My Top 5 Reasons I Won't Get A New iPhone

TOP 5 - WHY I WON'T BE BUYING A NEW IPHONE ANYTIME SOON

Here's the first of a series of "Top 5" lists! Today's top 5? Why you won't see me in line anytime soon buying an iPhone 5, 5S, 5C, 6, M, Mega, Mini, or anything else they come out with. Here we go!

1) It's Too Small - my eyes are too old. I can't read text on the screen. That just sucks. Make it bigger Apple, and maybe I'll think about it. Sadly, even the rumored iPhone 6 is said to only have a 4.7" diagonal display. That's so 2010.

2) No Text Reflow - Apple joins the idiots at Samsung on this one. Panning side-to-side to read sentences after zooming in on text is just plain stupid. Unless I fall and hit my head, and become stupid, I'm not signing up for this kind of reading abuse.

3) They Break - All you people who think iPhones are like "jeweler's quality", you can keep them. Drop it from 2' and it's toast. I feel sorry for all the people with a brand new iPhone 5S that they dropped the first month and destroyed the phone. I'd rather buy a rubber ball to bounce on the concrete versus a $750 glass and metal computer.

4) They Malfunction - iPhones do stupid things for no reason. I'm sitting here right now with a friend's iPhone 5S that vibrates, and makes annoying sounds. But the screen won't come on. Not even with a hard reset. It's a known issue. But like always, Apple won't admit this for at least 12 more months and after 1,507,327 more complaints.

5) Apple Thinks We Are Stupid - I don't want my smartphone force-fed into my mouth on a baby spoon like Gerber products. I want to be treated like I am halfway intelligent by my smartphone manufacturer. The arrogance at Apple is and has always been something that I completely don't care for.

That said, I must go to work. I'm reading some tech blog posts on my brand-new Apple iPad Mini with Retina display. And before you call me an anti-Apple troll, I never said I didn't like the iPad!

Carlton Flowers
Top 5 Techno Babbler

iPad Air Drops November 1st From AT&T

IPAD AIR - THINNER, LIGHTER, FASTER

I've had several people ask me about the new iPad Air coming out Friday, November 1st via AT&T. Let's take a look at some of the details on this slick new tablet hot off the Apple press!

As the name denotes, iPad air is going to be thinner and lighter, and of course the fastest processing power to date. It weighs in at a super light 1 pound. That's 20% lighter than its predecessor, the iPad 4th generation tablet.

Plus it is 28% thinner. How this thing could get any more slim is beyond me, but the Apple devs have apparently been hard at work using miniaturizing ray guns to thin this device out more than all of the previous models.

It has an even narrower bezel than iPad 4th generation, which basically means that the iPad Air stretches the viewable display farther to the edges of the device. It gives a more futuristic experience than ever.

Its packing a brilliantly sharp 9.7" Retina display, which means you'll get some seriously sharp text for ease of reading. This means you'll hardly notice the difference between reading on this display from reading in a print magazine.

Apps will run super fast with the improved A7 cpu chip which is a 64-bit processor. That's kind of like upgrading a 4-lane highway to 8 lanes, which means it can move more data to push your favorite apps even faster. That will seriously decrease load times and graphics processing.

Your wireless capability will be faster for both WiFi and 4G LTE operation. With more an more LTE coverage around the nation, the iPad Air with a data plan will be a blast and give you blazing speeds on the go. Couple that with all the new iOS7 features, and you're in for a great tablet experience.

AT&T will be offering a variety of data plans for the iPad Air, including device data sharing. If you already have a wireless account, you can start off with a $10 addition to power your wireless browsing.

You also have the new pay-per-use plans that start at 250mb for one day for five bucks, and you can take that all the way to a one-time 30 day deal for $50 that gives you 5Gb of data. You can get the skinny on all the available plans at www.att.com/ipad.

For those of you who like to stay on the cutting edge, I think you'd be happy to jump on one of these. I'm going to have to go check this out myself and get a quick test drive. Up until now, I haven't been a big fan of tablets because they are too heavy in my hands. But this one might hit the mark.

Stay with me and I'll be back with a video as soon as I catch one of these puppies out in the wild!

Carlton Flowers
Gadget Monster

Caught In The Wild - Hands On With The iPad Mini

MY FIRST EXPERIENCE WITH THE IPAD MINI - INITIAL THOUGHTS

I had the chance to get my hands on the latest tablet offered by Apple, the iPad Mini. My good friend and Apple enthusiast Tim Largent purchased his new iPad Mini in December, and it was one of two left in the store inventory.

Just picking up the device was a treat. I've kind of had my eyes on the iPad Mini since the rumors were first swirling about the release. I will admit, it is even more impressive up close and personal.

The device is super thin, much more than I had envisioned. Along with Apple's magnetic case, it's pretty spiffy. I would much rather clutch the iPad Mini than the full-sized model, which I find to be way too big for comfort.

iOS looks plain gorgeous on the smaller cousin to the iPad. You don't get the Retina display with the Mini, but it's not that big of a deal. Yes, I could tell the difference in video quality, but it's not really necessary to have a Retina dsiplay on a budget device.

If I were to buy an iPad, this would be the one for sure. But I still can't decide if I would part ways with $329 of my hard-earned bucks for a device that does not reflow text when you zoom in. In keeping with Apple tradition, text reflow (or word rapping) does not work on this device.

I tried downloading the Opera browser to see if it allowed text resizing. I can't say for sure, but I don't think it will resize text and reformat the paragraphs. But it does not dynamically reflow text when zooming in, that's for certain.

As much as I read on my smartphone, and would read on a tablet device, I can't get beyond the lack of this one simple feature. The good thing is that the device is bigger than a smartphone, so you can at least enjoy larger text within the screen.

But the sad fact is, the websites that I visit to read on are not optimized to be read on a tablet. As soon as I zoom in to a comfortable text size, I find myself panning back and forth because the sentences go flying off the right side of the screen.

For me, that is maddening. It makes reading a serious pain in the rear end. If Apple could solve this, or if I knew that there was a browser capable of enabling text reflow, I would think about saving up the money to get one of these.

I would like to have an Apple tablet to run certain iOS apps for my business. This would be the perfect device to do it on. But we'll just have to put that on hold and see what "pans" out for text reflow.

My bottom line recommendation is that the iPad Mini is a great device if you don't mind panning when zooming in to read. It's also fine if you don't mind that Apple portable devices do not display Flash enabled sites.

If you're a serious Apple fan, and you want a smaller tablet, get it. You'll save $300 off the price of a full sized new iPad, and still have the functionality that you want.

Carlton Flowers
Half Apple Fanboy