Thursday 21 October 2010

Windows Phone 7 Commercial

Just saw the Windows Phone 7 commercial for the first time and I think Microsoft have gotten it spot on. I can see myself in some of those characters and that makes the phones personal to me already. Any phone that can give you back the time to appreciate the life that is going on around you has got to appeal to everyone. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Back to the Mac Opinion

Well that's another special media event over and Apple have presented us with some new hardware and software to take a look at. A refresh to the Macbook Air, release of iLife '11, introduction to the next OS X (Lion) and the introduction of an app store for Mac software. Pretty substantial event so lets take a look at each piece individually.

1. Macbook Air. The MBA is apparently what would be produced if the original Macbook Air and the iPad had a clandestine relationship. The result is a pair of beautiful laptops which are tiny and light coming in at just 2.9lbs for the 13 inch model and a mere 2.3lbs for the 11 inch model. Flash memory for instant on and battery life of 5hrs and 7hrs for the 11 and 13 inch models respectively sounds pretty impressive but would you buy one? With a price point beginning at £849 for only 2Gb of RAM, a massively underpowered 1.4GHz processor and 64Gb of storage it is not the most appealing of deals considering the 13 inch Macbook costs £849 for which you get a more impressive 10hrs of battery, a bigger screen, 2.4GHz processor and 250Gb of RAM for a still light 4.7lbs. Sadly the MBA just doesn't seem to have a reason to exist at the moment. Decrease the price to closer to £700 and I'll think about it.

2. iLife '11. The new iLife suite has been released and contains the same software as before, i.e. iPhoto, iMovie, iWeb, iDVD and Garageband. in this release there are updates to 3 out of these 5 applications namely iMovie, iPhoto and Garageband. much has been written about these new features already so I'm only picking out a couple of them. The new full screen mode for iPhoto is nice and allows the user to have their full screen taken up with just the application and no menu bars from the OS. Looks very like an iOS app in this mode I have to add. iPhoto also has some new slideshows and improved integration with cloud platforms like Facebook and Flickr.

iMovie has gained a very impressive movie trailer mode. I'm not sure how this one will look when you're trying to make a trailer of the family coming round for Christmas but I am looking forward to playing with this. It has also gained an excellent looking sound management feature and a similar face finding feature as the one in iPhoto.

Garageband has two features musicians are likely to love, namely Groove Matching and Flex Time. Flex Time gives you the ability to better manage the different sounds within a track and fix some errors like not holding a note for long enough. Groove Matching is like spell checking for songs and automatically corrects serious track issues like instruments being out of time with the beat.

iWeb and iDVD do not appear to've gained any new features but even with no changes to those there is enough in this release to warrant me buying it and I will be as soon as possible.

3. OS X 10.7 Lion. We got a sneak peek at the next 'big cat' and it shows the influence that iOS has had in Apple. With features such as a new application launcher, to be honest this looks like a modified version of stacks when you drop the application folder on your dock. The new launcher does support features such as the iOS folders which might be a nice addition but I'm not convinced. Mission Control brings together everything that is running on your Mac onto one dashboard. It is the merging of Expose, Spaces and Dashboard which is an interesting idea but seems a little useless if you're using an older Macbook that doesn't have a motion sensing trackpad but we'll see closer to the time I suppose. The final feature on show is full screen applications which is similar to what iPhoto gives us now. This does give the Mac a strange iPad feel and will be interesting to see how developers innovate and deal with it. I can't wait to see Lion up and running.

4. The final piece of news from Steve was the App Store for Mac. This is basically the same as the iPhone App Store but stocking applications for OS X. While it was announced as part of the Lion segment it is actually due to open in 90 days. Having an application store that can keep track of your applications and alert you to updates is great but after the issues with the iPhone App Store it'll be interesting to see what restrictions Apple put in place. This really is one of those things that can only really be judged after it's launched and we see how developers take to it. I hope it's a hit and I'm tempted to develop Mac applications now there is an easy release mechanism.

So that's the Back to the Mac event. Some very interesting developments on the OS front, an application store which could be a second developer gold rush, a disappointing hardware refresh and a new iLife suite that is certainly worth a look especially if you're on a version pre-2009. I nearly forgot Apple also released a beta of Facetime for Mac. I haven't gotten my hands on it yet but it looked nice, very bare on the feature front and with no integration with iChat, which is disappointing. With the Mac accounting for a 1/3 of Apple's revenue it's not hard to see why it gets an event on its own and its nice to see that Apple hasn't forgotten about it.

Wednesday 20 October 2010

Apple 'Back to the Mac' Event

Later today Apple will be holding a special media event where we expect them to announce some new goodies for us to play with. Recent events have been heavily focused on the iOS devices so it's nice to see an event bringing some focus to the Mac, a product we thought Apple had forgotten about.

So what do we expect to see at the event? In this post I'm going to make a couple of predictions about what I think we'll see and maybe a couple of things that I want but really don't see us getting.

1. OS X 10.7. Have to say this seems like a given considering there's a lion peeping out from behind the Apple logo in the invitation but it's still worth pointing out. Can't see us getting access to Lion before WWDC 2011 but it'll still be nice to get an introduction to the latest big cat. Will be nice to have closer integration between iOS and Internet services.

2. Macbook Air refresh. With all the rumours floating around about a new Macbook Air case this seems like a decent bet too. Maybe a version of the Air with a smaller, 11.6 inch, screen and a lower price point. This could be the laptop to fill the space between the Macbook and the iPad.

3. New version of iWork and iLife. It's been a while since these products were refreshed and now seems like a good time to release new versions. For iWork tighter integration between iWork on the iPad, maybe a light version on the iPhone and the desktop versions. Would love to see the ability to use Airplay to send your Keynote to an Apple TV, since it's so portable you could just bring it with you, plug it into a TV or projector at the client site and present nice and easily. For iLife I would say we'll see minor updates to iMovie and iPhoto, nothing on iTunes and the end of iDVD. iWeb will be entirely new with new templates, a code editor mode and maybe a link into XCode 4 for the web development community (I know that's just me being hopeful).

4. My final prediction is FaceTime in iChat. A version of the application on the Mac and PC along with an integration with MobileMe would be a great way to expand this extremely promising platform to the maximum number of consumers as well as presenting direct competition to Skype.

This could be a very interesting day in Cupertino. With the Windows Phone 7 handsets becoming available soon the quality of the vertical integration along will really help me to determine whether I want to pick up an iPhone 4 and an iPad or quickly aligning Windows line.

Wednesday 27 January 2010

iPod, iMac and now iPad


So after all the hype and online chatter the iPad has now arrived. Reading many of the reactions online there does appear to be disappointment but personally I'm not all that surprised. Lets take a quick look at the predictions I made in my previous post.

1) The screen will be about 10.1 inches and will not be OLED
Actual - 10 inch screen this is not OLED so good start.

2) Price point of approximately £400.
Actual - We don't know the UK price yet but seeing as it's $499 in the US I would say this might be a good prediction too.

3) Simple and intuitive UI with sensor bed under the screen
Actual - The UI could not be more intuitive, it's the iPhone UI. Doesn't type like a Storm tho.

4) iWork, iPhone OS, iLife and iPhone App support.

Actual - Again pretty good you gotta say. iWork is on there and part of the iLife suite will be present, iTunes, Photo etc. We can also see that this runs a slightly more powerful version of the iPhone OS with backward compatibility with iPhone applications. The only thing not here was the online services which is a pity considering the iPad will have 3G.

5) 3G Connection and eBooks support
Actual - These were almost givens before the announcement but it's still another tick in the accurate prediction column. The iPad is an eBook, sorry iBook, reader and can have a 3G connection depending on the version you purchase.

I'm keen to see the device in the Apple Store and I would love to review a unit come it's release in 60 days, if anyone happens to be reading this from Apple I would be happy to review the iPad if you can spare a review unit :) It's great to see a new product from Apple and I don't feel disappointed in what I've seen but we'll wait until the reviews start to come in and until we can actual hold the iPad  before judging it. Let's not forget that the iPhone was heavily criticized in the time between it was announced and it was released and the iPod was soundly bashed in 2001 on it's release so lets give Steve the benefit of the doubt and hold the judgements until it actually arrives in our hands.

Final Apple Tablet Predictions

We're only a few hours away from Steve Jobs taking to the stage and introducing us to Apple's latest innovation. We can only assume at this point that this is going to be in a tablet form factor and after hearing that Apple store employees were going through confidential training today I can only assume that it's going to be available to purchase tomorrow or at least within the next few days. So what exactly will this device have? Well that's what I'm going to look at in this post.


The majority of rumors claim the screen will be OLED and about 10.1 inches. I do agree that it'll be 10.1 inches but this device is not quite a laptop and not an iPod/iPhone so the cost has to be low. This low cost, approximately £400 would be a realistic price point, requirement would mean that OLED is too expensive.


It has been claimed that the Tablet has a steep learning curve when it comes to user interaction. Is this true? Is this really the Apple approach? Look at the iPhone. This device was developed with pure ease in mind, same goes for OS X. Why would jobs suddenly decide to make things complicated for the Apple users? The height of the complication is likely to be multi touch, nothing like Magic Mouse I hope. I would love to see a screen something like the BlackBerry Storm but with a bed of sensors allowing anywhere on the screen to be pushed down and so creating a keyboard like feel.


The software is going to be interesting. Since the ordinary user really doesn't care about the OS on their portable devices I don't see Apple having a problem releasing an OS that is an expanded version of the iPhone OS. This would give it backward compatibility with existing iPhone applications but also allow it to take advantage of the added power that a tablet would have. The applications from Apple will be similar to the defaults on the Mac and iPhone. I can see them adding to the iWork and iLife suite to support more online services, perhaps even an online version of Pages, Keynote and Numbers through MobileMe and I sincerely hope to see a mobile version of these applications on Tablet and iPhone.


A big surprise will be a streaming version of iTunes offered as both a part of MobileMe but also independently. The user can store their music in the cloud using the Home Sharing functionality built into iTunes already. The Tablet will then be able to stream this music through it's 3G connection. The removal of DRM will make this service possible for music.


The final core selling point will be ebooks. We've seen with applications such as Stanza how popular these now are so it's expected that this device will partner with a number of major content providers to provide books, magazines and newspapers. It's been interesting to see how magazines such as Esquire and GQ have presented themselves on the iPhone over the last couple of months and I believe that this is a similar style to what we can expect tomorrow. Full magazines well presented and easily accessible.

No matter how many or few of these predictions turn out to be true I must say I would not like to be in Mr Jobs shoes tomorrow. The hype around this upcoming announcements has reached such an extent that even if this device is brought in on the back of unicorns being held aloft by God Himself I still can't see how it would be anything other than slightly disappointing. I hope to be proved wrong and I hope the price point is positioned well so I can buy one.

Wednesday 20 January 2010

Why Are RIM Over Complicating The Touchscreen Blackberry?

In recent years Blackberry have produced the Blackberry Storm and Storm 2, both sporting a large touchscreen with SurePress technology. There can be little doubt that this device is inspired by Apple's very successful iPhone but in making the Storm similar to iPhone's design I feel that RIM may have missed a great design opportunity. Find out why after the jump.