Free Gifts From Apple

A few days before Christmas this year, Apple released a free app called "iTunes 12 Days of Gift".
The first "gift" would be available on 26th December 2012.

Now, there are already quite a number of "Paid-apps-gone-free-for-a-limited-time" app on the App Store. What makes this offering from Apple different from them?

On the 26th, when I launched the app, the gift was there!
It's an EP by Maroon 5! A 2-track plus a video EP.
This is an obvious different from the rest of similar app.

I was hoping to see what other goodies it got to offer.
To my disappointment, the following 2 days are just the same paid-app-gone-free apps. However, these 2 apps are real quality apps.

On the 28th December, I went to App Store's top "Free App" section and I see this:

The 2 free apps offered on the 27th and 28th December occupy the first 2 places with the main app itself taking 3rd place!

You don't see other paid-app-gone-free recommended by other app shoot up to the top spot like in this situation.

What an impact a big name company app (Apple in this case) can shoot an app to immediate fame.

iPhone 5 Panoramic Photo Quality

Apple built in Panorama feature in iOS 6 and introduced it during the iPhone 5 launch event.

Before iOS 6, I was using third party panorama apps such as "360 Panorama" and "Photo Synth".  The main problem with these 2 apps are that the final stitched panorama photo are of low pixel resolution.

With iOS 6's built-in Panorama feature, the final stitched photo has a much higher pixel resolution and thus better quality.

Here's one photo that I took few days ago at 77th floor of the Skypoint building in Australia's Surfers Paradise.

It's very clear in the original photo. Not sure if some quality are lost when uploading to this blog.

And here's the technical specs for this stitched photo:

Width  7360 pixels
Height 2332 pixels
DPI    72
Size   10.9 MB

The latest Version of Google+ Returns to Basics!

How do you like the latest Google+ update?
I particularly am overjoyed. The last version after version 2 was so bad that I switched back to an older version on my previous jailbroken iPhone 4S!
The last version was showing a "abstract-like" truncated picture of the post and won't show the comments until you click on it.
They are back now in the latest version!
Loving it!

Google+ Communities for iOS Workaround

So now Google released the "Communities" feature in Google+, but forgot to add that to Google+ for iOS!

The workaround now is to use the official Google Gmail app for iOS which allows posting comments and "+1".

Apple Maps is not Condemned

So, Apple Maps is unsurprisingly being voted one of the top 5 tech flops in 2012 by many gadget sites.

But is it really condemned?
Hmm.. I'm not sure for others.  But I'm not condemning it.

I actually did not hit any (yes, zero) snags or wrong directions from it for my country (Singapore).  I've been using it not less than 6 times now.

The 3D is not available yet in my country, so the "Fly-Over" mess is not applicable for me.

My Fibre Broadband under Minor Stress Test

This morning my newly-activated Fibre Broadband was put into minor stress test.

Several of the mobile devices were put to use in a typical Sunday morning.

I was also trying out the streaming of videos from my Android Samsung Galaxy S WIFI to my Apple TV. The PlayTo app was used to do that.

Meanwhile, the kids were watching YouTube videos on the iPad 3rd Gen. They like to replay those "favourited" videos.

At the same time, I continued my "saving" of 3 episodes of Taiwan drama serial simultaneously to local storage. "Saving" here means "Caching" technically or "Downloading" in layman term.

Then I start my "caching" of a 26MB videos from YouTube.

No one complained of any stoppages or lag.
Previously on ADSL, someone will grumble their videos are lagging or not moving.

WIFI Speed Test on my New Fibre Broadband

In 1996, I subscribed to my first Internet Provider, Pacific Internet with a then "fast" 56kbps dial-up modem.

In 2012 November 29th, I got my first Fibre Broadband with a speed of 100Mbs!

Naturally, I'm going to take my bunch of portable devices for a speed test comparison.

Here are the competitors:
1) Samsung Galaxy S WIFI 5.0 running Gingerbread 2.3.6
2) Apple iPhone 4S running iOS 5.1.1
3) Apple iPad (3rd gen) running iOS 5.1.1
4) Apple iPad Mini running iOS 6.0.1
5) Apple iPhone 5 running iOS 6.0

So, can the Apple iPhone 5, which Tim Cook said comes with "Fast WIFI" win it all?

The app to test with:
Speedtest.Net app for Android and iOS:

1. Speed Test Result for Samsung Galaxy S WIFI 5.0

2. Apple iPhone 4S

3. Apple iPad (3rd Gen)

4. Apple iPad Mini

5. Apple iPhone 5

Here's to summarise the results: