Revenge of the Sixth

Apple has announced the latest version of the iPhone. The iPhone 5 looks similar to previous models but has a larger screen and is lighter and thinner than the iPhone 4S. The company says the larger screen will make it easier to check and send e-mails and to view Web pages with the phone in your hand. The phone also comes with a new, faster processor called the Apple A6; and it connects to mobile carriers with a 4G LTE connection, making for speedier Internet browsing. If that alone doesn't serve as a good middle finger to the Android-based competition, I don't know what will. But it doesn't stop there: the iPhone 5 is 18% thinner and 20% lighter than the current version, the iPhone 4S. It has a 4-inch screen, measured diagonally, compared to a 3.5-inch screen on previous versions of the phone. It is the same width as the iPhone 4S, but is taller than that phone; and the iPhone 5 is made entirely of glass and aluminium. Those features are likely to be popular with consumers. Another, however, may cause some backlash. The new iPhone comes with a different-sized charging cord, meaning speakers and radios designed to work with the old iPhone cord won't function seamlessly with the new iPhone. The company did create an adapter, however, so that the old devices aren't useless. Apple calls this new cord "lightning," and says it is 80% smaller than the previous iPhone cord. Those are all nice features, but that's still not it because Apple also announced an update to its mobile operating system, iOS 6, which accommodates the larger iPhone 5 screen. The new operating system adds another row of icons to the phone's home screen, includes a new version of digital maps, and has a feature called Passbook. Passbook lets people pull up airline tickets or payment apps from the locked home screen. Apple also unveiled a new line of iPods, including an iPod nano with a 2.5-inch touchscreen. That device, which starts at US$150, is able to pause live radio. And Apple updated its headphones, now called Earpods, to have better audio quality and a new look. In other tech news, the good news is that Windows XP is no longer the world's most popular desktop operating system. But the bad news is that Windows 7 is now the world's most popular desktop operating system, according to the August report from Net Applications. In August, Windows 7 had a 42.76% market share, a fraction of a point more than Windows XP's 42.52%. The much-maligned Windows Vista sits at third place with a 6.15% market share, followed by Mac OS X 10.7 and Mac OS X 10.6 with 2.45% and 2.38%, respectively. Seriously, people. Come on. Apple's system software is clearly better than Microsoft's crap. And speaking of brown objects, a new product has popped up on the black market in New Bedford, Massachusetts. It's called chocolate syrup, and it's selling in an unexpected place: Greater New Bedford Vocational-Technical High School, which has become ground zero for a new underground economy based on trade in the contraband liquid. Students say some of their peers are buying it for 50 cents and squeezing it into cartons of white milk to give it flavour. It's their way of coping with, and circumventing, a federal ban on flavoured milk — and a long list of other items — that went into effect at the beginning of last month. I don't see how Obama could let this happen. The nutritional difference between white milk and chocolate-, strawberry-, or coffee-flavoured milk is too minimal to have an important impact on health. I'd rather the schools started openly selling crack instead of worrying about stupid little things like nutrition.