Posts Tagged ‘iOS’

More Apple News

Posted: July 7, 2015 in Tech
Tags: , , , , ,

Apple Watch sales bottoming out?  Well, this shouldn’t come as a surprise.  Market Watch is reporting:

Apple Watch May Not Be Ticking With Customers

I have yet to find a benefit of doubling the price of my phone for a piece of tech that will be obsolete in 6 months when the Apple Watch 2.0 comes out.

I’m still trying to figure out who the buyers for this are.  So far all I can come up with are the ridiculously rich, tech reviewers, patrons of the Church of Apple or “kids” who still have mom and dad paying their bills.

 

IPhone6_silver_frontfaceIf you use Apple’s Home Sharing do NOT upgrade to the latest iOS update (8.4).  Home sharing has been removed.  Your options now are to pay Apple for Match or pay for the family plan on the new Apple music service.  If you have the technical expertise and resources to set up something like a Plex server or move your library to OneDrive or GDrive, you can take those options, as well.

Fortunately for me, most of my music is ripped either lossless or at high nitrates from my extensive CD collection.  Even most of mp3’s come from private purchase and not iTunes.  Why in the world would I pay for Match?  It doesn’t give me anything I don’t already have.

Outside the home, I put what I want on my device at the time.  Most streaming is blocked at the office and why should I burn my data at work or in the car?  Beside, I’m rural enough that it’s not unusual to not have bandwidth available for effective streaming.

If you’re a kid that has mom and dad paying your bills, this might be good for you.  For many of the rest of us?  Not so much.

Apple has unveiled its new $9.99 per month streaming music service and a 24 hour online radio station called Beats One to take on Spotify and Tidal, Jay Z’s service.

Source: Apple unveils Music streaming service to take on Spotify and Tidal | Daily Mail Online

So we have what???

  • A music service that will have to compete with Spotify, Pandora and Apple’s own free iTunes radio, not to mention all the other online radio stations that are available like TuneIn, I <3 Radio and even YouTube.  All of which are free or have free options.  Oh, and also Amazon Prime’s rather impressive library, if you happen to have that service (which also includes free shipping and Prime Videos).
  • News sounds like Apple has finally decided Flipboard or Bing may be good ideas.
  • A pay service – Apple Pay – that hardly anybody is using here in the U.S.
  • Plus we get some OS updates that are finally *beginning* to catch up with Android and Windows 8.
  • About those billion Siri requests?  How many of those requests include the 2 or 3 times you ask something before giving up and typing it manually?  Or kids just asking silly questions to see what response is generated?

I hate to say this, because I love my iPhone 6, but I’m beginning to get some PalmOS deja vu.

The Phablets Are Coming. Not.

Posted: January 29, 2015 in Tech
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Phablet 2

Saw this on Fox News today:

Massive smartphones are not only here to stay, but they’re about to take over the world | Fox News.

I do get where the Juniper is coming from in this article, but I don’t think they are quite right.

Yes, the “phablet” is certainly here to stay and it does fill an important role.  However I do not think they are going to take over as the dominant format.  Or if they do, it will be a short-lived bump (i.e. an outlier).

Who will prefer the phablet format?  That’s not hard to figure out. (more…)

Lower your expectations: Apple Watch battery life report looks grim | Fox News.

In other words, the watch has plenty of power for everything you need.  As long as you don’t use it.

Folks need to remember that while Apple has had some stupendous successes, it has also had some spectacular flops.  Somehow I have a feeling that the Apple Watch, iWatch or whatever it’s finally called is going to be the Lisa of iOS.