The Apple Sheep

With the iPhone X out of the way we're now starting to focus on the iPhone X+ or whatever it will be called. With the iPhone X they couldn't really afford to come out with two new phones in 2017 as components such as FaceID and the whole manufacturing process was very constrained as it was a brand new design. But a year later Apple seems to have got a handle on things and seeing the great sales of the iPhone X, Apple seems to be ready to spread their wings into the + market. Why Differentiate At All? The iPhone X has been selling really well despite the rumours that state the contrary. A 6.5 inch plus model iPhone can really go a long way in keeping the lineup fresh and exciting. Just look at the Galaxy S8 and S9. Though great phones they lacked they didn't bring anything new and fresh to the table. Apple is in a unique advantageous position to bring something new to the table with the rumoured iPhone X+ .  Since the iPhone 7 people have flocked to the larger v...

So The Samsung S9 and S9+ were released yesterday after a lot of hype and rumours we can now finally relax and take a step back and enjoy the device. Yeah right cue the comparison videos about how the S9 is better than the iPhone X or vice versa. The S9 Is A Great Phone, But.. The S9 is a great phone don't get me wrong but it is just an incremental upgrade over the S8 and that's not necessarily bad thing. This phone is targeted at a particular demographic of people- people who loved the S8. The S9 builds on the S8 and it is a perfection of the S8.It fixes almost everything everyone been complaining about the S8, the fingerprint reader, the cameras , the speakers. You get that I'm saying. For that exact reason if the S8 didn't win you over the S9 probably won't. The S9 consolidates on what the S8 has done. Kind of like how the iPhone 8 isn't aimed at trying to get Android users to switch. It's a solid upgrade aimed at iPhone 7 and 6s users who want...

October brings a lot of things Autumn, candy and of course new Pixel devices and ever since these devices hit the shelves in 2016 reviewers and consumers alike have been raving about how good the camera is on the Pixel. But with all phones converging into the same minimal bezel glass sandwich design the Pixel is about to stumble into a whole new problem. Exclusives! The Pixel has long prided itself on it's camera. In 2016 when the Pixel came out the camera on the original Pixel blew the competition away with only the iPhone 7+ or S7 coming close. This time around in 2017 while being the one of the best cameras in the business the Pixel 2 could not be crowned the best camera in 2017 ( Don't bring up DXo Mark just don't). The cameras on the iPhone X really gave the Pixel 2 a run for its money. Looking back at the phones released in 2017 we see a trend the S8 had a gorgeous design, the V30 had a beefed up headphone jack, the Razer Phone was built for gamers, the iPh...

Recently popular Youtube superstar MKBHD uploaded his impressions on the first under the glass finger print scanner, you can watch the video here . Watching that video I kind of got the impression that he expects Apple to implement tech like this into iPhones of the future and I'm sure theres a larger portion of you that have been hoping for the return of Touch ID. But unfortunately (Or Not) that won't be happening. Touch ID is dead. FaceID Works With the launch of the iPhone X we were all expecting massive blowback over the removal of Touch ID. For better or for worse FaceID hasn't faced as much as criticism I was expecting it to get. From what I've heard FaceID does work it does what its advertised to do and that is authenticate you as the owner of the device. Sure in a vacuum FaceID might be slightly slower than TouchID but in the real world you're highly unlikely to notice that difference all the time. If you're anything like me you'll have a ...

A few weeks ago I wrote an article about why I thought the HomePod would be popular , And time has gone by and the HomePod has been out on the market for a few weeks now. So I thought it would be a great idea to look back and see how the HomePod has been fairing in cut-throat smart-speaker market. The HomePod Is Off To A Great Start, What A Surprise Appleinsider came out with a report  detailing how the HomePod has been received by the public. To no ones surprise the HomePod has a customer satisfaction score of 89%. But the report also went on to say that people don't really expect a whole lot from their smart speakers. All people really care about are the basic functionalities of a smart speaker.   Looking at what the average person uses their smart speaker for its clear that "intelligence" doesn't  really matter. You could have the best AI assistant and your speaker would still fail if it is a crappy speaker. Lots of people have been critiquing Siri for be...

iOS 11 really sent iOS off in a new direction and iOS 12 will be looking to improve on that. Still we found iOS 11 to be lacking in many ways and with WWDC around the corner well sort of I think it's time we take stock of what we'd like to see in Apple's next iteration of iOS, iOS 12. Notification Management! As far as I can remember notifications have been a mess on iOS. Sure the iOS way of notifications work if you have a limited number of apps, but as soon as you have a substantial amount of apps or you enter a really active group chat all that changes. You're notification screen becomes just becomes an unmanageable mess. With pages and pages of notifications. Frankly I'm surprised that Apple hasn't fixed this already. At this point I really don't care if iOS rips off the Android way of notifications but something needs to be done about them notifications. Wifi And Bluetooth Controls In Control Centre     Starting with iOS 11 you weren...

We're barely into 2018 and iOS 11 has been a dumspter-fire , But we're already hearing rumours about iOS 12 and the rumours say that iOS 12 will have a primary focus on quality and not new features. Which brings us to the iPhone 5s. iPhone 5s Backstory The iPhone 5s came out all the way back in 2013 and at the time it was considered to be the phone of the future and it truly was the 5s was the first phone with a 64 bit processor and at first apps couldn't fully utilise it's power this was or should I say is one powerful phone. But the mark of time and the advancement of software has left it's mark on the iPhone 5s, but nowhere is it near obsolete the hardware is surprisingly snappy and usable for a phone that came out in 2013. You can by all means still use the 5s as your daily driver to this day if you so chose. Calls and texting are fine it doesn't break a sweat even with some light multitasking, the camera is usable. Very impressive for a 5 year old p...

Apple has never been the budget friendly option when it comes to tech. So its is quite paradoxical when Apple releases a product that doesn't cost an arm and a leg it is really surprising. This is exactly what Apple did with the 2017 iPad. A $330 iPad which is just a an iPad, an iPad for the average user. No it doesn't have Apple pencil support nor does it have a Pro Motion display or a beefed up processor. But it sold well, it sold so well that it single handedly helped in improving the iPad sales( With some help from the  10.5 inch iPad Pro), Now they're planning on bringing out a $270 iPad Why Cheaper Is Better When It Comes To iPads Unlike smartphones people arent that heavily reliant on iPads, You use your iPhone for everything under the sun from photography to gaming to texting. In comparison the average user doesn't use the iPad as much. You watch a bit of Netflix maybe some light browsing. Thats about it. This can be done by pretty much any iPad released...

Finally the iPhone X hype has died down and we're already hyped about the next iPhone release. We're just two months into the year and we've already got rumours about the 2018 iPhones. Ming-Chi-Kuos Got Us Covered Trusted leaker Ming Chi Kuo recently let out a report stating that Apple might release 3 new iPhones in 2018 and at first glance this may seem a little confusing when you look at it in context of the rumored feature set. Yeah that line up definitely raises a few questions. Would Apple really backtrack to an LCD panel after all that talk about how an OLED finally rose to the standards of the iPhone? To that I say yes, yes they would.  Most People Dont Want To Spend A $1000 On A Phone Despite the amazing sales of the iPhone X which actually grew rather than contracted as per most reports. Most people still don't want to shell out a $1000 as shown by the strong iPhone 8/+ sales. So it would be a good idea to reduce the asking price of Apples new...

 Apple for the longest time has been portrayed as the company who lost it's way in the tech industry, the company that just can't innovate anymore, a company that went south after the death of Steve Jobs. But just one quick glance across the market shows that that is not the case. Sure any fanboy who's worth his salt will tell you that all of Apple's new innovations are just rip offs of Android features, and thats true to an extent. But it goes both ways. So for the purposes of this article I'm going to be looking at three things namely Software, Design and Features. So lets get into it! Software When ever a reviewer reviews an iPhone they always compare it to stock android. For me that doesn't really make sense. If you look at the top 10 Android manufacturers you'll see a whole bunch of companies you've probably never heard of except for Samsung and maybe Motorola. The common denominator is that none of these top companies run stock Android the...

               Apple's all about that wireless technology and its no secret that Apple eventually wants a port-less iPhone. With the death of the headphone jack , Apple has obviously trained its guns on the lightning port. Surely even Apple isn't courageous enough to remove something as basic as the charging port. Right? If this is the first time you've heard about this you might be feeling a sense of dread. Don't worry thats normal. Yes all those memes that said that the next iPhone might not have a charging port were true. The lightning port's days are numbered. Why This Obsession With Wireless? Apple believes that wireless is the future ( And it is ) and all their design choices and decisions as a company over the past few years have been to wean us off cables and physical media. Starting with the removal of the CD drive, then with the headphone jack, then with very few ports on the MacBook. Yeah Apple has been hinting at us to switch ...

The iPhone SE was released all the way back in 2016 and it has been the saving grace of everyone whos a fan of small phones. The iPhone SE takes after the iPhone 5 which was released all the way back in 2012. But for a 6 year old design it looks and feels premium and surprisingly - modern. So Whos The iPhone SE For? Apple aim the iPhone SE at a demographic that prefers smaller phones, But whos not willing to skimp on the specs. A small but persistent demographic. For the last two years the iPhone SE has been the only small phone with decently modern specs. On it's release the iPhone SE could go toe to toe with the flagship iPhone at the time, The iPhone 6s. Thats mainly due to the fact that the SE is basically the 6s in an iPhone 5 body. The iPhone SE has an A9 chip, 2 gigabytes of ram, a 12 MP camera. All just like the iPhone 6s. The iPhone SE allowed all the people who were holding out from getting a new iPhone since the iPhone 5s to finally upgrade. The iPhone SE Did ...

Wayyy back in 2010, 8 years ago (No 2010 wasn't 3 years ago! I know right ) Steve Jobs said something that really made people go what? To quote Steve " When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks, because that’s what you needed on the farm, But as vehicles started to be used in the urban centers, cars got more popular. Innovations like automatic transmission and power steering and things that you didn’t care about in a truck as much started to become paramount in cars. … PCs are going to be like trucks. They’re still going to be around, they’re still going to have a lot of value, but they’re going to be used by one out of X people."    People at the time greeted the statement with incredulity, including yours truly. Keep in mind this is 2010 we're talking about a time before every 10 year old had an iPhone or an iPad. Back then  I used my computer for everything from playing games to doing homework to viewing pictures taken on a dedicated point and sho...

So iOS 11 was released back in September of 2017 and it has been a cluster-You know what I mean. iOS 11 has been crippling devices ever since it's release. Its ironic iOS 11 has been iOS's (iOSes?,iOSeses?) most beta tested version to date, and it is the most buggiest iOS release ever. iOS 11 has been said to shorten the battery life of older iPhones by quite a bit. My iPhone 5s really took a hint in the battery department after the iOS 11 update. Performance also took a hit with iOS 11. Why is this so? iOS 11 Changed A Lot iOS 11 gave users a lot of things that they had been clamouring for. A redesigned control centre , a more productive environment on the iPad so that you can actually get work done on it,  you know the works. But unknown to most of us, I think Apple redesigned the innards of iOS. They really tweaked it at the nuts and bolts level. iOS 11 updates were weird in the sense that they were unusually massive the initial update was a few gigs ( as you'd...

So recently the heads of the FBI, CIA, NSA and presumably any other three letter organisation came out and warned American citizens from using Huawei or ZTE phones fearing their ties to the Chinese government. So is this fear of Chinese phones or tech based on any real concrete national security concerns? A Little Backstory Over on the other side of the great firewall things are very different and I mean very different. In the west or where ever you're reading this from (This is probably not even accessible in China), privacy laws are very strict and not in a good way. You see while the rest of the world formulates laws to protect or safeguard a users privacy the laws in China are literally the opposite the laws help the Chinese government snoop on it's citizens, And the Chinese government isn't afraid to use these laws. A man was jailed  for the heinous crime of sharing pictures of the Dalai Lama on WeChat (Chinese iMessage). Let that sink in the Chinese government ...

So Apple found itself in the midst of another controversy a few weeks back ( Big Surprise right!?). This time people were fuming at the fact that apple slowed down older devices to prolong their lifespans (or to implement planned obsolescence as per the conspiracy theorists). With me being the Apple Sheep I feel like I need to defend Apple on this topic, Just to reiterate I think that Apple did  the right thing. Physics 101: Batteries Die Now this is point that we all know, Not battery stays the same over the course of a phones life span all batteries decay over time. Android phones feel the effect of battery decay too. A survey I conducted found that  73% of people who used the same phone for more than 3 years noticed a significant drop in battery life. So no matter who makes the phone it's a given that your battery is going to decay provided you use it over the course of a few years. We expect all our tech to wear out over time so why are we surprised that the lithiu...

The HomePod is finally here, and the reviews are in. I'm sure you've watched umpteen reviews and you all know the basics, It sounds amazing , Siri is dumb (Which is don't think is the  case ) and that it lacks Spotify and Android integration (You can read why I think thats not going to happen here ). But what stood out to me was the lack of "consumer interest " in the product. The preorders went live and much un-like the iPhone or the AirdPods, the HomePod was available for quite a long time, only selling out on the day before the launch day. For Apple this is really weird, a company that sells out of everything they release instantly.This made me  doubt the demand for the HomePod and I wondered if the critics were right , That maybe people aren't really interested in a $350 smart speaker. But thats not really the case. AirPods Are A Totally Different Ballgame Now you might remember back in 2016, when the iPhone 7 came out Apple came out with AirPods a...