Author: jamesclay

Posted on

iPad mini, take two…

iPad mini, take two...

So it was only a week or so ago that I said:

I don’t think I will be getting an iPad mini

Well… I might now…

You see I popped into the Apple Store at Cabot Circus in Bristol and had a quick look at the iPad mini.

I was really impressed (and remember I do have a Google Nexus 7) the size and weight felt just right and it was very responsive. Well it should be as it is basically an iPad 2 and that was a good piece of kit.

I really did like the feel of the device and the screen wasn’t too small (which was one of my worries). I didn’t have a lot of time with it, but trying out the e-mail and web browsing felt okay. This was a device I could work with.

There was the issue of size and I don’t think it will fit in my coat pocket as the Google Nexus 7 can. Also the price… at £239 it is a lot more money than the £159 Google Nexus 7 and £70 would buy a lot of apps and content. Of course I have already made an investment in the apps and content for my current iPad, so that isn’t really too much of an issue.

Overall if price is a real issue then I would recommend the Google Nexus 7. If this is your first tablet then I would again go for the Google Nexus 7, as if it doesn’t work out, you’ve not lost too much money. However if you have already invested in iOS apps, have a lot of content on iTunes, and you are not that price sensitive, then I think the iPad mini is probably a better deal.

I am seriously thinking about selling the Google Nexus 7 and getting the iPad mini.

Posted on

I don’t have an iPad mini

iPad mini

I don’t think I will be getting an iPad mini, not that I don’t like the idea behind the product, but I already have the iPad (third generation) and a Google Nexus 7, I am not quite sure where the iPad mini would fit into my life. Then again I thought the same about the iPad when it first came out (got a laptop and a desktop, why do I need a tablet?).

If I didn’t have the Nexus 7, then I might seriously consider the iPad mini. The form factor of the Nexus 7 is really nice and portable, much more than the big iPad. Unlike a phone though, the larger screen size makes stuff like web browsing work.

Early reviews of the iPad mini say that, though it is smaller than the iPad, due to the 1024×768 screen resolution it is too wide! Making it difficult to put in your pocket. I also wonder if the small screen would make it challenging to type on. I do a fair bit of typing on the screen of the larger iPad, but have found it not so easy on the Nexus 7 screen.

I am less bothered about the “lack” of a retina display. Don’t get me wrong I really love the retina screens on the iPad (third generation) and my MacBook Retina, but it isn’t always a deal breaker; I can always get my glasses out.

One of the reasons I might get an iPad mini is that I have a large investment in iOS apps and as a result it would be quite quick and easy to get it into my workflow. Another reason would be 4G, but as the current status of 4G in the UK isn’t exactly attractive, what with limited coverage and high tariffs, I am not sure that is a valid reason (at this time).

Posted on

4G

Mobile Phone Mast

Today sees the launch of the UK’s first 4G network. It’s quite a small network with availability only in the following cities: London, Manchester, Bristol, Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Leeds, Liverpool, Sheffield, Glasgow and Southampton.

I don’t have a 4G device, well I do, I have the third generation iPad, but I don’t think that will work with EE’s 4G. I can’t actually find out if this isn’t the case, but I am pretty sure that is correct.

I am thinking about getting an iPhone 5 that supports 4G to replace my ageing 3GS. Though as the 3GS is still running iOS 5 I might keep it for the Maps app! However I am expecting Apple to turn off that existing Maps app in a year’s time when their licence for Google maps runs out.

To be honest what I really need is a 4G MiFi or similar so I can take advantage of 4G with all my devices. EE will start selling SIM only deals next month.

The tariffs from EE are quite expensive, £36 per month gets you just 500MB of data which is not much… a typical BBC iPlayer programme is half that! It goes up to £51 for 8GB.

So though I would like to have 4G I don’t think I can afford it!

Another factor that has taken me by surprise is by how slow the reported speeds of 4G are. I have always thought of 4G as speeds in and around 100Mbps. However from the news reports I have seen today have spoken about 15Mbps.

EE’s own press release says that their 4G is only five times faster than 3G.

The UK’s first 4G mobile service will launch on Tuesday October 30th, offering consumers and businesses a new way to access the people, places and things they want on the move, with speeds typically five times faster than 3G.

So as well as wondering about the costs of 4G, I am not even sure with the limited geographical availability and lower than expected speeds, I don’t think 4G is for me at this time.

Posted on

No magic with BBC iPlayer

No magic with BBC iPlayer

I know many people out there have no sympathy for me now that I have lost access to fibre (through FTTC) and have reverted back to a relatively much slower ADSL connection when I moved house. I am aware that much of the UK population only have similar broadband speeds.

However I do think it is interesting to note the problems I am having, it has certainly made me much more aware of the advantages of FTTC over ADSL and the need to speed up all of the UK (not just my neck of the woods).

The other evening I sat down to watch Merlin on BBC iPlayer and it was stuttering like crazy… My Sony TV has internet capability and BBC iPlayer is accessible from the user interface without needing to use a laptop or iPad. I was slightly surprised as I had recently moved a few things around and connected the TV direct to my router. Previously I had used wifi to connect the TV to the internet and this had proved unreliable; when I had FTTC, it had worked fine over wifi. When I did a direct wired connection this appeared at the time to resolve those buffering issues.

I tried again, and once more it didn’t work…

I thought about it, checked upstairs and found that my son was streaming BBC iPlayer on his computer at the same time.

It was apparent that though my ADSL connection was fast enough for BBC iPlayer, it couldn’t cope with two streams at the same time. When I had the FTTC connection, it coped fine with higher quality BBC iPlayer streams, and streaming two programmes (and doing other stuff on the web as well) was all fine and dandy.

So we waited until my son’s programme had finished and then we watched Merlin.

What this incident made me realise was that the real advantage of FTTC wasn’t so much the speed of the connection, but the width. I find on ADSL that I can cope with waiting for things to download, but what I really miss about FTTC is the ability to use the full capacity of the fibre “tube” to do lots of different things all at once. Now with ADSL I need to schedule streaming and downloads to ensure that, not only do they work, but also to not inconvenience others in the house.

So is FTTC anywhere on the horizon for me? Not that I can see, which is a real pity.

Posted on

iTunes failed to sync…

Sometimes after synching my iPhone (and occassionally my iPad) with iTunes I find that the sync has failed and various apps have not been updated.

As a result various apps can not be opened in the usual way.

iPhone Home Screen

The usual solution is to resync with iTunes. Sometimes though this isn’t possible, you may not have noticed the error message on the front of the phone.

The various apps that failed to update, will then fail to start, either by tapping it on the home screen, or through the multitasking bar.

iPhone Home Screen

You can tell which apps have failed to update as they will be in shadow and have an empty installation bar. In the above screenshot you can see that Podcasts and Flipboard did not update correctly.

In the past I have had to delete the app and reinstall it. Fine for some apps, but if you are on 3G or have configured the app then this may not be an option. With really large apps, it might not be possible to redownload it on a 3G connection.

As a result you probably think you can’t use the app. I have found a workaround that will work until you get a chance to resync with iTunes.

Search for the app in Spotlight. Swipe right from your first Home screen. Enter text in the search field. In this example I have typed Flip for Flipboard.

I have typed Flip for Flipboard.

This will allow you to run the app, even though you can’t access it through the home screen.

Should point out that if you do a hard reboot of the device, you won’t be able to do this.

Posted on

Cross Country WiFi

Cross Country WiFi

I have mentioned, okay moaned, about the lack of wifi on Cross Country trains and the problems with using 3G in their Voyager trains as their construction was very good in blocking phone and 3G signals.

I realised it must have been some time since I last travelled with Cross Country as on my most recent trip with them I was astonished and surprised to find that there was wifi…

Gosh!

This I had to try. Alas it wasn’t free and when I checked the tariffs it wasn’t cheap either.

There are two tariffs, one based on elapsed time and the other on total minutes.

There are two tariffs, one based on elapsed time and the other on total minutes.

So for a one off long journey then it will cost you anything up to £6.

Now I don’t use Cross Country that often, but did consider the total minutes package. For £18 I would get 30 hours of wifi that was valid for a year.

In the end for the test I went with the one hour for £2. I did like how I could pay by SMS, but that does mean you need a phone signal!

Overall the speeds were low compared to potential 3G speeds. This isn’t a service you could use for doing certain things, the terms of use explicitly say you can’t use it for catch-up TV (ie iPlayer), downloading large files (ie system updates) or file sharing.

Cross Country WiFi

So how did it go. Well apart from a couple of glitches on my journey, I was quite pleased with the performance. I can’t really expect decent wifi when travelling through a tunnel for example.

On the return journey I decided to rely on 3G and the experience was awful in comparison to Cross Country WiFi. It think it is a serious option if I need internet when travelling by train, especially Cross Country.

Posted on

Google Play, Fun, Games and Pirates

The Pirates

One of the benefits of buying the Google Nexus Seven was getting £15 worth of credit for the Google Play store. The reason behind this was simple, from Google’s perspective, in getting you use to buying stuff from Google Play, so in future after exhausting the credit you’ll buy more.

I wanted to get a good idea of how everything worked… however here in the UK we get nowhere near the quality and quantity of stuff you can get in the US. So it was actually quite hard to find things. True apps were easy and I had already bought apps for my Nexus One phone, so the majority of these could be installed on the Nexus Seven without buying them again. One app I did install was Doubletwist which as well as allowing me to very easily copy music over to the Nexus Seven from iTunes on my Mac, can also stream video using AirPlay to my AppleTV. After installing I did test it out and I was pleased with how it worked. I used a clip that I had recorded using EyeTV and encoded for the iPhone as it happens. No it wasn’t 1080p HD, but the video quality was certainly acceptable and the wireless streaming worked well.

I did buy a book to try out the reading experience and was quite pleased. It was a similar experience to reading on the iPad, but the size of the device, been lighter than the iPad, made the reading experience easier, whilst the bigger screen made it a much nicer experience than reading on a phone. Of course, unlike Kindle books, it wasn’t possible to move around devices as you can with Kindle apps and devices.

I also wanted to try video from Google Play, alas you can’t buy films, only rent them (and no television programmes). I really can’t see Google Play replacing iTunes for me, as it doesn’t have the content that you can get on iTunes. Having decided to rent a film, I made the decision to rent Pirates from Aardman.

The Pirates

Having initially clicked “buy” on the Nexus Seven I could have started watching straight away… knowing the (poor) speed of my ADSL connection I decided not to. You could download your rental, so decided that would be more sensible than streaming. I set the Nexus Seven to download overnight and when I checked the next morning it was all fine.

With renting, you have 30 days to watch the film, and once you start watching you just have just two days to watch it. So though I was tempted to have a glimpse to see video quality I knew if I did that I would probably never to get to see the rest of the film.

When we got round to watching it, I spent a fair bit of time working out how to stream the film from the Nexus Seven, via AirPlay through the AppleTV to my TV. Hmmm though it is possible to do this with video you put on the device, alas DoubleTwist does not allow you to stream videos protected by Google Play DRM. There is no HDMI out, or any other video out for the Nexus Seven, making it nigh on impossible to view the video on a screen other than the Nexus Seven screen. In the end we watched Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs on Netflix instead straight from the AppleTV.

Not wanting to try and all crowd round the 7” screen of the Nexus Seven I tried to think of a solution. In the end it was quite easy. I went to Google Play on Chrome on my MacBook Retina which has an HDMI slot, connected it to the TV direct. Initially I wasn’t allowed to stream as I had downloaded it on the Nexus Seven… I found if I removed that downloaded file from the Nexus Seven then Google Play would stream from Chrome on the laptop.

Doing this allowed me to change the resolution to 480p. I was initially worried that my slow ADSL connection would cause buffering issues, however in the end we didn’t have single buffering problem.

Doing this allowed me to change the resolution to 480p. I was initially worried that my slow ADSL connection would cause buffering issues, however in the end we didn’t have single buffering problem.

I was impressed with the quality of the video, it looked great on my 40” TV. My only disappointment was that I was forced away from the Nexus Seven to watch it and use another device. As a personal device, the Nexus Seven is great for watching video, but if everyone in the family wants to watch the video then unlike the iPad the Nexus Seven didn’t work for us.

Posted on

1000th Instagram

A week or so ago I posted my 1000th image to Instagram and to be honest it’s not one of my favourites or one of my best…

1000th Instagram

It’s a cooker!

It is part of my Instagram project for 2012, #366photos, in which I take a photograph every day during 2012 and post it to Instagram. You can see all the images I have taken for the project on my Flickr account.

A nice feature of Instagram is the functionality to also post to Flickr. You can also post to other social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr. I do like Instagram and I see it less as a photographic app and much more a social app.