Forstall leaving Apple

I was about to leave the apartment for the morning rounds, but couldn't resist the urge to get this entry across, having woken up to this news.

No, it wasn't about Sandy pounding the Big Apple. But Apple itself, having an internal shake down.

The blogs had been abuzz about the friction at the top between Scott Forstall and the other Senior VP at Apple. Scott was in charge of the development of the iOS, and it became clear that the iOS 6 did not innovate as much as it was expected. Not to the extend that Jelly Bean did compared to the previous iteration of Android.

Add to this the debacle that was the Apple Maps, and the writing was on the wall. It was rumoured that Scott was more keen to move Apple towards a more skeuomorphic - real-life imitation - design elements, while the other gurus, Sir Jonny Ives included opposed this. Clearly somebody had to go.

Announcing the news while the US was looking forward to Sandy and the Presidential election was a touch or PR genius. The announcement also included that the SVP for retail, John Browett was also leaving. He had just joined Apple less than a year ago, taking over from Ron Johnson, the real architect behind the Apple retail store experience. Mr Johnson is currently the CEO of JC Penney, and was recruited as a highly prized asset across.

Will this signal a further change at the top of Apple? Bob Mansfield was due to leave, but was invited back to be the special advisor to Tim Cook. Maybe Bob was giving the company an ultimatum as far Scott's tenure was concerned.

Either way, Scott Forstall is leaving and Apple had to move on with things. He will officially leave some time next year, and for the interim, Craig Federighi would overlook both the OS X and iOS.

The Apple Announcement

It was finally announced. One of the worst kept secret in Apple was unveiled in the keynote last night and the iPad Mini would be arriving later in the year - or later in the month at Low Yat. Supporting the same resolution as the iPhone 4, not quite the retina display, Apple finally yielded at the viability of the 7 inch form factor. This iPad has a cellular chip, but the stock model does not carry voice, meaning no native ability to make phone calls.

Camera would be a 5 MP affair - which should be pretty decent. And taking snaps and videos would not be as awkward as doing so on a full sized iPad. But that was not the announcement which caught my eye.

Reading the rumor mills and reading the logs made it obvious that the announcement was imminent. So was the release of the 13 inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display. But what surprised me about the Pro was that it had two Thunderbolts and an HDMI output. It would be very interesting if the Intel Graphic chip - the laptop did not have a separate high-powered GPU unlike the 15 inch sister - would be able to shift all the pixels. It also only carried 4 GB RAM (ed: sorry 8 GB but still underpowered) and a dual core i5 processor. I think it would be a touch underpowered.

But the main headline for me was the upgrade to the iMac line. Yes, I was planning to grab one for the apartment for the last few months but held off as I thought it was de for a revamp. It finally came. New form factor, but nothing revolutionary. Same resolution, and still an i5 chip - a slightly powerful one though. The chassis was now thinner, and the display was upgraded to IPS technology, which translate to a mo vivid colour rendition. And no optical drive ...... I guess everything would be stranded rather than burned in the future ....

I have yet to watch the full keynote - I would leave it for later in the weekend. It would be interesting to read the gadget blogs to see the reactions. I reckoned it would generally be a positive one. And yes, I would be investing on an Android 7 incher .......

Update Crash!

It had been more than a couple of weeks since I updated the iOS software into the new version. Some of my apps crashed, but the worst one affected had been one called 'Day One', which I used as my blogging platform. At least at the drafting stage. It synced across all my devices, and once I drafted the entry, I would just need to upload it onto the SquareSpace server from there.

Since the update, it had crashed big time. I have since found it a pain to update the blog, and consequently, things had slowed down.

As a last resort, I had to delete the synced files and lost the older updates - I still got a backup. It was now back in order. I suspect it was because I had too many entries on the server. It just could not cope with the syncing. It was now back in order, and I would be updating my blog more regularly from now on….

Is That What It Is?

My brother-in-law was working in Singapore over the weekend, and guess what he brought himself with him from our Southern neighbour? He picked up an iPhone 5!

It was still in the box since nano SIM cards were still not available in Malaysia yet, until today. He would be going over to Maxis to pick up the SIM a bit later, and we should then see how the new phone performs ..... Jealous!!!!

Worth the Update?

Updated to iOS 6 in the early hours of today. And as expected, some of the old apps may not work. In fact, the main app unused for blogging and putting my thoughts together - Day One - crashes completely. There was an update later in the afternoon, but that too crashed. No joy!

But I was sure a path will come along soon for all the apps.

My iPhone 4S did feel significantly faster. Everything seems to zip along very quickly. The Facebook integration was particularly handy. My RSS program worked OK, as well as my SquareSpace app. The apps which tended to crash were the ones relying on iCloud integration.

The camera app worked fine. I have yet to try the panorama feature, but the samples I've seen on the Internet looked impressive.

To be honest, I have always been an early adopter when it comes to updates and software on my iDevices. Yes, it has it problems, but eventually things sort themselves out. Apart from the fact that I was not able to update my iMac to Lion since the P1 software - the main Internet source for my study in Gombak - is not compatible with the new OS. P1 never thought that their Mac user were significant enough to make the investment. Shane on them.

I spent the rest of the afternoon waiting for update downloads for the apps. But on the whole, the extra speed alone was worth the update.