iPhone 4S, iOS 5 and cloud service about to go live on Apple website

[Luc Bouvrette]

Unless the new iPhone goes to 11 I'm keeping my cheerleader outfit clean for Nov. 3rd.

Rather have a shitphone and an iPad. Lot easier to talk and tap simultaneously.

[jake blackstone]

I'm pretty happy with what Apple announced, though there is nothing earthshaking there.

I think in time people will realize, that Siri introduction was a watershed event for new type of interaction with the phone, just like the multitouch was at the time. Siri hasn't received much coverage, but I can't wait to try it out. Once again, Apple leads the way. I just hope it understands my accent:-)

[Alex Kiritz]

Apple isn't leading the way at all actually. When I switched from a Droid to the iPhone 4 a year and 4 months ago, voice recognition was the feature I missed the most. I could just ask it to give me directions to an address and it'd get it right the first time. I look forward to being able to do this again.

[AnthonyFlores]

The 4S *is* the 5... What matters what Apple calls it? The iPhone 4S surpasses most all the rumored specs and abilities that have been circulating, yet people are still complaining. WTF?

Some people wanted the rumored tear-drop shape... Well, Apple already stated, as many people suspected, it's just not that friendly to hold onto. The popular rumor mongers kept choosing to ignore that. Probably due to the multitude of cases and whatnot coming forth that support the tear-drop shape -- all based on that of a stolen (possibly even planted to be stolen or picked up) iPhone prototype. I highly suspect the plant... Kinda funny. I also think it's laughable that these companies are willing to go out on a limb and embrace an obviously flawed concept and make cases for it. I wonder how many of those Asian companies paid some thief / informant to get the measurements of that prototype?

Bigger screen? LOL. Who wants the phone to be bigger? I'd love an edge-to-edge screen, on the same size device. But if I have to take a bigger phone to get the bigger screen, then no thanks. IMO, I think the screen is just the right size. Much bigger and it becomes awkward to reach the entire screen surface while operating one-handed. Unless you have really long fingers... I don't know anyone who does serious app development or interface design for the iPhone, who put any stock in the larger screen rumors.

Once people get past the fact that Apple didn't call it the "iPhone 5" and realize that it is 7X more powerful than than the iPhone 4, has the A5 chip, 1GB RAM, seriously upgraded camera, etc.. the only real thing left to complain about is the lack of LTE... The problem with that is if anyone pays attention to who is who and what is what in the cellular industry, they wouldn't have been hoping for LTE anyway. A quick review of who is currently suing who and who is and isn't licensing what to who, answers all that. LTE availability is so sparse at the moment, 99% of all user don't give a shit about it anyway. The 4S has HSDPA "4G" support as it is, so great. With the way carriers throttle bandwidth and start charging over limit fees, the only thing LTE does for us is allow us to download small stuff a bit faster and/or reach our cap faster. yay. AT&T and Verizon don't even let 3G run at full 7G speed, who gives a crap about LTE? Once it rolls out to the masses, they'll cap the crap out of it too, the networks just can't handle the load. HSDPA+ on AT&T and Sprint is usually choked off at 5 to 8 Megs anyway, depending on load. lol

That's all true Jeff, however -- mass sales, stock pricing, etc are all very related to perception. And having heard the hype of "iPhone 5, iPhone 5, iPhone 5" over and over again -- and then what "seems" like just an update, to the average person it feels like much ado about something small, and partly a failure.

I just read an article on Gizmodo where the author states his disappointment. Like many, he avoided buying iPhone 4 initially because of AT&T ... then avoiding it on Verizon because the next update seemed to be coming quickly on the horizon. Like many, he was waiting for the iPhone 5 -- and yes, even though this "is" the iPhone 5 and significantly improved -- to many, it feels like a mere update. Thus the disappointment. Whether people are rightly disappointed or not, doesn't matter. They are. And that has consequences.

Yes, Apple will be fine. Their stock might drop a bit, but it will rebound and continue to grow according to sales, profit, market share, etc. They will sell good numbers on this phone, especially with a new carrier on board. However, there are many who will still wait it out for "5" (especially those who got the "4") ... meaning some of the huge projections made recently about iPhone sales on Wall Street about sales and stock prices might have to be adjusted.

Also, I sort of question Apple waiting so long to release what they had to know people would -- rightly or wrongly -- classify as just an update. Strategically, being Tim Cook's first launch as CEO -- I don't think that was or is optimum. Obviously, if they had been ready or able to launch a true "5" they probably would have, but IMHO it would have been better for morale about Cook to have launched something more radical and exceeded expectations, rather than going beneath most people's expectations.

Obviously, he will never match Jobs in charisma, speaking ability, vision, history and many other areas. But people are already a bit disappointed/underwhelmed with him relative to Jobs in a variety of ways -- so to kick off his reign as CEO this way just doesn't feel optimum.

It is what it is, maybe it couldn't have realistically been otherwise, and I'm sure Apple will be fine, just sayin' ....

[jake blackstone]

Apple isn't leading the way at all actually. When I switched from a Droid to the iPhone 4 a year and 4 months ago, voice recognition was the feature I missed the most. I could just ask it to give me directions to an address and it'd get it right the first time. I look forward to being able to do this again.

Something like 20 years ago I saw editing on CMX, that was controlled by voice. That was a disaster BTW. Voice control is not new by any means, use of artificial intelligence to interact with the phone is. Getting direction is not a big deal, interpreting a question"Will I need a coat today?" is a big deal.

[Tim Hole]

How much is iOS5 gonna enhance my current handset, and iPad? Have been in two minds whether to ditch my iPhone 4 now and get the new one. To be fair I have no complaints about my handset apart from 3G being a bit slow and there is no back button, oh and I hate the way you edit txt...apart from that...

Anyone heard if Apple planning are making Siri impossible to use on predecessors of the 4S now? Not that I used it before but interested to know.

[AnthonyFlores]

How much is iOS5 gonna enhance my current handset, and iPad? Have been in two minds whether to ditch my iPhone 4 now and get the new one. To be fair I have no complaints about my handset apart from 3G being a bit slow and there is no back button, oh and I hate the way you edit txt...apart from that...

Well, iOS5 - won't change that much from 4 to 4S ... just probably a bit faster. Although I read that certain features with Siri might be limited to the 4S only because of the need for greater processing speed. Either way, iOS5 is pretty badass. With all the new features, cloud integration, etc it's quite a significant software upgrade. One that you'll get whether you upgrade your hardware or not.

[Tim Hole]

Well, iOS5 - won't change that much from 4 to 4S ... just probably a bit faster. Although I read that certain features with Siri might be limited to the 4S only because of the need for greater processing speed. Either way, iOS5 is pretty badass. With all the new features, cloud integration, etc it's quite a significant software upgrade. One that you'll get whether you upgrade your hardware or not.

I hope so. It would be typical if they crippled it so that it didn't work at all on anything below 4S - sure they would sort it in a jailbreak though. I have jailbroken my phone a few times but always reset it, never really bothered before Appstore is cheap and has all I need.

iOS5 is cool just for the split keypad on the iPad, and iCloud ;)

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I think you got a few facts wrong here: The phone is 2x as fast

Well, the 7X is a composite number, not my number, it's Apple's. But it's pretty logical how they come about it. The A5 is roughly 2~2.5X as powerful per clock cycle per core vs. the A4. There's 2 cores. It has a faster memory bus and double the RAM to work with. It has a 9-core GPU vs. the dual-core GPU found in the iPad, iPhone4 and 3GS... Just being announced today, we'll have to wait until people get one here next week to start seeing benchmark tests. But I'm expecting the numbers to line up, just the way we get about 6~8X overall increase in performance from the iPad to iPad2 when we can load up both cores and push on the GPU.

For generalized, single-threaded apps that are not GPU-intensive, yeah. It's only going to show about a 2 to 2.5 times increase... All in how the software is written to use what's available. Kinda like buying a monster system with 12-cores... Sure, the power is there, but does most software attempt to use it, let alone benefit from it? Nope. That said, many iOS apps are making use of the dual-core A5.

and Verizon LTE is available just about everywhere. I just ordered a LTE Mifi and if I used it and kept my 4G iPhone I think it would be a bigger upgrade than switching to a 4S. I do agree that a thinner design would be harder to hold but the way technology is going most people will soon rarely need to hold a phone; Siri now allows you to perform half of the functions on your phone over a headset.

LTE available everywhere? Everywhere in Los Angeles, maybe. Yeah, we have it here in Denver too, and a couple select suburb areas... I travel all over the place, mostly the southwest USA. As you can see by the coverage map I just pulled, many areas don't have 3G yet, let alone LTE. Plenty of major cities where LTE is still somewhere on the roadmap for a couple years from now. If I want LTE, I have to drive downtown to use it. I do agree on Siri. It's a strong indication of what is to come. One day soon,

All of the changes Apple has made are just to allow it to maximize profits. They probably could have invested and made a product that would have made people happier but instead they chose to maximize availability from the start and reduce their production costs. This is really the opposite of what RED does and I can't see much of a reason to support it.

So, what changes do you think they should have made? The upgrades are incremental, as expected. It's got the CPU and GPU most people expected and were hoping for. LTE wasn't going to happen, not with all the current lawsuits and licensing issues flying around. That and no integrated chipset to support it as well as GSM and space inside the phone has to be at a premium, I doubt they want to have a separate CDMA and GSM chipset inside the phone in order to support one standard that currently serves only about half of the larger cities in the US and barely anywhere else.

If you don't like it, don't buy it. I'm sure Apple will have their updated CPU, possibly called the A6, in the iPad 3 announced here in about 6 months. And we'll have a new iPhone in 4 to 6 months after that. It's a perpetual cycle... All the Android device makers are following similar paradigms. As I develop iOS apps (Android apps too), I have to get one. And I may as well make it my own phone since I'm still using a 3GS that is showing signs of a decaying battery. But I have every other model of iDevice here. I've got a whole worktable full of Android devices too. It actually kinda sucks. Have to buy all kinds of devices and crap for testing and appeasing clients. I'm actually not looking forward to the iPad3.. Because I'll have to buy a couple the second they're available. I already own 4 iPad2's... Ugh. I'm thrilled that we're getting unified iPhones now, this iteration I only need to buy one instead of two -- yay!

One thing I'm interested in knowing though, it seems the hardware this time around should allow simultaneous voice and data on CDMA/ Verizon now. ...Don't see any reason it wouldn't unless Verizon restricts it.

[Gavin Greenwalt]

I'm a bit of an Apple Hater but Siri looks awesome. It delivers what Microsoft's TellMe service promises to do but hasn't delivered on. It's not technically that much further than Genius or TellMe... the frustrating thing is once again the competition is just incredibly lazy to even do basic improvements.

For instance on WP7 you can only say "message" not "text" or "sms". Because... it must be impossibly difficult to build a library of synonyms. *slaps Microsoft programmers*. They solve the really really hard programming challenge of very accurately doing speech to text... and then don't invest even the 5 minutes necessary to build a library of words and actions on the phone.

Hopefully Siri will slap some sense into Google and Microsoft.