Apple — Sometimes, They Gotta Get Their Sh*t Together Too

The newslet­ter that has every­thing and any­thing you need to be in the know with all things Apple. Only twist? Noth­ing sug­ar coat­ed. Read on, Apple truth seekers.

Sorry iTunes, But Not Everyone Is A Fan Of U2

 

Steve Jobs must be rolling in his grave right now. No lev­el of excite­ment would ever urge Jobs to give Apple con­sumers some­thing not all of them would want — he was too smart for that. Turns out not every­body wants a free U2 album in their iTunes library! Like a LOT of peo­ple. So many peo­ple that iTunes had to cre­ate a whole new tool to remove the album from their iPhones, iPads and iPods.

“Some cus­tomers asked for the abil­i­ty to delete ‘Songs of Inno­cence’ from their library, so we set up itunes.com/soi-remove to let them eas­i­ly do so. Any cus­tomer that needs addi­tion­al help should con­tact Apple­Care,” spokesman Adam Howorth told the BBC.

And by “some” cus­tomers, he must be allud­ing to a mas­sive amount of peo­ple. You don’t just hasti­ly cre­ate a spe­cial tool to remove an album from your phone unless cus­tomer ser­vice phone lines were get­ting pushed to the lim­its with angry peo­ple want­i­ng to get rid of some­thing they NEVER asked for.

Sort of embar­rass­ing for Bono and U2, would­n’t you say? Not to men­tion plain creepy that Apple has that much access to your iPhone — some­thing you’d like to think would be a lit­tle private.

 

The iPhone 6: Apple Joins Team Phablet

The Phablet — a hybrid between a tablet and a smart­phone. Apple final­ly releas­es an iPhone with a 5.5 inch dis­play, which has been deemed wor­thy of get­ting cat­e­go­rized as a phablet, and a com­peti­tor of the long known cre­ator of the phablet — Sam­sung, releas­ing the Galaxy Note in 2011 with the same dimen­sions as the iPhone 6 Plus, 5.5 inches.

As awk­ward as these absurd­ly large phones may be to make a call on, they’ve become a glob­al hit nev­er­the­less and Apple had no choice but to soon con­form to the fad. Not to men­tion, who real­ly makes phone calls any­more? It’s become an age where con­sumers want the con­ve­nience of a PC, tablet, and phone right at their fin­ger­tips — ergo, the phablet.

Along with the 5.5 inch dis­play, Apple released a ver­sion of the iPhone 6 with a 4.7 inch screen — giv­ing a much more com­pact iPhone for those who want to keep the sense of “pock­etabil­i­ty” they once knew with the pre­vi­ous iPhone 5.

Some­thing else to keep in mind is the over­all pric­ing of the iPhone 6 in com­par­i­son to an iPad mini. With­out a cel­lu­lar con­tract, the iPhone 6 Plus is $750 and much more expen­sive than the mini. With a con­tract, how­ev­er, it’s only $299. Both the 6 and 6 Plus will be released this Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 19.

Maybe Apple got this one right.

Apple iOS 8 Is Now Here — And Nothing’s Really Changed

Apple CEO Tim Cook announced the release of iOS 8 this Tues­day, Sep­tem­ber 9, 2014, and frankly, it’s noth­ing to rave about.

iOS 8 goes the much more func­tion­al route with updates rather than visu­als. One of them being a fea­ture called Hand­off, giv­ing the abil­i­ty to type an email or text on your phone, and then fin­ish it on your com­put­er or iPad.

HOW EXCITING…

For all the teens out there who’ve strug­gled with their use of typ­ing pro­fan­i­ty because of auto-cor­rect, your solu­tion is here. This is one of the few pros of iOS 8, and it’s called Quick­Type — fea­tur­ing a pre­dic­tive key­board soft­ware enhance­ment, learn­ing how you talk with dif­fer­ent peo­ple to allow for quick­er auto-corrections.

Apple also sur­pris­ing­ly broke the very rigid mold of let­ting in third-par­ty appli­ca­tions access things such as a key­board. Swiftkey, an app allow­ing you to swipe over let­ters to com­pose sen­tences, is now avail­able for down­load (and it actu­al­ly works!)

Anoth­er fea­ture that can very well become an issue for the guys with over­bear­ing girl­friends is the Share My Loca­tion that is now in iMes­sage. For an extend­ed peri­od of time, you can share your loca­tion with whomev­er you’re tex­ting and always be in the know in case you want to catch your sig­nif­i­cant oth­er in a lie.

Oth­er than a few oth­er minor cos­met­ic changes, iOS8 is noth­ing but yet anoth­er very expect­ed let down.

The iWatch: Superfluous, Gaudy — and $349

And here’s where Apple needs to get their sh*t together.

First off, let’s address you’re pay­ing $349 for some­thing sim­i­lar to your iPhone, just on a 1 inch screen with lim­it­ed capa­bil­i­ty. You can do all the basic things on your iWatch just like the iPhone — such as look at pho­tos, open maps, and yes, even tell time. Sound worth wait­ing for yet? God, I hope not.

Sec­ond, you need an iPhone 5 or new­er to oper­ate it! If you already own one then you’re good to go, but if not, this is already a mar­gin­al­iz­ing deal.

Third, it’s anoth­er thing to charge at night. Apple tends to for­get elec­tric­i­ty isn’t free, so enjoy hav­ing yet anoth­er device to charge if you’re still not con­vinced to not buy it.

Last­ly, and the ulti­mate fac­tor in your deci­sion we all tend to for­get Apple does, this is a first gen­er­a­tion! Apple is known to release mul­ti­ple ver­sions of a device. Soon enough there’s going to be a new­er iWatch that’s thin­ner, with more capa­bil­i­ties, and left-hand friend­ly since the dial only comes on the right hand side.

Save your money.