Where did my hotspot allowance go?

checking my e-mail

When I got my iPhone 6S Plus in 2015, I got a new phone contract and moved providers. The SIM only contract was with Three and came with unlimited data. However this was unlimited on the phone only, there was an allowance for hotspot, which was only 4GB. This was initially problematic as at home we had a very poor ADSL connection, so I would use the hotspot quite often when I was frustrated with my poor connectivity. As a result I would need to keep an eye on my usage. Quite often I would run out. 4GB was generally fine for simple browsing or e-mail, but would quickly run out if I was streaming video.

I did think about increasing the allowance, but the packages available weren’t cheap. Today Three’s unlimited data contract has a 30GB hotspot allowance. Why don’t I upgrade? Well my contract is just £17 a month, the current unlimited data contract is now £30 a month. However since my home broadband was upgraded to fibre I’ve stopped using the hotspot feature at home, reserving it for trips and visits, again mainly for browsing and e-mail. The 4GB allowance has been fine for this kind of internet activity.

A recent trip away to Glasgow made me aware to still carefully check my usage. I was away staying at the Premier Inn which came with free wifi. According to the blurb the free version of the wifi was for browsing and e-mail and the Ultimate version of the wifi was for streaming. Testing the free wifi, I found it worked fine for streaming Netflix. So there I was watching my favourite TV shows on the iPad and though the free wifi wasn’t brilliant, it was working. As I watched the next episode I found the quality had improved, this is alright I thought. Then another episode…

Then I got a SMS from Three saying I had nearly used my hotspot allowance. I was confused, it was only five days since it had reset. Where had my allowance gone? I then noticed that my iPad wasn’t connected to the hotel wifi it was now connected to my iPhone’s hotspot.

What happened was that previously at the Airport I had connected my laptop to the hotspot, but hadn’t turned it off. My iPad was connected to the hotel wifi, however that connection must have stopped or dropped and then the iPad found and connected to the hotspot network automatically. So when the hotel wifi came back it didn’t re-connect. So the quality of the Netflix stream had improved because of the new connection… the downside was that it sucked up all of my hotspot allowance.

Will I upgrade, no, because it was an error and though it may happen again, I am quite content with a 4GB limit.

Adding the keyboard

As I am still having major issues with my Smart Keyboard and my iPad Pro I have decided to start using an old Bluetooth keyboard with the iPad. I had to reset the keyboard and then pair it with the iPad.

bluetooth keyboard

Using it made me realise how useful a “proper” keyboard is with an iPad (or even an iPhone) when you have to type up lots of stuff. Even just entering an username and password for me is easier with a keyboard.

It also reminded me how useful Bluetooth is, though today we take it mainly for granted. I do remember how exciting and innovative Bluetooth was when I first experienced it.

Snapeeding

Bristol Harbourside

One of my favourite iOS apps that I use on a regular basis is Snapseed. There are certain effects and image adjustments that I use to make images brighter or more dramatic.

The user interface, which I initially found challenging, I now find really simple and easy. I like how it takes advantage of the touch interface of iOS. You can swipe left and right to change the intensity of the filters and up and down to change aspects of those filters.

The one filter I use quite a bit is the HDR filter to add drama.

This is the original image

unaltered image

This is the processed image that has been through Snapseed.

Snapseeded Image

I realise that the HDR effect is somewhat subjective, but for me the key question, is do I like it, if so then I will keep it. There are images I work on that don’t work for me and these don’t get saved or uploaded to social media.

So which tools are you using?

No, it’s still not working as it should!

In a previous blog post I talked about how I had reset my iPad Pro to see if that made a different to the problems I’ve been having with the Smart Keyboard.

Every so often the iPad seems to think that this Apple Smart Keyboard. isn’t a proper accessory and “isn’t supported”.

Well initially I thought resetting had made a difference, but the reality is that I am still having issues.

I think time to visit the Apple Store.

Better than it was…

In a previous blog post I talked about the issues I was having with my iPad Pro smart keyboard. It got to the point where it rarely would work and I would get a consistent stream of messages saying that “this accessory is not supported”. I knew that if I went to the Apple Store that I would get a “have you reset the iPad” question, so pre-empting that I did a partial reset.

In the reset menu in settings you can reset the iPad completely or you can just reset the settings. I went with the reset of the settings.

This though somewhat a pain, as your iPad forgets your Apple ID, forgets all your wifi settings, amongst many things, it did initially appear to have the result I wanted. The smart keyboard does now work most of the time. I still have the odd “this accessory is not supported” error, but this is usually rectified by disconnecting and reconnecting the iPad to the keyboard.

I am hoping that in the future this stays like this, otherwise it will be a full hard reset of the iPad.

Well that’s a surprise!

War for the Planet of the Apes

Back in 2010 or thereabouts when buying movies, I would generally go for the what the trade called triple play movies, these sets contain a copy of the film on Blu-Ray, a copy on DVD and a digital copy for your mobile device.

With most of the films I bought the digital copy was in an iTunes format. This was fine with me as I already used the iTunes ecosystem for music and video. Since December 2011, I noticed that the trend was to use Ultraviolet DRM.

I blogged about the challenges I had with this back in 2013. Eventually I did manage to get the login processes sorted out with Ultraviolet and Flixter. Over the years I have built up a collection of films on Flixter. However compared to the user experience in iTunes it was never a smooth journey.

I had major challenges with my version of Edge of Tomorrow, resulting in being unable to play the downloaded film on my iPad. This was sorted out after numerous e-mails to Flixter support.

Another annoyance for me was that the Flixter app wouldn’t remember where I had got to in a film, if I had not finished watching. I would then need to work out where I was.

I also found it frustrating that I couldn’t play my Flixter films through an HDMI cable (via an adapter) to my TV or use Airplay. I suppose they thought if you wanted to watch on the big screen you would use the Blu-Ray disc.

The end result was that, I generally stopped specifically buying versions with a digital copy so would buy the Blu-Ray only. Also many studios appeared to stop selling the triple play format. I often found it easier to buy films from iTunes direct or more recently using Amazon Video after a good experience with Amazon Prime Video.

For Christmas this year I got War for the Planet of the Apes, which came with a Blu-Ray and a Digital Copy. It reminded me I had Dawn of the Planet of the Apes also on Blu-Ray with a digital copy. Now this had been a Christmas present in 2014 and hadn’t worked on my Blu-Ray player.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes [Blu-ray + UV Copy]

I had gone out and bought the DVD version of the film and had stored the Blu-Ray version of the film aiming to sell it at some point. However feeling guilty that the Blu-Ray disc may be “corrupted” I had never actually done this, I didn’t want to sell a dud disc to anyone, so was wanting to check that it wasn’t a dud disc by using someone else’s Blu-Ray player. This I never got round to. This Christmas though, the family present was the XBox One S which can play Blu-Ray discs. Receiving the new Planet of the Apes film reminded me that I had Dawn of the Planet of the Apes so tried it out and it worked. I then decided now I had both discs out to redeem the digital codes.

So I started Flixter on the iPad, followed the instructions, which meant searching for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes in the Flixter library and entering the redemption code (a much simpler process than it was back in 2013). I then checked the code for War for the Planet of the Apes. I followed the same instructions I had done for Dawn, but I couldn’t find War for the Planet of the Apes. Okay lets read the instructions… it said to go foxredeem.com and I was pleasantly surprised to find that I could download War for the Planet of the Apes in an iTunes format (which I did).

Now I am not sure when 20th Century Fox stopped using Ultraviolet, but though still DRM, the iTunes format has worked much better for me than Ultraviolet.

So what about War for the Planet of the Apes, well I’ve not watched it yet…

My keyboard “isn’t supported”

Smart Keyboard

Ever since I upgraded my iPad Pro to iOS 11 I have been having problems with my Apple Smart Keyboard. Every so often the iPad seems to think that this “accessory” isn’t a proper accessory and “isn’t supported”.

Sometimes it’s a simple matter of detaching the iPad from the keyboard and re-attaching. Sometimes I have to shut down and hard restart the iPad.

A Google search hasn’t illuminated any clear solutions to the problem.

20 years later…

Back in the mid 1990s Apple released this video about their vision for the future and included a tablet that is reminiscent not just of the iPad, but also the iPad Pro.

There are a couple of things to note, the drag and drop planning, the sharing of content and ideas and using mobile devices to capture stuff (today we’re using mobile phones and tablets for this).

I like watching these videos to see how far we haven’t come and how far we have.

Getting Bigger

Phablets by Maria Elena

You have probably noticed that over the last few years mobile phones have been getting bigger, and tablets, such as the iPad have been getting smaller. Almost a convergence in terms of size between phones and tablets.

Doing some internet research for another article I found this comment I made on Brian Kelly’s blog post (from 2008) on what devices we would be using in 2013. My main comment was wondering if devices (such as phones) would get bigger!

James Clay said
7 February 2008 at 1:16 pm

I believe that the key difference will be is that the storage capabilities will become less important, as connectivity improves allowing easy access to information and content whenever and wherever you are.

I wonder if the devices will get bigger rather than smaller?

Think about phones, the Nokia N95 is a BIG phone compared to the compact small phones of a few years ago.

The iPod touch screen is so much bigger than the iPod video screen.

Bigger and thinner possibly?

Though for me the downside of all the functionality is battery life and I wonder if there will be minimal improvement in functionality, but a huge leap in the battery life as technology improves the power efficiency of the chips and memory.

As with all things rather than look five years in the future, look five years in the past.

In 2003 I had a phone which could play music, video, had an in-built radio, could surf the net (slowly on a GPRS) connection.

In 2008 I can do all those things but in higher quality and I know where I am (GPS).

In 2013…

I thought it would be interesting to see what said then and see how things have changed and also look forward a little more.

I said back then “I wonder if the devices will get bigger rather than smaller?” well in 2013 we saw the first large phones or phablets. The iPad mini had been released the year before and we had played around with the iPad since 2010, but now we wanted smaller tablets.

Now in 2015, the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus have been released by Apple and as with many Apple devices, and as I predicted, these are bigger and thinner than the phones we had in 2008.

Connectivity is much better with most new devices able to access 4G speeds, but not all of us can afford to be connected at those speeds.

These larger screens, more powerful connectivity have large power requirements compared to older devices. Back in 2008 I said

I wonder if there will be minimal improvement in functionality, but a huge leap in the battery life as technology improves the power efficiency of the chips and memory.

Manufacturers have improved battery life for their devices, still for most people there is a requirement to charge every day, but at least the battery does last most of the day. I remember having a Nokia N95 and too often the battery would only last half a day as I did use many of the different functions on the phone.

One thing that wasn’t mentioned in the first post was battery life, but I commented on in the following post.

Upon reflection I realised why I carry multiple devices around. The key reason is battery life.

If my phone has GPS, plays video and/or music, internet, acts as a 3G modem for my laptop, oh and makes phone calls; then even with a large battery I don’t expect it to last the day.

Spread the functionality over multiple devices and suddenly I can ensure that I can do all of the above, over catching the 6.30am train to London, all day in a meeting or a conference, and back again to reach home at 7.30pm.

I have multiple devices as a single device can not last for the time I need it.

The one change from 2008 that is much more apparent is the decline of the specialist device and the move to a multi-function device. No longer are we carrying pocket cameras, dedicated music players, video devices, e-book readers; our larger phones now do all that for us and then some…

So what will the device of 2020 look like?

Well that’s more difficult to predict, what do you think?

Image Credit: Maria Elena

Stay hungry, stay foolish

Is Apple innovative?

David Hopkins on the Google+ made an interesting point

Am I missing the innovation everyone holds Apple in such high regard for? All I am seeing is reaction to what is happening elsewhere but no real drive or innovation. The latest updates are in reaction to Dropbox, user keyboards, messaging, widgets/homescreen, etc.

Apple have always been like that, even under Steve Jobs.

What they do best is take ideas from other people and make them really work well for users.

Steve Jobs famously said in 1996:

Picasso had a saying — ‘good artists copy; great artists steal’ — and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.

Dynabook

The Dynabook was first revealed in 1973, the HP TC1100 was a fantastic tablet (let down by a poor OS implementation), so when Apple released the iPad in 2010, this wasn’t innovation, this was reinvention of an existing form factor, and what they did was make it work and work well.

There were a few music download services prior to iTunes, but it was iTunes that made it mainstream.

There were many different mp3 players, from companies such as Creative, but it was the iPod which turned the mp3 player from a geeky product to a mainstream need.

The iPhone was, though innovative, most of the touchscreen phones before were clunky and didn’t work very well. What Apple did was take the touch interface to the next level, reinvention again, really.

Even Steve Jobs said reinvent when he announced the iPhone.

An iPod, a phone, an internet mobile communicator… these are NOT three separate devices! And we are calling it iPhone! Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone. And here it is.

Even Steve Jobs said reinvent when he announced the iPhone.

The 11″ MacBook Air is a fantastic piece of kit, but before then we had the Asus EeePC mini-notebooks, and Sony for years were making innovative VAIO laptops.

So following the WWDC keynote where we saw Apple release their version of Dropbox, the iCloud Drive (which replaces iCloud, which replaced MobileMe, which replaced the iDisk!). The previous versions were all a bit “rubbish” in comparison to Dropbox, so it will be interesting to see how iCloud Drive works against Dropbox.

Store any type of file in iCloud and access it on any device. With iCloud Drive, you can organize your files in the cloud the way you like, create as many folders as you want, and add tags to find files faster.

This is a great example of how Apple continues to copy what others do, but also demonstrates that don’t always get it right.

Another example from WWDC is the possibility of using third party keyboards.

iOS 8 brings the biggest changes to the keyboard since the very first iPhone. Now you can tap to choose the perfect suggestion for your next word. And for the first time, third-party keyboards will be available. Typing as you know it might soon be a thing of the past.

Third party keyboards have been a feature of Android phones for a fair while now, this is another example that shows Apple rarely creates something totally new, but takes on board ideas from elsewhere.

In my opinion what makes Apple a success is they focus on the customer experience, learning from what others do and then improve it.

Lastly a quote from Steve

Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.