Party ipad

Purveyors of fine Apple peripherals Griffin have filed a copyright patent for the most ambitious looking iPad / iPhone dock yet – one that turns your iPad or iPhone 4 into a fully fledged game console.

The sleek looking dock contains four joypads and can be connect to a TV. It’s simple to set up and comes with three PartyDock mini-games and one full game. Additional PartyDock games can be downloaded from iTunes – only these games are compatible with it, so there’s no chance of playing Doodle Jump or Angry Birds on your TV just yet.

For details such as price and release date, keep an eye on the official website.

This is the droid you’re looking for

Last week Samsung had a laugh at Apple’s expense by mocking their iPhone 4 woes via an advert printed in the daily newspapers. This week Motorola are at it with an advert for the Droid X:

The “jacket”, for those not up to speed, refers to the plastic case required for the iPhone 4 to maintain a strong signal.

Apple throw their toys out of the pram

Oh Apple, have a little dignity, eh? Not content with holding a press conference to basically deny the iPhone 4′s antenna issues as a significant problem (whilst giving out free cases or refunds to all iPhone buyers – a great sign that there’s absolutely no problem at all…), Apple have now taken to saying it’s a problem with all other phones too. They say they’re shooting back – except it wasn’t the other manufacturers who highlighted this problem, it was the thousands of iPhone users who complained they couldn’t get the signal to make a phone call!

We’re sure if you wrap most phones in tinfoil or smash them with a hammer, they lose signal. However, most don’t drop calls when accidentally touched by a pinky finger. Now Apple, how about you stop being shits about this and just own up like a big boy. “Billy did it too, mummy!” really isn’t an excuse for a company with a defective product.

Antennagate

Ninety journalists gathered at an Apple press conference last Friday where Apple addressed the problems with the iPhone 4’s reception. Or “Antennagate,” as the issue is now seemingly referred to.

“We’re not perfect. We know that. You know that. And (our) phones aren’t perfect either. We’ve been working our butts off to understand what the real problems are,” said Steve Jobs during the conference.

The outcome? From next week until 30^th September a free signal boosting mobile phone case will be available on Apple.com . If you’ve already purchased a case then a refund will be given.

It was also announced that the delayed white version of the iPhone 4 would be available from 30^th July in the US.

iPhone 4 is Apple’s Vista

At least according to Microsoft’s Chief Operating Officer, Kevin Turner. At Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference, the big COO stated; “It looks like the iPhone 4 might be their Vista, and I’m okay with that”.

While some people are up in arms over Mr Turner’s apparent blunder for insulting his own product, it does seem fairly honest and accurate. Vista and the iPhone 4 are both a bit underwhelming and bug-ridden. Fair enough really. It would be nice if Mr Jobs acknowledged that the iPhone 4 won’t make phone calls if you hold it funny.

Apple responds to iPhone 4 issue

People all over the world queued up to be among the first to own the iPhone 4. Within hours of going on sale though, word spread of a fairly fatal flaw – if you hold the phone in a certain way, the antenna becomes obscured and the phone will loose signal.

Apple have now responded with the following message:

Dear iPhone 4 Users,

The iPhone 4 has been the most successful product launch in Apple’s history. It has been judged by reviewers around the world to be the best smartphone ever, and users have told us that they love it. So we were surprised when we read reports of reception problems, and we immediately began investigating them. Here is what we have learned.

To start with, gripping almost any mobile phone in certain ways will reduce its reception by 1 or more bars. This is true of iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, as well as many Droid, Nokia and RIM phones. But some users have reported that iPhone 4 can drop 4 or 5 bars when tightly held in a way which covers the black strip in the lower left corner of the metal band. This is a far bigger drop than normal, and as a result some have accused the iPhone 4 of having a faulty antenna design.

At the same time, we continue to read articles and receive hundreds of emails from users saying that iPhone 4 reception is better than the iPhone 3GS. They are delighted. This matches our own experience and testing. What can explain all of this?

We have discovered the cause of this dramatic drop in bars, and it is both simple and surprising.

Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength. For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars. Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don’t know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place.

To fix this, we are adopting AT&T’s recently recommended formula for calculating how many bars to display for a given signal strength. The real signal strength remains the same, but the iPhone’s bars will report it far more accurately, providing users a much better indication of the reception they will get in a given area. We are also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see.

We will issue a free software update within a few weeks that incorporates the corrected formula. Since this mistake has been present since the original iPhone, this software update will also be available for the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G.

We have gone back to our labs and retested everything, and the results are the same- the iPhone 4′s wireless performance is the best we have ever shipped. For the vast majority of users who have not been troubled by this issue, this software update will only make your bars more accurate. For those who have had concerns, we apologize for any anxiety we may have caused.

As a reminder, if you are not fully satisfied, you can return your undamaged iPhone to any Apple Retail Store or the online Apple Store within 30 days of purchase for a full refund.

We hope you love the iPhone 4 as much as we do.

Thank you for your patience and support.

Apple

Apple usually test everything they manufacture to destruction (literally) so to find a fault in their shiny new phone was a surprise to many. Hopefully by the time the second generation iPhone 4 is rolled out everything will be back to Apple’s high standard.

iPhone 4 predictably official

Yesterday Apple held their Worldwide Developers Conference, and as everyone expected, unveiled the iPhone 4. The real thing has turned out to be exactly like the leaked iPhone back in April. Although there were mixed reactions when the leaked version was first seen (some referring to it as a cheap Japanese knock-off), now that it’s official everyone agrees that it’s a thing of beauty, with the aesthetic stylings of a classic Leica camera.

So what’s new? There’s the 960×640 3.5 inch IPS LCD display, which the Apple marketing department are referring to as “the retina display” (a nice way of ignoring the fact it’s not a low-power, daylight-friendly AMOLED display like most other new smartphones). Under the hood there’s an A4 CPU, as seen in the iPad. Battery life has been boosted slightly, with 7 hours of 3G talktime. The camera has also got an upgrade, now with 5 megapixels and 720p HD video recording, plus a small front-facing camera. That’s your lot on the hardware front – memory and storage remain unchanged.

As you can probably guess, we’re not really blown away by the iPhone 4. Of course, the early leaked version did take some of the wind out of the announcement, although the incremental hardware upgrade – basically just taking the iPhone 4 to the same level as the HTC Incredible and similar new Android phones – leaves us a little underwhelmed. That said, many see the apps as the iPhone’s… killer app. So we’re sure it will still sell like crack-covered hotcakes.