iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, Android reviews

The Sennheiser PX 200-II i suffer from an incredibly stupid naming convention, but that doesn’t stop them from being a fantastic pair of portable headphones. They’re light and durable, produce some kick ass sound and minor sound isolation, and even include a slim in-line remote and microphone.

I’m so in love with the sound of the comfort that these headphones offer that I’ve been using them with my MacBook, iPad, and iPhone. The long 1.8 m cable is very helpful while I’m at my MacBook, and although it is a little long for those times I walk around with my iPhone in my pocket, it isn’t unmanageable.
In situations where the headphones are not in use, it takes only seconds to fold them up and put them in my laptop bag (the PX 200 IIs came with a cloth carrying pouch, but I have neglected to use it).

I always get a little bit antsy talking about sound quality and headphones because I’m not very comfortable with the jargon. For what it’s worth, these headphones seem to deliver very clear highs and mids, without overdoing it on the bass. The foam pads also help with noise isolation when walking on the streets or riding public transport, but I have found that I need to crank the volume up to about 50% to enjoy music in noisy areas (I normally stay at around 25%).

The in-line remote on the PX 200-II i is the complete package, and I love how the volume buttons and the play button are on different levels so that you can differentiate them by feel. The real surprise here, however, is how fantastic the microphone on the PX 200-II i is. Unlike many other earphones and headphones with built-in microphones, the PX 200-II i features a microphone that doesn’t need to be held up right to your face. You can simply let the wire hang naturally and trust the microphone to pick up all the sound. I use this microphone at my computer for dictating text, as well as for Skype calls, and haven’t heard any complaints about the sound quality. It’s a mighty good mic.

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve been using the PX 200-II i both on the go and at my desk, and have found it perfectly comfortable to use for hours of time. I do experience a light ache after four or five hours, but that’s nothing that a 20 minute break doesn’t fix. I can also confirm that the PX 200-II i can be used during workouts, but I don’t plan on making a habit out of doing so, for fear of stinking up the foam padding with sweat.

I have also taken the PX 200-II i out during long walks and have noticed that the steel band that holds the entire frame together can get quite warm. You don’t feel the temperature of the steel band when you’re actually wearing the PX 200-II i, but it’s definitely noticeable when you take the headphones off of your head and hang them from your neck.

I’m extremely happy with my PX 200-II i and have nothing but praise for its sleek design, awesome remote and microphone, wonderful fit, and great sound. The only real problem is that it can be difficult to find out which PX 200-II model to buy (the other versions have a much larger in-line remote). My particular model is the PX 200-II i with the lowercase “i” at the end, and it’s probably easiest to find on Amazon.com for about $110.

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The Sennhesier PX 200 II i was bought by the author for review on iSource. For further information regarding our site’s review policies, please see the “About” page.

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Ming-Chi Kuo, a Concord Securities analyst, is claiming via AppleInsider, that Apple shipped some 480,000 Apple TV units in Q2 of this year. This is a 70% uptick from the year-over-year quarter. This is no doubt do to the change in business model undertook when they replace to original Apple TV with the current model, which lacks a hard drive and has little on-board storage.Also in the report, Kuo makes the claim, with industry sources to back him, that there will be no new Apple TV for some time. This contradicts recent rumors and findings that suggest iOS 5 will bring full 1080p video support, with some suggesting that the current Apple TV hardware, with it’s A4 processor, may not be able to handle the load of such pixel-dense content. By extrapolation, Apple would need to release new hardware to handle to load- apparently this is not the case.

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Cult of Mac is reporting that Apple may be preparing to discontinue the Magic Mouse, in an attempt to direct users to the company’s Magic Trackpad offering, so that users can better utilize all of the multi-touch features in OS X Lion. The report’s source, who reportedly works in Apple Retail, claims that Apple simply isn’t replenishing stock of the Magic Mouse, as their stores run low on inventory.

Granted Apple has a long history of phasing out what they see as outdated technology, but I sincerely don’t believe they will phase out the mouse. It’s not so much that Apple makes a lot of money from Magic Mouse sales, as much as it’s a hole that Apple plugs. That is, they don’t make a lot of money off of them, but not selling them could be devastating, as it could drive users to purchase third-party products, or even other computer manufacturers (a stretch, I know).

Remember, Apple also offers a wired mouse called The Apple Mouse, which was formerly known as the Mighty Mouse, with a scroll ball on top, and a clickable shell to invoke features such as Expose.

In short, I find this report hard to believe. Perhaps Apple is going to phase out the Magic Mouse in favor of the Magic Trackpad, but more likely, Apple will phase out the Magic Mouse, with a new mouse that can handle more of the multi-touch features. Hell, we’ve seen Apple patents showing the company’s interest in new mouse technology.

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As part of its ongoing study of people and electronics, Retrevo has issued results of another user survey – this one on ‘Mobile Protection & Data’. It’s all about security awareness levels among ‘cellphone’ users – but since the three platforms covered are iOS, Android and Blackberry I’m just going to say smartphone users.

The headline conclusion of the survey:

Android Owners Are Most Unprepared

And some quick highlights of the study:

- 39% of Android owners haven’t done anything to prevent someone from misusing data on their cell phone if it were lost or stolen (compared to 30% of BlackBerry owners and 26% of iPhone owners.

- Only 32% of Android owners think their cell phones CAN get malware and 27% don’t know.

- 36% of iPhone owners think their cell phone CAN get malware and 30% don’t know.

- If they lost their cell phone today, only 18% of Android owners would use a recovery service to get their cell phone back, compared to 28% of BlackBerry owners and 37% of iPhone owners. 39% of Android owners don’t know how they would get their cell phones back, compared with 31% of BlackBerry owners and 26% of iPhone owners.

- BlackBerry (62%) and iPhone (61%) owners are the most likely to have password protection on their cell phone, compared to Android owners (only 49%).

Apple iPhone and BlackBerry owners come across as a safer set of phone owners and the responses to this question reinforce that with almost two thirds indicating they password protect their phones compared to half the Android owners. BlackBerry owners are up there with the iPhone owners when it comes to protecting their phones from prying eyes while more Android owners say they don’t do anything to safeguard their phones.

You can check out the full survey results here: http://www.retrevo.com/content/blog/2011/08/iphones-backups-and-toilets-connection

OK, I’m an iOS user all the way – maybe I’m expected to chuckle and say ‘Ha – look at how ignorant those Android users are’,  but I have to say my first reaction when I see these survey results is that they sound way, way off.

Not to pigeonhole people too much here, but my experience has been that most Android users are very tech-savvy. As much, or often more so than iPhone and iOS users. They’ve never struck me as being clueless about mobile data protection or security. I would argue that Android is inherently a less secure platform because of its openness, but I’d never argue that its users are unaware and unconcerned about security on their devices.

Well there you go – there’s my quota of defending Android users met for this week / month / lifetime. What do you all think? Are Android users really the least savvy when it comes to smartphones and security?

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Catching the most momentum in May, a Malware attack by the name of MacDefender, was spreading throughout the Mac community. It’s method of attack, was to trick less technically-savvy users into installing the malicious software by claiming to be an application needed to stop an attack. Instead of course, it is the attack, and after a user enter’s their credit card number and clicking OK to “remove the virus”, it was granted access to do it’s evil work. It all boiled down to a phishing scam for credit card numbers.

The situation soon ballooned into a tit-for-tat ballet between Apple and the MacDefender makers, one creating a patch to fix the problem, the other releasing a new variant to eschew the fix. Then suddenly it all stopped around June 18th, which is the last day Apple updated their patch to stop MacDefender.

Brian Krebs of KrebsonSecurity.com, suspects that the arrest of Pavel Vrublevsky the co-founder of ChronoPay, an online payment company known to be affiliated with the fake AntiVirus software market, had something to do with MacDefender’s disappearance. Vrublevsky’s arrest took place on June 23rd, just five days after the latest MacDefender variant was released on June 18th.

Krebs points to another report he wrote in May, wherein he showed evidence suggesting ChronoPay employees were involved, in some fashion, with the MacDefender attacks. ChronoPay later issued a statement denying any involvement. However, after the June 23rd police raids of ChronoPay’s offices in Moscow, evidence has come to light which suggested that the company was very much involved in the MacDefender attacks.

No one is accusing ChronoPay or Mr. Vrublevsky. However, the attacks did end shortly after ChronoPay’s office was raided, there was preexisting evidence suggesting they were involved, and the fact that the police raided them, all make for one hell of a coincidence, if they are indeed not guilty as they claim.

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Further extrapolating on earlier reports regarding Apple’s purported move to take movies to their iCloud service. Now, Jeffries analyst Peter Misek believes that Apple now has deals in place with movie studios and tv studios to offer a service similar to Netflix.

As we recently noted, Apple just the other day turned on iCloud services for Apple TV users, so that they can now stream previously purchased tv shows from the cloud. It’s also being reported that Apple is preparing to launch “iTunes Replay” which will do much the same for movies.

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China is the gift that keeps on giving. Only a week or so after news broke that the country was host to several fake Apple stores, we are now hearing reports that “iPhone 5? knockoffs, along with rubber cases for the next-generation iPhone are surfacing in that country.

Chinese counterfeiters got to work when they saw the recently leaked iPhone design plans, which may or may not have been authentic. It made the counterfeiters no difference, and knockoffs have now begun to surface. These devices being sold (~ $108 USD) as the “iPhone 5? run a JAVA-based OS, and feature MP3 and MP4 playback, and offer Wi-Fi support.

Although it does take cues from the leaked design images, it is not an exact copy. For starters, the home button is similar to previous iPhone models, and not the elongated form it takes in the design images. This device does feature tapered edges similar, but not the same as the design plans.

That leads us to the cases. MICGadget is reporting that cases being manufactured for the real next-generation iPhone are “now everywhere” in China. The cases show that the mute switch will be located on the opposite side of the device, while the device itself will be tapered along the edges.

In another report from 9to5Mac, these cases are compared to current iPhone 4 cases, and it shows that the next-generation iPhone may be slightly longer and wider than the current model. Again, these images show that the mute switch has been moved to the opposite side, and features rounded edges.

So, some crooks are trying to make a quick buck on some non-savvy buyers in China, while case manufacturers are rapidly pumping out molded rubber, ahead of the real, next-generation iPhone’s launch.

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