Finally the last two telcos revealed their prices for the new iPhones. Below are the price comparisons at the various plans. Images sourced from HWZ. Click on the images to view in full size.
Got questions about iOS 7 and the new iPhones? Visit sgmac.net today!
MacNet is the closest thing you will find to an Apple Cult these days.
Based in Singapore, but we welcome every single Mac user.
We hope to create a community where the purest and most devoted Mac users can be active in, as we recognise with the rise of Apple, many devoted Mac users feel left out.
No longer can a Mac user just start a chat with someone else he/she spotted using a Mac in a public area. No longer is there any tight-knitted group where devoted Mac users can share information and tips about Macs and related stuff.
We hope to bring all that back.
We are not some crummy user group which was left to die when its core members lost interest and its founder went missing, neither are we some off-shoot group of a rowdy PC-hardware forum.
We are here to stay.
We sincerely invite both long-time and novice Mac users to join this group, so long you believe yourself to be genuinely interested in Macs and most things Apple.
With the introduction of iOS 7 today, we recognise that many will be shocked at all the changes in iOS 7 and might not be able to cope. A bunch of us with prior access to iOS 7 (dev access!) for the past two months will be around the group and helping to answer any iOS 7 or Mac related queries you might have, so join us today!
MacNet is located at http://sgmac.net.
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This year’s prices are quite a bit higher, due to the fluctuation in exchange rates.
It is however, interesting to note that the iPhone 5c is only retailing at $318 at the lite plan (the plan most Singaporeans will pick), while the iPhone 5s is retailing at $538 at the same plan, with the 5c at a full $220 cheaper.
Looks like the subsidies are higher for the 5c, and those buying on contract should do well to consider the 5c instead.
While I am most probably buying a 5s because I am already carrying a 5, truth be told, I will much rather buy a blue 5c this Friday. It’s just a bit funny to consider the phone with the same specs when you are supposed to be upgrading.
Those without the 5 though, I cannot stress this enough – the iPhone 5c is a superb phone for the price. Don’t believe me? Just touch the real thing this Friday. You won’t be disappointed.
There are units reaching Mac retail stores (NuBox, epiCentre) TODAY, 18th September 2013. While I am not sure if there will be display units out today, if you are nearby one it makes sense to go in and ask if you can try out the 5c.
As recent rumors have pegged, tonight’s Apple event will introduce two new iPhones – the iPhone 5S and the iPhone 5C.
We have seen enough leaks to know everything there is to know about the iPhone 5C’s five colors and construction, and how they are really just iPhone 5 innards in a new plastic housing.
That said, the exact placement of the iPhone 5C in Apple’s iPhone lineup remains a mystery up till now.
In a previous post, I had revealed that the iPhone 5C had a 4-inch screen and a Lightning port (thanks to my friends) and speculated that the iPhone 5C will replace the iPhone 4S at the lowest end of the iPhone lineup and complete the transition of the iPhone line to Lightning ports and 4-inch screens this year, leaving the iPhone 5S at the top and the current iPhone 5 in the middle of the lineup.
I still think that this will be the arrangement, but rumors (from idiotic analysts nonetheless) suggest that the iPhone 5C will replace the iPhone 5 completely, leaving only the two new iPhones (and the old iPhone 4S) in the iPhone lineup.
This is weird for various reasons.
Firstly, it will leave a big gap between the pricing of the iPhone 5S and the iPhone 5C, assuming that the iPhone 5C will be quite a bit cheaper than the iPhone 5S. Previous years, the mid-range iPhones have always been about 100USD cheaper than the top-of-the-line models, and people who are intending to buy mid-range this year will not be happy that they are paying for something that are not last year’s models, at the same top-range-minus-hundred price point.
Secondly, it will not be feasible to have the iPhone 4S remain on the lineup, for the extra effort Apple needs to maintain the dock connector accessories and the assumed extra cost of making the iPhone 4S’ metal and glass housing will outweigh the benefits of just letting the same production lines making the now lesser in demand iPhone 4S continue running.
The only reason/way I can see it (iPhone 5C replacing the iPhone 5) is if the supply yield of the delicate aluminum and glass housing of the iPhone 5 still remains small today even after one year of production, due to the care needed to prevent scratches on the soft aluminum on the assembly lines.
If that is truly the case, it will make sense for Apple to divert all current iPhone 5 housing production lines to the production of the iPhone 5S, to ensure maximum supply of the iPhone 5S on launch day (20th September) and in the months after that, especially with the rumored increase in color choice.
Plastic housings are extremely cheap and easy to produce (ask Samsung), and will be produced fast enough to meet iPhone 5C launch demand, and a big supply of iPhone 5Cs is need if China is going to be part of the first launch countries this year.
Apple will still have to adjust their prices accordingly, and there will still be a gap, unless of course they just went ahead with the old top-range-minus-hundred pricing assuming that people will pay for the "newness" of the multi colored iPhone 5C lineup.
Can’t wait for tonight! Will love a blue 5C.
Visit Sgmac.net, the new fb group (still in tweaking mode until mid-Sep, but open for joining) for devoted Mac users today!
Pic sourced from AppAdvice
As of today’s information, we in Singapore will be getting the new iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C on…
Mark your calendars. Stay at home and wait for the Starhub carrier. Or go queue at your local M1 shop.
I usually try not to write much about non-Apple news here, but this is a classic “I told you so” scenario.
Upon earlier reports that the Samsung flagship phone, the Galaxy S4, is not selling too well in local (and many foreign) markets, today we have Wall Street finally telling us exactly that.
Samsung’s stock took a serious beating upon news of a major slowdown on sales of the Galaxy S4, despite announcing that they have shipped 10 million S4s to sales channels all over the world within 28 days. It is however, believed that less than 30% of shipped Galaxy S4s were sold to consumers, with the remainder in warehouses as unsold stock.
In other news, iRadio finally look like it is going to happen next Monday after all.
Hell man, I hope I don’t get a cease and desist for this.
Got really sick of the default “universe/galaxy”-style wallpapers introduced since Leopard, and extracted some old wallpapers from pre-Leopard Mac OS Xes.
Am currently rocking this setup.
Here are all the default Aqua Blue and Aqua Graphite Mac OS X wallpapers from the past. Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah has the same default wallpapers as Mac OS X 10.1 Puma so it’s meaningless to include those.
Do note, due to the maximum supported screen resolution being quite limited in the earlier Mac OS X releases, the resolution of the earlier wallpapers will be much smaller, and might not look great on current-day screens.
Here goes.
You can follow MacRyu at @ryuworks on Twitter and @ryu on App.net.
Sometimes I wonder why people even crave for such posts when everything is out there in the open, but I guess there are some who would not bother with the research.
I am just going to rehash everything that is already all over the web, adding some of my opinions if necessary.
Honestly, I do not know what to expect. Jony Ive has designed the majority of the Apple hardware we know and love today, but his take on UI is still uncharted territory. As far as we know, he was, to quite an extent, involved in the original iPhone’s UI design back in 2006/2007 but everything after that was under Forstall. The whole “flat look” rumour thing that has been reported widely sends chills down my spine – I absolutely will hate iOS losing most of the fun elements it is known for.
However, if looking the gradients and gloss means a much slicker and professional looking UI (think Tweetbot, think Reeder), I am all for it. It is highly unlikely the hordes of software engineers will let Jony Ive change iOS into something as tasteless as Windows Phone 8, after all. Besides, the Brit has impeccable taste. A clean look, less gloss, less gradient, but with lots of colours and fun elements will be the hallmark of a modern iOS. Besides, change just for change’s sake, for once, is something that iOS needs to keep a majority of their bored customer base from “looking for a change”.
As with iOS 7, OS X 10.9 must be the most well kept secrets in Cupertino right now. Rarely in the past two years has information about the two new operating systems been so tight-lipped that even now, less than a week from WWDC 2013, there has been no leaks, no screenshots of new features or the new UI (in the case of iOS 7). Rumour-mill has it that engineers have been taken from 10.9 development to help speed up iOS 7’s development pace, and that has resulted lesser changes to 10.9.
Like many of the traditionalists I am more interested in OS X than iOS, and a much improved OS X will perk me up way more than a completely revamped iOS. That said, though, OS X is extremely mature and with much of the underlying changes needed for a modern desktop OS already done in Snow Leopard and Lion, all that is left to do for the next few years is tweaking OS X to perform better, and address the outstanding issues still present today.
An improved Finder (as rumoured) will be welcomed, and hopefully the UI for Calendar and Contacts will be changed to something slicker. Mail.app is in crazy need of a refresh after many years of bloat, though most peeps these days run Sparrow, or more recently, Airmail, as a replacement for Mail.app. I really doubt a new file system will debut anytime soon to replace HFS+, definitely not in 10.9. There is also some speculation that widgets and Dashboard might be discontinued, but I hope that they do keep Dashboard as I still use it everyday for currency conversion.
What other changes do OS X need? You tell me. I am really happy with how everything works so far.
NO. NO NEW IPHONES AND IPADS. PLEASE. THESE ARE COMING IN SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER.
I am going to slap anyone who tells me that he or she is disappointed because there is no new iPhone/iPad at WWDC.
Haswell is just released. So new Retina MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs are definitely coming. There are rumours that the 13″ Retina MacBook Pro will go on a diet and get slimmer (thanks to crazy power efficiency in the new Haswell platform), and that will be definitely welcomed. The current rMBP 13″ is not that much lighter from the old 13″ MBP (non-retina) right now, and is not tempting enough for anyone to switch.
Oh ah, and a price drop across the whole line of Retina MacBook Pros is much needed (will and probably come).
You can follow MacRyu at @ryuworks on Twitter and @ryu on App.net.
Changed a few things around the site. Contemplated going with a completely new theme, but decided that the effort will not be worth my time, especially as I really like the current layout.
Quite some time back, I wrote about how I discovered 5by5 studios, and how switching to it (from the deteriorating TWiT network) gave me new enjoyment as I discovered, along with other like minded listeners, Marco Arment and John Siracusa.
Then the whole John Gruber-Dan Benjamin fallout thing happened, and 5by5 lost The Talk Show. It was, however, not a huge loss for 5by5, for by then Build and Analyze and Hypercritical were way bigger shows than The Talk Show ever was, and John Gruber’s own relaunch received universal criticism for the lack of polish.
Then, the unthinkable happened. In late 2012, both Marco Arment and John Siracusa ended their shows on 5by5 studios. There was apparently no falling out between Dan Benjamin and either of the two bigwigs, and the termination of shows was reportedly on good terms.
Marco Arment, John Siracusa and their friend Casey Liss eventually went on to do their own car podcast, Neutral in early 2013…… and accidentally created a tech podcast in the process.
The Accidental Tech Podcast is, today, arguably the most popular Mac-related podcast amongst like-minded Mac podcast nerds, and is what I look forward to most every Friday.
Jim Dalrymple and Dan Benjamin on Amplified. Need I say more? Jim is the nicer version of John Gruber and the combination of Mac stuff and rock music is just awesome (I am into rock music and band stuff).
The Talk Show with John Gruber, Gruber’s relaunch of the popular The Talk Show on 5by5, is third, and only because the other choices are not very promising. Gruber is still a pretty bad host despite marked improvements, and there are episodes where I could not bear to continue listening after the first fifteen minutes. Very often though, the show is saved from extreme boredom by his interesting guests, who often ask the right questions in order to extract interesting replies from Gruber. The main problem with the current The Talk Show? The current host should be the one being asked questions, not the other way round.
To finish the list, I listen to the Vergecast from time to time. A bunch of noisy tech nerds talking industry-wide tech stuff is often interesting so long you can overlook the complete mess that is the Vergecast.
With the drought of interesting Mac news these days, these shows provide me, and probably many others, much needed relief from the boredom that is life.
You can follow MacRyu at @ryuworks on Twitter and @ryu on App.net.
And it shows.
The grand total attendance, of the Mac User Group Singapore (MUGS) meet-up recently, is ONE. That is despite MUGS having over 200 members, and having the event details casted out on every form of social media I could think of.
This is enough reason for me to tell myself to just move on, accept that nobody has love for fellow Mac users anymore, and stop feeling sentimental.
You can follow MacRyu at @ryuworks on Twitter and @ryu on App.net.
A podcast about everything Apple, and non-Apple, in the Sunny Island of Singapore. Hosted by Ryu and Daniel.
Your Monthly Overview of Apple news, with a Uniquely Singaporean Flavour. New episodes monthly with additional episodes after Apple events. Hosted by Ryu.
Old Apple “Steve”notes, ancient Apple Ads and original content!
