time. Then I uploaded the route to mapmyfitness.com using their app. (I did not take 30 minutes to run the race, I fired it up about ten minutes early).
• Listened to music during the race
• Snapped a few pictures and emailed them off
• Updated 5 or 6 apps that had updates available
• Made a 2 minute phone call
• Kept push and WiFi turned on all day

I’d say that’s pretty impressive. My old 3GS and 3G would not have been able to pull that off.

I thought that it’d be a good idea to wait a full week after I got this thing to write a review, but here’s how I feel about the iPhone 4.

Actually obtaining this thing was a little annoying, but my experience was a lot better than what most people had. I was able to reserve one using the Apple Store iPhone app so I had one waiting for me at the Apple Store. My first trip there was around noon during my lunch break and the line was still about 100 people long so I turned around and went right back to work knowing I’d never make it in time if I stayed. When I went back after work at 5:30, there were 3 people in line. Awesome. I was in and out in under 15 minutes with no activation issues. Unfortunately, for my friend, his experience was much worse. The line was hundreds deep when he went at 7am so he returned at 7:30pm to find 400-500 people still in line and saw a guy that was there 12 hours earlier just getting his phone. The Apple Store employees ended up cutting the line off at the 125th person because the mall was going to close before they could do the rest of the line. They told him he would have to go back the next morning to get his phone. He did, but still had to wait a bit.

Anyway, about the phone itself. It’s a phone, but it’s an incredible gadget. The design of this thing is beautiful. It looks futuristic, yet timeless, and feels great to hold. The phone feels much smaller and compact in your hand than previous generations and the flat back makes holding it more comfortable, especially while typing. Even though it’s only slightly heavier than the 3G and 3GS, it feels much heftier, but in a good way. The phone feels extremely solid, more so than any other gadget I’ve ever held, but because of the glass on both sides, I’ve been terrified that I’m going to drop it and break it. I need to get a case ASAP. The buttons feel great to use and the removal of plastic makes the phone look and feel much more elegant. One notable annoyance though is that it’s difficult to feel which way the phone is facing. You almost have to look. When it’s in your pocket, you have to feel for the buttons or the slit for the receiver.

Using the phone feels slightly faster and smoother than the 3GS running iOS 3.1.3. It’s noticeable, but doesn’t blow you away. However, when compared to my 3GS after I upgraded it to iOS 4.0, the difference is a lot bigger. Everything is smooth and snappy. Loading apps and using them feels snappier and more fluid.

There has been a lot said about the display on this phone and everything you’ve read is probably an understatement. I don’t know where Apple put them, but there are no more pixels. I can’t see them. I can’t focus my eyes at a close enough distance to be able to make them out. It’s glorious. Text is crisp and clear. Factor this in with the new snappiness and the device starts to disappear, if that makes sense. This screen is incredible.

The camera is something else that has gotten a lot of attention. This thing is really, really good. The pictures are detailed and clear and they snap very quickly. Low light performance is definitely improved to the point where you get usable shots in conditions that would have produced nothing but blackness on a 3GS. However, I don’t know how I feel about the flash. It’s great for use as a flashlight–even if it is a pain to get to. It’s plenty bright and supplies a lot of light, but the white balance seems to be a bit off, everything seems to have a greenish tint. Maybe it’s something I’m doing, but it’s annoying. Still, it’s nice to know it’s there. The 720p video is great. This is a nice feature to have and is more than good enough to cancel out that FlipHD purchase I was going to make. Tap to focus during video capture has been very useful for me so far. I’ve posted a few pictures from the camera here, but there’s another one to the right. Overall, the camera is good enough that I’ll be able to leave the point-and-shoot home more often than not.

The front camera is just fine. It’s just the front camera, what do you need? It would be sweet if Apple put the same camera on the front and the back, but is that really necessary? That might be helpful for self portraits, but one thing I’ve noticed is a bonus of having an all glass back is that if you use the back camera, you can use the entire back of the phone as a mirror to see what should be in frame for your shot. Works decently well.

Battery life is much improved overall. Light to moderate use seems to drain the battery much more slowly. Yesterday, I used 26% of my battery to get through 15 hours of the day using the phone lightly with push mail turned on. Under heavy use, the life is better than my 3GS and I feel like I can get through an entire day without too much worry. I like this.

Now, as for that “death grip,” that’s real. I can reproduce the bars disappearing relatively easily, but I’ll be honest about the fact that it hasn’t seemed to cause me much of a problem functionally…yet. However, this is definitely a design flaw on Apple’s part that they need to own up to. Simply saying that we should hold the phone differently is ridiculous. All phones may be affected by how you hold them, but none lose reception like this. The worst part is, the position that causes the problem is one that I use a lot when I’m reading things on my phone. Most of my web browsing is down holding the phone cupped in my left hand. Apple’s arrogance on this subject has been extremely annoying and it’s made me question them as a company. It’s been enough to make me consider returning the phone despite all of the other improvements. I almost want to switch to Android out of principle, but AT&T’s Android selection kind of sucks.

If you take away the death grip issues, upgrading for $200 to the iPhone 4 is a no-brainer for any current or wannabe iPhone owner. I like it a lot.

A short iOS 4 follow up…
After using iOS 4 a bit more, I’ve found that the fast app switching is definitely well done and my issues of ending up with a tray full of dozens of apps isn’t too big of a problem. The app I want is usually in the first 8. However, I would really like a quick way to clear everything out of there in one shot.

The saved-state is really nice for the apps that have included it so far, but I find that sometimes I prefer to start fresh. I wish there was a way to quit an app entirely right away. The default camera app is one of those situations, I’ve accidentally taken a few videos when I wanted to take stills because the camera was still in video mode from the last time I used it. Having Twitter and Facebook start where I left off is nice, but I miss the auto-updating on load, you end up doing it manually now. These are small problems though and will probably get worked out.

I’m going to post something more in depth about this thing, but the camera on the iPhone 4 is pretty great. I snapped these shots of my fiancée when we went out to eat for her birthday tonight with the Camera+ app. All the edits were done within the app as well.

Like just about everyone else that has an iPhone, I upgraded to iOS 4.0 yesterday. If you’re gadget nerd, you’re either completely sick of hearing about the iPhone 4 and iOS 4.0 or you can’t get enough, so where you stand on that should probably dictate if you continue to read or not. However, for anyone that cares or wants to continue reading, I decided I would post my impressions.

Upgrade process
The upgrade process wasn’t bad for me at all. The software downloaded quickly, in just a few minutes, and the installation took less than ten minutes. It was quite impressive actually, especially compared to some of the experiences I’ve read about. My fiancée’s update wasn’t going as quickly though, the download for her was going to take 3-4 hours so we canceled it and just updated on my computer with the software I already had downloaded. The only hiccup either of us found was that most of our contacts didn’t make it across, but a re-sync fixed it for me and hers just came back on their own after a few hours. The only other problem that I’m still having is with my email (Gmail via GoogleSync), but that hadn’t been working lately anyway so it hardly seems like iOS4′s fault. I hear Google is having issues with it on their end. We’ll see.

What’s not to like
Feature-wise, I’m going to be honest, I’m a bit underwhelmed. Before I get into what was included, the fact that Apple doesn’t have a quick reply for SMS and better notification handling at this point is ridiculous. I was disappointed that these weren’t included in the preview a few months back, but was hopeful that ol’ Steve would surprise us with them at the last keynote. It also would have been nice to get some widgets or useful information on the lock screen. All of this stuff can be fixed via jailbreak, but since I’m not running a jailbreak right now, I’ll have to deal. More on that later.

I like the idea behind the multitasking implementation Apple developed. I think putting battery life and actual performance as the first priority was the right thing to do. I know there are many days where my battery struggles to keep up with me. I can think of very few situations in which I would ever need a full-blown app running in the background. Allowing just some necessary threads is great, but unfortunately, Apple decided against including a thread for apps to keep themselves updated with the freshest contect. It would be great if there was an option that could be toggled on a per-app basis that would allow the app to continue fetching updates. This would be great for Twitter and Facebook apps.

Having to wait for developers to integrate multitasking sucks, but it was to be expected and even though only a few apps have been updated so far, more should be on the way. My real issue though is the fast-app switching. It’s insanely convenient to be able to switch quickly between two or three apps without going back to the home screen, but the problem I’m finding is that the tray fills up with apps too quickly. I end up with a dozen or two app icons down there and it feels like the whole purpose is lost at that point. I never realized how many apps I go in and out of regularly, but it’s a lot.

So far, battery life has been much worse. To be fair, I’ve been using my phone pretty heavily today, but even just my normal morning web browsing in the car (while the fiancée was driving, of course) used up about 40% more battery life than usual. And to be even more fair, I didn’t do a clean restore when I updated as is regularly suggested when you’ve jailbroken–it’s a known issue that battery life can suffer horribly when you update/restore a jailbroken iPhone if you don’t start fresh. However, my fiancée is also seeing decreased battery life and she was previously not jailbroken.

On top of the battery life woes, I’m also noticing occasional sluggishness in apps and in system animations like sliding the app icons into the home screen.

What’s to like
The likes are mostly smaller things, but I do like the fast-app switching and multitasking for the most part, outside of the issues above, at least. Being able to quickly switch between apps without hitting the home screen is a really big improvement and speeds things up a ton. The overall implementation is really great…if only I didn’t end up with over 30 apps in the app switcher tray guy (what is this thing called?) so quickly.

Spellcheck, searching in the messages app, unified inbox, and message threading for email are all great and very welcome additions. So glad that this stuff finally made it.

The camera app is much, much quicker now. It feels ultra snappy and snapping and saving a shot seems to take less than half as long as it did previously. This didn’t seem to make it to third-party camera apps by default, but as far as the stock app goes, it’s much better now. Hopefully, devs will be able to speed up their apps like this as well. Being able to tap to focus for video recording is also pretty sweet and allows a bit of an artistic touch to video recording. I think this will yield even better results on the iPhone 4. And the 5x zoom is another nicety. I’m generally very anti digital zoom since you’re doing nothing more than cropping, but on a phone, it’s a nice feature when you just want to take a quick picture and send it along to someone. It cuts out the middle-app to crop it down.

I’m also really liking the audio control widget in the tray. This is really useful and the fact that it will control whichever app is being used to play audio is even better. I tried it out with Pandora (while it was backgrounded!) and it was fantastic. The rotation lock icon to the left of these controls is also a nice addition and removes one reason to jailbreak for me.

And folders are pretty sweet. The implementation is significantly better than Categories (jailbreak only). It’s smooth and consistent and adds a lot of organization to all your apps. I’m a fan and I don’t find it that annoying to be limited to 12 apps, though I have a couple games and utilities folders now.

Missing jailbreak though
I’m missing my jailbreak though. During the course of typing this, the Dev-Team released a jailbreak that is compatible with the early 3GSes of the world, but I’m not sure that I will be messing around with it. I’m planning on picking up an iPhone 4 on Thursday (I have a reservation) which I’m sure will not be jailbreakable for quite some time…if ever. So I might as well just get used to it now.

What I’m missing the most are SBSettings and BiteSMS. Both of these offer features that I can’t believe Apple hasn’t included yet, quick access to settings like WiFi and quick reply for SMS that works from anywhere in the system. I keep catching myself trying to fire up the BiteSMS quick compose.

I’m also missing GriP which is notification solution that I just recently started using. It’s similar to Growl on a Mac, if you’ve ever used that, or other solutions on Windows and Linux. It’s not perfect, but it gets the job done.

Other than that, I think I can easily live without anything else I’ve installed via jailbreak. I’ll miss having a flashlight app that’s actually useful, the app store versions don’t have access to make the screen as bright, but maybe the LED flash on the iPhone 4 will replace that need. I’ll also miss the status bar notification icons for email and SMS, but that’s not a big deal.

As for Backgrounder and ProSwitcher, I don’t think I’ll be missing those after a few weeks go by and most of the apps I use are updated.

Conclusion
There are definitely a lot of good things going on here, but there are some complaints too. Apple has come really far, but still has some major improvements to make in some relatively basic areas.

I made a reservation for an iPhone 4 at my local Apple store, but unfortunately, my line isn’t up for an upgrade so it’s going to cost $400 if I actually decide to show up and buy it. I was originally sold on the “retina display” and the front camera, but what I was most excited about was beefed up rear camera and extended battery life. I wasn’t sure if those would be worth it at $400, but it seems the reviews from the heavyweights are in and it supposedly, the iPhone 4 puts the iPhone back at the top of phones on the market right now. Engagdet did a very in-depth review and gives the camera and battery life high marks. For the amount of photos I take with my phone, I think that’s a pretty big selling point, especially the considering the low light improvements. If I can leave the point and shoot at home even more and forget about that FlipHD purchase I was planning on making, I’ll be happy.

Alright, that’s about it. Maybe I’ll post an iPhone 4 review…or anything else soon. Next week, I’ll have a review for Insubordination Fest this weekend.

Normally, I don’t do any Summer projects, but I think it’s time to change that. I always have a ton of things I want to get done, but the bigger ones never make it. Tasks that I can’t do in a couple of hours tend to just sit on my to-do list without ever being started. Half of it is because I just don’t have the time for most of these things, but the other half is laziness and lack of motivation for tackling these things. However, this Summer I want to do a few of the things on my list. Hopefully, it’s not too much, but I’ve got four projects that I want to do.

First, I want to get on the task of organizing all of my photos. I was thinking about this a lot last week and wrote an entire entry about it here, but I think this is a doable task. I’ve mostly worked out how I’m going to tackle the project and I’ve actually started already, which is good because this will probably be the project that takes the longest to complete. I’m just a hobbyist when it comes photography, but I’ve been getting into it a lot since getting my DSLR camera. Even before that though, I took tons and tons of pictures, I have tens of thousands of them on my computer. But for all of these pictures that I take, I rarely ever go back and look at them later on. Not only will this project allow me to get all of these photos better organized so that I can find anything I’m looking for later–I’ve got a pretty comprehensive keywording system that I’m planning on using and blogging about soon–but it will also be fun to actually go through and look at all of these pictures that I’ve taken over the years.

My next project is to actually clear my to-do list for the software I develop for the radio station. Okay, not the overall to-do list, but the one that’s been growing recently with about two dozen items on it. I started development on it again for the first time in a while this year and I have a pretty awesome new feature to push out, but there’s a lot more I want and need to do with the software. It’s hard to find the motivation to come home from developing all day at work only to do the same thing at home, but I think over the course of the summer, I can push out everything I want. My general process in the past was to do a ton of enhancements and then push them out in big groups. This was great at first, but it ended up causing some things to sit forever before going out. My new approach is going to be to push out each enhancement and bug fix as I finish it. This will get the new stuff to the users much quicker and also make it easier to check things off my list to make it feel like I’m actually getting things done.

I’ve got one more nerdy indoor project that I want to do, this one is not super important to me, but I think it would be a great learning experience. I want to develop an iPhone app. I downloaded the SDK a few weeks ago when I couldn’t sleep one night, but I haven’t had a chance to actually play around with it. I don’t know Objective-C yet, but I don’t expect it to be too hard to learn given the fact that I do software development for a living. I’m still trying to think of a good idea for an app though. It doesn’t to be the next big thing or even make me any money via the App Store, but I don’t want to make another to-do or fart app or anything else that will just get lost in a sea of similar apps.

And my last project is going to be to take enough pictures to be able to walk away with at least one “useable” picture everyday. I think this will be the most fun project out of the group. I know some people do photo 365 projects and make it a point to shoot everyday, but I’ve totally botched that idea for the year already, so I’m going to make it a Summer thing. I’m not going to try to limit myself to any particular theme or anything, but given that it will be Summer, I think I want to try some action photography. Maybe I’ll take some pictures of my soccer buddies one week or I’ll just go hang out at the park one day and take pictures of what’s going on. Who knows!

So that it. It’s a lot of nerdy stuff that will keep me indoors, but given that I’ll be playing soccer once a week, running a few times a week still, hopefully mountain biking here and there, and my fiancée and I finally got a table and chairs for the backyard so we can eat dinner out there, I’ll still be spending plenty of time outside. And besides, once the temperature starts to approach 80° I’m pretty miserable being outside anyway.

Last night was another fantastic show. Almost perfect all around. Great music, great segues, and the phone was ringing off the hook. Not even just the phone, but the instant messages too. So much so that it was almost stressful trying to keep up. I was actually sweating because of it.

I found out last night that our station streams perfectly fine over an iPhone just by going to www.thecore.fm and clicking to listen. I’m assuming this will work on any other smartphone too, I guess I never thought about it before.

Apparently, we’re supposed to get a Nor’easter this weekend so that’s going to put a damper on my Field of Terror plans, but I’m still excited to see Gaslight Anthem, Murder By Death, and The Loved Ones on Sunday in Philly. And it seems that there are still tickets for the Monday night show as well. You may want to check that out. Either way, expect a full report next week.

Anyway, here’s what I played…

Source: 90.3 The Core