There are many great Tumblr sites out there collecting images. What’s even better is when they show just how good Apple’s design is by how much others copy it!
Goodbye Sony Ericsson
Sony Ericsson, the noughtie’s partnership that waged war with the once almighty Nokia, is no more.
The love child of the once big Nokia rival Ericsson and the proprietary loving consumer electronics company is no more. Sony have decided the time is up on its partnership, which bought us a mobile phone shaped Walkman and the real pioneers of great cameraphone’s long before the iPhone 4 got its HDR mode: the Cybershot.
The collaboration spawned the first colour screened mainstream handset, the T68i along with the excellent K800i with a 3MP camera that actually made taking pictures with your phone worthwhile. Sony Ericsson took the fight to Nokia throughout the last decade when the smartphone was nothing and the feature candy bar handset was everything.
Personally I used to love the K750i, once we’d warmed to the ‘Back’ button (who’d of thought that’d work?) having tried to get over our addiction to the Nokia ‘Navi key’. It’s incredible to think now how much people would struggle with the idea of moving phone brands. How we laughed at those with ‘old’ smartphones with a stylus like the P800 and wondered why the hell anyone would want to try and send an email on their phone.
How times have changed. Now all people talk about are iOS, Android and Blackberry. Not the latest Samsung ‘status’ clamshell or Walkman phones. Off the stage go Sony Ericsson, on come HTC.
Check out this great retrospective on a decade of Japanese and Swedish collaboration by The Register.
Asking Siri to pour you a beer
Those lucky enough to have got hold of a new iPhone 4S are getting used to talking to their phones, or at least to the new Voice Assistant known as Siri. For once it seems that Siri could have some uses beyond being a bit of a gimmick. Dictation and operating your iPhone 4S when you are driving seem a great reason for voice control that actually works.
That just seems utterly boring though when you and your friends have too much time on your hands.
Ok so is quite crude, but it sort of works. I think it’s time for us to get the UsedMac soldering iron out and get a four pack of Carling to see if we can do better…
Steve Jobs 1955 – 2011
On Wednesday the 5th October 2011, as the Palo Alto evening closed in, Steve Jobs lost his long battle with Pancreatic cancer and the world lost one of the greatest visionaries of the modern era.
There isn’t much a small website like this can say about Steve Jobs that hasn’t already been said by many of the worlds leading figures. So we’d simply like to say our thoughts are with his family and friends at this difficult time.
It is a fitting tribute that many people are learning of his death through the very products he created, however we still hope his family is afforded privacy to grieve his passing.
Of the products he brought to us, well, they are products so era-defining and desired that millions would rather buy a 2 year old Apple model than a brand new product from a rival.
Steve Jobs 1955 – 2011
5 reasons your parents should have an iPad over a PC
1. No Windows Updates to worry about so less time you have to spend fixing it for them when it doesn’t work.
2. No viruses so no need to run any rubbish like Norton 360 or Mcafee
3. It. Just. Works.
4. Easy web browsing. What else do your folks do?
5. Easy email. What else do your folks do?
Review: OS X Lion – Part 3 ‘Spotlight broken’
So it’s day 2 now of my Upgrade to Lion from my existing Snow Leopard install.
On the face of it it seemed all was well and working. It wasn’t long either after the installation finished that Apple released the first update to 10.7.1 meaning I’d timed the install well.
It didn’t take long though for me to spot something was up with Spotlight. Put simply, it wasn’t working. Like many OS X users, I use Spotlight as my main way of launching Apps. So the first time I tried to open something quickly (Activity Monitor in this case to work out what was taking all my performance up) by typing Act into Spotlight I noticed the only returns to my search where an offer to search the Web or Wikipedia for it. Hardly much use for getting my own Apps open.
So I thought I’d give it the benefit of the doubt and presume that perhaps due to the upgrade that Lion would need to re-index my Hard Drive before it sprang into life. So I left it for the evening to see if the little dot would appear within its magnifying glass icon. Appear it didn’t. Nor had it appeared when I returned to it this evening. So I rolled my sleeves up to try and fix it.
Having delved into Spotlight’s settings in System Preferences I realised that Apple have removed the option there to force it to re-index. So I then did a quick Google search and ended up on the Apple Support forums. This post suggested using a Terminal (a throw back to Lion’s UNIX roots) to essentially use a command line to switch Spotlight off then back on again, thus forcing it to re-index. However this didn’t work either!
About to pull my hair out I went back to the Spotlight preferences and by chance clicked on the Privacy tab. This is not what you want to see:
Somehow my entire Macintosh HD had been added to the privacy list, meaning it would be excluded from any Spotlight searches!
Removing it from the list meant that Spotlight leapt back into life re-indexing my drive. As it stands I have 87 minutes until it is finished. At least thought it has already started returning results and I can quickly open Twitter without reaching for the Dock.
So a frustrating issue to sort out and one which would stump a normal user without a Genius Bar visit. Hopefully this is one of only few niggles.
Was there an upside? Well it did force me to use Launchpad, the new iOS style App launcher for Lion. This was simple as you’d expect, but would I use it over Spotlight? There’s more chance of me buying a HP Touchpad…
Review: OS X Lion – Part 2
Upgrade Time: We take the plunge with Lion
So after taking the plunge Lion is now installed and I’ve spent the last hour loading my regular Apps and just using it as normal.
I’m pleased to say it was completely painless on our older Black MacBook. It didn’t warn us about any conflicting software nor run into any problems. The Lion Upgrade App that the App Store puts in your Dock was simple and just asked me to Agree to the Software license. It then worked away busily for 3 minutes before rebooting itself into the proper install. Some 29 minutes later and it booted in the new darker iOS style login screen. My Account picture was even in a circle rather than a square. I felt like I was about to be today’s PlayBus stop!
So at first look it’s not a massive departure from Snow Leopard but clearly there are lots of enhancements. I like how the Email setup of iOS has been bought over and I’m looking forward to getting to grips with Mission Control.
Oh and I think I am beginning to get used to the reverse scrolling. Not going to just give up and switch it off. Yet.
Next time we’ll take a look at the updated Mail and iCal apps. How are you finding it? We’d love to know your Lion experiences in the comments!
‘My Top 3 iPhone annoyances’ by an Android devotee
My friend George is an Android fan and hardcore Microsoft devotee. He even owns a pair of Microsoft branded socks (however claims these where a freebie along with a copy of Vista Ultimate from a Microsoft event. Insert your own Sock/Vista joke). However he’s sadly just lost his HTC Desire so has been borrowing his girlfriends iPhone 4. This was a ripe opportunity for him to tell me what he didn’t like. George, take it away:
I thought I had to tell you about some things I found with it that I not used to, after being with the HTC for a year:
Number 3
I really notice the lack of haptic feedback when pressing buttons. Typing, it’s ok, I don’t know why but perhaps because the actions are so fast and responsive. But touching a button without getting that little vibration to acknowledge it was strange for me, a bit like trying to press the “buttons” on our ceramic hob.
Number 2:
Every notification that appeared – be it SMS, Twitter update, new Wi-Fi network detected – came up in a modal box. This was very different to android where there is hardly any interruption; messages appear in the top bar and scroll through line by line, but you don’t get popups that take away focus. If you’re in the middle of a word, you have to retype it, which is odd.
And Number 1:
OK, this is just a re-hash of my normal gripe…. but why couldn’t I download Spotify on the App store? I’m in Switzerland, where Swiss users can’t legally use Spotify. But it’s not like Spotify doesn’t check on its servers that if you are trying to log in on a free account, or sign up, from Switzerland, and block it. I am entitled to use it when I’m over here, given I’m from the UK and pay for a premium account, so “what gives”?
Well obviously Number 2 is about to be resolved with iOS 5′s new notifications. Hey some might well of picked up on the similarities between Android’s notifications and the new Notification Centre in iOS 5, but we couldn’t possibly comment.
What do you think? Does Android have the iPhone beaten here?
Review: OS X Lion – Part 1
Now that Lion has been released for a while and we have our Time Machine up to date, it’s time to upgrade it from 10.6.8 Snow Leopard to the latest version of OS X: Lion.
We’ve just kicked off the download of the 3.74 GB install and luckily the rush to Apple’s servers for it appears to have calmed down as we are halfway through and only have twenty minutes or so left to go on it:
As we are on a pretty aged Black MacBook with 2GB of RAM, we are going to try an upgrade first to see how it fares. Keep reading the UsedMac blog to keep up with our Lion experience!
Unmasking the 19 year old Jailbreaker
I couldn’t fail to click through to this article from John Gruber’s Daring Fireball blog about Comex, the 19 year old hacker behind ‘JailBreakMe’, the website based jail break hack for iOS. It’s well worth a read once past the ad page.
It talks about Comex using hacking techniques up there with Stuxnet, the worm alledgedly designed by the US to infiltrate Iran’s nuclear facilities.
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Apple reveals the next version of Mac OS X: 10.8 Mountain Lion
Apple have quietly revealed the next version of Mac OS X 10.8 and it's a Mountain Lion. Seemingly out of nowhere and with Keynote announcement, Apple have ...
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(Another) Apple Legal Dispute
It seems not a week can pass by without some kind of legal or patent dispute involving Apple. I suppose it is inevitable that, with many companies involved in t...
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James - "it says this has expired"...
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Tags
3
3g
Adobe Flash
android
Apple
Apple Store
Chrome
Dropbox
Facebook
Google
iCloud
Intel
ios
ios4
ios 4.1
ios 4.2
iOS 5
iPad
iPad 2
iPhone
iphone 3g
iPhone 4S
itunes
iTunes Match
Lion
Mac
Mac App Store
macbook air
MacBook Pro
netbook
New
o2
orange
OS X
OS X Lion
Samsung Galaxy Tab
sim only
Snow Leopard
Steve Jobs
T-Mobile
The Daily
three
update
White iPhone 4
Windows 7
