When Apple envisioned this hub they saw you going home and plugging in your devices, then heading out again. Now we take our hub with us into the living room, the kitchen, meetings, lecture and even sometimes the actual pub. The idea that the cloud is going to be our new home doesn’t work for me. I would rather keep as much as I can locally for speed, ease of access and privacy. What I see happening is the cloud acting as a bridge. We no longer have to come home and plug in to sync all our data. Instead we turn on and connect anywhere anytime. This is what iCloud is doing; unlike most services it is giving us access to our hub from anywhere.

The cloud is not a new hub it is a bridge.

Android is suffering from fragmentation, where each handset maker has a variation of the OS; So when Google update you have to wait for the manufacture to modify it and then hope that your woefully under powered cheap handset will run it. Google are combating this with making the ‘Holo’ theme used in Ice Cream Sandwich mandatory, but they are not going all they way.

It looks like Microsoft has learnt from their previous experience in this market and by watching others namely Palm’s WebOS and Google’s Android go up against the iPhone. People want their phone to stay simple but be smart at the same time. They seem to have found a balance between Google’s open to everyone and Apple’s full control approaches to offer real an alternative. This combined with the eye watering aesthetic that Nokia have been using since the N8 it makes it a real pleasing offer.

The titled interface is a refreshing way of looking at a phone compared to Android and iOS’s very similar UI’s. Microsoft seem to have realised that the key to getting a phone OS to stick is to get apps, something WebOS failed at. I hope this could be another XBOX for Microsoft.

When I subscribed I was expecting for it to match half of my iTunes library; however I have been mightily impressed with it not matching just under 30 songs out of 3000. Interesting enough it matched most of the songs from an album but not 2 from the same album, peculiar? And then it found another 3 songs that had too lower Bit Rate for it to match.

Thanks to the wonders of having unlimited broadband I promptly downloaded almost 2000 songs to improve the quality. It is a great service at a nice price, but I am not sure if it is one I would re-subscribe to; simple because the biggest benefit to me is one off upgrading of my music. My iPhone is large enough to hold all my music so the idea of not having to worry if something is on my iPod is not their. As a backup solution I have too many photos to not backup my computer over the internet anyway.

I have done this for the past few years and it has always proved to be very popular, I think mostly due to the insufferable pain anyone buying for a geek goes through. In end having to submit a list in advance so people can choose what to get me as it makes life simpler. Here are some ideas that people might enjoy this year.

Harry Potter or any other triple play BluRays – This is a great option for a geek that wants their content anywhere. Not only do you get a movie but with the triple play you get it in BluRay, DVD and download format.

The Magic Charger – A neat solution using inductive charging. Inductive charging isn’t really widely available yet, but its implementation here would save every having to think about batteries.

The Magic Bar – Another inductive charging solution for those wire free geeks, this time for your keyboard.

The Magic Wand – This one is an idea for those who have a computer in the kitchen or attached to the TV. It joins your Keyboard and magic trackpad together. It is perfect if your the kind of person that finds yourself not sat at your desk using a computer.

PlugBug – We have seen those wall plugs with USB ports in for charging but most of us aren’t going to go around and change the plugs in our house just to have a USB port. This adapter from Twelve South fits onto your MacBook /Air/Pro charger and allows you to charge any usb device as well. The rest of their products are well worth a look.

Lowkey Stand – These guys offer some great desk solutions for laptop and desktops that are worth a look.

I ? Math – What nerd would be complete without a nerdy T-Shirt? This one really is nerdy, but just search the internet and you will find thousand with witty remarks.

Canvas Print – Hello Canvas offer a great quality product and they are super cheap. Speaking from experience I have 4 of their prints and love the quality of every one.

aJays Four – Another favourite product of mine, you have no idea how hard it is to find reasonably price good quality headphones with inline controls that work with your iPhone. These work seamlessly with my iPhone and look great. They don’t offer the same comfort as full in ears, but they also sell a more expensive in ear version.

Holga iPhone Case – A little geeky camera case for your iPhone great for anyone who uses Instagram or similar apps.

Past suggestions:

2009

2008

The camera, I have always seen phone camera’s as a less of a camera more of a connivence; however if the images Apple showed are what can really be achieved with the new camera I can see this as a permeant point and shoot replacement, Glenn Wolsey wrote an article on this. Along with the greatly improved camera the video quality has gone HD. When ever you want to record a funny video you tend to do it on your phone, it looks crappy to be kind. That is why you buy a Flip, but not more if you can shoot HD from your phone and edit it in iMovie video blogging will have a whole new dimension.

As much as Apple are excited about FaceTime, I really can’t see people full using it for another 3 or so years. The limitation of having to be on WiFi is just to great even tho when at home most people will be.

My problem is my contract expires in February and last time I checked Vodafone would upgrade me to anything but an iPhone, which is not what I wanted to hear.

Aperture 3 is said to have 200 new features but really how many of those feature will one use and how many of them are even worth my time? Well I am going to try and help answer that question.

Brushes

This is a feature similar to what Lightroom has had for ages and one I have been waiting for. Apple handle the idea of affecting certain areas very well with out complicating it with layers. In fact all you have to do to affect a select area is click the settings of the adjustment you wish to paint on and click paint in or paint away. You can do paint in almost every adjustment you get plus there are some new adjustments like skin smoothing which is one of my favourites and has huge potential for real life usage.

The skin smoothing has been really effective in this picture in making him look a lot younger.

Here I use brushes to reduce the saturation of the background so she popped out more.

Faces

This is a feature we have already seen in iPhoto and is great to see it in Aperture. Using keywords to tag an image is great but really time consuming and slow however Apertures face recognition is rather good and makes it a load quicker to group photos of the same person. I have used the faces feature to help me when I was making a calendar. We didn’t have any photos of my brother, faces made it much easier and quicker to find them and add them in.

Places

Again we have already seen this in iPhoto. It is a great idea and I am sure will be really useful when more cameras have GPS built in, but very few do and this is a bit of a downside. GPS units cost around £100 at the moment and most people don’t have them and I feel this feature has no practical purpose unless you have shelled out for a GPS unit, which is unlikely.

Presets

Most presets tend to be alright but never actually come in handy. However when using Aperture 3 I have found it really useful to use them to help you get an idea of what you can do to an image. I use them as a base and then adjust to suit the image itself. They offer some great effects and are super easy to use with their little pop out preview. Have you ever shot a load of photos then realised that the white balance is off on all of them or they are all too dark and need lightening up, this is where the presets really come into their own. Upon import you can apply presets to all the images fixing them and saving you hours of going through and adjusting all of them.

Here I used the punch preset as a base and worked off it.

Curves

Curves are powerful stuff and have been missing from Aperture. (As a little side note we actually had a little lesson on curves in Physics recently which was quite funny as most people struggle with the way they work.) As you would expect they offer you great control over your image.

Web Publishing

The web publishing links to Flickr and Facebook are a great idea but I doubt most people buying Aperture are going to be uploading to Facebook. Flickr on the other hand I personally prefer to use Photonic for uploading my images as it makes it super easy to add the pictures to multiple groups, but not everyone has Photonic and so I guess it could a be a useful feature.

UI

There are a couple subtle tweaks to the UI, that make it just that much nicer to use. The grey is slightly lighter and the icons bigger and brighter, this gives Aperture a much more friendly feel.

The Problems

As much as I like Aperture 3 it has some faults, and some major ones at that. It is painfully slow, much slower than its predecessor. It is also a complete memory hog when you first use it. When you first open it and import all your photos it will spend hours looking for faces and processing all the thumbnails. This is painfully slow and means you can’t do anything on your machine. When I had the trial version installed it was prone to crashes, especially if my computer went to sleep while it was open, however I have found this to disappear after installing the boxed version. I mention this sleep thing because lots of people seem to be having the same problem and from what I can work out it is due to a feature in newer macs that basically hibernates your computer if there is a power loss and so saves what you were doing in the RAM on to the hard drive; for me this has resulted in almost 20GB sleep image files that fill up my hard drive. Don’t fret they disappear after you have been up and running for a bit. This problem has again disappeared for me once I installed the boxed copy of Aperture 3, but I can’t speak for others. Something worth noting if you have lots of Aperture plugins, if they have not been updated to work with 64 bit then you will have to relaunch Aperture 3 just to use them.

Conclusion

Aperture 3 has some great features that are well worth the upgrade and make a huge difference in how you edit your photos, but as with any release it is not without its faults. Most of the major problems I experienced simply resolved themselves after I installed the boxed copy I bought, it may have just been a problem with the trial version of Aperture Apple were offering. Loads of the new features are actually useable instead of being just there for show. I have attached a gallery with some of my favourite images from Tough Guy.

I was initially very disappointed in Apple for announcing what I was myself calling a “large iPhone that can’t even phone”. I saw no market for the iPad, I just could not see anyone buying it. You really can’t use an iPad unless you already have a computer (you need to be able to sync it) and so I thought why in the hell are people calling it a tablet computer, when it most clearly is not one.

The Good

However since then I have come round to the iPad a bit more. It has a great UI and from what I have seen and heard it works wonderfully in your hand. When I started to think about the kind of people at would use an iPad. I really could only see one possible answer, and that was the kind of people that use Netbooks. When Netbooks first came out I did a review of the Asus EEE PC and one of the major problems it had was the input devices i.e. a keyboards and trackpad, they were just not practical on such a small device. When Netbooks first came out most ran their own version of Linux, but nowadays we see most of them running Windows. The main reason for this is the lack of functionality and applications for the linux based versions. This is not a problem with the iPad as it already has thousands of apps ready to run sitting in the App store. The more I Think about it, it really is what Netbooks should have been. Finally the biggest surprise of all was the pricing; the top of the line only costing $829 (£530 roughly), putting it in perfect contention with other Netbooks.

The Bad

Sorry if this bit sounds like a rant but Apple left out some major stuff. First off why is there no camera? Considering most Netbooks are used for Skyping (and other AIM clients that support video), you would have thought a camera was an obvious one. Next on my list is the lack of Flash, Apple claim this is the best web surfing experience out there, but I ask how can it be if you can’t see anything done in flash? John Gruber of Daring fireball wrote a very interesting piece about this subject, which I suggest you check out. What really gets my goat is that people are calling it a tablet computer when it is clearly not a computer at all; even Steve Jobs calls it an iPod (29:40).

And that is a little bit of an overview of the
iPods hardware

It has no multi tasking and no standard interfaces such as USB ports, so if your friends shows up with a keynote on a memory stick and you want to put it on to your iPad you’ll need a computer; in fact if you want to put anything on your iPad you will need a computer. Apple also seem to be keenly advertising the iBooks function, but what they forget to mention is that at the moment it is US only.

The Ugly

In this case I think the beautiful might be more appropriate. There is no doubt that Jonathan Ive and his team have done a great job designing the iPad. Physically the iPad is slim and familiar. The UI is out standing and brings some of the nicest physical aspect of having a address book and a book in ones hand in to the digital realm. The contextual menus are well integrated and work seamlessly with the larger screen.

Final Opinion

My final thoughts after a bit of contemplation are that of contentment. I think it is a great start but as with any first generation device things are missing. Also I feel the hype didn’t help, people were expecting a fully fledged tablet computer and what they really got was a tablet iPod. I feel the iPad is for people who have a main computer, but might occasionally need a Netbook.

Rumours are flying around that Apple will release a tablet at their event on the 27th. They may just be rumours or complete truth, but what I want to talk about is where this tablet is going to fit in their line and who the hell is going to use it?

The idea of a tablet sounds great and I am sure if Apple make one it will work wonderfully. What I worry about is that there is just no market for one. If you want to surf the web while your out and about then you will use your iPhone; if you want to type a blog post you would use a laptop, it’s just that simple.

Where does a tablet fit in our lives? One possibility is as an ebook reader, but then you arrive at the question of the screen. What will they use? there are two choices and energy hungry LCD or a colour limited e-ink screen. If this was its primary purpose I just can’t see that many selling. Another use is for the more artistic mac owners who really want a touch screen to better create their art work, however this market share is probably so small it will not be profitable. It has also been rumoured that you maybe able to get it with a wireless carrier, if this is true it is competing with the iPhone as a wireless surfing device.

Then we come to the mine field that is price, this is a nightmare; if they price it at $1000 it is competing with fully fledged laptops and if they put it at $500 it is competing with the iPhone. A tablet sounds like a great idea, but it is a tried and failed model. I am not saying Apple should stay away from it I just hope they have something innovative and unique so it can easily be differentiated from an iPhone or a laptop.

Copyright: http://www.flickr.com/photos/deep-resonance

Just before the release of Windows 7 Apple announced a couple updates to some of their products. They released what are basically widescreen versions of the iMac, which have to be said look extremely nice, they also gave them a bit of a speed bump. They released a slender new aluminium Apple remote, a server version of the Mac Mini and a new MacBook with better longer battery life and a plastic unibody shell.

But most importantly they released the Magic Mouse, that is unbelievably cool. One of most talked about announcements is a flipping mouse. It is so hard to find a good bluetooth mouse these days. Logitech are the only company that sell a good basic bluetooth mouse ever other mouse wants you to plugin some form of dongle. Is it so unreasonable to use a technology that could be built into every Laptop and is in nearly every phone. Anyway back to the Magic mouse, it has the most sleek and stream line design of any mouse I have ever seen. I don’t know if I would really uses all those fancy finger gestures, but as long as I don’t have to lift my right finger to click with my left I might actually have to buy it.

What I did buy was a copy of Windows 7, there are so many version it can get really confusing but after looking around people were suggesting to get the 64-bit version on a Mac as Apple have drivers for 64-bit Windows 7 unlike Vista where there are only drivers for the 32-bit versions. In the end I bought the 64-bit Home premium version. I decided to get Windows 7 after playing with the beta which has to be said was rock solid and great to use. I need it for some of my A level subjects such as Physics where we are given a CD which, surprise surprise is Windows only and for DT where we use a lot of Windows design software packages such as “Pro Desktop”. I think I might wait till I have the official word from Apple that it is supported under Bootcamp, which is said to be coming by the end of this year.

WWDC

With Apple pulling out of Macworld in the years to come WWCD is left as Apple only regular annual event. Even without Steve Jobs giving the keynote it was a riveting presentation to watch and there were many exciting announcements.

MacBook Pro’s

The new Macbook Pro line now includes a 13″, 15″ and 17″. The introduction of the new 13″ initially confused me as to where Apple are going with this, but after a bit of thought I believe Apple are moving their laptops in to the MacBook Pro label leaving the MacBook label free for something new.

As an avid photographer I have been waiting for the day that Apple would add some sort of a card reader into there laptops and finally they have. The addition of the SD card slot may seem insignificant but it is one of those little thing like the backlit keyboard that will help set Apple laptops apart from the rest.

Another feature Apple were emphasising was the improved 7 hour battery life. I have used my MBP for nearly two years now. As a heavy user of my laptop the battery is nearly dead (lasting just over 1 hour on a full charge). Apple are claiming that their battery will last 1000 recharges compared to a typical 300, if this translates into real life use then I am one step closer to an upgrade.

With all these great updates you would expect in the economic climate of today that the prices would rise but Apple lowered the prices.

Snow Leopard

As expected Apple went into some depth on the new OSX release. They focused on the refinement they had made, for example the reduction of the OS by 6GB and on a MBA that would be a significant help. There are also simple speed improvements throughout the OS due to many of the refinements. They spent some time discussing the new improved Quicktime 10 and the addition of exchange support.

Apple are billing this update as a no thrills update with a software speed bump, because of this again they came out with some radical pricing to entice existing uses to buy it. At $29 could anyone say no to updating?

iPhone 3.0

Before WWDC Apple held an event to talk about the 3.0 update. Some of the highlights were cut and paste, tethering and in app purchasing. Cut, copy and paste were finally announced and from playing around with it well implemented. Tethering has been a hot topic of discussion with a few free work around’s already been put out.

With the ability now to create turn by turn GPS apps, the in app purchasing is being used as a subscription method. Spotlight is another feature that in my experience has been very useful. The average person has page after page of apps on there iPhone and with spotlight it makes it easier to launch all those apps.

A feature that has been neglected is the ability for apps to now interact with add on hardware. This would be great in a word processing app where you could add a keyboard, but there is much more you could do, a barcode scanner for delicious library, or even if you want to buy something off amazon you could find it in a real store and scan the barcode then purchase it from amazon while standing in the store.

A feature that was only announced at WWDC was Find My Phone, it uses the MobileMe service to track down your iPhone and place its location on a map. We have already seen how it can save people from loosing there phones and might make MobileMe a worthwhile purchase.

iPhone 3GS

The climax of WWDC culminated in the announcement of the next version of the iPhone. The new phone offers an improved camera with 3 megapixels, auto focus and video. The new phone is reportedly much faster and has a built in compass which dramatically improves the GPS experience. There is no alteration to the case design which in my opinion was a mistake, the matt backing which we saw in many of the leaked photos would have been a good choice for the new 3GS model.

Palm Pre

Just before the announcement of the iPhone 3GS Palm released the Palm Pre. From what I can gather from reviews of the Palm Pre, physically the device is nicely designed but where it really excels is in the Web OS it uses. Its use of gestures makes it easy to navigate around the phone and the UI is very good. Palm are also taking a very active ad campaign against the iPhone as users come to an end of their two year contracts. The Palm Pre is by far the iPhone’s best competitor but personally I think the iPhone still offers more.