the blog of ryan moser

Have you seen the new iPhone 4S?

It’s beautiful, amazing, simplistic, sheik, and did I mention identical to the iPhone 4. That’s right, identical…

When I watched the unveiling the other day of the new iPhone I was blown away by all the enhanced features in iOS 5, Siri, dual antenna bands, and the identical body design. I’m not really sure how the design of the phone could be made better, thinner, bigger screen? Speaking with a close friend, Matt Reed the other evening he brought up a great point about screen size and thumb size. Matt mentioned how the iPhone is not only designed around your pointer fingers, but your thumbs too. When you hold the iPhone in your hand your thumb can easily reach any corner on the screen.

But anyway, back to our subject, exterior design. The exterior of a product isn’t always changed every year, look at the Mac Pro which has held the same exterior appearance since 2006.

When a design is great, why change it?

Has Gowalla considered Item Sharing?

While checking in at a local spot tonight I thought of something cool Gowalla could possibly implement in the mobile application.  My Idea: Attaching items to “Notes” left at checkin locations.  How great would it be to be able to attach an item to a note that you were leaving for a friend! It’d be so much fun to be able to easily share and exchange items between friends. What do you think?

Apple Press Conference Friday?

What could it be!!??

The internet is buzzing with Apple’s announcement about a press conference this Friday the 16th at 10AM PT. Sources have suggested that Apple will be “coming clean” about the iPhone 4 antenna issue and even dropping the price… We’ll see what goes down!

Maybe they’ll announce the release of the WHITE iPhone 4, wouldn’t that be nice, I’m tired of waiting!

Be sure to follow engadget live on Friday.

iOS4 for the iPhone 3GS

WOW, what can I say! Some of us have been waiting for these features since day one, but they are finally here. So many cool features fill the latest update and make it the best ever!!

What I like:

• Folders- Folder have truely helped to make my phone less cluttered, they allow me to hide/store apps that I use less frequently along with apps that I use all the time. I love how easy it is to make a folder and would love to see this feature used in an os x update…

• SpellCheck- Yes!! It’s finally here, no more purposely misspelling with hopes of a replacement word, spell check is here and works very nicely. One feature I would like to see added is the ability to add words to the dictionary or maybe even and ignore button?? 

• WallPapers- Not the lame lock screen wallpapers, real behind icon wallpapers!! They’re here and they rule!!! Unfortunately if you have a 3G you won’t be able to change your behind app wallpaper, I found this out on my work phone. Bummer!

• Unified Inbox- IT’S HERE!!!!! No more going through all 12 email inboxes to view all 109 emails! All emails are cleanly brought into one simple mailbox, one of my favorite features! I have a ton of accounts and get a boat load of emails a day…

• PUSH- Push for some reason feels like it’s actually working like it should, emails, notifications, all coming through perfectly!
• Photos- When opening up photos, at the bottom you will see two options: Albums and Places. Albums being your standard album view and Places showing you all of the many places that your photos were taken, too cool! The abiltiy to use faces is also added! One feature I wish would be added is the ability to make albums through the iPhone versus having to make them on your computer…

• Multitasking- If you know how I run my Mac then you know I am a multi-tasking whore! Before it was here I didn’t think I needed it, now that it is I can;t imagine the phone without it! I was running facebook chat, recieving and sending text messages, looking for movie showtimes, and jamming to some BCFT. I don’t know if I could handle that many tasks on my computer! 

• Screen Orientation Lock- This feature was announced with iPad and was put into the iOS 4 update. This feature is accessed in the multitasking bar. A great feature for people like me who do a lot of game playing/web browsing while laying on your back. However I wish you had the ability to lock it in landscape mode and not just portrait mode.

• Tap to Focus- Tap to Focus has been added in the video portion of the camera feature which now allows you to focus throughout filming. This is a great feature. Below is a demo video I shot:

All in all this update is great on the 3GS and pretty weak on the 3G.