09.21.2014 09:07 AM

Attention Team Propellerhead: Warren’s free commentary on iOS8

I thought about inserting this web posting into the hard drive of your Mac, iPad or iPhone while you slept – without your permission, gratis! – but thought that would be a really ignorant and possibly illegal thing to do. But, in my ongoing quest to impress my annual 2.2 million page viewers with my technical know-how, I decided to give you my review of iOS8, which Apple is billing as The Biggest Thing They’ve Done© since the last Biggest Thing They’ve Done©. You’re welcome.

Cons

• It takes up a ton of room in your device, which necessitated a lot of folks having to purchase more iCloud space. If you keep all of your naked selfies and sex tapes in iCloud, like I do, remember how the leak of a sex tape harmed the career of Pam Anderson and Paris Hilton. Poor girls.

Pros

• There are plenty – and you guys know how much I hate singing the praises of big, grasping, Satanic conglomerates like Apple. The iOS8 thing is a good thing, even.

• When it’s hooked up to its power source, you can holler “Hey, Siri!” – who came up with that dumb name, by the way? – and it will unerringly do anything for you without you having to look at, or touch, your iPhone. Why’s that the best thing about iOS8? Because it will actually save lives, that’s why. If you use it right, for everything, no more distracted driving. It will actually save lives. Always good.

• They’ve made the voice recognition stuff way, way better. I realize this means all of my verbal quirks and peccadilloes are in Cupertino, now – along with several sex tapes – but you can thusly dictate emails, messages, etc. for hours, without the thing rendering “marinating” as “masturbating” or “auditioning the kids” as “auctioning the kids.” Helpful.

• In messages, you don’t need to type stuff any more. There’s a little button that allows you to embed taped messages instead, and you can send ’em with a single finger swipe. Per above, this eliminates the chances of you saying “I’m bringing some cold hermaphrodites over to tame” when you really mean “I’m bringing some cold Heinekens over for the game.”

• Typing stuff is way, way better. If you have maladroit, misaligned stubby sausage fingers like me – why do you think I’ve played bass in punk bands for 40 years, and not the Philharmonic? – the Apple folks have helped you out. They call it “QuickType,” but I call it “Makes Fewer Mistakes.” It apparently learns your writing habits over time, and helpfully stores that information in the Cloud, along with your sex tapes and naked selfies.

• They’ve made the photo stuff better, meaning you now officially no longer need a camera. You can adjust brightness, contrast, whatever, and you can edit the pix of you and Paris Hilton with ease. There’s also a time-lapse mode, and a timer so you can now be in that family portrait before Uncle Fred is sent off to Millhaven.

• There’s a “Family Sharing” thing, now, but don’t do it. See “naked selfies,” above.

Anyway, those are the things I liked. For fun, I dictated an entire chapter of my new book while driving to the lake yesterday. After 500 words, it did not make a single mistake. Not one. Wow.

Now, get thee to the Cloud. You have sex tapes to delete.

14 Comments

  1. smelter rat says:

    On the con side, it seems to chew up battery life faster than ever.

  2. Matt says:

    “If you keep all of your naked selfies and sex tapes in iCloud, like I do…..”

    Not the visual I needed with my Sunday morning breakfast.

  3. Greg says:

    Apple’s now allowing replacement keyboards to be plugged in. Give SwiftKey a try. It’s so good at word prediction that I find I can type entire messages with just typing 1 or 2 characters per word.

  4. terraderma says:

    “Hey, Siri!” – who came up with that dumb name, by the way?”

    I’m going to stick my ignorant neck out on this:

    Siri’s voice transmission is carried on SiriusXM

  5. james Smith says:

    Given the result of the vote in the UK this past week, perhaps the’ll fix this too:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsHxK6_KpXs

  6. Greg says:

    I work in a project room full of people. I’ve already fallen victim to someone yelling “Hey Siri! Show me some good porn” as they walked by.

  7. Derek Pearce says:

    I’m expecting it will eventually be a matter of etiquette– that is, a discussion of sending someone a text message versus inserting a voice message. It is easier/quicker for someone to speak/say a message to another rather than typing it, but it’s eaiser/quicker to read a message *from* someone than to listen to it. It’s why I much prefer reading a story online rather than watching video reportage. There are those I know (including me) who regualarly ignore the VMs on my phone and respond to and via text only. I predict arguments arising!

  8. The standard security provided by Acrobat PDF consists of two different methods and two different passwords,
    “user password” and “owner password”. Right click on it and click
    “Run as administrator” to run it. Dynamic analysis looks at the behavior of
    the application at runtime, and is what is traditionally done
    in regression testing.

  9. Reality.Bites says:

    If you do your update on the computer through iTunes, the mass deletion isn’t needed. The issue is the upgrade needs to be downloaded before installation. The space it takes can just as easily by on your computer’s hard drive as on your phone.

  10. socks clinton says:

    That’s a pretty anti-nerdite statement to make. True propellorheads use the Linux operating system. And if Linux isn’t available then the webpages should be backward compatible down to HTML 1.0 so one can browse freely using a Lynx web browser emulation program.

  11. John Werry says:

    My 4s looks like a Typewriter now. I was about to purchase a DSLR Camera (photography unless I get corrected), have a newish Macbook (there is already a more advanced Macbook Pro and mine was purchased in April!). I used to say they would have to take the 4s out of my cold dead hands. One look at iPhone 6 and I will be uncontrollably out $1,000.00 at least (unlocked only). Progress is nice. Experts: How long before this Apple product is superceded enough to trigger the “typewriter” effect?

Leave a Reply to james Smith Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.