IPHONE 5
There's a very simple way to describe the Apple iPhone 5: thinner, lighter and a bit taller than the iPhone 4S. While that gets across the general look of the phone, it rather underestimates what's gone into the design to achieve this.
SIZE AND WEIGHT
For starters, Apple has managed to shave 1.4mm of the thickness of its previous phone. When you compare them side-by-side, what Apple has done is immediately obvious. While the iPhone 4S' screen and back bulged out from the side, the iPhone 5 has a flush back, while the screen is barely raised at all.
While the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 are clearly related, there are some cosmetic changes to the new model, which give it a different look and help keep the weight down. Gone is the all-glass rear, replaced instead with an aluminium panel that covers most of back of the phone, bar two glass panels at the top and bottom. We've been told that during manufacturing the rear of the phone is photographed with the aluminium panel in place, so that the best-fitting glass panels can be found. Our review model was certainly well put together, with a flush fitting rear.
The Flickr app leaps beyond the abilities of the companion website, and brings with it all the things we need in a photo-sharing and capture app.
Of course, there are the filters. Take a photo of your latte, and the next minute you can be festooning it with all manner of digital effects. What was once a stupid photo of your stupid coffee now becomes an objet d'art, something that future generations will hang in the Tate with sighs about how the artist really understood coffee, and the story of how that humble beverage became a must-have morning accoutrement.
As an app, there's more to it than just filters though. You've got a news feed that hauls in the photos from your contacts. If you're a long-time user of Flickr, then you'll have lots of friends, and you'll see some great stuff here. Flickr really does have some amazing talent locked up in its vaults.
You can also look at photos that are either "interesting" or close to you. Interesting is already filling up with shots of coffee - we're sure these are ironic - and other things that people have been looking at. In our lonely Surrey corner of the country, there wasn't much happening when we looked, just a few aerial shots of London that were pretty impressive, but nothing "real".
One of the things we really like, that will appeal to proper photographers, is the ability to easily access the EXIF information from photos. So if you're browsing images, and you see one you admire, you can then see what equipment was used, and the settings. It's things like this that it that beyond the casual snapper tool that Instagram is, and in to a more interesting place.
Olympus has been on a roll with their latest batch of Micro Four Thirds (MFT) lenses. They kicked off this run with the 12mm F2 and followed it up with the 45mm f1.8 and the 75mm f1.8. Their newest offering is something different, their first MFT macro lens. The Olympus M.ZUIKI ED 60mm Macro, Olympus’ newest offering and we’ve got our hands on it.
The lens is smaller than I excepted it to be. At approximately 3.2″ long, it’s about the same size as the OM-D’s 12-50mm kit lens. So far, overall usability of the lens is quite good. The focus ring dominates the top half of the lens and it turns with a smooth, consistent action. The resistance from the focus ring is neither too light nor too heavy. It feels very balanced when manually focusing.
Let me show you some images that will describe by themselves what is the new Olympus'.
The Acer Aspire V5 is a tiny, run-of-the-mill 15-inch laptop, conservative in design, and modestly priced at $729 for this Intel Core i5 configuration. But, it includes a touch screen, and not as a special feature worthy of promotional point-of-sale stickers, but simply as a matter of course, because that's what (according to one reading of the tea leaves) you'll expect from all but the cheapest of budget laptops in the world of Windows 8.
If you're looking for an inexpensive entry point to the Windows 8 touch experience, that's going to be hard to beat; the V5 is decent-looking for a $700 laptop, but for $529, with its edge-to-edge glass and big, buttonless touch pad, it's a real looker.
Some importants things:
Price: $729; Processor: 1.7GHz Intel Core i5-3317M; Memory: 4GB, 1600MHz DDR3 ;Hard drive: 500GB 5,400rpm ;Chipset: Intel HM77 Graphics Intel HD4000; Operating System: Windows 8; Dimensions: (WD) 15.0 x 9.9 inches Height 0.9 - 1.0 inches; Screen size: (diagonal) 15.6 inches; System weight : Weight with AC adapter 5.4/6.0 pounds; Category: Midsize
