Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, has died at the of 56 the company announced.In a statement Apple said “Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve. Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundations of Apple”.Jobs had been ill for some time, first announcing that he was suffering from pancreatic cancer in 2004. In recent years speculation over his health had mounted with Jobs appearing increasingly gaunt during public appearances.Bill Gates joined those offerring tribute to Jobs “For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him it’s been an insanely great honour. I will miss Steve immensely”.Jobs’ deaths comes just one day after Apple announce its latest batch of products, including the next generation of the iconic iPhone that Jobs first launched back in 2007. Jobs’ role in the company took a backseat to his medical condition when he handed over the running of the company to Tim Cook to take a medical leave of absence, before finally resigning in August, making Tim Cook the new CEO.Jobs was undoutedly the face of Apple and the company will be forver linked to him. His leadership helped turn Apple into one of the most successful companies in the world and it was often to Jobs that consumers looked to see what the next big thing would be.All of us here at Mobile-Review send our thoughts and prayers to Steve Jobss family and friends at this time. The world may have lost a great man, but it is all the better for having had him in it, even for just a short while.
It’s Finally Here … the iPhone 4S
“The big news of the day/week/month/year (depending on your level of fanboyism) is of course the announcement at long last of the new iPhone. Contrary to what many had expected the new device is not called the iPhone 5, it is in fact called the iPhone 4S. Before we get into the nitty gritty let’s take a quick peek at some of the changes in this new iPhone. First up is the design, which isn’t actually a change at all. It looks the same as the iPhone 4 and has the same screen dimensions. However, as Phil Schiller, was keen to stress, inside the iPhone 4S is where we see the new tech. Leading the charge is a new A5 dual-core processor, which Apple are saying is a good x2 faster than that found in the iPhone 4. The graphics performance is better than its predecessor too, clocking in at x7 the performance of the iPhone 4. To highlight this new capability they showed off a demo of the iPhone 4S running Infinity Blade 2 today and the accepted wisdom was that it looked pretty damned good. The camera has also seen an upgrade with a new 8 MP sensor in the iPhone 4S. This new sensor, Apple claims, traps 73% more light than the iPhone 4’s sensor. Speed has been enhanced too with the iPhone 4S apparently being able to take its first picture in just 1.1s and thereafter its second picture just 0.5s later. That’s pretty impressive stuff for a cameraphone in anyone’s book. One of the biggest complaints surrounding the iPhone 4 was of course the ‘antennagate’ debacle whereby the handset would suddenly loose signal and drop calls. Well Apple have been at work designing a new antenna system that ‘intelligently’ switches between masts to improve call performance. It’s all worth noting that the antenna design in the iPhone 4S seems to be the same setup as that used in the CDMA version of the iPhone. That leads me onto my next point, which is that the iPhone 4S is a true world phone. It supports GSM, UMTS, HSPA+ as well as CDMA. One phone for all networks then, assuming Apple wants to give it to them. Mind you it looks like American network Sprint will be getting its hands on the iPhone 4S so Apple might be loosening the restraints a bit in that respect. By far the biggest wow moment, if there could be said to be any such moments in a sea of recaps today, was the unveiling and demoing of Siri. I’ll be going into more detail on Siri in another post, but for now suffice it to say that it acts as a personal assistant and responds to voice commands. If that sounds a bit dry well it isn’t. In terms of availability we’re looking at 14th October for the first batch of countries, which are the U.S., Canada, the UK, Australia, France, Germany and Japan. More countries will be added on the 28th October and by the end of the year there should be 70 countries in total able to get their hands on an iPhone 4S.” via mobile-review.com