I think Lex Friedman echoes my thoughts perfectly in his article here.
This is still the most inspirational speech I’ve ever heard, and if you have a spare 15 minutes, it’s most definitely time well spent.
Written on my iPad.
When I came to choose a case for my iPhone 4, I couldn’t find any reviews of the incase Snap Case, so here are my thoughts on it for anyone else that might be considering one.
First, a little background as to how I acquired the case. There has been a lot of publicity regarding the signal attenuation problems with Apple’s new iPhone 4 handset. In my humble opinion, it has been blown way out of proportion, mostly by people who don’t even own an iPhone 4. To be totally honest with you, I have experienced the so-called ‘death grip’. At my desk in the office where I work, I’ve always had a low signal. 3G is a distant dream, and a middling 2G signal is pretty much the best I can hope for. When I bought my iPhone 4, holding it in my left hand facing me (note: I only hold it like this when texting or emailing), the signal bars would indeed begin to decrease, and after a few seconds the signal would disappear completely leaving me with ‘No Service’. At home, however, where I have a strong 3G signal, I could never replicate the problem. I suppose what I’m trying to say is: Yes, it was a real problem, but not one demanding as much attention as it did. I suppose it comes with the territory for Apple. They have a tendency to generate huge amounts of hype around their product releases that even the slightest of problems will be met with huge amounts of negative feedback.
To address this negative feedback, Apple launched the iPhone 4 Case Program. This program provided those who experienced the signal attenuation problem with a free case. Either an Apple iPhone 4 Bumper, or a third-party case from a given selection. Evidently, I opted for the incase Snap Case Clear.
As nice as Apple’s bumpers are, the ‘naked’ iPhone 4 really is a beautiful piece of design work, and it seemed a shame to cover it up. The clear hardshell case allows all of the iPhone 4′s glass and stainless steel components to remain in full view, whilst providing a reasonable amount of protection. Precisely what I was looking for.
It’s been a while since I’ve had a rant about something on here, but this one has been bubbling for a long time.
I’ve read several articles over the last few months relating to how Apple always seem to be ‘working’ with record labels and movie distributors to improve sales of albums and movies on the iTunes store. Most recently is the news that they may be looking to include better ‘digital booklets’, or some kind of ‘interactive digital booklet’. Now, dont get me wrong, I like iTunes. I regularly buy my music from iTunes, but mostly, it’s just singles, or the odd specially-priced EP. Sometimes even a music video. I’ve not bought a single movie or music album from the iTunes store. I also know that I’m not alone with this. There’s a very good reason I don’t buy movies or music albums for download, and one that Apple (and the record companies/movie studios) seem to be ignoring.
As an example, let’s look at the top 5 albums currently in the iTunes music store:
1. Now That’s What I Call Music!, Vol 73 – Various Artists
iTunes Price: £16.99
CDWOW CD Price: £ 10.99
2. iTunes Price:Lungs – Florence & The Machine
iTunes Price: £7.99
CDWOW CD Price: £6.99 Continue reading
It really irritates me how some applications will ‘steal’ ownership of certain file types on my Mac. The biggest issue I have with this is with images. More often than not, I just want to open an image in Preview to take a quick look at it. I expect that when I double-click on an image file, it will quickly open in Preview. On several occasions, Adobe Photoshop has taken it upon itself to assign itself as the default application for many image types that Photoshop supports (.png, .jpg, etc). If you’re a Photoshop user, you’ll know that it’s not a quick application to start up.
In Microsoft Windows, you can right-click and select ‘Open with’, choose the relevant application and check the box for ‘Always use the selected program to open this kind of file’. This has pretty much always worked for me. Mac OS X has a similar right-click option, but this doesn’t always seem to work system-wide, as you might expect.
In order to make this change system-wide, you need to take a different approach. Right-click on the file you wish to always open in a particular program (the .png file in my case), and select ‘Get Info’. There is a section in the pane that opens for ‘Open with:’, and the ‘rogue’ application should be selected. Choose the required application (‘Preview’ in my case) from the pull-down list, and select the ‘Change All’ button. Confirm that you wish to make this change to all files.
Now when I double-click any .png file, it immediately springs open in Preview, and doesn’t try to launch Photoshop instead.
I’m pretty sure it’s the same procedure for Mac OS X Tiger (10.4) too.
Updated 22/06/2009
As with most of the rest of the Worlds iPhone owners, I updated my iPhone 3G to the long-awaited OS 3.0 on Wednesday 17th June 2009. Surprisingly, it seemed to take far less time to complete than any of the other software updates I’ve applied to my iPhones. As to be expected from what we already knew though, most of the new features are subtle ones. The most obvious is the Messages app, which has replaced the old SMS app. Other than that, theres nothing remarkably obvious to differentiate it from 2.2.1. Not that thats a bad thing.
I’ve been reading about the 100+ new features, both known and hidden, but I wanted to note down the ones I’ve experienced which I particularly like or dislike. I’ll keep adding to this list as time goes on. Continue reading
When I bought my iMac almost three years ago, I decided to upgrade my printer at the same time and take advantage of the Apple printer rebate offer. 
So I went for the more-than-I’d-usually-spend £160 Epson Stylus Photo RX640 All-In-One Printer, Scanner, Copier. With the £60 rebate, this made it £100, which was a bargain for a printer of this specification at the time. Although I didn’t have a particular use for the feature, I quite liked the idea of the advertised bluetooth connectivity. I know the range of bluetooth isn’t as good, but WiFi home inkjet printers were few and far between at the time, and using a USB print server would have left me unable to use the scanner function.
So the printer arrived, I got my rebate, and it has served me brilliantly over the last few years. I really can’t fault it. However, I was really quite baffled when I originally set it up as to how I enable the bluetooth connectivity. I found out shortly afterwards, that there was no bluetooth connectivity…at least not built-in. To enable the bluetooth functions, you have to purchase the optional Epson USB Bluetooth Adapter! This was a small-print item on the original product brochure, that I’d annoyingly overlooked, but what a swizz!! Feeling slightly misled after spending £160 on the printer, I was in no hurry to be spending yet more money on a bluetooth adapter for it.
I’ve recently had more and more need to be able to print to my printer whilst my iMac has been turned off. It’s such a pain having to wait for it to boot up, just to print a document from my laptop. So I decided to look into purchasing (begrudgingly) the Epson USB Bluetooth Adapter. Continue reading
My iMac broke a few months ago. Nothing too serious, but annoying nonetheless. The Superdrive decided that it would eat any disc that you put in the slot, and would not eject it. You could hear the mechanism whirring away, but then a nice stressful ‘clunk’, as the disc was eaten again. The disc never even making a minor appearance. So I decided to finally get it fixed while my AppleCare is still valid.
But what’s this got to do with UK Broadband, I hear you – imaginary guy that I’ve borrowed from Wil Wheaton – asking? Shh…I’m getting there…
As I have a lot of personal files on my iMac, I wasnt going to trust it as-is in the hands of my local Apple reseller, so I backed it up with SuperDuper!, formatted it and installed a fresh copy of OS X 10.4 Tiger (via a USB DVD drive). The iMac went off for repair, came back fixed, and then came the time for installing OS X 10.5 Leopard.
Still not seeing what this has to do with UK Broadband… Shhhhh!! I’m getting there!… Continue reading