Let's Talk Tech
The iPhone camera is a mid-pack performer, but there are some great tools to improve things like macro performance and shooting wider angle shots. Ztylus has built an entire photography system into their Metal case which can really help you take your mobile photo game up to the next level!
Shop the Ztylus Case and Lens system on Amazon.
Shop the Ztylus LED Ring Flash on Amazon.
I think the iPhone’s home button is a bit over-worked. Single press, double press, long press, music functionality, and an accessibility custom triple press. At some point some other hardware control might help this poor beleaguered button.
Kickstarter project Halo Back is looking to aid the home button with a special screen protector that will add a bottom mounted back button. As the iPhone has gotten larger, reaching up to the top of the screen for those apps that have software back buttons isn’t quite as convenient as it used to be.
It would seem a number of people agree with Halo Back as the project has already raised over $100,000, over five times their initial goal, and there’s still sixteen days left to back the project.
You can watch their pitch video below, or head directly to their project page for more info.
Do you want better drop and scratch protection for your iPhone 6? Do you want some fun color accents and a fun design? Speck might have the case for you with their two piece MightyShell + FacePlate. Let’s take a look!
Shop the Speck MightyShell on Amazon.
More info on Speck Products.
I NEED YOUR HELP!
I want to do a video quality showdown between the iPhone 6 and the LG G Flex 2, similar to the recent LG vs Nokia video we just published. Now, I think you should always produce the highest quality samples that a phone can shoot, but that means 1080p video on the iPhone and UHD video on the G Flex 2. I don’t want to produce four different videos to compare these two phones, so what makes the most sense for a SINGLE comparison video?
I’m taking this poll VERY seriously as whatever the general winner is here, will influence how I shoot and produce a comparison video. These videos often take me a couple DAYS to shoot and edit. Beyond just voting, comments and sharing will be GREATLY appreciated, as I want this to be as professional a comparison as I am able to create.
The “Tech as Fashion” wars are heating up. Now that Apple has finally released all their details on the Apple Watch, and started advertising it on TV, now other companies are cutting TV ads to compete. Why Google would have waited for Apple to start broadcasting ads I’ll never understand, when Android Wear had a solid head start in the market, but I digress…
Anywho, now that the two companies are duking it out on TV, who do you think has the better ad? Apple went with their classic “Simple and show some functionality” approach, while Google played into the more recent feel good slate of ads, like their Animal Friends, with some colorful dance moves. One team’s ad is all about focus, the other all about diversity.
Which company did the better job introducing the world to their smartwatch? Drop us a comment below!
Google:
Apple:
I recorded a video earlier this week in response to Apple’s MacBook and Apple Watch announcements, where I washed my hands of the tech angst many of us gadget geeks face when discussing Cupertino. Many of us who are now the most critical of the company, were at one time the most passionate advocates of the brand. I myself was an Apple product specialist for a company that sold systems and maintenance contracts to Department of Energy research facilities. The general thesis of my video focused on the realization and acceptance of the fact that Apple is not (and some would argue hasn’t been for some time) a tech company, but is now a full-fledged fashion and lifestyle brand.
Scanning through Apple’s site and ads, we see a company showcasing design in much the same way that a jewelry website would show off luxury, premium offerings. Sure, there’s a tab you can click on to get a full listing of hardware specs, but it’s neatly tucked to the side, while large banners talk about “Reinventing the Laptop”, or how Apple Watch is their “Most Personal Device” yet. Marketing intangibles, statements designed to make you feel good, appeal to you emotionally, but which aren’t quantifiable or verifiable.
While Apple has often been accused of recycling their designs, the tick-tock update schedule of the iPhone is a perfect example, the company has learned an incredibly important strategy from the retail arena. While iProducts rarely change much from year to year, the subtle design changes keep brand awareness high amongst the demographics of folks with money to burn.
When moving from the Black iPhone 5, to the “Space Grey” iPhone 5S for example, this was a clear visual signal that you had spent money recently to acquire the new phone, instead of slumming it with an old phone. A Silver MacBook likely wont stand out much in a coffee shop when surrounded by MacBook Airs, but a Gold MacBook gives up a ready signal that you are on the pulse. It just wouldn’t do to be seen with last season’s Apple gear. We can count on the next MacBook to be a modest iteration improvement to the internal technology, but we’ll likely focus more on a new design accent or a new color option. Continue reading “Apple, Fashion, and Perceived Exclusivity – Keeping Desire High for iProducts”
The iPhone 6 is a gorgeous phone, but it’s not known for being the most rugged gadget on the market. Australian manufacturer Dog & Bone have adapted their wetsuit case for Apple’s latest and greatest. Let’s take a look!
Filed on Tuesday, a class action lawsuit claims that Apple is misrepresenting and falsely advertising how much storage is available in the iPhone and the iPad. Far be it from me to to defend on Apple on a situation like this, but the media covering this story has blown a fairly common practice wildly out of proportion. The filing itself reads like it was written by someone who lacks basic knowledge of math and technology.
This is a problem we’ve been dealing with since the advent of home computing. How do we accurately report how much space is on our device?
The main issue comes down to the discrepancy between advertising and how computers are actually programmed. To grossly over simplify, you are allowed to advertise a megabyte as being equal to 1 million bytes, and a gigabyte as being equal to 1 billion bytes. Makes sense right? All those metric-y words? This is known as “decimal notation”.
But that’s NOT how your computer utilizes storage. Your computer stores info via binary powers of 2. Your computer treats 1,048,576 as a megabyte and 1,073,741,824 as a gigabyte.
So if we do a little math, the outside of the box claims the iPhone has 16GB, in that it has sixteen billion bytes on board. But iOS will use that in binary compatible chunks. Those same 16 billion bytes will be reported to the operating system as 14.90 GB out of the box before you slap an OS on the device. Have a “32GB” phone? The OS will report that as 29.80GB when it’s totally empty.
The larger the pool of storage, the larger the chunk of data you lose via this advertising hijinkery. Have you cracked open a hard drive recently? Sure you can buy a box which claims to 4TB packed inside, but your computer will report that as 3.64TB. You didn’t “LOSE” this data, you did receive 4 trillion bytes, but your computer doesn’t use a storage device like that. It has to cluster them, so it looks like you’ve lost some 360GB, when you haven’t.
This practice is so common that pretty much every hard drive and flash memory manufacturer has some link in their respective FAQ’s that explains this very phenomenon. Here’s Seagate’s for example.
The chart being used in this class action suit is conflating the difference between decimal notation (1MB = 1,000,000 bytes) and binary notation (1MB = 1,048,576 bytes) to make it look like Apple is trying to do something nefarious, and to make it look like iOS has eaten up significantly more space than it actually has.
If we want to talk about bloat, I think Samsung customers have more reason to complain as the first batch of “16GB” Galaxy S5’s were delivered with less than 10 binary gigabytes available to the user depending on carrier. Samsung took more than 30% of the available storage for the OS, pre-installed apps, and partition.
What I hate most about this situation is that it forces me to defend Apple here. We do have an issue with how products are advertised, and it’s a problem we’ve had since the first storage devices were built into PC’s. What’s not going to help us explain this situation to consumers is screwing up the math being used to demonstrate the problem.
The problem here isn’t with Apple being “stingy”. It’s with an entire industry and how it advertises its products.