Apple to unveil new iPads, iMacs and OS X Yosemite on 16 October, claim sources

I Do Care

I get excited about the prospect of some more innovation, some interesting new features and maybe a few surprises. Granted, it seems like there are less and less party tricks each year, but it's still entertaining.

The big question is though, will they bend? :P

Definition required

Please advise on the difference betwen the definition of the word "New" and the word "Repackaged"..

SHINEY, SHINEY, SHINEY, ARRRK, ARRRK...

The local Magpies are chomping at the bit......ARRRK!!!!

A view from Delaware

Whilst haveing a few hours to kill before my flight back to Blighty, I visited a shopping mall in Delaware.

Note that this was at 14:00 on a Friday afternoon.

For those who don't know it, Delaware, apart from being 'The First State' also has 0% Sales Tax so people from all around head there to buy stuff. The mall I visited is just off I-95 and contains both an Apple Store and just a few yards away, a Microsoft Store.

The first thing I noticed that there was a line of people outside the AT&T stores. I asked and they were waiting for an iPhone 6+. Apparently the store had a delivery and ... well you know the rest. There were about 20 people in the queue.

Then I walked past the Microsoft store. Here was a depressing sight. there were about 8 staff and THREE customers.

Finally, the apple store. It was heaving with people/ It looked like about 60/40 customers to Apple Staff but there were a lot of them. I lost count at 40. Many customers were observed leaving with little white boxes (probably containing iPhones) in white Apple drawstring bags.

These people cannot by any description be called Fanbois. A total mix of people if my observatioms were anything to go by.

The previous day I was in downtown Harrisburg PA. Lots of Phablets in view. The current bling device amongst the locals was BIG and I mean really BIG phones. 6in just didn't cut it for this lot. 9in was common. I have no idea who makes them but to be honest the users looked like they wouldn't take kindle to being asked about their body extension (If you know what I mean...innit). They also had lots of custom cases with loads of Bling. Vertu eat your heart out...

As I say, this was just some observations of phones on the west side of the pond. It may well be different in other places over here but I can only report what I saw.

Like or Loathe Apple, they must be doing something right. The sell shed loads of kit and it isn't all going to fanboi hipsters. There can't be that many in the world (or can there)

There is a huge iPhone 6 billboard strategically placed as you come out of the Mid-town tunnel into manhatten ($7.50 toll).

On a side note, my Three one month rolling contract for $16 and no US Roaming charges attracted a lot of attention from the people I was with last week. some Samsung S5 contracts here work out at $50 a month and only 1GB of data.

Yosemite Sam has been public beta?

Wait, isn't Yosemite already released? Public Beta? And if they have a release date, the last build is the GM... not rocket science I don't think?

Well, I care - some innovation I came across..

I hadn't really paid attention to what exactly iOS8 brings - I installed it because customers will have installed it and I had to get familiar with it. I wasn't quite prepared for how good the phone integration was.

The first time I realised this was when my phone rang and my iPad was alerting me to this fact too. "OK, fine, good to know" I thought and that would have been that, if I had not been in another room later when it rang again, and out of curiosity I used the screen that came up on the iPad to pick up the call while I prepared to rush back to my desk next door. And sat back down, because the iPad had basically turned into a speakerphone to handle the call. A bit of experimenting then shows that the call initiation from the iPhone basically does the same.

Now I don't know about you, but that simple, stupid feature has been eluding us for the last, oh, 20 years or so. Only at high costs can you normally have IT to phone integration as anyone knows who has ever had to set up a call centre for support - it's certainly not something you'd have as a home user unless you were prepared to seriously hack your kit (or use Skype, but that's gone to the dogs since MS started to change it IMHO).

From what I recall, Yosemite will have this too, but I would like to point out that this comes *free* with the new operating systems (which are also free). There's not even that big a fanfare about it, it's just part of the package. For free. Nada. No big fuss - I think they maybe had a 20 sec demo in the presentation (I didn't watch it, I just saw it fly by in some later reporting - correct me if I'm wrong). Now you can just use it. Set up a CRM with a call to this function (and I suspect the "callto:" URL may also hit this) and off you go.

Yes, you need kit that's not quite stone age, but I use an iPhone 4s, my iPad is not new either and my test laptop is from mid 2010 so it's 4 year old (but has a 1680 x 1050 screen as I tend to do a lot of diagnostics which require screen real estate).

I need to check how safe this is (privacy and comms wise), but that is just one of these things that Apple just throws in without too big a song and dance about it (apropos song & dance, I really think Apple should stop trying to be cool by using U2, but that's just me).

Am I a fan of Apple products? Yes. Not universally so (I do not like the iPhone 6+ in any way, shape or form, for instance, and the laptop power supplies seriously suck in the way they handle cable), but in the main I found using Apple to be of a better benefit to my business and home than MS or Google's Android. And that's the only metric that has value - my personal assessment and the TCO model we use - it is very well possible that YMMV. And I won't berate you for it - I would be interested in the metrics you use to evaluate because that's what a discussion is about - exchanging ideas. Not this stupid tribalism.

the not yet announced new ipad does look interesting..

I think I'll be eventually buying the "iPad Air 2" (ten-inch, not the bigger one). It's quite a step-up on the iPad Air, and I currently just have an ancient but still OK iPad2.

The new iPad Air 2 would be the portal of choice for the varied online purchases that we get up to in my house, as I worry about all of the other methods of transacting online. I write IEEE accepted academic papers about these worries!

Even with the very powerful A8/A8X CPU & the estimated 2GB RAM it's still not quite 'as fast' as a desktop, but the iPad is so-far only targeted by government level malware, as far as I know.

Now just have to save-up for a while to afford the little blighter, but it'll probably be worth it - I have relatives who lost £17K (eventually refunded after a year & lots of bother) due to online crime - which is still on the way UP!

Question is what are they going to remove this time?

Yawn

Apple worked when there was Jobs there to slickly sell the snake oil. Cook always looks to he's trying flog tupperware.