Category — mac

It had to happen I guess, I’ve had my 16Gb iPhone less than 6 months and there’s every indication that some time next month the next version will be hitting shelves.

Rumors are coming from all directions, starting with O2 UK discounting the 8Gb unit by £100 and subsequently running out of stock to AT&T telling their staff they can’t take leave in a 4 week window from mid-june and execs from several firms giving “off the record” hints of a 3G device.

As June also brings the big 2.0 software update it makes sense that there would be some 2.0 hardware - I’m guessing the features between v1 and v2 will only really differ when it comes to UMTS/HSDPA so I’m not entirely fussed, but I have a few friends who are already working out if they can bear the cost of cutting their existing contracts short…

My commute is pretty easy so the data connectivity side of things isn’t of particular interest, EDGE is fine for reading the odd blog as I travel - in fact the only positive for me is that all the 2.5G haters will hopefully suck it up and buy one and hopefully increase the draw/demand to create decent stuff for the app store

Following the failure of my AppleTV last night I visited the retailer where I picked up my unit and was told that they couldn’t simply swap it, instead insisting it had to go to their repair center for diagnosis, I’m not sure what that would do to the manufacturer warranty but I gave up discussing it with the counter staff and instead opted to call Apple this evening.

Within 15 minutes one of their support people had diagnosed the machine as dead and arranged a replacement to come out to me. All they needed was a delivery address and VISA details (in case I run off with the dead one, obviously) - I should be back up and running before the end of the week. Hurrah!

I’ve no doubt cursed it and the courier will lose/drop/throw/eat my replacement unit, but what the heck, I feel like being optimistic

Technorati Tags: Apple TV, Apple

A small gripe, but that’s never stopped me before.

Despite claims to the contrary, it’s no big suprise that UK tech consumers get a bit of a raw deal compared to our counterparts on the other side of the pond. Occasionally this is justifiable - in the case of the iPhone for example Apple probably needed to get the relationship nailed with one carrier before branching out in to other territories.

Still on an Apple theme, there are less complicated process which i think are pretty straighforward - in this case literally a case of box-shifting. That can’t be hard to do, right?

Having been caught up in the hype for Leopard I dutifully pre-ordered it a while ago, I was impressed to see the below on the UK store site (note the 0800 number which verifies this wasn’t a page on the main US apple store).

I also need this for work, so have two preorders going to my work and home respectively.

Today when calling the Apple store folk to query a different purchase I was told that UK Leopard orders are leaving them on the 26th on a 3-day courier. Logging in to my work and personal accounts I can now see the shipping date has gone from unknown to the 26th.

It’s far from the end of the world but I simultaneously hear of friends in the states who have shipping dates of the 25th with a next-day priority service. A great way to show how they value their UK customers I guess

Technorati Tags: leopard, apple, 10.5, mac os x 10.5

Much like John, I’ve been contemplating an upgrade from my 5.5gen iPod. I might not have the same 4hrs of commute per day to tackle, but the next couple of months will see a lot of jaunting between London and Cardiff, plus the new iPod Touch is a bit too shiny for my magpie-like gadget sense to ignore.

Hearing that devices were pretty scarce (the iPod Touch Locator site is a great resource if you’re curious on stock levels) I made a preorder a week ago, with devices due ‘in around 3 weeks’ only to find that 6 days later a brand new 16Gb iPod touch arrives on my desk. Hurrah!

Am going to spend the next 48hrs faffing with it, providing I remember I’ll write some kind of verdict before the weekend.

So either Wordpress 2.3 is horribly broken for Safari 3 users, or the WYSIWYG editor is b0rken in general and will (hopefully) soon be bugfixed. Either way I need a new way to post to my blog so have been dabbling with MarsEdit, Ecto (I bought this a while back…) and a Firefox plugin called ScribeFire.

Because of the changes with categories and keywords posts I fired up Ecto and edited some old blog posts. Big mistake… Where originally I had preview text with an expanded post on clickthrough I now only have the preview. Thankfully my intial blogging wasn’t too extensive (or for that matter interesting) so I’m just forging ahead with finding something that plays a little nicer with 2.3 for the time being. One down, two to go.

MarsEdit seems to be a similar deal to Ecto, it’s a standalone Mac app, it edits the posts in markup (so I cheat and write blocks of text then use the Humane Text service to convert my posts to XHTML…. But it feels a little more limited than Ecto and is going to cost me to use until they fix Ecto for 2.3, so I’m shelving it for the time being at least.

As to ScribeFire, well I’m writing this post with it, I guess I’ll see what happens when I click ‘Publish’. Hold me, I’m scared

Edit: So I did some tests with FF and Safari, looks like it IS a Safari bug. Ack. Oh and ScribeFire works, so no more excuses from me…

Technorati Tags: ecto, marsedit, wordpress, scribefire, firefox

I’m trying to be more productive, and I’ve found the perfect way to do it, spend time faffing with productivity software!

Technorati Tags: gtd, mac, software, igtd

Keeping the macheisters longing… [Read more →]

Since moving to a mac several friends have done likewise and while it’s great to see the effect exposure to OSX can have on frustrated Windows veterans, I’m getting a tad bored of the constant comments that I forgot to tell X about application Y…

So I’ve resolved to list my “essential apps” every couple of months and just refer people to my blog…

That list, in no particular order:

• RSS Reader: Newsfire, Vienna
• Text Editor: TextMate, Text Wrangler
• OS Enhancement: Quicksilver, Growl
• Finder Replacement: Path Finder
• System Optimisation: Tech Tool Pro, Cocktail
• Browser: Webkit (+Nightshift) plus the essential Inquisitor 3 add-in.
• Security: Little Snitch
• IM: Adium
• Newsreader: Unison
• P2P: Xtorrent / Zudeo
• IRC: Colloquy
• CSS Editor: CSS Edit 2
• CD/DVD Authoring: DiscoOther: Delicious Library, Pzizz
• RDP Client: CoRD
• Transcoding: iSquint (to iPod video)
• iTunes/iPod: Senuti, Clutter
• Video Playback: VLC
• FTP: Transmit

What, you still use the plain-Jane iTunes interface? [Read more →]

My fun and games with the new pre-n router from Apple. [Read more →]