So many people wondered how I made my website, while being able to choose my domain name (ie website name). It sounds difficult but it is not in fact. First you need to rent an hosting space which is provided by a hosting server. And after that you upload your scripts and files onto it, and connect them!
And two days ago, I switched my host server from Hostmonster to iPage. I was pretty happy with Hostmonster until they start jacking up the prices to like $8.95US per month
And now I pay iPage $2.99US per month. (I also share the cost with a friend) iPage is a wonderful server in its price, in its features, in its consistency, in its security, and it is super environmental friendly! 100% Wind Energy powered! Their tech support was pretty efficient too!
Well despite all that, it took me a while to transfer the domains and reconnect it with the new ftp space and database. And by mere chance iPage was experiencing traffic issues yesterday, taking me mad long to re-upload all my stuff.
You are looking at Apple’s next iPhone. It was found lost in a bar in Redwood City, camouflaged to look like an iPhone 3GS. We got it. We disassembled it. It’s the real thing, and here are all the details.
While Apple may tinker with the final packaging and design of the final phone, it’s clear that the features in this lost-and-found next-generation iPhone are drastically new and drastically different from what came before. Here’s the detailed list of our findings:
What’s new
• Front-facing video chat camera
• Improved regular back-camera (the lens is quite noticeably larger than the iPhone 3GS)
• Camera flash
• Micro-SIM instead of standard SIM (like the iPad)
• Improved display. It’s unclear if it’s the 960×640 display thrown around before—it certainly looks like it, with the “Connect to iTunes” screen displaying much higher resolution than on a 3GS.
• What looks to be a secondary mic for noise cancellation, at the top, next to the headphone jack
• Split buttons for volume
• Power, mute, and volume buttons are all metallic
What’s changed
• The back is entirely flat, made of either glass (more likely) or ceramic or shiny plastic in order for the cell signal to poke through. Tapping on the back makes a more hollow and higher pitched sound compared to tapping on the glass on the front/screen, but that could just be the orientation of components inside making for a different sound
• An aluminum border going completely around the outside
• Slightly smaller screen than the 3GS (but seemingly higher resolution)
• Everything is more squared off
• 3 grams heavier
• 16% Larger battery
• Internals components are shrunken, miniaturized and reduced to make room for the larger battery
We’re as skeptical—if not more—than all of you. We get false tips all the time. But after playing with it for about a week—the overall quality feels exactly like a finished final Apple phone—and disassembling this unit, there is so much evidence stacked in its favor, that there’s very little possibility that it’s a fake. In fact, the possibility is almost none. Imagine someone having to use Apple components to design a functioning phone, from scratch, and then disseminating it to people around the world. Pretty much impossible. Here are the reasons, one by one.
It has been reported lost
Apple-connected John Gruber—from Daring Fireball—says that Apple has indeed lost a prototype iPhone and they want it back:
So I called around, and I now believe this is an actual unit from Apple — a unit Apple is very interested in getting back.
Obviously someone found it, and here it is.
The screen
While we couldn’t get it past the connect to iTunes screen for the reasons listed earlier, the USB cable on that screen was so high quality that it was impossible to discern individual pixels. We can’t tell you the exact resolution of this next-generation iPhone, but it’s much higher than the current iPhone 3GS.
The operating system
According to the person who found it, this iPhone was running iPhone OS 4.0 before the iPhone 4.0 announcement. The person was able to play with it and see the iPhone 4.0 features. Then, Apple remotely killed the phone before we got access to it. We were unable to restore because each firmware is device specific—3GS firmware only loads on 3GS devices—and the there are no firmwares available for this unreleased phone. Which is another clue to its authenticity.
It is recognized as an iPhone
This iPhone behaves exactly like an iPhone does when connected to a computer, with the proper boot sequence and “connect to iTunes” restore functionality. Xcode and iTunes both see this as an iPhone. Mac OS X’s System Profiler also reports this as an iPhone in restore mode, which is a natural consequence of remotely wiping the phone, but report different product identifiers (both CPID and CPRV) than either the 3G or the 3GS.
It uses micro-sim
The fact that it uses a micro-sim is a clear indicator that this is a next-generation iPhone. No other cellphone uses this standard at this point in the US.
The camouflage case
The case it came inside was a fully developed plastic case to house this phone to disguise it like a 3GS. This wasn’t just a normal case; it had all the proper new holes cut out for the new switches and ports and camera holes and camera flash. But it looks like something from Belkin or Case-Mate. It’s a perfect disguise.
The fact that it’s in the wild right now
Logic can also narrow down why this phone is this year’s iPhone, rather than next year’s model or one from the previous year’s, just because it was found in the wild right now. It makes no sense for Apple to be testing 2011′s model right now, in super finished form—they wouldn’t be nearly finished with it. The phone also can’t be last year’s test model, because last year’s model (based on the iPhone 3GS teardowns) components were way different. No micro-sim, much bigger logic board, no flash, no front camera, smaller battery and an inferior camera. That only leaves the 2010 model.
The guts, the definitive proof
And finally, when we opened it up, we saw multiple components that were clearly labeled APPLE. And, because the components were fit extremely well and extremely conformed inside the case (obvious that it was designed FOR this case), it was evident that it was not just a 3G or a 3GS transplanted into another body. That probably wouldn’t even be possible, with the size constraints of the thinner device and larger battery.
The New Industrial Design
At first sight, this new iPhone’s industrial design seems so different from the previous two generations that it could be discarded as just a provisional case. Even while the finish is so perfect that it feels right out of the factory, some of the design language elements that are common to all Apple products are not there. Gone is the flushed screen glass against the metal rim. Gone is the single volume button, replaced by two separate ones. Gone is the seamless rim, and gone are the tapered, curved surfaces.
Despite that, however, this design is not a departure. Not when you frame it with the rest of the Apple product line. It’s all the contrary: This new iPhone gets back to the simplicity of the iMac and the iPad. In fact, you can argue that the current iPhone 3GS—with its shiny chrome rim and excessively curved back—is out of place compared to the hard edges and Dieter-Ramish utilitarianism of the iMac and the iPad. Next to the iPad, for example, the new iPhone makes sense. It has the same feeling, the same functional simplicity.
But why the black plastic back, instead of going with an unibody aluminum design? Why the two audio volume buttons? Why the seams? And why doesn’t the back have any curvature at all?
Why the plastic back?
The plastic back is the most obvious of the design choices. The iPad, with its all aluminum back, has seen its Wi-Fi reception radius reduced. The 3G version comes with a large patch on the top, probably big enough to provide with good reception. But the new tiny iPhone doesn’t have the luxury of space: It needs to provide as much signal as possible using a very small surface. I’m sure Jon Ive is dying to get rid of the plastic back, and go iPad-style all the way, but the wireless reception is the most important thing in a cellphone. A necessary aesthetical-functional trade-off.
Why separate volume buttons?
This new iPhone uses separate buttons for the volume instead of the single button that you can find in the iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. It’s one of the factors that may indicate that this is a provisional case, until you think about one of the most requested features for Apple’s phone: A physical button for the camera. The new iPhone has a bigger sensor and a flash, which means that the camera function keeps gaining more weight. It’s only logical to think that Apple may have implemented this two-button approach to provide with a physical shutter button. It makes sense.
Why the seams?
The seams are perhaps the most surprising aspect of the new design. They don’t seem to respond to any aesthetic criteria and, in terms of function, we can’t adventure any explanation. But they don’t look bad. In fact, the whole effect seems good, like something you will find in a Braun product from the 70s.
It’s doubtful that the seams are arbitrary, however. Either they will disappear from the final product, or they have a function we can’t foresee at this time.
Why no tapering or curves?
As you will see in a future article, the new iPhone is so miniaturized and packed that there’s no room for the tapered, curved surfaces. Everything is as tight as it could get, with no space for anything but electronics.
The hardware specs
The phone measures 4.50 by 2.31 by 0.37 inches. It weighs 140 grams. The 3GS weighs 137 grams on a postal scale (and 135 on Apple’s official measurements). So, in comparison, it’s 3 grams heavier. The battery is 5.25 WHr at 3.7V, compared to the 3GS battery, which is 4.51 WHr at 3.7V. On the back of the phone, it said it was XX GB, but since we were unable to get the phone to a running state, we couldn’t see exactly how large it was.
How it feels
Freaking amazing. As a person who never really liked the round mound of a back in the 3GS, the sleeker, flatter, squarer design is super welcome. It feels sturdier than the 3GS, and much less plasticky. The metal buttons give it a heftier feel—less of a toy—than all previous generations. The closest analog to it would be the original iPhone, which is more square and heavy than its newer brothers.
It feels completely natural up to your face, and the fact that both the front and the back are glossy makes no difference on how well you can hold it without the phone slipping. And because it’s thinner, it feels even nicer in your pants.
What all this means
Apple has updated the exterior drastically different from the 3G and 3GS. That design is old, it felt out of place compared to the rest of their products and needed desperately to be killed. Now you have a thinner body, a much more pleasant form factor with no wasted space and lots of hard lines. But the design isn’t the most important part that’s changed.
They’ve delivered many of the features people have been waiting for—that damn front camera!—while at the same time upgrading everything else. Flash, better back camera, better battery life and another microphone for better voice clarity. People who bought the 3G two years ago and are now in the perfect position to upgrade and get a dramatically different, and better, phone. If confirmed this summer, and if it performs as we expect, this next-generation iPhone looks like a winner.
Much additional reporting and design analysis by Jesus Diaz. Rosa Golijan also contributed.
Installing this was a pain. It took me quite a long time to figure out all the kernels and installing the correct extensions without conflicting with each other.
I’ve never thought of using Mac before and for a certain periods of my life – I hated Apple.
My grudge starts to dissolve since the begetting of my iphone 3G 8G, for $280 haha…
I was amazingly surprised by the simplicity of everything, simple yet elegant.
now this Mac OS I installed (leopard 10.5.8 to be precise) is absolutely gorgeous. Its flexible, its stable, its smooth – its well designed.
Now I am totally fond of Mac
Well… Having that all being said, I still need to find a way to install a fresh windows on my emptied partition without screwing my Mac bootloader…
And I miss qvod.
I am looking forward to get a MacBook Pro in HK (hopefully something new comes up).
Memory, has long been separated into distinct categories- sensory, short and long term; varies theories are proposed to clarify how memories are encoded and stored. Karl Lashley spent his entire life searching for the “engram”, a localized brain region that is responsible for memory storage, where inducing perturbation in this region will disturb memory in all aspects. Of course, there is none and the nature of memory remains a mystery. After 50 years, the theoretical concept of Routtenberg and his colleague suggest that memory storage does not exist. There are no discrete brain regions that “store” memory, rather metaphorically, memory is the representation of overlapping, concurrent, multiple reactivated network circuits.
To understand the story of memory, first we must understand the nature of memory. How do we remember our own name? the word Edward can be divided into fragments, the semantic pronunciation, the syntaxical associations between each alphabet, the episodic representation of my self-image. I like to term this mixing of fragments as “schema”, a general strategical categorization of events. An analogy of this fragment nature can be drawn from mixing chemicals elements, mnemonic atoms, that of all produce a compound we refer to as memory. But what about recall specific details of episodic events? I remember taking an anatomy course in my first year of university, I forgot most of the anatomical structures that I could have recall easily back in two years. From the skeletal system lectures, I can still remember the location of our sphenoid, but I forgot almost everything other than that. So how do I explain this saliency of remembering sphenoid while forgetting everything else?
As forementioned, memories are linked by fragments of events. According to the computational matrix model of memory, these events can be represented by features and contexts. Breaking down the fragments, we have vector a and vector b. The product of these vectors creates a matrix of features in which is used to compare with the probe item. Increasing the events related to the probe will result a positive match, vice versa. One constraint of this model originates from the fact that memory does not simply represented by features. Memory traces can be found in all other aspects. Features of an item are considered as a piece of puzzle of memory. A ship, can be derived into lines, color, shape, size, episodic events, subjective experiences, which can be all summed up to create a central representation of the item – ship. In summary, the traditional views are flawed, there are no dual storage sites of short term versus long term memory.
The fragment nature of memory inspires my research in protein synthesis. Hebb proposed two stage of learning, first a protein synthesis independent stage that last hours and next, a protein dependent stage that thought to last for days, months, years and life time. The essential question here lies in the mechanisms of “where” and “how” memory are being processed. If there are no dual-storage where as memory are in fact presented as distinct events, the “storage site” will be vast, likely the entire brain is interactively responsible for this process. And the “how” question? Three levels must be considered, first is the molecular level where kinases are involved in feedback cycles. Next we have the cellular level where the so-called retrograde factors are contributed to enhance or dampen the physic synapses of neurons. Finally, the network level. Routtenburg proposed the theory of Post-translational modification (PTM) of de novo proteins. According to PTM, proteins that are necessary for consolidation are preexisted between synapses, and this dynamic view of memory suggests Protein synthesis inhibitors (PSI) role in memory retardation is simply a deprivation of “food” that are necessary for long-lasting memory.
PSI prevents learning and consolidation of memory fragments. In another way, protein synthesis is not an instructive mechanism for long-lasting memory, but rather it is responsible for the persistence of long-lasting memory.
The more I dig into my research, the more fascinating I think of God. The brain is unquestionably intelligently engineered, and here we are to understand the mechanisms and process of our brain.
今天下午下課後一口氣看完了朋友介紹的一本小書 : The Prodigal God
相信大家都聽過浪子回頭的比喻吧
其實真正的浪子不只有一個, 大兒子跟父的距離也許比小兒子跟父的距離更遠
叫人警醒的一本好書
“There are two ways to be your own Savior and Lord. One is by breaking all the moral laws and setting your own course, and one is by keeping all the moral laws and being very, very good.”
怎讓有德行, 怎讓在教會虔誠, 何樣作好榜樣, 最終要問問自己 – are you doing it for yourself? or for HIS joy?
很喜歡書中提及了莫札特傳一個例子
敘述者 Salieri 說 “Lord, make me a great composer! Let me celebrate your glory through music – and be celebrated myself! Make me famous through the world, dear God…. In return I vow I will give you my chastiy my industrey, my deepest humility, ever hour of my life… Amen and amen!”
看了這齣電影的都知道, 當莫札特踏進了Salieri 的生命, Salieri 狠狠地罵上帝說 “From now on we are enemies, You and I… I like myself… Till he com. Mozart”
就像大兒子一樣, 恩典總是不夠用
看到別人的成就總是要抱怨
最大問題就是一切都為了自己
How does this bird manage to survive this dreadful weather? Well, it works hard for its survival.
Apparently non-migratory birds, particularly small size birds (ie sparrows) demonstrates a unique build of physiology that allow them to survive harsh winters.
From a surface approach, it is the insulating down that isolates their body from the external environment which provides heat energy reservations. Next, comes to the behavioral approach, the birds have to feed through the daylight hours with a large quantity of food as much as 30% of their body size, which is essentially necessary for them to go through the cold and long night.
That being said, you may wonder HOW on earth these birds find food in such winter conditions, where seeds and all other common food are deep buried under the snow. This lead the a very interesting aspect of psychology – spatial memory. Birds, under natural conditions that store food ahead of time are classified as food-storing birds, and migratory birds are typically non-food-storing birds. Food-storing birds are usually well-prepared before the winter and stores their food in various locations for later consumption.
Many food-storing birds, apparently to have a fluctuating memory system for long term spatial memory. They demonstrates an extraordinary improved memory in the winter, but not in summer where abundant amount of food can be found. Researches shown that the hippocompal and parahippocampal regions had suddenly “adapted” to the extreme environment, indicated a greater hippocampal complex activity and greater in size and weight. Astounding! Right off from my memory, I remembered a research shown that food-storing-birds are able to allocentrically located more than 70% of food cache site where us, human is only able to retrieve ~20%; this difference is relatively large considering human’s superior intelligence. Now what is more?
How does the mode-switching complex works neurologically in food-storing birds?
How the brain signals itself to switch-modes?
Does the natural of mode-switching restricted to the functional anatomy of just birds?
What are other aspects of cognition is improved in birds other than spatial navigation?
Comparative Cognition can be interesting too…
Oh right, the photo was taken on the last day of my exams, the 15th.
Edward Wong is a Year 3 Neuroscience student at University of Alberta, Canada.
