October 5, 2011 | Hongkie Town

This is one of the events I look forward to all year long, the one that seems to consistently bring in top musicians who otherwise don’t seem to get here, as well as always having some interesting dance and theater events on the program. You can see the full schedule here. (BTW, some people get all excited about seeing the Kevin Spacey production of Richard III on the schedule but note the date – that’s already been and gone.) This year I saw a wonderful performance given by Marianne Faithfull. I had Elvis Costello tix but was sick and couldn’t go. The year before I recall a great set from John McLaughlin, Chick Corea & the Five Peace Band.

I’ve already booked for Charlie Haden & Quartet West (Ernie Watts, Alan Broadbent, Rodney Green) and for Dr. John & the Lower 911. Tickets for both shows top out at a very reasonable HK$600. There are other shows I might consider going to as well. Nigel Kennedy’s coming. A couple of days ago I saw Tinariwen on the schedule but today they seem to have disappeared. Book now even though it’s 4 months in advance; many of these shows will sell out. Take a look at the program – which shows do you want to see?

Well, the announcement has been made. It’s official – no iPhone 5 for now. Apple is releasing the iPhone 4S this month. Same form factor as the iPhone 4, same black and white colors, just some seriously bumped up specs.

* The CPU becomes Apple’s A5 processor, the same chip that’s in the iPad.

* A bumped-up graphics processor. This and the A5 mostly impact the hardcore gaming crowd, of which I’m not a member.

* A very bumped up camera – 8 megapixels, backlit CMOS sensor, 5 element lens that opens wide to f/2.4, 1080p video, and claims that far less lag time to get to your first shot and from shot to shot. All of which means very little to me.

* 4G network speeds (but not 4G LTE) which doubles throughput, 14.2 mbps downloads.

* New software includes what could be a revolutionary voice assistant called Siri that allows one to speak in “natural” language rather than remembering specific commands. If this works as advertised, this will be setting the bar pretty high for the competition. Apparently in order to function correctly, internet access is required.

* Increased storage; a 64 gig model will be available.

This gets rolled out to the first batch of countries on October 14th and the next batch on October 28th. The question many HKers are asking this morning is if the Apple Store opening last month was so monumentally successful, why isn’t Hong Kong included in the first or second wave of releases. No official word, of course. I am guessing it has to do with that 4G network speed. Probably 3 and SmarTone don’t have their 4G networks ready yet and maybe Apple has made that a prerequisite for country rollout? But by now we all know what that means – grey market iPhone 4S’s selling at Sin Tat for double (or even triple?) the retail price.

Aside from that, Apple also announced iOS 5, which can be downloaded on October 12th. A key part of that is their new iCloud service with 5 gig of free cloud storage, more available at a price. But so far, many of the iCloud features appear to be US-only.

The US Apple web site is accepting pre-orders for the iPhone 4S starting on October 7th. On Apple’s HK web site, it merely says “coming soon.”

So what will I do? The 64 gig upgrade is meaningful to me. The voice assistant has potential. Better chip set and camera are not deciding factors for me. So I’m going to be very interested to see what next week’s Android announcement is.

My best guess is that the iPhone 5 is another 6 months away.