Apple Source

iPhone 3G S Announced

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 23:22:38 +0200

So, at the end of today's keynote presentation at the Worldwide Developers' Conference, they announced a new version of the iPhone called the iPhone 3G S. The "S" stands for "speed", apparently. Bit of a sucky name, but there you go.

Looking at it, it's identical to the iPhone 3G. There is a new coating on the glass screen which is resistant to fingerprints, but that's about the only difference. Same size, same shape, same buttons.

The real differences are all on the inside. There's a faster processor (they've been quite coy about how much faster, though), a magnetometer (a compass, basically) and a better camera - 3 megapixels with autofocus. They've also bumped the maximum storage up to 32GB.

These don't sound very exciting on their own, but the iPhone software makes use of them to great effect.

The camera has a pretty revolutionary interface which lets you tap the area you want to focus on. It automatically adjusts the focus and exposure to take the best possible picture of the chosen area. You're not gonna get professional portrait shots from the thing - it's still a camera on a mobile phone after all - but it's a vast improvement on the iPhone 3G, and apparently very intuitive.

The other thing the improved camera resolution allows is video recording. The interface is very slick, and even allows you to perform basic editing functions before sharing them by email, MMS or uploading to Youtube direct from the phone.

The original iPhone 3G has been hacked to enable video recording, but Apple has not enabled it officially. The only reason I can think of for this is that it's a quality issue - Apple has deemed video quality from the original iPhone 3G to be too poor to put their name on it.

The magnetometer is interesting. With the iPhone aware of the direction it's facing, the screen can display all sorts of location-aware information. Combined with the GPS, you could theoretically stand on a street, hold up your iPhone and have it overlay a live video with information about addresses, landmarks, bus timetables - anything!

The really cool stuff has been enabled by the extra processing power, though. The iPhone 3G S will be capable of not only voice dialling, but also playing the music you tell it to. Voice Control enables you to talk to your iPhone and have it follow your instructions, or give you information. You want to call someone? Tell it. You want to hear something by a certain artist? Tell it. I've had phones with voice-dialling before, but never voice recognition on this scale.

Gaming and application load times will be greatly improved by the increased processing power, too.

The iPhone 3G S also is also capable of connecting to a 3G network at 7.2mbps, up from 3.6mbps on the original iPhone 3G. Interestingly, the chip in the original iPhone 3G is capable of that speed, but it's been limited for some reason...

Also announced today was the release date of the new version of the iPhone software. Version 3.0 will be available to download on 17th June.

One of the features that I didn't discuss last time I talked about the 3.0 software is Tethering. You will be able to hook up your iPhone to your computer via bluetooth or USB and use the 3G internet connection to surf away, just like using a 3G dongle from any of the mobile networks. O2 have signed up for this, but they haven't announced any additional costs that may be involved yet.

Granted, many of these features are nothing new. The T-Mobile G1 has a compass, most phones from the last few years have had voice dialling and video recording, and many smartphones allow tethering to share an internet connection. The difference is in the way everything is implemented. Yes, Apple have taken their time getting all this stuff in their device, but they're making sure it's done right.

The iPhone 3G S will be available from the 19th June in certain countries including the UK, and then "6 more countries" a week later. I'm hoping that includes Ireland! It's available in 16GB or 32GB versions in black or white. The original 8GB iPhone 3G will still be available at a reduced price. Prices vary depending on the monthly payment plan you choose.

I shall be getting a 32GB model at the very earliest opportunity!

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Nearly time...

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 23:33:05 +0200

WWDC, Apple's developer-oriented event, takes place on Monday, and this is where the last two generations of the iPhone have been announced.

Fingers crossed that they will stick to tradition and reveal the new version, which is rumoured to have a better camera, a magnetometer (fancy compass, basically), more storage, more RAM, possibly a front-facing camera for video calls and who knows what else. The new hardware is almost secondary to the new software, which will be available to all current iPhone owners (and iTouch owners too, for a price...). I covered that in more detail here.

I've been holding off getting an iPhone til the next version, so I'm hoping for a release date ASAP - the clever money is on a mid-July launch.

Also expected to be outed is the likely release date of the new version of the Macintosh operating system, Snow Leopard, which is full of refinements rather than new features. No doubt it'll be pretty well demonstrated during the keynote speech.

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iPhone 3.0

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 00:02:50 +0100

So, there was an event today to show developers what they can do with the next version of the iPhone (and iPod Touch) software, due out in "Summer" - just in time for the next version of the hardware, no doubt. Free for iPhone users, $9.95 or equivalent local currency for iTouch users.

Much of the presentation was taken up showing off the new features developers can use to create cool applications, but there was some time at the end devoted to new features that will be built in.

First and foremost - cut, copy and paste, MMS messaging and the ability to forward messages. Yes, these features have been available on pretty much every other phone for years now, and Apple are very late to the party, but at least they're coming, and they're well implemented too. I'm sure they'll be much appreciated!

Other tweaks include landscape (and therefore larger) keyboards available in every major application, and system-wide search. This last item was a pretty inexcusable omission, given the excellent Spotlight search feature in the Mac operating system.

One feature I'm quite excited about, and another one that should have been there from the start, is full A2DP stereo Bluetooth support. With the new software, you'll be able to use bluetooth earphones in the gym, or connect your iPhone to a compatible car stereo, no wires in sight. Marvellous!

There's plenty more to the new software, and I for one am excited to see what software developers are going to come up with, given these new toys to play with.

For a pretty concise guide to all the newly announced features, see this Gizmodo article.

One final point - first gen iPhone and iPod touch users are out of luck with some features - no Bluetooth for the iPod, and no MMS for the iPhone. I don't really understand that - my little Nokia 6300 isn't 3G, and it handles MMS absolutely fine...

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Nice things in small packages

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 16:20:46 +0100

It's been a while! There's been a fair few product updates and I've been nowhere to be seen. I'm a bad blogger.

So, there's a new iPod Shuffle out (scant days after Jake received his in the post). It's tiny!

Apparently, the insides of this thing weigh just 10% more than a sheet of A4 paper. Apple are calling it the smallest music player in the world, but I'm sure that won't last long. It's almost half the size of the last version (which was bloody small!), and has twice the capacity - 4gb. It's very minimalist in design, there are no buttons on it at all, just a switch to select between shuffle, straight and off. The controls are all in a little nubby on the right earpiece cable.

Which is a bit of a problem for me, were I to get one of these puppies. I don't get on with Apple standard issue earbuds. I don't know if my ears are a funny shape or what, but after about fifteen minutes use, my ears get really sore. Other companies have already started to release compatible earphones, and Apple have said they'll be releasing an adaptor with the controls on it (at additional cost, of course).

The controls are such that you have a volume up and down toggle, and then one button that does different things depending on how you press it. It sounds pretty confusing, but Apple say it's intuitive, and they tend to get things like this right. The best thing is, no more fiddling to skip a track - just a click of a button which is easily accessible, right there on the cord.

A stand out feature is VoiceOver - something that's been available on the new Nano for a while, but on the screenless Shuffle is a great idea. Basically, you hold the button for a couple of seconds and your Shuffle tells you what the current song is. That in itself is of limited use - it's your playlist, you should know what you've put in there. But the great thing is, this allows you to browse playlists too, so you can have more than one playlist on the device. I only use mine in the gym, it has a load of high tempo dancey tracks on it to keep me motivated - but if I could, I would have other stuff on there too. This is very useful in such a miniscule device.

I don't think the Shuffle would ever be my sole portable music device, but this tiny little beauty is even more useful now than it was this time last week.

Click here for the official site.

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Sorry

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 17:13:04 +0200

Been a really bad blogger lately.

Did you know there was a new iPhone out?

Landers has one, and I'm getting one at the earliest opportunity. The new prices (while I'm sure they will go down as soon as I commit to buy) make it a no-brainer for anyone who needs a new phone and doesn't mind paying for a nice bit of kit - it's pretty much half price, and that's if you get it on the cheapest tariff. Historically I've always gone for a free upgrade when my contract expires, but this thing is too good to pass up, even at around €200.

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"Last Skipped" in iTunes or iPod

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:16:02 +0200

I just found out that your iPod and iTunes will only mark a track as "skipped" if you press the "next" button between 2 and 30 seconds into it. Before or after this time frame and the skip is ignored.

That solved a mystery for me! I was skipping tracks too soon, and they weren't being removed from my random playlist. I now exercise a little restraint before bashing that skip button when it plays ~~Steps~~ ~~Erasure~~ ~~ABBA~~... oh, hell, they're all too embarrassing to list.

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iTunes Playlist Tips

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 00:30:25 +0200

I have an iPod Video, which has a capacity of 30GB (about 27GB usable space). That's potentially 7500 songs. My music library is already bigger than that and so I use several playlists to make sure I have what I want available when I want it. If you have an iPod classic, it's unlikely (but not impossible) that you'd have this problem, but if you have a Nano, a low capacity Touch or an iPhone, chances are you will be in the same situation as me. Even if you have lots of space and not many songs, playlists can help you listen to the music you want to more easily if you organise them properly.

Talking to some people I know with iPods, I was surprised at how little they knew about playlists in iTunes, so I thought I'd share the way I use them, and give some tips that might help you enjoy your music more.

I know this post looks long and complicated, but that's because I've tried to explain things fully. If anything is unclear, let me know in the comments.

It's important to understand that playlists are separate to your library. They do not contain the actual songs, just references to songs. That means that if you have the same song in several playlists (I do!) only one copy of the song exists on your computer, and only one copy will be on your iPod. A playlist with 20 entries for the same song would only copy that song to your iPod once, it just tells your iPod to play it 20 times.

There are two types of playlists, regular ones and smart ones.

Regular ones are blue, and you manage them yourself. Smart ones are purple, and they can have parameters applied which mean their contents can change depending on a huge variety of conditions. I'll explain more as we go along.

To create a new playlist, you just go to the file menu at the top, and you'll see options for new playlist or new smart playlist. The new playlist will appear towards the bottom left of your screen - you may have some default ones there already if you haven't created your own.

The regular playlists I have are very basic. I have one for my favourites, I literally just drag songs I like into it as I come across them in my library. They don't actually go anywhere, they stay in your main library, but they are added to the playlist. You can also add songs to playlists by right-clicking on them and selecting "Add to playlist".

Similarly, I have playlists for the gym, easy listening, and I even have a Christmas one. You could have as many playlists as you like, just drag the songs you want into them.

The last regular playlist is one I would never actually listen to. It contains all the albums I know I might want to listen to at some point. With that playlist on my iPod, I know I've got the the albums I love with me. I go to the albums section of the iPod, and there they are.

To add a whole album to a playlist, you don't have to select each track manually. You can drag the album cover to it, you'll see a little red star with the number of tracks being added to confirm the whole album is being added. I've outlined it in green here:

On to smart playlists now.

As I said before, smart playlists have rules which tell them which songs to include in themselves. There are rules that cover all the information stored about your MP3s such as title, artist, genre and the year it was released. Then there are rules about the number of times you've played a track, the rating you have given it and even the last time you played it.

So, if you have rated the songs in your library, you could set up a smart playlist that contains all your five star songs, and every time you give a new song a five star rating, it would be added to the playlist. You can take it further, and set up a playlist that contains all songs with a rating greater than two stars and that you have not listened to in the past two months. In fact, I have done this - it's a great way to rediscover music you love.

There are other options when you set up a smart playlist. These include limiting the playlist to a certain size (by number of songs, or by file size). Also, make sure "Live updating" is checked, as this is what makes it update itself as your library changes.

I have smart playlists for 100 Top Rated songs (top rated songs, selected at random, limited to 100 tracks), 100 Least Played (as outlined above), 100 Most Played (songs with the highest play count, selected at random, limited to 100 tracks), and also one called New Stuff, which contains all songs added to my library within the last three months. If space is an issue, you could say this playlist should only contain the 100 newest tracks - as you added new tracks, the oldest would disappear from the playlist.

Have a play, but if you add more than one rule, notice the option at the top of the window - you need to tell the playlist to apply either all the rules or any of the rules.

Say for example your playlist had a rule that said "Artist is No Doubt" and another that said "Artist is Gwen Stefani". If you selected all, the playlist would be empty, because no tracks have the artist as both No Doubt AND Gwen Stefani. If you selected any, the playlist would contain all tracks by No Doubt and all tracks by Gwen Stefani. Which option you choose depends on what you are trying to achieve and how selective you want to be.

This next section only applies for non iPhone/iPod Touch users.

iTunes and your iPod allow you to randomise the play order of your music. I like to shuffle my favourites playlist (which has a fair few songs in it!) so that I hear different songs each time I play it, but then I like to listen to albums in the correct order. It's a bit of a pain to go all the way through the menu to change the settings all the time, so I came up with this solution:

I already have playlists set up for my favourite tracks, my top rated etc. What I did was set up a new smart playlist which selected tracks at random from each of the other playlists! I limited it to 500 songs taken at random.

Then, I made a second smart playlist, told it to look at the first one and take 250 songs that I haven't listened to in the last day.

This means the playlist contains a random selection of my favourite music, it has a smattering of new stuff, some stuff I love but haven't listened to for a while and best of all it's always fresh stuff because it changes every time I listen to it. There has to be two playlists involved because the first one has an "any" rule (take songs from any of these playlists) and the second one has an "and" rule (take songs from that playlist and make sure they haven't been listened to today). It's a bit fiddly to set up, but once it's done you have a completely random playlist, which changes on the fly.

So, there you go. I hope you have a better understanding of playlists now, and some good ideas for smart playlists to help you make the most of your favourite music. If you need any help, just leave a comment and I'll do my best to sort you out!

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My First Mac

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 23:57:45 +0100

I never touched a Mac until I was 18 years old. I knew of their existence of course, but I didn't know anyone who owned one, and I didn't really know anything about them.

I got a job as Tech Support for an ISP, and we had a couple of Macs for testing and problem solving. They were the first generation of iMacs:

A now classic design, fitting all the components of a personal computer into one neat package. I never had to use them much, but when I did, I remember thinking that they were easy to use. If you can use Windows, you can use Mac OS.

Fast forward eight years, and I ordered my first Mac in 2006.

I'd kept up with things via the internet, played with a couple of Macs at people's houses and in the Apple store, and Landers was smitten. When the Macbook was released, I decided to get one, and I can honestly say I've never looked back. I would certainly never consider getting a Windows PC again. I do still have my old PC, but it's used as a glorified network hard-drive come media centre. It stores our music and is hooked up to the stereo.

Don't get me wrong, Macs aren't perfect. I've had a couple of problems; for example, currently my laptop's battery is not being recognised and I can only use it while it's plugged into the mains. But the fact remains that the experience of using a Mac after years of fighting with a Windows PC is a pleasure every day. I can count on one hand the number of times my Mac has crashed, and most times the problem is due to a piece of software which is promptly updated and the problem goes away.

I've had to resort to using my PC on exactly one occasion - an obscure bit of software I downloaded was in a format I had never heard of, and the only programme I could find to open it was Windows only. Not bad in 18 months of usage, in my opinion.

The best thing about Mac OS is the fact that everything just works. It's seamless. Just playing with one in the Apple store does not fully illustrate how wonderful the whole package is when you get it home, and you start actually using it. And as I said, if you've used Windows, you can use Mac OSX.

Many of the features of Vista that Microsoft trumpeted about when it was released have been in OSX for a long time. The slogan for the Vista launch was "The wow starts now!"

As far as I'm concerned, the wow started 8 years ago with OSX.

I think I've gushed enough for now. I hope I've given a good overview of my Mac experience, this blog is intended to spread the gospel of OSX and if there's anything you want to know, leave a comment and I'l do my best to answer it.

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iPhone in Ireland

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 18:26:25 +0100

So, the iPhone is released here in Ireland on Friday. I'm quite excited, Landers and I both want one, but I was loathe to buy one from abroad and unlock it because it would be unsupported if anything went wrong. They are quite expensive, and I wouldn't want to take that risk.

There is a big ruckus going on about the so called "Paddy Tax" - the fact that things cost more here than they do elsewhere. The main gripe is that the phone itself is going to cost more than in the UK (despite costing the same as elsewhere in Europe), and the tariffs o2 are offering are rubbish compared to the UK.

The cheapest tariff on offer is €45, and you get 175 minutes, 100 texts and 1GB of data transfer per month. It doesn't matter how much you pay, you still only get the 1GB allowance for data.

The cheapest UK tariff costs about the same, but you get 500 minutes, 500 texts and unlimited data transfer (subject to a fair usage policy).

At first glance, it looks like we're getting screwed. That is, until you look at other tariffs in Ireland. Sticking with o2, to get 100 minutes, 100 texts and their 1GB data add on you have to cough up €50, so the iPhone tarrif actually saves you €5 and you even get an extra 75 minutes for your money. It's a similar story with the other mobile networks here, they all offer less inclusive minutes and texts than in the UK, and you have to pay a lot more for data transfer. The iPhone deal is not bad in a fair comparison.

I've pointed this out on several blogs, and generally I've been blasted for it. Other people seem to think that in Ireland, things should cost the same as everywhere else. I don't really get that. Our taxes are different, our income is different, our economy is different, our currency is different. I was told that my attitude is the reason that the mobile phone companies are able to charge so much; people like me let them get away with it. Well, yes, that's true. But I bet those people use mobile phones currently, so how is that different to signing up to one of the iPhone tariffs? It annoys me that the iPhone has been singled out when the problem is industry wide; the iPhone just happens to be a high-profile item.

Yes, the tariffs are pants, but only when compared to the UK. If the people moaning about the price difference looked at other things, like the cost of petrol, they might shut up. You guys in the UK are totally getting bent over with that one - even at an expensive garage, our petrol works out at about 92p per litre! It's 87p at Tesco!

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Appletiser...

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 15:16:54 +0100

In order to avoid bombarding people with my fanatical Apple ramblings on my main blog, I decided to create a new one.

Expect news, opinions and rants fairly frequently. Difficult as it may be to believe, I've restrained myself on my main blog - now, the gloves are off!

(Oh, and I'll have a play at home later and make this place look a little prettier.)

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