Apple is rightly pleased with its inclusion of 120fps slow motion feature in the iPhone 5s, and if the videos we have already seen taken with the device are any indication, it will be more than another feature that never gets used beyond the first couple of weeks. We're looking at you, Samsung.
JoinedJanuary 21, 2011
Articles20,139
Oliver Haslam has written about technology for over a decade. His work has been published in print at Macworld and online pretty much everywhere else. If it plugs in or has a battery, it's fair game.
Gaming on smartphones may be something of a boom industry, but that doesn't mean that all developers are falling over themselves to launch on every platform imaginable. Take EA and PopCap's Plants Vs Zombies 2 as an example - the title had its worldwide launch on Apple's iOS last month, but so far Android gamers have been left looking over the fence at what their cool neighbors are playing. Yes, Plants Vs Zombies 2 for Android is available to download if you happen to be in China, but that doesn't really help everyone else now, does it?
There's little doubt that the big topic of discussion surrounding Windows 8's launch last year was the removal of the Start button that we had all grown to love ever since its addition in Windows 95. The cornerstone, and literally living in the corner of Windows ever since, the Start button was unceremoniously removed in Windows 8 as Microsoft tried to push its users towards the Metro/Modern interface that it hoped would replace the old way we navigated our apps, settings and documents.
Now that the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c releases are out of the way, attention is beginning to turn to what we all expect to happen within a few weeks; new iPad announcements. Now that the iPad 4 and iPad mini are nudging their 1 year birthdays, it doesn't take a genius to come to the conclusion that Apple is more than likely gearing up to release newly revised versions of its two tablet devices.
One of Apple's biggest selling points for the iPhone 5s, or at least the one that is easiest to demo in-store, is the addition of the Touch ID system. Hidden below the Home button, Touch ID allows iPhone owners to unlock their device securely, without having to enter a passcode. Instead, the clever technology reads the fingerprint of the person pressing the Home button, and if it matches what it's looking for, then the phone unlocks. Magic.
As is always the case with such things, and especially anything involving streaming video or music, Google’s Chromecast dongle immediately attracted the attention of modders and developers alike. If there’s anything that gets the geek juices flowing it’s going to be a mini dongle with a bit if computing power. Sure enough, Chromecast was hacked, but in a good way which we users always like.
VLC is undoubtedly the second most popular media player on both Windows and Mac. The app's ability to play just about any file thrown at it is the thing of legend at this point, and is something that plenty of other developers have tried to replicate. To date, the folks at VideoLAN are the only ones to manage it, and they've done a particularly good job of it, too.
Facebook may have been around for what feels like forever, but the social network is still missing one or two features that some of us have been crying out for. One of those features is something that seems rather simple on the face of it, and today Facebook announced that we will soon be able to edit our own posts on the social network.
If there was ever any lingering doubt that the two new iPhones that were released last week would sell well, then let those doubts be cleansed after Apple today announced its sales figures for the three days since the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c went on sale.
We're now what we like to call 'post-iOS 7,' and as the dust settles on what can only be described as the biggest change to Apple's iOS since multitasking was added, the response has been mixed.
