PushingJelly

Well it’s out, the Apple device is called the iPad, is small cute and expensive enough to get some people moaning about it’s price but affordable for the devout/fashionably stupid to get one.

Looks quite nice and I’m sure it will be a roaring sucess, but why isn’t there a camera and iChat for comms? Once again they have overlooked Instant messaging/Video or audio chat for a mobile device – it is so frustrating. It doesn’t even have a mic from the look of it.

Will I get one? well never say never, it is very neat and I haven’t had the thing in my greasy mitts yet but I think I’ll be saving my cash at the moment for the next gen MacBook Pro. Sorry guys, with a MacBook and an iPhone, why do I need something I can’t put in my pocket or run any app I wan’t on.

At the end of the day I don’t spend enough time on the loo or in sitting on a train to justify it.

— update —

Ok, it DOES have a mic apparently, but still no zarking camera – really, I ask you – WHY?

Well it’s the morning after the night before and I have awoken on my sofa. The day is bright and there’s a sprinkling of snow on our cars that looks like icing sugar sprinkled from a giant sieve in the same way as mince pies have.
The start of a new year and a new decade.

In the UK we are looking forward to a change of government this year and although not a Tory voter by any means, the Labour party have been in charge for far too long, they are if not overtly corrupt then criminally complacent and need to go. It’s just a shame there’s no alternative to the Conservatives who let’s face it are potentially as bad as the incumbent bunch of tossers. Don’t start with the LibDems either, as they have no recognisable presence in the political race. I have no idea what they stand for and I am not even sure who leads them any more.

Technology wise it looks quite promising, the tablet finally looks like it is due for release (we have been waiting YEARS Steve, what took so long?), Apple may finally take the AppleTV project seriously and who knows what iPhone v4 will be like (Well Steve and Jonny Ive do obviously, it was a rhetorical question really). 40 Million 5MP camera modules have been ordered – apparently.

So as it has become traditional at this part of the year here are my predictions for 2010 (excluding the tablet which is a given)

• Tomorrows World will come back to the BBC (Oh please Aunty, serious tech reporting again – Click’s good but it’s not TW)
• O2 will turn on Apple for the bandwidth issue and drop the iPhone
• Free WiFi Mesh installations will increase in the UK (First one is always free)
• ADSL will reach “Up to” 100Mb/s (actually delivering 5Mb/s for anyone further than 10 feet from the exchange – Lies, Damn Lies and ADSL speeds)
• “iPod Game” will be launched with game controller built in (this is of course a joke entry)
• App Store will come to the Mac platform bringing unlimited secure application delivery to the Mac reducing piracy and in turn application prices and increasing Apple’s profits (30% cut remember).
• Apple will continue to alter the memory market with their bulk purchases of Flash chips causing the cost of solid state storage to remain too high for the rest of us
• The hepatic interface pioneered (read UAT tested) on the iSlate will come to the new iPhone v4 to applause and frustration in equal measure.
• The Apple Tablet will have a cell phone built in and be offered for cheap (£200) on contract

Happy new year everyone.

B

Had a enlightening and infuriating afternoon today.

At 5:45, I was sitting in a Starbucks coffee shop having a latte and a piece of cheese cake with my lovely wife. A small boy of middle eastern appearance and with an accent to match who must of been about ten years old, came over to our table and showed some leaflet muttering incoherently about “this is coffee”.

Bemused at what he was talking about, I placated with a “yes” and smiled and he then left.

As he left, my wife asked where my iPhone was – thirty seconds before the kid arrived it was on the table in front of me.

It had of course gone.

Realising quickly what had happened, I chased after the boy, who by then had run out of the mall and (according to a passer by) met up with another kid and apparently got onto a bus.

Walking back to find a mall security guard (two met me on the way – my wife had got to them first) – I remembered that because it was an iPhone and I have a subscription to Mobile Me (Apple’s cloud data service) I could track the whereabouts of the phone on the me.com website.

I told the mall security officer this and we walked promptly to the recently opened Apple dealer. I quickly explained the issue to a member of staff and they allowed me to log into the me.com website and we tracked the phone.

We called the police while watching my phone travel along a local bus route. We could see the phone stop at bus stops and then carry on it’s route. One of the shop assistants said that she knew the route (the 86) and we told the police where they could find the bus. We were told that they could not send anyone out as they couldn’t “chase around Romford after a bus”. I told them they wouldn’t be chasing around as I knew where the bus was and they could just drive there and pick the little git up.

Instead they told me they were going to send “a unit” to the shop to take details (even though they had taken all the info over the phone).

While we were waiting someone from Romford police station called me and I had to give all the information I just told the CAD operator.

By now I had sent a message to the phone saying that the police were on their way and that we knew the brat was on the 86 bus and in Goodmayes and that he should give the phone to the bus driver.

The office turned up after about 15 minutes (while we watched the kid get off the bus and go to a MacDonalds on our Hybrid Google Map display within me.com’s website.). He was a PCSO who although very nice and apologetic, was unable to do anything apart from take the details of the crime again (third time lucky perhaps). He couldn’t even fill out a crime report.

After giving the info to the PCSO, I went back to the terminal and it had stopped updating. We tried calling the phone and it was off, going to voice mail.

It was gone. The police were useless and were not going to chase the bus. I was not going to get it back.

I decided to hit the kill switch on the website and remotely wipe the phone. I wish I had done this before I lost contact with it, as then I could be sure my data would be safe. As it is, I can only hope that the device will be wiped when it starts back up or when they try too many times to unlock it.

At any rate, I have done all I can to protect myself now.

The system will email me to tell me when the wipe has begun, until then I just have to wait. The SIM has been cancelled however so I am not that sure if it will work.

Things I learned today.

• Don’t trust anyone, including innocent looking little kids.
• PCSOs although nice and all are just there to make it look good, they are as useful as a chocolate teapot.
• The police couldn’t give a crap about petty theft, and won’t do anything – even when you hand them the thieves on a plate.
• If you have an iPhone, don’t send messages to the thieves to alert them to the tracking or they will turn it off.
• Lastly Wipe the phone before they do turn it off – just to be sure, you can always get your data re synced later from Mobile Me or the Mac/PC you sync with.

Ok, Personally I don’t think there’s an overwhelming reason to get the new iPhone.

OK it’s faster, has better GPS, a compass, voice commands and more memory but apart from that, what has it got to offer us right?

But what about you dear reader, are you tempted by the toys, the machismo, the tethering?

Damn, the tethering – OK but apart from the tethering, it’s faster, has better GPS, a compass, voice commands and more memory what has it got to offer?

“It’s got a better camera……”

Express your apathy on our exciting poll below:

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Apparently the word Trojan is associated with a number of different things not just the inhabitants of the city of Troy, a computer malware infestation or a brand of condom in the USA.

But it is a strange quirk of fate that these last two should come together in some small way in the news that some new malware is masquerading as a missing software component when browsing the most popular of website genre’s, the internet porn site.

As this article in Information Week points out the Trojan (called OSX/Jahlav-C apparently) prompts the user to install an Active X component to view a movie, this should of course be a give-away as Active X is a Microsoft technology and is not normally associated with the Mac platform however in the heat of lust driven furvor you guys (yes you –  you know who you are) should beware not enter your admin password when prompted no matter how big they are or whatever she is doing with that legume.

Let’s be careful out there.

I don’t normally have much of a problem with single source supply. It allows a distributor/seller to specialise and concentrate on the product, however when that exclusivity turns into a monopoly because the product is popular, there is always the danger the supplier will use that monopoly to squeeze their customers’ last shekel from their hands, just because they can.
This is bad for the customer of course but also for the manufacturer because the product gets a bad name which results in reduced sales of ‘it’ and by association the manufacturer’s subsequent products.

Where monopolies are concerned they don’t come much bigger or longer standing than AT&T in the US and O2 in the UK.

Read more

OK, it’s a day later and the WWDC announcement is now history and I am 50p poorer having bet Ian that a NoteBook would be forthcoming this time around.
There’s quite a bit of other good news however and if you have an iPhone, I think the 3.0 software upgrade will be worth the effort. I am not that sure yet whether at £300 for the 32GB, it will be worth me putting my hand in my pocket.
Ian (of course) will upgrade, he is on P&G and is forever complaining that 16GB is not big enough for him. If the new hardware is demonstrably faster and better then I will consider it – I’ll just let my chief tester Ian try it first
Roll on the 17th of June.

For those of you who not yet have installed 10.5.7 on your machines, you may want to hold off for a while longer.

Nothing officially confirmed as yet, but if my Mac Mini and the reports from this website are anything to go, by there’s a fan control or other heat related issue with the OS update that is causing malfunctions and in my machine’s case, the unit to power off altogether.

So installer beware .

 Well another six monthly Mac lust fest of rumours and speculation is upon us in force. The suspects this year are of course the new iPhones and Snow leopard, MacOS X 10.6.
Now I may be blind (well in one eye anyway) but I’m not seeing anyone else picking up on this. Is it just me or does ‘NTB’ suffix in the recently shown listing of new iPods, refer to the long expected Apple NetBook device but with an iPhone OS not MacOS X?
Just a thought.
See the picture below.

T-Mobile's handset list in Germany this week (Picture AppleInsider)

My favourite comic XKCD had a (as usual) cutting funny on the keynote: xkcd.com