The iPad mini and what it means for the iPod touch

As time has progressed of late, it has become increasingly clear that Apple will announce a new, smaller iPad at tomorrow’s press event. Dubbed the iPad mini, the new device is, we believe, going to offer much of the current iPad experience, but this time in a more diminutive form.

This iPad mini has been rumored for what feels like forever, with the tablet almost as fabled in Apple rumor circles as that Apple-branded television we are still waiting for. With less than twenty-four hours to go, it seems we need not wait much longer. But where does it sit in Apple’s product line?
If you’re not someone who wants to buy an iPhone, then the obvious choice right now is an iPod touch. If you don’t want something quite so large as an iPad, then the current choice is to plump for that same iPod touch, or something a little more Android-y. But what about post iPad mini? That’s a whole different story indeed…

See, that iPod touch is a marvelous piece of kit. Just looking at the latest, shiniest iPod touch has us enchanted. It’s truly gorgeous, but why would you buy one? The iPad mini is already expected to eat into iPad sales, so could the iPod touch suffer the same fate?

At its current price point, you’ll need to spend $300 to get hold of the latest, most iPhone-like iPod touch. That’s a little close to iPad territory for our liking and, more importantly, right around where the iPad mini is expected to debut. In fact, there’s the chance that Apple’s iPod touch may even be undercut by its larger, possibly more desirable sibling. An interesting position to be in. With the iPod touch arguably seeing its largest sales in the teenager/child market, we suspect the lure of an iPad will be too strong for many to resist. We know which we’d prefer, and that’s without ever laying our hands on a real life iPad mini.

Now those still wanting an iPhone-like experience without the contract will still go for the iPod touch, but as of very soon there will be something else to take into consideration. Something that, at least on paper, will be a compelling product. Something that, assuming you’re going to use it as more than a music player, will probably be the better device. If you’ve room for around 8-inches in your bag, the iPad mini may well be the better choice.

Having spent some time with the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire, we’d argue that the iPad mini form factor may be the way to go even for those looking at the “proper” iPad. Even if you take the enhanced portability out of the equation, many will agree that the iPad is “just” a little too big. Not a lot, but just enough. The iPad mini may be the sweet spot, especially if it hits the right price point too.
Apple could avoid all this, of course, by reducing the price of that lovely iPod touch. At $300, it’s expensive as things are. With a small iPad costing around the same amount of cash, that little iPod seems all the more pricey.

After the Buzz - Pocketnow

Most new-device launches go the same way: usually the press gets review units before they're widely available, and we get to use them for a few days -or a week if we're lucky- as we work on our review.

Then press day arrives. The embargo on media coverage lifts, and everyone posts their reviews and videos at the same time. It's a huge frenzy, commenters go nuts, and it's a giant explosion of frantic opinion-sharing activity.

For about ... a day. And then it all goes away. Sure, there's followup coverage as people find bugs and hidden features, but after that initial blast, not many people revisit the device to see how it feels a few weeks or months later, because everyone's already focused on the next big deal coming down the pipe.

I recommend you watching after the buzz on youtube. they take a device like the nexus 7 or the samsung galaxy S3 and look at it after a few weeks of use.

Microsoft's Surface pricing

Microsoft recently announced its Surface tablet pricing and, after a day it went on sale, the 32GB model is already on back-order for 2-3 weeks. It certainly seems like consumers are flocking to the tablet already, but at least one analyst is worried that Microsoft may have priced its tablets too high.

“Our view on this is mixed. On one hand, this should give breathing room for its hardware partners to price more aggressively,” Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu said in a note Thursday. “But we believe a key risk is that Surface’s high pricing could prove to be a fatal mistake and relegate it to be a niche No. 4 or No. 5 player. We believe Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire HD will likely see considerably higher volume given their low $199 price points and stronger ecosystems with iPad retaining its commanding No. 1 position.”

“We believe a key risk for Microsoft is that pricing for its Surface tablet could end up being a fatal mistake with the delta too significant, particularly against Google and Amazon,” Wu continued. “As we have said before, we believe MSFT needs to price aggressively to give it a fighting chance in the highly competitive tablet market. We believe $299 including the cover-keyboard would have been much more compelling.”

We agree somewhat, especially since Microsoft’s Surface RT tablets are unproven, and since it’s now going to go head-to-head with Apple. Still, its early sales already seem to suggest there’s initial success for the tablet.

Comex Fired from apple

While iOS hackers are often a thorn in Apple’s side, sometimes the Cupertino company acknowledges that their expertise could actually be of value, and it offers them a job. That’s what happened to 20-year-old Brown University student Nicholas Allegra, better known as legendary iPhone jailbreaker Comex, last August.

After a year with Apple, however, Comex no longer works for the company. The reason for his departure? He forgot to reply to an email.

In messages posted to Twitter, Comex explained: “So… no point in delaying. As of last week, after about a year, I’m no longer associated with Apple.” He continued: “As for why? Because I forgot to reply to an email.”

That email was offering Comex the opportunity to extend his employment with Apple as a remote intern — and he forgot to reply to it. And at Apple, offer letters are taken seriously, Comex explained to Forbes, and the company doesn’t like them to be ignored. Needless to say the offer was rescinded.

“I wasn’t too happy about it, but it didn’t seem like I was able to fix it,” Comex said. “So that’s what it is.”

Comex did note, however, that his departure from Apple was “more complicated” than just that forgotten email. He insisted it “wasn’t a bad ending,” and that he enjoyed his time in Cupertino, but he chose not to disclose any more information. He also wouldn’t reveal what he worked on during his time with the company, but that’s to be expected given Apple’s strict non disclosure agreements.

Comex was the mastermind behind the hugely popular jailbreaking tool JailbreakMe, which allowed iOS users to hack their devices simply by visiting a link in the built-in Safari web browser. One security researcher, Charlie Miller, said Comex was “years ahead” of other iOS hackers.

But when Comex decided to switch sides and join Apple, he waved goodbye to iOS jailbreaking for good. Despite no longer working for the company, he believes his contract with Apple prevents him from any future work on reverse engineering its products.

“I don’t know whether or not it’s against the terms, but it probably is,” Comex said.

Nintendo's development of the gameboy

I've recently acquired a gameboy advance SP, see i made an intro for my friend "mrretrocity" (have a look at his work on youtube) and he wanted to repay me for creating the introduction for him and since he goes to a lot of car boot sales, he was able to pick up a gameboy advance SP for 4 pound with the charger and so me and him came up with a compromise to work on both sides. Since i had a lot of gameboy advance games without a DS/GBA to play them on. i thought the logical choice would just get the gameboy advance and now, it was definitely worth doing the introduction for him. I've recaptured all of my childhood memories with Crash XS and Banjo kazooie's grunty's revenge and mario kart super circuit. 

here's why i'm talking about the gameboy advance SP. it astounds me that up to the gameboy advance SP, nintendo didn't realise that people wanted to play their gameboy at night especially little kid when they really want to play the gameboy when they got sent to bed. even all the years that nintendo were producing gameboy's you'd think that they would have caught on that that. it might have not been ideal for the battery life since it had to power the back light. i can see why nintendo didn't include but things like peripheral's being added onto the gameboy that was also there for wasting the battery.

I think nintendo should have decided to have a lithium polymer battery soon with the previous gameboy advance. and as always thanks for listening.

update

sorry i've not been able to update my blog, i've been focusing on my college work and plus i'm in blackpool this weekend. I've already got the blog written at home but i've forgot to upload it onto the blogger. i was outside blackpool sand castle and i was going through my google currents news feed and there was virtually nothing there that really caught my eye or was that interesting.

SO yeah and also thanks for reading

Roundup update

I won't be doing a blog tomorrow with the roundup of the tech news of the week since i've got too much at college to do. I've got to edit my mini podcasts and plus we've just gone into production for the soap opera.
i've not done movie reviews in quite a bit and i really want to do the little mini reviews, where i just explain the plot of the story, my thoughts about certain scenes and depending on the special effects. i will be analying the special effects as well. instead of doing written blogs on blogspot while i've been walking home. I've pulled out my phone and talked to it and explaining my thoughts like an idiot with all the cars and people looking at me.

Future of technology

in college, we've got to write a script for a radio drama and i had plenty of different storylines i could take, an action thriller, an action comedy, detective drama and a sci-fi drama. I experimented with the different storylines and trying to realise the full potenial of each of the storylines and the ones that stuck out from me was the sci-fi drama. The storyline for the sci-fi drama was going to be a every day guy just working on his normal radio show but then the power goes out and causes a big disruption in the building. while johnny (main character) is trying to find his bang, he stumbles upon a time portal  and it would transport him to the year 2022 and i'll just leave it there. Once i've got the recorded and edited all together, i'll be putting it onto youtube for everybody to listen. while i was experiemeniong with the different quotes and the inspiration i've got, i got steal some of the famous quotes that come from those films like back to the future 2.

by now you've probably realised that i like technology and i like to talk about technology with a passion well since it's my radio drama and it's set in the future i thought 'Concepts in technology such as Google Glasses and the progression of voice recognition until it works perfectly with everybody. The natural progression of technology like we will end up stop carrying round Phones/devices in our pockets, they’ll be on our faces as described from the Google Glasses Prototype.'
that's a quote from my proposal.

The whole main reason i'm talking about this is the idea of the future in ten years and how will technology triumph us. I don't think we'll have robots or flying cars, or even hoverboards. I know that according to the back to the future 2, where they got transported to the year 2015. like seriously do you think we will actually have all the things that they advertised in back to the future.
How far will google glasses come? will everybody have them and will we get turned into Wall-E characters were we are just all blinded by screens?

this is a different blog to the one that i created this morning. it was on about the gameboy advance SP backlight but i forgot to add it to the blog ready for posting and as always thanks for reading

Ultrabooks vs Hardware and software

With the introduction to a new line of laptops called ultrabooks, What are ultrabooks?

Ultrabooks are just basically a laptop with a higher specification than normal laptops and they either use the i3, i5 or the i7 processor from intel and that's basically it, there's no new internal way of making a laptop to make it a lot faster, it's just basically a naming convention that laptop manufactures have gave laptops to make laptops popular again. I don't currently own a ultrabook but from what i've read about them and from what i've seen, it's just basically a laptop with a new name and a maybe a beter processor. We aren't going to refer to them in everyday use and call them ultrabooks. They are and fundamentally laptops with a better spec.

I was going to create another blog for this but since my rant on ultrabooks is small, i thought i'd talk about it here. Nobody really cares about the hardware, they only really care about the software and when i say hardware i don't mean what the internals have got such as how much ram it has or what speed the processor rans at, i'm talking about what the keyboard feels like, the trackpad, the materials that it's made from and how they've been put together. I'm not really fused about what laptop i get, all i'm concentrating on, the specifications of the laptop, is it up to speed with today's CPU's and GPU's, will it be comfortable to type on for long periods of time and how well it sits on my desk or lap, has it got a good fan to keep it cool whilst i've got it on my lap. Sure it's nice to have a good looking laptop such as a macbook but really all i care about is the user experience, the internal hardware and is it comfortable.

Sorry if this is a bit late, we were actually filming our soap opera today (the one that we've been planning for a bit now). i've not actually been on a computer today to update my blog and as always

Thanks for reading my rants

Nightly roms

I said i was going to talk about apple's advertiseing technique and how apple can really create a technique that you're instantly friendly with, but as i was writing it, there isn't that much that i can write about really without digressing. here's the short version. I was watching TV the other day and an advert came on and instantly thought 'i bet it's an apple product' why? well it had narration by an unknown person. Second the white background, with any Apple advert background, they're normally white, not sure if it's to produce the effect of heavenly how that's just how the cookie crumbles and the third one ius the framing on the advert. The ears were in the middle and stayed in the middle, so i thought, it's got something to do with the ears and let alone enough it was the Earpods advert, advertising the way that earphones should be produced and how they should be worn.

you can probably guess from the title that i'm going to talk about nightly roms and no it's not something that you say goodnight to or anything on those lines. I'm not even sure why they are called nightly roms at all, each version could be released during the night or maybe it's an underground thing. Roms are just basically Images of the operating systems and these images are compiled together to we can easily install them with a recovery image and that recovery image is Clockwork Mod (CWM). <that's just roms in basic terms.

Nightly roms are Android OS's such as Jellybean and Ice cream sandwich. CM10 is an operating system based on the design and architecture of the Jellybean android OS, Some phones out there haven't got their official release yet of jellybean and people who have no idea just wait for the official release (if it get released) and then you get the other people that can't wait at all to upgrade to the latest OS, so they install a rom by rooting it. For some phones don't get up getting the Official build of, let's say CM10 and they've got to settle for nightly rom, Nightly roms are pretty good because you know you will be a new update every if not every other day. Now it's good that you get updated roughly everyday but why don't they just update the nightly rom every week so you can see the changes more and plus you don't have to keep updating everyday. Sometimes if you're updating everyday, you'll hardly see the changes unless it's a massive feature. If they keep producing great roms and still put the same amount of work in but only release an updated version every weekend. you wouldn't have to mess around as much and plus you've got a better OS for one that you had last week.

Hopefully you get what i'm saying with this blog and hopefully you'll agree with me. and as always thanks for reading.

Apple's advertising technique

i was at my aunties at the weekend watching x factor and a new advert came on television during that time there was something that struck me. The new amazon advert, everything that was seen on the advert, obviously apple insprised, here's some digression here.

apple have been known for their advertising from a very young stage. remember the 1984 commercial advertising the macintosh. Well that advert had great praise to it's cinematic design and tension. i'll be posting the link at the bottom. Most of the commercials that apple have done recently are normally painted in white and normally showing off the elegance of their design. There's one advert that i can't help but listen to all the time when i'm down, which is rare for me, It's The Crazy ones narrated by steve jobs not by richard dreyfuss. The steve jobs one just attracts more attention to him and pulls all the focus away from Apple which steve actually said when he was listening the advert back that it was pulling more attention towards steve's life than apple's progression.

Anyway i've digressed and that's the digression, Amazon's new advert is the spitting image of the recent apple's commercial. everything even down to the acoustic guitar playing in the background and i'm waiting for apple to get their class action lawsuit and sue amazon. Obviously i'm exxagtering but that's for effect. and how did they end the advert, they ended it on the amazon logo, and that's just sticking two fingers up at the marketing crew at apple.

For tomorrow, i should be talking about apple earpods advert and how their style of advertising is quite obvious even when they're aren't showing the product.

thanks for reading 

Apple rant

All i want to do at this very moment and laugh at apple. Couple of reasons why. they failed to make the iPhone the iPhone 5 and advertise it like it's two previous interations. I've said this before and i'll say it again, iOS 6 is boring and iOS 5 had a couple of new features like notification centre that was in android years before but iOS 5 set it self apart due to the fact it had the best experience on the iPhone 4S and you know what was on the 4S… Siri. Yes Siri was the main reason why many people actually bought the 4S (other than the fact they wanted the latest and greatest iPhone) The iPhone 5 did set it self apart from an engineering standpoint but other than it, there wasn't that big of a leap between the iphone 4S and iPhone 5. Specs wise it's massively different. the iPhone 5 has a great processor and here's why. If you're playing a high spec game like the ones running tegra 3 on the android side, apple have engineered the processor to overclock at certain speeds to give the user a better experience and if you're using the Facebook app or just safari, it will underclock it to about 512mhz and surprising this is very useful and it save battery.

I've noticed i'm not getting a lot of views anymore, ever since i started my views have been going up and up and the maximum i've got is 3,200 in a month and i used to hit at least 100 views a day and sometimes i'd even hit the 250 mark once every week but now i'm actually struggling to even reach 100 views. i know my content has just a little bit and i've started ranting about stuff that's been on my mind (technology wise) and i've stopped talking about the day news that i see on technobuffalo or idownloadblog.

Plus i know i have a rant about Apple and how shit the iPhone 5 but the iPhone and apple have inspired many people all round the globe to invent stuff and steve jobs has been a great inspriration for that adventure to invent the latest and greatest product.

Thanks for reading

Roundup Update

There's not been that much news in the technology industry that i can really highlight on with one day of blogging like everything that i've been looking at recently hasn't really caught my attention or it's been interesting enough to actually write about. i know this blog is a bit late and it's going to be a bit late roughly every friday since i see my family now on a friday and it's very hard to fit that in with my social life and my blogging life. i haven't stopped doing the roundup of tech news of the week. It's just throughout the week i would write some details down of what to highlight on the end of the week roundup but since there hasn't really been anything that really caught my attention, there has been no point. And another note i'd like to add that i'm getting my sync cable today that i left at my sister's and i only see her once every week so that's why i'm only getting the sync cable a week from when i left it at hers.

Those are just my general thoughts and i've also noticed with my recent blogs that i've started doing blogs about ranting and not about the general news. as soon as i get my work done for college. See this week i've had to write a 15 page script for the soap opera that were doing in college and i successfully gave it in yesterday…finally but i've got more work i need to do, i've got to write a radio drama script that's due in on tuesday and i haven't started it yet and the script in duration has to be 10 minutes long and i'm actually unsure i'll get it finished in time. 

So this is just a little update blog on what i'm doing and most of you won't actually care but that's why i haven't been doing blog that are up to my usual standards.

thanks for reading anyway

Downgrading to ICS

Hello world, i've just talk about this bluntly on my Audio podcast, which i'll give you the link at the bottom. I'm downgrading to Ice cream sandwich from jellybean and well i've got a couple of reasons why. Jellybean is the fastest operating system i've ever played with and it's much better than their froyo days, i'll tell you that. but i've got a few problems which are mainly the roms fault.

First there's no camera app, the Gallery app is there with all the pictures that i've taken with the previous roms i've had. I was at John bishop's Tour on thursday night (famous english scows comedian, Very funny) and i was going to take a picture of the event and post it on Facebook, just because i'm that sad and i was looking through the apps and i couldn't find the app at all. So then i was laughing my head off thinking how could they include an OS with no camera app and plus there was no camera drivers installed so even if i downloaded a camera app from the play store, i couldn't possibly get it to work. so i installed a new version of Jellybean but a different rom and i checked the rom was there which it was but when i installed the Gapps Zip file, the camera app just disappeared again and it turns out people have had the same problem when installing the gapps and they've been able to fix it. I'm not going to go into details but the nesscessary APK file that i needed wasn't there.

Second reason was, there was a lot of apps in the play store that weren't compatible with the device, Facebook and Twitter worked but games like Bad piggies or Jetpack joyride didn't. sure i can live without bad piggies and jetpack joyride but it's just that i want those apps and yet i'm so close to having them.

The third reason, it's the decrease in battery life, i used to get about 3 days worth of battery life with ICS but when i updated to Jellybean rom1, i'd get about 36 hours of battery life and when i tried to run the same OS but different rom, i got about 18 hours and i would have to charge it up at night to ensure i didn't run out of battery the second day.

One more reason is, when i got a text message, the phone wouldn't buzz at all. i would have to have the pulse notification lights to see if i got a message, sure i could just unlock the phone and it's effort to actually see if you've got a text. I would get vibration if i got a phone call.

Thank for reading

Bad Piggies (Creators of Angry birds) Review

A few days ago, a game released and it was said to be a nothing but a spin off and just be a small chapter. I think we are all farmilar with how crap and low minded angry birds is for that trial and error gameplay mechanic. That game has virtually taken over the world and not just in the mobile world. you can buy angry bird themed, IPod Docks, Hats, Board games and many more. It's a fad that has a taken over the world by storm. Now something that isn't low-minded or crap at all is GANGNAM STYLE now that has taken over the world! I don't mean to be a hipster but i watched it before it was famous like when it had under 5 million views.

Back to my original point, the Game that was suppose to be a spin off was Bad piggies and i actually talked about it in a previous blog, how the trailer looked promising, well personally Bad piggies has certainly rejoiced the reputation of Rovio (Creators of angry birds) seriously i was on Bad piggies for about 4 hours without noticing and i ended up being late to meet my friends. It's got the same trial and error format with angry birds but you have so many more opprutintys to be creative, design your own course and create any vehicle you can think of. It might be a car, plane, boat, air balloon, low rider, anything you can think of.

I love this game! no i'm not a angry birds faggot, sure angry birds was a good game but then it got way to repitiive way too quick and yet you could replay the levels on bag piggies, not just because you want to get 3 stars but just because you can and start achieving different outcomes with your little bad piggy.

I recommend it to all and thanks for reading

Tri-band microphones

I did have a blog planned for today about the new bad piggies game for android and iOS Devices but i forgot to post it so it was ready for posting today so instead of skipping a day in blogging, i thought i'd touch a subject that i knew i wanted to cover. I've got a few blogs that i've written in case i won't have time to write a blog due to E.g upcoming deadlines that might be approaching or i've got to get concentrated on Writing the rest of my script instead of technology. If i talk about something that i love, i can really type fast and it's amazing that i can write stuff off the top of my head and it'll make sense but if i talk about something that i have roughly no interest, i will be writing dead slow and it won't be as creative as my other pieces of writing.

Something that struck me that wasn't really a problem is the quality of the phone calls we've been taken for years now. sure there's distortion but i thought that was just because of the network's problem and it realivity couldn't be improved. I'm sure the iPhone 5 wasn't the first phone to have this implemented into their design and i'm going to guess that they aren't the last phone either. Apple might have implemented the Tri-band Microphones into their design and apple being apple are going to patent it to prevent everybody else having it in their design. This is true words, since apple haven't really invented rounded rectangle design for their iPad but they have patented it. It's just the same thing with the patent 'Seeing a number and clicking it and the device will start automattically ringing that number' Yes this is the patent that caused many HTC devices being banned in the USA because of one little patent. That patent is just how the whole world of devices should operate. It's just the cardial progression of technology.

The iPhone 5 has a microphone on the top of the device, a microphone on the bottom which is obvious for the actual phone call microphone and then there's one more microphone on the back of the device which is quiet clever as it listens in on the background noise of the phone call and then converts them hertz and kilohertz to eliminate those sound waves from the initial phone call. Hopefully everybody else can catch onto this idea, even the carriers as they've got to improve the bandwidth on the network towers to with stand the extra data going through.

Thanks for reading

Mac Apps Plead!

Hey i've started blogging everyday on Youtube, over the months i've been doing, Blogging is a dead platform for on website Blogger where they are normally text driven. So i've decided to do my own Information download series on Youtube where i talk about the days events and just something that's on my mind. I've been wanting to do for it ages but the software that i had just wasn't up to scraps. So i've decided to re-work it and do it solely from the top of my head. There's digression and jokes and just you will see the inside of my head. I'll put a link at the bottom.

I actually talked about this on today's audio blog (monday) I've got many things to talk about the macintosh and OSX but today it's only one subject. why do many MAC apps not exist in the mac App store? I don't know if it's distribution or it's just developers don't want their apps on the app store so that apple don't get any money from the apps. For many people they might just think the app doesn't exist and the developers haven't put time in to develop for the mac platform. I know for a fact that VLC player is on the mac but when i searched it in on the Mac app store, i got no results found. So i went on safari and downloaded the Mac version of VLC Player.

It just takes a lot of time in comparison to what time it could take to download the same app if it was in the app store. why do i have to go to the external source to download an app when i could easily go the app store and download it from there. There's another thing as well is that… well i'll tell you the story first. I downloaded Google drive for my mac so i can have all my documents be synced with my college work and PC stuff all in one place but i had to download the app from an external source which is OK because it's a google app and they don't really want to put their apps on the Mac app store so that's understandable but every time my Mac boots up, a little prompt indicating me that Google drive needs to be allowed or ignore and every time i click on Always Allow and yet it still comes up every time, I don't know if it's a bug in the program or that's just how it works.

Thanks for reading and Give me some feedback on my blogs on youtube.