digg this | Add to Del.icio.us Well that's the new OS downloaded and installed on my iPod Touch and I can't help wondering what all the fuss has been about. This update feels even more anticlimactic once it's actually living on your iPod. There's just nothing to it. Nothing really changes. There's no little red circles on Twitter apps suddenly appearing to tell you that someone more has left 140 characters of wisdom, there's no oomph when the device boots in again for the first time after update...there's nothing.

Labels: Apple, iPhone OS 3.0, iPod Touch

digg this | Add to Del.icio.us I was browsing the App store the other day looking for a new game to play and I came across Paper Toss. The App itself is great fun and being free it's well worth a look. While playing it however I noticed something in the background that made me laugh. The developers had included a computer running Windows XP. In fact it's in all of the levels of the game.

Labels: App Store, iPod Touch, Windows XP

digg this | Add to Del.icio.us I've been thinking recently about Apple's position in the consumer market and I realized just how close Apple are to creating Bill Gate's vision of a digital home. They are 2/3 products short of a viable claim to the home.
Firstly lets look at what they have in place at this time. The iMac is an aesthetically pleasing piece of technology that will look well in any office or bedroom. I'm going to ignore the functionality of the software installed on the device because OSX certainly has some shortcomings but lets assume for a moment that the software is at a level to compete with Microsoft Office etc. On the iMac you can have your music, pictures, video and documents all managed by the ilife and iWorks suites.

That's all good on one machine but no internet isn't much use so we turn to the AirPort Extreme Base Station. This will give you wired and wireless network access along with the ability to share a USB printer or USB hard drive which can be plugged into the unit. But what if your rooms do not have the room or the look to take an iMac. Well that's OK because the AirPort Express can be plugged into a wall socket and will extend your wireless network. All you need to do is plug in a set of speakers and you can stream your music to this room too. But what good that's if you have to go to the room with the iMac to play and change songs? Well you don't. Buy an iPod Touch or iPhone and you can download the Apple Remote app. This gives you control of any iTunes library on your wireless network so you can play, stop and change any song you want from the comfort of any room.

Want something more impressive well if you have a Widescreen television with enhanced or high definition then you can add the Apple TV. From this little white box you can access and play your music, video, TV Shows, films or pictures stored on any iTunes directly on your TV over the wireless network. Even better you can access the iTunes store and buy a new film etc anytime you wish.

To round it all off lets just add Time Capsule to back up your Macs to so you don't lose any of your files and photos and a Macbook to allow you to work or surf the Internet from where ever you're sitting. This, my friends, is the Apple home and if price isn't an issue it's a pretty impressive situation.

Now the missing pieces. We need a photo frame in order for us to display our images for visitors to see without having to switch on the television. Connecting over wireless the minimal white or black look could be very impressive and non-obtrusive. Secondly we need a silent media server along the lines of Windows Home Server offering much the same functionality and being cross platform. Thirdly and finally a partnership with Sega or Nintendo where Apple could get a foot into the computer game/media machine market. While the Apple TV is nice it can't compete with the Xbox 360 0r the Playstation 3. If Apple could add these three devices to it's portfolio then it would only be the price that would be in their way. Apple is high end and the people who could afford this vision would have to have a lot of disposable income. The main point is however that Apple have brought themselves within touching distance of Bill Gate's vision to have the digital home leaving Microsoft with the less exciting but more lucrative digital office.

Labels: Apple, Apple TV, iMac, iPhone, iPod Touch, Microsoft, Nintendo, Sega

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Well Apple have confirmed that they are holding an event in San Francisco this Tuesday, September 9th. So what are we in store for at this event? Well I'm going to outline my predictions now and I'd be interested to know what you guys think.

1. New Generation of iPods. This one is pretty much a given. Since the new terms have started and the laptops for schools and universities have been bought by now this show is most likely going to introduce products for Christmas. New iPods are the most obvious new product for Christmas. Cult of Mac are even carrying the image to the left that claims to be the new Nano.

2. iPod Touch Improvements. With the iPhone getting it's improvements I have to believe that the Touch is about to get some improvements. I would

love to see the ability to tether the Touch to a phone added but that's just hopeful thinking. The best case scenario would be a new Touch that acts like an Internet tablet. Like an iPhone but without the ability to make phone calls. I can't see this hurting the iPhone because, let's face it, your phone needs to make calls but it would act as a fantastic entry level to the iPhone family. I also suspect that the current family of Touch will get a price cut.

3. iTunes 8. Kevin Rose of Digg has already talked about some of the features that he expects to be announced in iTunes 8. These include a Genius feature.

A new source comes forward w/this info:  (this is consistent w/everything I've heard)

What's new in iTunes 8
iTunes 8 includes Genius, which makes playlists from songs in your library that go great together. Genius also includes Genius sidebar, which recommends music from the iTunes Store that you don't already have.
With iTunes 8, browse your artists and albums visually with the new Grid view; download your favorite TV shows in HD quality from the iTunes Store; sync your media with iPod nano (4th generation), iPod classic (2nd generation), and iPod touch (2nd generation); and enjoy a stunning new music visualizer.

Labels: Apple, iPod Touch

digg this | Add to Del.icio.us I've been using MobileMe since it became available and on the Apple side I've had no issues with it. It syncs easily with iPod Touch and OSX. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the Windows side of things. I've been trying to sync contacts and calendar with Outlook with mixed success. I have my Windows Live account hooked up to Outlook using Outlook Connector. I was under the impression, rather stupidly, that the contacts and the calendar would sync out of the box. There's been none of it. Not even close in fact.

Syncing contacts is the first major issue. If I sync with Windows Contacts then everything works perfectly and the contacts appear. If I use Outlook however OutlookSyncDevice crashes every single time. I'm going to hook in and debug it but I suspect it's linked to Outlook Connector and MobileMe not playing nice. I've no intention of turning off Outlook Connector so that could mean bye bye MobileMe.

Before I jump however lets look at the calendar. Well it's awful. I've tested multiple scenarios with it and so far I'm having no joy with Outlook. In this case I can't even test it with Windows Calendar because for some reason Apple won't support it. I'm now looking at Windows Live Calendar and the cost of using it seems to be perfectly justifiable compared with the cost of using a badly substandard MobileMe.

On a quick note what about the online applications? Well I first used them on OSX and found them pretty useful and responsive. There's nothing really new in what they offer but they are simple enough to use. Move over to Windows and again there's issues. The service doesn't work properly with IE7, I'm very interested to test it with IE8 to see how well it works. You even get an arrogant warning that blames this on IE7 but remember that if Google can develop for IE then you would expect Apple to be able to. So what are the services like on Firefox? Well they work but they're slow and if you're a Firefox user then I'm afraid you can't get your bookmarks synced even though it's one of the support Windows browsers. Weird? Well not really because there's a browser that happens to display the services and let you sync the bookmarks, guess which one? That's right the downright hideous Safari. MobileMe is not a good reason to use Safari, nothing is a good reason to use it in fact. So the online services aren't sitting well for Windows either even though they are meant to be platform independent, kinda the point of the "cloud" concept I would've thought.

The final scenario and the realisation I had was that if I wanted MobileMe to work even a little on the Windows side then I would probably have to abandon my current email accounts and make sure that Outlook is only hooked up MobileMe. I'm not doing it. I've no interest in doing it. I'm sticking with my Windows Live address and services so I'm guessing it's going to have to be goodbye to MobileMe. Let's face it Live Mesh offers a great online storage option along with Office Live Workspace and SkyDrive. There's nothing at all wrong with Live Mail and if I ever decide to sign up to MSN Premium account I'll get calendar sync but lets face it, is it really that important? What about push? Well since it's on a 15 minute delay I can get my Live Mail forwarded to my GMail account and get my N95 to sync every 15 minutes for free. That's a Microsoft flaw however. I shouldn't have to. Live Mail needs IMAP or POP asap.

So what's the lesson from all this? Well I think it's pretty obvious. Computers are still not even close to being user friendly. There's so much infighting and "nerdy" arguments between Microsoft and Apple users, to name but two, that we can't simply get an integrated system that is user friendly. Users don't want to have to understand all the stuff that's going on under the hood. They simply want to be able to sign up to their email, select what they want to sync with and when they look at their Nokia phone they want the same contact list as their email account has and at the moment that is not being offered. It's not just Apple, Google and Microsoft that are to blame for this but they have a lot to answer for. There's room for more than one company in the technology world but only when the systems easily integrate. There's plenty of car companies making money why can't the same be true for IT? Imagine a world were there was a different driving test for each make of car. Then one company would dominate simply due to people not wanting the hassle. I want to see real system integration between the major companies because one will never win out over the rest and the bitter cat fighting is just hurting the consumer. Also lets face it people are sticking to Microsoft because it's familiar and that's a hard habit to break. It's no coincidence that Apple released Boot Camp and Apple hardware sales really started to rise. MobileMe was in the position to really breakdown a few barriers and show that Apple can develop quality software for a different platform in the same way as Microsoft have built Office and Messenger for Mac. I'm not sure they actually can. iTunes is weak as is MobileMe. Lets see something better guys because I'm getting fed up waiting around for you.

Labels: Apple, iPhone, iPod Touch, iTunes, Live Mesh, Mac OS X, Microsoft, Mobile Me, N95, Nokia, Office Live, Windows Live, Windows Vista

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An article in Arstechnica highlights how slow Apple can be when patching security flaws.

Although Apple didn't make a big deal about it, one of the security fixes included in the recent iPhone/iPod touch 2.0 firmware is a fix for a fairly high-profile WebKit bug that was used to hack a MacBook Air back in March. People immediately began asking why the bug took so long to fix on the iPhone. Now, the researcher who discovered it, Charlie Miller, has called Apple out over its iPhone patching practices in a recent Computerworld piece, saying that the company "messed up."

When the bug was originally disclosed to Apple, the company asked Miller if Mobile Safari was also affected, and he suggested that it probably was. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to confirm his assertion at the time, and left it up to Apple (which had all of the details) to test the exploit on the iPhone itself. It turned out that the exploit code needed to be tweaked slightly to do anything malicious on an iPhone, but Apple apparently closed the case after the OS X exploit failed to do anything nasty.

Further research revealed that if the actual JavaScript regular expression exploit code was run, bad things would still happen. Apple seemed to have corrected the bug pretty quickly after that. However, the mere fact that it took Apple so long to patch an iPhone WebKit bug has brought up the question: how well will Apple be able to manage two OS versions? Miller has pointed out that most WebKit bugs found on OS X will also occur on the iPhone and iPod touch, so Apple could theoretically patch both at the same time. Whether that will ever actually happen remains to be seen.

Labels: Apple, iPhone, iPod Touch

digg this | Add to Del.icio.us So far virtually all the apps I have for the iPod Touch are available for the N95 in some form which is just as good. The applications were one of the major reasons, if not the major reason, why I was considering the iPhone but with virtually every major newspaper having a mobile version, every major email provider having mobile access and most major blogging services having a mobile interface or an application that gives a mobile interface then what exactly sets iphone apart?

Labels: iPhone, iPod Touch, N95, N96, Nokia