The service enables you to ‘match’ your music collection to Apple’s own vast music collection on their iTunes store rather than have to upload all your music at once. Why? Well it saves you time – a lot of it in fact – compared to other Cloud based Music services such as Google Music. It also cuts down on the amount of music Apple have to store themselves.

Any tracks that iTunes doesn’t match are then uploaded along with your playlists and album artwork. You can then access your entire music collection on any iDevice running iOS 5 or any PC or Mac in which you install iTunes. So if your work PC can run the latest version of iTunes you can log in with your Apple ID and see all your music. Here’s the killer feature too: despite some reports you can stream your music from iTunes Match. So if you have a vast music collection like many others now, you do not have to worry about storing it away from your main computer.

The only downside is the absence of a web interface like that of Google Music, so in order to play it you must use your iOS 5 device or install iTunes. If you can do either of these though you soon start to see the benefits when you start using it. Given that Apple are now storing all your music in the Cloud, you no longer have to worry about keeping a local copy. Need to reclaim 20GB of space? Then just delete what your not listening to. The item remains in your iTunes Library but gains a Cloud logo next to it. You can then still double click on it to stream the track or choose to re-download it from iTunes.

The well trumpeted other advantage to this is that if the track has been matched successfully with iTunes, you now download an iTunes standard file. These are 256k AAC and free of any copy protection (DRM). So you can potentially upgrade your old 128 MP3 rips easily with iTunes AAC’s created straight from the studio masters.

You can purchase iTunes Match through iTunes 10.5 and must be running iOS 5 to use it on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch.

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!

In fact some enterprising users have managed to prematurely sign up to Apple’s music in the cloud service, iTunes Match in the UK. TheNextWeb have reported that by a cheeky ‘hack’ that UK users have been able to sign up for the service even though it is yet to launch on our shores.

Other curious users have attempted to trick iTunes into thinking they are in the US rather than the UK by signing out of iTunes, changing the Store to the US and then clicking on iTunes Match before signing back in.

We’ve tried this loophole ourselves but without luck: having clicked to purchase iTunes Match on the US store and entering our Apple ID we where greeted with ‘Computer Says No’ dialog box. iTunes then reverted to its homepage, but not before revealing for a few seconds that the UK price is £21.99.

Apple may of closed the sign up loophole but they have still let the price cat out of the bag. It’s a price we like too as for only 2 CD’s not only could you get the benefits of having all your music in the cloud, but you’ll be able to upgrade all of it to ‘iTunes Plus’ 256k AAC tracks, all free of DRM (copy protection). Even music you’ve ripped yourself. This strikes us as a rather cheap way to legitimise a lot of ripped music.

Perhaps Apple have started to use the same currency converters as the rest of us.

Apple have released this anticipated update to its mobile OS in order to solve poor battery life issues that have affected some users. Even more exciting: this is the first iOS update you’ll be able to do without connecting your iPhone or iPad to your computer!

Just go to Settings them General and hit Software Update when connected to WiFi:

It’s only 39.1mb if you update on your device, far quicker than previously with iTunes. Why? Well if you decide to do the update through iTunes then you’ll need to download a much heftier file that contains the whole of iOS 5.0.1 rather than just the changes. No point doing that is there?

Even better if your an owner of an original iPad. This update adds multitasking gestures support which previously was only for iPad 2 owners. We’ve just tried it and it works well. An unexpected bonus! You may need to switch them on in Settings after you’ve updated:

The update also addresses general security and bug fixes, issues with Documents in the Cloud and it makes Siri compatible with Australian accents…

Various reports have popped up across the interweb since the release of iOS 5 about hidden and yet to be unreleased features being found by hackers. The latest concerns the Keyboard in iOS 5 and a feature which offers suggestions of words on a bar above the keyboard.

This feature is already something that Android users take advantage of, which had lead to speculation that Apple have withheld it to avoid pouring yet more petrol on the endlessly burning patent issues flame.

So what does it look like? Well intriguingly you don’t need to do any jail breaking or hacking to see the feature in action. You just need to switch to a Japanese keyboard:

So that’s all good and well if you speak Japanese but what if you want to have it on your iPad with a United Kingdom keyboard? Well most the internet will say you’ll have to jailbreak your precious iDevice. You can do this to add extra features but we recommend you don’t unless your an experienced user that enjoys hacking or your frustrated and wish you’d bought an Android.

What if you don’t want to jailbreak but your an advanced Mac user? In that case this guide over at Gizmodo will show you how to enable this feature. Do proceed with caution though and don’t say that we haven’t warned you.

It remains to be seen if Apple will add this feature for all users in the future. If so it will be an interesting twist in the battle between Apple and other companies implementing Android.

iOS 5.0.1 update includes an early Christmas present for original iPad owners

Is there anything more exciting than a new iOS major release? How the first update to it that fixes all the bugs? Especially if you happen to be a new iPhone 4S owner with battery problems.

Apple have ‘seeded’ (in geek terms) the beta for this update to iOS developers according to the Apple news site Macrumours. The update majors on addressing the bugs which led to some 4S users reporting poor  battery life.

In a rare move for Apple though it will also retro add a cool feature for original iPad owners. Since iOS 5 lucky owners of the newer iPad 2 have been able to enjoy multitasking gestures. These gestures make it easier to access the multitasking bar and swipe between running apps by using four finger swipes on the iPad 2′s touch screen. Apple decided that original iPad owners would not get this to much disappointment, however they have now quietly decided to reverse this decision (much to the pleasure of this particular original iPad owner).

Once tested and released to the public the update will also include general bug fixes, fix issues relating to Documents in the Cloud and address security issues.

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.

Some iPhone 4S’s are nailing their batteries too quickly. Has anyone asked Siri how to fix it?

iPhone 4S users are contacting Apple’s support forums complaining of poor battery life. Early adopters of Apple’s new voice controlled iPhone and the latest version of its software iOS 5, have been saving enough battery life in order to get online and complain about losing up to 15% of battery life an hour.

So far there are no fixes or solutions from Apple themselves. Luckily this hasn’t stopped others trying to work out what is causing it though. One blogger has made the most of the extra Location Services options that Apple have added in iOS 5 to do some detective work himself. Oliver Haslam of iDownloadBlog.com has found a bug which means that automatic setting of your time zone by your location is constantly accessing GPS. If anything is going to where out your battery quickly it’s either a bright screen, lots of 3G use or activating GPS.

Other people have found that corrupted contacts syncing with iCloud have led to services crashing or running the CPU too hot, which will also kill battery life.

Here at UsedMac we have been using iOS 5 since its early beta days on an original iPad but battery life seems to have been unaffected adversely up until the last few weeks. It has been a bit more battery hungry but we’ve presumed that is down to iCloud calling home more. We’ve tried switching off the sending of Diagnostics and Time Zone by Location to see if it helps.

You can head here for tips on troubleshooting your power hungry iOS 5 device.

The Guardian’s iPad Edition is now here. We order a Soya Latte and look for spelling mistakes.

We like the Guardian. Not just because we are lilly livered liberals or adore spelling mistakes, but because of all the ‘quality’ British newspapers it has done the most to embrace digital and the web. It has for long been one of the best websites of a newspaper since it decided to publish all of its content on there without a paywall. We loved its iPhone App, as it seemed to have as much care put into its design as its usability. The Guardian has long held design as an important part of its offering, even if its Berliner format is expensive to produce, it looks and feels great.

Newspapers and the iPad

Just like it seemed to take Facebook forever to build an iPad specific App, so it did with the Guardian. In this video, it’s editor Alan Rusbridger (if you ever closed your eyes and imagined what a Guardian editor looked like, surely Alan fits the bill?) explains how they’ve had a good look around at what other titles have been doing on the iPad before releasing something. I suspect this is a shrewd move by them, as the iPad has never been an easy to define device - is it for content consumption? Is it for creating? can it replace your computer? – well thats for you the user to decide ultimately (we think it can do all three). The world of publishing have hoped it would be the first answer to our question and to their prayers. They have wanted the iPad to do for them what the iPod did for the music industry, with us all rushing to iTunes to subscribe to their papers and magazines on our iPad’s. However we know of few people that stick with newspaper subscriptions after the free trial ends, often going back to simply reading news sites on Safari, or just sticking to the free BBC News App. Other recent attempts such as The Daily in the US have not proved as successful as hoped, with some complaining that the experience is trying too hard to be content rich leading to it being too slow to use.

The proof is in the reading

Newsstand: Giving publishers prime home screen real estate

So with some excitement and trepidation I loaded the Guardian App from the App Store. The first thing of note was that it landed itself in the Newsstand folder, the new home of Papers and Magazines purchased in iTunes within iOS 5. In fact the Newsstand folder has caused some annoyances for people, as they have tried to hide it away in a folder themselves and can’t. The reason for this is it is simply an iOS folder itself, albeit with the appearance of a bookshelf. It simply contains Apps that have been designated Newsstand status. The Guardian iPad edition is still an actual App, even if Newsstand alters that perception. The crucial benefit of Newsstand though is it enables the Guardian to push out a new edition to your iPad without you having to remember to download it. This is the big difference to the Guardian’s iPhone app: the iPhone app is all about reflecting the Guardian’s constantly changing website, whereas the iPad app to give you a more (dare we say it) traditional newspaper experience, available to read when you wake up or first open your iPad.

Beautiful

The Guardian has always been a paper that takes design very seriously. It’s easy for its detractors to say it probably puts form before function, but its part of the appeal it has to its more liberal and media savvy buyers. I personally loved the look and feel of its new Berliner edition when it decided to not go tabloid like its broadsheet rival The Times, when others felt they where just being snobbish about the tabloid format. So I was excited to learn that the development of the iPad edition drew on the experience of the team behind the Berliner paper. Boy it shows, it’s a beautiful looking iPad App and for me the best attempt yet at bringing a print publication to a tablet computer.

Hold the front page

The front page is awash with great looking high res pictures to promote different stories. There was a time when this would of frustrated me, just as it has with previous redesigns of the Guardian website “just give me more headlines, not endless photos of bloody Charlie Brooker” (that’s not to say I don’t love Brooker, despite recent Lizard mentalness).

Headlines: No pun downs here just a gorgeous use of colour

On the iPad edition it just looks so vibrant! There is great use of colour too, just as the Guardian’s iPhone app does to distinguish between sections. Tapping on a story takes you quickly to the item with another big illustration dominating the screen. They are using fabulous looking images though, which just make you feel good about looking at it on the iPad’s screen.

Whilst all of this is going on, there is a sliding rule across the top of the page allowing you to jump between different sections such as National, International, Sport or Comment. This reinforces the feel that you are reading a paper (glass?) edition rather than simply surfing the website.

Mono-tasking

Initially I wondered if the ‘delivered in the morning’ approach would be frustrating: would it instantly feel like the content is out of date? Especially given that it’s only a few button presses back to Safari and the Guardians own up to date and more importantly, free website. Then there is the social aspect: Would I want to see reader’s comments? What about Twitter and Live Blogs?

In reality though I actually felt happier. I actually read the articles properly, rather than skimming them, without also getting distracted by some other opinion from another reader. Fans of iOS will often cite the concept of ‘mono-tasking’ as a plus of the iPad: you are forced to focus on what you are doing at the very moment, free of distractions such as Twitter or Instant Messaging. I remember being told once that for every short distraction it can take much longer to then get your concentration back to what you are doing. I know I have a terrible concentration span but I found myself enjoying staying within the Guardian iPad edition and forcing myself to get a more rounded look at the news, rather than just cherry pick what I want from Google.

How much?

Right now for a limited period it will cost you nothing. The Guardian are offering a trial period of a free subscription so you can get a good taste of the App. This is a good thing on their part, as it enables you to see how much difference the automatic download of editions makes to the experience. Why is this so good? Well you don’t have to think about it. In the true Apple tradition it “just works”. It’s there and on your iPad for flicking through over the Weetabix. Even better, once downloaded it will all be readable without an Internet connection. Not all of us will be lucky enough to have 3G iPad’s or if we did, any guarantee of signal coverage on our commute.

Morning Glory: Wake up the latest edition, automatically downloaded

Once the free trial period is up the subscription will cost £9.99 a month, with just a monthly commitment. As its a Guardian Edition, this gets you a paper 6 days a week from Monday to Saturday. We can only presume they have an Observer edition in the pipeline, or they are still trying to close it to form a Sunday Guardian. That makes it just over 40p an edition. Currently a weekday edition of the paper will set you back £1.20, rising to £2.10 for the Saturday Guardian. So a great incentive to save some trees.

Should you subscribe? Well if you already own an iPad and spend more than a tenner a month on the old Grauniad, then it makes perfect sense. Not a regular buyer? Well we recommend trying the current free trial to see if you enjoy it over a traditional paper. You then only have to commit to a tenner once to try it for a month.

This is easily the most readable and easy on the eye newspaper yet for the iPad. The Guardian’s typeface and design have set the bar now for other newspapers attempting to conquer the tablet world. It perfectly complements the device and feels great to use. If your someone prepared to spend money on your news past the normal free websites and Apps, then this is the place to put your beer tokens.

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…