Tuesday, 31 August 2010

Wednesday, 25 August 2010

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/

Tuesday, 24 August 2010

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.

Sunday, 22 August 2010

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.

Saturday, 21 August 2010

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.

Wednesday, 18 August 2010

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.

Monday, 16 August 2010

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.

Saturday, 14 August 2010

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.

Store Image 3

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.

Sunday, 8 August 2010

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.

Operating systems Ccmparison, 1997-2009

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.

Friday, 6 August 2010

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.

Wednesday, 4 August 2010

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?

Tuesday, 3 August 2010

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?