In case you didn’t know, today is apparently “Steve Jobs Day” in the state of California. Governor Jerry Brown recently tweeted that today, October 16, is now known as Steve Jobs Day. The golden state celebrates Jobs’ legacy.
A great way to take part in the new holiday would be to tune into the Discovery channel tonight to watch the Mythbusters special, “iGenius: How Steve Jobs Changed the World.”
Siri is the intelligent assistant that comes with the iPhone 4S. You simply hold the iPhone’s Home button and speak your question or command — Siri does the rest.
While the obvious benefit of Siri is the handsfree aspect of voice technology, you can actually edit your Siri conversations the good old fashioned way with your keyboard.
Photo Stream is a feature in iCloud that allows Apple users to wirelessly sync photos and video between multiple devices. The service lets you take a picture on your iPhone or iPad 2 running iOS 5 and have it uploaded automatically in the background to your Photo Stream folder. That folder is then made available on all of your devices that are logged into iCloud, including iPhoto on your Mac.
There currently isn’t a way to individually delete photos from Photo Stream, but there is a way to completely reset Photo Stream and start over.
Planted in your shiny new iPhone 4s and in the iOS 5 are the seeds of tomorrow’s Mac of the future, and indeed the future of all computers. You can find them if you know where to look. (And I’ll tell you where below.)
It’s not supposed to be this way. In the Microsoft world, at least, new technology starts at the top and “trickles down” from bigger and more powerful computers over time to mobile devices and eventually cell phones. If you’re focused on the machines, this makes sense, as larger computers are more capable of handling powerful new features.
But if you’re focused on the user, as Apple is, this approach doesn’t make sense. Apple has developed what I believe is a unique strategy: introduce new interfaces and new ways to interact with computers and the Internet on the smallest devices first, then scale them up over time, eventually ending up as desktop features.
California Governor Jerry Brown announced Friday, that Sunday, October 16th will be known as “Steve Jobs Day” statewide. This will coincide with the private Steve Jobs memorial planned at Standford University for the Apple co-founder. The Governor tweeted the news about Sunday late Friday after the announcement that some of Silicon Valley’s well-known people were invited to the memorial service at Stanford.
We have no doubts at Cult of Mac that iPhone 4S sales this week-end are going to be a blow out and the first thing people will probably try to do after obtaining their iPhone 4S is to converse with Siri. Well it looks like this morning with way too many people to talk to Siri has gone offline or maybe its just out on a coffee break.
I had a late day yesterday and I’m only now getting around to playing around with and testing Siri. I think the rest of you might have worn it out since it isn’t as snappy as it was yesterday when I tried a few preliminary requests.
According to a report Steven Troughton-Smith has made progress on porting the Siri voice assistant to the iPhone 4. The resulting ported version of Siri isn’t ready for prime time so I wouldn’t get to excited just yet and return that iPhone 4S you bought yesterday.
The new iPhone 4S has a minor physical tweak that makes it difficult to fit into some cases. The culprit is the silent/ringer switch which has been moved down slightly towards the bottom of the phone. Since I’ve had a few reader queries about cases for the iPhone 4S I thought I’d share some information about cases I have on hand.
I have six iPhone 4 cases that I either purchased or received for review and surprise a that a lot of them fit just fine for regular use. Only one of them wouldn’t fit at all. If you have one of the other five you’ll be just fine when you upgrade to an iPhone 4S.
The big question about the iPhone 4S is whether it’s worth the upgrade.
The answer is yes, and that’s because of Siri, the talking personal assistant.
Siri is unbelievable; a paradigm shift. It’s new way of interacting with computers that’s as big a breakthrough as the original Macintosh with its mouse, windows and icons. In fact, it’s bigger. It’s a much more natural way to interact with machines. It’s a glimpse of the future of computing.
Like the first Mac, it’s far from perfect. We’re at the very beginning of this revolution. But if you want to join the party, you need the 4S.
Here’s the video to that “Steve Jobs” rap song that hit the Internets last month.
It’s got a few things that might not be safe for work – mainly rapper Supreme General who wrote and performs the song in various states of undress with obligatory crotch grabbing and too many obscenities to count. (Not that I didn’t try to count the obscenities – I’m like that.)
Today Sprint announced that the iPhone’s launch on its network resulted in the carrier’s best day ever in sales. Apple announced its partnership with Sprint to offer the iPhone 4S and 8GB iPhone 4 last week.
After today’s launch day, the iPhone has given Sprint more sales than any product ever on its network.
Fared Adib, Sprint Product Chief:
“Sprint today reported its best ever day of sales in retail, web and telesales for a device family in Sprint history with the launch of iPhone 4S and iPhone 4. We reached this milestone at approximately noon CT/1pm ET. The response to this device by current and new customers has surpassed our expectations and validates our customers’ desire for a truly unlimited data pricing plan.”
Rumors suggested for months that Sprint and Apple would partner for the next iPhone launch leading up to last week’s announcement.
Sprint offers its customers the unique option of purchasing an unlimited data plan with the iPhone.
AT&T also announced a record number of iPhone activations for today’s iPhone 4S launch.
AT&T announced Friday, October 14 that it saw a record number of iPhone activations on its network. The iPhone 4S was made available to US customers on AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint this morning.
The carrier confirmed to BGR:
“As of 4:30 pm ET today, AT&T had already activated a record number of iPhones on our network – and is on-track to double our previous record for activations on a single day.
These record volumes may produce slower activations for some customers, though our systems continue to run at record levels.”
Despite the fact that many were unable to activate their new iPhones on AT&T today, the carrier still calls the iPhone 4S its “most successful iPhone launch” to date.
AT&T alone was responsible for 200,000 of the 1 million worldwide pre-orders that were placed last Friday.
Although Apple has slashed international shipping times for many countries, eBay auctions may bring the iPhone 4S to early adopters before they can buy them in stores.
eBay currently lists a whopping 8,000 iPhone 4S for sale on its international circuit, in addition to individual country markets.
Some 22 European countries await the iPhone 4S launch on October 28, but that hasn’t stopped people from trying to sell them now via the online marketplace.
Apple has been on a software rollout spree lately. iCloud and iOS 5 were both released to the public this past Wednesday alongside a slew of other app releases and updates.
Some of this week’s releases have also caused significant problems for many consumers. Certain iCloud customers have been experiencing faulty connectivity since the product’s launch two days ago. Luckily, Apple offers a way to check iCloud’s status from the web.
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The folks at iFixyouri have put together a brief iPhone 4S teardown that shows you how to disassemble and repair your new smartphone. They also have a separate video that shows you how to replace the screen on the iPhone 4S.
iFixit recently did its own teardown of the 4S as well, and it was learned that the device has 512MB of RAM and a new 3G chipset (among other additions).
As 9to5Mac notes, you may want to have the mute switch ready when playing this video. Not sure what the makers were thinking with the song choice.
US carriers — specifically AT&T — have been buckling under the weight of hundreds of thousands iPhone 4S activation requests today. Since the 4S went on sale worldwide this morning, many customers have been trying to activate Apple’s newest handset to no avail.
While Sprint and Verizon activations seem to being going smoothly, AT&T has been failing all day.
If you can’t activate your iPhone 4S on AT&T, we’ve got a few tips to help get your 4S up and running.
After weeks of wild price swings, Apple’s stock closed today at its highest value ever, $420 a share. The previous high was about $413; many were expecting that value to fall tremendously when (my hero) Steve Jobs passed, but to much surprise Apple’s stock remained relatively unaffected by his passing.
The new high comes right before Apple’s Q4 FY11 earnings report and conference call next week (Tuesday, Oct. 18th). This will of course be their first earnings call since Steve Jobs’ passing, and though I think the report will be their usual “we made ALL the money we win” type, whatever success they have had will surely be sobered by the loss of their visionary CEO and friend Steve Jobs.
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Jeff from iDownloadBlog is one of the lucky few to have not one, but three iPhone 4S’s running on all three US carriers.
The above video demonstrates the speed differences between AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint on the iPhone 4S. As you can tell, Sprint is painfully slow while AT&T and Verizon seem to have very similar speeds.
Apple touts the iPhone 4S as having HSDPA “4G” speeds on AT&T, but many have found that data speeds on AT&T are barely faster than Verizon’s network.
Also, if you can’t activate your 4S today, you’re not alone. AT&T specifically has been falling apart under the crushing weight of the 200,000 pre-orders that were delivered for its network today.
UPDATE: AT&T denies it has activation problems. A spokesperson just sent us the following statement:
We had our most successful iPhone launch with more than 200,000 preorders placed in the first 12 hours last week. As customers are receiving their devices – and more are buying in our stores – we’re seeing completed activations across our servers and are moving requests through as quickly as possible. We’re not seeing any widespread delays at this time, though customers may experience minor wait times as more devices are activated.
AT&T’s activation servers have melted down, according to a tip we just got from an Apple store employee.
What a difference a week makes. Last week I went to the San Francisco downtown Apple store to take pictures of the sad Steve Jobs memorial. This week it was a different world at the iPhone 4s launch. Business as usual. There was only one reminder of Steve, a single bouquet of flowers stashed in the corner of a window.
This isn’t the best way of showing the speed increases that come along with the iPhone 4S, but it is one of the ways that the iPhone 4S’ faster A5 chip will immediately be felt: in significantly shorter app launch times.
Apple released iOS 5 and iCloud this week and iOS 5 is the version of iOS designed to set your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch free with the help of iCloud. By free I mean that along with iCloud you no longer need to tie any of these devices to a computer. Now with the introduction of the free AirPort Utility app for iOS you could buy one of the three devices above and an Airport Extreme (or other Apple network appliance) to setup your own local area network to use with these devices.
In case you needed proof that dropping your iPhone 4S face down on the concrete from six feet up without a case was a bad idea.
[via iClarified]
Psst. Wanna buy Apple’s design for the iPhone 5? In the shadowy world of case manufacturing, leaks and rumors fuel a market worth more than $436 million annually. After one company lost a bet worth thousands of dollars on a supposed iPhone 4S design, competitors say guessing Apple’s next move can be an expensive gamble.