Category: Apple (Page 7 of 9)

Apple

2014 MacBook Air Review: Best Laptop for Students

August 6, 2014 / Andy / 1,574 Comments

This is my review of the new 2014 MacBook Air. I’m going to go ahead and quickly say in my personal opinion this is the best laptop for students or people on the go. Now let’s get into the full review so I can show you why that is. The 2014 MacBook Air is an absolute beast when it comes to portability. It’s sleek. It’s slim. It’s lightweight, but at the same time it’s fast and powerful enough for the casual user. It comes in 2 different sizes: 11” or 13” and those come in 2 different variations as well. You can either get a 128GB hard drive or a 256GB hard drive, and those are both solid state drives.

The one I’m reviewing is the 13 inch model with the 256GB SSD and 4GB of RAM. Now let’s start off with the processor. The Air sports a 1.4 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost up to 2.7 GHz. That means the normal CPU speed is 1.4 GHz, but when it needs more processing power for heavy applications the Turbo Boost kicks in and it goes all the way up to 2.7 GHz. This is why you can consistently get over 11 hours of battery life on this 13″ model. The ridiculously long battery life is one of the main reasons why this laptop is perfect for students who may have classes all day long.

The 256 GB SSD has extremely fast read/write speeds so you can copy huge files within seconds. The 128 GB hard drive is a little slower than that, but it’s still fast because it is an SSD. The overall workflow on the 2014 MacBook Air is snappy. Apps start up quickly without slow load times. Though I did notice that when you’re booting the laptop up from a cold boot it’s slower than I expected, but the wake from sleep is instantaneous.

Of course this is an Apple Mac laptop so you get all the perks that come along with that. You get Mac OS X with all the built-in iLife apps, responsive chicklet keyboard with backlights, smooth and clickable multi-touch trackpad, FaceTime HD webcam, magnetic power adapter, thunderbolt port, 2 USB 3.0 ports, a headphone jack, dual microphones, an SDXC card reader on the 13″ model, and of course the illuminated fruit on the back.

This is a MacBook Air so this shouldn’t be a surprise, but this thing is extremely portable. It’s quiet because there is no spinning hard drive inside. It’s lightweight, weighing in at less than 3 pounds, and the 11″ model is even lighter than that. It is super thin at 0.68 inches at its widest and down to 0.11 inches at its thinnest. The built-in speakers seem pretty loud to me so you should be able to jam out to your #ThrowbackThursday Spotify playlist with no problem.

Having said all that, there are a couple negatives about this laptop. I don’t like the fact that you cannot add RAM yourself. The RAM is actually soldered onto the motherboard so whatever RAM that you choose at checkout (4GB or 8GB) that’s what you’re stuck with for the life of it. But for the casual user that shouldn’t be a big deal. Also the 2014 MacBook Air does not have a Retina display, which is kind of a bummer. The native resolution on the 13″ is 1440 by 900 which is not even full 1080p HD. Other than that, I’m a huge fan of everything else about this laptop.

The pros of this laptop are it’s a good value. It’s less than $1,000 and that’s pretty standard nowadays for a nice laptop that should last you at least 4-5 years. The portability aspect is great. It’s super lightweight and small. It’s probably the most portable laptop available as of right now. Of course with an Apple MacBook you’re going to get an aesthetically pleasing design. I’ts everlasting. The battery life is extremely long. You can go all day with this and not worry about it dying. It’s high quality and quite powerful for its size. The cons for this laptop: again you can’t add RAM yourself and it doesn’t have a Retina display.

Bottom line this is perfect for for college students, high school students, law school students, or just people who are on the go in general. If you travel a lot or if you frequent coffee shops, this is perfect for you. You’re going to love this laptop, highly recommended.

By Andy Slye

How To Clean Up iTunes Library – Fix All Songs Automatically!

January 8, 2014 / Andy / 1,574 Comments

In this video I’ll show you how to clean up your iTunes library. We all know how hard it is to keep your iTunes library organized with all the correct song, artist, and genre information especially when you have hundreds and even thousands of songs in your iTunes music library. It’s nearly impossible to do that manually. That’s why you need an application like Neat Music to clean up your iTunes library. This program uses intelligent music recognition to complete missing artist, track, album, and genre information for your songs. It corrects “untitled” or “unknown” track info. It adds missing album artwork, groups scattered album songs, and organizes all your music for your iPhone, iPad, or iPod.

First, click the link at top of this description. That link will take you directly to the free download page for Neat Music, which works on Windows PC computers. You can try this application out for free. It’ll fix up to 100 songs in your iTunes library with the free version. If you have more than 100 songs in your iTunes you can buy the unlimited version at a special discounted price so you can fix your entire iTunes library. Once you download it, install it on your computer. Then open up iTunes and open up the Neat Music application.

It gives you a preview of your iTunes library at the bottom. As you can see if I go back to my iTunes I have these songs that I have no information for. I have no idea what the song name, artist name, album, genre, year, etc. There’s no album artwork either so it would take me forever to do this manually, but with Neat Music it does it automatically for me.

With Neat Music you can select all the songs in your library and click the Identity button. That will identify all the song info. It’s very fast and only takes about one second per song to get the information. Once it’s done you’ll see this red icon for success, and you can click on each song and it gives you a little preview of what info it has found for that song. To save that information in your iTunes just select the songs and click the Save button. It’ll import all the information into your iTunes, cleaning it up automatically with all the correct track names, artist names, album names, etc.

Neat Music also gives you the ability to get all the album artwork. Click the Get Album Art tab at the top, and it gives a list of albums in your library. Select all the albums then click Get Album Art. It gives you the standard album artwork. It also gives you high quality versions. I usually just go with the standard so double click that and it’ll import it into iTunes. Go back into iTunes, and you’ll see now it has all the correct song information, the correct album information, the album artwork – everything. It did it within just a few seconds. That is how to clean up your iTunes library automatically, quickly, and easily. That’s with the program called Neat Music. You can download the free trial version with the link at the top of this description. Enjoy!

By Andy Slye

Apple iPhone 5s Review: New Features & Should You Upgrade?

October 4, 2013 / Andy / 1,560 Comments

Apple iPhone 5s Review

New Features + Should You Get It?

Click here to order an unlocked iPhone 5s

iPhone 5s Introduction

This is my full in-depth iPhone 5s review. Externally the iPhone 5s looks almost exactly the same as the iPhone 5. It’ s sporting the same aluminum-style shell with the microphone, speaker, and Lightning connector at the bottom. The same 4-inch 1136×640 Retina display and the same 1.2 Megapixel front facing camera. It also has 4G LTE support and comes in the same storage capacities: 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB.

Speed & Performance

The speed of the iPhone 5s is blazingly fast thanks to the new 64-bit A7 processor. If you own an iPhone 4S or earlier iPhone you’ll be immediately captivated by the quickness of the 5s. Even iPhone 5 users will notice the speediness as the iPhone 5s claims to double the 5’s CPU and graphics performance. I’ve noticed a huge speed increase in app launching and loading, multitasking management, taking photos, even shuffling songs seems even more instantaneous. Playing games is definitely a treat on the 5s. When put to the test, the 5s came out ahead in nearly every benchmark test. As of right now, according to the benchmarks, it’s safe to say the iPhone 5s is possibly the fastest smartphone available.

Battery Life

The iPhone 5s does not have a magical new everlasting battery that we all dream about, but it shows no decrease in battery life either. Apple says it can get up to 10 hours talk time, 10 days on standby, 40 hours music playback, or 10 hours video playback on a single charge. I’ve concluded that the standard “daily overnight charge” is still needed. On a regular day I can wake up with 100% and make it through 16 hours and by bedtime have anywhere from 10% to 20% remaining. Battery life does have a slight increase thanks to the M7 coprocessor taking some of the load off of the main chip.

Camera

The iPhone 5s camera is a huge improvement & does take some awesome photos and videos. It’s still an 8 megapixel camera, but each pixel is bigger, and the sensor is larger as well. The aperture was increased to 2.2. That along with the new dual LED flash improves the quality of photos in low-light conditions. Also new is image stabilization, and burst mode. A cool new video recording feature is the slo-mo feature which captures video in 720p HD at 120 frames per second and allows you to slow down the whole video or a certain portion. Overall, the new camera can produce stunning photos and HD videos.

Touch ID

The most talked about feature of the iPhone 5s is the new fingerprint sensor called Touch ID. The fingerprint scanner is built into the all new redesigned home button. It takes about 20 seconds to set up a new fingerprint. As of right now the authorized fingerprints can be used to unlock the device and make iTunes and App Store purchases. Overall, I think the Touch ID feature improves the user experience more than being a gimmick.

iOS 7 Software

A match made in heaven. That is the best way to describe the iPhone 5s and the new iOS 7 software. The general layout is the pretty much the same as iOS 6, but now there are brand new designs, icons, colors, fonts, gestures, and animations. The new multitasking is very fluid on the 5s. Spotlight search is the quickest I’ve ever seen it, and Siri seems snappier as well. iOS 7’s makeover includes new animations and parallax 3D effects. The new Control Center adds a much-needed feature to iOS 7, giving quick access to popular settings and apps that make the user experience more efficient. iTunes Radio is a nice feature as well, allowing you to create your own music stations. So from what I can tell, the iPhone 5s and iOS 7 were meant to be together.

Conclusion

If I had one word to describe the iPhone 5s it would be: delight. It’s a delight to use this phone, with the power it has paired alongside iOS 7. So the question is should you get it? If you own an iPhone 4S or earlier, yes I would highly recommend getting the iPhone 5s. If you’re an iPhone 5 user, I wouldn’t recommend upgrading to the 5s unless you’re a hardcore camera lover or have the need for speed. iPhone 5 users should probably stick it out and wait for the iPhone 6 or if you want a bigger screen you’ll probably want to switch to Android. With its new power and speed, its new camera and fingerprint sensor, and new software design, the iPhone 5s is a fantastic smartphone.

By Andy Slye

Apple iPhone 5s Unboxing – Hands On & First Look!

September 20, 2013 / Andy / 1,558 Comments

Official Apple iPhone 5s Unboxing – Hands-on & First Look!

It’s September 20th, 2013 and I just got back from the AT&T store. This is an official unboxing video of the new Apple iPhone 5s. They already took the plastic off of the box, but I put everything back in there as perfectly as I could so I could do this unboxing for you. Let’s take a quick look at the outside of the box. On both sides it says “iPhone 5s”. On the front there is the image of the iPhone 5s itself. I have the space gray color. It also comes in two other colors, gold and silver which both have white faceplates while the space gray has a black faceplate.

So once we open the box you’ll see the new iPhone 5s. I wish my screen could stay as smooth and clean as it is when the plastic is taken off for the first time. That’d be awesome, right? There you have it folks. That’s the 32GB space gray iPhone 5s unboxing. Let’s do a quick hardware overview over the iPhone 5s itself. The new redesigned home button is sporting the new Touch ID fingerprint sensor. On the bottom it has the microphone, headphone jack, Lightning connector, and speaker. On the left side we have the volume buttons and the vibrate button. On the top we have the sleep/power button as always. On the back there is that new iPhone 5s HD camera with the new dual LED flash. The 720p FaceTime camera is of course on the front. iOS 7 is installed.

Now let’s take a look at the other accessories in the box. We have the Apple Earpods with the microphone and volume controls. It also comes with the Lightning to USB connector. I hate cords don’t you? I wish everything would go wireless already. Last but not least we have the power adapter to charge it. So that is a quick unboxing and first look at the new Apple iPhone 5s, the space gray version. Make sure you subscribe to this channel so you are notified when I upload more videos over the new iPhone that are coming very soon.

By Andy Slye

Top 7 New iOS 7 Features

June 18, 2013 / Andy / 1 Comment

iOS 7 is packed with many awesome new features. These are my top 7 best new features in iOS 7.

7. The New Design

The new modern design for iOS 7 is fresh, clean, flat, and minimalistic. Apple completely revamped the whole iOS environment and even redesigned all the default app icons. The new design is very transparent with a lot of translucency built into it. For example, you can see that the default weather app looks way better. It looks very similar to the new Yahoo weather app that just came out recently. Needless to say, I love this new design.

6. The New Siri

Siri got a redesigned interface, and it can do more tasks like change settings in your phone, turn on Bluetooth, check your voicemail, and all kinds of other cool stuff. It recognizes a more natural speech pattern, and you can actually change the voice. All you ladies out there who wanted a sexy Siri guy voice are now in luck. I still hope they give us the ability to turn off Siri’s annoying sound effect though. Maybe these new features in Siri will make me use it more because I never use Siri. Ever.

5. iTunes Radio

Apple’s new radio streaming service is similar to Pandora and Spotify. iTunes Radio is built natively into the music app in iOS 7. I feel like iTunes Radio might be a good competitor to Pandora and Spotify because it’s already on iOS 7 which gives it an advantage over third-party apps. I’m eager to experiment with iTunes Radio and see how well it works. Pandora and Spotify may be in for a fight.

4. Photos & Airdrop

The Photos app has a few new features called Collections and Moments. Photos are now organized by your location data and the time that you took the pictures. So say if you take a trip and you take pictures with your iPhone when you’re on that trip, the Photos app will organize the pictures based on that trip’s location and time. You will have the ability to go into each Collection or Moments where you can see different times during that trip. AirDrop is a cool new feature that basically lets you share anything that’s shareable (like a photo or video) with any of your friends that are in close proximity to you. You can even share it with people who aren’t your friends as long as they have Airdrop turned on and you give them access. This creates a super easy way to share stuff without emailing or messaging whatever you’re sharing.

3. The New Notification Center

The Notification Center was given some cool new features in iOS 7. It’s split up into three categories now: Today, All, and Missed. Today is just a basic glance at your day: the date, weather, any scheduled events on your calendar, any reminders, traffic, etc. You can access the Notification Center from any screen, even the lock screen. All shows all your notifications, and Missed shows any missed notifications. These new features should definitely make the Notification Center more intuitive to use in iOS 7.

2. The New Multitasking

This definitely needed an update. The new Multitasking in iOS 7 should make multitasking very efficient and easy to use. It shows off a new design. Now you can see all the icons that are running in the background along with a preview of them. To end a background app, just swipe up on the app’s preview. This allows you to get a better handling of background tasks along with a better view of all the background tasks. Another cool feature of iOS 7 is all your apps get automatically updated so you don’t have to worry about updating your apps manually. They all get pushed.

1. Control Center

Yes, we have all been waiting for Control Center. SBSettings is an app that has provided a similar functionality to jailbroken users for years. It’s definitely one of the most popular because everybody loves those quick shortcuts to changing settings. That’s what the new Control Center for iOS 7 does. It gives you quick access to changing settings, turning Wi-Fi off, turning airplane mode on, changing brightness levels, iPod controls, calculator shortcut, etc. Control Center even has a built-in flashlight app so you don’t have to go out and download a third-party flashlight app. To access the Control Center, just swipe up from the bottom on whatever screen you’re on, even the lock screen. It gives you quick access to different things that you can change, enable, or activate. Control Center may not seem like much, but I promise it will give you a better iOS experience in the long run.

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Category: Apple (Page 7 of 9)

2014 MacBook Air Review: Best Laptop for Students

How To Clean Up iTunes Library – Fix All Songs Automatically!

Apple iPhone 5s Review: New Features & Should You Upgrade?

Apple iPhone 5s Review