Apple

Live Out Loud!

| Richard

Well since I last updated this blog, a lot has happened. Obviously the main event was my trip along Route 66 on an Electra Glide (posts syndicated below and on my Big Trip Blog). Breathtaking!

A week back in the UK – missing the States a lot – and I was off to Paris for a couple of days again with one of our Clients.

Back in London and the weather was wonderful at last, making walking home from work lovely if challenging – trying to avoid pubs!

Silhouette
Silhouette

Paralympics were on, bringing with it the Mayor’s fun: a big screen on Potters Field between County Hall and Tower Bridge with stalls selling all sorts of food and a bar. Made walking home and indeed lunchtimes different and bringing out the crowds.

Tower Bridge Adornment
Tower Bridge Adornment

GT got us tickets for the weekend’s Paralympics so off we went for a look around and to be awestruck.

Coca-Cola "Bubbles"
Coca-Cola “Bubbles”

I think GT’s favourite part of the Olympic Park was probably the champagne and seafood restaurant where we spent a pleasant hour or two!

Then the following week, it was my daughter’s 21st birthday, so she came down to stay at mine for the weekend, with a trip to the West End shops for a dress and a champagne afternoon tea at Harrods’ Georgian Restaurant (after we’d had the Best Milkshakes Ever!).

Shake It Baby!
Shake It Baby!
'Arrods
‘Arrods

My 21st birthday present to her was a vanity plate for her car: 1991 AM (her birth year and initials). This was the end of the weekend that I’d spent with GT shopping in Kingston for an LBD for a do coming up with a lovely vegetarian meal on the Thames.

The following week saw more meals out plus a trip and stay in the Midlands to train a client’s staff. Great fun as always, but hard work.

Last week was fun: GT came with me to a champagne drinks reception at the Spencer House in St James Place, hence the new Karen Millen dress and Jimmy Choo killer heels! Driving in the back of a cab over Waterloo Bridge, we saw a huge ride at the Southbank that we decided we had to go on, so plans were hatched for coming back last weekend to ride on Priceless London Wonderground’s high-spinning swing ride, the Star Flyer, the tallest travelling ride in the country at 60m tall, with amazing views of London (especially when we went back later, after dark.

That was a weekend of film too, seeing “Killing Them Softly” (slow-paced but well done) on the Friday night and “The Sweeney” (which was an enjoyable romp if paying only lip service to the original series) on the wet Sunday afternoon.

Quite pleased too, recently, with the release of iOS6 and the iPhone 5 which is a lovely shiny thing!

And finally, Esther, I’ll leave you with my favourite track during this period which sums up a lot of things (more of which later):

Siri Arse Lee

| Richard

So when I first got my iPhone 4S I wrote:

“I see it really being of use to me when I’m in the car and a text message comes through: Siri can read it out and send a dictated reply. It’ll be interesting to see if that’s done through my Mazda RX-8′s Bluetooth sound system or the iPhone’s loudspeaker.”

Well there’s some good news and there’s some bad news.

The good news is that yes, it works through the car’s Bluetooth sound system, so it mutes any music and reads out the text messages.

The bad news includes:

  • “Uh-kay” being said before most things it does.
  • If you haven’t got a web connection it’ll say it can’t do anything right now, like reading something stored locally.
  • The voice recognition at anything other than walking pace is pretty poor, actually, and I’ve now started simply sending bizarre text messages in reply to people rather than spending hours arguing with Siri when it comes up with gobbledegook instead of what I actually said, thinks that I said “danger” rather than “change it” and claims not to understand danger (big, brave Siri!)  and sometimes even picks a track from my music library to play in an attempt at being ‘helpful’.
  • Won’t perform a web search because I’m in the UK and using proper English.
Close, but no cigar.
Oh and another thing: to be fair to Apple, they claim different sets of services from Siri on their US site to those on their UK site.

“It Just Works”

| Richard

Yesterday, I was reminded about just how good technology can be when it all works together. This can, of course, be a rare thing and nothing is more frustrating than kit that doesn’t work as it should.

But two things – OK, three – reminded me of how lucky we are these days.

It started with iTunes Match: I updated the iTunes software on my work laptop and then enabled iTunes Match and watched as it increased the number of songs from simply those I’d previously purchased from the iTunes Store (available since a previous release of iTunes) to all of my music collection currently stored on my iMac back at home but now backed up to iCloud.

I was then able to download a track I wanted on my laptop from my music store back home.

I’m working away from home at the moment and saw that there was nothing much worth watching on the telly. So I fired up my iPad, tethered it to my iPhone – thanks to 3’s All You Can Eat data plan – and did a bit of social networking before starting up Sky Go.

I then watched a couple of films from Sky’s Anytime+ feature: new or classic films that are available to you, depending upon your Sky TV package. Streamed over 3’s network at no additional cost to me.

“It Just Works”…

iPhone 4

| Richard

Well as I mentioned over at Crass Stupidity, I’d been considering an iPhone 4 after it was announced and given it a guarded ‘maybe’, so I’d registered an interest in it with 3 and indeed Vodafone.

Recent searches had also indicated that 3 might well be offering free tethering, whereby you use your phone’s data package with other devices like laptops and indeed an iPad to save you having to splash out on a separate data contract. And yes, I am beginning to be tempted by the thought of an iPad as well, having had a photographer friend extol the virtues of his and having played with one at Meadowhell last weekend.

Merely having expressed interest, I’d been surprised to receive this text from 3 on the 22nd June:

“Great news: You’ll get an iPhone 4 upgrade and we’ve already reserved one for you…”

I didn’t even say I wanted one yet!

Then on the 24th June:

“Update. Your iPhone 4 is still reserved. Due to high demand we’ll contact you when we can process your order. View tariff details at three.co.uk/iphone”

The next day, I received this text:

“Great news. Your iPhone 4 will be available w/c 19 July. We’ll contact you between 1 & 7 July to process your upgrade…”

Well I’ve just received that call late this afternoon. They’re offering me a 16GB iPhone 4 on a 24 month contract with a one-payment to start with. In other words, it’s the same offer as anyone else would get, except that:

  1. I wouldn’t want a 16GB one as I’d intend to actually use it and fill up the phone with music, video and of course work.
  2. Why the hell would I want a 24 month contract when Tesco are offering a 12 month one?
  3. Why the hell would I want a 24 month contract when my current one is a 12 month one?
  4. Why the hell would I want a 24 month contract when Apple tend to launch a newer, better iPhone every year?
  5. Why the hell would I necessarily want to stay with 3 when I have two pay monthly phones and want to combine the two into one?

Time to talk to 3’s customer retention department, I think…

The Trouble with iPhones

| Richard

So Apple has unveiled new features for its iPhone. The main one is for advertising within apps – I read that as intrusive targeted ads that you need to click past before using the app or whilst using it.

This means the final nail in the coffin for me ever getting one: my Nokia N97 is due for replacement this summer and I thought about getting an iPhone but quite honestly its size puts me off. Likewise I’m becoming more and more annoyed with touchscreens and having a filthy, greasy screen to read. There’s no way I’ll be putting up with intrusive ads either.

More and more, I’ve been thinking that the only thing that makes my other phone, a Sony Ericsson W595, less than perfect is its lack of GPS. And guess what? Their W995 has that. SE also do a great-looking touchscreen model running Android, but Google’s implementation of Bluetooth hands-free is such that you can’t actually make the call from a car kit but you need to do it from the phone. Which means it’s not good enough for use in the car (much like Nokia’s N97 then…).

The Sony Ericsson W595 Just Works. If their W995 is as easy then that’s a no-brainer for me: a small phone with all the features I want and none of the features I don’t.

Fail: iTunes Gift Cards

| Richard

“And best of all, iTunes gift cards are convenient and fast. You can buy them online or in hundreds of stores nationwide, email them, print them out or gift select items directly to someone special.”

Well you can … if you have iTunes installed on the machine you are at when you want to make a purchase.

I decided that buying an iTunes gift card might be an option for my niece and when I received an e-mail from Apple advertising them, I clicked on the link.

The landing page, however, looks for iTunes on the machine and if you don’t have it installed – as is the case on my work laptop – then that’s it. No purchase is possible.

iTunes Fail

Fail!

The Trouble with Macs…

| Richard

So with the move to London happening soon, one of the items I had to sort out was my Internet access. Here at home – working for myself from my office on the side of the house – I have a business broadband package from Demon with fixed IP addresses for all the computers and printers. When I’m out and about, I usually use a 3G USB dongle from Vodafone which is more often that not either a regular 38Kbps service or on occasion nothing more than a pretty white plastic thing for decoration only. Where there is good coverage, it’s supposed to deliver 1.8Mbps with the promise of 7.2Mbps in parts of London though annoyingly Rotherhithe doesn’t appear to be in the Promised Land but just outside – I’ll check when I get there.

So anyway, with 5GB/month I thought that might make it easier: no need to get a phone line and a broadband package, just use my allowance for a change.

But Mrs RHM then suggested I should get a webcam for my laptop so I could help the kids with their homework if need be and also keep in touch with her. Fine, I thought, though alarm bells started ringing: she uses our venerable iMac while the rest of the family have PCs.

So what’s the problem with the iMac?

Well the iMac and OSX Leopard has iChat which promotes its video chat features. To use it to its best, you need to have a .Mac account – which is expensive for what you actually get which is why I abandoned my .Mac account after a couple of years – as does your friend and .Mac is pretty much a waste of time for anyone on a PC. “Never fear”, says Apple, “you can always link up with AIM.” What?

“iChat works with AIM, the largest instant messaging community in the U.S. You and your buddies can be either AIM or .Mac users. Text, audio, and video chat whether your buddies use a Mac or a PC. Sign in with your AIM account, and all your buddies appear in your iChat buddy list.”

Great! No-one in the UK – OK, I exaggerate a tad – uses AIM: AOL Instant Messenger. The client software seems to have issues here on this PC, by the way, which comes as no surprise to me having once used AOL software for testing purposes. Go on: ask any of your connected friends what they use for instant messaging and they’ll say “MSN” (or “Windows Live Messenger“, to give it its proper name).

You can, of course, download the Mac Messenger client, but the ‘usual’ home user version does not support video messaging. Not really a surprise as I think Microsoft doesn’t really bother with Mac users as they’re lost causes as far as “the Beast of Redmond” appears to be concerned.

Maybe this is another reason not to get a Mac? Until Apple comes up with an instant messaging client that supports video messaging with Windows Live users, you’d otherwise be partially cutting yourself off from the majority of computer users, at least here in the UK.