I Now Know What All the Hype Around iOS 5 Was About
Dropping out and tuning into all the news about Apple has been overwhelming for fans the past few days. Information junkies are taken aback by the stream of news coming from Apple: Steve Jobs died, iOS5 released, iPhone 4S, new iPod Touches and Nano, Free iPhone 3GS with contract, iOS updates 10.7.2 and Lion Assistant, iPhoto w/ Photo Stream and AppleTV. It’s nuts how many news releases are coming out of Apple. You don’t see ExxonMobile saying so much.
What is the hype about iOS 5? Well, slower interface if you’re running it on an iPhone 3GS, but nonetheless somewhat stable a day after release. Siri voice assistant is available for iPhone 4S users, which is a real bummer for everyone with an iPhone 4 or 3GS.
People are saying that Siri is a revolutionary step in human computer interaction. For realistic AI, wouldn’t the AI have to be able to store vast amounts of information? Take Watson for example. Watson is a supercomputer. Watson can beat humans on Jeopardy. From what I understand from watching the 60 minutes, it was necessary to pack all the information in Watson into several drives, across multiple servers. To put it plainly, 4G speeds aren’t fast enough to compete with the human brain. If Siri has to rely on the internet, however vastly infinite of a meta landscape it is, it can only go as fast as whatever network it is on. How reliable is your network? Apple, please give everyone with an Apple ID their own Siri Assistant, that knows what we like and how to get it fast, on all of our devices. Maybe even store our most likely accessed information in a database our local devices have to reference and then backing up that database to all the devices. OSX should be a snap for you. Use some of that new data center in NC for a Watson like information powerhouse and multiply him by 10,000,000 times over for your customers. Maybe you will create a mirror universe for our wants, needs, or even habits like Amazon did.
Newsstand is great Apple, very good. The subscription rates are reasonable I suppose. On a iPhone 3GS w iOS 5, I’m having problems seeing more than 25 results in any of the Top Paid, Top Free, and Release Date Pane and I cannot narrow results down to objects in Newsstand. Do you hear me Apple? I have a question for you. Why can’t I play Chess with Siri? Is this some sort of hidden easter egg? One could only hope. Can anyone post a ‘zine on newsstand, I wonder? Could my RSS Feed be a ‘Zine?
I bet Safari is way faster on an iPhone 4S. Which is good news for HTML5 developers, however we still don’t have auto play for video elements inside of objects like this example I made when I was playing around with CSS5 transforms, animation, HTML5 video element, and SVG masks. iOS should be able to do this so we can made rich visual apps with streaming video with Safari. iOS 5 lock screen is way better than previous version. It displays missed calls. You can open the camera directly front the Lock Screen by double tapping the home button and pressing the camera icon, and now your volume up button snaps photos.
iOS is a great opportunity for those who are unemployed and need some income. Write a publication, like a Children’s Book. Give Apple your SS# or Tax ID and you can sell the book in the Book Store. Apple gets 30%, you get 70%. Children’s books go for $12.99 on the App Store.
If you upgrade to iOS 5, Box.net offers 50GB free cloud storage at 100mb file-size limit, but only for 50 days after iOS launch. Follow the Link
Well that’s a wrap on my thoughts about the new iPhone 4S, iOS 5, and Siri Voice Assistant. Onto experimenting with HTML5 video, CSS transforms and animation, SVG masks, and making a screencast. Look for more tech updates, editorials, and examples by Steve Belovarich on InstallationSpace.
