The Apple Thread

[Saidur_Ali]

When the OS is designed hand in hand with the hardware it's pretty easy to make something very fast. My 5 year old plastic Macbook outperforms my friends year old Lenovo laptop in 90% of everyday use. On paper his spec is better, but in actual use I can launch apps faster, browse the net smoother, run multiple programs with ease. I could probably get another few years use out of it if I didn't desperately want USB3 ports.

The 1.4GHz CPU is only a rumour at the moment anyway, the only source of that is one Chinese screenshot.

The CPU on any app and OS that is 64 bit, whether it will be new Android L or iOS 7 or higher will heavily favour the iPhone 6 processor. It is a bit like comparing say a top Intel Quad Core against an AMD Eight Core CPU, the Intel CPU not only has more CPU performance, it also takes a lot less power to run. Also single core performance is important which both the Apple A8 has and top Intel CPUs have so any tasks that don't utilise all the other cores, the gap will widen in performance.

 

[F1GTR]

Really nice article on the Apple Watch from a watch guy's point of view. He's quite impressed by the build quality:

Again, Apple paid great attention to detail with this new wrist-bound peripheral, and it shows the Swiss that it is possible to have great design at low costs. That is the most exciting thing about the Apple Watch for me – it will push the Swiss to take the sub-$1,000 mechanical watch category more seriously.

http://www.hodinkee.com/blog/hodinkee-apple-watch-review

The link bracelet and the Milanese bracelet look so good. And now I want that Tissot Milanais so badly.

 

[Swagger897]

I'd like to say that I never had any issue with battery in my 3G, 4 or 5. I couldn't careless if I could change the battery, simply for the fact way before the battery give a up the ghost (my first two phones are still ticking along fine) I'll upgrade. So @E28 statement holds true from my experience of owning iPhones for some years. Others haven't been so lucky but that's the same for all hardware, some have issues others don't. Apple wouldn't be getting such high customer satisfaction scores if it was such a huge issue.

I can get my 5 to last two days of use. If needed but if I'm seriously hammering it I usually get home from work about 8pm and put on charge with the battery sitting on 25% or more. Unless you live with the phone you can't claim something you only have seen second hand and heard in a TV advert.

Well on the fact that my mother, father, and sister, along with all but around 7 of my friends have iPhones, I think that gives me sufficient reason of proof to claim what I said, and the fact "I live with it/them"...

It might not be that bad where you are, and until the mophie or whatever the charging cases is called came out, battery issue has been the número uno problem/complaint for people whom I know.

iOS8's continuity features with OSX Yosemite and now the Apple Watch. I'll be able to take calls, receive/send text messages on my Mac and it'll route through my iPhone.

https://www.apple.com/uk/ios/whats-new/continuity/



Nope.

Galaxy S2: 8.5mm, Galaxy S5: 8.1mm, iPhone 6: 6.9mm



If I'll be out without a wall socket for a while I'll just bring a powerbrick. Which is exactly what I did this Summer when I went to a 5-day festival in the middle of a field. I topped my phone up from 20% (from the previous day's usage) to 100% every morning and I still had enough juice in that brick to top up my GoPro batteries too.

If there's something truly wrong with the battery I can just book an appointment on Apple's site, walk into one of their stores and walk back out with a replacement.



iCloud is backup storage for your phone, and you get 5GB free, which is enough for a full backup for most people. It's there so that you don't lose messages/contacts/data if you lose your phone, and if you get a new one it'll just sync from that so you can pick up where you left off. Expandable storage would be nice though. There are cases/apps that do that now I think.

Ahh... I thought the Galaxy Gear did sync pretty well in the reviews and when I tried it out.. But I don't live with it so.....

I'll look at a few more articles on the build specs too for both comps I said..

 

[boiltheocean]

Really nice article on the Apple Watch from a watch guy's point of view. He's quite impressed by the build quality:

http://www.hodinkee.com/blog/hodinkee-apple-watch-review

He raises a good point about emotion, my watch was given to me on my 21st, a pretty traditional present for a guy of that age and no matter how good the Apple Watch or any other smart watch is it will never find space on my wrist.

 

[Cobra_GT500]

Nothing that striked me to want this phone for $1000 im still on iPhone 4S may upgrade when it's a bit cheaper.

 

[SlipZtrEm]

?? do you mean an Android device doesn't sync as well as Apple's do?

It syncs with other Apple devices easier, yes. And in a work environment where I'm utterly surrounded by them, that's handy.

I don't know how to roll this out nicely but that is probably one of the most ignorant statements I've ever seen.. Samsung even made a commercial about it for Pete's sake..

And? Apple made those awful "I'm a Mac" ads a decade ago that had some folks thinking it really wasn't possible to make photo albums on PC, or still parrot "Mac's can't get viruses". Commercials have taken the smear approach for a long time now; it doesn't make them fact.

My 4 will last me two days if I don't treat it like a portable computer. It typically exhausts about 75% of its battery during a day of heavy use though, and then I charge it at night. Strangely enough, my dad's constantly complaining about his Galaxy whenever I see him, and he barely uses that thing at all, yet it dies as quick or faster than my older phone. It's odd, but I don't take either of them to be representative of the entire model line.

or the fact that you can't update your storage... that's why Apple want you to purchase iCloud storage.. none of it is for the "consumer interest" but rather "big fat green wallets with help from Steve"

A little from column A, a little from column B, I think.

 

[Swagger897]

And? Apple made those awful "I'm a Mac" ads a decade ago that had some folks thinking it really wasn't possible to make photo albums on PC, or still parrot "Mac's can't get viruses". Commercials have taken the smear approach for a long time now; it doesn't make them fact.

I recall those with the young looking bloke and the cube worker...

I do also understand that a commercial doesn't make everything facts, but that paired along with what I have seen, is no different than me using sources for a frq to provide a pov..

but I don't take either of them to be representative of the entire model line.

well you certainly don't read a car review and find a $250k+ car does not have cup holders and not purchase it on that basis.. so that's a bit obvious. But everyone has their own mindset of a product, and what they want to look at it as. That's the important bit, your own opinion..

 

[Sonygamer455]

I hate that they "killed off" the IPod Classic because that was my favorite for storage purposes. I loved the fact it could be enabled for disk use to store other stuff on it. Everything from music, to videos, and whatever I else I could store on it, it was sort of like an external hard drive. Oh well, all good things must come to an end at some point.

The irony about them canceling the Classic is that my 160GB Classic quit functioning today. I have had it for 4 years now and I don't think I will ever get to use it for anything much anymore ever again.

 

[kennylmao]

I don't know how to roll this out nicely but that is probably one of the most ignorant statements I've ever seen.. Samsung even made a commercial about it for Pete's sake.. I have two batteries but I don't carry it everywhere with all the time, only on trips and such (which Samsung portrayed the commercial in an airport [as my memory recalls]). Just about every high school kid I went with had an iPhone (probably 9/10) and they always had to "hunt for a plug".. (First off, shouldn't we be doing our work like a good student? or fidgeting on out phones? goodie-two-shoes reply there)

Haven't they heard of power banks? My douchebag(didn't use to be) cousin has one. Looks like a dumbass clutching it under his arms connected to his iPhone 5.

I can't wrap my head around the purpose of a power bank; and this applies to iPhones, Androids, and any other phone users. Phone doesn't have enough battery life? Then why aim for thinner, lighter phones to the point that it compromises battery life? Ignorant consumers want the thinnest, lightest, etc.?

Oh and uh, remember when Apple said that an iPhone was the optimum size for our hands and big phones were pointless?

 

[Sprite]

Oh and uh, remember when Apple said that an iPhone was the optimum size for our hands and big phones were pointless?

Companies make stupid statements and that doesn't exclude Apple, they come out with all sorts of throwaway statements and make themselves look like tools. Other famous people have done it in the past regarding the success of the iPod or storage in a computer too.

@Swagger897 my apologies, if you've had first hand experience then that's fine.

I've been having this same discussion with a friend at work who was an iPhone user (having a 4s) and decided to upgrade to Samsung S5. He loves his new phone and I agree it's, good. The screen is nice and bright, the photos (especially night shots) look great. But he still has to charge it up every night.

It's sounding more like those who are wanting the iPhone are people who work with Apple products and choose them based on this for ease of use. As stated earlier I'm going for the 6 simply because of the Ecosystem is something I'm familiar with, I have hundreds of pounds worth of Pro Photography and Music apps for my phone, iPad and MacBook.

@F1GTR

Thanks for the article regarding the watch. The more I look at it I see nice design touches which add to the idea of nice build quality. I'm just not convinced a watch is supposed to do more than tell the time. It's a segment I'm going to follow closely and see how it all pans out for now.

 

[Grayfox]

Oh and uh, remember when Apple said that an iPhone was the optimum size for our hands and big phones were pointless?

Apple also said a small tablet is useless, but hey the ipad mini being a good seller is just a lie.

Apple says a lot of things to make them self's look smart and cool.

They also said they wont make a cheap phone, they then made one.

Reasons, they were running out of idea's and their current ones were stale updates of current model lines.

 

[2clicks]

It's odd, but I don't take either of them to be representative of the entire model line.

Of course you can't generalise when it comes to Samsung Galaxy phones, but with the iPhone you can see that it is easier to judge usage statistics because only one model per generation exists. That could make it a lot harder for Samsung to roll out support for all their devices and efficiently optimise them. I've owned an S1 and an S2 Plus. The S1's battery lasted about 10 hours, while my S2 Plus's batttery could last about 16. Upon rooting and installing Cyanogenmod 9, I found that the S1's battery life was significantly improved. So the case with Android is that optimisation is entirely up to the user, but Apple does it for the consumer, and does it properly.

 

[sesselpupser]

How is a Dual-core 1.4 GHz CPU faster than a Quad-core 2.5GHZ? Apple fanboys

If things were that straightforward, how could a 3.5GHz quad core ever be considered to be better than a 4.7GHz octo core? There's more to it than the number of cores and the clock speed. A very rudimentary example would be two processors, one 1GHz and one 2GHz, all identical except the 1GHz does 200 instructions per cycle and the 2GHz does 100 IPC, they'd perform about the same even though one is half the speed of the other. Examples of other things that matter a great deal are storage speed and latency, the processor architecture, efficiency of the OS and how many abstraction layers the software being run on the processor have to go through. The latter is why Metal is a big deal.

Also, Android is a generic OS whereas iOS is effectively an OS for embedded systems; Android hardware and software is no more synchronised than Windows OS is with the hardware. Apple's systems can be more efficient because the left hand (software) knows exactly what the right hand (hardware) is doing. If you can understand why the PS4 and Xbox One can produce graphics as good as they do despite using what is effectively a 1.6GHz (when was the last time you saw a gaming PC with a 1.6GHz processor?) octo core netbook APU and an outdated GPU that would struggle in a PC, then you should be able to understand this concept.

 

[Grayfox]

How is a Dual-core 1.4 GHz CPU faster than a Quad-core 2.5GHZ? Apple fanboys

CPU pipeline length.

Normally pipeline lengths are the about the same these days.

 

[Robin]

I hate that they "killed off" the IPod Classic because that was my favorite for storage purposes. I loved the fact it could be enabled for disk use to store other stuff on it. Everything from music, to videos, and whatever I else I could store on it, it was sort of like an external hard drive. Oh well, all good things must come to an end at some point.

The irony about them canceling the Classic is that my 160GB Classic quit functioning today. I have had it for 4 years now and I don't think I will ever get to use it for anything much anymore ever again.

What problem are you having? You could try opening it up and reseating the hard drive. I had the same problem happen to my 20gb 4g iPod and I took out the hard drive gave it a very gentle shake (apparently the parts seize up over time), put back the rubber bumpers and plugged in the ribbon cable tightly and it worked again. Also if the battery is old it can't deliver the proper voltage to spin it up.

 

[Grayfox]

If the drive is dead, replace it.

There cheap on ebay.

 

[GBO Possum]

For me, it's not just the hardware specs, but how it integrates with other devices.

We have moved from PCs to Macs. (I used to build PCs for myself to get a lot of performance, but gave that up.)

Our house has 3 Macs, 2 iPhones, 2 iPads, an Apple TV and an Airport Extreme. It all works nicely and I don't have to spend any time on system integration, and very little time on maintenance. Everything has a long life, so the sticker shock is not too much of an issue. I'm writing this on a 2008 MacBook Pro which still works really well, and I expect it to last me another 3 years or so. Maybe it'll have a ten year life.

That's by way of background, so you can see where I'm coming from.

I suspect I will upgrade from iPhone 5 to 6+, primarily due to the camera and battery life. The size delta is both a negative and a positive. So long as it fits in a pocket! I'll go for the maximum capacity as always.

The Apple Watch is not clearly enough defined to make a decision yet. My impression is that the announcement was incomplete in order not to tip their hands to the competition. What I saw, I liked a lot. I can see my FitBit going away, which will be a bit of a relief. The FitBit and its app are buggy and take too much time to coddle them along.

The downside of the Apple Watch is that I am of a generation which wears watches, and regards them as a longterm investment. I have two, which were gifts - one for "dress" use, one waterproof. Do I wear a watch on each wrist, using the traditional watch to tell me the time and the Apple Watch to do the other stuff? Probably. I wear watch and FitBit Flex now.

Apple Watch pricing, when completely released, will probably cause sharp intakes of breath. I'm guessing I will be an early adopter (as usual) but time will tell.

 

[2clicks]

Apple cater to the majority, to the consumer. And most consumers will never change the battery in their phone, or have any need to.

So a cold reboot by removing and re-inserting the battery in case something hangs is pretty much impossible. I don't get why OEMs want to do this. PCs, laptops and gaming consoles are all cold-bootable because their main power source can be physically detached from their bodywork, I don't know why mobile phones and tablets can't be the same.

 

[E28]

So a cold reboot by removing and re-inserting the battery in case something hangs is pretty much impossible. I don't get why OEMs want to do this. PCs, laptops and gaming consoles are all cold-bootable because their main power source can be physically detached from their bodywork, I don't know why mobile phones and tablets can't be the same.

Phones almost always have an option to do this without removing the battery. On iDevices you merely hold the home and power buttons simultaneously until it turns off. My old HTC also had an option to do the same, except you hold the volume down button.

 

[Swagger897]

Phones almost always have an option to do this without removing the battery. On iDevices you merely hold the home and power buttons simultaneously until it turns off. My old HTC also had an option to do the same, except you hold the volume down button.

An Apple device most of the time will do this normal... But I have had a few cases where the freeze was so bad it lasted for more than thirty minutes. It was a good thing though that it was really low on battery (5-10) and I let it run out.. Probably not the best thing but there wasn't a fix for it..

 

[Dan]

Gee thanks, Apple. I really didn't need that new U2 album. Seriously. I don't want it.

 

[Robin]

Gee thanks, Apple. I really didn't need that new U2 album. Seriously. I don't want it.

They haven't been good since 'All That You Can't Leave Behind' and 'How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb' anyway IMO.

 

[Dan]

They haven't been good since 'All That You Can't Leave Behind' and 'How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb' anyway IMO.

To be honest, I've never listened to a U2 song entirely and I couldn't be bothered to. How do I get rid of this album? I don't want it to take up unnecessary space on my phone.

 

[sesselpupser]

So a cold reboot by removing and re-inserting the battery in case something hangs is pretty much impossible. I don't get why OEMs want to do this. PCs, laptops and gaming consoles are all cold-bootable because their main power source can be physically detached from their bodywork, I don't know why mobile phones and tablets can't be the same.

They want to make the phones as foolproof as possible (as well as more expensive, sexier-looking, less repairable and more like a service than a product - an iPhone user on a 24-month contract is essentially on a £35+ per month subscription treadmill of apps and upgrades to the next model), so having a phone that an idiot can't accidentally corrupt by removing the battery while it's doing something is a thing they want. In addition it lets them save a whole load of cost - soldering the battery on directly is far cheaper than having a connector component for it on both the phone and battery, and there'd have to be some sort of latch on the back cover of the phone, and it'd have to be designed to be operable over several years' worth of cycles, knowing Apple they'd want to add a proprietary microcontroller on the battery to prevent cheap knock-offs but that'd get circumvented anyway so they'd make very little money on replacement batteries, making the whole thing a very expensive way to let Ebay resellers make a whole load of money. Then you have the fact that li-po batteries are really quite sensitive and will explode if used inappropriately (I found this out the hard way after procrastinating on getting a replacement charger for my MacBook for two weeks, the battery level dropped so far that it would refuse to charge again as a safety precaution to prevent the battery from exploding) so cheap knock-off batteries could potentially start exploding, turning phones into glass frag grenades that you carry around in your pocket. Actually, I know someone who had a Galaxy S4 explode in his pocket (due to a bad batch of batteries, not a cheap knock-off he'd put in there), in addition to the initial bang it set his rubber case on fire which gave him some pretty bad burns, it sprayed the contents of the battery into the wound and also a few fragments of plastic were removed when he got to A&E. It, sadly, also ruined his favourite jeans.

Anyway, I personally have never needed to remove the battery from my iPhone 3G, 3GS, 4S, iPad 1st gen or late 2013 MacBook Air, and I never needed to remove the power source of my 2008 MacBook or my 2009 Mac Pro (which I had up until a month ago). Sure, I reset the SMC of my girlfriend's 2006 MacBook once or twice in late 2011 when she was having all sorts of problems with it, but it was a five year old laptop that was one of the first of Apple's new (at the time) Intel computers off the production line... I've never had a problem with an iOS device that a quick hard reset by holding the two buttons down or a factory reset and restore from backup couldn't fix, nor has anyone else I've known.

 

[Swagger897]

@CallmeDan it's never going to go away, but you can hide it..

Open your iTunes store. On the right hand side, locate the “Quick Links” column and click on “Purchased.” On the right hand side of that page, you’ll see two side-by-side tabs: “All” and “Not in My Library.” Click on “Not in My Library.” While in this mode, scrolling over a purchase

will generate an “X” icon on the upper left hand portion of the purchase (in this case, the new U2 album). Clicking on the “X” gives you the option of hiding it. iTunes will ask you if you’re sure you want to hide this purchase. Click “Hide.” You will no longer see Songs of Innocence on your device.

 

[Swagger897]

Galaxy S2: 8.5mm, Galaxy S5: 8.1mm, iPhone 6: 6.9mm

After looking up those numbers, I didn't mean the size of the phone, but the actual back cover of the phone..

I have something that will measure it but could not find it.... nor could I find how thick it is either..

 

[F1GTR]

After looking up those numbers, I didn't mean the size of the phone, but the actual back cover of the phone..

I have something that will measure it but could not find it.... nor could I find how thick it is either..

A glued in battery allows for tighter packaging - there's no need to add a frame to slide the battery into, no need to have contacts on the battery and a connector on the phone. Doesn't matter how thin the cover is, you look at the phone as a whole.

 

[nobuffalo]

Just today I was hiking a part of the Appalachian trail and found a samsung cell phone battery, about a mile up I ran into the guy who was heading back looking for it. He said his phone kept turning on and off so he pulled the battery and it then fell out of a hole in his pocket. Not sure that it means anything, I just found it somewhat ironic considering the discussion going on in here. Personally I could care less about being able to easily change my battery as long as it works well, and the one in my 4s has worked well with only the occasional hiccup for the 3 years or so I've had it.

Anyways, my brother and I will be upgrading soon and I think he's going for the new 6 while I'll be getting the 5s. The 6 would cost me about twice as much so I'm unsure if it would be worth the extra cost.

 

[Robin]

The 6 plus has already sold out in the US and also crashed the Apple website, can't people just wait a month!

"No one is going to buy a big phone" - Steve Jobs

 

[Dan]

@CallmeDan it's never going to go away, but you can hide it..

God I hate Apple. And U2.