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One Week with the iPhone 4

Thursday, July 1st, 2010 | Author: OWC Jamie

I was the first OWC employee to receive their iPhone 4. I was lucky enough to have it arrive the day before the official release (Yay!), at about 9:15 in the morning, thanks to our exceptional FedEx service. And let me tell you, it was a steady stream of people coming to look, see, touch and feel it that day since it was the only one in the office. Everyone had the same reaction—utter disbelief at just how thin and solid it is. You cannot honestly appreciate the beauty it is until you have held it in your hands. The iPhone 4 is easily the finest piece of electronics I’ve ever owned.

How did I get my iPhone 4? I was able to order my iPhone 4 straight from the Apple website at about 9:30 CST the day orders started being accepted. I would have to guess I loaded the order page probably 50 to 60 times before it went through. Three of us were successful in ordering that first day, and all three of us did get our phones the Wednesday before release; I was the only one smart enough to have the phone delivered to the office, though :>) The other 2 employees didn’t get them until they went home that night.

My initial impressions, coming from a iPhone 3G, was that it’s as fast as an iPad, which I use every day, so I was not as blown away by the raw speed of the iPhone 4 as some have been. I’ve done side by side tests and while the iPad is faster, the iPhone 4 is certainly no slouch, it’s right on the heels of the iPad. I really wish that we had iOS 4 for the iPad to make that test an honest “Apples to Apples” shootout, because I have a feeling the iPhone 4 is going to end up winning—more RAM, and actually a smaller screen are definitely in it’s favor. I can honestly say that it’s such a marked improvement over my old iPhone 3G, that I could not go back to using it on a daily basis, that’s for sure. :>)

Article Continues…

An interesting change from Apple today

Monday, March 15th, 2010 | Author: OWC Jamie

As long as I’ve know, other than a couple of very odd “non standards”, Apple’s USB ports have provided 5V 500mA of power, regardless of it being USB 1.0 or USB 2.0. Now today, a tech document was updated by Apple;

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4049

“On some newer Intel-based Macs, such as the MacBook (13-inch, Late 2007), when a device requiring more than 5V and 500mA is connected, the port with that device connected to it becomes a high-powered port capable of offering up to 1200 mA at 12 V. That port will continue to operate as a high-powered port until the device is removed.”

Very very interesting. This obviously must be for the iPad, which is going to take a 10W power source;

So… Perhaps we’ll be seeing some kind of enabler being included with Mac OS X 10.6.3 or in the iPad software CD that’s bound to be included with them. Wonder if that means people with older systems will just recharge slower?

The old article is cached here (Probably not for long, though)

It clearly says :

“The USB ports on Macintosh computers provide 5 V and 500 mA for each port, regardless of whether the port is USB 1.1 or USB 2.0. This is in compliance with USB specifications.”

The only other Apple system to include a higher power USB port that I can think of is the MacBook Air, for it’s external superdrive, but there are no specs at all on what power it’s drawing, or that the USB port is putting out anything more than 5V. This comment about 12V is very, very interesting.