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Join us for the Macworld/iWorld 2014 State of Apple Technology panel liveblog
When it rains, it pours. Sure enough, it has been raining here in drought-stricken Northern California, so much so that numerous flights were delayed coming into the city yesterday. And after a drought of Apple-related liveblogs, we actually have two that will be happening simultaneously. Mike Rose will be covering Microsoft's announcement today at 10 AM PT/1 PM ET, where we expect to hear about an iPad version of Microsoft's Office suite. At the same time and just a few blocks away, we will be liveblogging the "keynote" of this year's top Apple fan event -- Macworld/iWorld 2014 -- which is a panel discussion on The State of Apple Technology. Longtime Mac writer Jason Snell (Senior VP, editorial director, IDG Consumer & SMB) will moderate the discussion and is joined by Ben Bajarin (Principal, Creative Strategies, Inc.), Christina Bonnington (Staff Writer, Wired), Rene Ritchie (Editor in chief, iMore), and former TUAW blogger Christina Warren (Senior Tech Analyst, Mashable). So choose your liveblog wisely. Even better, open up two tabs in your favorite web browser and flip between the two liveblogs. It should be quite fascinating!
Get new life out of an old Mac Pro (Updated)
You've been drooling at the video of the new Mac Pro, but realize that your chances of having enough money to buy one of the cylindrical black speedsters when they ship this fall are slim to none. Not to worry -- iMore's Peter Cohen has just the answer if you'd like to add some life to your existing Mac Pro. What Cohen wisely suggests is replacing your old Mac Pro's hard drive with a solid-state drive (SSD). He borrowed a couple of SSDs from Other World Computing (aka OWC) and put 'em through the test. The first was a SATA-based drive, the Mercury Extreme 6G (480 GB for US$549.99), while the second drive was a PCI Express-based drive called the Mercury Accelsior_E2 (up to 960 GB for $1,289.99). The Mercury Accelsior_E2 is unique in that it's a PCI Express card with an SSD built on. Cohen notes that you can upgrade the SSDs down the road, as the PCIe card-based devices have removable SSDs on them. Any Mac Pro from 2008 or later should work just fine with this drive placed into one of the two 16x slots, while 2009 and newer Mac Pro models will get the best possible performance from any slot. I won't divulge all of Cohen's test results, but let's just say that the SSDs -- especially the Mercury Accelsior_E2 -- smoked the basic hard drive in terms of performance. While the maximum capacity versions of these drives aren't exactly cheap, they're certainly less expensive than any new Mac Pro will likely be. Update: An OWC spokesperson noted that Cohen was working with incompressible data, and that using the QuickBench suite of tests, they were able to show that the Accelsior_E2 can achieve read and write speeds that are in the 671 - 686 MB/second range (see below). Since the QuickBench suite tests more day-to-day usage, those who aren't using their Mac Pro primarily for video editing or manipulation of large files will see an even better improvement in performance.
"Debrickifying" an iPhone 5
I got my share of flak from TUAW readers when I wrote a post three weeks ago bemoaning the fact that my iPhone 5 -- which was running iOS 7 beta -- lost battery power on the first day of a vacation and went into an endless restart loop. Yes, dear readers, I am well aware of the fact that Apple points out that you shouldn't run beta software on a mission critical device, so I deserved what I got -- a nice three-week-long respite from checking my iPhone every few minutes. This post is to let you know that I did manage to get the iPhone in somewhat working order yesterday (my first day back from vacation), and that you can accomplish the same thing should you ever encounter the endless restart loop problem. Let me describe the symptom of the endless restart loop. The iPhone appears to be starting up, displaying the Apple logo and then going to a black screen showing the familiar progress "rotor" -- which doesn't rotate. After a while, the device decides to reboot and go through the process again, ad infinitum, or at least until the battery is completely drained. This was the point on my trip that I A.) wished I had taken my MacBook Pro on vacation with me and B.) put the iPhone 5 into the safe in my cruise ship cabin to act as a paperweight. Fast-forward to yesterday morning. After a good night's sleep to kill the jet lag and taking care of some TUAW business first thing, I decided to see if I could make my iPhone 5 into something other than an attractive and expensive brick. To begin with, I tethered it to my Mac and launched iTunes, which showed a device running iOS 7, but would not let me restore the device. A Google search for "endless restart loop" somehow pointed me to a June 2013 post by iMore editor Allyson Kazmucha talking about how to downgrade an iOS 7 device to iOS 6. In turn, that pointed to an older post by iMore editor-in-chief and all-around nice guy Rene Ritchie on how to put your iPhone into DFU (Device Firmware Update) mode. Between the two of those posts, I was on the road to Debrick City. At this point the iPhone 5 was back into endless restart looping and still tethered to the iMac, so I picked it up and started with putting it in DFU mode. This involves some critical timing: Hold down the Home button and sleep button on the top of the iPhone simultaneously for about ten seconds. I actually used the second hand on a watch (ancient technology) to time this... Ritchie's instructions note that "if you see the Apple logo, you've held them too long and will need to start again." Next, let go of the sleep button and continue holding the Home button for another five seconds. In this situation, Ritchie warns that "...if you see the 'Plug into iTunes' screen then you held it too long and will need to start again." At this point, the screen remained black, meaning that the device was in DFU mode and happily awaiting new firmware. Where to go from here? Well, I had no choice but to go back to iOS 6, since Dev Center is still down and there's no way I can get access to the iOS 7 files again. My next move was to find the latest iOS 6 firmware file for my phone, which happened to be the 6.1.4 version for CDMA (I have a Verizon iPhone 5). With Dev Center down, I was happy to see that iMore has a downloads section available with all recent firmware files, so it was no problem to grab the file. Once the iPhone 5 was in DFU mode, iTunes began displaying a message (above) that said "iTunes has detected an iPhone in recovery mode. You must restore this iPhone before it can be used with iTunes." Looking at the device screen for the iPhone 5 in iTunes, there was a button for "Restore iPhone" (image below) Since iOS 7 isn't available (ahem...), I held down the Option key on my keyboard and clicked Restore iPhone, which brought up a dialog where I could select the firmware file. Within a few minutes, the iPhone 5 was humming away happily, although I can't do a restore from iCloud because -- get this -- all of the backups that I can select from were done from an iOS 7 device. At least this gets my device back in my pocket and acting like an iPhone again until I can do a total iOS 7 restore after the Dev Center is back online. Many thanks to iMore for their how-to posts and the screenshots included here.
Ibrahim Balic talks Dev Center downtime with iMore
Last Thursday, Apple's developer site suddenly went offline. Apple announced the interruption was attributable to an "intruder" who was attempting to access the personal information of Apple's developers. So who was responsible for the downtime? A Turkish security researcher named Ibrahim Balic thinks he might be the cause. He caused a stir this week with the release of a YouTube video explaining exactly what security holes he reported to Apple, and what went wrong. Now iMore has published an interview with Balic in which he aims to shed more light on exactly what happened, the methods he used to test the Developer Center's security and his thoughts on Apple's response. Balic found an exploit not directly in the Developer Center, but in Apple's iAd Workbench, which allows users to build targeted iAds. By giving iAd a single piece of user information, Balic was able to retrieve a user's full name, username and email address. Once the exploit was discovered, Balic created a script to generate random users to see if Apple's servers would send back a match for the names in what he says was an attempt to test how serious the bug was. He reported the bug to Apple and the rest is (unconfirmed) history. It's a fascinating interview that gives a hard look at what might have gone down this past Thursday. Of course we don't know for sure since Apple hasn't commented. But if you're wondering what happened with the Developer Center last week, head over to iMore for the rest of the story.
iPhone 5, HTC One cameras compared by iMore
Here at TUAW, we're strictly an Apple blog, but our friends over at iMore tend to take a more cross-platform look at things. Today, iMore's Allyson Kazmucha published a lengthy and detailed side-by-side comparison of the 8-megapixel camera built into the iPhone 5 and the highly touted 4 MP camera that is part of the HTC One Android phone. How did the iPhone 5's camera compare? Kazmucha took photos at the same place and time with both cameras, so you really get a feel for how each camera responds to certain lighting conditions. The iPhone uses an f/2.4 aperture on a 1/3.2-inch sensor with a pixel size of 1.4 micrometers, while the HTC One has a slightly faster f/2.0 aperture and a pixel size of 2 micrometers on the same sensor. As she points out, these "UltraPixels are larger and should allow for better light sensitivity, particularly in low-light situations." What follows are comparisons of general, motion, low-light and panorama photography. While I won't spoil the excellent post on iMore, let's just get to the bottom line -- the iPhone 5 has better color depth, tone and saturation, while the HTC One is much better at capturing images in low light. In the one sample image at the top of this post, that's the iPhone 5 on the left and the HTC One on the right. The iPhone 5's panoramas tend to knock the HTC One out of the ring, by the way.
Shooting fashion photos with an iPhone
So you're looking for a new career as a fashion photographer. To kickstart your job, look no further than today's iMore post by Rene Ritchie where he asked Mobile Nations' David Lundblad to take high-fashion photos of model Amanda Del Duca in Manhattan's Bryant Park with an iPhone. Videographer Martin Reisch captured video of the modeling session, and the result is a one-of-a-kind blog post that provides some tips on how to use an iPhone to take amazing fashion images. As Ritchie notes, "nothing beats a DSLR for final photos, but increasingly the iPhone is the new Polaroid for everything else on set." Lundblad uses Camera+ (currently on sale for US$0.99) instead of the standard Camera app to take advantage of the extra control over exposure and focus that it provides. Ritchie is inviting aspiring fashion photographers to share their work in a forum thread he's started. In the meantime, check out the post for the tips from Ritchie and photographer Lundblad, then start getting your models lined up. We've embedded the iMore video of the shoot below.
Rumor: Apple to add smaller Dock connector to all iOS devices this fall
iMore and other sources are reporting that the smaller Dock connector design that is expected to debut with the new iPhone this fall will also be included in revisions to other iOS mobile devices. The smaller connectors have been seen on alleged images of the new iPhone and on case designs, but now the word is that new versions of the iPod nano, iPod touch, and 9.7-inch iPad will feature the new connector, as well as the rumored 7-inch iPad mini. As iMore notes, it's been a while since the iPod line has been refreshed, so updating those devices with a new and consistent Dock connector design isn't out of the question. However, the iPad was refreshed in March of this year, meaning that an update to the design to address connector consistency and heat issues would fall outside of the normal release schedule. Apple did refer to a number of "new products in the pipeline" during the Q3 FY 2012 earnings call, so perhaps an update to the existing iPad isn't exactly out of the question. Only time will tell, and as the rumored September 12 announcement date gets closer we'll hear even more speculation.
How to fix an iPhone 4 Home button, Sprint or Verizon
I've never had problems with the home button on my Verizon iPhone, but if you do, you should check out this repair post from iMore's Allyson Kazmucha. Kazmucha, who founded the repair company PXLFIX, shows you how to remove the back cover, disassemble the internal components and pull out the home button on your CDMA iPhone. It's not an easy process as you have to dig through the battery and the logic board to get to the home button. The iMore post has detailed images, which should reduce your chance of making a costly mistake. As always, if you do decide to take apart your iPhone, proceed at your own risk.
iMore lists the best free iPad games
My son is home sick today, but instead of staring at the TV he's poking at some strategy games on the iPad. As luck would have it, iMore published an extensive list of free iPad games, broken down by category. There are some easy hits, like Angry Birds Free, but also some little gems like Wind-up Knight, Forever Drive and Spice Bandits. If you or a friend is wondering what games to try out first on an iPad, you can't go wrong here.
The case for ditching the Dock connector
Apple's 30-pin Dock connector has spawned generations of cables, docks, and accessories that all use the wide dongle we've all become familiar with. But is it something that has outlived its usefulness and is ready for replacement? That's the question iMore's Rene Ritchie discussed in a post yesterday, and his opinion is that Apple may move to an updated "micro dock" this year. Why? Ritchie notes that design changes like this are not unprecedented in the world of Apple, citing the move from mini SIM cards to micro SIM for the original iPad and removing the antenna from the inside of the iPhone for the iPhone 4 and 4S. The changes provided the extra space under the hood required for a larger battery, a power-hungry Retina display and backlight, 802.11n Wi-Fi and more. Ritchie points out that the current dock connector takes up a relatively large amount of space that could be better used for a 4G LTE radio. While the change might not occur in the next generation of iPad expected to be announced in the next few weeks, it could be a requirement for the iPhone 5. Ritchie doesn't think Apple would go to Thunderbolt, since iOS doesn't use the PCI Express architecture, nor does a micro-USB connector make much sense as it doesn't add a lot of speed to the connection. There's less of a need now for a connector that does more than just charge the device. With Wi-Fi sync and installation of apps and AirPlay connections to speakers and TVs, the need for a wired connection has waned. Last year's move to iOS 5 brought about the "PC-free" era, no longer requiring a PC or Mac to complete the initial setup of an iOS device. Apple would, Ritchie comments, upset a lot of customers and accessory manufacturers with a change to a new connector. But the company has always been willing to take a chance, pulling floppy disk drives, optical drives, and FireWire ports from new Macs as the need for those components disappeared. What will take the place of the 30-pin Dock connector? Your guess is as good as mine (or Rene's). This year seems like a likely time for the change to come, and we'll all get a chance to embrace change for better or worse.
