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Apple iPhone 5S Space Gray Review

My Space Gray iPhone 5S arrived early this morning from Apple in China, and upon first opening the box, I was amazed to see how much longer, and lighter weight this 5S phone is compared to my 2.5 year old iPhone 4s.  Janna’s new iPhone will arrive tomorrow.  We’re both on the 4G Verizon network.

The first thing I noticed is that the Space Gray iPhone 5S would not turn on at all!  I was perplexed. Then I did the traditional “hard boot” by holding down the “on” button and the Home button at the same time until the phone turned on with the White Apple logo.  I picked Space Gray because it has a black face.  I prefer a neutral black on a smartphone.  A white face is just too aesthetically jarring.

The phone started and already had a 91% battery charge.  After setting up and restoring the phone, I was immediately prompted to download an 7.01 iOS 7 update.

As you can see in the screenshot below, I have a whole “extra row” for four more App icons in my Home screen!  That is a delightful and welcome change from the 4s.

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The Venus Effect and the Artifice of Assumption: Watching the World Watch You Watching Your Screen

“The Venus Effect” is a fascinating concept in painting and film that shatters the illusion of the perceived, the perceiver and the preceptor.  In the example below, the woman is peering into a mirror.

At first glance, we think she is looking at her own reflection, but the angle of the mirror deceives us, because she is really directly looking at us, not herself.  In fact, the artifice of assumption is something of an aesthetic cheat because we fail to realize she is watching us while we watch her.  She is incapable of viewing her own reflection in that particular angle of yaw.

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The Apple AirPort Time Capsule Review: 3TB Edition

Of all the electronic doodads I am surrounded by every day, the one I use the most, and the one that gets the least amount of appreciative forethought, is my AirPort Time Capsule — my silent sentinel.  My AirPort Time Capsule connects and manages all my iPhone and iPad and Apple TV and wireless printer WiFi connections to the internets, and it backs up all my most precious data.  When Apple released a new AirPort Time Capsule this week, I loved the new design, and I upped my commitment at the 3TB level and I have been delighted ever since.

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Your Life on Live Internet Protocol: Text is Out, Video is In

Technical advances in the scientific field serve a dire need first and then those totems of communication and facilitation trickle down to the mainstream.  The Deaf popularized pagers first, followed by the Hearing community in everyday business, then there was the move to SMS in cellphones and today, the new trend is video conferencing in your iPhone or iPad.  The image below shows the first TTY — teletypewriter — that the Deaf used to communicate with each other in end-to-end conversations.

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More Bad Apple iOS 6 3D Mapping

The horrible new 3D map App in Apple iOS 6 is still getting a lot of negative play weeks after the operating system update.  While my experience isn’t as horrible as some, I can still report some tremendous disparity in the disappointing mapping results.  For example, let’s take a look at a slice of my Jersey City neighborhood.

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Why I Moved Up to the Verizon Share Everything Plan: They Will Not Flip Your SIM!

Yesterday, I spent my morning stuck in a Verizon store — not trying to order the new iPhone 5 — but rather trying to achieve one simple task: Swapping out the old SIM cards on my two iPad 2(s) and not getting very far, even though I had already done my web research and wasted an hour on the phone with Verizon customer support telling me the only way to add the iPads to my new “Share Everything Plan” was to replace the SIM cards because a “pre-pay” SIM card is hardcoded in the Verizon system as a standalone device and the only way to add an iPad to a shared data plan is to replace the pre-pay SIM card with a “post-pay” SIM card.

Easy, right?

Not so fast!

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How a Bag of Rice Saved My iPhone

I have had my iPhone 4 in early August of 2009 and I have been carefully protecting it since then. At the slightest hint of rain I bury my phone deeply in my pocket and have had a thin yet solid cover which has, I believe, saved it on numerous occasions from dopey drops — the cracks in the case are testament to this reality.

Above all, I have kept it well away from bodies of water, trying not to have it out near ponds or lakes and even being careful when going to use the restroom. On Friday, as we were preparing for the holy Sabbath and I was doing the otherwise mundane task of washing dishes, disaster seemed to strike when I picked up my phone to look at something and it slipped out of my hand and straight into a large bowl full of water.

Continue reading → How a Bag of Rice Saved My iPhone