Wooden Keyboard Accessories

It sounds a bit strange to have an accessory for your wireless keyboard (which is, after all, an accessory itself) but Combine Collective in Canada make a fantastic hardwood tray to hold you keyboard, trackpad and other bits and pieces. 

Go on, have a flick through over their website and tell me that this isn't a great bit of design. If only I had a Mac desktop or a Mac Mini with which to use this. Hmm - idea!

iOS Feature Request

Link Syncing - it would be really nice if, possibly via iTunes, I could sync Safari bookmarks between my iPhone and my iPad so that, whichever device I have to hand, I always have my bookmakers. Actually, that sounds like an idea for an app that works on both devices and syncs wirelessly via a third-party server component. Hmm.

iOS 4.2 for iPad walkthrough

iOS 4.2 is almost here. Get the details from tipb.com.

http://www.tipb.com/2010/11/07/ios-42-ipad-walkthrough-2/

MacBook Air; Wow. Just Wow.

It's thin. Very thin, and quite fast, possibly very fast (a quick play in the Regent Street store isn't a good test but there was no obvious difference between the operation of the Air and the Pro). It switches off and on pretty much instantly (by the time the screen is open it is lit and ready for use) so you'll be up and running as soon as you get it out of your bag and it's ridiculously light. The screen is pretty good, the keyboard is physically present (unlike the iPad) and it looks fantastic.

Downsides? It's not cheap at £849, and 64Gb storage isn't going to be enough for the MacBook Air to be a primary machine (try storing your movies, photos and music in such a small space). For power users the screen is too small, the processor too slow (editing movies is probably a no-no) and the lack of an optical disc drive could be an issue.

Would I buy one? I think the answer is a definite "Yes, if I didn't already have an iPad". As it is I'll probably wait for the new MacBook Pros (a refresh is due any week now if Apple stick to their normal MBP upgrade cycle) before making a decision.

iPhone Feature Request: Wifi Dumping

Not the best title but all I could come up with this early in the
morning. The problem is that the iPhone will try to connect to any
wifi hotspot through which it passes, which is fine as long as it
succeeds but far too often the hotspot doesn't allow the connection.
When this happens it can take ages for the phone to realise and revert
to 3G which prevents data downloads and interrupts whatever it was you
were trying to do.

This problem is particularly apparent when you at in an area with lots
of hotspots or when you're moving around a lot. I notice it when I'm
on the bus in South London - there's a lot of wifi coverage but most
of it isn't open for casual use.

The answer, I think, is for these random hotspots to be presumed
closed until they deliver data, at which point 3G download can end.
Until then the 3G service should be used so that data availability is
maximised.

Researchers Claim Some Android Apps Covertly Send GPS Data to Advertisers

Do you really want an Android phone if the apps can send private data to unknown third-parties without your knowledge? It would worry me...

http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2010/09/some-android-apps-found-to-covertly-send-gps-data-to-advertisers.ars

Thoughts on iOS 4.2 Beta for iPad: Highlights and Disappointments

Good rundown of the new features and improvements coming to the iPad in iOS 4.2. Can't wait.

http://feeds.smokingapples.com/~r/Smoking-Apples/~3/ZsLTe-hLetE/

Minor problems with Evernote for iPad and iPhone

Don't get me wrong; Evernote is a great for taking notes and accessing them through multiple clients and methods and my life would be rather less well organised without it. My problem is that the iOS clients for Evernote are often, for no discernible reason, unable to display synced notes. This is very annoying and makes it difficult sometimes to work on a note, even when it was created on my iPad, when I'm offline or away from my desk (as now, for example, when I'm on an aeroplane).

Another grumble is the lack of rich-text editing (although I think this is promised for a future release). These features are available in the desktop clients but font settings and other elements (tick boxes, for example) are stripped out when notes are viewed in the iOS clients, making the features somewhat less than useful for anyone working with a multi-OS setup.

Minor gripes, to be sure, but annoying enough that I would consider switching to another note app if one appeared with the same features and an Evernote importer.

People still queuing to buy iPhone 4

It seems strange, but yesterday people were still queuing outside the
Apple store in Covent Garden to buy iPhone 4. It's a great phone but
I'm surprised supplies are still so short.

David Beach's Blog: Developing for Android

Great article on the problems of Android, particularly in comparison with iOS.

http://www.itsbeach.com/blog/2010/08/developing-for-android.html

First impressions - new Apple TV

Wow. Some change. Buying, syncing and local storage are out, renting and streaming are in. That's a pretty radical turnaround and, to be honest, I'm not yet sure that it works for me and the way I currently manage my media. I quite like having it all synced across for immediate access so moving to a streamed model will be a bit of a change; do I want to leave my desktop running just so that I can listen to music or watch a movie?

The answer is no, not really, but it isn't really a major inconvenience to turn on the PC if I want to consume local media and, if the new Apple TV works as well as advertised with iPads and iPhones, then it probably isn't a big issue. So the long and the short of it is that I still plan to buy a new Apple TV when they are available and I'll just have to change the way things are organised. I might even buy a Mac Mini to act as local media storage. More comment once they've been launched.

Just How Bad Is Flash on Android?

Follow the trail to find a video demonstrating the problems with Flash on the Nexus One. The comments make for interesting reading as well.

Just How Bad Is Flash on Android?

Daring Fireball

Ian Betteridge:

What does this demonstrate? Simply that the idea that Apple could simply magically put Flash on the iPad (which runs a processor in the same class as the Nexus One) is fantasy. Ignoring the broader reasons for Apple wanting to keep Flash off its platform, it's clear that Flash is simply too processor-intensive to work properly on mobile-class processors as currently specified.

 ★ 

Rumor Roundup: Tomorrow’s Apple Event

Nobody know what Steve Jobs will announce tomorrow, but here is a reasonable roundup of the rumours.

http://theappleblog.com/2010/08/31/rumor-roundup-tomorrows-apple-event/

Apple Special Event Taking Place September 1

So we have a date for the updates to the iPod range. I'm not normally too interested in iPods (the iPhone handles music pretty well) but I think the next model of the Touch could be pretty good.

That said, what I'm really interested in is the new iTV, which I expect to buy if it is as good as the Rumours suggest it might be. Actually, I'm expecting it to be better than the rumours - Apple has a way of springing surprises - but there's no way to know. Roll on Wednesday.  

Apple Special Event Taking Place September 1
http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/25/apple-event-september/

Could Apple be preparing a competitor to Google Voice?

Information on Google Voice is a little tricky to come by if you are outside the US; when you visit their website you get a brief, uninformative description and a login box but as soon as they work out that you are not in the US you get a nice message telling you that you are not in the US and that the service is unavailable. That means that, in the UK at least, Google Voice has a very low profile; it sounds like a really neat service that would have huge benefits for people who travel or who work from more than one location (which is pretty much everyone I know) but there's no way to be sure.

So what makes me think that Apple might be preparing an alternative? Three things:
1) It sounds very much like the sort of service that Apple might like to offer; it is a potentially complex service that offers opportunities for convergence between mobile and desktop hardware where exceptional design skills could deliver noticeable advantages over Google's offering.
2) Apple's rejection of the Google Voice for iPhone app might be seen as part of a long game that will end with the launch of an Apple iVoice product.
3) Apple's enormous new data centre, believed to be the power behind the rumoured iTV product, may also be intended as a base for an iVoice service.

This is all very thin and highly speculative, but from what I've heard of Google Voice an Apple alternative could be a really attractive service. We wait for news.

Author: Kindle eBooks Outselling Apple iBooks 60-to-1

The ratio sounds a bit high to me, but I'm not surprised that Kindle is outselling iBooks.

http://www.cultofmac.com/author-kindle-ebooks-outselling-apple-ibooks-60-to-1/56015

Minimalist living with Apple's iDevices

I stopped using CDs a few years ago when the wife got an iPod and we transferred all our music to iTunes. DVDs lasted a bit longer because there weren't any simple online alternatives but now we buy everything either through iTunes or Sky TV. Thanks to iBooks and Kindle for iPad, books have now gone the same way and all my entertainment media is now digital; I have passed beyond the physical.

It has taken me a while to realise exactly what it is that Apple have accomplished. Setting aside the qualities of their traditional computers, the combination of iTunes, their portable media devices (iPod, iPad and iPhone) and Apple TV has delivered a complete system for the consumption (and, to a lesser extent, creation) of entertainment products (movies, music, books, photos and magazines). To the fan of minimalist living, for whom books are the bleached flesh of dead trees, DVDs are bits of elegantly processed plastic and magazines are a sort of high-res advert, the ability to handle these datasets in the digital domain is liberating.

Where once we collected objects as status symbols or testaments to our wealth or societal position, now we recognise that instead these items tie us to a single location, restricting our freedom and constraining us to act in manners prescribed by the vendors of these products. Apple, whether deliberately or as a by-product of their focus on design and ease-of-use, have created a product set that enable us to consume on demand without devoting resources to the storage and maintenance of the media.

If the rumours are to be believed, and Apple are planning to move the storage of digital media online (which might explain the construction of their mammoth new data centre), then maybe even the backup of our media is to be handled automatically by offsite agents, severing the last tie between the user and physical media. If even the backup is remote, untouchable and transparent, physical media are truly obsolete. Sounds good to me; now all I have to do is work out how to upload my books.

Marco.org - A smartphone retrospective

Marco Arment, lead developer of Tumblr and Instapaper, has posted (http://www.marco.org/980434663) on the developments in the smart phone market after the iPhone was launched in 2007 and the possible changes that seem to be coming on the back of the iPad launch. Interesting stuff.

Some more thoughts on Kindle v iBook

I've been using my iPad to read books pretty much since I bought it, and I've bought maybe a dozen iBooks and Kindle titles (as well as a ton of free, classic texts). I have, therefore, read enough to comment on the experience.

There were two real criticisms of reading on the iPad. First, the backlit LCD screen of the iPad was felt to have a disadvantage over the passive e-ink display of the Kindle. Second, Amazon's huge library gave them a head start in terms of content.

The first of these is likely to be a personal preference thing. I haven't spent any time with the Kindle hardware, but using the iPad for an extended period of reading isn't something I have found to be tiring. You might be different, but if you play with the settings in either the Kindle or iBooks apps you'll probably be able to find some combination of colour scheme and brightness setting that suits you.

The second problem is a bit more real. Amazon's library is larger and, for all the books I've checked, cheaper. This means that my default store for books is Amazon's website rather than Apple's iBooks store, even though, to be honest, I'd rather buy through iBooks. Apple's selection is also much smaller than Amazon's and it doesn't seem to be growing very fast.

So if you've got an iPad you probably don't need to buy a Kindle. If you've got a Kindle and you only ever want to read books you probably don't need to buy an iPad. However, if you've got neither, you can afford the iPad and you want to do something more than read a book, the iPad is the obvious choice.

Microsoft demonstrates compatibility features in Office 2011 for Mac

One of the things that prevent me from switching to an Apple laptop is the fear that documents created in MS Office might not be readily interchangeable between PC and Mac versions. I have no evidence to support this prejudice, but Microsoft's recent push to bring the two versions closer together with the next release release of Office for Mac is welcome news:

Microsoft on Wednesday released a new video highlighting new ways that Office 2011 for Mac users will be able to work with data in Excel and new photo editing tools, all compatible with Office for Windows.

Source: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/08/18/microsoft_demonstrates_compatibility_features_in_office_2011_for_mac.html

Photojojo lenses for your mobile phone

The camera on the iPhone 4 is really pretty good. The only thing it really lacks in order to replace my Casio Exilim is an optical zoom function and, if I'm honest, I wouldn't want to add a zoom lens if it meant doubling the depth or increasing the weight of my phone.

One alternative, which I hadn't really considered before today, is an external lens that attaches to the body of the phone. These things have been around for some time in the form of special cases, or impractical clip-ons, but Photojojo (http://photojojo.com/store/awesomeness/cell-phone-lenses/) have a new range that seems to offer a decent tradeoff between cost, size and quality. At $40 a set they're not all that expensive and the sample pictures look fairly good.

The only downside I can see at the moment is that you have to attach a magnetic ring of some sort to the back of your phone so that the lenses have something to which they can adhere but that probably isn't too serious, as long as the ring is low-profile.

Anyway, Photojojo have both fisheye and combo wide-angle/macro lenses in the range and they look pretty interesting; I hope to check them out later in the year.

Makeshift iPad Stand; a battery, a desk and some tape

So now I have a make-shift iPad stand on my desk, constructed from the desk itself and a battery taped to the shelf (see awful photo below). It actually works reasonably well and I'm able to type properly on my wireless keyboard without worrying if either it or my iPad will slide off my lap.

What this says to me is that a little imagination and some tape is enough to construct a usable working environment from an iPad and a keyboard. That gives me hope that, sooner or later (probably after iOS 4.0 brings multi-tasking to the iPad) I'll be able to dump the laptop on business trips and rely fully on my Apple Combo. Till then, I'll stick with the Lenovo.

Apple at Covent Garden

I saw a couple of videos of the opening of the new Apple store in Covent Garden, which is just around the corner from my office. What I don't understand is the apparent jubilation of the first people entering the store, high-fiving the staff as they go in and cheering. What is wrong with these people? It's a shop! A large, expensive, impressive shop, I will admit, full of interesting spaces and neat products, but a shop nonetheless.

Except that, while I wouldn't want to engage in such behaviour, I do understand why people are excited. Apple's stores, especially the larger ones, are undeniably attractive. They deliver not only great products but also a great shopping experience (if you don't believe me, go and play with the iPhone in an Apple store and get a demo from a staff member, then do the same thing in a Nokia store and watch for the differences) and, after years of visiting stores where you can touch but not operate the high-tech gizmos and the sales staff are, at best, useless, it is a refreshing change to deal with Apple's knowledgeable, interested and enthusiastic staff.

Apple aren't the first electronics company to try their hand at retail (Sony have had shops for years and Gateway had a modest retail estate in the late nineties) but they're the first to make their shops as cool as their products and that, I think, is the key; not only are the products right, the whole experience is right.

Apple's Bluetooth Keyboard; first impressions after an hour of use

I've taken the plunge and bought one of Apple's Wireless Bluetooth Keyboards to use with my iPad (the wife has a Keyboard Dock - more on that later). It is undeniably beautiful, a masterpieces of consumer electronics and a delight to use, but it does have a few problems or, at least, unusual operating features when compared to the touch keyboard. For example, when tying on the physical keyboard, the iPad doesn't capitalise the first letter of sentences or translate "iphone" to "iPhone', or convert "i" to "I".

A more serious complaint is that the @ and " marks have been reversed so that the @ sits on the 2 key, which you would expect on a US keyboard but not on a UK keyboard. Then there are the shortcuts; quite a few of these work as they would on a normal computer (cmd-c for Copy, cmd-v for paste etc.) but there aren't very many of them so you can't, for example, jump to the address box in Safari without tapping the screen. This isn't a huge problem, and there's a reasonable chance that things will improve in iOS 4.0, but it does seem a bit strange.

Then there are a couple of minor niggles. You can't as far as I can tell, change the key repeat speed (I like my keys to repeat quickly). It's also glaringly obvious that Mail and Pages haven't been setup for use with a physical keyboard, so although cmd-backspace will delete a whole word (as you would expect) you will be left with a double space, or a space followed by a full-stop depending on your starting point. Again, not a big problem, just a modest lack of sophistication.

Having said that, there are a few cmd shortcuts and they work well. I like being able to delete whole words and sentences, or sections of text by shift-selecting with the cursor keys. Typing is definitely faster on a physical keyboard, but the iPad is still primarily a touch device and, sooner or later, you need to go back to the screen to make a selection. One unexpected example of this is the selection of a URL from the list suggested by Safari once you've typed in the first few letters; you can't use the cursor keys to move through the list as you would on a desktop.

So, overall, a great keyboard. It's light, easy to use and, unusually in my experience of Bluetooth-connected devices, reliable. Integration with iOS 3 is ok but not great, so although I would recommend the keyboard if you want to do a lot of typing (and there really isn't any other reason to buy a keyboard) you need to be aware that it has a few shortcomings. Apple have a great opportunity to address some of these complaints in the next version of the iPad's operating system (promised for the Autumn) so now we wait, eagerly, and hope.

Microsoft losing to Apple on Campus

This is a pretty striking graph (source) and it clearly shows Apple's renaissance since the launch of the iPod in October 2001, although it took a couple of years for the halo effect to show up here.



Also of interest is the table showing the number of Linux users falling quickly from a peak in 2004 (77 of 3,037) to 8 (of 3,156) in 2009. It seems that hair shirts are also falling out of fashion.

iPad and iOS 4.0 - we wait, hopefully

The more I use my iPad and iPhone 4, the more I appreciate the improvements in the newer version of the operating system. It isn't really the multi-tasking, or the improved spell-checker, or the combined email Inbox, although all of these are desirable. The thing I really want, more than any of these other features, is the persistence between sessions so that, when I want to check my email when I'm halfway through catching up on Flipboard, I don't then have to start again from the beginning of the app.

iOS 4 is supposed to hit the iPad sometime in the autumn, but that's about all we know. Roll on autumn.

Minimal iPad stand - neat, very neat

I wonder if it would work with one of Apple's new Magic Trackpads?One of these stands, a Bluetooth keyboard and an iPad and you have the ultimate minimal desktop computer. Very cool.

Article: New Syndicate trademarks filed by EA! WHAT COULD IT MEAN?

Interesting story on Arstechnica. In my fevered imagination this can mean only one thing - Syndicate is coming to the iPad! There is no evidence to support this of course, except for a feeling, probably because I read the story on Flipboard, but how cool would it be?

New Syndicate trademarks filed by EA! WHAT COULD IT MEAN?
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/08/new-syndicate-trademarks-filed-by-ea-what-could-it-mean.ars

(Sent from Flipboard)

Vitally important wallpaper message

If you're after a set of "Don't Panic" wallpapers for your iDevices, have a look at this one on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/johncodywalton/4487187179/in/set-72157614267941266/

Everyone knows where "Don't Panic" is from, right?

iPad Screen Cleaning

It might have an oleophobic screen but the iPad picks up fingerprints like you wouldn't believe. The only time you can type without marking the screen is immediately after you've washed your hands in hot water; this doesn't last.

Removing grease and fingerprints from the screen can be a bit of a challenge. Cleaning it with you shirt cuff doesn't really work. Jumpers and sweatshirts tend to be pretty useless as well. You can use tissues but they're not much more effective than wiping an inverted iPad over your jeans, which doesn't do much more than smear the grease. Oakley sunglasses bags work reasonably well but take a fair amount of effort. I haven't tried carpets but I don't think I'd advise their use. Soft velvet curtains might work and you might find one in your local National Trust property, but that's not a very practical solution (and the NT room stewards can be a bit scary if they think you're damaging their charges).

So what are your remaining options? I've found that the best tool for cleaning the screen of my iPad is the cleaning cloth supplied with our LG LCD TV, which works really well. No idea what it is made from, so this advice is not going to be uniformly helpful, but if you've got an LG LCD TV kicking around you should find that the green cloth they include in the box is really good and fits easily into many iPad cases for handy carrying.

Your Flipboard is Ready to Customize

I had an email from Flipboard this morning (see below) telling me that I could now configure the app to work with my Facebook and Twitter accounts. Having now done this, I can tell you that Flipboard is a really nice way to consume these sites, far nice, in fact (in my opinion, and after only a short time playing with them) than either the the websites or apps of these sties (there isn't a dedicated Facebook iPad app - you can use the iPhone app, or the website, but that's it).

The Twitter integration is particularly impressive. Rather than simply giving you a list of tweets, which would be a little dull (I can't see myself wanting to use another Twitter client, to be honest, except to post new tweets), Flipboard pulls in some of the photos and stories linked from the tweets (should "tweets" be capitalised?) and presents them in the "standard" Flipboard magazine format. This looks great and works really well.

If you've got an iPad, Flipboard is the killer app you must install. If you haven't got an iPad, get one, then install Flipboard.   

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Flipboard, Inc." <no-reply@flipboard.com>
Date: 29 July 2010 01:19:09 GMT+01:00
Subject: Your Flipboard is Ready to Customize

Hi there. We're now ready for you to set up your Facebook and Twitter accounts on Flipboard. Try it out and let us know what you think. And thanks again for your patience and enthusiasm.

- The Flipboard Team

Short Review - Pages for iPad

So here I am, drafting a blog post using Apple's Pages application for iPad; it is undoubtedly a good app, as far as it goes, but it's not quite all I had hoped for. For a word processor at the cheap end of the market (£5.99, to be precise, although that's fairly expensive in iPad app terms) it's very good but with some unfortunate feature holes that rather reduce it's usefulness.

For example, there's no way (as far as I can tell) to add a hyperlink to a document except by including the URL (for example http://myryama.blogspot.com), which is a little inelegant. Exporting the document (assuming that you don't want to use iTunes) requires that you either email it (in Pages, Word or PDF formats) or share it via iWork; an option to save to the cloud (MobileMe, Dropbox etc.) seems like an obvious omission for a portable Internet device. To export to iWork you will need an active Internet connection, so don't expect to be able to hit share on the plane and have your document appear in iWork as you wander out through the terminal building (this might be fixed in iOS 4 when multi-tasking becomes available, but who knows?).

So, given these problems, what's so good about the app? Firstly, it's very easy to use. The controls are simple and logical; positioning elements (photos, shapes, tables etc) on the page is straightforward and intuitive (although precise placement is sometimes tricky as the train bounces along); formatting features and options allow for the creation of presentable documents; icons and general functionality conform to expected (ie Microsoft Word) norms; file management, including autosave, is simple (although the apparent lack of a folder structure might prove tricky once the number of documents grows large).

Overall, it's worth investigating if you want to do more than capture plain text (mail, Evernote or Notebook will do that for free) and you need to be able to create new, rather than edit existing, documents. The weak file-sharing features mean that syncing documents with a PC or Mac isn't going to happen and this could be a killer problem if your intended workflow requires editing in both mobile and fixed environments. Pages is not without its weaknesses, of course, but as long as you want to create and export new documents they are (probably) manageable inconveniences rather than compromising faults.

Apple Addiction, Part 2

When last we discussed my Apple addiction (posterous, blogger), the story had reached 2009 and it was time for a break. Now, read on for the next thrilling instalment!

Actually, having acquired the iPhone, Apple TV and an iPod Touch our Apple cravings were pretty much sated and for the next year or so, the only things we bought were music and movies from iTunes, apps from the App Store and odds and ends (headphones, cables, cases etc.).

So what next? What we really wanted was an iPod docking station for the kitchen to replace the ageing Philips CD player (which had always been a bit rubbish, even when it was new), preferably one that included a DAB radio and a Disc spinner, and that was, if at all possible, a British brand. Finding such a beast turned out to be a bit tricky but eventually we chose the Roberts Roberts MP43 Sound, a very nice piece of kit with a DAB radio, CD player and good sounds quality - bonus!

At the same time we grabbed a Roberts iDream CRD42 to replace the little-used, over-large and ugly stereo in the bedroom. The iDream is rather less of a product (smaller, cheaper, fewer features) than the MP43 but it's still a very good clock radio and it sounds much better than the average bedroom timepiece.

With these equipments installed there was nothing to do but wait for the iPad to reach the UK, which it duly did at the end of May 2010. Let me start the iPad comments by saying that my wife doesn't share my enthusiasm for the iPhone and she wasn't even slightly interested in the iPad. She quite fancies a MacBook and she's got a couple of iPods but otherwise her interest in Apple products is pretty much non-existent.

So what happened? We were in the car on the way to PC World to collect my iPad and the Wife asked "would you buy me one if I wanted one?", to which the only possible answer is "er, yes, love to". Of course, after about 30 seconds playing with the Photo app she was hooked and we left the store with two iPads (64Gb 3G for me, 32Gb Wifi for her), two cases and a bruised credit card. Having two turned out to be a good thing. There's absolutely no way we'd have been able to share one and it would just have caused problems (to read about somebody else's experiences with a shared iPad, have a look at this account from The Unofficial Apple Weblog.)

Early June rolled round and with it the iPhone 4 demonstration. The Wife didn't understand why I might want a new phone as well as an iPad (what can you say?) but I was still out early on the Thursday morning trying to buy an iPhone 4. I failed miserably, of course, and had to wait till the following week to make my acquisition (16Gb, Black). It's great, of course, and I haven't experienced any of the issues reported in the press; if you're using a 3G you should definitely upgrade - it's life-changing.

What next? Nothing for the moment. Various other life events mean that cash might be tight for a few months so even with new iPods and new laptops expected fairly soon we probably won't do more than browse. The new Apple store in Covent Garden, when it eventually opens, will present a daily temptation (it's a five minute walk from my office) but I'll probably only buys with apps and accessories (I fancy a Dodo Case). Might grab a new iPod Touch for the Wife if it has a FaceTime. Might also need a new rucksack, a Bluetooth keyboard and an iPad stand (or two). Hmm. Updates to follow.

Flipboard; the app the iPad was made for?

Sounds a bit strange when you read about it but it works beautifully and is remarkably easy to use. The presentation of articles is so good that it pretty much makes magazine apps redundant; all publishers need to do is provide a suitably rich feed of articles and Flipboard can re-build the magazine. That won't happen, of course, because there's only a very limited revenue stream for the publisher, but it's nice to dream.

So should you investigate further? Yes. Download it now, accept that some features aren't yet available and enjoy the rest while you wait for the initial surge to die down.
You may not have heard of (http://www.flipboard.com/) because it's rather new. So new, in fact, that they haven't yet activated all the features for all their users because they're struggling to cope with demand.

So what does Flipboard do that is so great? It pulls together your chosen feeds in to a new, but familiar, magazine format and you flip through the pages browsing the articles, newest first. You then open interesting articles by tapping the summary, from where you can head out to the source page.

Apple, Covent Garden, London

Pocketlint have this teasing photo of Apple's new Covent Garden store, expected to be one of its biggest in Europe. No information on an opening date but it surely can't be long; next week, maybe?

My Predictions for iPad 2

I've had an iPad now for a six weeks or so, and an iPhone 4 for about three. They're both great, but I can't help wondering about what might feature in the next releases, particularly iPad 2. Here are my predictions:
1) Forward facing camera for FaceTime support.
2) More memory, specifically 512Mb to match iPhone 4.
3) Improved performance, probably by further reducing the silicon footprint (ie fewer, smaller chips).
4) A compass and an improved gyroscope.

And then there's a short list of things that probably won't feature in iPad 2:
1) Backward-facing camera - the iPad's form factor doesn't really support photography. An app (or iOS features) that used wifi or Bluetooth to connect to a third-party camera for setup, review and backup purposes seems more likely.
2) Retina Display - it would be pretty fantastic, but a 10" panel at 320+ DPI doesn't sound very likely.
3) New case - it's not impossible that iPad 2 will feature a case and antenna layout that mimics that of the iPhone 4 but I don't think there's enough time to deliver such a radical change if Apple run with an annual upgrade schedule; look for this in iPad 3.
4) USB or HDMI ports - I don't think the existing case is thick enough to house either of these connectors and I don't think they fit the product's philosophy. Don't expect either to arrive in iPad 2.

Finally, there may be some features in iOS 5 to strengthen the iPad/iPhone link and to make them natural operating partners:
1) A fast, multi-tasking local network between the two devices to allow files or pictures to be shared without requiring a third-party through which to sync.
2) An emphasis on cloud services, possibly making DropBox (or something similar) ubiquitous with developer APIs to simplify it's use.

Of course we won't actually find out what's in iPad 2 till spring next year and I don't plan to upgrade until at least the 2012 (unless iPad 2 is spectacularly better than iPad 1). If you're in two minds about buying now or waiting, my advice is to buy now and enjoy the existing features rather than waiting for new gizmos that might, or might not, appear next year.

iPad iOS 3.2.1 is out

I'm not close enough (by about 350 miles) to download 3.2.1 but here is the list of fixes: 

• Improved Wi-Fi connectivity
• Fixed an issue that stops the copy/paste of single-page PDFs in Mail
• Addressed issues that causes video playback to freeze
• Improved reliability involving the video-out using the iPad Dock Connector to VGA Adapter
• Added Bing to Safari's search options

Improved wifi connectivity would be a big fix for me if I hadn't already invested in a new 802.11n wireless adapter that completely fixed the problem, which may, for me, have been related to the use of a cheap Sky router running 802.11a/g.

So Apple have announced an iPhone 4...

... press conference for Friday morning. The expectation is that they will announce something related to the antenna problems (maybe the root cause, a software fix, a recall) but, as with all Apple's announcements, nobody really knows. Whatever they intend to say, I'd just like to state now that I've had no issues of any kind with my iPhone 4 and I'm really pleased with it.

Apple's Bookstore and Amazon's Kindle

When it comes to reading text, my opinion, and I've used both apps, is that iBooks is better than Kindle but Kindle is still good enough. Functionality is basically the same, so it comes down to personal preference, and I prefer iBooks. For their respective bookstores, however, there's not much in it; both, from my perspective, are seriously flawed.

Apple's store, for example, has a very small choice of books (about 31,000 at time of writing) and many of those are duplicates (some books have both free and charged versions) or foreign language texts. Their book categorisation and search tools are not very sophisticated, it's quite difficult to browse their offering and even for authors for whom they stock a reasonable number of texts they generally don't have a complete set.

Surprisingly, for the world's largest bookstore, Amazon also suffer from a shortage of texts. Although they have a very much wider range of books on offer, they only sell through Amazon.com in US dollars and many texts aren't available to customers in the UK. As long as you stay in the dedicated Kindle store you can be reasonably confident that the listed texts are available for purchase in your territory, but the author's Kindle pages (which are a great feature) don't flag unavailable texts and you have to drill down to the book's page to find out if you're allowed to buy it.

So what now? Both stores are broken to some extent. Amazon need a UK version with a more complete set of titles. Apple, currently adding texts at a rate of around 300-500 a day, need to be an order of magnitude faster if they're to offer a reasonable selection before, say, Christmas. As of now, at least in the UK, the race is wide open and neither company could be said to have delivered a killer product.

More on Evernote for iPad

Evernote for iPad is a nice application and I use it a lot but it has a couple of annoying bugs and one frustratingly absent feature. Bugs first. Sometimes, if I create and save a note on my iPad, it then won't let me edit it without going through the "Can't edit rich text, Append/Copy?" process. There is also an occasional problem reopening notes created on my iPad; the thumbnail shows correctly in the left-hand note list but the text doesn't show in the main window and the note can't be edited.

As for missing features, the only one that really bugs me is the lack of rich text editing. The Evernote blog suggests this is coming in a future upgrade (and, to be honest, it's not really a vital feature in a notebook app) so I don't want to complain too much, but I'd really like to be able to add hyperlinks, lists and font formats to my notes (particularly when I'm composing blog posts).

In general, though, I really like Evernote and I use it on all my devices (iPhone, iPad, laptop and desktop). Definitely a recommended app.

Pages - to buy, or not to buy, that is the question

I think I might have to splash out on Pages, Apple's word processor for the iPad. I don't really want to; the reviews have suggested that it's an excellent product but with severe restrictions when it comes to sharing files (no integration with the cloud, for example) and I had planned to hold off for a later version. Unlike most technology purchases, however, the trade-off between "buy now use now" and "buy later get better features" is less important since any upgrades to features are likely to be rolled out for free to existing users.

Hesitance is, therefore, illogical and I should buy the app as soon as I have a use for it. As of now, the only use I have for it is to enable me to write rich text blog posts but, as Pages only costs £5.99, it still seems like a bit of a bargain so I think I'll take the plunge. I'll let you know how I get on.

The 2-day verdict on the iPhone 4

Upgrading from the iPhone 3G, as I did on Saturday, it is immediately obvious that the iPhone 4 has two standout features. Firstly, the new display is absolutely stunning. Whatever you might think of Jobs' marketing or the argument about the Retina Display, there's no denying the fact that it is an exceptionally good screen, looking for all the world like an illuminated, if shrunken, page from a glossy magazine; it really is that good.

Secondly, iPhone 4 is quick. Very quick. Really fantastically quick. All the little niggles you might have had about apps opening slowly or updates taking a while or the keyboard occasionally being unresponsive (all of which were regular, if minor, issues on my 3G) have been smoothed away by the improvements in iOS4 and the brutal speed of the A4 processor.

There are a ton of other improvements, of course, but if you're looking for reasons to upgrade, those are the biggies; the rest (better camera, FaceTime, industrial design etc.) are nice to have and make iPhone 4 a hugely capable product, but in comparison they are just the icing on the cake.

Conclusion; upgrade as soon as you can.

Fareham's O2 Store, early morning

It's ridiculously hot in here, but they've got iPhone 4s (16Gb only) in stock and the queue isn't too long. With any luck I'll be heading home soon with a new toy.

Acquiring an iPhone 4 - how not to do it

I had a plan, and the plan was sound; get up early on iphone release day, arrive at the O2 store by 8am, buy an iPhone 4. Execution was rubbish, unfortunately, as I just couldn't get up early enough to avoid the traffic and the net result is that I'm still using my 2 year old iPhone 3G.

So what now? The O2 website has a list of stores holding stock (http://stock.o2.co.uk) that updates several times a day. The mix of stores with stock changes at each update so they are obviously receiving a trickle of deliveries; the name of the game is to check the site and head to the closest stockist as soon as possible. That's what I'll be doing tomorrow, 'cos they've got the 16Gb version in Winchester. Tally ho!

Subtle Changes You May (Or May Not) Notice in iOS 4’

Every time Apple release a new operating system they make a host of minor incremental improvements to various parts of the system and iOS 4 is no exception. Nik Fletcher has a list of the changes here: http://nikf.org/post/722500438/8-subtle-changes-you-may-or-may-not-notice-in-ios-4

Apple's Bookstore - Any Good?

iBooks is a great app. Slandered by many, written off as inferior to Amazon's Kindle, it actually turns out to be a really good app for consuming text. Not only that, the recent upgrade to allow PDF reading opens up whole new classes of documents for iPad consumption - technical documents (many companies publish specifications or design notes in PDF), sales brochures, self-published books, work manuals, magazines, newsletters; the list is endless.

The bookstore is not so good, but it does at least appear to be improving quickly. When I first picked up my iPad there were very few titles available (no Tolkien, for example, and almost none of the current authors I like to read) but this is being rectified (Tolkien is now well, if not comprehensively, represented) and I'm almost ready to make my first purchase.

On that note, it's interesting that lots of titles are priced at or above their Amazon price. It might be that publishers are simply hiking eBook prices to hit the early adopters as hard as possible but I wonder also if this indicates extremely low distribution costs for physical books (if a paperback that retails at £7.99 costs only £1.50, say, to print and ship, there's not much room to lower costs for the eBook version).

In fact, is an eBook actually a book at all? Sounds like a daft question, but in the UK books are exempt from VAT, software and online services are not, so it's actually a very important question. If eBooks aren't defined as books by HMRC (who are, I think, responsible for collecting VAT) then they're subject to a sales tax of 17.5% tax that doesn't affect their physical counterparts and might, therefore, explain some of the price difference.

So, are there any bargains on Apple's bookstore? Well, sort of. Peter V. Brett's The Painted Man, for example, is available for £3.99, matching Amazon's paperback price (excluding shipping, of course). Bram Stoker's Dracula is free (and if you've never read it please check it out - it's an excellent example of slow-burning tension and horror) or, if you prefer to pay for your out-of-copyright literature, £4.99 or £5.49. Most books appear not to be price competitive with their physical counterparts so you're paying for convenience; personal circumstances will determine the value of convenience.

Conclusion? It's a good start. The bookstore is reasonably well stocked (much better, it has to be said, than Amazon's UK Kindle store, which is non-existent - you have to buy your Kindle books from the US in dollars) with over 26,000 titles, the prices are high but convenience is considerable and delivery immediate. As new books are added and older texts fall in price, it will become, I suspect, a serious force, especially in the UK while Amazon refuse to play.

iOS 4 applications - looking good

And so, having been able to upgrade the first of my apps to the new iOS 4 version (I chose Evernote) I can confirm that it works perfectly. I therefore attribute the earlier lack of functioning apps to incompatibility with the new operating system. How long till all have been upgraded? It might be worth checking that your must-use apps have been released in a compatible version before upgrading your OS...

First impressions of iOS 4

The first thing you notice is that the upgrade process for iOS 4 (on my 16Gb iPhone 3G) can take a while. After about nine hours, and having interrupted installation of the apps in order to go to work, it is noticeable that I don't have any settings, contacts, music, videos, favourites, photos, texts or, possibly because of the interruption, working apps. What I do have is a working phone running iOS 4 that is currently syncing contacts from Exchange and which I can use, so not too bad.

Any improvements? Folders work really nicely although it is quite easy to drop apps in the wrong place creating strange groupings of apps (reorganising your phone on a moving train might have something to do with this). The combined email inbox is good and now sports "To" and "Cc" icons to indicate direct and copied email. The phone feels no slower and, occasionally, faster than it did running 3.1.3. Text replace work just as well as it does on the iPad.

The next step is to run a full sync and recover my missing media, but that will have to wait till this evening, after which more feedback.

Update: there are loads of application updates waiting to be downloaded as soon as a decent 3G signal pops up. They all list "iOS 4 compatibility" or something similar, the lack of which in my current apps probably explains their failure to launch.

So you want to know what's in iOS 4?

Well, you probably don't, but here are the release notes anyway. Enjoy!

iOS 4 Software Update

This update contains over 100 new features, including the following:

• Multitasking support for third-party apps*
- Multitasking user interface to quickly move between
apps
- Support for audio apps to play in the background
- VoIP apps can receive and maintain calls in the
background or when device is asleep
- Apps can monitor location and take action while
running in the background
- Alerts and messages can be pushed to apps using
push and local notifications
- Apps can complete tasks in the background
• Folders to better organise and access apps
• Home screen Wallpaper*
• Mail improvements
- Unified inbox to view emails from all accounts in one
place
- Fast inbox switching to quickly switch between
different email accounts
- Threaded messages to view multiple emails from the
same conversation
- Attachments can be opened with compatible third-
party apps
- Search results can now be filed or deleted
- Option to select size of photo attachments
- Messages in the outbox can be edited or deleted
• Support for iBooks and iBookstore (available from the
App Store)
• Photo and Camera improvements
- 5x digital zoom when taking a photo**
- Tap to focus during video recording**
- Ability to sync Faces from iPhoto
- Geo-tagged photos appear on a map in Photos
• Ability to create and edit playlists on device
• Calendar invitations can be sent and accepted wirelessly
with supported CalDAV servers
• Support for MobileMe calendar sharing
• Suggestions and recent searches appear during a web
search
• Searchable SMS/MMS messages**
• Spotlight search can be continued on web and Wikipedia
• Enhanced location privacy
- New Location Services icon in the status bar
- Indication of which apps have requested your location
in the last 24 hours
- Location Services can be toggled on or off for
individual apps
• Automatic spellcheck
• Support for Bluetooth keyboards*
• iPod out to navigate music, podcasts and audiobooks
through an iPod interface with compatible cars
• Support for iTunes gifting of apps
• Wireless notes syncing with IMAP-based mail accounts
• Persistent Wi-Fi connection to receive push notifications*
• New setting for turning on/off mobile (cellular) data only**
• Option to display the character count while composing
new SMS/MMS**
• Visual Voicemail messages can be kept locally even if
they have been deleted from the server**
• Control to lock portrait orientation*
• Audio playback controls for iPod and third-party audio
apps*
• New languages, dictionaries and keyboards
• Accessibility enhancements*
• Bluetooth improvements
• Better data protection using the device passcode as an
encryption key* (Requires full restore.)
• Support for third-party Mobile Device Management
solutions
• Enables wireless distribution of enterprise applications
• Exchange Server 2010 compatibility
• Support for multiple Exchange ActiveSync accounts
• Support for Juniper Junos Pulse and Cisco AnyConnect
SSL VPN apps (available from the App Store)
• More than 1,500 new developer APIs
• Bug fixes

Microsoft Docs - iPad Killer?

It's not supposed to be, of course. Docs.com (http://docs.com) is Microsoft's answer to Google Docs but with the added advantage of compatibility with Office. On a PC it probably works really well (don't know, haven't tried because Office makes it redundant) but in Safari on my iPad it doesn't. And I don't mean that a couple of features don't work quite as they should, I mean that Docs.com crashes Safari so hard that it completely stops working and the only way to recover is to close the browser and follow a link to another site from within another application.

I had hoped that Docs.com might be an alternative to Pages and Numbers (which seem a bit limited on the iPad, especially if you want to share documents with a PC) but no, it turns out Microsoft has inadvertently built an iPad killer; "load our site" they snigger "and we'll kill your iPad". Maybe version 2.0 will be better, but until then, or until iWork can share files without requiring iTunes, I'll stick with plain text in Evernote (www.evernote.com) or email and do the formatting on a PC.

Rene Ritchie’s iOS 4 Walkthrough

If you want to know what you'll be getting from iOS 4, take a look at this walkthrough of what's new and what isn't. http://www.tipb.com/2010/06/14/ios-4-walkthrough/

Do we like Apple? I think we do!

Hi. My name is James and I'm addicted to Apple's products (sort of). I invite you to read my blog where, possibly, you'll find the history, the future and the cure for the habit.

Let's address the third part first, since it's the easiest to deal with; I'm going to keep feeding the habit. After all, I enjoy it, it gives my brother something to complain about (he's never really got over Apple's software-eject feature for 3.5" floppy discs on their early Macs) and it keeps me off the streets (where, you may rest assured, I'd be fermenting popular revolt if I had the time).

Describing the history isn't all that tricky either. My first contact with Apple was a university programming course using Modula II on the Macintosh Classic in 1993. That went reasonably well but there was no love lost between me and the Classic; the nine inch monochrome screen seemed like a backward step after the full-colour Amiga 1200 I was used to. I didn't really touch any Apple hardware after that until the wife acquired an iPod (20Gb U2 Special Edition) in late 2004 and I started ripping CDs into iTunes.

Another long break followed as all sort of factors (not least a lack of desirable products) conspired to prevent me from increasing our Apple collection. During this time our music collection moved, via iTunes, from the living room to the computer and use of the CD player steadily declined.

In 2008 this all changed with the arrival of the iPhone 3G. Finally, here was a product that was desirable (to me, rather than to the wife), affordable and practical. In late July, after struggling to find stocks of the iPhone, we splurged, buying an Apple TV (160Gb), an iPod Touch (for the wife) and an iPhone (for me) in a single day. It was an orgy of fruity goodness and it finally killed our use of the living room CD player and signalled the end of the DVD player; silver disc spinners were on their way out.

So that takes us through to 2009, which is a good place to take a break. In a forthcoming post I'll give you a quick overview of the rest of our Apple collection, some hints about where we plan to go in the future and a few comments on third party accessories. It's thrilling stuff, so stay tuned!

Entry one - just testing

As the title says, just testing