Ok, the home button. People are freaking out, comparing the above image with photos they’ve taken of their current iPad trying to show that the icon position and the water droplets on the homescreen background image all line up the same and that this definitely indicates that the iPad in the photo above is in portrait orientation and that then this definitely means that Apple has removed the home button. Oh my the world is ending. No it’s not…

Why?

Siri.

Ok, next.

Is that really a retina-equipped iPad hiding there right before our eyes? Maybe, maybe not. Look at the size of the finger in relation to the icons. Those icons are enormous. On my iPhone 4 my boney little fingers almost entirely cover a single icon, on the current iPad the icons appear a little bit larger, but then this dude with normal sized fingers is tapping on an icon that his finger is only covering about a quarter of. Yes, we’re going to see a retina display on the iPad 3. No, this photo isn’t one, unless of course Apple has started using toddlers as hand models. My guess is that this is just photoshopped together for the purposes of the invite.

What of the other rumoured improvements? HD upgrade for the front-facing camera? Upgraded back camera to match the iPhone 4S? I think both of these are covered by the same issue. Space. If the leaked photos are anything to go by then the iPad 3 is only very, very slightly thicker than the iPad 2, I don’t think this is going to allow enough room for ‘better’ cameras, especially given talk that the extra width was to allow for a bigger battery required to power the retina display everyone is craving. I’d like to see a camera upgrade, but I won’t be massively shocked or disappointed if it doesn’t get one.

Keeping expectations low is always going to be better.

I’ve seen a couple of people mention that they think the software (OS and core apps) is going to receive some changes. For the most part I doubt it, at least for the initial launch. Sure they might give a sneak peak at what they might be looking at for iOS 6 when it drops later in the year, but I don’t think that any major changes will appear in iOS 5.1 … with one exception of course.

Siri. Right now Siri is only available on the iPhone 4s, this is the first iPad update since the 4S was released so it seems more than reasonable that Siri is going to make an appearance. Personally I haven’t played with Siri (don’t have a 4S), and I think even if I did has a 4S I’d probably play with Siri for a week and then just go back to using my phone as I would normally. Still seems too much like a novelty item to me.

The internals will no doubt get a boost, the inclusion of a quad-core processor and 4G LTE seem to be the most expected improvements. RAM will probably get/need a boost to deal with the plethora of extra pixels that need to be driven – another reason why the quad-core processor rumour seems reasonable.

What else? There’s always a ‘what else’.

People are starting to talk about the possibility of an Apple TV update accompanying the iPad 3, with a feature bump to enable 1080p mirroring. I don’t mind the logic behind it, whether Apple is going to drop two new products at once is the question. They may prefer to keep all the attention squarely focused on the iPad 3.

On the other hand, to Apple, a minor spec bump might be a worthy ‘one more thing’ when paired with the freshly revealed iPad3. We’ll just have to wait an see.

Credit cards are ready.

Oh great, its going to end up being called iPad 2S and I’m going to have to listen to the elitist-tech-morons of the world complain for months because it wasn’t called the iPad 3.

“No, that won’t happen again” I hear you say. Of course it will, it always does — it is just that last year’s iPhone 4S nonsense was a little more extreme than usual. You do remember the ridiculous rumoured feature set that was being spouted as “fact” for the iPad 2 around this time last year don’t you? About the only feature that the tech blog’s “sources” hadn’t confirmed was that the iPad 2 would be a personal intergalactic teleportation device. How many of the “crazy” rumours panned out? Maybe one or two (thinner design and dual cameras) can’t find the original list to compare.

The one thing that was at the top of most lists was the surefire retina display for the iPad. Just about every tech blog had this right at the top of their feature list.

Of course iPad 2 will have a retina display. Why? because the iPhone’s already got one.

Did the iPad 2 get a retina display? No, it did not. *shock* But the impact of that non-appearance of a feature was probably lessened by the fact that 90% of the rumours turned out to be complete garbage. Roll on iPhone 5.

The next iPhone will be the iPhone 5 and it will be awesome, its going to be a complete redesign to match those cheap mass-produced Chinese cases, they’re going to get rid of the home button so you can control it with your mood, and their going to make the screen massive like one of those jumbo-tron-wont-fit-in-any-normal-persons-pocket android phones.

Or so they said. Instead what turned up was the iPhone 4S, a ridiculously good upgrade over the previous generation, bringing faster processor, faster graphics, new antenna, new 8MP camera that can also shoot 1080p/30fps video, and a brand new version of iOS with a stack of features including the amazing Siri voice control system… and then people started to complain.

Firstly because it looked nothing like the magical iPhone cases that the Chinese manufacturers had been churning out, secondly because it wasn’t called the iPhone 5.

Yuk, its looks like the iPhone 4 and how dare they not call it the iPhone 5, I’m never going to buy an Apple product again.

Le sigh. Anyway, back to the iPad 3. The most persistent rumour yet again is that it will definitely get a “retina” display. The new “details” provided by iLounge are that both cameras (front and back) will get an upgrade, that it will be slightly thicker (this one’s been going around for a while) and that the current iPad 2 might also remain but at a lower price point.

But here’s the thing, its all speculation. Sure these people have “sources”, you know, as in “I know a guy who knows a guy who’s girlfriend’s aunt’s second cousin once visited the same Chinese province where the iPad is manufactured so they are clearly an authority on all things technical”. And yes, sure, I get that tech blogs love the time in the lead up to the release of an “iDevice” because it means that if they can post some juicy rumour that the internets get a hold of then their blog traffic will explode and they might make a quick buck from the ton of gaudy advertising plastered all-over their site.

But for every one “true” rumour, there are two dozen other completely stupid rumours to distract (and annoy) people. Don’t get me wrong I love rumours and speculation as much as the next guy, but don’t read everything the tech blogs write as gospel. It’s not. All they are doing is unrealistically building up your expectations way higher than they need to be so that no matter what Apple actually do release you are guaranteed to be disappointed for some daft reason.

Then, of course, you can head back to their site and take part in the noob comment threads on the topics that they will undoubtedly write about how Apple has stooged everyone by not releasing the device that their “source” had told them about.

Hmm, now I kind of hope Apple actually do call it the iPad 2S…

Those playing along at home will know that I’m fond of the odd redesign — or twelve — and for the majority of the last 5 years I’ve redesigned this blog with dedicated regularity. That is until the last year or so. It’s not like I haven’t “tried” to freshen things up, just that I’ve made a dozen attempts and none of them ever really progressed further than a basic mockup before I would get sidetracked with something else or simply lose interest.

Last night at 9:50pm — yes, I redesigned my blog on New Year’s Eve, I’m just that awesome — I decided that if I was going to relaunch for 2012 then I had to do something about it pronto. What you’re looking at is the result of that snap decision. The focus being on the articles that I will (or at least intend to) write, rather than the site itself. I had been toying with the idea of also publishing short posts with links and other things I found interesting but in the end I’ve decided to stay away from that — at least for the moment, I may yet change my mind.

Gone is all the old content, all the old (unnecessary) plugins, all the comments, all the likes, all the images, all the scripts — everything, gone. And I like that. (That’s not entirely true, I haven’t blown them all to oblivion, instead I’ve archived them off onto a sub-domain and will attempt to set up some ‘smart’ redirects so that old links don’t break)

I do intend to bring back some of the “better” articles from the archive, still not sure what I’ll do for the couple of articles that have really good comments attached to them.

As far as plugins go I didn’t have a huge amount running anyway, maybe 20 or so, but they weren’t doing much. Aside from Akismet none of them were really that useful if I’m completely honest. And now that I’ve banished comments as well, I probably don’t even need Akismet. I’ll probably turn a couple of plugins back on in the next week or so after I discover that I was actually using them, will have to wait and see.

While this site is now live again with it’s new look, its far from complete. I still need to work out basic things like the archive and an about page. The site header probably needs a little work, its simple, but I can’t decide if its too simple. I also need to redo the “responsiveness” of the design so that it adapts to different situations — it is one of the “nice to haves” not one of the “must haves”, at least on this site.

This year

On the immediate radar for 2012 is to continue to pimp out my very first <subliminal>you should buy it</subliminal> iPhone app, CricLive, that was released just prior to Christmas. I submitted an update for approval yesterday, and there is still a few more improvements that I hope to make. I’m pretty happy with its release considering that 10 weeks ago I’d never written an iPhone app — sure I’d played around with Interface Builder, but that doesn’t count. This is an actual app, an app that you can buy, with money, in the iTunes store. Wonderful.

I’ve got rough plans/ideas for a second iOS app, one that would have a much broader audience — I just need to a) work out if the ‘rough’ idea is a ‘good’ idea, b) work out if I’m capable of executing the idea, c) work out how I find enough time to put into the idea and d) find a cool name for it. Maybe it you keep an eye out on dribble you might spot some of my “ideas” in near future. I’ve already trawled the app store and couldn’t find anything the same — there were a couple that were “similar”, but they looked poorly done and hideously designed. I don’t want anything I do to ever fall into either of those categories.

On the web front I’ll continue to update the BigBashBoard which I started on a whim one Friday night earlier in the year and suddenly people started using it. It spiraled out of control from that point, and now I’m (slowly) building up this massive database of Twenty20 Cricket stats. It’s fun though, and that’s the main point.

A couple of my other side-projects died (or at least went into deep hibernation) at some point during the year. Not because I didn’t love them, but because I wasn’t getting anything out of them. The time spent maintaining them was was probably 100-fold the time other people spent using them. A bit sad, maybe one-day when I’ve got more free time (ha! like that’s ever going to happen) I’ll revisit some of them.

Fluency Admin needs an update, the current version simply doesn’t work with WordPress 3.3. But I’ll admit the motivation to start work on the update is low, primarily because the main feature (fly-out menus) of Fluency is now just part of the default admin interface, but secondly because the default WordPress Admin itself is not really that bad anymore — it gets closer to looking like Fluency with every update… but I’m sure I’ll get to it at some point, it’s probably something I can work on during my lunch breaks at work.

During 2011 I set up a ‘portfolio’ site, where I could stick stuff I’m working on or have worked on — essentially the sort of things that used to be in the “projects” section of this site. That’s part of the reason that this blog has returned to “just” being a blog. That way Fluency Admin, CricLive etc. can all live over on the FortySevenRobots site instead. And they do, quite happily.

Ok, that’s enough rambling. I’ve got some idea expansion to do. On with 2012.