French based company, Parrot, who specialize in wireless devices for mobile phones have recently released their Augmented Reality Drone. The device, a Quadricopter, with forward and downward facing cameras, is controlled by any Apple iOS device (iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad) over a WiFi connection, and is the ultimate flying craft. “At Parrot, we have been developing wireless concepts for video games for 4 years. Our first project was a Bluetooth race car. We’ve developed it, but I was not satisfied. A video game should contain a part of a dream that I missed with the Bluetooth car,” explains Henri Seydoux, founder and CEO of Parrot. “It should fly! So I started the idea of the AR.Drone. With video cameras and a powerful computer, we have developed a very stable drone that is easy to control and flies like a dragonfly.”

The four blades of the Quadricopter are powered by brushless motors providing instant lift to the device, which also give it fantastic maneuverability through tight spaces. The A.R. Drone can be flown both indoors or outside using an iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad as the touchscreen controller, and ships with both a bumpered indoor body and a bumperless outdoor body.

Parrot’s substantial AR.Drone packaging cleverly incorporates a printed helipad, and includes a fully assembled quadricopter supplied ready to fly, after downloading a free copy of AR.FreeFlight from the App Store®, onto your iOS device, and charging the battery. The A.R. Drone features an autopilot facility to take itself off, hover at a predetermined height, and land automatically upon command.

To make the craft travel forwards, backwards and sideways, left or right, the pilot simply has to tilt the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch being used as the controller. In order to get the Drone to climb or drop, the pilot pushes the virtual joystick forward to back, releasing the joystick makes it hover, and pressing the land button makes it safely touch down. The Drone can be made to spin clock wise or anti clock wise by pushing the virtual joystick to the left or right.

Whilst learning all of these controls can be a little confusing initially, an adult with no prior experience of flying remote controlled toys, will master the Drone in no more than three hours of fly time. A child given their lack of fear and quicker adoption of technology will likely be able to halve this time. For safety, the rotors on the Drone will stop immediately should they make accidental contact with any obstacle. We tested this by convincing a daring friend to stick his finger in the way of the spinning blades, and he came away unnerved but unmarked.

The AR.Drone features a robust carbon fibre framework, with a tough expanded polypropylene foam protective body with bumpers for indoor use. A streamlined hull is provided for flying outside, with pairs of red and green LED lights conveniently fitted front and back for added effect, and to assist orientation.

The AR.Drone generates its own Wi-Fi connection with a range of up to fifty metres, and incorporates an onboard computer. A pair of electronic gyroscopes provide superb directional stability controlling the pitch, roll angle and yaw, even outdoors in light winds. Whilst an ultrasound altimeter maintains the height up to six metres, combined with an accelerometer designed to accurately detect horizontal and vertical movement.

A vertical and horizontal video camera selectively feed live footage to an on screen display on the iPhone® or similar, with a high speed of sixty frames a second providing stabilisation for the vertical camera. An innovative detection system will identify other AR.Drones, or tagged virtual objects, whilst validating the shots fired against an enemy, when used in conjunction with AR.FlyingAce software.

To show pilots exactly how to operate this sophisticated product, a comprehensive collection of instructional videos are available to teach both basic and advanced techniques. The AR.Drone includes a high capacity 1,000mAh lithium polymer battery and will fly for up to twelve minutes, whilst recharging in an hour and a half, using the mains charger and alternative international adaptors provided.

Having had an A.R. Drone to play with for three days I can safely say that this is the most fun that I have had with a gadget since I received my initial iPhone in 2007. My one gripe with the device is the limited battery life providing twelve minutes of flying time, however, when one sees the power generated by the four motors, this is no surprise, and increasing the battery would add excessive weight to the device reducing its agility in the air. Spare batteries are inexpensive and are readily available from Solution Centre.

The new service is available free of charge to all users of iOS5, which I wrote about in my last editorial and which runs on all iPod Touches, iPads and iPhones. Great to see is that Apple hans’t kept iCloud a closed system, they have given third party developers the ability to write iCloud capabilities into their applications so that content changed in an application on one device automatically syncs to the same application on your other devices.

Three New Applications
Apple has created three new apps for iCloud.
Documents in the Cloud - uploads Pages, Numbers, and Keynote ,(Apple’s versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint), documents to the cloud for syncing. For example, if you create a Keynote presentation on an iPad, Documents in the Cloud stores that presentation. Then, if you have an iPhone that syncs to the same iCloud account and that iPhone has Keynote, that presentation is available for editing on the iPhone.
Photo Stream - lets you take photos on any device and uploads them to sync with your other devices (for example, your iPhone shots appear on your iPad). Photo Stream also works with iPhoto on the Mac, and supports the second-generation Apple TV. Because photos are so large, Apple says that photo syncing works over Wi-Fi or ethernet, and Photo Stream has a limit of the last 1000 photos on iOS devices (unlimited on Macs and PCs). Photos remain on iCloud for 30 days after you upload them, but you can save them permanently on a device by moving them to a new or existing album.
iTunes in the Cloud - for songs that you’ve already purchased from the iTunes Store, there’s a Purchased button that shows your entire purchase history of songs (purchased on any device). You can view by all songs, recent songs, or by artist. You can then download any song or album with the touch of a button.
“This is the first time we’ve seen this in the music industry,” said Jobs. “No charge for multiple downloads on many devices.”
You can download music to up to 10 devices, and you can also enable an Automatic Downloads feature that will grab any new purchases you make on other devices.
Additional Features
iTunes Match
Unlike cloud based services from Google and Amazon that require you to upload your bulky music or video library to the web, Apple’s iCloud service features iTunes Match. iTunes will scan your tracks in iTunes regardless of whether they were copied from a friend, ripped from a music CD or dubbed from a cassette, if the songs are available in the iTunes store, Apple will give you access to the original tracks in 256kbps AAC format. iTunes Match does come with a price tag of $25.00 per year, but in my mind this is a very small price to pay to legitimize your huge collection of pirated music and replace it with  original recordings and live guilt free. For songs in your library that are not included in the 25million tracks sold by Apple on iTunes, they allow you to upload them for free to your iCloud account. So with iCloud you have benefit of your entire music collection available to you anywhere in the world on any of your iOS devices without spending years waiting for them to upload on your limited internet connection (for those of us in Southern Africa).
App Flexibility
iCloud lets you view your purchase history on the App Store, allowing you to re-download apps you previously purchased, at no additional charge, to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. It doesn't matter what device you used for the original purchase. When you purchase new apps, iCloud can push them to all your devices automatically. Similarly, with the iBooks app on your iOS device or the iBookstore on your desktop Mac or PC, you can get a list of your past book purchases and download these books again to any of your devices. When you buy a new book, it will appear everywhere. When you start reading on one device, iCloud will save your place. Your iBook bookmarks, highlighted text, or notes are automatically pushed to all your other devices.
Backing-Up
If you are signed up on iCloud, once a day, your content will automatically be backed up to the cloud. If you ever get a new iPhone, you enter your iCloud username and password and your data will automatically sync to that new device from the cloud. This includes your iTunes Store purchased music, applications, books, your camera rolls from your old device, video, settings and app data. 
Specifications and Availability
Each user gets 5GB of free storage for mail, documents, and backup. Fortunately, purchased music, apps, books, and Photo Stream photos don’t count against that total.
iCloud will be available from September this year, although users of iOS 4.3 can try out a beta of iTunes in the Cloud now by launching the iTunes app and clicking on the Purchased button.
My Clouded Vision
So to summaries, what do I think of iCloud? I am extremely excited, whilst at the same time a little apprehensive. The service if it is all that it was made out to be in the unveiling by Mr Jobs will be simply fantastic. It will save hours of searching for the right content on the right device and avoid moments of disappointment when I am wanting to show some content to someone and discover that it is on another device that I don't have with me at the time. I am apprehensive to see how well it syncs particularly for a user with more than one mail account and multiple address books. I fear too that given our limited connection speeds and internet caps in Zimbabwe, the service may become costly and result in half synced documents. Given Apple’s track record however, I have no reason to believe that it won’t operate as advertised, and like all of the company’s other initiatives, work like clockwork. I can’t wait to try it out.

For the iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches, Steve announced iOS 5 which will be available free as a download off of the internet, in September this year. For the Apple desktops and notebooks he announced Mac OS 10.7 code named “Lion” which will be available on the iTunes Application store from July this year, and finally, for all internet users regardless of whether they use Windows, Mac or Linux, he announced the iCloud service, which stores all of your content on the internet and wirelessly pushes it to your devices.

IOS 5

The new operating system for Apple’s iOS devices (iPods, iPads and iPhones) brings more than 200 new features to the devices. The top 10 features are as follows:

Notifications Center – a complete revamp of the notifications system to replace the annoying pop ups that come onto your screen catching you by surprise and then disappear before you can read them. It pulls together all notifications into one place accessible by swiping your finger down from the top of the screen. The Notifications Center essentially shows a list of different notifications organized by app. Non-obtrusive notification animation at the top of the screen that quickly goes away but can be easily accessed again later via Notifications Center. Improved lock screen shows more notifications. Sliding your finger across any notification takes you directly to the app where the notification came from. Notifications can also be individually dismissed or dismissed altogether.
News Stand – is similar to the iBook app and makes it easier to access newspapers and magazines on iOS devices with an integrated subscriptions feature. Content is downloaded in the background for you to read when you have time.
Twitter – is now deeply integrated into iOS. It uses single sign-on similar to Facebook’s single sign-on. Twitter becomes a native app and gets its own pane in the settings menu. Twitter is also integrated into native apps such as Camera and Photos, so that you can tweet directly from those apps. You can also tweet from Safari, YouTube videos, and from Maps. Contact photos can also be pulled directly from Twitter profiles.
Safari – a new Safari Reader button has been added that pops up in the address bar, just like how it does on Safari for desktops. It reformats pages to make it easier to read on an iPhone or iPad, and can also email contents of stories compete with its link.
Reading List – allows you to pull various articles together to look at later, much like third-party service “Read It Later.” It syncs across all iOS devices so that if you didn’t finish reading something on your iPad, you can finish it on your iPhone or iPod Touch.
Reminders – a native to-do app that can create virtual post-its and assign reminders and locations to different notes.
Camera – can be accessed faster directly from the lock screen. The most impressive feature for me is that the volume button can now be used as the shutter button to take the photo. You can now pinch-to-zoom and you can hold your finger on part of an image to set autofocus and exposure lock. You can also edit your photos natively, such as red-eye reduction, quick-enhance, and cropping tools.
Mail – now gets rich-text formatting, indentation support, draggable addresses, and flagging to mark mail items unread. Search now works across the entire message, not just the subject. Better enterprise support with S/MIME support added for encryptions. The new split-keyboard option for iPad, makes typing more convenient with thumb use.
PC Free – in the past, the iOS devices needed a computer through which they were activated. With iOS 5, the device no longer needs to be synced with your desktop computer. A new iPhone or iPad will automatically setup and activate. Software updates are now over-the-air and there are now delta updates, which means you can download just what’s changed instead of the entire OS.
Game Center – is now more social. Adding photos and you can even compare yourself against your friends and friends of friends. It also offers Friends and game recommendations, and upport for turn-by-turn games.
iMessages – is a native enhancement to messaging. It brings the features of conversation messaging found on the iPhone, to the iPad and iPod Touch. You can message with individuals and groups, receive delivery receipts and read receipts. It supports text, photo and video messaging, all over 3G and WiFi networks and is encrypted.

MAC OS X.7 - LION

Lion will take over from Snow Leopard next month as the latest release of the Mac X series of operating systems, making it the eighth cat in the family. Lion brings with it over 250 new features. Lion will only run on Intel based Macs that sport a Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7 or Xeon processor. Thus it will run on any machine released by Apple in the last four years. Lion will be the first Apple operating system to be distributed via the App store as a download, and it is yet to be seen how this will effect countries such as Zimbabwe with limited download speeds. Given that the download is four gigabytes, it may present challenges, however there will be solutions from registered Apple Resellers.

Below is a wrap up of in my opinion the 10 most key enhancements coming out in Lion:
Multi-Touch Gestures – Apple has taken a lot of what it has learned from the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch and integrated it into the new OS, providing disappearing scroll bars, fluid momentum based scrolling, swiping, and taps.
Full Screen Apps – All native apps now have a full screen mode that take advantage of every pixel on the screen. There is a new Full-Screen button. You can have more than one full-screen apps running at the same time. You can three-finger swipe to the right to go back to your desktop without closing the full-screen app.
Mission Control – Combines the great features of Expose and Spaces. A simple three-finger swipe upwards takes you into Mission Control which is a bird-eye view of everything going on in your system. It makes multiple desktops and multiple full-screen apps, all easy to see and get to.
Mac App Store – Built-in to Lion. In-app purchases, push notifications, sandboxing for better security, and delta updates.
LaunchPad – A pinch motion makes all your applications fly onto your screen. The screen looks very similar to the iPhone and iPad icons grid interface, one of the best enhancements to the iOS in the release of 4.
Resume – Brings you right back to where you were when you quit an application. It works system wide, not just in apps.
Auto Save – Lion will automatically saves everything for you in the background. Adds a new History dropdown to your menu bar including Lock, Duplicate, Revert to Last Opened, and Browse All Versions.
Versions – can take manual snapshots, only changes are stored, not entire document in each version. It looks a lot like Time Machine, but works per document rather than your whole system. You can even cut and paste between the versions.
AirDrop – is a very easy way to share files on a peer-to-peer WiFi-based network. Your system automatically detects who else around you is also running AirDrop. You can drag and drop files to them in this way. Auto-discovery, auto-setup. Confirmations on both sides just to be safe, and all transferred data is encrypted.
Mail – The mail interface has been revamped with full height message, favorites bar, and message snippets. New search suggestions, boolean searches, and conversation views.

These are just some of the great features coming out in iOS5 and Lion, but in true Apple form we are likely to find many hidden gems within the releases that make our user experience even better.

In the next edition of the e Zone, I will be writing on the much talked about iCloud Service that was also announced at WWDC.

In addition to Thunderbolt, Apple made a few internal changes to the machines that make it faster than ever.  They opted for the AMD Radeon HD graphics cards and Intel’s Quad-Core Sandy Bridge processors and offer the option of Solid State Hard Drives.  These internal enhancements together with the speed of Thunderbolt to connect to external devices as fast as if they were inside the machine, turn what was intended to be a family friendly eye catching machine into a lightening fast powerhouse that may even be fast enough for professional video production.

The iMac comes in four different standard configurations, two of which sport a 21.5” screen and two of which have the huge 27” screen.  All the machines have four cores of processing, with the lower spec 21.5” containing the 2.5GHz whilst the higher spec 21.5” has the 2.7GHz Quad-Core i5.  The lower spec 27” has the 3.2GHz i3 whilst the top spec 27” machine has the 2.8GHz Quad-Core i5. All four models ship with 4GB of DDR3 RAM installed as two 2GB DIMMs, which is upgradable to 16GB. In terms of storage, all the iMacs have a 1 Terabyte 7,200RPM SATA Hard Drive, with the exception of the entry level 21.5”, which has a 500GB.  The two Thunderbolt ports on the back of the top spec 27” machine means that it is now capable of powering up to four external displays given the dual-channel nature of each port. On the side of the screen you will find a Dual Layer DVD writer which will allow you to burn up to 8GB on a dual layer disk.  Underneath the DVD writer, there is an SD card slot allowing you to read data directly off the card from your digital camera.  The iMacs are ready to use right out of the box, and ship with an Apple Wireless keyboard and Magic Mouse.

For Windows lovers, the iMac can run your chosen version of Microsoft’s operating system in one of two ways. By purchasing a piece of software from either Parallels or VMWare, a user can install a virtual environment on top of the Mac Operating System. Within this virtual environment, one can install the operating system of one’s choice. The second alternative is to partition the machine’s hard drive into two virtual drives, one containing the Mac Operating System and one containing the Windows or alternative operating system. On booting up the machine, the user can select which operating system he or she would like to work in.

So to wrap-up, could a pro-level user, someone who spends their days in Photoshop or Final Cut or even Premier be happy here?  Yes, surprisingly, they could -- especially with the addition of an internal SSD (an $800 option for 240GB) and a high-speed external storage array connected via Thunderbolt.  It wouldn't be our choice, and whether it makes sense to buy something like this in preference to a dedicated machine such as an 8 Core Mac Pro with an external display is another question entirely but, if you wanted to, you certainly could.

For ease of setup, aesthetic appeal, and overall performance and flexibility, the iMac is as hard to ignore as ever.
 

For the iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches, Steve announced iOS 5 which will be available free as a download off of the internet, in September this year. For the Apple desktops and notebooks he announced Mac OS 10.7 code named “Lion” which will be available on the iTunes Application store from July this year, and finally, for all internet users regardless of whether they use Windows, Mac or Linux, he announced the iCloud service, which stores all of your content on the internet and wirelessly pushes it to your devices.

IOS 5

The new operating system for Apple’s iOS devices (iPods, iPads and iPhones) brings more than 200 new features to the devices. The top 10 features are as follows:

Notifications Center – a complete revamp of the notifications system to replace the annoying pop ups that come onto your screen catching you by surprise and then disappear before you can read them. It pulls together all notifications into one place accessible by swiping your finger down from the top of the screen. The Notifications Center essentially shows a list of different notifications organized by app. Non-obtrusive notification animation at the top of the screen that quickly goes away but can be easily accessed again later via Notifications Center. Improved lock screen shows more notifications. Sliding your finger across any notification takes you directly to the app where the notification came from. Notifications can also be individually dismissed or dismissed altogether.
News Stand – is similar to the iBook app and makes it easier to access newspapers and magazines on iOS devices with an integrated subscriptions feature. Content is downloaded in the background for you to read when you have time.
Twitter – is now deeply integrated into iOS. It uses single sign-on similar to Facebook’s single sign-on. Twitter becomes a native app and gets its own pane in the settings menu. Twitter is also integrated into native apps such as Camera and Photos, so that you can tweet directly from those apps. You can also tweet from Safari, YouTube videos, and from Maps. Contact photos can also be pulled directly from Twitter profiles.
Safari – a new Safari Reader button has been added that pops up in the address bar, just like how it does on Safari for desktops. It reformats pages to make it easier to read on an iPhone or iPad, and can also email contents of stories compete with its link.
Reading List – allows you to pull various articles together to look at later, much like third-party service “Read It Later.” It syncs across all iOS devices so that if you didn’t finish reading something on your iPad, you can finish it on your iPhone or iPod Touch.
Reminders – a native to-do app that can create virtual post-its and assign reminders and locations to different notes.
Camera – can be accessed faster directly from the lock screen. The most impressive feature for me is that the volume button can now be used as the shutter button to take the photo. You can now pinch-to-zoom and you can hold your finger on part of an image to set autofocus and exposure lock. You can also edit your photos natively, such as red-eye reduction, quick-enhance, and cropping tools.
Mail – now gets rich-text formatting, indentation support, draggable addresses, and flagging to mark mail items unread. Search now works across the entire message, not just the subject. Better enterprise support with S/MIME support added for encryptions. The new split-keyboard option for iPad, makes typing more convenient with thumb use.
PC Free – in the past, the iOS devices needed a computer through which they were activated. With iOS 5, the device no longer needs to be synced with your desktop computer. A new iPhone or iPad will automatically setup and activate. Software updates are now over-the-air and there are now delta updates, which means you can download just what’s changed instead of the entire OS.
Game Center – is now more social. Adding photos and you can even compare yourself against your friends and friends of friends. It also offers Friends and game recommendations, and upport for turn-by-turn games.
iMessages – is a native enhancement to messaging. It brings the features of conversation messaging found on the iPhone, to the iPad and iPod Touch. You can message with individuals and groups, receive delivery receipts and read receipts. It supports text, photo and video messaging, all over 3G and WiFi networks and is encrypted.

MAC OS X.7 - LION

Lion will take over from Snow Leopard next month as the latest release of the Mac X series of operating systems, making it the eighth cat in the family. Lion brings with it over 250 new features. Lion will only run on Intel based Macs that sport a Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7 or Xeon processor. Thus it will run on any machine released by Apple in the last four years. Lion will be the first Apple operating system to be distributed via the App store as a download, and it is yet to be seen how this will effect countries such as Zimbabwe with limited download speeds. Given that the download is four gigabytes, it may present challenges, however there will be solutions from registered Apple Resellers.

Below is a wrap up of in my opinion the 10 most key enhancements coming out in Lion:
Multi-Touch Gestures – Apple has taken a lot of what it has learned from the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch and integrated it into the new OS, providing disappearing scroll bars, fluid momentum based scrolling, swiping, and taps.
Full Screen Apps – All native apps now have a full screen mode that take advantage of every pixel on the screen. There is a new Full-Screen button. You can have more than one full-screen apps running at the same time. You can three-finger swipe to the right to go back to your desktop without closing the full-screen app.
Mission Control – Combines the great features of Expose and Spaces. A simple three-finger swipe upwards takes you into Mission Control which is a bird-eye view of everything going on in your system. It makes multiple desktops and multiple full-screen apps, all easy to see and get to.
Mac App Store – Built-in to Lion. In-app purchases, push notifications, sandboxing for better security, and delta updates.
LaunchPad – A pinch motion makes all your applications fly onto your screen. The