Today is the day that the iPhone 5 goes on sale. If you stayed up late or woke up very early last Friday, you may have been lucky enough to preorder from the first batch, in which case your shiny new iPhone 5 will be delivered to you today by UPS or FedEx. A number of iPhone 5 devices will also be sold in stores today, but if you are not already in line by the time you are reading this, it may be too late to get one today. Demand for the iPhone 5 has been incredible. Back in June of 2010, Apple was delighted to announce that it had taken over 600,000 preorders for the iPhone 4 in the first 24 hours. In October of 2011, Apple announced that it had taken over one million preorders for the iPhone 4S in the first 24 hours. This year, Apple announced over two million preorders for the iPhone 5 in the first 24 hours. As you can imagine, the iPhone 5, along with the new iOS 6, dominated the news of note from this past week:
- Speaking of the lines for the iPhone 5, editorial cartoonist Walt Handelsman of Newsday offered this amusing take.
- New York attorney Neil Squillante of TechnoLawyer wrote an interesting analysis of Apple and Google's rise to prominence at the expensive of Microsoft and what this means in the legal industry.
- If you want to try to get an iPhone 5 over the next few days, Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun-Times offers advice for doing so.
- One of the nice new features in the iPhone 5 is support for 4G LTE, but of course you must be in a city that offers that service to take advantage of LTE. Last week I identified the cities with AT&T, Verizon and Sprint LTE, and that list has already become outdated. Chris Parsons of iMore identifies eight cities that just gained AT&T LTE service and wrote a similar post with new Verizon LTE cities.
- Glenn Flesighman of TechHive explains LTE.
- Now that people are spending more time with iOS 6, we are learning a lot more about what it can do. Two good and comprehensive reviews of iOS 6 were written by Dan Moren of Macworld and Rene Ritchie of iMore.
- Chad Williams wrote this interesting post on less well known iOS 6 features.
- Similarly, Jessee Hollington of iLounge explores secrets and features of iOS 6.
- The 16 people on Apple's design team are responsible for some of the best looking technology in the world. Sam Oliver of AppleInsider reports that all of them traveled to London to receive an award for being the best design studio of the last 50 years.
- Daniel Eran Dilger of AppleInsider reminds us that you can use the new panorama feature in the Camera app to take long vertical pictures, and his article has some interesting examples.
- Nick Heath of TechRepublic reports that the iPhone is now as secure as the BlackBerry. That's good to hear, but I've been listening to BlackBerry advocates say for years that the iPhone is lacking in security, and yet I'm not aware of even one example of a lawyer having confidential information breached because the lawyer used an iPhone instead of a BlackBerry. And I'm sure it isn't for lack of effort — just think of the notoriety that a bad guy could get for doing so. We all need to exercise common sense when it comes to smartphone security, but I'm much more worried about leaving a briefcase with confidential papers in a cab or on a plane.
- I recently talked about why lawyers will love the iPhone 5. Jason Hiner of TechRepublic similarly reports on why business professionals will love the iPhone 5. As you can imagine, there is a lot of overlap in the reasons.
- Here's a similar story: Tony Bradley of PCWorld on how the iPhone 5 and iOS 6 can benefit business users.
- iFixIt shows us what the inside of an iPhone 5 looks like and has all sorts of geeky details about the electronics and components used. For example, iFixIt reports that the new home button "sports an integrated metal support bracket, which we hope will greatly strengthen the oft-used switch." I've heard of people having problems with the home buton on previous models of the iPhone.
- Are you planning to use your iPhone while you travel abroad? Darren Murph of Engadget recommends a service called iPhoneTrip that lets you rent a SIM before you leave the U.S. that will work while you are abroad. Prices vary from $5.99/day for only 50MB of data to $14.99/day for a generous 500MB.
- I've reviewed a bunch of styluses for iPhone J.D., and my current favorite is the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo. Dan Sung of Pocket-Lint reviews the new Wacom Bamboo Stylus pocket, a tiny version of the stylus that shrinks to fit in a pocket. I've never had a problem with the size of the "duo" version, but if you have, this may be of interest.
- Biam Beam of Macworld reviews Twist, an app that can automatically send text messages to people to let you know how close you are to arriving at your next meeting. I haven't used the app and frankly I'm not sure that it is something that I would ever want to use, but California attorney David Sparks says that he has come to rely upon the app, so maybe there is something there.
- Christopher Breen of Macworld has an interesting article on the evolution of the iPhone since 2007.
- The iPhone 5 come with new earphones that Apple calls the EarPods. Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun-Times likes them and offers this review. The other reviews that I have seen seem to all agree that they are an improvement over the former earphones that came free with an iPhone, but everyone also agrees that if you want to pay more you can get nicer ones from third parties. Still, it is nice to see an improvement in the default "free" option.
- Christopher Seward of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution writes that two armed robbers were caught last week thanks to Find My iPhone.
- And finally, I've written before about the amusing fake iPhone videos from JLE. Here is their latest funny video, the Banned iPhone 5 Promo:
