viernes, 12 de octubre de 2012

iPad By Davis: “iPod touch 5 vs. iPhone 5 vs. iPod touch 4 gallery” plus 10 more

iPad By Davis: “iPod touch 5 vs. iPhone 5 vs. iPod touch 4 gallery” plus 10 more

iPod touch 5 vs. iPhone 5 vs. iPod touch 4 gallery

Posted: 11 Oct 2012 06:51 PM PDT

iPod touch 5 vs. iPhone 5 macro gallery

The iPhone 5 is the thinnest, lightest iPhone ever, but the iPod touch 5 is almost 2-dimensional. Everything comes at a price, however, and so while the iPod touch 5 is even thinner and lighter than the iPhone 5, it doesn't have anywhere near as good internals. If you don't care about that, however, if all you want to do is scratch the surface and find more surface, then here's how the iPod touch 5 compares to the iPhone 5 is close up. And for good measure, we'll throw in some iPod touch 4 and iPod touch 3 action as well.

While the iPhone 4 had a decidedly worse display than the iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S, the iPod touch 5 received the same 4-inch, 16:9, 1136x640 326ppi IPS (in-plane switching), in-cell display as the iPhone 5, and that's remarkable.

As you'd expect, the iPod touch 5 looks every bit as good, bright, clear, crisp, and colorful as the iPhone 5 even at macro.

Compared to the iPod touch 4, the difference is far more noticeable. Even at the same 50% brightness level, the iPod touch 4 display has far more "pop" (that's the technical term, I swear!) And IPS really improves the viewing angle. (It's more dramatic on videos than it is on the Home screen, so we'll add some of those shots in soon.)

While the iPhone 5 has a two-tone back made necessary by the large, glass, radio-transparent panels at the top and bottom, the iPod touch goes for edge-to-edge aluminum, albeit with a black, plastic radio panel in the top corner. That's unlike the iPod touch 4 but similar to the iPod touch 3.

The iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S both have 8 megapixel sensors for their rear-facing iSight cameras. The iPod touch 5 has a 5 megapixel sensor, the same size as the iPhone 4. Lenses like depth, however, and the iPod touch 5 has very little of that, so it's impressive Apple got as good a sensor in there as they did.

The iPod touch 5 iSight camera, of course, dwarfs the 720p (as in peashooter) found on the iPod touch 4. (The iPod touch 3 had an even worse camera -- none.)

The iPod touch 5's front-facing FaceTime HD camera, however, is the same as the iPhone 5's, capturing 720p video. (Yes, the front camera this year is as good as the back camera of the last two years...)

And it absolutely embarrasses the the iPod touch 4's embarrassing VGA (480p) FaceTim camera.

Close up, while the iPod touch 5 lacks the phone mic, and the same grid design and the iPhone 5, thanks to the iPhone 5 headset jack moving, they both now share similar layouts.

Like the iPhone 5, the iPod touch 5 uses the new Lightning connector at the bottom. This lets it be even thinner than the previous, ridiculously thin, iPod touch 4 and iPod touch 3.

It's hard to really tell because of the amount of curvature on the iPod touch 4 and iPod touch 3 -- The iPod touch 5 has a flatter form factor, more reminiscent of recent iPhones than iPods.

But it makes the iPhone 4S look positively chunky.

All shots taken with a Canon 5D Mark III and a Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM and an EF 100mm F2.8 L IS USM Macro lens, embedded at HiDPI for iPhones, iPad 3, and Retina MacBook Pro.

Apple snags veteran chip designer Jim Mergard from Samsung

Posted: 11 Oct 2012 04:25 PM PDT

Jim Mergard, a 16-year veteran of chip maker AMD, has left his position at Samsung for a job at Apple. Mergard was formerly a vice president and chief engineer at AMD before he left for Samsung, and he is known for his work on both desktop processors as well as systems on chips, or SoCs, like those found in iOS devices. Processor design is of great importance for both Apple and Samsung, as the The Wall Street Journal reports:

Chip design seems to be increasingly important to both companies. Samsung, while better known for memory technology, has vowed to become a more formidable contender in developing microprocessors and related products. Apple also has been staffing up for several years with chip designers to help differentiate its mobile devices. Both use technology from ARM Holdings in their mobile processors.

While it's true that the iPhone 4, 4S, and all three generations of iPad run ARM hardware, with the iPhone 5, Apple introduced the A6, a completely custom processor. If Apple continues to design its own chips, and there's no reason to believe that it won't, acquiring veteran talent such as Mergard, is a crucial. The hiring comes at an interesting point in Apple and Samsung's relationship. The two companies are already rivals, they are suing each other back and forth, and at the same time, Apple depends on Samsung to produce the chips for their iOS devices. Luring such an important and high profile person away from Samsung will undoubtedly intensify the rivalry, which only seems to increase with each new product either company produces.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Notable New iPad Apps: It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

Posted: 11 Oct 2012 01:30 PM PDT

It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown iPad app

It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is a new iPad interactive storybook app that's a re-imagined version of the classic Peanuts Halloween special.

While Linus and Sally wait for the Great Pumpkin, you can create your own Peanuts character and join Charlie Brown at his first-ever Halloween party! Choose from millions of hilarious costume combinations and dress up to trick-or-treat with Lucy, Pigpen and the rest of the gang. Carve your own pumpkin, play a little ditty on Schroeder's piano and bob for apples with Snoopy — just watch out for dog germs, blech!

The app features narration by the original voice of Charlie Brown, Peter Robbins and digitally remastered illustrations, and voices, dialog and music from the 1966 original TV special.

(...)
Read the rest of Notable New iPad Apps: It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (301 words)

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Sprint in talks with Japan's Softbank, may sell stake in company

Posted: 11 Oct 2012 12:17 PM PDT

Japan's Softbank may tie the knot with Sprint

Sprint has disclosed that they're in talks with Softbank, Japan's third-largest mobile carrier, about Softbank potentially acquiring of a large stake in Sprint. In a statement this morning, Sprint announced that the talks primarily regard a "substantial investment" in Sprint by Softbank, and a potential transaction could change who controls Sprint. Such a move would give Softbank an instant national foothold in the United States, and help Sprint financially. They would not be the first internationl carrier to come to the U.S. either. Vodafone, the second-largest carrier in the world, owns a large stake in Verizon Wireless, and T-Mobile is famously owned by Deutsche Telekom.

Sprint has been the thrid-place carrier in the U.S. for years, and though a Softbank investment would not change that, at least in the short term, it might allow Sprint a bit of breathing room, as well as more resources to increase the deployment of their LTE network. What this means for a potential Sprint bid on MetroPCS is unknown.

Source: Sprint

Google+ iPad App Updated: Adds Ability to Edit Posts & More

Posted: 11 Oct 2012 10:11 AM PDT

Google+ iPad app

The Google+ app for iPad and iOS has been updated today, to Version 3.2. The list of new features in this update is not long, but it does include a couple of big user wish list items.

The ability to edit posts is the first of those and iPad users also get the ability to search for people and posts. The update also adds support for iOS 6 and the iPhone 5, and allows Google+ page owners to sign in as their page and view and comment.

I have a Google+ page for iPad Insight as well as my personal account, so I've been giving all these new features a quick try since installing the update a short while ago.

(...)
Read the rest of Google+ iPad App Updated: Adds Ability to Edit Posts & More (188 words)

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Eric Schmidt talks Apple, Maps, patents, and says the Android-iOS platform fight is "defining"

Posted: 11 Oct 2012 08:48 AM PDT

Eric Schmidt talks Apple, Maps, and says the Android-iOS platform fight is

Eric Schmidt, the former Apple board member, Google CEO, and current Google Executive Chairman, has once again given his thoughts on the current relationship between Google and Apple, including patents Apple's current mapping woes. In a sit down with the All Things D's Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, Schmidt opined that Apple should have kept Google Maps, and that Apple was now discovering that maps are difficult work.

The Android-Apple platform fight is the defining contest. Here's why: Apple has thousands of developers building for it. Google's platform, Android, is even larger. Four times more Android phones than Apple phones. 500 million phones already in use. Doing 1.3 million activations a day. We'll be at 1 billion mobile devices in a year.

We've not seen network platform fights at this scale. The beneficiary is you all, the customer, globally. "This is wonderful."

Of course, iOS is installed on, at any given time, three models of iPhone, the current model and the previous two generations, while Android powers most of the phones from Samsung, HTC, Motorola, etc. So of course there are going to be more Android phones than iPhones. That's just common sense.

Speaking about patents, Mr. Schmidt expressed frustration at patent wars, and the fact that hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent fighting patent trolls. When asked about the Apple/Samsung trial in particular, Mr. Schmidt wouldn't comment directly, though he did offer up an opinion that companies like Google and Apple were not victims in these patent conflicts, but rather it's the smaller companies, those that can't get patents in order to defend themselves, that are really in trouble.

Other topics touched on include Facebook, China, and Google's self-driving cars. The whole interview is interesting and illuminating, and should be read in it's entirety.

Source: All Things D

Survey Says: Teen Tablet Ownership Growing & Teens Love iPads

Posted: 11 Oct 2012 08:58 AM PDT

Teens and Tablets

A new survey shows that tablet ownership among teens is on the rise, and finds that teens are big fans of the iPad. The survey was done by Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster and polled nearly 8,000 teens.

As AllThings D reports, in addition to finding that Apple "remains the pre-eminent technology brand for teens", the survey highlights these results related to tablets and the iPad:

    • 44 percent own a tablet – that's double the number in the same survey 18 months ago
    • Of those who own tablets, 72 percent own iPads.
    • Of those who do not own tablets, but plan to buy one in the next six months, 74 percent hope to buy an iPad.
    • 43 percent said they'd be more likely to buy an iPad if Apple released a smaller version of the device at $299.

Good numbers for iPad momentum there, especially if we see that little fella come out soon as we're expecting  to.

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The Magazine, by passionate technologists, for passionate technologists, now available in Newsstand

Posted: 11 Oct 2012 08:10 AM PDT

The Magazine, by passionate technologists, for passionate technologists, now available in Newsstand

The Magazine is a new endeavor by Marco Arment, the creator of Instapaper and host of Build & Analyze, with no greater or lesser goal than to do an iOS Newsstand periodical the way it was meant to be done. In a market all too littered by massive, unwieldy Adobe InDesign exports, shackled to old-world sales and marketing models, The Magazine's premise comes off as audacious -- 4 articles every two weeks, written by passionate technologists for passionate technologists. Here's how Arment describes it in his forward/declaration of intent:

I've always loved technology, and I especially love the recent focus on mobile phones, tablets, and truly great personal computers. These interests also increasingly include other fields, such as photography, publishing, and music, affected heavily by technology.

This is what The Magazine is about.

Arment is also taking a page, almost literally, from Instapaper's playbook. Eschewing the static PNG files and anachronistic layouts of traditional magazines, he's simply, beautifully, cleanly, presenting The Magazine's content in as enjoyably readable a format a possible. Controls are likewise minimal. From the table of contents you can switch between dark and light mode, increase or decrease the type size, or swipe to delete content (a small trashcan will appear in the colored issue number/data bar to confirm).

From an individual article's page, you can share content via Mail, Message, Twitter, or Facebook, or send a copy to the clipboard or to Instapaper. Links are easy to see and if you tap on one, the article lifts up to show you a preview of the linked content. If you tap a link in the preview, you're carousel'ed out of The Magazine and the web page is served up in Safari.

The reading controls, however, are only available on the table of contents screen, so you can't change type size or toggle dark/light modes while inside an article, which also means you can't preview type-size changes without flipping back and forth. The share sheet is available on the article pages, but it's anchored to the top, so if you only decide you want to share an article by the time you finish reading it, you have to scroll all the way back to the top. Some sort of persistent controls (the way the issue number and date persist on the table of content), or even a set reveal-on-touch controls, would feel better.

Scrolling in articles is fast and fluid, and both button and gesture-based navigation options are available. From the table of contents screen, tap a article to go to that article, and tap the contents button to go back to the table of contents. You can also swipe to push the table of contents aside and reveal an article beneath it (the first article if you haven't begun reading yet, otherwise the last article you were reading). You can also swipe to pull the table of contents back into place so you can choose another article. Unfortunately, you can't swipe the other way to navigate to the next article. That's something I keep instinctively wanting to do, so hopefully it gets added in a future release.

In addition to Arment's forward, the first issue of The Magazine includes essays by Guy English, Jason Snell, Alex Payne, and Michael Lopp. English takes a look at the [Daring] Fireball Format of link blogs and their rise in popularity, Snell tackles the schism between geeks who do and don't love sports, Alex Payne laments on the people behind technology and how sometimes we get it wrong, and Lopp explores leadership and the dynamics between stability and volatility.

Most magazines aren't really in the content business. They're in the advertising and marketing business, selling our attention and our mailing addresses, with the content serving as a kiss and a cookie to keep us happily flipping page and subscribed. That's not always bad, and some really terrific magazines have been funded using that model. But The Magazine looks to be in the actual content business -- you read what you pay for.

With The Magazine, Arment has stripped the traditional format, model, and expectations of the magazine down to its essence, to the barest possible elements it needs to exist as a magazine -- a determined publisher, talented writers, and solid content -- and is hoping that in doing so, it flourishes.

I hope so as well. I hope it gives voice and exposure to a wide array of technologists who take the opportunity to raise the bar and the stakes of technology writing. And I hope it provides an oasis to readers hungry for just that. That may sound like a lot of pressure to put on a new type of publication on the day of its very first issue, but it seems like not an ounce less than Arment himself is placing upon it. And that's a stupendous thing.

The first issue of The Magazine, with free 7-day trial, is available now. Subscriptions cost $1.99 a month (which should include 2 issues given the current publishing schedule). Give it a read.

Free to try - Download now

Note: There's currently a bug that prevents you from subscribing on multiple iOS devices. According to Arment, a fix is on its way.

iFixIt tears down the 5th gen iPod touch

Posted: 11 Oct 2012 08:00 AM PDT

iFixIt tears down the 5th gen iPod touch

Apple's new fifth generation iPod touch is just starting to hit consumer's hands and iFixIt has already managed to tear it down. While the iPhone 5 was given a 7 out of 10 repairability score from iFixIt, Apple's newest generation iPod touch only achieved a 3 out of 10.

Much like its predecessors, the fifth generation iPod touch isn't the easiest device to repair, mostly attributed to its thin design.

With no external screws, the Touch is tough to pry open, and its logic board utilizes two hard-to-manage ribbon cables: the battery, logic board, front camera, speaker, headphone jack, Lightning connector, and home button switch are all soldered onto one cable, while the volume buttons, power button, LED flash, and rear microphone are all attached to another cable. Repair is not impossible, but it's certainly going to be difficult and expensive if one component breaks. These factors combined earned the iPod a 3 out of 10 on our repairability scale (10 is easiest to repair).

In the past, the trend was typically that the thinner a device got, the harder it got to repair. The iPhone 5 proved that theory wrong and actually ends up being extremely easy to repair. We've already shown you how to replace a cracked screen on an iPhone 5 and we believe many users with moderate DIY skills will be able to do it on their own with no problems.

Since Apple has chosen to link many functions to single cables, it can make a hand slip or a torn cable a lot more expensive this time around. While previous generation iPhones and iPods have put functions like the proximity sensor and noise canceling mic on the same cable, they were relatively cheap and inexpensive. Components such as the dock connector, Home button, flash, and speaker had their own assemblies making repairs easier and more cost effective even if you did make a mistake.

This probably won't be the case with the fifth generation iPod touch. While we aren't sure what component cost will be for these guys yet, I'd be willing to bet it's going to be higher than components on previous models. While a repair isn't impossible, it'll definitely cost you more time and money than before.

Outside of repairability, iFixIt also has some details on the specs of the new iPod touch:

  • A5 Processor
  • Hynix H9TKNNN4KDBRCR 512 MB RAM
  • Toshiba THGBX2G8D4JLA01 32 GB NAND flash
  • Apple 3381064 dialog power management IC
  • Murata 339S0171 Wi-Fi module
  • Broadcom BCM 5976 touchscreen controller
  • Apple 33831116
  • STMicroelectronics AGD32229ESGEK low-power, three-axis gyroscope
  • Texas Instruments 27AZ5R1 touchscreen SoC

While it may not have received the same A6 treatment as the new iPhone 5, it's still a worthy upgrade for anyone using a second or third generation iPod touch. If you've got a fourth generation iPod touch, it may not be a huge upgrade unless, of course, you've got your eye set on a specific color and really desire the extra screen real estate.

You can hit the link below for even more images and detail on the insides of the iPod touch fifth generation.

Source: iFixIt

Deal of the Day: 46% off Seidio ACTIVE Case (with kickstand) for iPhone 5

Posted: 11 Oct 2012 06:47 AM PDT

Today Only: Buy the Seidio ACTIVE Case (with kickstand) for iPhone 5 and save $15.95!

The Seidio ACTIVE Case provides great shock and impact absorption while adding minimal bulk to your iPhone 5. This two-layer case features a compact and lightweight rubber polymer with a precisely positioned hard skeleton for added protection. Comes in black, blue, red, purple, white, green and features a retractable kickstand.

List Price: $34.95     Today Only: $19.00

Learn More and Buy Now

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iMore show 319: Renanoed

Posted: 11 Oct 2012 06:19 AM PDT

Rene's angry, Seth is tired, and Georgia's at peace with the universe. Wait... what? Join us in the Fringe-verse as we talk the iOS 6 App Store, the Podcasts app, the new iPod touch and iPod nano, the iPad mini non-event, and app.net. This is the iMore show!

Show notes

Hosts

Credits

You can reach all of us on Twitter @iMore or ADN @iMore, or you can email us at podcast@imore.com or just leave us a comment below.

For all our podcasts -- audio and video -- including the iMore show, ZEN and TECH, Iterate, and more, see MobileNations.com/shows

Thanks to the iMore Accessory Store for sponsoring this week's show. Your one-stop-shop for everything iPhone and iPad, including cables, cases, chargers, Bluetooth and much more, check out store.imore.com.




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