Are you disappointed that after sixteen months, Apple followed the iPhone 4 not with a radically redesigned iPhone 5, but a mere iPhone 4S?
You shouldn’t be. There’s a reason the iPhone 4S is just a slightly better iPhone 4, and it’s because Apple’s looking out for you.
That’s also the reason you should expect an iPhone 5S, iPhone 6S and iPhone 7S every two years, like clockwork.
From all the bitching and moaning, you’d think the iPhone 4S was a flop.
But Apple just announced that iPhone 4S preorders topped more than 1 million in the first 24 hours — a new record. No wonder the preorder system was glitchy on Friday morning.
A gang of 14 thieves arrived on mopeds to raid Apple’s flagship store in Covent Garden, London, in the early hours of this morning and made off with a handful of valuable Macs and iOS devices. Robert Shoesmith, a man who is already camping out for the iPhone 4S, was woken up when the store’s alarm went off at around 1:15 AM.
When Apple unveiled the iPhone 4S to the world on Tuesday, the smartphone’s ability to take advantage of HSPA+ data speeds raised some eyebrows. Were the carriers going to brand the 4S as a “4G’ device?
It appears that Apple and AT&T are both working to replace the 3G indicator in the iPhone 4S status bar with the term “4G.” Will the iPhone 4S actually have reliable 4G speeds? Probably not.
Apple was aware that Steve Jobs was on his deathbed at the subdued iPhone 4S announcement. Not only that, but they met with police in Palo Alto, California earlier in the week to notify them that Steve Jobs was close to death, and to arrange for additional security around his home.
Been trying to preorder an iPhone 4S tonight? Yeah, me too… I’ve been trying for the last hour and a half and have had to restart the checkout process just about 26 times now.
Well, guess the Apple store has finally given up. Only minutes ago, trying to order an iPhone would have gotten a never-ending series of page timeouts and error messages. But now, Apple is assigning reserved spots so you can come back later, once things are working, to get your order on. Looks like they might have expected this to happen this time around.
How can it be this hard to give a company $300?
Apple promised customers the ability to preorder the new iPhone 4S at 12:01AM Pacific Time on Friday — but the store blew right past that deadline and is still showing a “Back Soon” sign. The Apple Store App is “Back Soon” also.
Verizon’s website is accepting preorders fine, according to a stream of happy tweets on Twitter. But there’s no sign of a pre-order button on AT&T’s website.
iPhone 4S order fail.
Who’s off to bed soon?
UPDATE: The online Apple Store went live for preorders at about 12.40. However, there were lots of complaints of timeouts and other problems. Some customers reported success using the Apple Store App.
Sprint customers can now check their upgrade eligibility if they are interested in purchasing or upgrading to an iPhone 4S. Although the front page declares that this feature is “Coming soon” it was active this afternoon when I checked.
Welcome Sprint customers! Now you have a chance to buy the phone that the rest of us are already enjoying. So what are you waiting for – go check your eligibility now!
Hopefully the Sprint deal you get will be better than the one that AT&T is giving its customers.
Hardware researchers say Apple’s just-released iPhone 4S costs $203 to build, providing similar ‘evolutionary’ advances seen when the tech giant jumped from the iPhone 3G to 3GS. The 32GB iPhone 4S will cost $749 before customer subsidy.
Apple sells an unlocked iPhone 4, so it stands to reason they’ll do the same for the iPhone 4S. Even so, we’ve yet to get any direct confirmation that Apple’s got an unlocked model planned, which is sort of a bummer, since an unlocked world phone iPhone is seriously tempting.
It does seem, though, that Apple may have an unlocked iPhone 4S in the pipeline, based on info found by selecting an iPhone 4 on the Apple Online Store and then clicking the link titled “About the unlocked iPhone.”
What’s weird is the text says the iPhone 4S won’t look on CDMA-based carriers, which is just bizarre, since the hardware should surely allow it. I’m guessing this is just hastily updated boilerplate that will be refined over time, but it’s still pretty strange.
[via MacTrast]