I don't think protecting the looks of your product is frivolous, especially as the brunt of appeal in an Apple device is in the looks...If your profit comes from your look, then defending your looks is to be expected, and somewhat reasonable ?

But they all look the same, so why isn't Apple suing Motorola (left in the pick) for the xoom or the plethora of other electronic slate manufacturers?



I think the answer is because it assesses Samsung to be its main competitor, and therefore its prepared to block its access onto the market by any means necessary.

It's quicker and cheaper to get a precedent against one company , and then apply this to the others rather than run parallel challenges all trying to prove the same thing.

All these companies just TRIZ'ed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ) the same challenge and got the same result, what's the deal?

Hardly. The iPad came about after recognising They could create a a demand based on desirability and portability. It did not offer a solution, nor was it created to solve a problem or issue. It created a need. Apple leads the innovation race, not a theoretical TRIZ challenge that assumes all companies were posed with the same problem and end up with the same design, and assuming all inputs were equal

I know, but all this hate about companies stealing each-others designs sounds worse than that they all made up the same solution for a technical problem.

In fact all tablets are useless except for the first week you own them.
Consumers desirability, bleh, I am glad I work for an industrial company...

I was always sceptical about Apple's processor upgrades until I upgraded my original iPad to an iPad 2. The difference is actually remarkable.

That said, I'm probably going to skip this version, unless I can get rid of my current iPhone 4 for some serious bucks

For me the new camera is the biggest draw. I've got a 3GS at the moment and the camera is quite poor. I'm no great photographer, and my phone is the one camera that's on me nearly 100% of the time. Unless I'm on holiday, or sightseeing somewhere to take along a more serious camera, the phone is it.

I also prefer the form factor of the 3GS over the 4 (don't like the sharper edges), but new camera (and the rest) are very tempting.

Whoops, meant to add: if you already have a 4, agreed there's not much incentive to upgrade. But from a 3GS (or even a 3G) it makes more sense.

That's often the best way to approach Apple gear - get every second generation of whatever it is you're after, just after it's released.

Off-topic: I never understood the complaints about Apple 'always bringing out something new that makes the previous model look bad' - sure, they do. But usually with at least a 6-9 month gap (if not longer), as compared with other manufacturers that tend to bring out new models...oh, about every 5 minutes or so. And people somehow don't get as upset about that.

For my money this is the biggest advance. At the moment we press buttons or screen areas to communicate with a device be it a computer or a phone or whatever. Being able to tell the phone what to do is a huge advance and I think more significant than we know now.

Apple paid 200m for the technology and if it works as well as they say and is under copyright (as it surely is) then Apple are going to get a major boost from this. Just as finger swipes were new a few years ago and have now become so instinctive that we find ourselves swiping cashpoint screens, so will talking to machines become second nature

I am strapped in to my phone till summer so no upgrade for me but the idea of getting things down whilst I drive is very compelling

Definitely very cool...but...there was another comment piece saying that:
a) the public have been burned too many times by crappy voice recognition (eg. banking/cinema call lines), and
b) you tend to feel like a wierdo talking to a phone/computer.

Maybe socially we'll get over b) when/if it actually starts working reliably.

I note with interest it supports French & German initially. Won't that mean a local boycott until it supports Swiss-German?

A lot of the voice commands are already possible on Android and nobody uses them.

I didn't know that. Does it work well? The only voice things that have ever worked for me are a satnav and a BB. But even these were weak.

I am looking forward to seeing how it works and if it will be in the iPad although I think its unlikely as Apple will likely leverage this feature to pull sales. As for feeling like a weirdo talking to a phone I remember feeling self conscious even having phone back in the early 90's so we do get used to things that feel weird

* The camera argument is poor, if you're serious about photography you know all of the digital phone camera's are useless, in any case my Sony Ericsson Cyber Shot phone that I had over 5 years ago with 3.2 meg pixel camera is still light years ahead of all the iphones I've tried. Just the fact it has a real flash and not a silly LED is a major thing that I have no idea why noone else has copied and in terms of effects it had a lot more than just take a picture and zoom in!

* As for the Siri app, as previously said, those sort of things exist already and their usability is highly doubtful, and even if it is a major advance I'm sure it can be easily downloaded and used on the previous models.

Conclusion: Apple's latest device is an EPIC FAIL!

Only from a marketing/release point of view. It fails to deliver as an upgrade, but as it is an improvement in whatever respect, it is still bespoke food for iPhone hungry buyers. Sales will continue despite the disappointment , they have not killed the Golden Goose. The iPad now leads any technological bursts from Apples marketing. The iPhone has been subtly relegated to product position #2 on Apples priorities. This latest release is a very smooth transition to that 2nd spot.

I had a little search just now and it seems The Siri app won't be embedded in ios5 and the processor in the existing iPhone isn't up to doing what ever needs to be done. The a5 processor can do it so the limitation isn't software but hardware

If you're really serious about photography, you're probably talented enough to create great images with lenses and sensors far worse than what the current iPhone has, never mind the new one. There are plenty of sites out there showcasing stunning images taken with mobile phone cameras, which most of us couldn't take in a million years.

If you also happen to be really serious about photographic hardware, you won't be relying on a phone to make your images with anyway.

i'd be happy with a 5mpx camera that will take a photo when i press the shutter release and not 3 seconds later.

my honest opinion: nope. Yes, you can take some great-looking snap-shots with a cell phone camera. However, the difference between high-end glass and cheap glass is massive. I'm not seeing iPhone pics finding their way to istockphoto any time soon.

Siri works just fine on the current-gen iPhone 4 - as a matter of fact, they only just pulled the app from the App Store a couple of days ago.