Apple Launches The IPhone 6 And 6+ In Cupertino

The new iPhone has been launched and it is bigger and better than ever, but will it manage to overshadow the security issues that have surrounded Apple recently?

Apple launched the new iPhone on Tuesday with all the slick smooth confidence of a company that has done the same thing five times before. The chosen audience of worthies packed the hall, the stage was suitably black and featureless, and the technology on which much of their business is based (the internet) totally let them down. Such are the best laid plans of mice and men failures, especially in face of random actualization of issues at sensitive moments. When one finds oneself losing at blackjack new strategy is often called for, by the time Apple realized their “live streaming” was neither streaming nor live, it was all too late.

But the technical difficulties aside this was an event of note, and not simply because the iPhone has become the de-facto standard by which the performance and capability of smart phones is measured. It is always expected that the latest iPhone will contain the latest in technology, give better visuals and larger levels of efficiency in terms of power usage and battery life, but this time round we were not merely treated to a new pair of handsets pushing forward the limits on small package processing and rendering hardware, but also a new wearable option.

Wearables, bits of technology you wear, is going to only grow bigger as a market and revenue stream if the larger players continue to push their various versions of the same basic concept, the smart watch. However whilst the novelty of being able to do impressions of Dick Tracy is likely to loom large in the days, weeks and months to come, it remains to be seen if current designs set the world aflame or leave it cold, and remember that watch costs nearly as much as the phone does, and the phone isn’t exactly cheap. However Apple have long since shown that their products can bear a higher market price.

~ Mobile Gaming Goes Mainstream ~

One of the reasons that Apple products still command a premium, mostly based on marketing and image rather than machine capability or function, is that the mobile phone has ceased to be merely a communication device but the gate keeper twixt you and your data. Your phone now has your pictures, your videos, your music, your contacts, and now, with Apple Pay, access to your money too. But why have we allowed our phones to become such gravitational attractors of all our access-to-data needs?

The individuality of a phone is key. Whilst a family computer or games console might offer some of the same facility it is a shared machine that might well be able to run mobile casino software or its equivalent, but the privacy of one’s phone is unrivaled in that you rarely leave it lying around unattended, so your own peccadilloes can be kept to yourself. This first led to guilty gaming by adults who still saw it as a childish waste of time, then by adults who knew gaming on a phone was a waste of time but had time to waste, and then by just about everyone as social acceptability kicked in.

~ Apple Gambles Security And Stream Woes Won’t Tarnish New Tech ~

Of course social acceptability has been an issue for Apple lately as security failings within its iCloud service allowed unwanted eyes to not only glimpse the naughty selfies of the rich, famous and rather pretty, but let these eyes carry them away to other parts of the internet realm (which in response went absolutely insane over them). Sympathy for these young stars being embarrassed in this fashion was huge, judgment not falling upon them for taking the pictures, but Apple for not protecting them properly despite assurances.

It was thus not entirely great that the live streaming of the launch presentation for the all-connected new iPhone 6 went wrong from the start and never recovered meaning that millions of people who’d tuned in to watch the count down on the website were left with either no stream at all or a stream that was choppy, looping and, for some reason as yet not fully explained, speaking Chinese. Like a bizarrely unrewarding mobile casino the stream simply failed to live up to expectation or just the standards of the average Skype video-chat. It won’t give their competitors much comfort but it is still nice to know the big boys can make a balls up of it all too.

~ The Rival To Apple’s iOS That Is Not Exactly A Rival ~

The major competitor to Apple comes not from another manufacturer of handsets or tablets or even smart watches (which frankly continue to look like someone’s given you a particularly fashionable electronic ankle tether and asked you to wear it on your wrist) but from an entirely different platform that has been its major competitor since its inception back in 2007. Android slots neatly into the market because it gives all the people who dislike Apple somewhere to stand whilst screaming their abuse.

Will a billion android devices now roaming the world it has never been of greater threat to Apple’s revenue streams. It provides better machines at a lower price for those that place substance above style and refuse to become trapped in the proprietorial world of Apple computers and their premium price tags. Apple have gambled that their new handset keeps them ahead of the competition and whilst they can expect it to do so for a little while, it is only ever a matter of months before someone brings out an Android phone that does all the same things only cheaper and, if we’re honest about it, better.