Posted by: Dave | October 6, 2011

Comparing the Apple iPhone 4S

It seems that everything happens when I’m on vacation, firstly the announcement of the iPhone 4S and secondly and more recently, Steve Jobs passing away. I had put together the following information and thoughts on the iPhone 4S announcement, I was just about to post them when I heard the sad announcement of Steve Jobs passing away.

Many millions of people worldwide were looking out for the announcement of the iPhone 5 and were left a bit deflated when there was no iPhone 5 but a newer iPhone 4 modeled on the same design of the iPhone 4.

Apple didn’t re-design the iPhone 4 because quite frankly, the iPhone 4 is the best looking and designed iPhone to date. It’s so good that Samsung and other companies are copying the design of the iPhone 4, like they did with the iPad and iPad 2 to increase their sales.

For anyone thinking there isn’t a lot of new features in the iPhone 4S, the iPhone 4S is evolutionary not revolutionary, here is a breakdown of the new features…

  • iOS 5 – greatly overhauled to enhance speed, enhance notifications and a lot more
  • Dual-Core  A5 chip, making the device much faster
  • All new 8 megapixel camera with better CMOS (almost double the pixels over the iPhone 4′s 5 megapixel camera), f/2.4 aperture and face detection
  • 1080P HD Video Recording as standard
  • New Notification Message Center and iMessage
  • iCloud support allowing you to have all your data in the cloud
  • iTunes Match allowing you to have all your music in the cloud
  • Siri. The intelligent assistant that helps you get things done. All you have to do is ask
  • iPhone 4S supports ALL networks GSM and CDMA in a single phone
  • AirPlay as standard
  • iPhone 4S is the first phone to intelligently switch between two antennas to transmit and receive, so call quality is better. It also doubles the maximum HSDPA data speeds from 7Mbps to 14.4 Mbps. Which means faster connections, faster loading and reloading, and faster downloads.

The biggest enhancement that everyone will see on a daily usage is the A5 processor as Apple explain “Two cores in the A5 chip deliver up to two times more power and up to seven times faster graphics.2 And you’ll feel the effects. Fast. iPhone 4S is quick and responsive, which makes all the difference when you’re launching apps, browsing the web, gaming and doing just about everything. And no matter what you’re doing, you can keep on doing it. Because the A5 chip is so power-efficient, iPhone 4S has outstanding battery life.

If you still doubt the A5 chip will enhance the iPhone 4S then “The dual-core A5 chip delivers up to two times more processing power, which makes iPhone 4S even more responsive. Pages load quicker. Gameplay is better. And everything just feels faster.

So there might not be an iPhone 5 available this year, but these are significant enhancements over the iPhone 4, very similar to the enhancements seen from the iPad 2 over the original iPad.

To compare some of the iPhone 4S features, see the table below

Will many previous iPhone customers upgrade?  I think it will be similar to how many iPad 1 customers upgraded to iPad 2.  Eventually when your mobile phone contracts are up for renewal then many will go for the iPhone 4S.  The die-hard Apple fans will undoubtedly upgrade within the first 3 months of launch.  For anyone upgrading the main enhancements will be the Speed of the dual core processor, the enhanced camera and video recording and perhaps Siri.

Steve Jobs was a visionary creator, everything he designed and did in life was to perfection. Steve was a great mentor to many, whether people knew him personally or knew him in his public life, and will be dearly missed by everyone that uses Apple products.

Steve, R.I.P and enjoy your time looking down at us all from the great iCloud in the sky.

This is a great parody….

When I’m out with friends, many have their phones or gadgets die just when they want to use them, and mine are always fully charged. I always get asked how come I have so good battery power on my gadgets? It’s quite simple, I have a host of battery chargers I use.

I have 2x New Trent 5000mAh battery chargers and 2x Philips SCE4430/05 battery chargers.

The New Trent 5000mAh will give me about 40% extra power on my iPad (which already enjoys a massive 10 hours battery power), or I can get around 3x full charges of my iPhone 4.

The Philips SCE4430/05 which I have previously mentioned here and here, will give me around 1x full charge of an iPhone 4. I actually do have 3x of these and not 2, although one requires a reverse adapter (which I conveniently forget) so I tend to not use this one so much.

So in essence if I take all 4x battery chargers out I can get a massive 8x full charges of an iPhone. For the most part I never usually have to charge up my iPad as I’m never away for more than 10 hours from an electrical plug socket, but it’s nice to know I have some power on tap if I need it.

For the most part if I’m only out and about for a few hours then I’ll take my Philips SCE4430/05 with me, or if I’m out for 5+ hours then I’ll carry around the New Trent 5000mAh charger. I usually keep at least one in the car, so if I need to I can run back to the car to get additional juice.

The great thing I like about both of these battery chargers is they have a standard USB socket on them, so pretty much any USB cable you have for a phone or gadget will connect into these devices. So no real need for these attachment bits that some chargers come with (and that you always happen to lose).

The Philips SCE4430/05 is great for putting into your shirt pocket with ease, the New Trent will fit into your shirt pocket and it’s the same dimensions of the iPhone 4, but a little heavier, so although you could put your iPhone 4 and New Trent charger into the same shirt pocket, it does look a bit on the bulky side.

I always pack at least one of the New Trent 5000mAh battery chargers into a bag I carry whether it’s an iPad bag, gadget bag or even my Messenger (over the shoulder) Laptop bag or rucksack. That way I always have something available fully charged and ready to go just in case I ever need it. You’d be surprised the amount of times you think, I’m running low on battery or I need a quick top-up. Whether it’s in meetings where you might have plug sockets but no charger plug lead to being out in the street, out on location photographing something or at a friends house.

This is a common question I receive a lot from people that ask me by email or in person.  I converted from PC to Mac a little late, about 9 months ago to be exact.  I decided at a whim to suddenly try the other side as grass is usually always greener on the other side of the fence you sit on, even though many friends had tried to convert me to the Mac OS for a number of years.  I think the first suggestion was around 2001 and 10 years later I finally made the jump (or is it a leap?).

For the most part the Mac is a good platform, it’s not that disimilar to say Windows.  Both Mac and Windows have evolved leading with innovation as well as taking features from each other.  The big question that I had to ask like most people was, will most of the applications I use be available on the Mac, and if not, is there a suitable alternative?  For me, a good handful of apps were available (and of course being a different platform you have to purchase these again), for the ones that weren’t (like Jasc PaintShop Pro that I use a lot) there’s other applications like Pixelmator and other free alternatives.

For the most part I’m very happy with Mac OS X Lion (and Snow Leopard before that), it’s a good OS.  There’s a lot of good innovation like the gestures on the trackpad that Windows still doesn’t have, dashboard, mission control and more.  I use the Mac primarily for Blogging, Facebook, Google+, Gmail, internet Surfing, Photo Editing and it works extremely well.

What should you look at when buying a Mac?  Don’t go for the entry level model.  When you look at prices you’ll say “£1000+ for a laptop?  I can get a PC Laptop for £399!”.  Yes you can, but it’s an entry level laptop.  It might be a 15″ or 17″ laptop but it’s running a slower processor, less RAM and the build quality is probably pretty plastic.  MacBook Air’s and MacBook Pro’s are much more robust, build quality is superb in a single aluminium unibody (single block of metal hollowed out).  Take a look at a windows based laptop for around £1000-£1300 and then compare those specs to the Mac’s.  If you’re not looking to pay £1000 then quite simply you’re not looking at a high-end laptop, so the Mac’s may not be for you (likewise the better higher-end Windows laptops aren’t for you either).  If you’re okay with paying this amount of money for a laptop then you’re going to get a good laptop.  Get the best processor and RAM you can afford, ensure you get a laptop with an SSD (Solid State Drive) and one that’s the largest your an afford (yes you will need it).

The Mac’s with Snow Leopard have the AppStore as a download, Lion now has the Mac AppStore integrated fully into the Operating System. The Mac AppStore is similar to what you would see on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, which offers a lot of inexpensive applications (and games), and is a good first check to kitting out your Mac’s.  Apple do take 30% cut from developers through the AppStore, so you some developers still prefer to do a slightly cheaper version outside of the AppStore and to make a little more revenue per sale. However then you have to know how to install DMG files (which the Mac AppStore is just plug and play), tap on something, purchase it, it downloads and installs automatically without having to do anything else).

So if you think you’re ready, there’s no better time to make the switch or to at least try out a Mac with the Mac AppStore making it so easy.

I think I have done a pretty good job in my standards of avoiding the Google Street View Car over the past couple of years, but that day had to come where it would make the pounce and I couldn’t avoid it.

    1. The street I’m on managed to somehow get driven down by the Google Street View Car but thankfully 5 houses either side of my house (and including my house) managed to avoid being shown on Google Street View maps.  I’m not entirely sure why, what happened, maybe the radiation being omitted from my house  or perhaps the gun turrets in the front garden, or the sign that says “Google CEO lives here, do NOT photograph).  Actually I don’t have any of the above in the front garden, but it was my first strike at avoiding the Google Street View Car.
    2.  

    3. The  second one came at driving through my home town, I noticed the Google Street View car coming up quickly in my rear view mirror, thankfully the car in front of me managed to get out of the way quickly.  I’m not sure if it was due to the excessive waving and flashing of the headlights or whether he planned to take the turn, I managed to put my foot down and make a few left and right turns to avoid the Google Car getting too close (and to this day on the same stretch of road it doesn’t show my car).
    4.  

    5. The third came driving in Kings Langley one time in the last year, I came out of a side road to only see the Google Street View car to the right on a main road (already had passed the junction I was at before I managed to reach the junction) – another great escape!
    6.  

    7. The fourth came driving counter-clockwise around the M25 this year, I managed to see the Google Street View Car going in the opposite direction too quickly to make my car a complete blur.

More recently on a trip up into the Highlands in Scotland, unfortunately I wasn’t able to escape the evil grasps of the Google Street View car.  I was traveling up through GlenCoe and low and behold what appeared coming towards me at lightening speed was the Google Street View Car….DARN!  It got me!

These past couple of years I felt that Google was trying it’s best to follow me around and capture me.

Some of you might be asking, what’s the problem?  Well I particularly don’t want to be photographed by the Google Street View Car, or any other photo nabbing system that might be out there.  It’s not that I’m doing anything wrong, I’m not skiving off work, speeding or driving illegally.

It’s bad enough with all the CCTV where in London the average person is photographed around 50 times a day as they walk around the streets, on the underground, train networks, on buses, in shops etc, you don’t really want your face blurred out on a street for 10 years do you?

This is a great concept video, unfortunately I doubt the iPhone 5 will pack these features, but a great design!

Last night wasn’t a usual night, I took out the trash as usual, decided to have a drink before going to bed. I’m an early riser which unfortunately means an early sleeper too, but decided to go to bed an hour later than usual last night. I lay in bed tossing and turning, couldn’t sleep for a couple of hours. Finally get up, decided to grab a drink. Usually I’d go for a cup of tea or a glass of milk, but decided on a grabbing a can of coca cola. It was only after I had opened it and started drinking it I thought, ah caffeine, that’ll sure help me to go to sleep (not!). I switched on the TV, watched the paper review on Sky News, then suddenly a news flash came up, “Steve Jobs resigns”.

Oh sheesh! I turned on the iPad and then was up for the next hour watching Twit.tv and the coverage they had as a news breaker.

Now I know why I couldn’t sleep, with something that big brewing.

The writing has been on the cake a long time. Steve’s resignation has been expected due to the pancreatic cancer he had and his liver transplant all within the past 7 years, and the more recent leave of absence suggesting that more health problems might be a foot (or existing ones materialising), but it still comes a shock to the best of us.

Steve also has his autobiography coming out, originally due in 2012 it’s apparently been moved forward to November 2011.

Steve has been visionary throughout the entire Apple process, although Steve is resigning as CEO he is going to still going to be around at Apple as Chairman, but just won’t have the day to day involvement in shaping products that he’s enjoyed for over the last decade.

Posted by: Dave | August 24, 2011

Why SSD’s are the way forward to replace HDD’s


Many people ask me why I chose the MacBook Air as my personal choice.  Apart from wanting to finally try and make a run away from Windows was one of the reasons, but the main reason was to take advantage of SSD’s (that’s Solid State Storage if you don’t know).

Hard Disk drives you may not know have been around since 1956 and introduced by IBM.  Hard Drives have grown in both strength and size.  They now have shock protection, parking of heads all built-in but also incorporate imminent failure warning systems.  The sizes have grown massively over the years, and we’re now into terrabytes for some users or gigabytes for most users.

SSD’s are the newt way forward, they’re Solid State Drives, e.g. no moving parts.  No latency on having to spin the disk up to speed, e.g. 7200 rpm (revs per minute) and then having to have a head (needle) touch the disk (which can sometimes scratch the surface and damage it under movement/shock).

Think of SSD’s like a memory chip in terms of Solid State, they’re efficient, their quick, there’s no need to spin up a disc, there’s no need to have a head touch the surface.  If you try to access it, it’s there and ready.  When you take an average laptop that can take easily 45 seconds to 1 minute to boot up to the Operating System, be it Mac OS X or Windows 7, swap the Hard Disk Drive out with a Solid State Drive, and you’ll then see speeds of around 13 seconds boot time to the Operating System.  That’s about 3x times faster than a manual Hard Disk Drive.

The speed gain isn’t only seen on boot up, try to run any large weight application like Word, Excel, PowerPoint on Windows and you’ll find that it loads in <1 second.  If you try to do anything that does very heavy Hard Disk Drive access then this is really where you will see great improvements in reduced wait times.

SSD’s aren’t all that rosy though.  They’re still new for one thing, there’s still no average as they’re new on how long they’ll last.  Most manufacturers of SSD’s claim that they will most likely last less than a regular Hard Disk Drive.  Likewise if they start to die, the suggestion is they will die quickly as opposed to a spinning Hard Disk Drive, although I’m not too sure of that.  On average I find my hard drives in laptops last around 2 years or less, so if an SSD were to last 18 months, then I would still be happy if I could get the speed gain that I really crave as a power user.

The other problem with SSD’s is both price and size.  As they’re new, prices are still high although SSD costs are coming down.  Likewise 256gb SSD’s are within the grasp of most end users but if you want something larger than that, they start to get really expensive.

Which manufacturers make Solid State Drives?  Well there’s a good article over at WikiPedia that shows a comparison of which manufacturers make Hard Disk Drives vs Solid State Drives.

Now both my MacBook Air run an SSD and my Toshiba Windows 7 based SSD laptop, and I’m seeing huge amounts of speed enhancement over regular Hard Disk Drives.  I’ve been running the Macbook Air for around 9 months and the Toshiba for about 1 month.  I simply couldn’t go back to a conventional spinning Hard Disk Drive.  The only problem with costs still being high is that both the MacBook Air and the Toshiba both only have 128gb SSD’s and not 256gb SSD’s.  This really isn’t enough and for a lot of my ‘other’ documents that I tend to have in archive as well as mail PST backups, I tend to still have to plug in a removable 512gb Removable USB Hard Disk Drive, but at least most of my programs are running directly from the SSD speeding up the disk access times.

I added the word ‘good’ to the title of this post because there are dozens of iPhone Alarm Clock docks available.

About a year ago, I was looking at an iPhone Alarm Clock dock to replace my ageing digital alarm clock in the bedroom.  I looked long and hard, most were well over £100.  I don’t mind spending that kind of money providing what I get is value for money and that it will last for a long time.

When I was looking about a year ago, the iPhone 4 was coming out, and none, I repeat none said whether they supported the iPhone 4 or not.  I still had an iPhone 3GS but I wasn’t about to purchase a dock over £100 and find that I get the classic “Accessory not supported” error or simply it doesn’t charge the iPhone.

A year on I had been taking a very extensive look at the current assortment of iPhone Alarm Clock docks and it still seems that nothing has moved forward in a year.  90% of all the iPhone Alarm Clock docks do not say whether they support the iPhone 4, be it on web stores or more importantly on the manufacturer websites.  You have to dive deeper into looking at customer comments on each webstore or reviews to work out which ones still don’t support the iPhone 4.  In a year my requirements have changed, no longer do I have a 3GS or a single iPhone, I have 2x iPhone 4′s, so I want an iPhone Alarm Clock dock that supports two iPhone 4′s.  I also have an iPad, but I’m not expecting any of these iPhone Alarm Clock docks to support the iPad, that would be just too much of a requirement.

Whittling down the iPhone Alarm Clock docks that have a dual charger facility and that support the iPhone 4 I came up with only two.  Actually there’s like a dozen, but the majority of these say that the left hand dock only sync’s and doesn’t charge and the right hand dock only charges the iPhone 4.  Or that one dock is for iPhone 4 and the other for a non-iPhone.  That unfortunately rules them out in my situation.

So back to the 2x I could find, one looked ideal and was just what I was looking for.  Unfortunately looking at the Apple Store comments, there’s about 50 reviews across UK and US Apple Stores online and pretty much they all say that within 12-18 months the unit dies.  Prices have come down a lot in the last year, but I’m not going to buy something with a high failure rate and especially outside of the 12 month warranty.  That reduces it to two iPhone Alarm Clock docks, both remaining ones don’t have a digital alarm clock on them (which is again one of my requirements to replace my ageing alarm clock).  So now I’m down again to a healthy 0 available for my current needs.

I’m amazed that with people either married or in relationships, that charging two iPhones in the bedroom is I would have thought it quite a necessity now days, yet there’s very few alarm clock docks that will actually allow you to do it.  Why?

I think one of the big problems is that most of the hi-fi manufacturers haven’t really embraced this technology yet, most likely because if they want a “designed for iPhone” or “iPhone Supported’ logo then they have to give Apple 30% of the revenue, which means either they make a 30% loss or they have to hike the price by 30% – incidentally that’s most likely the reason why these are usually over £100.  There’s one that was made from a reputable hi-fi manufacturer, JVC, but it didn’t have a large LCD alarm clock on it, and looked very large and bulky.

I really wish companies would stand up and take note that having one of these in the bedroom is a good thing.  I suspect another reason why companies aren’t making these is that they feel that each person has their own bed stand, so will want their iPhone close to them.  So that means going for a single iPhone Alarm Clock dock for each person, which also adds to their profits.

If you’re in the market for a dual iPhone Alarm Clock dock, then if you have an iPhone and an iPod then you’ll find lots of different docks, but if you want two iPhones or two iPhone 4′s to be supported, that’s when it starts to become tricky.

If you have found and are using a dual iPhone Alarm Clock dock, let me know which one you have and how it’s working and how long you have had it.

This is a question that a lot of people have been asking lately. I’m not talking about all Android tablet manufacturers coming together, I’m talking about what does it take for a single manufacturer to compete on par with Apple? Why do Apple have such a strong hold over the Tablet market sales?

Before I get flamed by a bunch of Android users, let me say that I have both iOS and Android devices. The first reason is that Apple had a head start. Apple is an innovator and although it wasn’t the first to create a tablet, it was most certainly the first to create a tablet that just worked out of the box, with a complete ecosystem.

Apple have the right ecosystem, they have 400,000+ apps at time of writing this, Android have around 200,000 apps and Apple had a head start in the tablet arena over Google.

The biggest thing after talking to both Apple and Google fans that everyone seems to want is a device that’s upgradable. This is one thing that Apple gives all customers for a good 3-4 years. If you take a look at the iPhone 3G it’s still popular and upgraded to iOS 3, iOS 4. Okay, maybe it won’t be supported by iOS 5 perhaps, but there’s a good 3 years usage out of the device. Now take a look at Android. Samsung botched most of their upgrades for the Samsung Galaxy S, most customers couldn’t upgrade their devices because you had to connect it to Samsung Kies PC software, which just didn’t work properly.

Take a look at Sony Xperia devices, most of these wouldn’t see the light of day for an upgrade. Likewise some HTC devices although more lately have been upgradable, it’s only been because of customer pressure. HTC weren’t going to upgrade some of their phones to Gingerbread until customers forced them.

People want a device that isn’t going to be a brick or die of death in a year or two. Although people change their devices they still want to be able to use them or sell them and get a good return. This is the big problem so far with Android, it’s down to the manufacturer and sometimes not even the manufacturer, sometimes it’s down to both the manufacturer and the mobile operator. Where some customers see upgrades in some countries for a given device but not in others, or sometimes some in the same country get an update where others on another network don’t.

Another good reason as to why Apple have such a good run at the tablet market is if you take a look at other manufacturers, Microsoft still after all these years haven’t produced a single tablet (well if you exclude the WinCe devices), and look at HP, they’ve been in this market space several times in the last decade and pulled out. Palm although they weren’t yet competing in the tablet market, were in the mobile market with WebOS which was then bought up by HP, HP then decided to take part in the tablet industry (again), and have now recently decided it’s going to pull out of the tablet market.

Customers also want a device that’s going to work out of the box, not be complicated to use. Apple have this down to a tee. Likewise if you have previously owned an iPod Touch or iPhone then there’s a zero learning curve if you go to the iPad. With Android however, although it works out of the box, there’s a lot of customisation that can be done, things that can be accidentally turned on and off, or from a user perspective (broken) and that also puts off the non-technical users.

Apple have aimed their sales not at the technical user, but the non-technical user, where Android manufacturers seem a lot of the time to be targeting their products at the self confessed techy.

The other thing to think about is it’s fine to provide a device for every single kind of person out there, but this creates massive fragmentation in the operating system. That in turn makes games and apps break, not just once or twice but regularly. Bad news spreads quicker than good news, and although Apple don’t provide things like flash, the average person out there believes the devices tend to be more stable.

It’s also interesting to see how tablet manufacturer’s try to advertise their product. I have to smile when I keep seeing this advert for the Asus Eee Transformer where they actually show the tablet on the TV advert running out of battery. No worry, just plug it into the keyboard to restore some power. If you have a tablet that is capable of something like 10 hours battery power like the iPad, why would you even want to think about advertising that it WILL run out of battery power? That immediately puts me off buying the Asus tablets and I’m sure it puts off a lot of other people too.

At some point the eco seesaw will change, and it may tip in Googles favour or other manufacturers favour, but currently it’s still tipped towards Apple.

Posted by: Dave | August 3, 2011

Scotland Photography – 2 Day Trip

I recently managed to get a few days to drive around Scotland again. I try to do this once or twice a year following a heavy 1-2 weeks worth of work up in our Scotland office.

Unfortunately I usually find there’s about a 20% chance of either coming down with something rotten either before the trip or whilst I’m up there. Don’t ask me why, but it happens. This time wasn’t any different and managed to come down with acute laryngitis whilst up in Scotland. I suffered for most of the week but managed to get somewhat well for the weekend where I managed to get my energy back and get out and do some driving around Scotland.

I drove up through the highlands passing Glencoe and up to Fort William and the beautiful Corpach. The weather was picture perfect and was really warm.

The Highlands were perfect and once the sun burned through the clouds, it was a really pleasant day.

I then drove onto Corpach which is a little quaint town the other side of Fort William. Corpach canal / loch overlooks the mountain range of Ben Nevis.

For the second day I went up to a place called Rest and be thankful and you can see why, it’s utterly stunning.

Then I travelled onto Inveraray and visited the quay, the high street and Inveraray Castle.

I used the iPad 2 with the SD card adapter to quickly take photos off of my Canon EOS 550D Digital Camera which used an 18-55mm IS lens. For post processing of the 15mp photos I used my MacBook Air in the hotel and after the trip to process the photos using Aperture.

The driving was pretty tiresome especially seeing I was still suffering from Laryngitis and a temperature. I drove 18 hours within 2 days, but as the weather was great, it was well worth the punishment to get the 300 photos I came away with :) Thanks to the MacBook Air and iPad 2 making the work load a lot easier, and my trusty Canon EOS 550D :)

Posted by: Dave | July 21, 2011

Mac OS X Lion is here

Mac OS X Lion is finally here and comes with 250+ new features.

Multi-touch Gestures

  • Tons more multi-touch gestures available in Lion

Full-screen apps
  • Although previously available on some apps, OS X Lion offers system-wide support now for full screen mode
Mission Control
  • Mission Control brings together full-screen apps, Dashboard, Exposé and Spaces in one new feature that gives you a bird’s-eye view of everything on your system
Mac App Store
  • Mac App Store installed by default – no additional download
Launchpad
  • Launchpad is a new, full-screen home for all the apps on your Mac
  • Just think an iPhone/iPad Springboard display for Mac
Resume
  • Now apps you close will reopen right where you left off, so you never have to start from scratch again. And when you install software updates, you no longer need to save your work, close your apps and spend valuable time setting everything up again. With Resume, you can restart your Mac and return to what you were doing — with all your apps in the exact places you left them.
Auto Save
  • It’s time to stop worrying about saving your work. Because now your Mac automatically saves what you’re working on so you don’t have to.
Versions
  • Versions is a new feature that charts the history of your documents, taking snapshots in time, and displaying them side by side with the latest versions in an easily browsable timeline.
AirDrop
  • Looking for a fast way to share files with people nearby? With AirDrop, you can send files to anyone around you wirelessly — no Wi-Fi network required. And no complicated setup or special settings. Just click the AirDrop icon in the Finder sidebar, and your Mac automatically discovers other AirDrop users within about 10 metres of you. To share a file, simply drag it to someone’s name. Once accepted, the fully encrypted file transfers directly to that person’s Downloads folder.
Mail
  • OS X Lion introduces a whole new take on email. Mail puts your entire display to work with a gorgeous widescreen view featuring a full-height message and a message list that includes snippets. Conversations presents messages from the same thread in an elegant timeline showing each communication as it was sent while hiding redundant text. Mail also features search suggestions and search tokens, which help you find the messages you’re looking for fast.

The Mac AppStore seems to be having some teething problems over the Easter holiday period.

If you try to update some of your Mac apps then you might receive the following error message…

Unfortunately App updates don’t appear to be fully working for some apps and the message that Apple are providing definitely is the wrong message. Am I sure I didn’t purchase Clarity with another Mac AppStore account? Yes, quite simply I only have ONE AppStore account, so the error message Apple are displaying is definitely incorrect.

Just to verify I pulled up my purchase history for the same account and it shows I purchased Clarity on 1st February 2011…

Let’s hope it’s not a wide spread problem and Apple sees it and fixes it soon!

Posted by: Dave | April 7, 2011

Apple’s new iPad 2 advert

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