iPhone 4 is available in black or white

Yesterday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the new iPhone which is called “iPhone 4″.  It is a major upgrade from the previous model.  It’s worth considering an upgrade from a current iPhone.  I’ll list out the major differences and other factors to consider if making a purchasing decision.  I’ve intentionally stayed away from the cool features in iOS 4 since an iPhone 4 is not required for iOS4.

Main features

• Improved battery life.  Apple states 40% longer batter life.
• New hardware design.  Looks a different than the previous models.
• Thinner.  Thinnest iPhone yet.
• 5 megapixel camera.  Current iPhone is 3 megapixels.
• LED Flash.  Not available on current iPhone.  Flash can also be used as a light for HD videos.
• 4 times the amount of pixels than current iPhone.  Fonts and pictures look better with smoother edges.  Basically, it has more pixels per inch than the human eye can see from a foot away.
• HD Video camera with zoom.  Current iPhone is non-HD video and non-zoom.
• FaceTime – iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 video conferencing over wi-fi.
• A4 processor.  This is the same processor in the iPad

When & Cost

• Preorder on June 15.  Pick up at AT&T or Apple store on 6/24.
• On sale June 24 at $199 for a model with 16 gigabytes of storage, $299 for a 32 GB model
• If you are scheduled for an upgrade in 2010, you can upgrade to an iPhone 4 without a penalty.  The penalty is $200.  This is a big deal.
• Here’s an upgrade example:  My date is 10/12/2010, so I can upgrade on 6/24 as soon as the iPhone 4 is released.  You can verify your upgrade eligibility on AT&T’s website.  Last year, the upgrade was penalty free if your upgrade was before the end of September.  My date was 10/12/2009.  So I could not upgrade until 10/12/2009.  If my date would have been 9/30/2009, I could have upgraded in June 2009 as soon as the iPhone 3GS was released.

Conclusion

It looks like a worthy upgrade.  With the camera upgrades (video and still) Apple appears to working towards making it easy for people to have a phone that can shoot quality photos and video in one device.  Couple that with Apple quality and ease of use, and it’s a hit.  With AT&T waiving the upgrade penalty for the rest of 2010, I recommend preordering or getting to the store early.  I already have the money saved up and will be pre-ordering first thing in the morning on 6/15.

Additional info:  Apple’s official iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS comparison

Fast forward almost 10 years and DVR’s are fairly common in today’s households.  You can buy standalone units like Tivo and you can rent them from your cable and satellite providers for an additional fee.  Today’s DVR’s are more advanced and allow you to record two or more shows at once.

Even though there is generally nothing on at the time I want to watch, I could build my own playlist of shows and watch on my schedule.  The ability to record a ton and watch later presents and interesting dilemma.  TV really is not good.  It is a form of entertainment.  DVR’s allow you to build a library of entertainment larger than you can watch.  Google reports the average American watches 5 hours of TV a day.  I do not, but I can see how that is possible.  Okay, maybe I watch that much during football season.

I’ve listed a few of the good and bad things about DVR’s

Good:

• Allows you to time shift.  Watch when you want, not on braodcasters schedule.
• Time saving.  When you watch an hour show is about 42 minutes instead of 1 hour.  More efficient.
• Reduces exposure to advertising. Skip commercials to avoid being marketed to and materialism

Bad:

• Could encourage more TV watching.  Lots of TV shows recorded
• Source of stress.  I’ve heard some people state they need to catch up on TV or they need to “clean off the DVR”
• TV becomes a space filler since it is always ready to be watched.

Here are a few ways we deal with excessive TV viewing in my house:

• I watch an hour show when I run on the treadmill.  I’ll look forward to watching a show, but need to be exercising which is a good habit.
• If we record a new show and have not watched one after 4 episodes are recorded, we delete it.
• We’ve used the 30 second skip feature on DVR’s to teach our kids what advertising is and that watching commercials makes you feel like you need something. Need vs. want.

Summary

DVR’s can be used to make more effecient use of your TV viewing since commercials can be skipped.  Close attention should be paid to the amount of TV watched.  Just because you can watch more TV does not mean that you should.  The verdict: good, if used properly.

What, when, and how?

• Google TV will give its customers the ability to stream TV shows over the internet to their TV sets.
• Should be available in the fall of 2010.
• It requires a broadband connection of at least 3 Mbps.  Think DSL or cable modem.
• It will be integrated into Sony TVs and will require external hardware without a Sony TV.  I’ll be opting for the external hardware option.
• Once you have the hardware, the service is free.
• I was not able to find any pricing on the hardware at this time.  Needs to be no more than $200, preferably around $99.

How many times have we heard, “Internet on the TV is here or this is the year of Internet TV?”  Way too many times with little success.  I hope Google gets it correct and makes it simple.  Google said in their keynote speech, “TV just works.”  And Google TV is going to have to be that reliable and easy.  Everyone can turn on and operate a TV in anyone’s house.  You should not have to be trained to use Google TV.

In order for Google TV to be successful, it must be:

• Easy to use
• Easy to set up
• Be reliable
• Have compelling content

Today’s cable and satellite systems are closed.  You have to watch what is available from your provider and at their prices.  You can not roam the web, YouTube or any other Internet content with the current system.  Hopefully, Google TV will fix this or at least give the cable and satellite companies a little competition.

I would love to see Google TV have the ability to pull in your preferences by signing into your own Google account.  Imagine going over to a friend or relative’s house, being able to log in to Google TV, and all your shows are available.  Additionally, Google TV should also remember where you left off in a particular show and start from there.  I’m totally ignoring any business or content agreements that would keep this from happening.  I just want to see the content freed in order to let the technology do what it can.  In the long run, it will be better for consumers, advertisers, and the content owners.  So far, no one has been successful breaking down the business barriers in television or movies.

Can Google do it?  I hope so.

Released 4/22/2010. Not available at Netflix or Redbox until 5/20/2010

The major movie studios think they will get increased DVD sales by delaying fast growing DVD rental companies, Netflix and Redbox.

The movie studios with the 28 day delay are:

• Fox – Avatar, Tooth Fairy
• Warner Bros. – The Blind Side
• Universal – It’s Complicated

Time Warner is the parent company of Time Warner Cable and Warner Bros.
Comcast is buying NBC Universal which includes Universal Pictures.

DVD movies are available on demand during the 28 day delay on cable companies and satellite companies.  So your options during the 28 day delay are to buy the DVD or rent on pay per view.  It’s the studio’s content and they can do with it as they wish, however, I think this is a good example of how an industry is not grasping technological changes and consumer preferences.

In 3 out of 4 of the movie examples above, I did not buy or rent on demand.  Avatar was going to be bought the first day it was out regardless since that is my son’s “first favorite movie.”  Only one of the other movies caused any discussion at my house, Tooth Fairy.  Me trying to explain to my kids the DVD windowing process was not accepted well.  It should be simple, right? Even my wife gave me some looks on this one.  It’s ridiculous.  She understood, but did not agree with the studios.

Anyone notice something missing, Blockbuster.  The past video rental king is not even a factor in the 28 day delay.  Or is it?  Blockbuster is headed into bankruptcy and probably owes a good chunk of money to the movie studios for rental fees.  This is more than coincidental.  Blockbuster is also using this in their advertising strategy.  Consumers (you) should be the ones deciding where, when, and how much.  It’s called the marketplace.  Unfortunately, the movie studios have decided this for you.

I’ve got a quick poll at the bottom, let me know what you think. Please share this with your friends to get more votes. Maybe if the sample size is large enough, the studios will listen.

Picture of Home Theater magazine using Zinio iPad app

One of the tasks I thought the iPad would be great at is reading magazines.  After a tip from my brother, I decided to try out the Zinio Magazine Reader app.  The app itself is free and the magazines cost money.  You can purchase a single issue or a subscription.  There is essentially no price break on a single issue, but fairly substantial on a yearly subscription.  For example, I enjoy Home Theater, so I subscribed to Home Theater Magazine.

Price

The annual Zinio subscription (digital version) is $9.75, the annual print subscription is $12.97.  So the annual subscription is 25% cheaper.  Zinio got the pricing portion of this service right.  It should be less to purchase a digital subscription since there is no paper, printing, or shipping costs.

Reading Magazines

The experience of reading magazines on the iPad is a winner as well.  Text and graphics are very crisp and look better than a printed magazine.  Zooming in and out of pictures and text is also supported.  Websites in magazines are highlighted so if you touch a link in the magazine (has a blue rectangle around the link), it will take you out to the web so you can get more information.

Advantages

• Ability to read the same magazines on iPhone, PC, Mac, and iPad and only paying for one subscription.
• If you are a traveler and like to read magazines, you can download several magazines and have them ready to go on one iPad.  Eliminate the stack of magazines, at least two or three, right?
• Green.  Eco-friendly since there is no paper.
• Keeps your place in the magazine when you leave the Zinio app.
• No annoying subscription cards falling out all of your house or the plane.  Big pet peeve of mine.
• Instead of ripping out a page and storing somewhere for later, you can screen capture the page, send an e-mail with a picture of the page attached, and remind yourself why you sent this picture to yourself.  For example, take a look at this Blu ray player.

Disadvantages

• Can’t share a magazine unless you give your friend your iPad.  Not going to happen.
• Content is still somewhat limited.  BusinessWeek, Mac magazines, PC Magazine are some of the larger titles.  Where’s Time Magazine?  Oh yeah, each magazine is $5 in it’s own app.  Not good.

Summary

Overall, a great magazine experience, one that I prefer to the paper version.  Price is better, don’t have to lug around multiple magazines for a long trip, and eco-friendly.

For more information visit Zinio on the web.

Here are the benefits:

• Elimantes the needs to reformat (trans-code) a movie.  Trans-coding takes a lot of time and often results in some poor quality or lip sync issues.
• You would never lose a movie.
• You would not have to worry about repurchasing a movie if damaged.  If you have little kids, you’ll understand this one.
• You could download it from anywhere in case you forgot to put it on your device before you left for a trip, etc.  All that is required is  a data connection.

Until now, I’ve only heard of the studios (content owners) requiring the consumer to purchase each format.  This gets very expensive for consumers and only benefits the studios.  It just does not seem right to have to buy a movie three times to watch it in different places.

The full press release can be found here.

A couple of other items I would like to see are:

• Full magazines. The pages could be scanned right in.
• Technical books. The screen size and formatting on the Kindle are not good for technical books with code examples.
• Children’s books with pictures

What are some other Kindle-like features you can think of that a larger, color screen opens up?

Here is the URL for the full PC Mag article if interested: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2362595,00.asp