What will Apple ruin this time?

Today, at ten o'clock PDT (five o'clock this afternoon), Apple will host a 'Keynote' event on their website.  I suppose I ought to be excited – after all, I use Apple products, and I love them.  Instead, I feel an impending sense of doom.

Ever since Apple killed off the iPod Classic (the only real iPod) in 2014, I have suspected that Apple CEO Tim Cook treats these events as some sort of social experiment, to see just how much Apple can inconvenience and irritate their consumers before they abandon the tech giant altogether and switch to another brand.  So, instead of launching exciting, innovative, cool new products – like they used to – Apple now focus on making people's lives harder by (for example) changing the shape of the chargers for their laptops and phones, so you constantly have to buy new ones, and it's harder to lend one to your friends.

The latest rumours about the next iPhone suggest that Apple will ditch the standard 3.5mm headphone socket, meaning everybody in the world will have to buy a new set of headphones in a non-standard size – because obviously, that's what consumers really want.  (Not.)  Y'know, the same way everyone was crying out for a computer which couldn't play DVDs.

So, what pointless and inconvenient change will Apple foist on us in their event later today?  Maybe they're going to launch a computer without a screen – and announce that they are ceasing support for screens within twelve months, and that soon no computers will have screens…

The Apple Watch will no longer have an actual strap, you'll just have to balance it on your wrist and keep very still; but at least it will now come with a set of Apple Cufflinks (for £179 extra), which will be WiFi enabled, for some reason…

And the new iOS for iPhone and iPad will change the direction you 'swipe' across the screen to unlock your device from left-to-right, to right-to-left.  Just because.

And we'll still all just nod along with it all, and queue up at their weird shiny stores to buy the stupid things.

Who watches the Apple Watch men?

No, I shan't be buying an Apple Watch – the latest offering from Apple, which is available in the UK today.  I may have a MacBook Pro, an iPhone, an iPad and an iPod Classic, but I really can't see myself investing in Apple's latest output.

'Wearable tech' is not a good look.  No matter how classy Apple try to make the Apple Watch, ultimately it is still a gadget, and a watch should not be a gadget – it should be a classic, timeless (ironically!) piece of jewellery.

My own watch was a twenty-first birthday present from my Grandmother.  It is a square-faced analogue Armani watch with a black leather strap, and I wear it every day.  I don't need apps and other techery on my watch – I already have that stuff on my laptop, and on my phone – and I'd rather wear a timepiece which is simple, elegant and beautiful, and which won't be obsolete within five years.

What's next?  Touch-screen brogues?  Cufflinks with Bluetooth?  (No, don't tell me that already exists…?!)

I didn't know about the classic ten-to-ten 'happy' face for
photographing watches when I took this in 2011.

I got a free album, and U got one 2!

There has been a considerable backlash at the news that, along with launching the new iPhone 6 the the iWatch (more on those to come) and killing the only version of the iPod worth having, the iPod Classic (the heartless bastards - more on that, also, to come), Apple have given every iTunes user a free copy of the latest album by U2 - Songs Of Innocence.  But I can't, for the life of me, think why.

There has been such a tremendous fuss about this that I've found myself wondering whether there's some nasty small print detail I've missed which allows Apple and U2 to harvest your organs if any of the band's members need a transplant at any point in their lives.  There isn't.

You're being given something free-of-charge.  Something for nothing.  It may not be something you wanted, or something you like, but you'd have to be a serious churl to claim that owning it diminishes your life in any way.

Claims that the album is being 'forced upon' you are, of course, hyperbolic nonsense in every sense; you don't have to listen to it - you don't even have to download it, if you don't want to!  The choice is yours.  That makes about as much sense as saying you're being 'forced' to use a stopwatch because your phone came with one as one of its set of 'stock' apps - or saying you're being 'forced' to eat raspberry jam because your housemate left a jar of it in the fridge before going away on holiday.  It is complete rubbish, in other words.

As for the album itself…?  I actually didn't mind it.  I know it's 'fashionable' to disdain U2 - as it is Nickelback, Coldplay, Jamie Cullum and Justin Bieber - but if you care more about whether it's 'fashionable' to like a band or not than whether their music is any good then you're an idiot.

Instead of instantly feeling aggrieved at the whole incident, I actually downloaded and listened to Songs Of Innocence before deciding how I felt about it - and I found it not in the least bit objectionable.  Who knows?  I may even listen to it again.

OS X Yosemite not bother

Disclaimer: it was only after I had thought of the pun in the title that I discovered that the proper pronunciation of 'Yosemite' is not from the 'Marmite' and 'Vegemite' stable (as it were).  I don't care; the title stays.

This week has seen the release of the latest version of Apple’s OS X operating system - Yosemite.  Is it just me, or do OS updates seem to follow very hot on each others’ heels these days?  It was barely a few months ago that I was updating to Mavericks; this time last year, my Mac was still running Lion.

I’m as big an Apple fanboy as the next person, but I do start to get the impression they’re just pumping these things out for the sake of it.  An operating system update is a pretty stressful time in a person’s life…  Will all my apps still be compatible?  Will I have to spend lots more money on more updates to make sure everything will run smoothly?

Apple don’t have a particularly great record on backwards compatibility - from a personal point-of-view, I am running various pieces of specialist software for my work (applications like Sibelius, Logic Pro and Reason), and I don’t want to be stuck in a situation where my Mac won’t run these programs properly post-upgrade.  Yes, of course I would backup everything before doing any big upgrades so I can always restore my system to how it was before - but isn’t that all such a tremendous faff, if it turns out the upgrade has made things worse?

And then there’s the question of whether the new system will even work on older machines at all…  Although the upgrade to Mail, and the iCloud drive, are both very attractive (and long overdue!) updates, there is surely a limit to the amount of upgrading my 2009 MacBook Pro (which recently celebrated its fifth birthday!) will handle.  How much extra RAM and CPU will all of Yosemite’s ‘translucent’ cosmetic tweaks and gimmicky new features (like making a phone call from your Mac) be eating up?

Despite all of this, I will still end up downloading Yosemite when it becomes available in the Autumn - albeit with some considerable trepidation!  This is partly just because I am a sucker for some shiny new Apple stuff - but, more importantly, because I don’t want to let myself get left behind.

Sure, you can skip one OS update - possibly even two - but after that, you start to lag behind the development curve, and eventually you start missing out on things.  Witness the complaints from people still using even older Macs than mine, with old PowerPC processors, for example!  Sorry guys, that’s life; you can tread water for a while, but in the end you get swept away.

With each new OS release, I become more and more nervous that my older Mac and older software will prove to be no longer up to the job.

Of course, no piece of technology lasts forever - in today’s world to have a five-year-old laptop which still runs as well as any you buy new is actually pretty good going!  Eventually, there will come a time when I need a hardware upgrade, not just a software overhaul.

As in politics. a year is a long time in technology - but to people who have bought an expensive new Mac and want to be able to pay off the consequent enormous credit card bill before their machine is rendered obsolete by technological advances and they have to get a new one, a year is not very much time at all.  Personally, I would happily have carried on using OS X Mavericks for another year or another eighteen months, if something newer and (supposedly) better hadn’t come along.

#iOS7 review follow-up

A few more iOS7 issues have arisen since I wrote my Review yesterday, so I am going to bring you all up-to-date on these now...

Slay the Parallax monster

Yesterday, I was extremely damning about the new 'moving Wallpaper and app icons' feature which has been introduced with iOS7 - Apple calls this 'Parallax' - and even more damning about the fact that I couldn't find how to switch it off...

Thankfully, though, I have since been informed of how to switch off the Parallax feature.  Follow these steps:

Settings > General > Accessibility > Reduce Motion > On

Sadly, this doesn't get rid of the Parallax movement affect when scrolling up or down through an iMessage conversation - where the little message 'bubbles' take on a 'floaty' quality and appear to chase one another up or down the screen - but at least it means that I (and you!) can have a pretty, personalised Wallpaper again.  How lovely.

Caps Lock keyboard

Why the new keyboard in iOS7 only ever displays the letters on the keyboard in capital letters, I don't know.  Yes, that makes it more like our computer keyboards, which only have capital letters on the keys, but with iOS7 I sometimes glance down at the screen and panic that I've written a text message or email ALL IN CAPITALS, and will have to start again.  The new 'Shift/Caps' button to the left of the Space Bar has also taken on a different style, and I am now finding it difficult to differentiate between 'no caps' 'single caps' and 'caps lock' on the keyboard.

The keyboard also seems to respond every-so-slightly slower to typing than it did in iOS6 - which, if you type quickly on your iPhone, does get annoying.

Finally, some apps have the 'new style' iOS7 keyboard, while other apps still have the 'older style' grey version - very weird.

Writing a new text message (left)? Use the new keyboard!
Writing a new Tweet (right)? Use the old keyboard!

Another #iOS7 review

A couple of days ago, I updated my iPhone 4S to the latest version of Apple's mobile operating system, iOS7.  Having spent the intervening hours trying to get used to the changes Apple has made, I am going to put down my opinions on iOS7 here - in what is, I am sure, the Blog post for which the world has been waiting...

Firstly, some background.  iOS7 is a much bigger change than any of the previous updates to the iOS platform have been.  When I updated from iOS4 to iOS5, and then again from iOS5 to iOS6, the new versions didn't take much 'getting used to' - they were, essentially, the same system.  Each new update came with a few minor tweaks, a couple of added features (notably voice-command app Siri, which first appeared with iOS5, and the controversial move away from Google Maps in iOS6), but the overall look and feel of iOS remained fairly constant across the updates.  With iOS7, Apple have redesigned large amounts of the way their mobile devices work, and the operating system has a whole new look.

Still curious?  Here is what TechCrunch said about iOS7's new look:

The look is bound to be controversial; Apple has opted for bright, bold colors with more clean lines and far fewer textures, shadows and gradients. There is still some depth to the OS, however, with transparency effects giving a sense of background and foreground elements (the dock row is an opaque rectangle through which your home screen wallpaper is visible, for instance).

Apple’s visual overhaul received a lot of knee-jerk criticism when it was revealed at WWDC earlier this year, but in practice, the visual changes are actually quite pleasant, and grow on a user with time. Looking back now, iOS 6 feels dated, despite the fact that when I first started using iOS 7 I felt it was inferior in terms of look and feel to the older OS. Apple’s new look with iOS 7 takes acclimating, but on the whole, it’s an improvement.

So what do I think of iOS7?  Well, I'll tell you; are you sitting comfortably...?

Things I like

The good stuff...

Torch
Having to rely on a third party app for a torch on your phone has always been a weakness of the iPhone - not any more, as Apple have finally caught up with the Android operating system which have offered this for a while.  Thank goodness for that!

Control Centre
I like the Control Centre feature - swipe up on your phone's screen for instant access to basic functions, such as changing the screen brightness, or the volume of any music playing, without having to exit your main app.  Control Centre also lets you switch on/off Aeroplane Mode, BlueTooth and Do Not Disturb Mode without having to go into Settings first, and gives you access to a the torch, the calculator and the camera without having to open them from the Home Screen.

New signal indicators
Instead of the 'bars' of varying heights, from short to tall, to show how strong your mobile phone signal is (which I always thought looked slightly like the graphs which primary school children make to show how many kids in their class have brown eyes, how many have blues eyes, and how many have blood red eyes like the devil), iOS7 has little circles.  The more circles are filled (instead of empty), the better your signal.  I actually think they're rather stylish.

New Volume control - very nice.

New Volume control design
The little graphic displayed on the screen when you adjust the volume of the phone using the buttons on the left hand side has been change - I think - for the better.

3D tabs in Safari
The new 3D tabs in Apple's mobile web browser Safari look very cool, and are a nice update.

Pages in folders
Folders of apps on your Home Screen are now able to contain more than one page of apps - which, frankly, is a long overdue and very welcome improvement.

Things I don't like, but can probably learn to live with

There are some pretty minor, niggly little things in this section, but they're worth mentioning...

Buttons that aren't buttons any more
This is part of that whole 'clean, simple lines' thing that people seem to love so much - but in my opinion, it just confuses the interface.  In iOS7, the buttons with which you are familiar are still there, but they don't look like buttons any more - they are just text.  You just tap on the word, and hope that something will happen.  This doesn't actually affect the functionality of the phone, of course, and I'm sure I will get used to that, in time - but to me, it all looks a bit 'Windows'.  (If you know what I mean?)

Tweetbot and BBC Sport are lagging
behind the rest, with 'old style' icons.

Flat icons
It has been widely publicised that, in iOS7, Apple have 'flattened' their icons, and moved away from the glossy 'glass' look that has been their signature look since the first iPhone release.  Now, I've nothing against the flat icons themselves - but not every app that I use has updated its icon to the new style, so I now have an alarming lack of homogeneity in app icon design on my Home Screen, and for someone like me that is quite disturbing.

Folder backgrounds
I mentioned earlier how pleased I was to see that you can now have more than one page of apps within a folder - but one change of which I am not so fond is to the colour of folder background...  At first, I thought that the folder backgrounds had been changed to an unpleasant shade of beige, but now it appears that the background takes it colour somehow from the colour palette of your Home Screen wallpaper; either way, it leaves you with a clunky 'splodge' of a folder on the screen.

'Zooming' apps on the Home Screen
When you go to your Home Screen (either from the Lock Screen, or when closing an app) your app icons aren't just there any more - they have to 'zoom' in to the Home Screen.  There's nothing especially wrong with that, but it's just another unnecessary complication.

'Fading' Lock Screen
When you press the Lock button (at the top right of your phone), your Lock Screen doesn't just appear any more - it 'fades in' slowly.  And then it 'fades out' again when you press the button a second time to turn the screen off again.  This only takes a fraction of a second, and isn't a huge inconvenience at all - but how, exactly, is that an improvement on the previous method?  Answer: it isn't.

Things I really can't stand

These are the changes to iOS which, not only don't improve, they actively make it worse...

iOS6 (left) is personal - iOS7 (right) is bland and generic.

Moving Wallpaper
When you're looking at your Lock Screen, the Wallpaper background will 'move around' if you tilt or move the phone.  This is intensely irritating - so much so that one day after updating to iOS7, I changed my old Wallpaper (a photo of a blazing fire in my back garden, of which I am rather proud, and which has been my phone Wallpaper for almost two years) to a rather dull plain white background so that the moving wouldn't show up.  It feels like my phone has lost its identity.


Moving app icons
Similar to the above issue - on your Home Screen, the app icons themselves now move ever-so-slightly from side-to-side if you change the angle at which you're holding the phone.  Even changing the Wallpaper hasn't fixed this, and I can't find any way to switch it off in Settings - so it would appear that I am stuck with this, even though every time I see it I want to scream.

Calendar redesign
The new interface for mobile iCal is an absolute trainwreck.  It is hard to navigate, and adding events to the calendar has been made needlessly clunky and complex.  I have a lot of online calendars to manage, and I use my phone all the time to check my availability and keep my schedules up-to-date.  This task has just been made a lot more difficult.  The only good thing about the new version of Calendar is its new 'flat' icon, which I actually quite like.

So there we have it...  There are some very good points in iOS7, and there are a few things which either came as a bit of a shock, or which I initially haven't liked, but only because I haven't fully got used to them yet - unfortunately, though, there are also some things which I really hate, and to which I can't see myself becoming accustomed any time soon.

Another iPhone post

Earlier today, I read a piece in Telegraph by Michael Hogan, entitled The 15 Most Annoying Things About iPhones.

As someone who a) uses an iPhone, b) loves his iPhone, and c) has some spare time in the middle of the day, I decided to respond to Mr Hogan's points here (where he'll probably never see it):

1. The new, cheaper iPhone is called the 5C, which sounds like a class at school or a flat above a shop. It comes in four candy-bright colours, like it’s a highlighter pen, pair of Crocs or something. Perhaps the “C” stands for “common”.

As it happens, I completely agree with Mr Hogan, here.  In the past, iPhones were only available in black or white, and that's how it should be.  (Personally, I'd get rid of the white as well.)  Having a range of garish colours makes it look like a product for eleven-year-old girls.

2. Its posher sister model, the 5S, has a fingerprint sensor. So thieves won’t just steal your phone, they’ll amputate a finger too, like a sort of telecoms Yakuza.

I'm pretty sure you won't be forced to use the fingerprint thingy.

3. They still automatically put “Sent from my iPhone” at the end of emails, making you look like a tragic show-off.

You can switch that setting off pretty easily, actually.

4. Smug people with the new handsets will proudly place them on the pub, café or meeting room table when they sit down, then keep sneaking surreptitious glances at them. Oh, right. So the vague possibility of not seeing a text from your mum the very second it arrives is more interesting than anything I have to say, is it? Rude.

Nonsense.  I take things (my wallet and keys, as well as my phone) out of my pockets when I sit down because it's uncomfortable to sit down with a lot of bulky things in my pockets.

And as for whether a text/email I receive is more interesting/important than the people I'm actually with at the time?  Well, it may be - but if I don't look at it, I'll never know.  The fact is, most texts or emails can be (and usually are) left until later, once I've seen what they are - but if there's some urgent crisis in the family, or an incredible once-in-a-lifetime work opportunity arises, someone will contact me through my phone, and I'll want to know about it.

5. Don’t even get me started on “phubbing” (the phrase or the phenomenon).

I had never heard this expression before...

6. The first line of incoming texts pings up on the homescreen. So if you do leave your phone on the table, other people can see if you’ve been bitching about them/sexting. Not that we would, naturally. Perish the thought.

Again, you can switch this setting off.

7. Those losers who queue up to buy them on the first day of release. It’s just a telephone, chaps (and they always are chaps). Have a serious word with yourselves.

Fair enough.  But I'm sure those guys would have just as much disdain for other hobbies or interests - golf, for instance, or train-spotting...

8. The battery life is still like a mayfly’s. We’re encouraged to use all the fancy futuristic features but when we do, the juice runs out before we get home. Grrr, why I oughta…

This irritates me no end.  Not the battery life itself - but people moaning about it.  If you use your phone so much that the battery wears down within an hour of leaving the house, for goodness' sake plan ahead and take a charger with you when you go out!

I have an iPhone charger which plugs into the power outlet in my car, and I have a spare mains charger which I carry in my bag - very rarely do I find myself so far removed from normal civilisation that I wouldn't be able to find somewhere to plug my phone in within, say, half-an-hour, if I had to.

9. If something goes wrong with it, you have to go to the twattily-named “Genius Bar”.

Yes, it is a ridiculous name.  But also, if they fix your phone for you, what's the problem?

10. On the keyboard, the voice dictation button is placed right next to the spacebar – ie. the single most used key. Cue accidentally turning on dictation mode, taking a second to realise, then having to cancel it to exit. Teeth-gnashingly tedious.

I agree that this is hugely annoying, and a big design flaw.

11. Taking “selfies” (sorry) or using Snapchat makes you look fat and old. Or is that just me? Oh.

I've never seen the appeal of Snapchat, personally, and therefore don't use it.  If you don't like it, I would encourage you not to use it either.

12. People saying “Damn you, autocorrect!!1! lol” after they make a mistake in a text. A bad workmen blames his iTools. Read it back before you press send, you lazy shiv. Damn you, autocorrect.

This is 100% spot-on.

PROOF-READ YOUR MESSAGES - DON'T BLAME THE PHONE IF YOU FAILED TO PICK UP ON A BASIC ERROR IN YOUR TEXT.

13. Kids playing music out of them on public transport without using headphones. Not only is it antisocial but it’s invariably bad music. I realise this makes me sound like a joyless old fart. People with their keypad tones turned right up is almost as bad. Click click click STOP IT.

Again - no arguments here!  Turn the bloody noises off, especially when you're in public.

14. They popularised use of words like “sync” and “app”, which are impossible to say out loud without feeling like a prize prat.

Like it or not, these phrases are now a part of our everyday vernacular.  Every new innovation brings something to language, and people always moan about it - not that that ever makes any difference...

15. People boring on and on about them endlessly. Which this piece has probably just done. Oops.

I guess I've just contributed to that too.

Mobile phone development

This is a topic about which I've written before - but, with the recent advent of the new iPhone 5 and iOS 6 for Apple devices, I think it bears repeating...

While bigger screens, slimmer bodies, voice-recognition technology, etc. is all very well, I believe that none of that stuff is as important as that biggest of all mobile phone issues: the stupid noise made by HiFi speakers, radios, PA Systems or other audio equipment whenever a mobile phone is nearby.

"Buh-ba-duh!  Buh-ba-duh!  Buh-ba-duh!  Buh-ba-duh!"

If I owned a mobile phone company, I would make it my first priority to eliminate this problem from all the models in my company's range.  Never again would a group of people travelling in a car with the radio look bewilderedly around at each other, asking:

"Who's phone is that?"

"I don't know?!  It's not me; I'm not vibrating.  Are you vibrating?"

I believe that the entire research and development budget of all the mobile phone companies in all the world needs to be put into stopping this irritation once and for all - once that is fixed, then (and only then!) can you go back to creating all kinds of whacky apps, top-quality graphics and social networking integration.

Web and email: making the switch

After the high drama and excitement of last week's double sandwich review and comparison post, I am going to become very pedestrian now, and talk about which web browsers I use, and things like that.  So, if you don't want to know the results, look away now...!

I have been a loyal Mozilla user for close to ten years, now.  I got my first computer (a desktop PC from Evesham Technology) in 2003.  The first thing I did was to download Mozilla Firefox, in order to escape the slimy clutches of Microsoft's own browser, Internet Explorer.

I continued using Mozilla products (by now using both Firefox, and its sister email client, Thunderbird) on my HP Windows laptop, and when I got my first Mac (a second-hand G4 iBook) in 2009, I saw no reason to change this.  Eschewing Apple's native software (Safari for the web, and Mail for emails) I continued using the Mozilla applications with which I was most familiar.

Yesterday, however, I made the switch away from Mozilla, for the first time.  Why?  I don't feel they're keeping up in terms of design, and the software increasingly feels clunky and poorly-made.

In recent months, I have felt more and more frustrated watching other Mac users using slick, shiny, web and email interfaces, while I stick with programs whose interfaces haven't changed, in essentials, for years.  The aesthetics of Mail, in particular, seemed far superior to Thunderbird - and although Safari and Firefox are built on the same tabbed browsing model, Safari somehow manages to make this look cleaner and more modern than Firefox does, and Firefox just can't compete on performance and speed any more.

So, I am now an Apple Mail user.  So far, I am happy with it.  I like the "grouped conversations" feature, and I like that it brings my email management on my MacBook in line with on my iPhone.  Safari, however, impressed me less.  Having been used to the marvellous AdBlock Plus addon with Firefox, Safari bombarded me with adverts in the first five minutes before I Quit it in exasperation.

Following the advice of some people on Twitter, I gave Google Chrome a try.  This was a big step, as I had previously discounted Chrome, on the grounds that Google don't make an equivalent email client to run alongside their browser application.  (One of the irritating things about being as meticulous in certain aspects of life as I am is that I always prefer to use a matching pair of web programs than a hotchpotch of different software.)  In spite of these OCD-related misgivings, I decided to give Chrome it a try...

My first impressions of Chrome were that it was just as fast and stable as I had been told.  The interface, while nothing special, is uncluttered to the point of serviceable, and, perhaps most crucially of all, there is a version of AdBlock Plus available for Chrome as well.  So, I am now using Chrome - at least for the foreseeable future.  The idea of using a non-matching web browser and email client is still slightly unsettling, for now, but I'm sure I can get used to it, in time.

I'm still very disappointed not to be able to continue using Mozilla products.  I like the ethos and the open source nature of their software packages, and (although this is a small point) I think their software icons (in the Dock, or on the Desktop) are better.  At some point, I hope, Mozilla's performance and interface design can catch up with the rest of the world, and their products can become viable options for Mac users again.  Until then, though, I shall be sticking with Chrome and Mail.

Sandwiches will return later in the week.

The inevitable "I've got an iPhone and you're gonna hear about it!" post

So, last week, I got an iPhone...  Not a new 4G one - I'm not that awesome - but an old 3G version...

I like it...  I've only had it a week, but I'm already liking it a lot!

I'm not going to start reviewing the features, I'm not going to take a load of photos of it, and I'm certainly not going do any kind of tests on it...  After all, an iPhone 3G is fairly "old-hat" now - I'm sure everyone reading this knows what they look like, what the main features are, and that, should they wish, there are a billion comprehensive reviews, from all angles and perspectives, available on the internet already...

What I am going to do, is ask this question...  What is it that makes an iPhone better than, say a Blackberry, or an Android phone?

The answer?  Well, nothing, actually...  I know plenty of people who prefer those alternative Smartphones, and would much rather have one over an iPhone...  But equally, I know I'm not the only person who would choose the iPhone over those others...

Discussions on the internet always seem to get rather heated, on this topic...  Particularly, I've noticed, between the two rival "camps" of iPhone users, and Android users...  I'm never sure why they feel the need to get so intense about it - it's only a choice of phone, for goodness' sake!

Personally, I am a big fan of Apple products...  I'm typing this post on my MacBook Pro, I listen to music on my iPod Classic, and, now, I do all kinds of mobile telecommunicational activities on my iPhone 3G...  The reason is, that I find Apple products work, for me...  I'm quite ready to admit that they won't work for everyone - but, for me, they're great...

I think that's the whole crux of this ridiculous issue, actually...  The idea of personal preference plays an enormous part in the choosing of these gadgets, and it all comes down to what kind of person you are...

On some level, I suspect that the designers at Apple are actually very similar to me...  I think we must think the same, have the same ways of working, and so on...  Which, I think, is why the products they design make so much sense to me...  Apple's operating systems just "click" with my way of thinking, and always seem incredibly intuitive...  The devices always work in the way I expect them to - everything about them (well, almost - nobody's perfect!) is designed in a way which makes me think "yeah, that's how I would've had it done!"  And, as such, I feel very much at home using iPhones, iPods, Macs, and so on...  It's almost as if they were designed just for me...

Now, not everyone's like me...  I know many people who don't like the way Apple's products operate, and who find Windows, or Android, or the Blackberry operating system, much easier to work with...  Those systems seem to make more sense to them, and they work much better with them...

I'm not sure whether there are any correlations to be discovered here...  Is it true, for instance, that most "creative" types prefer working with Apple Macs, while businesses tend to lean towards PCs?  I've no idea...  And I can't be bothered to do enough research to find out...!

All I do know, is, that if somebody has a particular affinity for products which are designed in a certain way, and which work in a certain way, they're not "stupid" - they're not being "narrow-minded" or "a fanboy"...  They just have a different approach to using technology from you...  And, what's great, is that, in the modern technological market-place, there really is something for everyone...!

So, whether the iPhone's design really strikes a chord with you, or whether you find it clumsy, unintuitive, and you much prefer to use a Blackberry, that's fine!  Just remember that not everyone will have the experiences using those devices...

OK?  Good!  :)

Rationalising the iPad

So, Apple's famous tablet computer, the iPad, is now available here in sunny Blighty, and the adverts are already all over our televisual devices...  It's not a medicinal gadget, to be taken twice daily with meals (oh c'mon, did you really think I'd be able to resist the obvious pun?!) it's essentially an enormous iPhone...  No, better, an enormous iPod Touch - since the iPad doesn't seem to have any telecommunicative functions...

I'm not going to review the iPad...  Partly because I've never actually seen one in real life, let alone used one, but also partly because other people have already done it, far better than I could ever hope to...

What I am going to do, is try and decide whether I actually want one or not, right here, live on air...  Well, live on this Blog...  How exciting?  No, not really, I know - but don't grumble!  You suggest a better topic!

OK - here we go!  So, why would I want, or not want, an iPad?  I'm going to start with the "cons" - reasons not to get an iPad...  I shall express this, in the form of a diagram, thus -

As you can see, I'm not really sure what the need for iPad is...  It seems to overlap parts of what you can do with a laptop, and parts of what you can do with a mobile phone...  What I'm wondering is - is there anything an iPad does, which can't be done with either a computer or a smartphone?  (I don't actually know the answer to that, and I can't be bothered to do my research, so I shall simply presume that there isn't...)

So, what reasons are there for wanting an iPad?  I clearly don't *need* one - but, every time I see the rational, logical, clear-thinking arguments of the diagram, a little voice in my head wheedles "yeah, but - it's shiny!  It's cool!  It's made by Apple!"

And that's the thing - on a purely emotional level, the iPad really appeals!  So, it's head vs. heart - iPad vs. no iPad...  And, although I claim to be a "rational and intellectual individual" (I love words that end in "al") I know, deep down, that the base desire to have the latest in status-symbol-based gadgetry, to own it, to caress it, to been seen owning and caressing it by others, will win me over every time...

All of which is merely academic - I couldn't possible afford one anyway...!