It’s now been a week since the launch event for the iPad, I’ve now watched the Apple keynote and done a little research on the new Apple device. For those who don’t know about it, where have you been? I thought I would give my thoughts on what Apple have come up with, why some aren’t pleased and what I think the future of the device will be.
When I saw and read about the iPad I was underwhelmed, there’s a lot that’s ‘wrong’ with it, however now I have a chance to mull it over I think I get where Apple are coming from. People were always going to be disappointed with whatever they made, they wanted something revolutionary. I read someone complaint that the text input is by an onscreen keyboard, what else was it going to be? A thought keyboard, where you just think what you want to type? Let’s get real people.
I’ve sat down and tried to imagine the thought process behind the device, first we know things that Jobs doesn’t seem to like:
1. Flash
2. External memory – he likes everything built in to the device
3. Stylus – he doesn’t like having
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I’ve had a couple of days off to do a bit of decorating, I don’t mind painting, in fact a quite enjoy it, especially when the room looks so much better when I’ve finished. I do like to listen to music when I do any house work and when painting is no exception. It’s about the only time I really get to listen to music, painting doesn’t use much of my brain power so I can actually just enjoy the music. I’m not a great fan of setting up iTunes playlists so I thought I’d give the iTunes Genius feature a go. I know it’s a feature that’s been out for ages but I just thought I would let you know whether I think it actually is Genius…. or not.
I’ve always found it annoying that in iTunes you can’t (or I’ve never found a way to) start playing a track then scroll through your music library, click on tracks and add to the end of a current playlist. I know it doesn’t really take that long to set up a playlist but it’s just a feature of WinAmp, my previous music player from my PC days before I made
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Having decided never to upgrade my Mac from Tiger to Leopard I decided I ought to upgrade this time, I was finding some applications now not supporting Tiger and it was worth the upgrade now. There are two upgrade packs available one is a Leopard to Snow Leopard upgrade (obviously not an option for me), the second is the Mac Box set, at £129 I think it’s pretty well priced considering you get iLife ’09 (iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, iWeb, iDVD) and iWork ’09 (Pages, numbers & keynote) as well as Snow Leopard itself.
Upgrade process
So simple, put the disc, click install and it installs the operating system round the existing files, I would recommend a back up before the install but I had absolute faith it would install without a problem.
Performance
I’ve heard people have had one or two problems with the performance but I’ve really not noticed much difference – positive or negative. Applications run as fast as they did before, I didn’t like the new dock appearance as much as tiger’s but now I prefer it. I like the addition of spaces (so I now have different virtual desktops), I also like time machine as it
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When I bought my iPhone I looked for a replacement pair of headphones, I have never used apple headphones with any of my ipods because I don’t like the fit and I don’t like the fact I’m basically advertising to everyone I’ve got an iphone/ipod – I don’t think that’s a particularly safe thing to do!
What I found was the Griffin SmartTalk, a nice little device which is a remote control and microphone that I can plug my existing headphones in, only about £12 so just what I was looking for. Three months on and I’m again looking for a replacement. I’m pretty careful with them but as I walked round town with my headphones in today I lost first the right channel then the left. I can get it to work again if a wiggle it a bit but not consistently and it does look a bit dodgy one hand in the pocket all the time wiggling my hand about. Suffice to say it’s now useless and on the gadget scrapheap!
On quick inspection it is the cable just above the jack plug that has gone, this is because the cable is so flimsy. By the look of
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I’ve now had my iPhone for about 4 months and I just thought I would give an update about life with my iPhone.
Lets get the negatives over with first I only have a couple of minor gripes. I still would like an office app and also better step by step navigation software – so I could use it instead of my trusted (but now old and bulky) Tom Tom, which is a pain to carry around – google maps is not good enough. The other minor issue is battery life, because there is so much you can do with it I end up charging it every 1-2 days. Not too bad but it means you have to take your charger if you go away for a couple of days
As you can see my gripes are actually just things that could make it even better. I still think it’s the best phone I’ve ever had because the thing it’s so much more than that. It’s my main mobile music player, a video player, a mobile browser, it’s my diary…
….Oh and I can even update this website on the move – this post was written on my iPhone. On
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I’ve been thinking about how odd the “I’m a PC” advert is since the first time it emerged. I was so surprised when I saw it, if you’ve not seen it yet, you can find it on youtube, basically as I see it, it’s a direct reply to Apple’s “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” series of adverts. The Apple adverts are attack on some of Windows short comings, I’m not surprised by these adverts, Apple is very much the underdog in terms of number of sales and a good way to ‘steal’ Windows customers is to find out the problems people have with Windows and bang on about them, so people think, “yeh, that does annoy me, is there something else on the market which wouldn’t have that problem?” It has really always been the Apple Strategy, perhaps they have been more vocal about it recently.
These new Windows adverts are the first time I can remember Microsoft having a direct ‘go’ at Apple and to me it almost acknowledges Mac as an alternative, previously Microsoft haven’t even admitted that Apple are a competitor. For me, if they are going to play on Apple’s adverts they have got
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One of the things that makes the iphone great is the number of apps that are available to download for it. Some are free and some you have to pay for and obviously they range in quality, I thought I’d compile a list of apps that I’ve found to be pretty good.
Remote: a free app that enables you to control your itunes library via wifi. Simple but very well done.
Air mouse : I had to pay £3.49 for this one but it’s well worth it, I can use my iphone to control my mac over wifi. It’s got a touchpad or air-mouse (using iphone accelerometer) and a keyboard.
Twitterrific: free mobile version, for all your twittering needs
Facebook: another free app, it’s a really nicely designed app for accessing your facebook
Around Me: A free app that uses finds the nearest cinema, bars, petrol station, etc automatically
Movies: shows where your local cinema is, upcoming films and dvds, show times and more, all for free
Metronome: a great visual metronome for free, obviously only useful for musicians
Zenbe: There’s loads of to do lists, shopping lists apps available, this is the best, most flexible and free app I’ve
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After much debate over which phone to upgrade to I decided on the iphone, I looked at everything on the market and decided it was the best one for me. I’ve had it 3 weeks now and thought I would write my thoughts on it.
First the negatives. There are somethings you can’t do on it, it doesn’t have voice dialing which can sometimes be useful. You can’t customise sms tones or ringtones (I found a work round for the ringtones with a quick bit of googling!) Although it has bluetooth you can’t send and receive files via it which seems a bit odd. I’m sure there are other things as well but there the major ones I’ve found.
What has to be said is those are minor flaws when you start using it. It is just so intuitive to use and it does the basics well, I have found some great little apps as well (most of them free). I’ve actually found adjusting to the keyboard pretty easy and it’s quite fast to type on. Mobile Safari is a joy to use, for the first time I can actually browse the web on the move, rather than just getting
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