Moving to Posterous Spaces

The icrazee blog has moved to Posterous Spaces under the new domain ihing.me. The current posts have been migrated to Posterous Spaces and new posts added. The reason for the move is Posterous Spaces has a simple clean web interface. The iPhone App is also killer. It's going to be exciting times on the new platform. Please make sure you visit.

iTunes 10.5 Update

Apple today release iTunes 10.5 which has been upgraded to work in conjunction with the official release of iCloud tomorrow. According to Apple with iTunes in the Cloud, the music you download to one device automatically appears on all your devices. So the song you buy from your Mac at work is ready and waiting for you on your iPhone when it’s time to drive home. Regardless of where you click or tap Buy, iTunes will automatically download your new songs, apps, and books to your other devices over Wi-Fi or 3G.

In addition the new iTunes supports iTunes Match, where songs you’ve imported from CDs can be stored in iCloud. And you can play them on any iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, or PC — whenever you want and wherever you are, without syncing. iTunes Match is just $24.99 a year. iTunes determines which songs in your collection are available in the iTunes Store. Any music with a match is automatically added to your iCloud library for you to listen to anytime, on any device. Since there are more than 19 million songs in the iTunes Store, chances are, your music is already in iCloud. And for the few songs that aren’t, iTunes has to upload only what it can’t match. Which is much faster than starting from scratch. Once your music is in iCloud, you can stream and store it to any of your devices. Even better, all the music iTunes matches plays back from iCloud at 256-Kbps AAC DRM-free quality — even if your original copy was of lower quality. This is pretty cool, so are you ready to sign up for iTunes Match?

iPhone 4S Pre-Orders Top One Million

I pre-ordered an iPhone 4S last week friday, the first day of pre-orders. Well it seems pre-orders of the iPhone 4S have topped one million in a single day, surpassing the previous single day pre-order record of 600,000 held by iPhone 4. Wow, that's amazing! I am sure a lot has to do with iPhone users who have the original iPhone and iPhone 3 wanting to upgrade in order to run iOS 5 and get a faster phone. So have you pre-ordered an iPhone 4S? Here is a snippet of Apple's announcement of the record pre-orders:

CUPERTINO, California—October 10, 2011—Apple® today announced pre-orders of its iPhone® 4S have topped one million in a single day, surpassing the previous single day pre-order record of 600,000 held by iPhone 4. iPhone 4S is the most amazing iPhone yet, packed with incredible new features including Apple’s dual-core A5 chip for blazing fast performance and stunning graphics; an all new camera with advanced optics; full 1080p HD resolution video recording; and Siri™, an intelligent assistant that helps you get things done just by asking. “We are blown away with the incredible customer response to iPhone 4S,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “The first day pre-orders for iPhone 4S have been the most for any new product that Apple has ever launched and we are thrilled that customers love iPhone 4S as much as we do.”

iPhone 4S Pre-Ordered

The iPhone 3, I am currently using has been painful to use over the last year. It's performance has been sluggish since updating to iOS 3 and it slowed down even further after updating to iOS 4. With the imminent release of iOS 5 which only runs on the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and now the iPhone 4S, I decided to pre-order an iPhone 4S. What also forced me to upgrade is the release of iCloud, which only syncs with iOS 5 and is a replacement of MobileMe. If you have a me.com email address you will need to transition it from MobileMe to iCloud by June 30, 2012.

I pre-orderd an iPhone 4S from Rogers on friday morning and I was number 2802 in the queue. I just logged in today and I am now 2726.  Wow I have a long way to go! Can't wait to get the 4GS so that I can retire the snail paced iPhone 3. I'll probably use it as an iPod Touch in my car to play music. So are you planning to upgrade, have you pre-ordered an iPhone 4S. Let us know.

Steve Jobs Passes Away

It's a sad day, Steve Jobs passed away today at the age of 56, after a long battle with cancer. Our hearts go out to his family.

Apple announced on it's website, "Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple."

Steve was a visionary and the computer industry and Apple are going to really miss him. It's weird that a day after the latest iPhone announcement by Tim Cook, the new CEO of Apple, Steve passes away. It's almost like Steve said, "Tim you now ready to take over".

Apple Launches iPhone 4S

Today, Apple announced the iPhone 4S, which did not come in a new iPhone skeleton as expected but came packed with new features.  The iPhone 4S now comes with Apple’s dual-core A5 chip used in the iPad 2 which has up to 2X faster performance and 7X faster graphics. The iPhone 4S also comes with an all new 8 megapixel camera with advanced optics and full 1080p HD resolution video recording. New to the iPhone and only available in the iPhone 4S is an intelligent personal assistant called Siri, the company they bought in May last year. Siri helps you get things done just by asking using natural language. Can't wait to play with Siri! With the announcement, Apple also announced the launch of iOS 5 which has over 200 new features. In addition, Apple also announced iCloud, a complete replacement of MobileMe which has a set of free cloud services that work with your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac and PC to automatically and wirelessly store your content in iCloud and push your content to all your devices. So what do you think of the Apple's announcement yesterday?

Apple Shipments Via UPS

I recently purchased a MacBook Air 13" from the Apple Online Store and it shipped within 5 days directly from China. Yes, just 5 days plus some time zone changes! In fact it was 2 days earlier than estimated. Now I might have been lucky to have just placed my order in before a shipment was heading out. Either way the shipment by UPS from China to North America within 5 days door to door is phenomenal. Below is a copy of the shipment progress of the MacBook Air from the UPS tracking page.