The standard iPhone is a bit boring and let’s face it everyone uses it these days.
Sure you can buy ringtones from Apple, you can even make your own if you know how.
The latter is what I did and it’s proved to be pretty popular with people at the same time as confusing them something rotten…
Remember the old days of dialling up to your ISP with your modem? That screaming fax machine type sound? ah.. the memories…
Apple’s OS X has a good reputation for providing much better out of the box security than Microsoft Windows, in fact it’s one of the main reasons for running a Mac as opposed to a PC.
Is Apple generally better at designing secure products than other high tech companies out there? I’m not so sure…
I do a lot of online shopping and I use many websites that require some form of account that you log into, normally via a username and password combination. I’m very cautious and take security seriously, working as I do in the IT and more specifically Internet industry for over 10 years I know how to protect myself online.
Wandering through a shopping mall on Friday I spotted the new Google Android powered G1 phone at a T-Mobile store. So I decided to take a look as it could be a viable alternative to the iPhone if you don’t want the O2 network or can’t justify the £35pm entry point for the iPhone.
Initial impressions weren’t good, it had the same awful plasticky build quality of the old T-Mobile Vario (HTC Touch) with a screen that slides out of the way to reveal a proper keyboard. This slide out mechanism is not what I would call robust…
But the important aspect of this phone is the operating system and software which are supplied by Google, someone else may make better hardware in future if the platform takes off.
The Google Android system has all the features you’d expect of a modern smart phone, a full web browser, good email support, maps, an apps store etc. The features list is not the problem, but the implementation is. The iPhone was revolutionary not for any particular feature like the touch screen or maps, it was revolutionary due to the way it worked. The simplicity. It’s very obvious how to do almost anything. The Android platform takes advantage of keys to do some things and the touchscreen to do others. It’s never obvious which you need to use to do something. You find yourself scanning the keyboard for the appropriate key if you cant find what you want on screen, and then if you can’t find a button that does what you need you end up looking around the screen again for some sort of clue as to what to do next. It’s awful. It’s not much more user friendly than the original T-Mobile Vario which ran Windows Mobile 5(?) and that was an absolute nightmare, although the G1 isn’t as sluggish. If it worked well I could forgive the unfinished and very dated “look” that the interface has but as it stands I can’t find anything positive to say about this phone, apart from the price. Even the keyboard, which I thought might be a benefit over the iPhone really isn’t as it’s small size does not make for fast text entry, to be honest I doubt it’s any faster than the on-screen keyboard on the iPhone.
Hopefully Android will get better, that’s the beauty of software, but for now, unless you honestly can’t afford it, the iPhone remains very much the king of the hill.
I discovered something interesting this weekend.
I had a need for a new external USB hard drive and rather than buy my usual Western Digital MyPassport drive I decided to spend a little more and get a Toshiba drive. Why? Instead of being made of plastic it was made of brushed aluminium which I preferred.
When I got home I discovered it needed 2 USB ports to work (Toshiba supply a special USB Y cable for just this purpose) which is less than ideal and poor engineering by Toshiba in my opinion as many other drives work just fine with one USB port.
Apologies to those waiting for the next installment of this project, I have been busy with various client sites…
As I mentioned in part 1, I decided to make some real world measurements of the performance of the solar panel and also the power requirements of the iPhone 3G.
I hooked up a DC power monitor to a 12 volt battery and for a period of exactly 1 week I charged the iPhone exclusively from the 12V battery via a Kensington car charger. In 1 week of my normal use, (ie with WiFi and bluetooth switched on 24/7, email checks every 15 mins, some light browsing and probably 3 or 4 hours of calls) the phone used 43.5 WH (watt hours).
Some people use a PC or Mac for work or email and to them their computer is just a tool, nothing more. For those of us who spend a large portion of our time using our computers for recreation purposes (perhaps dealing with our digital photos, maintaining a blog or so on) it becomes an indespensible part of our lives. We can’t be without it! At that point we can become quite attached to our machines, in much the same way a car enthusiast may be attached to their Mustang, and wouldn’t consider using anything else. While many PC users love their machines it’s generally common knowledge that Mac users in particular are especially attached to their computers, possibly moreso than others. Hence being a Mac user has often been compared to a cult, with Steve Jobs as the leader. I’m not sure I’d go quite that far but there are certainly signs that I’m more than a Mac “user”, I’m a Mac “person”.
What’s the difference between a Mac User and a Mac Person?
I’ve been researching solar panels for some time now and really fancy having a go at putting together a system to run my computer setup off of solar power only. But I’ve decided to try walking before running (or maybe I should consider it crawling before even walking?) and just see how easy it is to power my iPhone purely from solar energy.
To power something like an iPhone from solar energy you need at least 2 things: (more…)
Following on from Part 1 of my opportunity to play with Snow Leopard (OS 10.6) I thought I’d give a bit more feedback on the applications I ran under it.
Now, bear in mind that I only had a few hours to play with this machine so my testing was very limited in scope.
1 to change the light bulb and to comment that the light bulb has been changed.
14 to share similar experiences of changing light bulbs and how the light bulb could have been changed differently.
7 to caution about the dangers of changing light bulbs.
7 to point out spelling/grammar errors in posts about changing light bulbs.
There have been a few rumors today that Apple might be killing off the Mac Mini, stores are unable to order any further systems and there is no word on a replacement.
Some people are prepared to say good riddance, complaining that the Mini hasn’t ben updated in a long time and thus represents poor value, especially compared to PC equivalents (ah that old chestnut!).
So I decided to price up a Mini and its closest competitor. The problem with most mini PC’s is that they’re not especially “mini” in size and they certainly have no class. But Dell seems to have woken up to the concept of design and has a really lovely Mac Mini-like computer called the Studio Hybrid. It’s available in several nice colours, including a very nice bamboo finish (an expensive option but the one I’d have).
