Apple
Gigabit WiFi: 802.11ac
In recent news (past few weeks) 802.11ac has been popping up quite frequently.
802.11ac is the emerging standard for gigabit wifi. The standard is still a draft, but just like 802.11n, there are already products that support this “draft” standard. 802.11ac will support up to 6.9Gbps (and in lesser forms down to 433Mbps). It is sometimes being marketed as “5G” as the public has become used to the term.
Higher bit rates for 802.11ac tend to use multiple (up to 
antennas to get the full bandwidth.
Broadcom announced a full family of 802.11ac chipsets at CES.
How Can I Delete Photos from my iPhone’s Photostream?
I’ve gotten a few people asking this question. How can you delete photos from your Photostream?
In reality you can’t. You can “delete” the entire album, but not photos individually. This is because Photostream is meant to make your photos available on all of your devices.
I don’t agree with it, but that’s how it is.
You can, however, reset your Photostream if you want to remove all the photos (and start fresh):
- Go to iCloud.com
- Log in (with your Apple ID, probably your Email address, and the password you have to type every day on your iPhone)
- Click on your name in the top right corner to bring up the Account options
- Click on Advanced
- Click “Reset Photo Stream“
You can also turn Photo Stream off, if you want to do that:
- On your iOS device (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch)
- Open Settings
- Click/touch iCloud
- Click/touch Photostream
- Toggle On/Off
Hope that helps achieve whatever you wanted to achieve.
Apple ‘Education’ Event Today in NY at 10am
Finally those of us on the east coast don’t have to wait until 1pm for an event to start.
Apple will likely be unveiling an effort to work with textbook publishers to create interactive eTextbooks (iTextbooks?).
You can follow the event live at TheLoop.
The initiative is rumored to be inspired by the immersive “Our Choice” app. You can see the video below:
Apple Phone Key to Apple TV Success
The Apple iPhone4 is the key to the success and imminence of the upcoming Apple TV (or iTV).
Everywhere you look online, it’s rumors about the upcoming Apple iTV.
Why is the Apple TV inevitable?
Other than it being mentioned by Steve Jobs in his biography as the next frontier for Apple, it’s just smart business.
There are 1.4 billion TV’s around the world. On average a TV costs about $700. That is an approximate market of about $1 trillion.
There are 5.3 billion mobile phones around the world. The average mobile phone cost (to consumers) around $100. That’s a market of $0.5 trillion.
With the average cable bill upwards of $75 a month, there is a huge gap for Apple to fill with it’s digital delivery. Customers are abandoning cable more and more often because of the high cable bills, and the availability of alternatives.
In order to compete with Microsoft, who has sold 57.6 million XBox units, for the coveted “set top” position (center of the home theater) — Apple has to step up their game. The AppleTV (in it’s current form, essentially an iTunes extender) has sold a paltry 2 million units (constantly referred to as a “hobby”).
Microsoft is competing via the XBox in bringing live programming, movie streaming, and even social media apps to the home theater. Why hasn’t Apple struck yet? They have the distribution network, they have the customer base, yet they have sold only 3.4% as many set top units as Microsoft.
They are waiting to get it right.
Apple and Amazon, Let us Choose!
First hand, I only have experience with the iPhone / iOS devices.
I had run across a review on the Kindle Fire at TechnologyRight (he had linked to one of my articles, and I was checking out his site). He mentions that it is too easy to buy content on the Kindle Fire. Definitely a problem (especially if you have kids, as John mentions).
One minor annoyance for me, is how I have to put my password in every time I want to buy, update, or sometimes use content on my iPhone. It is 2012, can we not decided whether to remember our password or not? It’s too hard to buy something. If I want to, let me click on everything and pay $0.99 every time I make a mistake. I want that option.
Personally, being without kids, it would be great to be able to hit “Update All” and not have to enter a password. After all, we can password protect our devices.
Carrier IQ: How to Disable Tracking on Your iPhone
There has been a lot of news surrounding Carrier IQ recently.
Is Carrier IQ on your iPhone? Yes.
Apple has said that it’s not on every device, and while that might be true, it’s probably running for a lot of us. If you have Diagnostics & Usage turned on, then it is running on your iPhone (that’s how Apple dances around it, iOS 5 asks if you want to turn it on).
How do you turn off Carrier IQ? It’s very easy on the iPhone:
- Open Settings
- Go to Location Services
- Scroll to the bottom and go to System Services
- Turn Diagnostics & Usage off
iOS 5.0.1 Update to fix Battery Life Problems
To fix some iOS 5 battery life issues, Apple released an update.
According to the update it:
- Fixes bugs affecting battery life
- Adds Multitasking Gestures for the original iPad
- Resolves bugs with Documents in the Cloud
- Improves voice recognition for Australian users using dictation (I’d love to hear the problems with that)
My iPhone is Fixed, Thanks Apple!
Yesterday I had a bad day.
I dropped my iPhone 4 coming down the stairs, and it shattered. (picture is in yesterday’s post)
My phone is used heavily throughout the work day, so I needed to get it fixed / replaced. First thing I do is make an appointment at the local Apple store (Providence, RI), and head on out.
On the way to the Apple store, I see the “flat tire” indicator turn on. Ok, I can drive with a tire that’s going flat no problem…
BOOM!
My iPhone Broke, Glass Shattered
It finally happened to me. My iPhone 4 broke (after only 9 months of throwing it around).
I was walking downstairs, and dropped it on a wooden floor. It didn’t seem that bad, until I picked it up and it was crazy cracked.
Now I begin my journey of “Do I get the 4S? Can I do this in the 2 days before vacation?”.
I’ll let you know how it’s resolved, and how much this sets me back.
iPhone 4S: How’d Apple Make that Site?
Apple has a pretty cool web page for the iPhone 4S. It’s not something you would expect to see on a web site.
When I first saw it, I had assumed they were all separate images being animated one at a time. I know it had to be CSS3 doing the transitions, but didn’t realize quite how elegant the solution was.
@johnbhall does a great job illustrating Apple’s approach to making the site we see on the iPhone 4S page. His example simplifies Apple’s approach a bit (imagine his example, but with multiple sprite images, one for phones, one for copy).
UPDATE
I took the original article creator at his word, but some things didn’t add up.
@johnbhall says that his example is jsut a demo, but he has the concept behind the iPhone 4S page entirely wrong.
How do I know? It’s pretty easy…
Please share, it makes me happy:
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