So you were so eager to jump on the iOS5 update when it arrived, and now your phone wont last the day? It looks like Apple’s fancy new mobile operating system has been giving a few people very poor battery life. Well luckily Apple has fixed iOS5 with a simple Over The Air update. In the past it was a big mission to update your iPhone, requiring you to plug in your device to iTunes and then downloading a massive ipsw file.

This time it is a lot easier, provided you have iOS5 installed already. First off, make sure you have a battery above 50%, or plug your device into power:

• Go to Settings – General – Software Update
• Click Download and Install.

You can then keep using the phone for other things. The download will happen in the background, and the phone will inform you once it needs to restart.

First off, you have to be connected to a wifi network, as the update is still 40+ megabytes to download. The whole update took us about 5 minutes on a decent internet connection. iOS5 is available on iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S (on which it is preinstalled). Any iPod Touch 3rd generation and newer, and any iPad can install iOS5 as well. As a bonus, this update also enables multi touch gestures on older iPad 1′s. Which might be reason enough to get it…

If you have not updated to iOS5, here are some reasons you need it right now.

While the full-length version of ‘The Lost Interview’ with former Apple CEO, Steve Jobs will be available on the 19th November, an exclusive teaser of the never before seen footage was revealed yesterday by What’s Trending.

The original hour long interview was conducted by author and journalist Bob Cringely during the making of his TV series ‘Triumph of the Nerds’ in 1995. In the end, only a part of the interview was used in the series and it was believed that the rest of it was lost. However, a copy of the VHS (remember those?) was recently found in the director’s own garage. With the help of modern technology, the tape was cleaned up, restored and put into context by Cringely himself. At the time of the interview Jobs was running NeXT, the computer company he had founded after leaving Apple.

In the interview Jobs talks about his pioneering days with Steve Wozniak when they built the Blue Box, the visits he made to Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and how it inspired the making of the Macintosh and his forced departure from Apple.

During the interview Jobs states: “We were on a mission from God to save Apple. I don’t care about being right. I just care about success.”

Steve Jobs died on the 5th October at the age of 56.

Watch the teaser below:

source: what’s trending

If you’re looking for something a little (or a lot) more luxurious than what’s readily available on the market, then you’d be interested in the latest iPad product offering from Stuart Hughes. The luxury goods designer and craftsman has dressed an iPad 2 with a gold, diamond and dinosaur bone casing appropriately named the Gold History Edition. The iPad, selling for a price of £5 million, is made of 24ct gold, the thigh bone of a 65 million year-old T-Rex shaved and splintered into 75 million year-old Ammolite rock and encrusted with 53 flawless diamonds.

Only two units of the exclusive gadget will be produced.

If you’re looking for more variation, Hughes has also designed the iPad Supreme Fire Edition, weighing in at 2.5 kilograms of solid gold and the solid Platinum iPad Supreme Edition, the worlds first solid Platinum and diamond iPad.

source: mashable

In response to the dramatic increase in the number of smartphones currently in use in the South African market, Groupon South Africa announced today the launch of the official Groupon application for iPhone and Android smartphones, as well as for the iPod touch. The app is available for download in the Apple App Store and the Android Market.

Wayne Gosling, joint Groupon SA CEO said that “South Africa really is a mobile-tech environment; we have limited access to internet compared to other countries, and so most people use internet through their phones. Groupon international now feature Blackberry, iPhone and Android apps, and as these options become available in South Africa it will start to have a real effect on the way consumers purchase.”

With the smartphone apps, South Africa has joined a growing number of Groupon markets worldwide that offer mobile app capabilities via mobile devices, including North America, Australia, Hong Kong, Germany and the United Kingdom.

Some of the features available through the new apps will revolutionize the way group buying is conducted in South Africa. Features include:

• The ability to browse daily deals and buy on the go.
• Accessing your account (sign in to your existing Groupon account to find and organize your library of previous purchases).
• Signing in to your account through Facebook or signing up for a new Groupon account directly through the apps.
• The ability to redeem your Groupon’s wherever you are.
• Pulling up and presenting Groupon’s to merchants directly from the device’s screen, which means that no printout is required.
• The ability to activate the GPS feature so consumers can purchase Groupon’s closest to their current location.

To download the app for iPhone click here.

To download the app for Android search for “Groupon” in the Android Market.

You might already know that today Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs goes on sale worldwide. It is already the top selling book on the Kindle store, so expect massive sales. There have been many biographies of Steve Jobs, but this is the first authorized one, and Isaacson interviewed Steve Jobs over 40 times in the last two years. The book description:

“Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.

At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, and when societies around the world are trying to build digital-age economies, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering.  

Although Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted.

Driven by demons, Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple’s hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values.”

Exclusive Books already has Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography, and it goes on sale today for R249 for the hardback.

As part of the book’s launch, 60 Minutes interviewed Isaacson. We have added the first and second half of the video below. Personally, I will be skipping the videos until I have read the book.

If you are all interested in how Jobs conducted his business or personal life, or how the book was written, get hold of a nice uncapped internet connection and watch the videos below:

(more…)

Apple has shared a TV ad on their Youtube channel about their new iPhone 4S. The video features Siri, the personal assistant technology Apple acquired last year and rolled into iOS5 enabled 4S iPhones. In typical Apple fashion, the TV spot avoids listing technical specifications in favor of highlighting the personal element to the device.

“You speak. Siri helps. Say hello to the most amazing iPhone yet.”

via Scoble

The iPhone has always had a weird development cycle – it has until now always lagged a little behind in terms of features, especially compared to the very quick development cycle of Android. Even though the hardware was first rate, users have stuck by the iPhone primarily because of ease of use and the rich app ecosystem.

But today Apple has finally given the iOS operating system the shot in the arm it has always needed. If you are an iPhone or iPad user, we strongly recommend you download and install iOS5 as soon as possible. It is perhaps the most significant update that the iPhone and iPad (and iPod Touch) has gotten yet. So why would you want it? Here is the rundown of the new features – this is not all (there are a LOT), but only the most important ones:

iMessage:

For a messaging crazy country like SA, this is the number one reason to get iOS5. It basically mimics the free BBM service that Blackberry has had for ages, or the Whatsapp app that many people are familiar with. Only it is a lot smarter – and it works very well.

It works in a pretty simple fashion-the first time you send an SMS to another iOS5 user, it notes that on the Apple server (automatically, no interaction needed), and then all subsequent messages take the iMessage route which only requires a data connection. If it finds that the message cannot be delivered, it switches back to the old sms route.

And no, there is no handing out PIN numbers like BBM – you can register your email addresses (in addition to the iPhone you are using) you prefer to be contacted at with iMessage. In my testing it has worked flawlessly for the past week. For example – my wife has an iPhone as well, and all our SMS’s between each other has been free. Great.

New Notification Center:

This might be a bigger deal to some than the iMessage integration. Up until iOS4, the notification system was severely limited. You know the drill – you might be playing a game, reading an important mail etc., and then a notification takes over your entire screen. This then freezes whats underneath it, until you confirm that you read the message. The new notification system is a lot more subtle – the top of the screen simply rolls up to tell you what is up. Easy enough.

But what if you have missed the notification? With iOS5 you can now go see previous ones. Apple has gone and taken a page from Android and WebOS and built a drawer that slides down with a list of past notifications. By clicking on a line in the drawer you are taken directly to the relevant app – for example click on a tweet you have gotten, and you will be taken to the Twitter app. Same for missed calls, calendar entries, weather, etc. Want to remove the notification? Just click the close button next to it.

New Lock Screen:

The iPhone’s lock screen has always been a bit of a wasteland, with perhaps one single notification on the screen. That has luckily been fixed now, and many apps can now take a place on your lock screen to inform you about things. If you miss something it will take up a line on the lock screen, and the user can very quickly be taken to the relevant app by just sliding the icon accross the screen. Missed a call? Just drag the notification icon to the right, and the phone instantly fires up a return call. Huge improvement.

Reminders:

Yeah, yeah. How interesting can a Reminders app be? Hold on – iOS5 does make some very cool enhancements to such a mundane app. Reminders will be integrated with iCloud (and servers like Exchange for Tasks), but they have added location aware reminders as well. You can set the iPhone (or iPad) to remind you based on certain location based triggers.

For example – set a reminder like “Pick up Gift” and set it to remind you when you arrive at home. Or before you leave work. I expected this to strain my battery, but my battery held up fine. Combined with the upcoming Siri feature on the iPhone 4S, this will be amazing.

Safari:

The Safari browser on iPhone is already the most popular smartphone browser out there, and the new upgrades will make it even better. The biggest change is with the new “Reader” option. You know that irritating thing where you might be reading an article, and then you have to click to read the next page? Now you can just click on Reader, and then it goes and pulls all those pages into one page, and you can then also quickly change the font sizes. No ads as well… Just good clean text.

If you are running iOS5 on iPad you also now have real tabbed browsing, not the pseudo version like on the previous iOS. The other tabs will also load in the background, just like your desktop browser.

Camera:

For some people their phone’s camera is never that important, but for others the best camera is the one they have on them. One of the problems have always been how slow it is to start up the camera – but now it is a lot faster. Simply double tap the home button when the phone is locked, and then click the camera icon. Apple has also finally listened to users and enabled the volume up button on the side of the phone, instead of trying to click the on screen shutter button. You can also see grid lines to better compose your images.

But after you have taken the photos, you also gain some simple on device editing. Colour balance a little off? Just click edit, then auto-enhance. You can also crop an image or remove red-eye by clicking on the subject’s eyes. Yeah, these editing tools have for a long time been available on other platforms, and Apple just caught up. Good thing nonetheless.

Once your photos have been taken they can also be stored in iCloud in what Apple calls “Photo Stream”. In default mode the iPhone will automatically upload all new photos up to photo stream, and then download that to all your other iCloud connected devices, like your iPad, or PC or Mac.

iCloud Backups and PC Free setup:

Typical readers of Bandwidth Blog are quite familiar with backups we reckon (right?). But a shocking number of iPhone users have never, ever backed up their phones. Then when they lose their phone and replace it with a new iPhone, they have to start afresh. The backup system has always worked well, but required users to plug in their devices into a iTunes-installed computer. Bit tedious, especially if you do not use a computer much. Luckily now Apple bundles iOS5 with iCloud, which amongst other things enables the user to backup his phone contents to the “cloud”. All you need is a decent Wifi connection, and then you can set your device to save changes on Apple’s servers. Lose you phone? Then just unbox a new iPhone, and then enter your iCloud details to restore everything like it was before. Great.

This also means that we finally get rid of that connect to iTunes screen when you unbox a new iPhone.

iTunes Wifi Sync:

People do not like connecting their iDevice every time they want to sync with iTunes. So with iTunes 10.5 and iOS5 you can now let your device sync through Wifi. In fact it will automatically sync if the phone is connected to power, and connected to the same wifi network as your computer.

Find My Friends:

While not strictly an iOS5 feature, it did roll out with iOS5. You need to go download this app, and it really does work well. The concept is simple – you need to find a friend, and you can now request his location quickly and easily. The recipient can then share his location for 24 hours, which ought to be enough. You then get a ping on your map to show where to find your friend, with a button to quickly find directions as well. How cool is that?

So this is not a social network class tool like Google Latitude. It is simple to use – because the concept is simple.

Other Nice to Have New Features:

• Built in Twitter functionality – Set up your Twitter account in Settings, then you can quickly share from various built in apps to Twitter.
• Mail has been improved – You will now have some more control over the text formatting in composed mail. You can also quickly drag contacts between different fields like BCC, CC etc. Not rocket science. Should have been there long ago.
• Newsstand – You can now subscribe to many magazines which will now be seperately kept on a bookshelf called Newsstand. You subscribe, and new issues simply land in the Newsstand.
• Split keyboard on the iPad – You can now split the iPad keyboard into two smaller halves, which makes for better thumb typing when you cannot put the iPad down to type.

After months of speculation and leaks, Facebook has finally officially launched its iPad app now available in the iOS App store. The app has been designed for optimal use on the tablet with a focus on consumption and easy touch screen navigation. The app has large buttons for effective navigation and also takes advantage of the iPad’s special features to do things that are not possible through a Web interface. For example, photos now take up the entire screen and users can pinch them to zoom in and out. Navigating through a photo album can be achieved through the swiping feature on the device and users can also take photos or film high definition videos from within the app.

The App includes a left-hand navigation bar for accessing the News Feed, photos, messages, Groups and settings. As with the website, notifications, chat, status updates, search and other key features are also included. However, the newly announced features, like Timeline, are not included in the iPad app just yet.

There are a number of new features that have been introduced especially for the iPad. Facebook has integrated Airplay into the app which allows users to play and share images and HD videos Apple TV or other Apple devices. Facebook games can also be played in full screen mode and games from EA, Zynga and more will support additional features such as Facebook Credits. Facebook is also making use of location services with Nearby. Nearby shows a map on screen with little icons indicating your friends in the area. Using the ipad functions users can zoom into the map, click on a person’s photo and leave a comment. Users can also check in to their location from within the app.

To download Facebook’s app for iPad click here.