The iPhone 4S

[Icyculyr]

It's definitely viable for an AI. I'm with you on the second half, but I'm kind of feeling like I'm trying to hold back the rising tide with a sand castle. The fact that Apple tracks you, even if you turn off tracking, is bothering enough. The fact that all phones could theoretically do this pretty effectively, is even more so.

They can't necessarily track ME, though, at least not for about a month every year.

What do you mean they track you? There was a list on iOS of all your locations but Apple changed it so the list was much smaller and was more secure.

Talk about profit margins...

http://www.economist.com/node/21525685

And for iMac, older model but still representative of the numbers http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ima...down,2083.html

EDIT: And here's one for the first iPad http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic..._each_499_iPad and a cosy 75% on every iPhone 4S http://realitypod.com/2011/10/nearly...phone-4s-sold/

And do you expect droids and other slates to have a more expensive bill of materials? I don't think so. They (speaking generally here) need to have a high markup on their products to cover costs such as R&D, employee payments, etc.

Oh, and that iMac isn't representative of their numbers. The 2011 iMac starts at $1199 and has significantly better hardware and includes a Magic Mouse and Wireless Keyboard. It's not comparable. It'd be interesting to see the profits on the 2011 iMac though.

>>>>

My brief and little review:

The camera and video camera on the 4S is really great quality and it puts my 3GS to shame. It works great in day, and pretty well at night. The device is snappy, and games look great which is mostly to do with the retina display right now, considering a lot of games haven't been updated with better graphics yet.

I'm very impressed with Siri. It's true that it does understand context because it really doesn't matter what way I ask it, in fact I can even pause a little and mumble (like you might in real life if you're thinking what to ask) and it still gets me what I wanted. For example, I've asked something along the lines of: Siri, will it be chilly in Paris the day after tomorrow at 3 PM? And it said "No, it won't really be chilly, here's the forecast", and I replied with: "What about Rome?" and it gave me the correct answer again. I also tried just saying "Sweden", "How about Australia", etc., and it gave me the time of the capital at the time and day I originally said.

The best thing is, I don't have to speak really clear and precise for it to understand me. I just say what I want, it shows me accurately (and speaks) what I said and then gives me the results of my query. It deals pretty well with background noise, too.

Raising the phone to your ear is a really great way to use it. It activates quickly, and turns off when you take it away. Currently, searching for locations, businesses, etc., is only available in the US. But is apparently heading to international countries in 2012, which will be good because I'd find it useful.

It also works really quickly. Text to speech and speech to text works pretty well.

I'm not sure what the battery life seems like so far (albeit I was doing some gaming and have had brightness set to max), I'll have to do my own tests. It seems to drop pretty quickly although maybe it's just in my head.

All in all, I'm very happy with it. I can't wait until mine gets here and I can set it up. I really look forward to games like Rage and Infinity Blade updating to make use of the extra graphics horsepower -- they already look pretty great.