My Thoughts on iOS 6 and the New iPhone 5

Barely one week has elapsed since the release of the iPhone 5, along with its accompanying iOS 6, and we’re already seeing some amazing numbers. It took just three DAYS for iOS 6 to be downloaded over 100 MILLION times. Wow! Thanks Apple for over the air updates and tight control over the hardware!

In contrast, Android’s latest 4.1 Jelly Bean release has only managed to touch 1.2% or about 6 million of the 500 million Android devices worldwide in two MONTHS. You can thank Android’s massive fragmentation problem for that.

Also, in just two days Apple managed to sell more than 5 million units of the iPhone 5. Those are numbers any other company would be downright giddy over. I’m sure Apple is plenty excited about it, but they've had such a string of successes this past decade that they’re probably used to it by now. My wife was one of those lucky 5 million and I’ve had a chance to steal her phone away from her from time to time (I’m ‘stuck’ on the 4S for at least another year).

There isn’t much I can add to some of the already fantastic reviews of the iPhone 5 and iOS 6 that are out there, but I thought I’d at least share some thoughts on the things that stood out for me:

Critical Flaw in Apple's iOS?

When I switched to an iPhone a year ago and ditched my BlackBerry, I thought I had also left crippling issues like RIM's famous widespread network issues far behind as well. As it turns out, even Apple has a glaring flaw that can disable a very important feature on the phone; WiFi.

I excitedly upgraded my iPhone 4S to iOS 6 today (more on my impressions in another post) and was fine for most of the day, only to come home and find out that I couldn't connect to my home WiFi connection without getting this annoying prompt: 

So what was the problem?

Sony RX1 (Wow, Wow, and Wow)

Sony announced the new RX1 camera this week, and it literally made my jaw drop. If you’ve read my S95 post, or if you’re a photography fan, you likely know very well how important image sensor size can be in a digital camera. It was for that reason that I let out my first “Wow” while reading the RX1’s press release and saw that they have managed to stuff a full frame image sensor in a body that’s not much bigger than your typical point and shoot camera. That is a truly incredible engineering feat.

Check out the massive difference in sensor size below between a point and shoot like the popular Canon S100, the Sony RX1, and the pro-level Canon 5D Mark III:

Beating the Itch with Therapik

Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that a gadget from a website as cheesy and poorly designed as therapik.com, would ever prove to be useful. Thanks to a review from Gizmodo, I can now say that yes ladies and gentlemen, there actually is a gadget out there that can effectively mitigate the annoyance and itchiness that come from mosquito bites.

As a full time resident of the Midwestern United States, I am very familiar with mosquitos and the persistent annoyance they leave behind long after they've sucked the life out of me. It was for this reason that immediately clicked on an article titled “Bug Bite Relieving Gadget Review” a few weeks ago. If not for the effusive accolades that Gizmodo gave the device, I would have run for the hills after seeing the Therapik website. It’s just one “buy now and get a mini Therapik free” claim away from being a late night infomercial. Thankfully though, the review’s praise and the low price of $12.95 made me think “What the heck? I might as well try it.”

It’s late in the blood-sucking season for my hometown’s unofficial state bird, but just the other day I FINALLY got a bite! I can’t believe I am saying this, but for the first time in my life I was excited to get bitten. Now I could try the Therapik out! 

Bing It On Microsoft. I'm Ready!

Much in the same way that the word Kleenex has become synonymous with facial tissue from all brands, and Tivo has done the same for DVRs, so has Google become the de facto standard term used to describe an Internet search. Just “Google it,” you’ll often hear people say. Ever since 1998, Google has been the search engine of choice for many (myself included), much to the chagrin of former search titans like Yahoo, Lycos, Alta Vista, and Ask Jeeves.

Not to be outdone, Microsoft also jumped into the game in 1998 with MSN Search. This later became the horribly named Windows Live Search, then just Live Search. I suspect one day someone at Microsoft with some guts (and influence) must have finally said “this is just stupid; we need a catchy name and unique features.” And so it was that just over 10 years after their failed attempts with MSN search, Bing was born in June of 2009.