tech, news, productivity, views and stuff
I have managed to download the iPhone SDK, but so far have left it alone. It does require an Intel Mac running Leopard and my iMac is still running Tiger (for a while).
My Mac mini is running Leopard, but it’s a G4 PPC Mac so no luck there.
Ah well out with the external Leopard drive and boot up the iMac.
Crave and Reuters reports that Apple has sent out invitations for an event on Thursday morning detailing the iPhone Software Developement Kit (SDK):
“Please join us to learn about the iPhone software roadmap, including the iPhone SDK and some exciting new enterprise features,” Apple said in an invitation sent to reporters.
Imagine going to Starbucks having already ordered your drink from your iPhone?
Engadget reports on an application for the iPhone which allows you to place an order for a drink so it’s ready when you get there.
Quickorder, as you can probably imagine, would enable iPod touch users to swing by their local Starbucks, order up their favorite drink and avoid a good deal of that always questionable human interaction.
Just demonstrates how useful/useless an application for a mobile device can be.
Photo source.
After my personal mobile phone gave up the ghost I decided it was time to get a new phone. I have a Nokia N73 through work though so haven’t been entirely phoneless. But I need a phone for personal use.
I discounted the iPhone almost immediately, in the main as a) the phone was expensive at £269; b) the phone plans were expensive with the cheapest one at £35 per month; c) you can’t use the iPhone as a Bluetooth modem which means that I couldn’t use it with my laptop; and finally d) it uses EDGE and not 3G which means that even if I could use it as a modem it would be very slow and internet on the phone would be slow.
I quite like the Nokia N73, but I have one of those and I don’t really want two!
I did consider the N95, but with rumours of an N96 and wanting something with a slightly better battery life, I decided to go with a different phone.
After much thought and looking, I decided to go with the LG Viewty. I went with T-Mobile as they are one of the few UK mobile phone service providers which allow you to use the phone as a modem with your laptop and I wanted that over a separate USB 3G Modem.
Alas when I went into the shop they were out of stock. So I ordered online, only to make a mistake with my bank details so when they made the charge to the card it was refused! After phoning and correcting the mistake I found out that the phone was now out of stock, but would be back in stock soon.
Ten days later I get an e-mail saying that the black one would be back in stock soon, but the silver model was available now.
Silver, I didn’t know it was available in silver.
A quick internet search revealed that the silver model was newer, hmm, choices, silver now or black later.
Well after thinking about it for a couple of minutes I decided to go with the silver model. Phoned T-Mobile to let them know, when they told me…
“the black one is back in stock”
Aaarrrgh, silver or black, silver or black.
Decisions.
Choices.
In the end I decided with the silver one, as it was newer.
Hopefully it may arrive today, but it should be here by Monday. Only problem I have is I will need to get another memory card format as it uses Micro SD whereas my other phones have or use Mini SD or Memory Stick Duo.
BBC’s Click has a nice article on the mobile web.
It is estimated that just one in five people with phones that are able to connect to the net actually do. But the iPhone, however, is having a profound effect on the willingness of its users to go online.
What no 3G?
Though you may think I am talking about the lack of a second generation iPhone with 3G, no I am talking about the lack of 3G on the MacBook Air.
Yes it has 802.11n, but how many 802.11n wifi hotspots have you seen on your travels? Also from an internet perspective, 802.11n is a bit of overkill for a typical internet connection. Not everywhere has wifi hotspots, they never seem to be available when I am out and about or they fall over a lot from too many clients.
So there you are with this beautifully thin MacBook Air and either you need to use a Bluetooth to a 3G phone, which kills the battery both on the MacBook Air and the phone, and a lot of mobile phone providers in the UK now no longer allow you to use your 3G phone as a modem (or they charge you a fortune) they all now seem to want you to use a USB dongle.
Now an USB dongle though has less of an impact on battery life on your laptop (and no impact on your phone’s battery life) is a dongle and it dangles from the beautifully styled and thin laptop you just bought!
All of this could have been avoided if Apple had provided 3G functionality with their beautifully thin MacBook Air.
I’m not the only one thinking like this, as you can see here and here.
I think Apple missed the boat on this one, though maybe they didn’t want to get into bed with another phone provider!
Those who know me will know that I am a bit of a fan of Apple products, not exclusively, but I do like good design and stylish kit.
Yesterday in San Francisco at MacWorld Expo, Apple announced some new products and upgrades for the iPod touch and iPhone.
Key new product announced at the keynote was the MacBook Air, a small light MacBook.
I do like small computers, great fan of the 10″Sony VAIO laptops, however this is slightly bigger than I would like, and I can’t see how that would survive travelling by air or train.
Don’t get me wrong I think it’s very stylish, well designed, but doesn’t meet my needs for a small portable computer for use at conferences, on the train and in coffee shops.
No rumoured touchscreen, nor a Blu-ray drive either (actually no optical drive, though cleverly you can use your other Mac’s drive wirelessly, which is a very clever piece of software and something I would like to use with Windows UMPCs).
Nor can you can carry a spare battery, actually you can’t even replace the battery, it has to be sent to Apple to be replaced if it goes faulty.
There was also upgrades for the iPhone and iPod touch announced which provide additional applications, annoyingly free on the iPhone and a £12.99 upgrade for the iPod touch.
Huh!
Probably worth it for the e-mail and notes applications which make the iPod touch a more useful.
Also announced was a new Airport Extreme base station which comes with a 500GB or 1TB drive for Time Machine backups.
On the Americans get the opportunity to rent films, here in the UK we don’t, well not for a while.
I have mentioned before the ability of the EyeTV application to export TV recordings in a format which then allows it to be viewed via an iPod touch or an iPhone. It exports in a Quicktime H.264 format, the quality is excellent, and file sizes small, so it is quick to stream/download over an 802.11g wireless network.
One thing which does let the whole process down is the speed of conversion. On my Intel iMac it is slow, a one hour show takes under an hour. However on my 1.5GHz G4 Mac mini, it takes forever.
A two hour recording I made last night which finished at 10.30pm was still been exported this morning at 9.30am! Eleven hours into the conversion process and it was about half way done!
As you might expect I have now turned of the wifi access function of EyeTV on the Mac mini.
Elgato do make a device that in theory makes things faster, the elgato turbo.264, an external USB device which according to the blurb…
Turbo.264 rapidly converts and drops videos into iTunes, ready to synch with your iPod, iPhone, Apple TV or Sony PSP. And even better, Turbo.264 does all the heavy lifting. While the hard work of video encoding is in progress, you can continue to work or play on your Mac.
Turbo.264 also accelerates the H.264 (MPEG-4) export command of popular Macintosh video applications, including EyeTV’s Wi-Fi Access feature.
I have read mixed reviews, but it certainly does look interesting.
Well I now have an iPod touch, and though I have touched one before, to actually use one for quite a bit of time, is a different kettle of fish. I am very impressed still with the device. Apple have done an excellent job.
The touch interface is very impressive and compared to the typical Table PC or Archos touch interface, the iPod touch interface is more fluid and responsive, and though I don’t like the fingerprints all over the device, the use of the finger is very intuitive.
The screen quality is excellent and images and video look excellent.
Syncing took a bit of time, it’s just an 8GB device, but I did put over five hundred photographs on the device as well as 4Gb of music and podcasts.
The browser is probably the best I have seen on any mobile device, the way you can intelligently zoom in and out makes browsing webpages really nice and you don’t feel you are losing out with the small screen (well it’s a lot smaller than my 20″ iMac).
Overall I do like the iPod touch, do I like it enough to get an iPhone, well if the phone functions work as well as the iPod then it’s a distinct possibility, though I will probably wait until we see a next generation iPhone, you know one with 3G capabilities.
iPod touch, me touch, me like!
