Category Archives: iPhone

Tech Tip: Freeing Up Space on Your Hard Drive

Note that my desktop PC runs 64-bit Windows 7. This tip may or may not be useful for people running Macs.

My C: drive is a solid state drive. The suckers are expensive compared to traditional drives and come in much smaller sizes. Mine is 224 gigabytes.

I’ve got things set up so that only programs go on that drive. I’ve moved my Documents folder over to my E: drive so when I’m saving files, by default they’ll go there instead of on C. Some programs save data to the C:/Users/xxx folder without asking, and with many you don’t have the option to choose another drive. Lazy programming, I call it.

Anyway, I noticed today that my C: drive was running out of space. I do have a lot of programs installed but even so, I didn’t think I possibly have 210 gigs worth of programs sitting there. I searched through the drive manually (I know there are programs to help with this but I don’t have any).

What did I find? The back-ups for all of my various iOS devices were eating up more than 80 gigabytes of the 224 gig drive. And that was including back-ups for devices I had long since sold off. iTunes doesn’t know you’ve sold something off and no longer need the back-up; you have to manually delete the back-up yourself.

You’ll find the folder in YourName/AppData/Roaming/Apple Computer/MobileSync. iTunes won’t let you move the back-up to another drive and the individual backup folders have “helpful” names like b0d32fecd8d1fb3c8c4efb152f1dc243a2f27798. At least they have timestamps on them, so I figured I could safely delete the old ones.

I have 4 active iOS devices – my gf and I each have an iPhone and an iPad. Fortunately iTunes doesn’t back up everything – that would have destroyed my hard disk. Even so, the back-up for my 128 gig iPad (which has about 80 gigs of stuff on it at the moment) takes up 20 gigs. On the other hand, the back-up of my gf’s 64 gig iPhone took just 600 meg.

I now have just 4 back-up folders there, one for each device, each device newly backed up in the past hour. The total file size has gone down from over 80 gigs to 33; more than 45 gigs of space freed up.

I could “archive” these to another drive and then “restore” them if and when needed. But then every time I go to sync, (which I do almost daily) iTunes will think there’s no backup at all and do a new one and the deleting/archive process takes a little bit of time. I’ve recovered enough space on my C: drive for now, so I’ll let them remain. I’ve got 65 gig free now – also because the last time I created a new Lightroom catalog I wasn’t paying attention and that ended up on my C drive, but that was easy enough to fix.

So anyway, if you’ve ever sold off an iPhone or iPad, find the backup folder and see how much space you can recover this way.

Up and Down with Spotify

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Call me crazy, call me nuts, but when I run across an interesting video on Youtube, I’ll download it in MP4 format and toss it onto my iPad for later viewing. Such was the case with this wonderful BBC 4 Arena documentary on Brian Eno that was done in 2010.

If you’re an Eno fan, this is really essential viewing. In one hour it manages to cover most facets of his career, more time spent on his ambient and experimental music but with plenty of nods to Roxy Music and a bit of time spend on his producing efforts with Coldplay and U2. You get to see him working in his (I think home) studio, hear him discuss his thought processes and influences, it’s really a pretty complete profile.

Midway through, he mentions that one of his favorite productions of all time is Giorgio Moroder’s work on Donna Summer’s “State of Independence.” (He likes the sound of the robotic sequencers against her voice.) I never even knew she covered this. I flipped over to Spotify and had the song streaming in a matter of seconds.

Although … I really love Moodswings’ version with Chrissie Hynde, which I think is the original (too lazy to check). Spotify had the single version of that but it didn’t have any of their albums because suddenly I got really in the mood for an extremely guilty pleasure, Moodswings’ Live at Leeds album, which basically sounds like 100 people randomly hitting percussion instruments for 36 minutes or so, with a bit of a dub or some tape loops tossed in here and there. It’s an all time favorite. Please don’t tell anyone.

Having completed the documentary, I then wanted to hear some classic Eno stuff. I brought up Spotify on my iPad and it found Eno and when I clicked on his name, that little wheel just kept spinning, minutes on end.

So I took out my iPhone and did the same search on Spotify and the search results came up instantly (and both my iPhone and iPad were on the desk next to each other, both on the 3 network) but not quite right. Search on his name and you find him but then it says there’s nothing available. Butthen click on albums and you get a list of almost every album he’s done and in a few seconds I was listening to Another Green World, which mostly streamed pretty smoothly with just a couple of buffering pauses in 30 minutes.

At home, my Spotify boat seems to have run aground. Spotify is refusing to work on my desktop Windows PC. It worked for awhile but then a few days ago it came up and said it was offline and couldn’t get online. So I followed instructions and did a clean reinstall. Following that, it doesn’t come up at all. I get “error 101″ which means it is likely being blocked by my firewall, but I checked and saw it was one of the allowed programs there.

Hmmm. Even though it worked in the past, I next tried disabling my anti-virus software. Nope. And I’ve got a few different VPN programs installed so I deleted those. Nope. Their tech support is telling me to make all sorts of entries in my router, which makes little sense because at home, on WiFi and not on cellular, my iPhone has no trouble reaching Spotify through that same router. So the answer clearly lies within my PC but all tech support keeps telling me to do is to do a clean reinstall.

I can live with that – I’ll probably use this mostly for mobile purposes. I wanted to use it on my desktop primarily to get links and build playlists to share here, which I now cannot do – at least temporarily. No idea why the same search on my iPhone and iPad, on the same network and right next to each other, would work on one device and not the other.

Anyway, watch the Eno documentary. I really loved it. Here’s a link in case you’re not seeing the player which should have been embedded above.

LTE From 3 HK – Fast as Molasses

I finally got the real upgrade to 3′s LTE service on Saturday. Where I live, I can barely get 3G, but in the afternoon I was in Sai Kung town, saw the LTE indicator and ran a few tests.

Wow. Not.

Though later that night, in Central, I did get this.

I guess it’s gonna take them awhile to get the network built out. Why they should be so far behind SmarTone is beyond me. Luckily I only have another 27 years on my 3 contract before I can switch.

I Want My LTE

One of the features of the iPhone 5 is compatibility with LTE mobile networks. If I’m not mistaken, that gives you internet connectivity at speeds up to 20 megabits per second, as opposed to the roughly 2 mbps I’m getting now on the 3G network.

(Hong Kong famously offers home internet connection speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second for around US$25 per month, but where I live, the best I can get is 8 mbps. I can barely get the 3G network where I live, my phone usually drops back to 2G, but the notion of going somewhere on HK island and getting LTE speed with my laptop tethered to the phone is enticing.)

There are a couple of different bandwidths for LTE networks. My mobile provider, 3, had one up and running that was compatible with Android phones. Then I ready in mid October that they were ready with their iPhone-compatible network.

I went into a 3 shop to ask about this and they told me it would probably be ready in December and that they’d contact me. On October 31st, I received an SMS that I would be upgraded to LTE on November 1st and that all I’d need to do would be to restart my phone, get the new carrier settings, and I’d be good to go.

On the morning of November 1st, I received another SMS confirming the upgrade. Given the crappy signal where I live, I waited until I was in Central to restart the phone. And then … nothing. No new carrier settings, no LTE option, just 3G.

I tried again on November 2nd and 3rd with the same results. I went to 3′s web site to see if there might be any instructions. Nope. But they have 24 hour online live chat, so I hit the link for that. I explained my problem to the customer service person who responded by typing, “I see. Is it okay if I type in Chinese?” No, it’s not. So she said that someone would contact me within 24 hours. Nice chatting with you!

Two days later when someone called me, they put the blame on Apple. They said they’d done everything that they need to do and that it was Apple that had to send me the new carrier settings. That made about zero sense to me, but I had no option except to say, “Oh, okay.”

I was in Central yesterday so I stopped into the Apple store. I explained my problem to one guy there and showed him the confirmation SMS’s from 3 that said that I should have LTE now. Soon I had about 5 different Apple employees all gathered round, all taking turns to see if they could figure out how to get me LTE. I saw that on their iPhones, on the settings page, where I have a slider for “Enable 3G,” they had a slider for “Enable LTE.” Finally the expert showed up. After rebooting my phone 4 or 5 times and typing in some secret codes (I wish I was paying better attention at that point!), the “expert” told me that 3 probably hadn’t finished their LTE network for iPhone and that I could go to a 3 shop or just wait.

I’ve managed this long without LTE and I don’t need it. It falls into the category of “nice to have.” Regardless, it’s frustrating that 3 says that they think I have it now and that I’m caught between Apple and 3 pointing fingers at each other. I’m not going to spend an hour on hold with 3′s customer service hotline, so further developments will have to wait until I’m somewhere in the vicinity of a 3 shop.

Do any of my readers in Hong Kong have LTE yet?

Tim Cook Admits Apple Maps Sucks

Apple put an open letter from Tim Cook to customers on Apple’s web site. (I got it from Mashable.)

To our customers,

At Apple, we strive to make world-class products that deliver the best experience possible to our customers. With the launch of our new Maps last week, we fell short on this commitment. We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers and we are doing everything we can to make Maps better.

We launched Maps initially with the first version of iOS. As time progressed, we wanted to provide our customers with even better Maps including features such as turn-by-turn directions, voice integration, Flyover and vector-based maps. In order to do this, we had to create a new version of Maps from the ground up.

There are already more than 100 million iOS devices using the new Apple Maps, with more and more joining us every day. In just over a week, iOS users with the new Maps have already searched for nearly half a billion locations. The more our customers use our Maps the better it will get and we greatly appreciate all of the feedback we have received from you.

While we’re improving Maps, you can try alternatives by downloading map apps from the App Store like Bing, MapQuest and Waze, or use Google or Nokia maps by going to their websites and creating an icon on your home screen to their web app.

Everything we do at Apple is aimed at making our products the best in the world. We know that you expect that from us, and we will keep working non-stop until Maps lives up to the same incredibly high standard.

Tim Cook
Apple’s CEO

I’ve now had a week with my iPhone 5.

On the positive side, the ever-so-slightly-longer phone feels fine in my hands and I’m definitely noticing (in a good way) the lighter weight and thinner body. The camera is fantastic – I think it beats the pants off the iPhone 4s camera. (I think Panorama mode on the iPhone works better than on any “regular” camera I’ve ever owned.) Aside from the clarity of images and the improved low light performance, it’s just faster – no more interminable shutter lag. Everything feels faster on the iPhone 5.

On the negative side, it seems as if battery life is not as good as with the 4s. It also seems to me that the antenna is not as good – I have no proof for this, just a feeling. These two things might actually be connected.

I live in an area with famously miserable cell phone reception. At my desk at home, if the phone is on the right side of the desk it drops down to 2G and I have 2 bars. If I move the phone just 2 feet to the left side of the desk, it reads “no service.” I’ve read that when the signal sucks, the phone uses more energy searching for a decent signal to lock onto and that would obviously increase battery usage. Perhaps Apple will address this in a future iOS update.

I’m also getting killed with iMessage. I’ve sat on the MTR trying to send text messages via iMessage to friends and sat there staring at the messages not going out for minutes that seem to stretch into eternity.

Maps? Yeah. I tried MapQuest – it works for Hong Kong but isn’t much better than Apple’s map. So I’m using Google Maps via the web site – it’s not as quick as a native app but it works.

Speaking of apps, I came across something that’s been out for close to a year but I didn’t know about. It’s called Hong Kong Taxi Translator. You can search by street, place, building, shopping mall and more. You get the name in English, Chinese and pinyin and press one more button and it prepares a larger sized “card” that you can show to taxi drivers. You can also add the ones you frequently use to a list of favorites.

I always try to know the Cantonese names of the places I’m going to but too often the drivers have problems with my miserable accent.

Me: Hang Hau

Them: Bin doh?

Me: Hang Hau

Them: ?????

Me: Hang Hau

Them: Oh, Hang Hau

Me: Um, yeah

So I’ve been using this for a few days and it seriously works. It’s not 100% complete but I’ve found 90% of the places I’ve searched for are listed here and apparently they update their database from time to time and you can refresh the database even if there’s no new update for the app. US$0.99 and well worth it.

Yes I Have the iPhone 5

Well, this was one of those mornings that, alarm or not, I couldn’t get myself out of bed. So there was simply no way that I could make it to the 3 shop in Hang Hau for their 9 AM opening. I finally made it out the door at 11 and told my gf that I’d either be home in 45 minutes or in 3 hours.

When I got to the shop, there was a small line in front, only around 10 people. I gave my ticket to one of the guys working there, he told me to wait, went off to talk to some other people, and told me to wait again. The good news was that out of the 10 people already there, only one other person had a ticket, so instantly that person was first on line and I was second. But even with three staff working at the counter, I had to wait almost an hour for my turn! I have no idea why those other people were taking so long. But after an hour, I was seated in front of someone who went in the back room and came out with a black 64 gig iPhone 5.

How is it? Ask me in a few days because I haven’t really had a chance to use it yet. 3 said they needed 6 hours to activate the new micro-sim card in their system. I got home around 4, got the phone set up, all my passwords and stuff done, and then plugged it in to sync. Tonight we stayed in so obviously there wasn’t much need for a mobile device.

Hopefully by the time I wake up tomorrow morning it will have finished syncing. Yes, it’s taking that long. But that’s because I rip my music to iTunes at the maximum bit rate of 320 kbps. But in order to fit as much music as possible on the phone – and figuring that I don’t need such high fidelity when out on the street or on the train – iTunes is set to convert anything over 192 to 192 kbps AAC when loading onto the phone. And at the moment that’s 8,000 songs – 50.3 gig after the transcoding is complete. It seems to be moving along at the rate of roughly 1,000 songs per hour – and honestly, that’s a pretty decent rate so I can’t complain. After it does this once, there will only be incremental changes going forward.

Once this is set up, I then have to get my old iPhone 4S set up for my gf and then her old iPhone 4 set up for her daughter.

My first impressions on the phone? Well, yes, it looks gorgeous – not necessarily a quantum leap from the 4S – the difference in size is really not that noticeable unless you’re holding it side-by-side with the older phone. It seems to be fast, for the stuff I’ve tried out so far. It’s just disappointing to me that there seems to have been this disconnect between the hardware and software sides of the house. The hardware is every bit as sleek and elegant as one would expect from Apple. (I quite like having a black band around the phone rather than the silver one. Not sure yet how I feel about the headphone jack being moved to the bottom.) Haven’t tried out the cameras yet.

Meanwhile Apple’s Map app and Passbook app are both clearly not ready for prime time. They rushed out Siri when it wasn’t quite done, they’ve done the same again. It’s a disturbing trend. I don’t care how much antagonism there is between Apple and Google; I don’t want to be paying $1,000 for beta software. They diminish the end user experience, which is the direct opposite of what Apple has always staked its reputation on.

Funny thing is, the most joy I had today wasn’t from getting the iPhone 5. It was that Taste supermarket (a higher end branch of Park ‘n Shop) was having an atrium sale in the East Point City shopping mall and I got a good deal on what looks to be a really good frying pan. Which is good because our old frying pan was coughing up blood.

(We’ve been trying out some of the recipes from the series Gordon Ramsey’s Ultimate Cookery Course and quite pleased with the results so far. Normally we watch a lot of food shows on TV but concentrate more on techniques and flavor combinations than the recipes. Something about the stuff he’s featuring on this series has really struck a chord with us so we’ve been writing them down, changing them just a little, and feasting.)

Anyway, for those who are bored with all of these iPhone posts (I looked back and see there’s been quite a few over the past week), this should about do it.

iOS 6? Maps & Passport Are Jokes, Right?

I keep running into annoying little problems with iOS6. No deal-breakers but still.

(image from here)

First off, if this is a topic of interest to you, then you’ve probably already read elsewhere that Apple’s new Maps application (which replaces Google Maps) seriously sucks. (And if this is not a topic of interest to you, then you probably stopped reading by now.)

First of all, they released it with key cities in the US and Europe fully fleshed out but Asia isn’t really done yet. You can get the usual road maps and satellite maps but not with the richness of detail that Google’s maps have.

The search in the map function is BRAIN DEAD. When you type in an address, Google could figure out I’m in Hong Kong and give me Hong Kong search results first. With Apple’s Maps app, it gives me zero results for Hong Kong, lots of results in the U.S. So I have to type in “Hong Kong” each time – still no little list to choose from but so far it has taken me to the right spot once I hit “enter.”

Now, there’s a sort of half-baked solution to this. Bring up Google maps in Safari and you’ll be asked if you want to add this as a button to your home screen. Sure, why not? So you have the button looking like an app, you tap the button and it opens Safari and brings you right to Google Maps. EXCEPT that Google Maps doesn’t have permission to use Location Services, even if Safari does, and there’s no way that I can see to enable it. So it can’t interact with the iPhone’s GPS, can’t show you your location, can’t track your movements.

UPDATE: @aublumberg helped me find the solution. First I had to reset all location warnings on the phone. Still didn’t work. Then I rebooted the phone. This time when I brought up Google Maps in Safari via the icon on the home screen, Safari and then Google asked for permission to use my location, which I granted, and now it’s working fine.

Also, all day long today, when I was on Hong Kong island, every time I checked Apple maps, the map was flipped around, with South on top and North on the bottom.

Also, the map for Wanchai is really weird. Zoom in to a certain amount and it shows you car parks, which is helpful. But that’s the only detail you get aside from street names – car parks. Zoom in all the way and you’ll get hotels. And every construction contracting company. Really. The corner of Luard and Jaffe has Sunrise Interior Design and Decoration Ltd. and E-stone Contracting Company. No bars. No restaurants. No shops.

Let’s go over to Central. Of course, there’s the Apple store. In the wrong location. Let’s see what’s in the area of Des Voeux Road near Pottinger Street. There’s Yu M Susan Dr Dental Surg. There’s Cantalever Investment Co. That’s it. Oh wait. There’s Queen’s Theatre. Which was torn down years ago. It is seriously bizarre and unforgivably useless.

My next beef is with the much-publicized new Passbook app. You bring it up for the first time and you get a little screen explaining how this is a nice little place to keep your boarding passes, movie tickets, store discount cards and coupons all in one spot. At the bottom is a link to take you to the section of the app store for the companies that are cooperating with this. For me, the page doesn’t load (and I’m signed into iTunes with a U.S. account).

No matter because Gizmodo has put together a list of what is there so far and it’s all but useless for most of the world. Here’s the complete list:

Fandango Movies
Live Nation
Lufthansa
MLB.com At Bat
Sephora to Go
Ticketmaster
Walgreens
Mlb.com At the Ballpark
Target
United Airlines
American Airlines
Shop Your Way
Belly Card

Wow. Certainly seems as if this was launched before it was ready.

(Still waiting for the Passbook page in the apps store to load.)

I suppose I should just be happy that the upgrade went smoothly and that my phone didn’t get borked in the process. But the Google Maps thing really bugs me because I used it a hell of a lot. I’m sure Apple will improve it in time. Maybe in a year from now it will be the best map application ever. But why launch it now, when it’s the worst? What happened to Apple’s fanatical quality control and attention to detail?

No iPhone 5 For Me (Yet)

Thursday I received an SMS and an email from mobile provider 3 telling me that I had an iPhone 5 reserved at their Causeway Bay shop and that I should “arrange to purchase iPhone 5 and subscribe the service on or after” September 21. By 9 PM I had not received an email from Apple, meaning that I didn’t make it through their reservation system for day 1. So rather than wake up every morning and sit by the computer fighting to place a new reservation and then waiting 12 hours to find out if I’d made it or not, I figured I’d just continue with 3. Yes, I know, SmarTone has the compatible LTE system but I’m already stuck with another year or two on my 3 contract so I figured the hell with it.

The Causeway Bay shop opens for business at 10:30 AM. I couldn’t get there until about 11:45 because of a meeting. Once at the shop, I was told to expect to have to wait on line for 2 hours. I couldn’t do that because I had a meeting scheduled in Central at 1:30. The guy at the shop said that I could go to any 3 shop and show the SMS and it would be honored. Okay.

So I go for lunch, I go to my meeting and then I figure there’s two 3 shops nearby. I go to the first one, 21-23 Des Voeux Road. Hmmm. There’s no line in front. That’s not a good sign. The guy tells me the shop is closed for a “special event.” That makes a whole lot of sense, right? iPhone launch day, Central shop, closed at 2 PM.

I walk down to their next shop, at 127 Des Voeux Road. This one has a line in front. I go up to the guy, I tell him my story, and he of course contradicts the guy from earlier and says I can only get the phone from the shop that’s listed on the SMS. Super.

So I go back to Causeway Bay (it’s on the way home anyway), I reach there around 2:30 and they tell me the phone is now out of stock. They take my name and phone number and promise to call me when it’s back in stock – maybe Monday or Tuesday, they have no idea.

So I head for home. I get off the MTR at Hang Hau and figure it can’t hurt to check the 3 shop there as long as I’m in the neighborhood. The young girl with purple glasses working there listens to my story and tells me they only have enough stock for the people who reserved it for that shop for that day. But unlike the guy in the last shop, she takes down my information, hands me a ticket and says I can come back on Saturday to get one. I ask her what time I should come by and she says they open for business at 9 AM. (Which, I belatedly realize, isn’t the same as them having stock when they open at 9 AM.)

So maybe tomorrow, maybe next week.

So why is this happening? Because apparently despite 3′s vaunted reservation system, anyone can walk in off the street and buy a phone from them, reservation or not, if they’re willing to sign a 2 year contract for mobile service at the same time. I mean – what the fuck, right?

For those who want to know the deal on pricing, here it is:

Without a contract, 16 gig is HK$5,588 (US$726), 32 gig is HK$6,388 (US$830), 64 gig is HK$7,188 (US$935).

With a contract from 3, the price varies according to which plan you get. The plans start at HK$138 per month and go up to HK$398 per month – the latter plan offers “unlimited” wireless data but they throttle you once you hit 6 gig within a month.

So there’s a “subscription price” for the phone and then a “prepayment price” – you have to prepay a certain amount which is then refunded back to you in drips and drabs over the course of your contract. I’m not going to reproduce the entire price table here. But let’s say you’re me and you want the 64 gig phone and the unlimited data plan. The cost of the phone is then HK$1,780 (US$230) plus an additional payment of HK$4,850 (US$630) which is gradually refunded back to you.

Or you can do interest-free installment payments if you have a credit card form Citibank, DBS, Hang Seng or HSBC. The 64 gig phone is then HK$74.17 (US$9.65) times 24 monthly payments for a total of HK$1,780.08. Plus the prepayment of course.

This being Hong Kong, there was the usual madness outside Apple’s IFC shop today. The SCMP reports that people who went in to buy the 16 gig phone could walk outside and sell it to waiting people for a price up to HK$3,000 more than they paid just seconds before. Or you could take the 15 minute ride to Sin Tat in Mong Kok and sell your HK$5,588 16 gig phone to a shop there for up to HK$9,300.

They also report that people started lining up in Mong Kok at 2 AM last night and that one shop had 70 units in stock which sold out immediately after they opened.

Mobile carrier One2Free is also selling the phones to walk-in customers, no reservation needed. Only SmarTone seems to be enforcing their reservation system.

Keep in mind, this little gizmo isn’t being sold in mainland China yet and there’s probably half a billion people in China vying to be the first one on their block to get one of these. And given that ship dates in the US have slipped to 4 weeks, I think this is going to be a hard-to-come-by item for at least the next month, maybe longer.

iPhone 5 Wrap-Up

Everyone else is gonna post about this, I might as well join in.

iPhone 5:

Made of glass and aluminum
7.6mm thick, 18% thinner than 4S
weight 112 grams, 20% less than 4S
4 inch diagonal display, 1136X640 resolution, 326 ppi retina display
All of Apple’s apps already optimized for this new resolution; 3rd party apps will display with black vertical bars on both sides till they get updated
GPRS, EDGE, EV-DO, HSPA, HSPA+, DC-HSDPA and LTE [only Hong Kong mobile company mentioned for LTE was SmarTone]
A6 CPU and graphics 2X faster than A5
Improved battery life
Essentially same 8 megapixel rear-facing camera but with better low light performance and sweep panorama
Front camera now 720p
New dock connector all-digital, reversible, requires adapter to use with older docks/accessories
White version with raw aluminum back; black version with black anodized back
iOS 6 available Sept 19th
New version of iTunes with revamped interface that will probably still be slow and buggy
US pricing – $199 for 16 gig, $299 for 32 gig, $399 for 64 gig, all with 2 year contract, unchanged from iPhone 4S
Pre-orders start September 14th, delivery starts September 21st for US, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Australia, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong

They also announced new generation iPod Touch and iPod Nano. No mention of iPad mini or refreshed iMacs or much of anything else.

Let the madness begin.

Yes, I’m sure I’ll get one. These days, if they announced that the new iPhone was just 2 dixie cups and a thread but that the cups were made out of Venusian ram’s bladders and the thread of pure gold, I’d probably rail against it for ten minutes and then get on line with everyone else.

Hoping that the slightly larger screen will be easier on my eyes. Assuming that the faster CPU will have some relevance to me. I was hoping there might be a 128 gig version but I would guess their thinking is that with iCloud and LTE you can get by with less storage – except if you’ve got some crappy mobile company where signal coverage is less than optimum or where they start to throttle your speed after you hit a certain amount of usage every month.

New York Hong Kong

The folks over at Lioncase have a new series of cases for iPhone, iPad, MacBook and Samsung Galaxy called New York Hong Kong or NYHK for short. Since I’m from New York and now live in Hong Kong, this is pretty close to irresistible. Made from “Microfiber leather” (whatever that is), they come in grey, white and black – though in the case of the iPad covers only the grey ones have the pattern embossed onto the front smart cover as well as the back cover.

Here’s what the iPad cover looks like: