What's Up Mac?

What's Up Mac?

By Bill Rose

It took three posts but now I'm ready for my first rant.

The iPhone 4S.

It came out the day before Steve Jobs died and almost universally the media/public reaction was negative. I read articles stating this was the most disappointing release of a new Apple product in years and that maybe Apple was slipping.

Slipping? Really?

Forget the 4 million iPhone 4S phones sold in just 3 days since the official release. Forget the fact that Apple added another distributor in Sprint. Forget the humdrum things like a much faster A5 Processor, a better camera and extended battery life. Forget all that! The iPhone 4S looks exactly like the iPhone 4 and that's bad!

Or is it. The iPhone 4 form factor was universally hailed as dynamic, unique, sleek and breathtaking when it first came out so all those expecting a new form factor shouldn't be too surprised and certainly not disappointed. It still looks cool.

People wanted a larger screen but a larger screen altered that unique one size fits all hands dynamic of the iPhone. The iPhone's Retina Screen more than makes up for a loss of screen real estate but again that's a carryover element from the iPhone 4. Since iOS5 and iCloud work with the 4 and 3GS it's not 4S concentric enough to be a factor but Siri is. Siri is the game changer on the iPhone 4S and you have to have a 4S to meet this charming young lady who is going to change the way we use smartphones.

Siri is a voice recognition digital assistant. Siri is smart and the more you use Siri the smarter she gets. You can ask Siri for directions or the weather and instantly you get the information you need. Right now Siri only works with the native iPhone products but soon there will be third party apps support too. In the meantime you can dictate notes, send a text message, play music or a video without having to navigate your iPhone. Simply push the HOME button and keep it there (like you do to activate VoiceOver on older iPhones) and then ask or command Siri to do your bidding.

That's revolutionary my friends. That changes the whole smartphone paradigm. Yet even though the pundits had an idea Siri was coming with the iPhone 4S they still complained it wasn't an iPhone 5. I guess they don't understand Apple because when the iPhone 5 is released it will be Insanely Great by an order of magnitude. In the meantime some of us who aren't locked into their carrier contracts for another year can be charmed and amazed by Siri and the rest of the new features on an iPhone 4S.

As for the critics they went away on October 5th, the day Steve Jobs passed away and now the reviews have come out and they are very favorable making that early post rollout angst seem either foolish or even more deliberate than accurate.