iPhone 4S: One Week In
Posted: February 4, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized 11 Comments »
My Apple history in 137 words:
I couldn’t have been much older than 16 when I bought my first Apple product. I love my iPod classic. All 55 GB of my music fits on it, plus podcasts and even movies.
I was first exposed to Macs at university. People tell me you can still use InDesign and Photoshop on Windows machines, but really…why would you?!
It was around this time that more of my friends started to get iPhones. I’ve desperately wanted once since Christmas 2010.
6 months ago I took a deep breath and spent a lot of money on my MacBook Pro. I’m telling you – once you get one of these things you’ll never go back!
One week ago, I could finally upgrade my phone and get the latest iPhone4s 16GB with unlimited, texts, internet and 2000 minutes. Booyeah!
Here are my thoughts on the iPhone 4s one week in:
- The auto correct feature is scarily accurate and super useful. It’s easy to hit the wrong letter when typing a text, but my iPhone knows what I meant to hit, and automatically corrects it.
- Games are addictive – especially Angry Birds.
- Closing apps is important if you want a decent battery life! And even when you do close everything, the battery life is disappointing.
- Siri is a lot more intelligent than you’d expect.
- The inability to record phone conversations (no matter what app you try) sucks, especially for journalists!
- I’m not sure my life will ever be the same again now I have ShopSavvy and Shazam - yet I’m still yet to use them.
- My skepticism remains regarding Sleep Cycle, but my whole body is constantly willing it to work.
- It’s very very pretty
- Enjoying the fact I don’t need to buy a Kindle – I can download books from Kindle and Apple’s bookstore direct to the iPhone
- I’ll never carry a Bible again. It’s in my pocket – all 209 versions in 75 languages.
- Instagram makes me looks like a decent photographer.
- Despite all of the above, I know I’m not getting as much out of my iPhone as I could. Open to app suggestions
- Really enjoying having a phone calender again – the fact it syncs with my Mac is a major bonus
- Foursquare is ridiculous, pointless, stupid. And I love it.
- I’m eager to try out Facetime
- I’m feeling the need to have a technology sabbath. Turn all technology off for one day a week. In the words of Tim Hughes “the more ways we have to connect, the more we need to learn to unplug”.
re closing apps and battery life. with the exception of listening to music no app continues to run in the background ie quiting apps from the multitask bar won’t affect battery life unless you can hear the audio of the app eg spotify or the default music app. enjoy your iPhone! Gavin
Hi Gavin! You are the king of Apple products and I hesitate to disagree with you, BUT from what I’ve been reading, people seem to be saying and suggesting you close apps that are running in the background. see point one here for example – http://www.iphone4jailbreak.org/how-to-save-battery-on-iphone-4s-ios-5.html
Hello Sam, I haven’t been on here for about 2 years but facebook told me to come here and now I must comment on something!
I have minor issues with a tool type (a mac for example) being elevated above the status of neutrality. Apple products are perfectly designed and “very very pretty” but with regard to design it should be a question of valuing the end result as opposed to revealing in the process and the tool. I’ve got your opinion throughout college/uni but it really doesn’t matter what students are using – pick your tool and use it brilliantly, be it a shiny mac or a beige coloured personal computer machine.
So yeah… use whatever really. With regard to design I don’t care what people use – when you get into specific areas within the vast subject of design there is of course going to be advantages of using a certain system but that’s another crazy conversation.
Oh, and I use itunes and it’s appalling. “Would you like to update?! Would you! I know, we made some coding mistakes, but we fixed them all now, honest! Honestly, when you connect your ipod next time it won’t delete all your music!”
I wish I had an iphone 4s…
Hi Mike, long time no speak!
For me, Macs are easier tools to use. It’s a great skill to be able to use both Macs and PCs.
But more than that I find Macs “just work”. The errors on PC/Windows are endless and confusing! When I get an error message on a Mac (very rare) at least I know what they mean! So it’s not that it’s merely a “prettier tool”. It’s a more useful one, and an easier one to use.
I’ve never had any problems with iTunes either and I’ve run it on PCs and Macs for years, so not sure what happened there?
In what way do you find a mac to be easier and more useful? I have to use pc’s because I need a fairly highend system to run various autodesk software but regardless of that point, I probably would anyway. Because I’m sufficiently geeky I seem to be able to flick between a mac and a pc quite easily and the ease of use thing doesn’t come into it for me, they are almost identical to use. In general you are probably right about the error thing and yeah pc manufacturers will often laden a pc with horrible bits of bloated software. Anyway, what makes a mac superior to a pc for you? This is interesting actually
I think once you get used to something, it’s always going to be ‘easier’ for you. But that’s why it’s important that I can use both. So both have become ‘easy’ with practice.
Although Macs are clearly more expensive, I think there’s a reason for that beyond prettiness! My Macbook Pro specs are so much better than any of the laptops I’ve had before. And it shows. It runs smoothly and I can have tonnes of stuff open at once, without it slowing down.
I think the operating systems are refreshing and more user friendly too. I’ve never seen anyone get as excited about XP or Vista as people did over Snow Leopard or Lion. And there’s a reason for that which transcends mere ‘prettiness’!
Then you look at the programs Apple have developed. I know very few people that cling on to WMP, iTunes has far surpassed it. Walk into any newspaper or magazine office and people will be designing on Macs, not PCs.
For every day office tasks, you could make the argument that PCs are better. And they probably are. But for me, Apple’s reputation on reliability is far greater than Microsoft’s. I just feel a lot safer on a Mac. So far, they haven’t let me down! Whereas everyone has story after story of how their PC crashed, they lost everything etc etc. Oh and did I mention the virus issue?
Within design (for that is the only area I feel even vaguely qualified to talk about) it’s not always ideal to have everything easy. The only example I can think of is Jack White:
Perhaps a subversive point there sorry, but I really subscribe to that argument. It’s up the user though. Most people cannot see why things should have to be fought for. Freedom is not about the lack of restraints but the right ones etc etc.
Mac’s prices have nothing to do with the quality of the components. For example, I bought a new graphics card recently (for a pc) and then found it was slightly more than double to buy the same card for a mac. I believe the reason this happens because mac’s are fairly uncommon and so production costs go up.This is seen to be the reason for less viruses on macs – there are fewer evil people developing viruses for the fewer people using macs. There are also more ‘morons’ using pcs. Mac’s do seem to be more ‘together’ though as they built under one system whereas windows is rather old and diverse.
Mac’s seem to cover the middle and high price brackets whereas pc’s cover literally everything from the free computer at the local library to the high end supercomputers that guys at ILM (industrial light and magic) will use. Granted, Microsoft have produced some embarrassingly poor software packages but Win7 is actually very good. People do not get excited about WMP yes
I haven’t used it for about 8 years. Remember they used to have their own audio file format hahahahaha!
You should certainly watch this to see the hysteria that can surround apple: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60GY9EnfRZA
Skip to 4:30 as it really gets going then.
hi Sam
I’m yet to see any convincing evidence for closing apps. They definitely do not run in the background, when you switch to another app they just save their current state.
I like your point Mike. Apple products are great but people do make a bigger fuss over the tool rather than focusing on what they could do with it.
Hi Mate.
Sorry to spoil your enjoyment on your new phone.
But just to say the working conditions of Apple’s factory are abysmal.
Help make a change, by signing the petition, and telling Apple, to make the iPhone 5 an ethical iPhone.
http://sumofus.org/campaigns/ethical-iphone/?sub=fb
Thanks
Hi Tom, I have signed the petition, it’s the least I can do.
I would say a few things. 1) this isn’t an Apple problem. All the major manufacturers are to blame. That’s not to let Apple off the hook, it’s just they shouldn’t be blamed more than other companies.
2)There is another side to the story. Apple admit things need to improve and change and at least appear (although some will be skeptical) to be making those improvements. See here – http://www.apple.com/supplierresponsibility/
3) We all need to have a serious collective think about how to deal with problems like this. Boycotting won’t work. The petition probably won’t have a massive effect either (although it’s more effective than boycotting). I don’t have any answers on this. I want to see change, but I also don’t want to waste time! I think one way to go about it is have greater Western legislation on using Eastern labour. This problem isn’t restricted to technology (just look at Primark!)
Cool great, and good points.