Apples Week of Hardware Updates

Next week Apple is having an event to announce something. We are pretty sure it is the Apple TV service and Apple News subscription service. When Apple has an event we normally speculate on what new hardware they might announce. Well, Apple must not want to focus on hardware next week so they let us know this week.

iPad Air and iPad mini:

This will be a running theme through all of this. The device is the same except they swept out the old chip for a new faster chip. Now we have faster iPad Airs (we are back to the Air name now) and the iPad mini isn’t dead. Both iPads are now sporting an A12 Bionic. With last years iPad update, we got use of the Apple Pencil but it couldn’t register things like how hard you are pushing on it. Well, now you can use the original Apple Pencil with the new iPad Air and mini just like you could on the original iPad Pro. You can pick up the new iPad Air for $499 starting next week or $399 for the iPad mini.

iMac:

The iMac line is now faster as well. The 21.5 inch iMac now has a faster 8th generation quad-core processor from Intel and sports Radeon Pro Vega graphics. The 27 inch iMac now has a 9th generation 6 core processor or you can get it with an 8 core processor. The 27 inch iMac has the same graphics but runs 50% faster. Just like the iPads, you can pick up the new iMacs next week. The 21.5 inch iMac will start at $1299 and the iMac 27 inch will start at $1799.

AirPods:

AirPods just what we have been waiting for, or am I the only waiting for this? Either way, we finally have new AirPods. The new ones are like everything else pretty much the same as the old ones but in this case, the new AirPods add a new feature. You can now use "Hey Siri" with the new AirPods. With the current ones, you can only activate Siri by tapping one of the pods. This is nice if like me you connect your AirPods to say your iPad and then leave that room and want to just say "Hey Siri" instead of tapping your ear. Along with new AirPods Apple is offering a new wireless charging case for the AirPods. You can buy the case with the New AirPods for a bit more or buy the case separately to use with your original AirPods. You can Get the new AirPods for $159 or $199 with the wireless charging case. You can pick up the wireless charging case for $79 if you want it later on or use with your original AirPods. You can pick up your new AirPods next week.

Mondays the Day:

Next week is going to be a busy week for the Apple Store with all this new hardware. I think the only thing left to be updated is the iPod Touch and Apple TV. With Apple's announcement being center around a streaming service, if they have an updated Apple TV they might wait until Monday to announce it. None of these products got major overhauls that some wanted but they are all faster now may have a new service or two on Monday.

What to Expect when you are Expecting an Apple Education Event

Tomorrow is the day, Apples Education event. Now is the time to make predictions as to what will be announced at this event tomorrow. I feel like it isn’t going to be much, and they will stay on the topic of education. For the past few years now Apple has lived streamed just about every event they have done, but tomorrows event will not be lived streamed. They are recording it and will have video of it shortly after. 

Cheaper MacBook Air:

Being a event for education price will be a major feature of anything Apple announces at this event. The Mac Air might be the mobile computer that they position as the cheap Mac. Now I don’t think they will do with a new Mac Air but I think they will come out with a new up dated Mac Air that will be a bit thinner and will only have USB-C. Then Apple will keep the current Mac Air and maybe just up its RAM and a few other updated configurations, then just slash the price to say $499 for a base model Mac Air. They may not go that low but my point is it will be much cheaper then any of the other Mac Laptops currently available. 

Mac mini:

I feel the Mac mini will follow the same events. They will most likely announce a new Mac mini with the latest CPU’s and maybe SSDs, better discreet graphics. Then keep the current model with a few new configuration options and discount it to hell making it the cheapest Mac you can buy.

iPad:

Before I go any further I will say you will not see a new iPad mini, this line is all but dead. What will see is a new iPad capable of using AR apps like the iPhone X. This iPad will also support Face ID and maybe due away with the home button on the iPad. This new iPad might also support use of the Apple Pencil. Once they have announced this they will probably keep the current iPad and discount it as well making it the cheapest iPad. 

OS updates Release:

Once everything is said and done apple will most likely release the iOS 11.3 and Mac OS 10.13.4. This will bring new Animoji to the iPhone X and things like iMessage cloud sync and lots of be hind the seances fixes.  

The Rest of the Event:

Majority of this event will be Apple making a case as to why schools should use Apple products and not Chromebook's and Microsoft products. They might even show off a future version of their OS’s that have a better way to manage devices for schools. I wouldn’t expect to hear anything about the Mac Pro, or the iPhone at this event. This event is first and foremost a education event.

I truthfully would like to be wrong about most of this and we get or hear about something really cool, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up.

Dos and Don'ts of iOS 10 Public Beta

Today is the day some of us have been waiting for, the iOS 10 public beta is here. As I type this I'm sacrificing my iPad Air 2 to the beta gods. This got me thinking, other people are doing this too and some of them might be first timers. Which is fine its a public beta anyone can sign up and get the bits. So I thought it might be helpful to make a quick list of dos and don'ts when using the public beta, and a lot of these things can be used for other betas as well.

Back-Up

Before you do anything at all, even before you sign up for the public beta program do your self a favor and do a local backup to your computer. Even if you do iCloud back up do a local backup. If you need to roll back to a stable build of iOS it will make things go quicker if you have a local backup.

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Play with your Apps

After you have installed the public beta bits, open some of your most used apps and mess around with them to see if they still work. Just remember this is a beta and none of the apps from the app store are optimize to run on iOS 10 so just be thankful they even open up. Also make sure your apps are all up to date. Sometimes its not an OS thing that is making them crash it could just be a bug that the developer already fixed. But if they do not and you really need the apps to work just roll back to iOS 9, that is why the first tip was to backup.

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Don't bug the Devs

Maybe some of your apps don't work and it might be, because of some changes under the hood in iOS 10. Please for the love of god don't go to the app store and write bad reviews about the app and give them a 1 star. Right now the 3rd party developers can not fix any iOS 10 related problems. If you have a problem with a app that could be a iOS 10 issue file a bug report in the feedback app.

App-Store

Feedback App

The feedback app will help not just you but also apple and 3rd party devs too. This is a public beta test so the whole point is to get feedback from users to find bugs and to suggest things you might want to see in iOS 10 or future updates to iOS 10. This is also where you can tell develops about crashy apps so they can make fixes and can have them ready when they can put iOS 10 optimized apps on the app store.

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I hope these tips help when you are trying out iOS 10. Just keep in mind that this is beta software and it will be buggy so don't get too mad when things break.

Speculations for March 2016 Apple Event

The invites have gone out for next weeks Apple event. Up until today this event was just a rumor but the invites went out for a March 21st event. But what will they be announcing? This is what I want to speculate about. iPhone SE:

First off we have to talk about iPhone. Rumor is that Apple might announce a smaller iPhone one about the size of the iPhone 5 but have the guts of the iPhone 6S. Some of us think even the iPhone 6S is too big of a screen. I still think the 4S screen was the better size but a iPhone 5 screen is pretty good too. I have big hands but I need 2 to use my iPhone a lot. While with my 5c I could pretty much use my iPhone with one hand. Well maybe my next iPhone I will be able to do that again.

iPad Mini Pro:

Back in October the iPad Pro was announced and some people liked it and some didn't. Mostly cause of the size. But most people agree that the best part of it is the Apple Pencil. Well what if you could have the power of a iPad Pro and the ability to use the Apple Pencil in a iPad mini? Well if that's what you wanted you might have won! The iPad mini pro might be a thing being announce in a few weeks.

Apple Watch 2 (1.5):

Almost a year ago the Apple Watch came out and it seems to be a success. Well we might just see the Apple Watch 2. I doubt it will be much different from the original, it will probably be faster and have longer battery life. They might have some surprises in software with watch OS 2 which is in beta right now and will be out at some point.

Watch OS 2, iOS 9.3, OSX 10.11.4, and TV OS 9.2:

This one I would put money on. I'm almost sure they will release them shortly after the event is over or later on in the week. All of these have in beta or public beta for while now and as far as the public builds for iOS they are in 6th build of it. So even if you can't afford anything that might be announced in the event you will still have something to play with that day. That's about all I can come up with. We will see in a few weeks on March 21st what they will really announce. You will be able to watch a stream of The event by Apple and many blogs will be live blogging it as well.

  

RedTuu... Youtube Red

Youtube has been bugging me and bugging me to do a youtube red trial. One night i just gave in and did it. The short hand of this is Im enjoying it. Now the longer version. I do like youtube red but I have a few issues with it. Maybe they will change these things but I doubt it.

To begin I hate the name YouTube red, I kind of get what they where going for something simple. The problem is there are plenty sick minded people like me who keep wanting to call it Red Tube. When I first saw the name I thought it was a joke or at the very least they might have changed it. Though this issue is a very little one.

My big problem with YouTube Red is its a pay wall in away. What I mean is in order to watch some content you have to pay Youtube. Youtube Red has original content like the new Pewdiepie show that is exclusive to red. So if you are not paying for Red you are not going to see it. This I take as a problem cause it sort of spits in the face of what youtube has stood for. Why should I have to pay to watch something like that? I feel like its also a spit in the face to his subscribers as well.

I would be ok if it was more of a choice, like if you don't have youtube red you just have to watch some ads and if you do pay for red you get no ads just like normal youtube videos. Some Red shows might do this but I don't know the agreements and stuff but as it stands now it looks like you pay or you don't get the see the red shows. This is my biggest problem with red but we will see how this plays out as shows come out.

Now for a little problem. Paying for Youtube Red also means you can have youtube run in the background on mobile. This is the big draw for me, but my problem with it is other apps like Twitch let me play just the audio in the background for free or on iPad they let me do picture in picture and red still docent do this. I just feel like I shouldn't have to pay $9.99 a month for something other apps do for free and a bit better. On that note I do love being able to listen to videos when Im in the shower threw my bluetooth speaker or out shoveling. I watch longer form shows like WoW Head weakly which is an hour long or more. So being able to start watching it on my Roku and then when I leave the house to be able to open YouTube on my phone to continue it but just the audio is so convenient. But I really don't feel like I should have to pay monthly for that, if they had it as a in app purchase I would pay a one time fee for it.

I guess my final thing is I just think YouTube Red is over priced. I feel like The prices should be closer to $4.99 a month.  Now as much as I don't like these things about Youtube Red what I do like is people paying for red is that some of the money goes to the youtubers that you watch. So as much as I feel like some of the things red does is wrong this is one very good thing for they do and I feel like Youtube Red needs to exist and continue to exist. i just think that you shouldn't have to pay the red tax to get the fullest out of youtube.

One a Day

I've been radioing my head all day to figure out what to write about today. Mostly cause I haven't seen any tech news that has jumped out at me that I feel like commenting on. But after using a app twice in a day I thought maybe that is what I should write about. So today I'm going to tell you all about one a day. 

I'm pretty sure I haven't talked about it before on this blog but if I have well I'm going to again cause it's an app I really love and I don't know if I could live with out it. For those of you who do not know, one a day is a journal app. In the past I have kept booth digital and physical journals. But I always ran into the problem of either losing them or just not having it around when I need it. My first digital journal was a floppy disk and I used Microsoft Works to write my entry's and saved them with a password and then locked the floppy so it couldn't be read if it was inserted accidentally. 

But the problem with that was it wasn't that covenant and probably not all that secure. About 2 years ago I herd about one a day. I'm not sure how I herd about it, it was either iPad Today or from appadvice.com. But either way it was an app I fell in love with cause it was simple and straight to the point. When you open the app it will ask you if you want to use iCloud or Dropbox to sync your entries. This so you can either write an entry from either your iOS devices or a Mac. I for one use it on all my devices I normally use it on my iPad or Mac when I want to write a long entry that could go on forever. I use my phone however when I'm out and about and I need to write a short entry either cause something or someone has pissed me off and I just need to write down quick how I'm feeling and what is going on in my head. Instead of say writing a tweet or a passive aggressive Facebook post.

 I also like that one a day lets you add photos and embed YouTube videos when making entry's. They also give you good way of keeping track of your entry's by being able to tag your entry's and even geo tag them. They can even kind of give you a snap shot of when you were writing the entry but showing what music might be playing and what the weather is at the time you wrote the entry. They also give a lot of ways for you to look at past entry's with a calendar so you can a photo entry mode so you can see only entry's that have photos attached to them or you can look at entries you favorited.

One a day is really a app I don't think I could live with out and is certainly an app worth it's price of $4.99. You can get it from the apple App Store here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/day-one-journal-diary/id421706526?mt=8.   

iPad Problems

UPDATE 7/31/13: For some reason I can see the updates now. I don't know what changed but its working and I was able to update all the apps that needed updating.

For the last week I have not been able to update my apps on my iPad 2 cause the App Store update page just shows a blank page. I can download apps and buy apps and even browse the app store but I cant update apps. It will even show the badge on the icon showing how many apps need to be updated but I cant see them. I just wanted to go threw what I have done to try and fix this issue.

To start off I have had this issue before. I open up the app store to update apps and get this:

Normally if I force quit the app store and restart the iPad things go back to normal. When I did this when it showed up a week ago this fix did not work. The second thing that I tried the other was to backup my iPad and then do restore threw the iPad then I restored all my apps and settings threw iTunes. I went to the App Store after everything was done and it still wasn't working.

Today I did basically the same thing but I did the restore threw iTunes so that it would be forced to download a fresh install of iOS 6.1.3. Once again after it was done restoring my backup I went to the App Store still nothing. Then I thought when if I update the apps threw iTunes so I updated all the apps that showed up in iTunes then synced my iPad. Well now it shows I have no updates on the icon badge. But if I go to the update tab it will not tell me there are no new updates like it normally should do if their are no updates.

At this point I have done everything I can think of to get to start working again I can think of except restoring it and setting it up as a new iPad. I don't want to do that since I have 100 apps on my iPad and I don't want to go back in to each one and resign in to every app and my e-mail all that stuff. I will if I have to I might call Apple before I do that they might be able to help or at the vary least put me in the right direction.

Bigger iPad

I was watching Tech News Today on the TWiT network which is how most of the ideas for blog post come form. They talked about a rumor of bigger iPhone and iPad screens. They seemed to not like the idea of a bigger iPad but to me it made me exited.  

Most companies seem to like this idea of big phones and small tablets. I have never agreed with this to me my iPhone 4S has just the right size of screen for everything I like to do with it which includes watching videos. I've never cared for the iPhone 5 bigger screen and I wish they had made a iPhone 5 that had the old screen size. I don't look at my iPhone and wish it was bigger cause I have a iPad 2 which runs iOS and is a bigger screen. I do look at my iPad and wish it was a bigger screen. I run into this thought normally when I'm doing some photo editing on my iPad or light video editing with the iOS iMovie.

I think the obvious thing would be for watching videos a bigger screen would be way better. When I'm in school I use my iPad a lot to show friends YouTube videos. I've always seen my iPad like a cheap MacBook  Air that runs iOS instead of full OSX. For me I it's all I need and if I need a real computer I remote my Mac threw my iPad. The only real times I need to be in front of my Mac is when I want to play a game like World of Warcraft or something like that or when I have to do major video editing for a project for school. That is only cause no one has made a grate video editing app for iOS and I only have 16 GB of storage of which I have only 1.1 GB free.

So what would I like to see the next generation of iPads to be like? Well I would like a bigger screen, not too big but between 11 and 12in would be perfect. I also would like them to up the storage on the devices. So instead of the cheapest iPad or iPhone coming with 16GB they start at 32GB and maybe go to 320GB. This is all wishful thinking I'm sure we will not see anything like this when they do come out with the new iOS devices. We will more likely see thinner, lighter, faster iPhones and iPads but next year maybe we will see some of these hopes happen.

Pad or not to ipad

About a week ago, I was at my grandparents and they were watching Oprah on TV. Oprah was talking about her iPad and raving about how great it was and what not. My grandma asked me about it and I went on about it myself. I tried to give them use cases for the iPad. Then my grandma asked, "Would you like an iPad?" Normally this means, "Would you like us to buy you it?" It took me 2 minutes to reply and what I said was no. A lot went on in my head in that 2 minute delay between when she asked me. If I wanted one and me saying no. Below are the ideas that ran through my head that caused me to say no to an ipad.

I, myself, do not have an iPhone or any kind of smart phone but I feel my iPod Touch makes up for not having an iPhone. The iPod Touch can do almost anything the iPhone can do but make phone calls and take photos. For some people, not being able to take photos or videos with their device might be a problem, but for me I don't care about doing that. The other thing they may not like is that you have to carry around two devices, a phone and an iPod Touch. Once again that does not normally bother me at all. The iPod Touch can only use WIFI, yet again that does not bother me at all.

Now that you know some of the ups and downs of it, here is why I didn't want an iPad. At the time my grandparents asked me if I wanted an iPad, I had a first gen iPod Touch. The iPad is nice. The apps look better on it than an iPhone or iPod Touch. Watching movies or podcasts look better because it has a bigger screen. Reading on an iPad seems like it would be better on it then an iPhone or an iPod Touch. I think you get the point. Everything you might love about the iPhone or iPod Touch is better on an iPad cause of the bigger screen. There is one big problem with a bigger screen, and that is that it makes the device bigger. What I love about my iPod Touch is that I can use it and put it in my pocket. The ease of portability is what I love about the iPod Touch. You can't shove an iPad in your pocket, unless you have big pockets.

I also thought about what I can't do with my iPod Touch and what you can do with the iPad. The only thing I could think of was that I couldn't use the iBook store. But then I remembered in June (I think) Apple is coming out with iPhone OS 4.0, which will add the iBook store to the iPhone and iPod Touch. Though I don't really care about the iBook store. I don't like to read books, I just can't stand to sit in one place and read text for hours on end. So that does not internecine me to get an iPad, but the other things coming in iPhone OS 4.0 do. The problem being, I had a first gen iPod Touch and to get the full benefit of iPhone OS 4 you have to have a third gen iPod Touch. So would it not make more sense for me to get a third gen iPod Touch than a iPad that isn't as portable, and I would have to wait longer to get the update?

That is what made me say no to the iPad, but I did say that I would like a new iPod Touch. Now I have a new iPod Touch that will work with the update coming this summer to the iPhone and iPod Touch. It felt like forever thinking of it all, but this is what went on it my head in those 2 minutes and what I decided made sense to myself. You may have different wants, or different situations that make an iPad more suitable for you then it was for me. I am happy with my new iPod Touch and will be for many years now.