A new iPhone was announced this week and yet, unfortunately, that was far from the most important iPhone and iPad-related story in the news this week. I don't know whether Steve Jobs was able to watch the iPhone 4S presentation on Tuesday, but I like to think that he stuck around for one last product introduction just to see that Apple would be in good hands before the he finally passed away to go to the great iCloud in the sky. The number of well-written tributes to Steve Jobs that I have seen this week is simply staggering. I'll note a few below, but there are so many more.
- Jason Snell wrote a great article on Steve Jobs making a dent in the universe.
- Lex Friedman of Macworld wrote a great article on why Steve Jobs's death feels so sad, even for those of us who never met him.
- Buinessweek is devoting its current issue to Steve Jobs. There is a long, well written, three-part story about his life with tons of details that I had never heard before: 1955-1985, 1985-1997 and Return to Glory.
- AdWeek reports that when Time magazine learned the news, they stopped the presses for the first time in 30 years to scrap all of its other stories and devote 21 pages to Steve Jobs. One such story is this one by Harry McCracken, and it's a great read.
- On McCracken's own blog, Technologizer, he posts an interesting video that was created as a tribute to Jobs on his 30th birthday.
- Moving from magazines to newspapers, John Brownlee of Cult of Mac collected pictures of the front pages of over 100 newspapers around the world reporting on the passing of Steve Jobs.
- Charles Duhigg wrote a touching story for the New York Times about Jobs saying goodbye to close friends and family during his last few weeks.
- Kentucky attorney Finis Price shares a great story on his TechnoEsq blog about the time that he got a call from Steve Jobs to assist with a broken Macbook Pro.
- Now for a few other stories in the news this week. If you are trying to decide whether to get an iPhone 4S on AT&T, Verizon or Sprint, Alex Colon of PC Magazine compares the different plans. Sprint, for example, is the only carrier offering a plan with unlimited data.
- What size iPhone 4S should you get? I find that video is the one thing that really eats up a lot of space on an iPhone, and since the iPhone 4S takes 1080p video instead of the iPhone 4's 720p, I've been wondering whether I should get a 32GB version or a 64GB version. Justin Horn of When Will Apple estimates that video on the iPhone 4S will take up about 2.5 times as much space as the iPhone 4. In other words, 60 minutes of video will take up about 10.4 GB of storage, versus 4.6GB on the iPhone 4.
- Anand Lal Shimpi of AnandTech offers a technical explanation for why the iPhone 4S does not support 4G.
- If you drop or otherwise damage your iPhone, bring it to an Apple Store. The folks at the Genius Bar are usually very forgiving and will often help you out with no or minimal charge, at least the first time. But if you can foresee more than one such incident (perhaps because that new iPhone is for a teenager), Charles Starrett of iLounge reports that Apple has a new AppleCare+ program for the iPhone. For $99, it extends your warranty to two years, and most importantly provides coverage for two incidents of even accidental damage (although subject to a $49 service fee).
- Newsweek notes that, back in 1984, Steve Jobs described a product that sounds an awful lot like the Siri integration in the new iPhone 4S. The new article on Newsweek's Tumblr account is here, but you should take a minute and go back and read the original interview from 1984 that is posted here, especially the second page.
- Dean Bubley of Disruptive Analysis believes that the new iPhone 4S contains complicated new hardware that will be the basis for many future iPhones to come.
- Maryland attorney Michael Berman reviews The Deponent App, an iPad app that can be used when taking a deposition.
- Debra Cassens Weiss of the ABA Journal reports that Atlanta's John Marshall Law School is the first to support using an iPhone or an iPad to prepare your law school application, and will even waive the $50 application fee for those who do so.
- Marketing consultant Martin Lindstrom writes in an Op-Ed piece for the New York Times that MRIs show that people literally love their iPhones. On the other hand, David Dobbs writes in Wired that the Lindstrom article is, um, bunk. (He uses more graphic words.)
- And finally, one of the most famous Apple commercials to ever air was the Think Different commercial that ran in 1997, shortly after Steve Jobs returned to Apple. Apparently Jobs was directly involved in selecting the people to be featured in that ad and in securing the rights to their images. (Here is a wonderful video of Steve Jobs explaining the new Think Different campaign and debuting the commercial.) The final version that aired was narrated by Richard Dreyfuss, but apparently Apple also considered having Steve Jobs himself narrate the Think Different commercial, and that version is on YouTube. I actually agree with the decision back in 1997 to have an actor with a distinctive voice like Dreyfuss do the voice over, but this week it is great to watch and listen to this alternative version of the video: