Error 53 Revenge of the Apple Store

Has Apple turned to the dark side with the latest upgrade bricking iPhone 6s with the mysterious error 53 if they have been serviced by non-Apple personnel?  Here I contrast Error 53 with Order 66.

Apple claim that it is a security risk if non-Apple personnel have tampered with the fingerprint sensor allowing them to gain unauthorised access.  However bricking the entire phone if it detects a non Apple home button is an extreme measure when they could just have prevented fingerprint access.

The other issue is that is not merely iPhones that have been serviced by non-Apple personnel but sometimes just if you home button has broken in a certain way and while you could continue this upgrade decides it needs to render your entire expensive iPhone useless instead.

The fix for Error 53 appears to be a new phone.

Siri Says

Was trying Siri on the iPad last night and thinking about how much trust we play in omniscient digital assistants.  Soon children (and parents) will consider Siri/Cortana/Google such an authority that it will be a factor in family decisions or so Siri reckons.  Anyway have to go Siri's reminding me of something she needs me to do...

For more examples on how new technology shapes our lives heres an older cartoon on predictive texting.

Green Lantern and the new Apple Watch

According to today's Apple event the new Apple Watch will have 18 hours of battery life which would be good enough for most normal people but probably not the Green Lantern who when I was introducing him to my son I discovered his super powerful ring needs to charge every 24 hours.

iPad Mini

My cartoon take on the new iPad Mini announced today.

New iPhone 5

Cartoon about new iPhone 5 launched today - the fanbois are from previous iPhone 5 launch cartoon.

New iPad Confusion

They were expected to call it the iPad 3 or the iPad HD instead Apple called it the "new iPad" which is great from a cartoon perspective because I couldn't figure which of it's features was worth cartooning about (and I'd already done the whole Moses tablet/iPad2 pun last year).

All I can think is having something called the 'new iPad' will be confusing for those who sell the old iPad and is going to seem really outdated at this point next year when the 4G version of the iPad is launched.

For those interested in the actual technological improvements it has:

• Higher resolution 'Retina' display
• Faster processor
• 4G LTE capability
• 5MP camera

Babies and iPhones

Some Apple execs who weren't Steve Jobs announced not the iPhone 5 that my previous cartoon had anticipated but an iPhone 4.5 or 4S.

Still there will be plenty of slightly disappointed Apple Fanbois who will buy it knowing full well that iPhone 5 is coming soon.

There has been alot of baby news in my neck of the woods so I thought I would combine both topics.

iPhone 5 launch

iPhone 5 coming to you sometime mid-October to be followed by iPhone 6, 7, 8, 9...

For every iProduct n there is an iProduct n+1 which you will want more.

Apple And The Fall

Today Apple's stock fell after news broke today that the iconic Steve Jobs was stepping down as Chief Executive.  On the one hand it was sad news from a human perspective given what it says about Steve Job's health but it also forced a founding giant of the IT industry to step down just as Apple was at the top of  it's game but markets aren't that sentimental.

His successor Tim Cook obviously has big shoes to fill and many articles today have analysed whether he is the man to keep Apple going forward or if they need a new charismatic figure.  Certainly Apple won't collapse any time soon and there will continue to be releases and improvements to the iPad and iPhone but where will the creative drive for the next big thing come from?  The jury is still out but you only have to look at Microsoft post-Bill Gates to know that today's market leader can be tomorrows also ran.  As an admirer of Apple over the years (including the period when they were drifting before Jobs returned) I wish them well but it will be interesting challenge to lift the company again.

This is my third Adam and Eve cartoon so far (first, second) and while I'm sure it looks more realistic than predecessors I'm worried Facebook will censor it for too much pink.

Osama's JihadPad

Back from my break and I've decided to be less topical than ever referencing events that broke in April (Warden and Allen discover the iPhone/Pad is storing all your location information longer than necessary) and at the start of this month the 'did it really happen' assassination of Osama Bin Laden by US special forces.

My theory about Bin Laden buying a (Jihad)Pad most be at least as credible as some of the theories floating around the Net.

Seriously however if want to know exactly where your iDevices are there's a service from Apple on MobileMe that helps you do that to frightening levels of accuracy.  I'm sure no-one else has that data.

IPad 2 and the Commandments

Apple's iPad2 was unveiled tonight/today in San Francisco like the Second Coming for geeks.  After days of hype saying it would be thinner, lighter, faster and make the user ten times smarter/attractive it turns out the iPad is thinner, lighter, faster and has a camera on both sides.

Of course the obvious gag here is the Moses Tablet vs Apple Tablet.  Read your Bible or Wikipedia and you will see there was two sets of tablets the first one Moses smashed when he discovered the Israelites had got tired of waiting and had built themselves a Golden Calf/Android replacement.  The second version wasn't smashed and was kept with the first set in the Ark of the Covenant.  Had Apple designed the second tablet it would have been thinner, lighter with room for only 8 commandments.  Apple would have insisted on keeping the commandments 'You Shalt Not Steal Music' and 'You will have no other Apps but Apples'.  Then again we all know that Apple is not some sort of cult or religion whose devotees slavishly buy every new gadget they make.

Apple's Triple Tithe

Are you reading this on your iPod?  Do you love all your cheap apps and marvellous media?  If so spare a thought for those who produce the content for your fondle slab that discovering that Apple want to take their cut (a triple tithe of 30%) at every opportunity.

Software developers signing up with Apple know they will take 30% of whatever they make, music artists know that iTunes will  receive a bigger slice of their download revenue than most of them with their 30%  but now newspapers and subscription based services are reacting angrily to the news that Apple want them to offer subscriptions through their iOS application thus offering Apple their 30% share.  In particular music and media app like Spotify and Last.fm are warning that 30% will guarantee they will make a loss on their services.

Only a market leader like Apple would risk such a strategy and even know it may backfire on them.  Consumers may love their fondle slabs but if they want businesses to contribute content for it then they have to give them a compelling reason to do so before their rivals offer more lucrative terms.

For those joining us on the search term tithe just remember to 'Render unto Steve Jobs the things that are Steve Jobs' (a slight paraphrase of Matthew 22:21).  For those who think that giving a church 10% is bad, Facebook and Google want all your personal data and Apple merely want 30% of your lives (but maybe not your wives).