Well the simple answer is yes, though don’t confuse this with, say, the Windows XP to Windows 7 upgrade. If you head on down to iTunes for the free upgrade to your phone or iPad, on the surface there’s not much new – the phone, for example, looks pretty much as it did before.


But it’s the detail that counts.  I should say that already I’ve seen some confusion about the reminder service so before I go any further: you need to enable the CLOUD and don’t confuse tasks with reminders. That done, one of the new features added in iOS 5 is the reminder service, and I think this is going to help me in my daily life GREATLY.  Oh, sure I could always leave calendar entries on the phone but with only limited use until now.

For those of you with a rubbish memory like mine, this scenario should sound familiar – you’re just driving off from the office and you remember, or are reminded, that you have to do something next time you get into the office – fat load of use that is as you’re driving the opposite way. Well, now iOS 5 can help. The new reminder app is “location aware”, which means not only can you set a reminder for a time or day, but also a location – and amazingly, whether you are LEAVING or RETURNING TO that location. The possibilities are endless… “don’t forget your toothbrush” just as you’re walking down the road without it – what a godsend. I think this is going to be my number-one new feature. Of course, it works best if your device actually knows where you are so don’t expect it to work on a WI-FI-only iPad.
 
There are new multi-finger options keeping all your alerts in one place – useful but hardly amazing.… twitter integration and a load of extras that are no big deal individually – but as there are 200 of them, overall it’s worth the upgrade – after all, it’s free.  The only downside is that I’ve already noticed some apps that are going to need upgrades so expect to spend some time waiting for downloads, especially on slow connections.  Downloading the iOS upgrade last night took four hours due to – well everyone else doing the same thing.

And where does the iPhone 4S fit into this – well of course having the same operating system it’s going to have all of the features the rest of us will see in upgrades – but with more. Siri, the personal assistant, sounds like it’s going to be very exciting IF it really DOES integrate voice control with the new location-aware reminders (we’ve heard it all before how voice control was going to change the world… and it didn’t).

If you believe the hype, all that’s about to change.   I can see it now, I’m driving away from the office and my wife says “don’t forget you have to….” Just as I’m heading off with NO chance of remembering.  One button press and Siri takes my verbal note to remind me when we get back to the office.  REALLY?? We’ll have to see, non-Apple demos are a bit thin on the ground right now, but for the busy businessperson this could be the difference between Apple and the competition!
 

Last week saw the iPad 2 launch throughout the UK. If there is anyone left who’s not aware this was happening, back in April last year the iPad was launched in the US, after several years of failed attempts to get a Star Trek-style tablet on the market, Apple dared to go where others had failed... and the gamble paid off as iPad sales went through the roof.

By Christmas 2010 everyone and their auntie were promising iPad-killers and the full might of Chinese industry went into producing various sizes and shapes of tablet armed with the promising Android operating system – but no one could match the price/performance of the iPad.

Last Friday, my wife and I went to the MetroCentre in Newcastle at around midday and already there were about 200 people queuing to get their hands on the iPad 2.

Apple wasted no time in dishing out Starbucks coffee and water to the waiting crowds and before long sent their guys out to find out what everyone would be buying and giving them reservation tickets to ensure there were no disappointments.

Apparently one poor soul had been queuing since the night before and the MetroCentre security guys would not let him stop overnight so I’m guessing it was a night in the car. Quite rightly he was given extra pampering by the staff.

As the 5pm launch loomed, the staff started clapping and cheering and you couldn't help feeling, as the crowd swelled, that you were in the middle of a special event.

We were herded into the shop in small groups and swooped on by friendly and knowledgeable staff who guided us through the various options, offered practical tips on how to use the device, and, of course, took our money.

By 7pm we were out of there, our choices being one black and one white iPad2, and we both bought the incredibly stylish Bluetooth keyboard.

So, was it worth it? You bet.

It’s thinner, lighter and faster than the original, the glass is many times stronger, the new apps – Garageband and iMovie – are excellent, PhotoBooth is great fun and Facetime works a treat.

I now have PDF and Word readers and program editors, video editing and I’ve just found a new bunch of business apps including database editors I didn’t know existed, as well as CRM tools and many more vital business apps – oh, and some pretty good games.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Apple has on its hands not only a new winner in the iPad2, but an Android-killer in the now price-competitive original iPad. Arthur C Clarke came up with the phrase “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. Well, we’re not quiet there yet, but the Apple iPad 2 is only stones-throw away from magic”.

Well done Apple.

 

It seems pretty obvious to me that the current range of tablets out there are merely the first stirrings of a revolution. Those of you old enough to remember the first tablets will remember Windows-powered, heavy and quite slow products that were little more than the standard operating system with pen-add-on.

How things have changed. In April this year Apple released the iPad, which was as near to a Star Trek tablet as anyone had come up with – and along with the iPhone it helped change Apple’s fortunes. Almost immediately other manufacturers started to claim they had alternatives in the works yet even today there isn’t anything to really compete with the iPad, mostly it’s just promises and demos. That is about to change.

The new upgrade to iPad – IOS4.2 – gives iPad proper multi-tasking, unified mailbox and a host of other features including the ability to stream video to their new Apple TV box (which I have to say is quite nice). Meanwhile the Samsung Galaxy Tab is already in the shops (with a smaller screen size and so not necessarily in the same marketplace) and there are others creeping out of the woodwork. By Christmas you can count on a range of tablets from many manufacturers being available. But will they compete?
 
The currently available Android tablets (with the exception of the Samsung) by and large use an earlier version of Android which won’t handle Flash (but then neither will the iPad, though there is an App that attempts to address that) and even Google themselves have apparently said that Android 2.2 is not optimised for tablet use – it seems the manufacturers are rushing in regardless and there is always the NEXT version of Android.

Windows 7 is an option on some tablets but it’s worth bearing in mind that Windows needs a lot more power than some of the alternatives and so it’s going to take a fairly fast piece of hardware to make Windows fly on a tablet and that usually means reduced battery life or some other compromise. Windows 7 is also not optimised for large fingers! There are other operating systems but I’m guessing the key players will be Apple, Android and perhaps Windows.
 
I’ve been using my iPad pretty much every day now since it came out in America in April and I’m still getting the better part of 10 hours between charges. I attend a lot of business meetings and I’ve been able to virtually eliminate carrying paper around with me while business colleagues lean to one side due to heavy briefcases full of paperwork. The Apps for reading documents really do work well. Meanwhile everyone seems to be jumping onto this particular bandwagon with magazines and newspapers offering tablet versions of their publications and for the first time it all just seems to work – at least for iPad users who already have Richard Branson’s new publication and with more to come.

It remains to be seen if the 4.2 upgrade will be sufficient to keep buyers this Christmas going for the iPad despite its lack of camera or ability to handle Adobe Flash properly – of course then there’s the rumour mill which has it that an iPad 2 is around the corner which would address one of these issues. One things is for sure, THIS time there’s a revolution going on – the tablet  concept has a bright future ahead of it  - WHO’S tablet will be the winner? – well, that’s anyone’s guess! IBM had the first PC but look where we are now!
 

As of Wednesday, the new iPhone operating system upgrade, IOS4.1, has something for everyone, apparently.

For those souls with the new iPhone 4, the operating system will bring new HDR features. Not that most people know what HDR means (but will by the end of this blog).

The operating system upgrade to IOS4.1 also features various fixes and speed improvements. See the Apple store if you want more info – no point in me repeating it here. Although the details on the site are a bit vague at the time of writing, strange considering they’ve now released the upgrade.

Apple won’t make a big deal about the fact that they’ve also taken the opportunity to plug another hole, which up to now allowed jail-breaking of the phone – which you may recall was recently made legitimate!

However, if you’re not planning on jail-breaking the iPhone, that won’t bother you. I could not see sufficient justification given the selection of apps in the Cydia store, so I went for the upgrade.

For those of you who’ve never updated their iPhone – I found it’s a doddle, just make sure the phone is charged, follow the instructions, be patient and you’ll soon be in new operating system heaven. Or you’ll own a brick if it doesn’t work.

In my case I plugged my iPhone into the PC, ignored the message about backing up etc… and pressed the update button…  I got a notice on the screen….  upgrading to IOS 4.1and 11 minutes later… and another glass of wine down the hatch… the iPhone insisted on doing a backup that I was convinced was going to take weeks given that I have hundreds of Apps installed – but no, it took only a few minutes.

As I was sitting praying for no power cuts, the software effortlessly backed up everything, then upgraded the phone with a few beeps here and there but very little else to indicate that the phone was having a lobotomy.

As I watched, the phone reset (always a worry) and a minute later the PC said “updating the phone software” as a little progress bar on the iPhone moved slowly from left to right assuring me I hadn’t converted my phone into a brick…I’m guessing five minutes in total during which I was more tense than during an episode of 24.

At the end of the upgrade my heart almost stopped when I heard the cheersome “beep beep”, which indicated that the iPhone was alive and well.
 
Oh, I should say I was updating from 4.01 to 4.1 – I missed out the intermediate update as it really didn’t offer much except plugging another leak. 

On power-up the only thing that was immediately obvious was… the new game centre (or center as some might say). Other than that, things looked pretty much like normal – it would be nice if they’d introduce a little pop-up guide to what’s new. Anyway… that’s it – job done!

OK, so what about the 3GS users left with no HDR and what on earth is HDR anyway? HDR is not hi-definition as someone suggested today but "high dynamic range".

Those of you with long memories may remember cassette tapes – which had low dynamic range (bear with me on this). 

At one end of the range, quiet sounds could be drowned out by hiss. At the other end if you recorded too loudly, the sound would distort.

Along came CDs and all of that became history. You could now hear from the quietest whisper to the loudest bang. Problem solved. No one even thinks about it any more.

But  the dynamic range of many phones' cameras is terrible. So what does this mean?

Look at any scene, say with buildings and the sun behind them, and your eyes can see all the building details – and with a little effort, the sun. Point your camera at the same scene and you will have an exposure choice of getting the sky detail with the buildings too dark, or the buildings with a whitened-out sky. This is one example, there are many. The fact is the camera just can’t handle the range of brilliance.

So how do you get around that? The best answer would be to have sensors that can handle everything from the dimmest light output to the brightest star – sadly the only ones that do that cost obscene amounts of money and usually sit in space telescopes. Getting this on our mobile phones? Not a chance, for now.

Another way - although it has its issues - is to take two or more photos of the same scene at different exposures, one exposed for the sky, the other set for the buildings, for example, then somehow merge the two images taking the best of both. Useless for fast-moving scenes but excellent for static shots – not entirely authentic but really good looking.

That is what the new iPhone will do – and you can get a pretty close approximation on the 3GS for the staggering price of less that £2. The app is called Pro HDR. It does the lot automatically.

I don’t work for them. I’ve tried the rest and they don’t seem as good. So if you want HDR pics on your “old” 3GS phone – there’s your answer.

I hope this is helpful; if you find anything better, do let me know. If you want to follow my interest in the iPhone and iPad, you could do worse than follow @scargill

 

A lot of rot is circulating about the new iPad, often generated by folks who have never laid eyes on the machine never mind made extensive hands-on use of it. I’ve seen reviews talking about reliability, about it being unsuitable for business… the list goes on – and mostly from those lacking any experience of the product.

Why listen to me? When the iPad was released in the US I had one shipped across almost immediately, despite lack of iTunes support in the UK. I wasn’t prepared to take the word of others and wanted to see for myself if this device was going to be useful and to see if there was a future for reducing or eliminating paperwork.  So, in very short order, based on daily use of the iPad since its launch in the US (and by that I mean used almost every day since then, sometimes all day), here is some information that may be of use to those thinking of buying an iPad for work.

First, the issue of Wi-Fi. The only issue I am aware of is that the iPad occasionally forgets the login password and does not seem to track the best signal if you move from signal area to signal area within a building. It is a minor issue, and does not really cause me any problems. I'm sure a fix will come along soon as this is not an issue with the iPhone. 

Now, the matter of business use.  I have instructed our head office to stop sending me the reams and reams of paper it usually bombards me with – all my papers now go onto the company extranet  (Sharepoint).  I receive automatic email notification of the availability of documents and as long as I’m within range of a Wi-Fi signal I can download using the likes of the GoodReader program (a bargain at 59p) and store the docs locally on the iPad. The largest document I’ve had the pleasure of using was 95MB comprisingmore than 400 pages of scanned documents – just about the worse combination… No problem. I also use another package which cost peanuts to let me scribble on PDFs and open multiple documents at once.

Multitasking. After extensive use I have to say I do not miss the ability to do umpteen jobs at once – the ONE thing I’d like is to run Skype constantly in the background – and that of course will come in the autumn update. Most programs start up where they left off so they may as well be multitasking – but without the overhead.

People who say the iPad is not compatible with Microsoft are talking rubbish – I regularly open the latest DOCX files from Office 2007 as well as spread-sheets and other documents. At least one program can SAVE in these formats.

Using the iPad to take notes in meetings. The 10-hour battery life makes it possible to do an all-day meeting without a cable in sight. Those who lug around heavy bags full of laptops, power supplies and endless paperwork look on with envy. Armed with properly bookmarked PDF files I can view and search through large documents more quickly than with paper.

What about Flash? Well, I’d prefer if the iPad could handle Flash, but considering that YouTube, Blip and others now offer iPad compatibility and even the BBC iPlayer is now iPad compatible, it won’t be long before that argument goes out of the window. You can watch a good number of the Freeview channels including BBC News 24 for free on the iPad, not to mention most radio stations.

When in Spain, as they say… I have a (small) place in Spain and last week I was there. The iPad can’t handle dongles but I have a 3G dongle and I simply put the Sim into a phone that has Wi-Fi and using a cheap program made the phone look like a Wi-Fi access point – others may prefer to get the 3G version of the iPad itself - as I already have a phone I didn’t fancy two subscriptions and annoyingly Apple won’t let you tether an iPhone to an iPad.

Skype and GotoMeeting work well – saving a fortune in calls when overseas as long as there is Wi-Fi available. Emails using Microsoft Exchange, Google Mail and others work absolutely fine as indeed do Exchange calendars and contacts.

Do I have any issues with the product? Of course I do – why on EARTH didn’t Apple put a forward-facing camera in for Skype etc. Also being able to read memory sticks would have been nice but why not go the whole hog and put in Windows? Erm, no! The fact is that Apple have a great product on their hands. Almost everyone I know who I’ve shown it to in business and otherwise wants one – I should have been a salesman but I’m NOT.

I‘m a ruthless consumer and if a better alternative comes on the market, I'll probably switch. But for now, Apple is onto a winner.