Official Apple Fall 2011 Keynote Announcements and Discussion: "Let's Talk iPhone!" (1 Viewer)

[DaveF]

Marco asks: What would have made this awesome?

http://www.marco.org/2011/10/04/iphone-4s-by-any-other-name



I bought the iPhone 4 last year, launch day. It was a debacle. How will it go for the iPhone 4S this year? (Which is why I won't upgrade as Sam considers: I can't risk being iPhone-less for a month between Gazelle-ing my 4 and when AT&T can ship me the new 4S)

 

[Sam Posten]

Macworld makes the case for not waiting: http://www.macworld.com/article/162697/2011/10/iphone_4s_upgrade_or_wait_.html#lsrc.twt_lexfri

 

[Sam Posten]

TIMN is reporting that the 4s will only have 512mb of RAM, which is a bad move. On the other hand it removes ALL argument for SIRI being iPhone 4s only and not on iPad

 

[DaveF]

That's unfortunate.


Also, sad news about Jobs' passing

 

[Ted Todorov]

Pull quote from the reviews:


iPhone 4S Reviews: "Best iPhone Yet", Great Camera, Siri is "Straight Out of Science Fiction"
http://www.macrumors.com/2011/10/11/iphone-4s-reviews-best-iphone-yet-great-camera-siri-is-straight-out-of-science-fiction/


Maybe I was right after all and those phones that got their voice recognition first are dead in the water compared to iPhone/Siri, just like the pre iPhone "smartphones" all ended up being...


Re the RAM -- who cares if it works well. It is, yet again, all about the software.

 

[Sam Posten]

More RAM is absolutely critical for having more pages loaded in safari's tabs (how many times have you been on between pages just to have them refresh at the worst possible time because RAM was full, I have, tons) and for games like Infinity Blade. At this point it's not the CPU or GPU that's the bottleneck, it's the amount of RAM that limits what you can do in 3D.

 

[DaveF]

where's my IOS 5? I got an iTunes update this morning, no iPhone update.

 

[Sam Posten]

It's coming, Find my Friends is live: http://9to5mac.com/2011/10/12/find-my-friends-app-goes-live-ahead-of-ios-5-release/ And iCloud is outta beta: http://www.macrumors.com/2011/10/12/icloud-com-website-updated-no-longer-in-beta/

 

[DaveF]

is iCloud coincident with iOS5? I thought everything was launching today? I've go household calendars issues iOS5 promises to fix

 

[Ted Todorov]

Sprint & Verizon iPhones will be GSM unlocked for world travelers. (Sprint immediately out of the box, Verizon 60 days after purchase, on request). Very, very cool. I'm going to start urging AT&T users to defect to Sprint, so maybe AT&T will get the message and at a bare, bare, minimum start unlocking our old, out of contract iPhones.


Get with the program AT&T -- the future is unlocked -- with you or without you.

 

[Sam Posten]

Yes, but iTunes Match does not launch till end of month. Let's make an iOS 5 specific thread...

 

[mattCR]

Verizon's iPhone4 does NOT travel the world at all worth a damn. Discovered that out the hard way a few weeks ago.. we had to express overnight a replacement to a VP in UK when his phone went tits up after landing. It's good they are more universal friendly in the 4S.

 

[Ted Todorov]

Apparently the Sprint thing is a false story:

http://www.macrumors.com/2011/10/12/sprint-denies-report-of-unlocked-micro-sim-in-iphone-4s/

 

[Ted Todorov]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sam Posten

More RAM is absolutely critical for having more pages loaded in safari's tabs (how many times have you been on between pages just to have them refresh at the worst possible time because RAM was full, I have, tons) and for games like Infinity Blade. At this point it's not the CPU or GPU that's the bottleneck, it's the amount of RAM that limits what you can do in 3D.

More RAM == shorter battery life. It is all a trade-off. Personally I'll take the battery life.

 

[mattCR]

4 iPhone 4S on my desk as I came back from lunch for me to program. I'll have to play around with one of them, the other three have to hit FedEx boxes to ship out by 3PM, so won't have time

 

[Sam Posten]

Quote:

More RAM == shorter battery life.  It is all a trade-off.  Personally I'll take the battery life.

 

Um, that makes no sense at all. How did you come to that conclusion?

 

[Ted Todorov]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sam Posten


Um, that makes no sense at all. How did you come to that conclusion?

DF:

[url=http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/10/07/reducing-runtime-memory-in-windows-8.aspx]RAM vs. Energy Consumption

★ So why didn’t the iPhone 4S go from 512 MB to 1 GB of RAM? Only Apple knows for sure, but I found this blog post from Microsoft’s Steven Sinofsky interesting:

Something that might not be obvious is that minimizing memory usage on low-power platforms can prolong battery life. Huh? In any PC, RAM is constantly consuming power. If an OS uses a lot of memory, it can force device manufacturers to include more physical RAM. The more RAM you have on board, the more power it uses, the less battery life you get. Having additional RAM on a tablet device can, in some instances, shave days off the amount of time the tablet can sit on your coffee table looking off but staying fresh and up to date.

 

[Sam Posten]

DF/Sinofsky or not I don't buy that for an instant as a compelling reason for not increasing it.

 

[DaveF]

Battery Life uber alles.


(assuming that's a correct explanation)

 

[Ted Todorov]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mattCR Yup turns out in the real world, Siri is every bit as far ahead from its predecessors as the iPhone itself was from the "smartphones" that came before it.


This demo was triggered by this statement

Here’s what Microsoft executive [url=http://9to5mac.com/2011/11/23/microsoft-exec-siri-is-nothing-special-weve-had-it-for-over-a-year/]Craig Mundie told Forbes about Siri

:

People are infatuated with Apple announcing it. It’s good marketing, but at least as the technological capability you could argue that Microsoft has had a similar capability in Windows Phones for more than a year, since Windows Phone 7 was introduced.

It's amazing to me how history can repeat itself this often. At least Google has been downplaying Siri's importance, rather than claiming that they too have its capabilities.