GeekwithEnvy

Richard Vincenti Jr

Should Apple Allow You To Exchange Your iPad?

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With the recent release of the new 4th generation iPad just 7 months after the last release, many 3rd generation iPad owners are a little angry. 7 months is pretty fast, even by today’s standards.iPad4

I would imagine that the biggest complaint among iPad users is that if they had known about a 4th generation iPad they would have most likely waited before making a purchase. This brings forth a good question, should the 3rd generation iPad have been released at all?

Yes, the retina display is amazing but overall the 3rd generation iPad doesn’t seem to cut it as a major improvement over the iPad 2. Perhaps if Apple had waited and included the new A6X processor in the 3rd generation then maybe we would feel a little better about our purchase.

It would seem that Apple wanted to update the iPad with it’s new Lightning connector in order to allow the iPad to fit in with the rest of the line up and decided that something else needs to be added in order to allow it to be considered as an actual upgrade, hence the A6X. After all, it would kind of stand out when it came time to pick out accessories and a significant performance boost will definitely be appealing. Also, we should consider the timing of this update. Apple seems to have moved from a “scattered” release of products to a single, multi-product release that lines up just before the holidays.

The question that comes to mind here is should Apple allow you to exchange your iPad 3 for a 4th generation version? Now, I am not talking about those of us who bought one 6 months ago but rather those who purchased an iPad within the last month. The good news is that if you feel frustrated by this unexpected release of the iPad 4, you’re not alone. There is significant buzz going around about the possibility of Apple having some stores exchange your iPad 3 for an iPad 4 of you have recently purchased and iPad, which would be a very cool move on Apple’s part. However, just because we think that Apple should do the exchange doesn’t mean they have to though and I’m not so sure about how this would affect consumer opinion of the company over an update of one product in a large line up.

The bottom line here is that when we decide to shop for technology, we should always assume it’s already out of date. I go through this every time I buy a new electronic device. I always have that thought in the back of my head that says, “They are going to release a new version of this next month, I just know it!”. Even if Apple doesn’t offer up an exchange or if you bought yours too long ago, you can always sell it. There is a huge demand for iPads and iPhones out there and those people don’t care if it’s not the latest or greatest, they just want a good deal on a solid product.

 

Apple Introduces New iPad Mini and Refreshes Lineup

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Today Apple has introduced their new iPad mini along with updating the iMac, Mac mini, Mac Pro, and iPad. Here’s a quick rundown of what was announced.

iPad Mini

The much anticipated iPad mini has been unveiled and it looks great. Consumers who were looking for an Apple device to better compete with devices like the Google Nexus 7 can now rejoice as Apple has done just that.iPad_mini

The new iPad mini features a 7.9 inch display which is slightly larger than the Nexus 7 which features a 7 inch display. Apple chose to describe the size difference in square inches rather than on the diagonal when comparing it to a 7 inch tablet, which works out to be 21.9 square inches (7″) and  29.6 square inches (7.9). Schiller went on to explain how much better your web browsing experience is with their 7.9″ design over their competition and then he compared apps on iPad mini vs other tablets and discussed how they offer a richer experience on the iPad mini.

The iPad mini will also feature the new Lighting connector along with new accessories like Lighting to HDMI. The body of the iPad mini -no surprise here- is made of an all aluminum unibody. Apple has also brought its iSight camera to the iPad mini and the all mighty A5 chip. If you’re planing on using the iPad mini on a cellular network, you will have the ability to take advantage of LTE.

iPad

Even though it has only been about half a year since the release of the iPad 3rd generation with retina display, Apple has just introduced the new 4th generation iPad that features a new A6X chip that’s 2x as fast as the previous generation iPad. The 4th generation iPad also has the latest in Wi-Fi technology and will be able to pick up both 2.4GHz and 5GHz (dual-band). Also, the new Lightning connector is now a part of the 4th generation iPad.

 

iMac

The iMac was one of my favorite unveilings that Apple had to offer. The new iMac looks great with it’s brand new slim design that has a screen edge of only 5mm. The back of the display is a much wider than the edge but it is done in a way that’s easy on the eyes.newiMac

Speaking of easy on the eyes, you will be dealing with 75% less reflection. The new iMac uses 50% less power than previous generations and has been equipped with the latest (ivy bridge) processors from Intel including both i5 and i7 chips. Graphics get a bump up to the latest Keplar architecture with the option to get the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX on the 27″ model.

Fusion Drive

The fusion drive is a combination of flash storage and traditional HDD storage. The flash storage will hold 128GB and the traditional HDD can be 1 or 3 TB. The Fusion Drive isn’t just a mix of both technologies it actually implements some really cool software that moves your applications from one drive to the other depending on it’s performance needs. The OS and pre-installed software will be placed on the flash storage for best performance and initially all of the apps you install will be stored on the HDD. OSX will then recognize which programs you use the most and which programs require the most performance and then move them to the much faster flash drive accordingly. Pretty cool idea considering most of us are already doing this manually with our computers.

 

Mac Pro

Apple continues to push their most popular laptops forward and the Mac Pro 13″ has now been updated with a retina display, a new thinner design and an all flash architecture.MBP13Retina

Mac Mini

The Mac mini remains basically the same except it gets up bump up in processing power by now featuring the new Ivy Bridge Intel chips. It should be said that the Mac mini really didn’t need much else, the Mac mini is affordable and can be a real workhorse considering it’s small size, cool little box.

For complete details on these new products you can head over to Apple.

 

Are You Ready For UHDTV?

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Just as we are starting to get really comfortable with HDTV as it is today, we are already looking ahead to the next big step.UHDTV Ultra High Definition Television

HDTV’s and basically any other displays we use are constantly being improved.

Television resolution was locked in at 480i (NTSC) and 576i (PAL) and these resolutions were the standard in television broadcasting for decades. Today, we seem to be in a race to create the most detailed display possible and every few months there is something better being created. We may not think about it very much but this is history being made before our eyes, quite literally.

Most of us are familiar with HDTV by now, which consists of two resolutions, 1080i/p (1920 x 1080) and 720p (1280 x 720). UHDTV or Ultra High Definition Television consists of 4K aka 2160p (4096 x 2160) and 8K aka 4320p (7680 x 4320). 3840 × 2160 is also considered to be UHDTV but for obvious reasons is not considered to be 4K.

Why in the world do we need such high resolutions? Well, as we begin to increase screen size we loose detail and with screen sizes over 80 inches, as is the case with projection systems, we begin to loose some of the fine detail that standard HDTV offers on screen sizes below 80 inches. 4K has primarily been used in projection technology until recently.

Now we are seeing LCD television sets that employ both 4K and 8K technology on screens at 84 and even 145 inch screens. The name of the game here is to reduce the visibility of pixels. Technologies like the Retina display from Apple and other high dpi screens also aim to make pixels disappear but on a much smaller scale. Resolution is relative to screen size, take a 1080p  image and place it on a 145 inch screen, that’s not going to look so great but also imagine 4K on your mobile phone, that’s not very practical so everything here is about making things look as smooth as possible based on screen size.

UHDTV_resolution_chart
Credit (GrandDrake)

Now that we have a basic understanding of what UHDTV actually is, it’s time to consider it’s actual implementation. In order for UHDTV to be broadcast, it would require a significant amount of bandwidth to do so. Many of our current television providers struggle to get us standard HDTV without severely compressing it and removing other data from the video pipeline. This also is true with streaming video online, we have only recently seen HDTV quality streaming actually work well on the internet and this is because we are still technically in the early days of broadband internet. I know what you’re thinking, our broadband has been around for more than a decade now! Yes, it is true that high speed internet has been around and it is relatively quick but we have only seen the tip of the “broadband iceberg”. Broadband will soon be many, many times faster than it is today and that’s when it will be practical to broadcast  or stream UHDTV.

I guess we can relax for now about our recent HDTV purchase as it looks like good old 1080p will be around for quite a while yet but we will start to see things change and it will be just as amazing as was the first HDTV display. It makes you wonder how much better will our displays get before we reach that theoretical “sweet spot”.

Orionid Meteor Shower

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Dust from Halley’s Comet will begin to collide with our atmosphere tonight as Earth’s orbit places us in the path of the debris.Meteors in the Night Sky NASA says that the best time to view the Orionid meteor shower is between  11PM to 3AM EST tonight, October 20 through the early morning of the 21st. The meteor shower will be visible from everywhere in the world.

To best view the shower, make sure to get as far away as you can from local light pollution and then find a good spot to sit and relax. Make sure you get into a position where you don’t put strain on your neck while looking up at the night sky.

If your fortunate enough to have clear weather conditions you should be able to see 15-20 meteors every hour. As the debris hits the atmosphere at over 100,000 miles per hour it will begin to burn up, creating a wonderful cosmic display.

You can watch a LIVE feed of the shower form NASA below.

Free desktop streaming application by Ustream

The Mighty Web Browser

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BrowserWe are constantly using our web browser, it’s one of the most frequently used applications on any computer, so we need it to be stable and quick. Sometimes though, things start to fail and we get frustrated. When things get ugly we just move on to the next one, perhaps even back to the one we used to use, to see if it has gotten any better. Fortunately, there are plenty of browsers out there to choose from.

I test out a lot of browsers but tend to find myself using either Firefox or Safari the most when I am not reviewing one. I actually had a good run with Internet Explorer for a while, up until I started to experience issues with certain web applications failing. These web application failures only happened when using IE and it was an app that I used on a regular basis.

While looking at web browser statistics, I was quite surprised to see StatCounter showing IE in the lead. I thought for sure that Firefox or Chrome would top the charts but IE is still quite dominant. It’s easy to see how a pre-installed web browser on the world’s most popular OS could easily grab such a large percentage of users and while many may have installed a second browser, they continue to use IE as their default browser. I’m not saying that IE is unusable but it needs a lot of improvement. In fact I prefer Internet Explorer’s UI over most, but the stability issues that plague my applications are just too much.

I basically consider four major factors when choosing a browser, stability, speed, simplicity and security. I like my browser to more or less, stay out of the way. I want the content to be the main focus and I like a clean interface that has only what I need and nothing else. An ideal browser should be fast and reliable, unexpected crashes and failure to load specific, media rich content are major decision factors for me. Security needs to be strong, especially if you use online banking and or shopping.

Here is a recent snapshot of the top 5 browsers from 2011 to 2012.

StatCounter-browser-ww-yearly-2011-2012-bar