Category: apple

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Apple at 50 and the iPhone

iPhone
Image by Jan Vašek from Pixabay

Apple started back in 1976, though I am old enough to remember 1976, my personal history with Apple begins half way through their fifty year history in 2001.

I have already written about my computing for personal and professional reasons, the iPad, and the iPod; this post is about the iPhone.

I have used a range of iPhones over the years, some through work and those that I bought for personal use.

I now have an iPhone 17 Pro Max and the main use case I got for this was the photographic capabilities which have made dramatic improvements over the years.

I have also used the iPhone 13. It’s interesting that in the early iterations of the iPhone there was often very good reasons for upgrading, with the more recent versions, the improvements have been marginal at best. You notice the improvements when jumping from something like the 13 to the 17.

I didn’t buy the first version of the iPhone, mainly as it didn’t have 3G, which I felt was important for how I was using a phone.

I did get the iPhone 3GS. I liked it, but it was a secondary phone and I kept the Google Nexus One going for a few years.

Through work I then got an iPhone 4. The iPhone 4 is what the iPhone should have been from day one. Finally, the iPhone came of age. It is one of the best phones I have ever used. The camera was better than ever before, and the phone also came with a front facing camera. At the time the iPhone 4 was one of the best phones I had ever used, and I was really pleased with it.

My next iPhone was the iPhone 5S. I also had a work phone in the iPhone 6 Plus for a while, and I replaced my dependable Google Nexus One with an iPhone 6S Plus. Later in a different job I had the iPhone 8, but the iPhone 6S Plus kept me going for a few years.

I then had an iPhone 13 for a few years, but now I have the iPhone 17 Pro Max, which I am hoping will last a few years.

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Apple at 50 and the iPod

Apple started back in 1976, though I am old enough to remember 1976, my personal history with Apple begins half way through their fifty year history in 2001.

I have already written about my computing for personal and professional reasons, this post is about the iPod.

Apple launched the iPod back in 2001. The first iPod was, when you think about it, not really going to be a success. It was expensive, it was Mac only, it needed Firewire and there was no where to buy music, you needed to use iTunes to rip your CDS to mp3 and then transfer them across. No wonder at the time lots of people were sceptical and thought the iPod was doomed to fail.

I didn’t get one, partly as it was very expensive, I didn’t really use Macs at that point and I had a CD player!

I didn’t get an iPod until the fourth generation in 2004 (that’s me a late adopter) this was the version that could show photographs. It wasn’t until iTunes added podcasting support in 2005 that my iPod became essential. I used it extensively for podcasts as well as music.

I did use various iPods as part of the MoLeNET projects back in the 2000s including the iPod nano and the iPod touch. I also used a 6th iPod Classic, on this I could add images and video, as well as music.

Since getting an iPhone though and the advent of various streaming services I no longer use an iPod. Sometimes I think I would like to have one back.

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Apple at 50 and the Mac

Apple started back in 1976, though I am old enough to remember 1976, my personal history with Apple begins half way through their fifty year history in 2001.

In my computing for personal and professional reasons I was a Windows user. I was aware of Apple computers in the 1990s and was impressed with the new G3 iMac in 1998 and liked the different colours. However, I was ensconced in a Windows ecosystem so why would I use a Mac?

In 2001 that reason came to ahead when I was working for a consortium of colleges supporting them with online learning, and one of those colleges said we use Macs, specifically G4 PowerMac computers so we had to get a Mac. Looking over the Apple range, I saw that the “cheapest” G4 Mac was a G4 PowerBook. I recall saying to myself, well if I am going to need to support users of Macs, then I better familiarise myself with the Mac. I got the second generation 550MHz G4 Titanium PowerBook.

It was a couple of weeks, and I was a convert to the Mac. I remember getting the PowerBook an Airport card so that I could have Wi-Fi.

Over the next few years, I upgraded the PowerBook to a 1.5GHz G4 Aluminium PowerBook with integrated Airport Extreme.

In 2003 when the Power Mac G5 was released I got one of those to use, a Dual 2GHz model.

The next Mac I got was something of a disappointment. Apple moved over to Intel, and I got an Intel iMac. I think the issue was the lack of RAM more than anything, it came with 1GB of RAM.

It wasn’t that long before I upgraded my computer to a 27” iMac with more RAM. The screen was amazing.

At this time, I was working for an FE college and with the funding I was successful in bidding for I was able to almost get a new MacBook every year, well every time a new model was released. The replaced models were then redeployed in the college.

When I changed jobs, I did have an 11” MacBook Air for a while which was perfect for working whilst travelling. I also tried out the cylindrical Mac Pro for a while which was very fast (at the time).

My next home device was the 27” Retina iMac. This was a great computer except one feature which was the fusion drive. It failed twice on my iMac, resulting in a replacement at the Apple Store.

I did use this computer for many years, but eventually it was used less and eventually was no longer supported by Apple.

Today (after a few laptops) my main Apple device is an M4 Mac mini which is certainly up to the job. I did once use a G4 Mac mini which I always thought was an amazingly small computer for what it could do. Likewise, I also liked the compact, thinner unibody aluminium version as well. The smaller footprint of the current version takes that concept of a tiny computer one step further.

Despite the fusion drive issues, if I was to say which of the Apple computers I have used was my favourite, it would be the 27” Retina iMac. Though the 11” MacBook Air and the Power Mac G5 are very close runners up.

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Problems with Prime Video App on the Apple TV

Apple TV

One of the apps I use regularly on my Apple TV is the Amazon Prime Video app.

I have recently updated my Apple TV to tvOS 26 and since then I have been having a few issues with the Prime Video App on the Apple TV.

The main issue is that when I open the app, it stalls. I have to exit (swipe up) the app and open the app again.

When streaming content, I have had some buffering issues. I am playing a video and then I get a whirling circle of death. Sometimes I can get away with restarting the app, other times I have to actually restart the Apple TV.

I did do a Google search to no avail, well nothing relevant to the current version of the Apple TV tvOS. 

I hope it will be fixed with an update to the OS or the app.

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Updated the Apple TV

Having updated my other Apple devices to the latest operating system, I took the plunge and updated the Apple TV to tvOS 26, which was released on the 15th September.

It adds the new Liquid Glass interface, now I am not so sure I am a fan of this new look. However the familiarity was that it was inspired by the Aqua interface, which was released twenty five years ago by Apple.

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Mapping it badly no more

Last year I blogged about some mapping issues I was having with Apple CarPlay on the Ora Funky Cat.

I have noticed a glitch with Apple Maps on CarPlay on the Ora Funky Cat ever since I upgraded to iOS 18. Starting CarPlay, opening Apple Maps I am in completely the wrong location.

Over the next few months I would have the same glitch with Waze and Google Maps. I would start the car, CarPlay would start and though I knew where I was as far as the car was concerned I was about 100 miles to the east.

Usually within a few minutes the error would correct itself and I would find that Waze would place me in the right location. It certainly was annoying, also when I actually needed the sat nav to work it was quite frustrating. One solution was to disable CarPlay and either use the built-in navigation (which worked fine) or use the phone separately and balance it on the dashboard.

This also impacted on Google Maps timeline, which would often show me having travelled a hundred miles in just a few minutes!

I kind of just lived with it.

I have noticed over the last few months that the glitch seems to have resolved itself. I’ve not updated the car, so it must have been an iPhone update. Whatever, now I have a sat nav works just fine, which is nice.

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Apple’s Image Playground

One of the new features for the Mac is Apple Intelligence. I was curious about Image Playground and how that would work.

Produce fun, original images in seconds with the Image Playground experience right in your apps. Create an entirely new image based on a description, suggested concepts, and even a person from your Photos library.

Having tried it, I would say it is nothing special. Yes the images are nice, but you can tell they are AI generated. It also doesn’t do photorealistic images.

As a tool to create some fun images to share with friends, yes it’s fine, so use it for that.

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M4 Mac mini

Mac mini

I recently replaced my old iMac with a new M4 Mac mini. I went for the base model.

      • 10-Core CPU
      • 10-Core GPU
      • 16GB Unified Memory
      • 256GB SSD Storage

I have been meaning to replace the iMac for a while now, as it is old, and is no longer supported by Apple. I have replaced the fusion drive twice on the iMac, and I think that means it probably would go again at some point in the future.

So far, I have been really impressed. The new Mac mini is really zippy and certainly is fast enough for virtually everything I want to do with a Mac. 

The only real negative is the size of the hard drive. At 256GB it’s rather small. However the 2TB storage option would have cost an additional £800. Decided it would be easier to buy an external 4TB storage for £100 or thereabouts.

I got a 4K monitor to run it with, as well as a cheap Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.

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Mapping it badly

I have noticed a glitch with Apple Maps on CarPlay on the Ora Funky Cat ever since I upgraded to iOS 18.

Starting CarPlay, opening Apple Maps I am in completely the wrong location.

I upgraded to iOS 18, the previous evening and when I tried Apple Maps and it came up as a blank map and crashed CarPlay.

Upon restarting, Apple Maps showed I was in Biggin Hill, which is 160 miles away…. it never corrected.

Should add that Waze and Google Maps showed the correct location.

On my next attempt, Maps did correct itself and the next day it was working as expected.

And this evening none of it was working properly.

I can’t seem to find the setting in the car, on CarPlay, or on the iPhone to force the car to use the phone GPS. 

The “error” appears to be the same error with the location of the car on the Ora app. That error has been with the app ever since I got the car, it places the car about a hundred miles to the East.

I am wondering if I open the Apple Maps app on the phone before going to the car, will that make a difference?

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You blocked this channel

screenshot of Apple news saying "You blocked this channel"

I am pretty sure that Apple News doesn’t understand the meaning of blocked.

I blocked a channel in Apple News, now as I understand the reason I blocked the channel was because I didn’t want to see articles from that channel in my news stream.

However despite blocking the channel, the stories still appear in the stream.

I can still see the headline, the only difference is that the story picture has been replaced with the words You blocked this channel. The story is still a live link, yes you get a warning, but I am not sure that this would count as blocking.

The way I would like it to work, is that when I block a channel I don’t ever see it again. There could be a list of blocked channels, in settings, but otherwise I wouldn’t want to see it.

If I hide photos in Photos then I don’t see the hidden photographs, but I can access them if I need to. I don’t believe I can hide channels in Apple News.

So, though I have blocked stuff, I still see it, what is that about.