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Deals posted on Tuesday, May 21st, 2013

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Deals posted on Tuesday, May 21st, 2013

View all 18 Deals Posted on Tuesday, May 21st, 2013

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    The New iPhone 5 - Widescreen | Lightning Dock | Thinner and Lighter

    September 13, 2012

    The iPhone 5 was released with much fanfare on Wednesday, creating a buzz on Internet forums and coffee shops alike.  The most interesting new features of the iPhone 5 are the Lightning dock connector, the Widescreen aspect ratio 4" screen, and the thinner, lighter design.  Normally I would have talked a bit about the processing power, but as usual, Apple upgraded the processor enough to handle iOS 6 well.  Time will tell how long the iPhone 5 will support the upcoming releases, but if history is any indication, expect the iPhone 5 to be cutting edge for at least 2 years.

    The Lightning dock connector is probably the most significant and controversial feature on the iPhone 5.  The dock connector has been a part of our Apple gadget lives for almost a decade.  It's in our cars, on our sound docks, and we've got dozens of cables with that clumsy unidirectional interface.  But now they have the Lightning dock, which is smaller, more durable, and does everything the old connector used to do except take up as much space doesn't do everything the old connector used to do, lacking an 'iPod' output and video output support.  Of course, this makes all the connectors in the sound/charging/car stereo docks rather useless unless the forthcoming dock connector is durable enough to hold the 4oz. iPhone 5 steady.  Until we can test the adapter, we don't know whether or not it will work with existing car inputs, sound docks, etc.

    Apple added 1/2" to the screen, taking it from 3.5 inches to 4, and increasing the resolution in the process.  This is an interesting change to the normally standard screen sizes found on Apple devices.  Rather than eliminate the iPhone 4 and 4S, they chose to keep the older models and cheaper alternatives to the taller resolution iPhone 5.  The taller screen will add a row of icons for applications and improve the camera/camcorder view.

    Thinner and lighter is a design infatuation that has plagued artistic engineers for decades.  The iPhone 5 certainly does not fall short in the thinner and lighter department.  Perhaps it could be more ergonomic rather than so thin, but Apple is banking on you buying a case for the device to suit your needs.

    What we didn't get with the iPhone 5 is an actual flash for the camera, an increase in the camera resolution, or an Apple-designed power add-on option.  By this point, I'd like to use the device as an every day camera, beyond the simple LED flash.  Also, many of us use these devices throughout the day, running the battery down before nightfall.  We would like a solution from Apple to address the lack of a replaceable or add-on battery.  Even an inductive charging system would be a welcome addition to the iPhone/iPod/iPad line.

    Overall, Apple did well with the iPhone 5, considering the price has not changed.  You can buy the iPhone 5 on September 21st from Apple stores nationwide, or pre-order on Apple's web store.

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    When iTunes Fails: iTunes Cannot Sync Apps

    March 12, 2012

    It's been a while now since iOS 5 and the iPhone 4s were released, and I had yet to update my phone because of an array of puzzling issues that seemingly should not happen on an Apple product. First of all, even a simple backup was failing. This was most alarming because one, I was using a Mac Mini, an actual Apple desktop; and two, because I had never had an issue with iTunes on the Mac. This sort of process worked smoothly in the past, and I had no reason to believe the experience would be any different. Unfortunately, this was just the start of a bizarre string of events I encountered as I tried to straighten out the mess.

    As you may have guessed, I am the typical 'power user'. I use most of the space available on my iPhone 4, and only generally offload files when absolutely necessary. In this case, I deleted about 1GB of data from my phone before I started the process of backing up and upgrading the OS. Right off the bat, I was greeted by a message stating, 'iTunes cannot sync apps to the iPhone because the apps installed on the iPhone could not be determined.' What the...I had never seen this message before so I started Google-ing. It seems this is a pretty common problem, and most often it's fixed by simply quitting iTunes and restarting it. Sure enough, that part was easy, and my apps were syncing as planned (or at least, so I thought).

    Well, halfway through the sync, iTunes comes back and tells me the same thing. But just a second ago it was syncing fine. What kind of cryptic message is this? Either you can determine the apps or you can't...you can't start copying apps and then fail without offering up some additional information. This makes it really tough on the user - figuring out what to do next. At this point, rather than start trying every oddball thing I read in support forums, I decided to watch the sync process closely and try to find out which app was last to sync before crashing the routine. Normally, I'd just update all the apps I have but the app store denies that request, telling me the app requires iOS 5, so here I am, forced to update each app individually. As a power user, this means dozens of apps now that iOS 5 has been around for a few months. Anyway, the last app I saw appear during the sync process was Xfinity Moble, so I went to the app store and updated just that app. I then closed iTunes and restarted, and was greeted with a different message: iTunes found purchases on my phone that were not transferred to my library (really?). Sure, transfer those apps. Well, not so fast, actually.

    After all that, the process is crashing again, with the same error, cannot determine apps. So what now? Am I stuck doing this with every application I have on my phone? This is going to take a while. Well, I fired off the the sync again and the next app to fail: Xfinity TV. Wait, what? It was just Xfinity Mobile that was giving me problems before. Now their TV app? Forget this - I am deleting this app and any app that gives me a sync problem from here on out. So I went ahead and deleted the app and here's what I got: The iPhone cannot be synced because there is not enough free space to hold all of the selected items (additional 3.46 GB required). Whoa, seriously Apple? I am trying to backup my phone and you're telling me to clear data off of it so I can copy something to it? This is absurd. Why would I clear data off of my phone in order to back it up? After looking a little more closely at the usage bar at the bottom of iTunes, apparently it determined that I have 5.8GB of 'other' files on my phone, leaving me 3.4GB over capacity. This is just simply not accurate, so I don't know where the program would have determined this math.

    After trying to close iTunes and restart it a couple times to get around this issue, I decided to go back to Google to find out if there was an easy fix. One of the first page results was a link to support.apple.com with an article recommending I turn off automatic syncing options. The one thing I felt I did not need to sync at this time was music, so I disabled that. It worked! Finally, I was able to sync the apps and get the backup process to complete. I only had to update an app, delete an app, and disable the music sync. What an aggravating mess.

    One thing I did notice after this sync: I ended up with 250MB less storage space than when I started, and now I had no music on the phone. Apparently, when you deselect 'sync music' it disables all the music on your phone. I don't recall seeing a message stating that this would happen if I unchecked that as part of the process. I expect the space freed up and the music deleted, so to see less free space than when I started the sync makes me feel even more uneasy.

    In summary, I suppose it wasn't as difficult a process to repair than other software glitches, but Apple could display more helpful error messages when iTunes fails. The lesson learned is: never underestimate the confusion a simple error message can cause.

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    What's New in The New iPad 3rd Generation?

    March 07, 2012

    iPad SpringboardHD Video? Check! Wait, better than HD Video? Yes, the 'New iPad' actually does do better than current high definition standards (currently 1920x1080 pixels) with a 2048x1536 pixel display utilizing 264 pixels per inch (ppi). That's close to what the 326 ppi that the iPhone 4/4s offers, and double the 132 ppi from the previous generation iPads. What this means for the consumer is better quality videos, sharper, more vivid photos, and text reproduction better than standard print. Combine this with a better camera, quad-core graphics capability and 4G data transfer, and you've about wrapped up the new features of the iPad 3 (er, the new iPad, rather).

    Current price points are the same as previous generation models, so there's no 7" model to compete with the Amazon Kindle, or any fire sale prices on the iPad 2 that would make you want to sell your HP TouchPad or BlackBerry PlayBook. iPad 2 is available at Apple.com for $399, and it won't be long before Amazon discounts them as well. If you've got an iPad 2 you're looking to sell, expect the used iPad 2 market to heat up on eBay over the next few weeks. Now is probably the best time to get a well-kept iPad 2 on eBay.

    The New iPad
    Expect a new round of apps designed to take advantage of this monster resolution. Built-in apps are updated to make managing information easier, including faster browsing in Safari, better readability in iBooks and Newsstand, and other updated core apps. Expect iPhoto, iMovie and GarageBand tweaks to make them better tools. Overall, the new iPad should outsell the current model over the next year and the high resolution display will give competitors a specification they'll need to monitor more closely in their future tablet designs.

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