Cult of Mac

Let’s put Antennagate behind us: the new iPhone 4S finally eliminates Death Grip issues once and for all, at least according to iSpazio. Having moved over to a dual antenna design, the iPhone 4S shouldn’t plague anyone with dropped calls just because you “held it the wrong way.”

Looking at our iPhone 4S, it does seem like attenuation has drastically been improved with the new model. What about you? Can you get your iPhone 4S to drop its signal just by holding it the wrong way? Let us know in the comments.

Following months and months of speculation, Apple’s iPhone 4S has finally been launched in the U.S. today, and is now available to through carriers AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, as well as a number of U.S. retailers such as Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and, of course, Apple.

After a record-breaking first day of advanced sales, the iPhone 4S is expected to sell 4 million units during its first weekend, four times greater than the iPhone 4’s initial sales, according to a Friday report.

The past few weeks have seen the passing of a number of computing giants. The world learned this week that Dennis Ritchie, the computer scientist who helped create the UNIX operating system and C programming language, passed away at the age of 70. This software was the progenitor of much of modern computing, including Mac OS X and iOS, and was born (ironically) out of the need to play computer games!

The lines to buy an iPhone 4S are forming across the US with the East coast getting a head start and only 16 minutes before Apple Stores open in the Central Time Zone. By now Apple has issued the proverbial golden tickets to anxious iPhone 4S buyers in those lines. Are you one of the lucky ticket holders?

Apple’s made another good PR decision this week in regards to AppleCare+ and the policy about the requirement that you had to buy AppleCare+ at the same time as your iPhone 4S or iPhone 4 8GB model. If you are a long time Apple customer like I am you were surprised to find out that you had to buy the two together since this isn’t the norm for AppleCare. Usually you could add AppleCare to any Apple hardware product as long as it was still under the first year warranty.

The change caused a stir among Apple’s customers so the company changed the policy, but only until November 14, 2011.

Siri has a problem with broad, comical foreign accents.

Not that the guy in the video has one, you understand. He’s just a non-native speaker.

Our fearless Cult head Leander, on the other hand, speaks exclusively in Cockney rhyming slang, and he’s always going on about how he wants to have a butcher’s down at Tottenham Court Road to stick his hampton in some Berkeley Hunt. How’s Siri going to deal with that, I wonder?

In light of that, something tells me Leander’s iPhone 4S review (coming later today!) isn’t exactly going to be glowing.

Still, Siri’s a work in progress, and Apple’s not going to rest until it can talk to everyone.

[via 9to5Mac]

Matt Warman and Shane Richmond from British broadsheet The Telegraph have put Apple’s new Siri assistant up against Google’s voice control featured in its Android rivals. As you can see from the video above, Siri seems to be significantly more intelligent than its Android rival when it comes to answering questions, sourcing information, and completing tasks. Here’s the video.

Londoners who can’t wait to get their hands on the new iPhone 4S have been forming huge queues outside of Apple’s Covent Garden and Regent Street retail stores this morning, hoping to get their hands on the latest device before they’re all gone. Here’s a few snaps from the U.K. stores.

Lines have started forming in front of Apple Stores across the globe as fans huddle together in anticipation of Apple’s newest magical device. If you’ve already read our iPhone Launch Line Survival Guide and are getting ready to stand in line at your local Apple Store, we’d love to see your pictures so we can share them with everyone. So, if you’d be so kind, please snap a picture of your Apple Store’s launch-line and email us or send it to us via Twitter, along with your store’s location, a brief description of the Launch Party atmosphere, and maybe even a little bit about yourself and the pics. We’ll be collecting reader photos over the next 24 hours and compiling them into a glorious gallery of iPhone Launch Party awesomeness.

Click This Link For Our Email Address

Lots of people are asking why Woz, Apple’s cofounder and still Apple employee number 1, is first in line to buy an iPhone 4S on Friday morning.

I just caught him on the local news, and he has a very good reason.

This looks cool. Gary Allen of IFOAppleStore just snapped these pictures of Apple’s new iPhone 4S window display. Allen is at the Apple Store on 4th Street in Berkeley.

Here’s a couple more pictures. One shows how these big video displays work:

Cloud storage services like Box.net aren’t taking iCloud lightly since on Wednesday they announced a new promotion, which you might find hard to resist considering that Apple’s newly released iCloud only offers users 5GB of free storage.  Box.net is offering 50GB of free online storage for anyone that has a free Box Personal account on any iOS device. Read that again — 10 times the amount of storage that iCloud offers and it is free!

Each year, the lines for Apple’s iPhone become more of a circus. Last year, it was pro line-sitter Greg Packer at the head of the line, giving tons of TV interviews.

This year, app developer Dillon Horowitz has brought a cow, a calf and a goat to Apple’s flagship NYC store.

Here’s something that I won’t know is real or not until I receive my iPhone 4S tomorrow, but never the less it’s funny and entertaining at the same time. So without further adieu its Shit That Siri Says from the website with the same name more after the break.

The iPhone 4S is going to be officially released tomorrow, but a few lucky people have already gotten the one they ordered. The lucky people at iFixit managed to get their hands on an iPhone 4S that was delivered early. They wasted no time disassembling the latest iteration of the iPhone 4S for your viewing pleasure.

You can check out their video teardown after the break.

The iPhone 4S looks like the iPhone 4, but under the hood it’s a whole new beast.

Here’s the first side-by-side picture showing the differences inside:

Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak is already in line for his iPhone 4S. According to Woz’s Twitter account, he’s first in line at the Los Gatos Apple store.

“The long wait begins,” Woz tweeted, “I’m first in line. The guy ahead was on the wrong side and he’s pissed.”

Historic but now down-at-heel retailer Sears isn’t known for its cool stores, but the company is hoping a massive iPad and iPod deployment will change that.

Sears Holdings is equipping 450 stores nationwide with Apple’s sleek devices to train sales people and boost productivity by allowing them to check inventory, order products online and access product information before customers get frustrated and go somewhere else.

Sprint has finally chimed in to end the confusion about whether or not the carrier will unlock the iPhone 4S for customers. In a statement given to Macworld, Sprint clarified that the iPhone 4S will indeed be unlocked at first, but a SIM lock will be “pushed to the devices shortly after launch.”

Reports from earlier this week said that Sprint’s iPhone 4S would come with an unlocked micro-SIM that would allow customers traveling internationally to insert another SIM from any GSM carrier. This would allow customers to avoid roaming charges.

Apple released Newsstand as one of the many new features in iOS 5 yesterday. Newsstand delivers subscription content from publications that have partnered with Apple in the App Store.

You can learn more about Newsstand here, but this time around we’re going to learn how to put Newsstand in a folder on iOS 5.

With the iPhone 4S now available on AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint, many consumers are wondering which carrier offers the best deal. New customers have lots of options on the table for selecting an iPhone 4S. There are also customers considering moving to a new carrier once their current contract expires.

AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint all offer competing voice and data plans for the iPhone 4S that make it difficult to decide on which carrier to choose. Let’s try and figure out which carrier offers the cheapest plans for US iPhone 4S customers.

(Image by Cain and Todd Benson, used under Creative Commons license. Thanks Cain and Todd!)

Users of photo sharing site Flickr have started posting their own tributes to Steve Jobs. This digital portrait by Cain and Todd Benson is just one example – there are hundreds more.

In the market for a new MacBook Pro? Updated models are coming, with all MacBook Pro models tightly constrained, including the 13-inch, 15-inch and 17-inch models.

We’re curious how many of you will be braving the crowds to get yourself an iPhone 4S tomorrow. Answer our poll, then fill us in on your exact plans in the comments.