Apples Week of Hardware Updates
Next week Apple is having an event to announce something. We are pretty sure it is the Apple TV service and Apple News subscription service. When Apple has an event we normally speculate on what new hardware they might announce. Well, Apple must not want to focus on hardware next week so they let us know this week.
iPad Air and iPad mini:
This will be a running theme through all of this. The device is the same except they swept out the old chip for a new faster chip. Now we have faster iPad Airs (we are back to the Air name now) and the iPad mini isn’t dead. Both iPads are now sporting an A12 Bionic. With last years iPad update, we got use of the Apple Pencil but it couldn’t register things like how hard you are pushing on it. Well, now you can use the original Apple Pencil with the new iPad Air and mini just like you could on the original iPad Pro. You can pick up the new iPad Air for $499 starting next week or $399 for the iPad mini.
iMac:
The iMac line is now faster as well. The 21.5 inch iMac now has a faster 8th generation quad-core processor from Intel and sports Radeon Pro Vega graphics. The 27 inch iMac now has a 9th generation 6 core processor or you can get it with an 8 core processor. The 27 inch iMac has the same graphics but runs 50% faster. Just like the iPads, you can pick up the new iMacs next week. The 21.5 inch iMac will start at $1299 and the iMac 27 inch will start at $1799.
AirPods:
AirPods just what we have been waiting for, or am I the only waiting for this? Either way, we finally have new AirPods. The new ones are like everything else pretty much the same as the old ones but in this case, the new AirPods add a new feature. You can now use "Hey Siri" with the new AirPods. With the current ones, you can only activate Siri by tapping one of the pods. This is nice if like me you connect your AirPods to say your iPad and then leave that room and want to just say "Hey Siri" instead of tapping your ear. Along with new AirPods Apple is offering a new wireless charging case for the AirPods. You can buy the case with the New AirPods for a bit more or buy the case separately to use with your original AirPods. You can Get the new AirPods for $159 or $199 with the wireless charging case. You can pick up the wireless charging case for $79 if you want it later on or use with your original AirPods. You can pick up your new AirPods next week.
Mondays the Day:
Next week is going to be a busy week for the Apple Store with all this new hardware. I think the only thing left to be updated is the iPod Touch and Apple TV. With Apple's announcement being center around a streaming service, if they have an updated Apple TV they might wait until Monday to announce it. None of these products got major overhauls that some wanted but they are all faster now may have a new service or two on Monday.
What to Expect when you are Expecting an Apple Education Event
Tomorrow is the day, Apples Education event. Now is the time to make predictions as to what will be announced at this event tomorrow. I feel like it isn’t going to be much, and they will stay on the topic of education. For the past few years now Apple has lived streamed just about every event they have done, but tomorrows event will not be lived streamed. They are recording it and will have video of it shortly after.
Cheaper MacBook Air:
Being a event for education price will be a major feature of anything Apple announces at this event. The Mac Air might be the mobile computer that they position as the cheap Mac. Now I don’t think they will do with a new Mac Air but I think they will come out with a new up dated Mac Air that will be a bit thinner and will only have USB-C. Then Apple will keep the current Mac Air and maybe just up its RAM and a few other updated configurations, then just slash the price to say $499 for a base model Mac Air. They may not go that low but my point is it will be much cheaper then any of the other Mac Laptops currently available.
Mac mini:
I feel the Mac mini will follow the same events. They will most likely announce a new Mac mini with the latest CPU’s and maybe SSDs, better discreet graphics. Then keep the current model with a few new configuration options and discount it to hell making it the cheapest Mac you can buy.
iPad:
Before I go any further I will say you will not see a new iPad mini, this line is all but dead. What will see is a new iPad capable of using AR apps like the iPhone X. This iPad will also support Face ID and maybe due away with the home button on the iPad. This new iPad might also support use of the Apple Pencil. Once they have announced this they will probably keep the current iPad and discount it as well making it the cheapest iPad.
OS updates Release:
Once everything is said and done apple will most likely release the iOS 11.3 and Mac OS 10.13.4. This will bring new Animoji to the iPhone X and things like iMessage cloud sync and lots of be hind the seances fixes.
The Rest of the Event:
Majority of this event will be Apple making a case as to why schools should use Apple products and not Chromebook's and Microsoft products. They might even show off a future version of their OS’s that have a better way to manage devices for schools. I wouldn’t expect to hear anything about the Mac Pro, or the iPhone at this event. This event is first and foremost a education event.
I truthfully would like to be wrong about most of this and we get or hear about something really cool, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up.
The new iPhones
Today was the day that I and I'm sure a lot of others have been waiting for. Today was the Apple event where they announced the next iPhone. They also announced a few other things and we will do what they did, and get threw those things first.
We have to start off with the venue. This years event and I'm sure any other event they do from now on, took place at the Steve Jobs memorial theater. This is a venue located on the new Apple campus. From all the videos and photos I have seen it looks vary beautiful. They then opened the event with some words from Steve Jobs and talked about him. It was very nice and sincere.
Now lets start the on slaughter. Apple Watch Series 3 was announced with with faster chips better wireless and new bands. But what is a surprise is the inclusion of cellular. With the series 3 you will be able to use the watch with out your phone. The watch will use your same phone number so you can get calls and texts and iMessages when your phone isn't around. Even with the extra cellular things inside it the watch is about the same size as the series 2. The watch will even get up to 18 hours of battery life. The Apple Watch Series 3 will go on pre order on September 15th and will start at $329 with out cellular and $399 with cellular. They will be available in stores starting September 22nd.
Now its time for the little engine that could, the Apple TV. One of the things I keep hearing people complain about the current Apple TV was no 4K. Today Apple addressed this and added HDR. The Apple TV 4K has a slightly faster chip to handle 4K and HDR and will have TV OS updated to display the UI in 4K. As far as what you can watch on the Apple TV 4K, will be iTunes movies will be updated to 4K and cost the same as HD movies. Netflix and Hulu will also be bring 4K streaming to the Apple TV with 4K. If you have any Movies you have bought on iTunes that get a 4K version your perches will be upgraded to 4K free of charge. Apple TV 4K will start at $174 for 32 GBand $199 for 64 GB, you will be able to pre order on September 15th and pick one up on September 22nd.
Ok here it is what you have been waiting for the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus!
Right just what everyone said it would look like. Yeah I'm pretty sure this was a troll on Apples part. This is also kind of what I predicted in my last post, which you can read here. The iPhone 8 and 8 Plus is the more traditional styled iPhone with a home button and the normal bezel.
It has a slight new look over the iPhone 7 with glass on front and back. They say its their most durable glass though I don't know about that glass on the back. As always we get faster chips better cameras and support for for faster wireless standers. The iPhone 8 will also have wireless charging with Qi wireless charging standard. So if you have a Qi wireless charger you can just plop your phone down on a pad and charge your phone. The iPhone 8 will start at $699 for 64 GBs and the iPhone 8 Plus will start at $799 for 64 GBs. Just like everything else you can preorder September 15th and will be available September 22nd.
Now lets talk about what we really wanted to see, the iPhone X. This is the phone we have been hearing about for months with the edge to edge display. The whole phone is screen with just the tiny little bezel. This phone has no home button and has a super retina display. The screen is also an OLED display. It has image sensors out the wazoo. HDR support and the list just goes on and on.
The real difference seems to be the front image sensors for facial recognition, which will be used for Face ID. This will work a lot like touch ID but with your face. It will recognize your face no mater what day or night, hat or scarf. This also will bring better facial tracking for things like Snapchat and Aniemjie which is a iMessage app that will let you animate your emojis. This also brings portraitmode to the selfie camera.
The iPhone X will not have a home button, instead you will swipe up to go home and swipe up and pause to do multi touch. It will also support all the wireless standers that the iPhone 8 dose including wireless charging. They also showed a charging pad that they will be coming out at some point called the Air Power. This is a pad that will charge your iPhone, Apple Watch, and Ear Pods all at the same time. The iPhone shows a little animation showing the devices being charged.
iPhone X will come in space gray and silver. It will also start at $999 for 64 GBs and will also have a 256 GB model as well. Unlike the other products announced today the iPhone X will go on preorder October 22nd and will be available November 3rd.
That is everything announced today by apple and I will also add, after the announcements I checked for updates on my iPhone running the iOS 11 public beta and I got a iOS 11 update not beta number this time. This is the GM build. So if you are running iOS 11 developer beta or the public beta you can update to iOS 11 today, for everyone else they will have to wait till September 19th. Get your credit cards ready and your F5 keys ready for Friday when most of these things go up for preorder.
Hello Again Apple October Event
Another day another company unveiling new things. Today that company was Apple. We got a few new announcements. In short we are getting a new Apple TV app and MacBook Pros. So lets get into more details of this announcements.
Apple TV:
Apple showed off a new app for the Apple TV called TV. The TV app is a hub for everything you are watching on Apple TV or your other devices. App makes it easy to find something to watch or continue to watch. There is a section called up next that shows movies and TV shows that you have been watching and by clicking on an item will launch the right app and begin playing right where you let off.
TV will also have a section for your iTunes movie and tv show library along with a store. The store though seems like more of a recommendation thing. It shows you shows and movies you might want to watch and when you find something it will open the app or install the app if you don't already have it. They also showed off Siri being able to find what live content you want. They showed it off with some football games that Siri was able to find the right app it was on by just telling it what team the presenter wanted to see.
This seems like a good update for people that have the new Apple TV and other iOS devices.
Macbook Pro:
Now on to the whole reason for todays event, new MacBook Pros. Apple showed off new MacBook Pros, a new 13’ and 15’. Booth models have what Apple is calling the touch bar, it goes right where the function keys use to go. The Touch Bar changes depending on what app you are using, if you are using iTunes you will see controls to Play puse and scan what you are listing to. The bar can also be customized as well. The touch bar also introduces touch ID to the mac.
Now that isn't the only thing new. The new MacBook Pros are more powerful than last years and thinner. They went on for a bit about this, comparing it the the Mac Air which almost seemed like they where trying to say the Mac Air is dead. I have not confirmed this yet. The 13’ even comes in 2 models one that has the Touch Bar and one that has the old function keys.
The 13” with function keys ships today. While the 13” with touch bar ships in 2-3 weeks and the 15” model ships in 2-3 weeks as well.
The rumor of the touch bar is something I was hoping it was true, and today I found out it is. Im going to have to go to an Apple store and take a look at it when they have them on display.
Happy Surprise Apple Update Day
Happy surprise Apple update day. Apple decided to drop iOS 10.1 and Mac OS 10.12.1 today. For the most part this update is a minor update. It fixed a few bugs and security fixes. But for iPhone 7 users this added the Portrait filter that really takes advantage of the new camera on the iPhone 7. Ive been using the public beta since I got my iPhone 7 just for that filter. Here are some shots I took with it.
Apple also released an update for watch OS and TV OS as well so if you have an apple tv or an apple watch you might want to update those as well.
Apple September 2016 Keynote
Apple had there announcement today and unveiled the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. They also announced a few other things to talk about other than the iPhone. We had a new Apple Watch and an update to iWork.
iWork Update
The first thing of significance was an update to iWork. This update will finally allow you to do live collaboration with other people across all platforms. They haven't said when this would be available but I would guess sometime around sierras launch.
Apple Watch series 1 and 2
The Apple Watch got a update today. The new Apple Watch is called the series 2. It looks pretty much like the old apple watch which is now being called the series 1. The upgrade is more on the inside with a better CPU (dual core) and better graphics. The other difference is this apple watch is water proof up to 50 meters, so this will be usable for swimmers. All the old accessories will work with this model. The series 2 will have a better screen and be brighter so it can be better seen in the sun.
Apple also decided to update the first apple watch with the series 2 new dual core processor. You can pre order booth series 1 and 2 on September 16th the series one will cost you around $269 and the series 2 will cost around $369. They also showed off a nike branded apple watch which they say will be good for runners. The Nike + watch will cost the same as the series 2.
iPhone 7 and 7 Plus
As you might imagine the whole reason for todays keynote was to show off the iPhone 7. The new iPhone will come in black and jet black. This just means one has a glossy finish and the other has a mat finish. It will come in same colors the iPhone 6s and 6SPlus come in as well. I guess ill rip the bandaid off about the headphone jack and say its gone. I’ll let that sink in for a second. Ok you have had enough time the headphone jack is gone but with booth the 7 and 7 Plus you will get a pair of lightning ear pods and a dongle that goes from lightening to a headphone jack so you can still use your old head phones with it. There reason was basically its time to get rid of it so we can add other things to the phone. They also introduced wireless ear pods that look pretty good and you can still use Siri with now a tap of the ear.
Now that we have that out of the way with they have made changes to the home button. It is now a solid state object and will use 3D touch. This makes me think they might be inching there way to a besalist design maybe next year.
The one thing they harped on the most was the new camera on the iPhone 7 Plus which uses 2 12 MP cameras with 2 different lenses. It seems to work much better in low light than any iPhone before it. The flash has improved, it can do up to 2X physical zoom and up to 10X software zoom. You can shoot in RAW finally and can do deep depth photos with a new camera style called called portrait. Though I will say this feture will not ship with the phone it will come in a iOS 10 update later on maybe iOS 10.1?
The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus will have the same faster better stronger things going for it. a new A10 fusion chip, which will be 64 bit and a quod core processor. It will have better batterie life for most of us. Apple has also changed the storage for its phones now starting at 32 GB and going up to 256 GB So lets talk about pricing. The iPhone 7 will cost you $649 and the 7 Plus will start at $769.
Wrap up
They did talk about iOS 10 which will be available one September 13th for all supported devices. Apple pay will be coming to japan in October and speaking of japan Mario will be coming to the app store in a new Mario game just for mobile. A lot was talked about today but I still am wondering about iPads and Mac. This might mean they could have an October announcement coming up. For now we will have to wait and see and enjoy our new iPhones with no head phone jack.
Dos and Don'ts of iOS 10 Public Beta
Today is the day some of us have been waiting for, the iOS 10 public beta is here. As I type this I'm sacrificing my iPad Air 2 to the beta gods. This got me thinking, other people are doing this too and some of them might be first timers. Which is fine its a public beta anyone can sign up and get the bits. So I thought it might be helpful to make a quick list of dos and don'ts when using the public beta, and a lot of these things can be used for other betas as well.
Back-Up
Before you do anything at all, even before you sign up for the public beta program do your self a favor and do a local backup to your computer. Even if you do iCloud back up do a local backup. If you need to roll back to a stable build of iOS it will make things go quicker if you have a local backup.
Play with your Apps
After you have installed the public beta bits, open some of your most used apps and mess around with them to see if they still work. Just remember this is a beta and none of the apps from the app store are optimize to run on iOS 10 so just be thankful they even open up. Also make sure your apps are all up to date. Sometimes its not an OS thing that is making them crash it could just be a bug that the developer already fixed. But if they do not and you really need the apps to work just roll back to iOS 9, that is why the first tip was to backup.
Don't bug the Devs
Maybe some of your apps don't work and it might be, because of some changes under the hood in iOS 10. Please for the love of god don't go to the app store and write bad reviews about the app and give them a 1 star. Right now the 3rd party developers can not fix any iOS 10 related problems. If you have a problem with a app that could be a iOS 10 issue file a bug report in the feedback app.
Feedback App
The feedback app will help not just you but also apple and 3rd party devs too. This is a public beta test so the whole point is to get feedback from users to find bugs and to suggest things you might want to see in iOS 10 or future updates to iOS 10. This is also where you can tell develops about crashy apps so they can make fixes and can have them ready when they can put iOS 10 optimized apps on the app store.
I hope these tips help when you are trying out iOS 10. Just keep in mind that this is beta software and it will be buggy so don't get too mad when things break.
Speculations for March 2016 Apple Event
The invites have gone out for next weeks Apple event. Up until today this event was just a rumor but the invites went out for a March 21st event. But what will they be announcing? This is what I want to speculate about. iPhone SE:
First off we have to talk about iPhone. Rumor is that Apple might announce a smaller iPhone one about the size of the iPhone 5 but have the guts of the iPhone 6S. Some of us think even the iPhone 6S is too big of a screen. I still think the 4S screen was the better size but a iPhone 5 screen is pretty good too. I have big hands but I need 2 to use my iPhone a lot. While with my 5c I could pretty much use my iPhone with one hand. Well maybe my next iPhone I will be able to do that again.
iPad Mini Pro:
Back in October the iPad Pro was announced and some people liked it and some didn't. Mostly cause of the size. But most people agree that the best part of it is the Apple Pencil. Well what if you could have the power of a iPad Pro and the ability to use the Apple Pencil in a iPad mini? Well if that's what you wanted you might have won! The iPad mini pro might be a thing being announce in a few weeks.
Apple Watch 2 (1.5):
Almost a year ago the Apple Watch came out and it seems to be a success. Well we might just see the Apple Watch 2. I doubt it will be much different from the original, it will probably be faster and have longer battery life. They might have some surprises in software with watch OS 2 which is in beta right now and will be out at some point.
Watch OS 2, iOS 9.3, OSX 10.11.4, and TV OS 9.2:
This one I would put money on. I'm almost sure they will release them shortly after the event is over or later on in the week. All of these have in beta or public beta for while now and as far as the public builds for iOS they are in 6th build of it. So even if you can't afford anything that might be announced in the event you will still have something to play with that day. That's about all I can come up with. We will see in a few weeks on March 21st what they will really announce. You will be able to watch a stream of The event by Apple and many blogs will be live blogging it as well.
OSX Now With Photos
For everyone running OSX Yosemite and waiting for the Photos app well its finally here. Back at WWDC last year when Apple was showing off OS 10.10 they showed the new Photos app which would come in a later update that would replace iPhoto.
Photos app is made to look and work just like the photos app on iOS. This will also allow you to use iCloud Photo Library on your Mac. This will upload all your photos to iCloud and allow you to view any photo in your library on any device. Up until now the only way to could do this on a desktop was by going to icloud.com.
Photos also have the same controls for editing your photos which are a lot better than what was in iPhoto. The one tool I noticed that is in the desktop version that isn't in the mobile version is the heal tool. For those who don't know the heal tool lets you get rid of any pimples or scares that you might have when you take selfies.
When Photos was announced it left me and I think a lot of other people with a dilemma. I had recently bought Aperture which is more powerful than iPhoto. But Photos is a replacement for booth iPhoto and Aperture and they as of today are no longer getting any future updates. choices were switch to Adobe Light Room or wait for Photos to come out and switch to it. Well Im impatient and so I went to Light Room. Now that Photos is out I regret my decision. Light Room is a grate if you are a pro photographer. But for me I'm not a pro I'm not shooting in RAW with a DSLR I'm shooting with my iPhone. I went to Aperture because there was some editing tools I wanted that iPhoto could not do. Now Photos can do a lot of what I wanted that iPhoto couldn’t. So after paying for a year of Light Room and PhotoShop I will probably be using Photos as my management system.
Well at least PhotoShop was part of that deal and I do use PhotoShop enough that its worth it. But back to Photos you can get it today by going to the Mac App Store and checking for updates you should get an update for OS X 10.10.3 which has Photos and a lot of other changes. Its just Photos is kind of the major thing.
Here are the Patch notes for this update:
WWDC Part 1
Apple announced a lot of new things at WWDC some we already knew were going to be announced others we didn’t know. I will keep this post consumer oriented. If you want to know about the new API changes or even the new coding language Apple announced today swift you can go to apples development site or you can go to the iBook store where they have released a book about Swift.
OS X Yosemite:
After the normal numbers and look how grate we are sepal, the first thing they talked about was OS 10.10 Yosemite. The first thing you will notice is the new flatter UI just like iOS 7. The other thing you might notice is the redesigned icons as well. But there is plenty of things you don't see.
Have you ever been lazy like me and had your iPhone charging across the room or even in another room and then you hear it ring, and you just ignore it cause you don't feel like getting up up from your desk to go answer the call. Well I don't know about you but I have. With Yosemite you will never have that problem cause OS X will connect to your phone and show a little notification on your Mac and let you pick up the call on your Mac. They didn't show it off or mention it but it seems like you will be able to pick up the call on an iPad as well.
This hand off will work with other apps as well. If you start working on a Pages document on your iPad when you go to your Mac you will see the Pages icon to the far left of the task bar. When you click it, it will open pages right were you left off on your iPad. This also works the other way too. So you make some more changes on your Mac then maybe you leave and you need to make some more changes on your iPad you will see the pages icon on your lock screen of your iPad and all you have to do is swipe up and the document will open right in pages were you left off on your Mac. A lot of this is to make OS X and iOS aware of each other and what you are doing on these devices and make it easier to get things done.
If you are some one who has a hotspot plain from your wireless carrier you can simply connect to your iPhones hotspot with out touching your phone on your Mac or iPad. Just look for networks and your phones hotspot will just show up.
This one is kind of a enhancement to an old feature. AirDrop was introduced a few versions ago but it only worked with other Macs and they added Airdrop to iOS in iOS 7 but to only worked with iOS devices. Now Airdrop you can use Airdrop on the Mac you can Airdrop files to your iPhone or iPad and vice versa.
iCloud drive will be a new part of the Apple ecosystem. iCloud drive will be a Dropbox type system were you can store files on iCloud that will sync to all your Macs and your iOS devices. It will also let you view documents that you have created on thrived party iOS apps. This will use your iCloud storage but the good news is apple has come out with new pricing plans with 20 GB of iCloud storage starting at .99 per month.
There was a few smaller things I will go over quickly. If you like to use iMessages on your mac and iPad but wish you could reply to the text messages from your non iPhone friends well your wish has been granted. Your iPhone will pus normal text messages to your iPad and your Mac in the Messages app. Apple has flatten the all the built in apps such as Mail, Calendar, and contacts. Notification center on the Mac will also get a change with a Today tab that will support widgets. The Mail app will gets a markup tool so you can add comments and drawings to photos or PDF’s that you are sending.
So much will be changing with OS X Yosemite and it will be coming this fall. But if you are feeling brave or you have an extra iMac or MacBook and you want it sooner sometime this summer Apple will release an open beta of OS X Yosemite. According to Mac rumors it will be limited to the first million people who register. You can register at Apples beta page. This post is longer than I planed on and so I will do a part 2 tomorrow about iOS 8.
Rumor Round Up
Tomorrow is WWDC and everything will change, well maybe not right then and there but we will find out more about the changes that will be coming. We defiantly know Apple will be talking about iOS 8 and OS 10.10. We might even see some other things as well.
iOS 8:
I guess I have to start this off with something we at least know they will be talking about tomorrow iOS 8. I would guess with this update they will have minor changes and tweaks to the mobile OS with a few major features to talk about. One of those features that have been rumored is a split screen feature so you can have two apps up at once. As seen here at macRumors.
One of the other well known rumors would be Health Book. This rumor seems to be like a Passbook type app that would be a one stop shop for all your health needs. They would have some type of hook for people who make things like fitbit to hook in to Health Book and tell you about all the information that it collects about you. It might even be able to work with blood sugar meters and you would be able to keep track of your blood sugar readings if you are diabetic. The idea would be to have any medical device could have a way to connect to your phone and give you accesses to your own medical information. MacRumors has info about this rumor as well.
The last thing I want to talk about as far as iOS 8 rumors is this live tile feature. If you have used Windows 8 or Windows Phone you might know of live tiles. The idea is to be able to see information about an app with out having to open the app. How this might work on iOS is you maybe tap and hold on the Mail app and once it starts shacking and you might get another option to make the icon bigger maybe up to 4 icon sizes bigger. Once you do that it would not only show the little red dot to say how many e-mails you have but it would also cycle through previews of the new e-mails. Once again MacRumors has info about this.
OS 10.10:
OS X we know will be talked about tomorrow at WWDC this will be OS 10.10 right now we think might be called OSX Yosemite. The major change we think will be coming in this version of the OS is a flater design. Just like the change from iOS 6 to iOS 7 we might be seeing design changes coming to OSX that will make it look similare to iOS 7 with its flatter design. I feel this will be a nice change. iMore has more about the rumor.
Hardware:
Normally WWDC is not a place were Apple announces new hardware. But there are rumors that they might talk about either a new iMac, iPhone 6 or iWatch. I really doubt that they will talk about any of these things. Hardware is normally discussed in the fall.
All of theses are rumors and you never know none of this could be announced tomorrow. They key note will be tomorrow at 10 AM PDT and you can watch it at Apples WWDC site.
iCloud Redesign Coming Soon
It looks like Apple pushed out a new iOS 7 design of icloud.com. All the web apps but the iWorks web apps have been redesign to have a flatter look to them. I didn't see any new functionality to any of the apps. The only thing new I saw was in the reminders app their is a schedule view for reminders. But out side of that nothing new but there looks. I'm still hoping one day they will add Photo Stream to icloud.com. You can check out the new look today if you want at beta.icloud.com just know things might be buggy. Here are some screen shots I took of some of the apps.
iPad Problems
UPDATE 7/31/13: For some reason I can see the updates now. I don't know what changed but its working and I was able to update all the apps that needed updating.
For the last week I have not been able to update my apps on my iPad 2 cause the App Store update page just shows a blank page. I can download apps and buy apps and even browse the app store but I cant update apps. It will even show the badge on the icon showing how many apps need to be updated but I cant see them. I just wanted to go threw what I have done to try and fix this issue.
To start off I have had this issue before. I open up the app store to update apps and get this: 
Normally if I force quit the app store and restart the iPad things go back to normal. When I did this when it showed up a week ago this fix did not work. The second thing that I tried the other was to backup my iPad and then do restore threw the iPad then I restored all my apps and settings threw iTunes. I went to the App Store after everything was done and it still wasn't working.
Today I did basically the same thing but I did the restore threw iTunes so that it would be forced to download a fresh install of iOS 6.1.3. Once again after it was done restoring my backup I went to the App Store still nothing. Then I thought when if I update the apps threw iTunes so I updated all the apps that showed up in iTunes then synced my iPad. Well now it shows I have no updates on the icon badge. But if I go to the update tab it will not tell me there are no new updates like it normally should do if their are no updates.
At this point I have done everything I can think of to get to start working again I can think of except restoring it and setting it up as a new iPad. I don't want to do that since I have 100 apps on my iPad and I don't want to go back in to each one and resign in to every app and my e-mail all that stuff. I will if I have to I might call Apple before I do that they might be able to help or at the vary least put me in the right direction.
Bigger iPad
I was watching Tech News Today on the TWiT network which is how most of the ideas for blog post come form. They talked about a rumor of bigger iPhone and iPad screens. They seemed to not like the idea of a bigger iPad but to me it made me exited.
Most companies seem to like this idea of big phones and small tablets. I have never agreed with this to me my iPhone 4S has just the right size of screen for everything I like to do with it which includes watching videos. I've never cared for the iPhone 5 bigger screen and I wish they had made a iPhone 5 that had the old screen size. I don't look at my iPhone and wish it was bigger cause I have a iPad 2 which runs iOS and is a bigger screen. I do look at my iPad and wish it was a bigger screen. I run into this thought normally when I'm doing some photo editing on my iPad or light video editing with the iOS iMovie.
I think the obvious thing would be for watching videos a bigger screen would be way better. When I'm in school I use my iPad a lot to show friends YouTube videos. I've always seen my iPad like a cheap MacBook Air that runs iOS instead of full OSX. For me I it's all I need and if I need a real computer I remote my Mac threw my iPad. The only real times I need to be in front of my Mac is when I want to play a game like World of Warcraft or something like that or when I have to do major video editing for a project for school. That is only cause no one has made a grate video editing app for iOS and I only have 16 GB of storage of which I have only 1.1 GB free.
So what would I like to see the next generation of iPads to be like? Well I would like a bigger screen, not too big but between 11 and 12in would be perfect. I also would like them to up the storage on the devices. So instead of the cheapest iPad or iPhone coming with 16GB they start at 32GB and maybe go to 320GB. This is all wishful thinking I'm sure we will not see anything like this when they do come out with the new iOS devices. We will more likely see thinner, lighter, faster iPhones and iPads but next year maybe we will see some of these hopes happen.
A happy surprise in mobile iTunes
I went to go update my a app on my iPod just a few mins ago and found the purchases button and saw all my apps that I have gotten and so I went to iTunes and all the music I have boughten were there as well. I didn't know they had added that today I thought it was a iOS 5 thing but I'm glade they added it today. I hope to see the whole WWDC keynote latter.