Welcome to the Geek Choice Blog

HP has thrown their hat into the mix of ultrabooks with the announcement of the Folio 13. The machine will be 13.3 inches and less than 0.7 inches thick although heavier than the MacBook Air at around 3.3lbs this machine also has the longest lasting battery life in its class. Clocking in at about 9 hours of battery life! This is two hours longer than the air.

HP is also aiming for an Air-like level of design with a real metal outer shell, single-surface Imagepad for its trackpad and a backlit keyboard. The PC claims more expansion, though, including Ethernet, HDMI out, USB 3.0, and an optional TPM security chip on top of the card reader.

The system ships with 4GB of RAM and a 128GB solid-state drive standard, but tries to undercut Apple by using slower parts. Base systems ship with a 1.4GHz Core i3 and have to be optioned up to the 1.6GHz Core i5 that Apple only reserves for its lower-end 11-inch system.

Folio 13 systems should be available starting from December 7 and, at $899, will be about $300 less than the MacBook through HP’s cost-cutting. The PC builder is just the third major Windows builder to step into the ultrabook arena and is taking a different approach to Acer and ASUS, both of whom have tried to get faster components or more closely imitate Apple’s teardrop shape.

Monday Apple released a new version of iTunes that included iTunes Match. This software will run you $24.99 a year and will scan all of your music librarry and match it to music available on the iTunes Store. If the music doesn’t match will automatically be uploaded so you can play any of your music from any iOS device you may currently own. The iTunes music will also be included on your Apple TV if you own one. This was supposed to be released on October 31st but Apple has a mind set of releasing something when it is complete finished instead of meeting deadlines. Although I am sure with all the bugs in the new iOS5 update people would beg to differ on that point. Just so you know it can be downloaded via the web but the iTunes Match update is not available with the software update in the OS X as of yet.

Today Intel announced that they have created the fastest chip to date for PCs/ It is a six-core i7-3960X Extreme Edition processor, which is based off of the Sandy bridge micro-architecture and designed for high end desktops. This chip has more cores and faster clocks to speed up the pc and we all know gamers love that. The Core i7-3960X runs at a default clock speed at 3.3GHz and you can over clock it to 3.9Ghz per core depending on performance needed. The beast of a chip has a 15MB of cache and four channels of memory. This chip will be priced from all accounts at a modest $990 and will go right up against AMD’s eighcore FX series ship that started shipping just a month ago. Intel also introduced the six-core Core i7-3930K chip, which operates at 3.2GHz and can be clocked up to 3.8GHz. The chip has 12MB of cache, four memory channels, and is priced at $555. So we shall see how powerful this chip will be. I will be looking for benchmarks as the time comes.

Apple’s iOS 5.0.1 update that was released today isn’t offering promised fixes of battery life (seen in the release notes) to everyone. Many users are still complaining, seeing battery life on their 4S’s dropping just as quickly as before. Here are some complaints I have read:

New update is no help at all. I opened Safari and lost 2 % just by opening it.

Upgraded to 5.0.1 this morning. Still draining at the exact same rate. Unplugged with a full charge 2 1/2 hours ago, and already down to 80% with light usage. Just lost 2% during a 15 minute shower. I see no difference at all.

Same here. Updated about 1.5 hours ago, battery has drained 20% since then with no usage! This is awful!

Apple did get something right however. Overall, majority of users are saying that the over the air update to get iOS 5.0.1 worked fantastic. So Apple needs to get on their horse and fix these underlying battery issues or else who knows what will happen.

Facebook Inc. is close to a settlement with the U.S. government over charges that it misled users about its use of their personal information, the latest sign of widening public concern over privacy in the digital age.

According to people familiar with the talks, the settlement would require Facebook to obtain users’ consent before making “material retroactive changes” to its privacy policies. That means that Facebook must get consent to share data in a way that is different from how the user originally agreed the data could be used.

This a big movement that has really been going on since 2009 and it is sad that it takes a lawsuit to get Facebook to do the right thing. Everyone should have a right to privacy and only by consent should anyone’s information be shared.

Logitech hosted an Investor and Analyst day and CEO Guerrino De Luca has some interesting comments about the mistakes the company made with the Logitech Revue Google TV set top box. Stating that the Christmas 2010 launch was “a mistake of implementation of a gigantic nature,” and he also added that this had “brought closure to the Logitech Revue saga.” He also added that he felt Google TV was far from ready at launch and went as far as to call it a beta version. ” Logitech executed a full scale launch with a beta product and it cost us dearly.”
He added more color about Logitech’s failure to read the television market in his remarks:
To make the long story short, we thought we had invented [sliced] bread and we just made them. [We made a commitment to] just build a lot because we expected everybody to line up for Christmas and buy these boxes [at] $300 [...] that was a big mistake.

Just another company making mistakes that you eat the losses and move on.

Today’s blog is going to be informative on a helpful level instead of my normal news level. The iOS5 if you didn’t know it has a feature much like the Android OS in which you can have a bar to choose your words. This information I learned courtesy of 9to5Mac so I trust the what needs to be done here and the picture above is what you will see when typing out your next text message.

1. Download iBackupBot

2. Backup your iPhone/iPod in iTunes

3. Open iBackupBot and find the backup, then load it.

4. Find Library/Preferences/com.apple.keyboard.plist and open the file. (if your software isn’t registered you’ll have to press cancel and then it will open)

5. Add in the following code: KeyboardAutocorrectionListsYES

6. Save your modifications, and then restore from backup from within iBackupbot.

There have been rumors that Apple has allegedly given the official word that Siri will not be on older iOS devices. There could be a possibility of this down the road but the outlook is doubtful. An article I read on this situation had some interesting information to add. iPhone 4 Users and iPod touch 4th generation users pay a fee of 19.99 to upgrade to a ‘special’ build of iOS 5.0.1 with Siri Final in it, (To avoid hackers hacking Siri onto non 4S devices illegally) **Many iPhone 4 Users and iPod touch 4th generation Users will pay for this special iOS build (5.0.1) which will enable Siri for a fee of $19.99 US dollars. Apple had this to say in response. Engineering has provided the following feedback regarding this issue:
Siri only works on iPhone 4S and we currently have no plans to support older devices.
So there you have it Apple is squashing any rumors of Siri going to any other older platforms. Sorry iPhone 4 users.

So as we know the iPad and iPhones have been pretty clean from getting malware and things of that nature. However now a Mac hacker by the name of Charlie Miller found a way to get a bad app into your phone right under Apple’s nose. Apparently Miller is going to present a method that exploits a flow in Apples restriction on code signing on iOS devices at the SysCan conference in Taiwan next week. Miller actually planted a sleeper app in the app store to demonstrate this trick, an app can actually phone home to a remote pc that downloads new unapproved commands onto the device and executes them at will, including stealing photos, reading contacts, make the phone vibrate or play sounds or re-purposing normal iOS app functions for malicious gain. “Now you could have a program in the App Store like Angry Birds that can run new code on your phone that Apple never had a chance to check,” says Miller. “With this bug, you can’t be assured of anything you download from the App Store behaving nicely.”
Here is the video that will demonstrate the security vulnerability:

It has been announced today that Netflix and MGM have signed a multi-year licensing agreement that gives Netflix the exclusive subscription streaming service in the UK and Ireland the majority of their first run feature films from MGM. This deal is suppose to kick in at the start of 2012 when Netflix is set to launch in these two countries and the members will instantly be able to get this content on their TV’s, tablets, computers, game consoles and mobile phones. With this great news there is still no talk about the pricing structure for the streaming in these countries. From what I have read the exclusive streaming movies will be on Netflix within one year of the theater release are such movies as Zoo Keeper, 21 Jump Street, The Hobbit: There and Back Again, and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.