Apple today announced it has sold a record-breaking nine million new iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c models, just three days after the launch of the new iPhones on September 20. In addition, more than 200 million iOS devices are now running the completely redesigned iOS 7, making it the fastest software upgrade in history.
Impressive.
Great interview with Apple's executives.
When Apple got into the mobile business, it was Nokia’s world. The Finnish company was considered something of a miracle worker. "I'm old enough to remember when Nokia had margins of 25 percent, and there was absolutely no way they were going to be dislodged from their leadership position," says Kuittinen of research firm Alekstra. Says Cook, "I think is a reminder to everyone in business that you have to keep innovating and that to not innovate is to die."
Quite true. If a fingerprint scanner and a 64bit ARM chip are innovation, time will tell, but for now, Apple is surely still atop of its game. The amazing load of iOS 7 application updates and the rapid adoption of Apple's latest is testament to that.
The only review of the iPhone 5S you'll need to read - AnandTech's.
At the end of the day, if you prefer iOS for your smartphone - the iPhone 5s won't disappoint. In many ways it's an evolutionary improvement over the iPhone 5, but in others it is a significant step forward. What Apple's silicon teams have been doing for these past couple of years has really started to pay off. From a CPU and GPU standpoint, the 5s is probably the most futureproof of any iPhone ever launched. As much as it pains me to use the word futureproof, if you are one of those people who likes to hold onto their device for a while - the 5s is as good a starting point as any.
It's a crazy world where the future of Apple becomes apparent not in its software, but in its hardware. The 5S looks like a significant step forward, and in my view, hints at a future where Apple's laptops and maybe even desktops will be powered by ARM, not x86. If I had the spare cash, I'd plonk it down for a 5S in a heartbeat - as it stands now, I have no way of testing iOS 7 myself.
Today, as it rolls out to users everywhere, iOS 7 is still on most levels the same operating system it's been for six years. Meanwhile Android has become a fun, efficient, flowing operating system that makes it easy to move data between apps, easy to share things, and easy to see only the information you need at the moment. Where iOS 7 still feels like jumping in and out of a series of apps, the best moments of using Android make it feel like a cohesive, unified platform. There's no question iOS 7 has the foundational strength to match that experience, but Apple has to throw open the doors and let its huge ecosystem build on that potential.
iOS has always been an excellent operating system, and iOS 7 remains an excellent operating system. But if Apple's goal was to match the power and flexibility of its rivals, iOS 7 feels very much like the beginning of a project rather than its conclusion.
Interesting site that compares iOS 6 applications to their iOS 7 counterparts.
A few things stand out. First, while I dislike the look of iOS 6 applications, they at least look a lot less confusing than their iOS 7 counterparts - easier to read, clearer buttons, better contrast in the colour palette, that sort of thing. Second, many of them, like iOS 7 itself, are quite bright. I'm used to the darker colours of Windows Phone and Android, and iOS 7 is a heck of a lot brighter. Three, there's a lot of Holo and Metro influences in there.
I have actually played with several of the iOS 7 betas, and found none of them particularly convincing. This look has a lot of growing up to do.
Apple's new iPhone 5S, which comes with a fingerprint scanner, won't store actual images of users' fingerprints on the device, a company spokesman confirmed Wednesday, a decision that could ease concerns from privacy hawks.
Rather, Apple's new Touch ID system only stores "fingerprint data", which remains encrypted within the iPhone's processor, a company representative said Wednesday. The phone then uses the digital signature to unlock itself or make purchases in Apple's iTunes, iBooks or App stores. In practice, this means that even if someone cracked an iPhone's encrypted chip, they likely wouldn't be able to reverse engineer someone's fingerprint.This seems relatively safe - but then again, only if you trust that government agencies don't have some sort of backdoor access anyway. This used to be tinfoil hat stuff, but those days are long gone.
I dislike the characterisation of privacy "hawks", though. It reminds me of how warmongering politicians in Washington are referred to as 'hawks", and at least in my view, it has a very negative connotation.
The fingerprint sensor in the 5S is interesting, but I wonder how accurate it will be in the real world; on top of that, with all the NSA news, I'm not particularly keen on Apple reading my fingerprint all the time. Supposedly, applications don't have access to it and it's not stored in the cloud, but I have little to no trust for companies.
The biggest news for me is the fact that the iPhone 5S has a new chip - the A7 - which has the honour of being the first 64bit chip inside a smartphone. iOS7 and first party Apple applications are all 64bit, and Xcode obviously supports it. While this obviously future-proofs the platform for more RAM, I wonder what other motives are involved here. ARM desktops and laptops, perhaps?
I doubt 64bit will provide much benefit today, but you have to hand it to Apple: at least they're done with the transition before it's even needed.
The Hacker School space has an old Apple //e sitting around.
Due to the fact that we are hackers, my friend Martin Törnwall and I decided to turn it into a lisp machine.
Quite cool.
The U.S. Department of Justice and 33 U.S. states and territories proposed those changes after U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan last month found in a civil antitrust case that Apple played a "central role" in a conspiracy with the publishers to raise e-book prices.
The DoJ also requires that competitors such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble be allowed to include links to their own stores in their iOS applications, which Apple had prohibited.
