Following the announcement of the iPhone 4S release, there has been an overwhelming negative response. Apparently the entire media (tech and mainstream), and most of the population, had convinced themselves that the form-factor of the iPhone was going to change yesterday. And it would seem that looks are all we care about.

To start, the iPhone having a drastically redesigned case only one year after it was initially released is pretty un-Apple. For how many products do you see Apple completely redesigning the form on a yearly basis? Correct: none. That’s not Apple. It may be what some people want from Apple (after all, when they do redesign something—or design something new—it’s almost always awesome), but that’s not how they work. They refine and iterate to a final design internally, then launch to the public and make incremental changes over time. If the initial form wasn’t elegant enough to stand the test of time (which isn’t very long in the cell phone market), it would not have been released.

So yesterday we were introduced to the latest and greatest iPhone: the 4S. Consistent with all of Apple’s products, it iterated on an existing design. Unfortunately, this is as deep as most of the analysis of iPhone 4S has gone. It looks largely the same, so it’s not a big deal. Yeah, maybe there are some little tweaks inside but it LOOKS the same! How will all the people you pass on the street know you have THE COOLEST, LATEST iPhone?!

But what was really announced yesterday was monumental. It’s obvious why Apple needed a slightly longer release cycle to get this iPhone to market. Everyone seems to be overlooking these major points:

World phone

Remember antennagate? Not only has Apple fixed the problem, they leap-frogged the concerns to offer a CDMA-GSM-capable world phone that intelligently switches antennae to optimize transfer performance. And it supports HSPA+, which means effectively 4G speeds (twice iPhone 4).

Camera

Sure 8 mega pixels is nice, but new optics and sensors, a collection of new software for facial recognition, and auto-leveling of 1080P video? I just bought a nice, new point-and-shoot camera a few months ago, but I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if iPhone 4S out-performs it—particularly with video.

Processor

A5. Twice as fast a processor in a phone that was already universally considered to be the quickest, most responsive smartphone in the world. And if there was any doubt that iPhone was the greatest mobile gaming device available, that can be set aside now.

Battery

Not only is there a more powerful processor, heavier-lifting software and twice-speed data transfer, but battery life actually improved!

Interface

We saw hints of iOS5 over the summer and began to see how a new notifications center and deep Twitter integration could evolve how we use iPhone. Yesterday we saw how Siri could completely change how we interact with a device. This isn’t “read my touchscreen” voice control like Android introduced. This is intelligent, contextual, human language interaction. Remarkably, it was only 4 years ago that Apple redefined human-computer interaction with multi-touch. Now they have introduced the next major revolution in human-computer interaction. Siri alone would have been a monumental announcement. It will have enormous, far-reaching impacts in technology.

Sorry if you didn’t get your tapered case.

If an App Is Your Content Strategy, You Are Doomed

Bloomberg takes a look at newspapers and magazines that considered the iPad their savior.

Storyboarding iPad Transitions

Greg Nudelman walks through the amazing detail of iPad (and iPhone) animations and shares his thoughts on how to document their design for developers.

How To Build A Mobile Website

This deep dive from Smashing Magazine includes a lot of often-overlooked details of implementing a mobile website.

Progressive Signup: A Better User Signup Process

QuietWrite segments their users by step of the sign-up process to provide a low-effort account creation flow.

This Shell by the Gamits

Similar to what the Arcade Fire did a while back with incorporating video and HTML5, this hit the webs recently. It was created by some very cool folks at Legwork Studios as well as the Denver band, The Gamits.

Controlling text size in Safari for iOS without disabling user zoom

456 Berea Street takes a look at the intricacies of text scaling and orientation changes on iOS.

iOS Icons Made in Pure CSS

A stunning collection of iOS icon replications made purely with CSS. Be sure to use a webkit browser to check these out.

Learn HTML5, JavaScript and CSS With Mozilla’s Free “School of Webcraft”

Mashable runs down Mozilla’s expansion of their School of Webcraft to 30 classes.

Five UX antipatterns to avoid when designing Log-in & Registration areas

Harry Brignull uses real-world examples to remind us what NOT to do when designing log-in and registration flows.

Apple engineer re-creates ancient computer with Legos

I remember using a computer to control Lego models back in school. Now the computer itself is made of Legos!

Mies van der Rohe Society

An appropriately stunning website for one of history’s greatest designers.

Telescopic Text

A new take on “progressive reveal”.

iPhone and iPad now support TrueType font embedding. This is huge.

Jeffery Zeldman offers a quick run-down on TrueType support in iOS 4.2.

Elsewhere in the iOS Fonts world…

iOS Fonts tries to maintain a list of the fonts supported on the iPhone and iPad.

Google and Microsoft cheat on Slow-Start. Should you?

Ben Strong provides some interesting investigation on how Microsoft, Google and others violate RFC-3390 to decrease page load time.

Editorial SEO: Get an introduction and best practices.

An overview of SEO tactics for writers and editors by Rob Flaherty.

Farbzauber

Fun JavaScript technique for creating coloring book versions of your image.

Why professional logo design does not cost $5.

Jacob Cass explores what kind of logo you can get at what cost.

Design for content management systems.

Smashing Magazine offers some tips on optimizing your website design for a content management system.

Find your way with static maps.

Guidance from 24 Ways on implementing static maps using the same techniques you use for dynamic maps (and why you might want to do such a thing).

University websites do it all.

Based on our experience in the higher-education space, XKCD hit close to home.

Review the history of CSS Resets.

It doesn’t seem like CSS Resets have been around that long, but Michael Tuck starts a three-part series on them with a great history.

Ben the Bodyguard brings news.

Awesome site introducing a forthcoming app for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Chrome 7 overtakes IE7 to become the world’s third most-used browser.

Sitepoint’s latest data shows that Chrome is rapidly gaining usage.

Firefox Live streams warm fuzzies.

Finishing up with the cutest additions to the Web community this week, courtesy of the Mozilla Foundation.

HTML5-compatible video on the Web, October 2010: http://blog.mefeedia.com/html5-oct-2010

Preview of Adobe’s Edge prototype tool for HTML5: http://tv.adobe.com/watch/adc-presents/preview-of-the-edge-prototype-tool-for-html5-/

Need a lot of GUIDs fast? Online GUID Generator: http://www.guidgenerator.com/online-guid-generator.aspx

Smashing Magazine’s Review of popular Web font embedding services: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/10/20/review-of-popular-web-font-embedding-services/

High-level overview of JavaScript frameworks from Luke W: http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1220

Replicating iOS pagination with JavaScript for iPad: http://insideria.com/2010/10/replicate-the-ios-pagination-w.html

UX Matters’ take on Designing for Different Screen Sizes: http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2010/10/going-mobile-designing-for-different-screen-sizes-promoting-your-mobile-app.php

iScroll – provide content scrolling inside a fixed-size element in iOS: http://cubiq.org/iscroll

Detailed, step-by-step write-up on developing for Android: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/10/25/get-started-developing-for-android-with-eclipse/

I have been intrigued by Windows Phone 7 for some months now. Since the first previews earlier this year, I was caught by what looked like a unique mechanism for finding, navigating and sharing information. Today we got to see the first real-world examples of Windows Phone 7.

Pretty cool.

Honestly, I’m not a Microsoft fan. I love my iPhone. I have no interest in running anything but Linux at home. I use openoffice.org at home and at work.

Microsoft has done something awesome with Windows Phone 7, though. More…