YeaNo

Ok.
I know I said I would post my iPhone 4 review but I changed my mind. I decided it was so crap that I would remake it. So yea...next Monday...I should have something else up on Friday.
Till next time
AndrewCow

Top 10 Game Apps

Soooo.....this is awkward......Well I may not have posted in about a month but oh well. I have an iPhone 4 review coming very soon. Oh well to get psyched up for the iPhone 4 AWESOMENESS!! I will give you my top 10....well 11 because I miscounted at first... favourite and most used apps.

I currently have 156 applications to search through so to narrow down, I will give you TWO lists, one of games and one of ....well everything else.

1. Tilt to live - I am sure most of you have heard of this awesome game. You tilt. you live ...OR DIEEEEEEE

2. Dactyl 2 - Now this is one of my favorites mainly because I can do it. High score of 160 on extreme mode of the first game:)

3. Fruit Ninja - This game was not only was developed in my home town, but also have made over 2 million dollars. The squishy sound cutting the fruit makes is delightful

4. Guitar Hero - This alternative to many other iPhone rhythm games is fast, fun and much more creative than the others

5.  You Vs Wall - This interactive version of the famous Japanese game show may be very short, but is also very fun:)

6. Peggle - This game will hook you. It is very very addictive

7. Doodle Jump - As well as providing the basis for many lame jokes (Can I jump your doodle *snigger*) it is also fun and addictive

8. Lightsaber - Now I'm not really sure if this is counted as a game but oh well. This spin-off of sorts from "Star wars: The force unleashed" an awesome glowing lightsaber....WITH MUSIC!!! Wave it around and see what happens:)

9. Line Rider - Originally a flash game, this open world ....track editor...sort of is awesome fun. You will let out a creative/ sadistic side you never new you had:)

10. Cubes Light - This game may seem simple and not particularly original, but it is a really fun way to spend an otherwise very boring public transport journey.

11. Blip Solitaire - Now this game is incredibly simple. But like Cubes Light, is a really fun way to spend an otherwise boring journeyThanksAndrewCow

White iPhone

Hey
So you may wonder what ever happened to the white iPhone 4. There are pictures of it sitting there in all its awesomeness on the apple website, but when you go and order it, you get a message like the one shown below. Now Apple has been very quiet about this but the never ending leaks on the product continue. Maybe Apple should use the money the gained from firing their head of engineering over the "Antennagate" scandal to hire a plumber.

Apparently (i have noticed I am starting to use this word a lot) they are finding it very hard to stop the screen's back light shining through the front panel of the phone. You may not really get what I mean but if you have ever seen a MacBook, you would. In the laptop's case, Apple utilizes the back light as not only a....well....back light, but also to light the Apple logo on the reverse side of the screen. In the case of the iPhone 4, this would cause the phone to glow like a Christmas tree.

The interesting thing about this reason is that functional white iPhone 4s do exist. Apple some employees have been given them. Most likely, these are hand made devices built at the headquarters in California. In silicone valley, not suicide valley(if you did not get that joke, the company that makes the iPhone, Foxconn, has had 13 suicide attempts in five months). But I digress with my tasteless jokes. Basically, there must be some way to make the phones not bleed light, because Apple is doing it. I'm guessing though there is something expensive about it that is not feasible in mass production.

Another theory states, this delay is just so they have time to re-engineer the antenna. Apple has really not had luck with this product launch. Not only was there is delay in white iPhone, but also reported problems with a batch of phones proximity sensor(the thing that makes the screen turn off when it is close to your face) as well as the terrible lagging experienced by users of iOS4 on the original 3G...like me....

In any case, I will have my iPhone 4 soon and then be happy. I have already ordered some really cool cases and I recommend you check them out HERE. They are truly amazing unique things.

Thanks for reading:)
AndrewCow

iPhone 4 Haters Are Idiots

Hi,

I was not planning on posting today but I was having a conversation with my parents that got me very angry. They were saying how they had read numerous articles bashing the iPhone 4's antenna issues and would never buy one now. I am sure there is no need for me to tell you how incredibly awesome the iPhone 4 is, so I am going to focus on the antenna issue.

This may come as a shock to some of you, but firstly: EVERY CELL PHONE EVER MADE HAS A DEATH SPOT. That is, a place where, when you touch it, the signal drops significantly. For my iPhone 3G, it is the bottom right-hand corner - meaning when I hold it, the signal drops in the EXACT SAME WAY THE iPHONE 4 DOES. So this issue really is widely spread. Why is everyone making such a big deal over this? One reason - the spot is marked. People can see directly where the spot is and therefore make a big deal out of it. It is ridiculous.

So, although there is no actual problem with the world's greatest phone, Apple has provided 2 fixes. Firstly, they fixed a software issue whereby the bars were displayed incorrectly. Secondly, Apple is providing a free case to everyone who bought the phone. Not just the Bumper because they said they can't create 3 million of them. They are providing a selection cases from other companies as well. What can I say. THEY ARE AWESOME!!!

So there you have it. The iPhone 4 has no problems. I am definitely going to buy it. On that subject, it has been confirmed to be coming out on the 30th of July.

I hope the media did not throw your mind.
AndrewCow

iOS4

Hi
So iOS4 was released a couple of days ago and the new iPhone 4 is due to be released in less than 24 hours. Now I have installed in on my iPhone 3G and had a play with it on my friends 3Gs. The first thing that comes to mind is how stupidly difficult it is to install. Now I know come people were fine and had it installed straight away but I had many issues installing it. Firstly, my phone had to go through a three hour backup before installing even though I had just backed it up 3 minutes before hand? There was no way to stop this and the disappointments
 just kept on coming. After around 4 hours of installing, I finally got to the sync stage. This is where the major stuff up occurred.

So it tried to restore it to the 3 hour long backup and just couldn't. Error message after error message spewed out at me until I finally tried to sync it without restoring my original settings whereby my iPhone decided to think it did not have a SIM card. I took out and replaced the SIM card about 5 times and my phone decided it had a SIM card but the computer it was connected to decided to completely ignore it and refuse to Sync. So I took it over to a different computer which made my iPhone very angry and phone decided it did not have a SIM card after all. By the way I think I should mention at this point iOS4 still has not been installed. It was demanding I reconnect it to iTunes and do it again. So back to the other computer (which was a Mac which probably helped), I took out the SIM card once more and low and behold it actually decides to recognize it. So I managed to install iOS4 in the phone on that computer and then Sync it with my other computer finally.

So now I have it there are some things I am happy and sad about. Well actually many things I am sad about. Apple said there were a few features it had to leave out of the 3G version. I think my a few they mean almost every one. It does not support multitasking (which I already knew) , home screen wallpapers, accessibility options or screen orientation lock. I was so excited when they announced orientation lock as I have wanted it ever since I got my phone but nope:(.

Oh well. There were some things I did like such as iBooks, Spell Check(very useful for me), and Folders. iBooks is a very nice app but a very slow. When you eventually get to one of the many free books, the reading experience is very nice when put in low brightness and Sepia mode, which makes the background brown instead of white. It often will not connect to the iBooks store for no particular reason but that hopefully will be fixed soon. Spell Check is useful bit a bit hard to use at first. I eventually got use to it but the many combinations of tapping used for select, copy, paste and replace make using feature a challenge. Folders are very easy to use as all you need to do is drag one app on top of the other and you have it but with my 130 apps the fact you can only have 12 per folder is annoying.

Now most of these features worked far better on the 3GS I used but the owner complained about the annoyance of having to stop your apps as they all go into the Multitasking menu. The system Apple implemented for stopping these apps is slow and unnatural. They make you hold to app down for a couple of seconds before closing them which can get frustrating if there are 12 apps open. The switching between these apps is seamless though and very fast.

So it is probably he fact this OS was not really made for the 3G that frustrates me so but the upgrade is mostly excellent on the 3GS.

Thanks for reading
AndrewCow

p.s. I actually have made the Office 2010 review and seeing the retail version was released with out anyone noticing I will post that tomorrow but be warned it is not very good.

iPhone 4

Ravings of a Technogeek - every Monday, Wednesday and Friday......usually....except for 2 weeks when I am incredibly busy. I thought I should probably post about about the sexiest thing ever to come to the earth. I have included a photo of the past sexiest thing on the planet (Megan Fox) for comparison.


So, you have probably guessed, at 3am this morning, Apple started their press conference and released their latest iPhone - the iPhone 4. It turns out this was exactly the phone that was leaked, except this one seems really really really pretty. So apart from changing the looks, there are over 100 changes on the inside. I don't know all of them for sure, but Steve went through the main ones. 


Firstly, it has the A4 chip, like the one in the iPad. This makes it very very very fast. They also managed to shrink everything so they could grow the battery. I'm very happy about this. I never really had a problem with my 3G's battery but .....faster.....longer battery ...what could be bad???


Another thing displayed and I think is AWESOME is the 4's ability to record 720p HD video. With its new 5mp camera it can take excellent pictures and its LED Flash (which can stay on while videoing), those pictures can be taken in the dark. Now you might think, as I did at first 'pfffft 5mp, thats nothing' well Apple has dished out some of their trademark jargon to convince us that 5mp is plenty. For once, it actually makes sense. You see.....I don't really understand it. It is something to do with the number of photons in each pixel...which sounds right... OH WELL :) 


One of the reasons the iPhone 4 looks so brilliant is because of its display. Apple has implemented something called Retina Display Technology. What this means (I think) that, although the screen is only 640p, it has much smaller pixels. Text, photos, basically any curved lines are now much much smoother because there are more pixels making them up. I hope that whole bit actually made sense.


I could ramble on for hours about the 4's dual mics for noise cancellation, or the iMovie application making 720p movie editing being just one tap away, but I do not want to. There are, however, three more things I would like to focus on.


 Firstly, Apple is trying to make a case, and it actually looks pretty good. It can be seen below and it is called the "Bumper". This is because it is more like a silicone, well...bumper bar, that fits around the aluminium edge of the phone, leaving the glass back and front exposed. You might be thinking. 'Great. Now I have two places to shatter my phone' but you would be wrong. Firstly, Apple has developed a glass that is apparently, stronger than plastic and sapphires. Secondly, the "Bumper" extends from the phone, like a regular case, meaning if you drop it, the case will hit the ground first. 


Very quickly, it now has a gyroscope. This means it can sense movement as you turn, jump or be doing similar things to the accelerometer, but on more scales.


Lastly, the front facing camera wound have no point without video calling. FaceTime is a service built into the phone application that allows for excellent quality video calls. Unfortunately though, only between the iPhone 4s and, for the mean time, only over WiFi. This is quite surprising to me that they did not integrate iChat and allow it to talk to computers. I'm almost positive though Skype will be able to call to computers, be it a Mac  or PC. What they are doing however, is attempting to make their way of doing video calling (e.g. codecs) universal, which means, someday, you might be able to call between iPhone 4s and HTC phones, or Nokias. 


So there is much more I could say, but I will let the professionals say it for me. For way, way, way more information and videos, go HERE. This phone should be available in the US on June 24th, along with the renamed iOS 4 on June 21, free to all devices excluding the original iPhone and the 1st gen touch. The phone should be available in Australia some time in July. I will definitely be getting one and I will do a full review of it then. 


Till next time,
AndrewCow


P.S. the Word 2010 video should be up this weekend:)