Posts by Dan Wilkinson

So, who here LURVES Windows Phone? Put your hands up, Brits

They're OK for some stuff

During a company wide phone refresh I was provided with a wide choice of phones spanning the middle tier of handsets from Sony, Samsung and Nokia. Whilst many went for the Galaxys because of the three they have the most 'cachet', a few others went for the Xperia as it had the nicest looking (on paper) screen. All very shallow choices. Very few went for the Lumia (820 in this instance), but I did.

We use exchange at work, the only thing I really want to be any good that I will be using daily (other than actual phone calls) in exchange sync, calendars, mails, and handling mail attachments with occasional potential for editing word docs etc. Regardless of which phone has the best apps, which has the cleverest features for doing ridiculous things with photos and music etc, when this is your primary use case, there seems no reason for anything other than an MS OS on your handset when you are an MS shop at work. As a result, I love it for what I use it for, and it's a nice tight focussed device once you remove all the Nokia crapware, even though I wouldn't touch it with a bargepole as a personal phone.

Apple seeds Mac OS X 10.7.2

Fresh Install

I did a fresh install too. Had no choice, as was already running an elderly developer preview as the sole OS and you can't install Lion from Lion DP...

No issues so far, nothing to do with wireless that I have noticed. The update the other guy got may well have been an airport update that was long overdue perhaps, but you're right there's been no official update for any part of the OS released thus far.

This thread is REMARKABLY quiet, eh? Can it be that there are no issues? Will El Reg be forced into putting out a "Fanboys rejoice" story?

Name them then

"There's no sign of 10.7.1, but the feeling among Mac pundits is that it will be released shortly to deal with the many issues Lion users have been reporting. "

El Reg is normally first to press with the "Fanbois howl with rage as Lion bites!" stories. Not seen any. Not heard of any ongoing issues with using Lion. Am away of one issue that may prevent it from installing on machines with odd Bootcamp configs.

So, please, enlighten us.

'Lion' Apple Mac OS X 10.7: Sneak Preview

Title

Not sure I get you. Downloaded software can't fill a landfill, so you must mean hardware, and yet you want to run old software on new hardware for the performance increase? As for money, It makes plenty of money to sell hardware, but with it will always come new software - that's why we didn't stop at Office XP, because they have to sell you a new one every few years or go bust.

When you download, you can burn a disc from the image.

Lucky You

You get an option that says "re-open windows on startup".

Apple iMac 27in

Wing Commander

So, how many of you guys are wearing jeans today? Most? Cool, so how many are wearing branded jeans? G Star? Levi, Gap even? Most? I would say so.

But why?

Surely, at £50 a pair, even £100+ they perform the same function, are made from the same materials, even look the same as a pair of £6 Asda specials.

So next time you "comment" on an Apple story just to bemoan the pricing, make sure your are wearing your "I can make these cheaper myself" Primarks rather than something that costs more for little perceived addedd value.

What's that you say, but they are comfier, fit better, last longer? Who cares, you are only comparing on Specs remember, not value!

Tits.

Apple pilfers rips off student's rejected iPhone app

haha! Classic.

This one's almost worth framing.

Are you really suggesting that the engineers at Apple, you know the ones who wrote the operating system themselves, and iTunes, and it's APIs and such like, would have to reverse engineer some students hack in order to get wireless sync working? That somehow, the reason it has not been present until now was because they couldn't work out how to do it without the assistance of said students crappy app?

You Sir, are a genius. Are you sure you are not AManFromMars?

This guy should sue...

http://www.androidzoom.com/android_applications/tools/wifi-sync-screen_rizq.html

Hmmm, what to call it...

So, we are synchronising stuff using wifi, and we need a name and an icon. What to do? Well, clearly the act of synchronising is to ensure that 2 or more things have a consistent state, so that gives us some simple language everyone might understand. And how do we explain Wifi? Perhaps we could mention that it is is a transport mechanism that does not rely on the plugging on of a cable in order to make a connection for the ensuring that 2 or more things have a consistent state. So that's our product name! iOS5, featuring the capability-th-ensure-that-2-or-more-things-are-able-to-maintain-a-consistent-state-using-a-transport-mechanism-that-does-not-rely-on-the-use-of-a-cable-that-needs-plugging-in!

Or...we could just use wifi sync...either that or we can have a bunfight as to where it was used first, Android? Windows Phone 7? Zune? Palm? Generic term guys. And as has already ben said, generic icon, made up of previously used generic icons.

This guys had his 2nd five minutes of fame now, we can move on.

iCloud Communications sues Apple for 'irreparable injury' to trademark

Funny...

...how they never bothered to sue xcerian before they sold it to Apple?

Apple iOS 5 and iCloud examined

haha :)

You realise, of course (I know you do, you must, no-one could be this dumb), that this article is about iOS, which is 4 years old. Of course, perhaps you mean to leave disparaging comments about 10.7 instead, only that one would be 10 years old.

The only OS that I can find released 7 years ago is Pocket RISC OS...

Still, thanks for the chuckle.

no FB iPad app

I think the thinking here is that FB mobile website is suitably good enough without needing an entire app for it. And of course, if this means that they get to remain in control of the advertising standards and revenue for the website without having to comply with Apple's Ts&Cs for ads in apps, then you can imagine why they won't do it. No ads at all in the iPhone App, they can't love that, surely...

No Facebook

...because Apple got burned with Ping - it was ready to roll with full facebook integration and was pulled because they could not agree terms to allow Apple to use the Facebook API etc.

That's my theory anyway, I would prefer FB to Twitter to be honest, but when they see what a boon it is perhaps they will be back, cap in hand, etc.

Fair deal this time

Last time it was $30/£30. Much better this time.

Also, don't forget that the US prices are sans tax. Take 20% of our price, and add a minimum of 2.5% (up to 15% depending on state) Sales tax onto the US price, and it's actually a fair deal.

Mac OS X Lion debuts in July as $29.99 upgrade

True :)

Just needing to vent, and there's no better place to find an asshat than the Reg forums. I've had my fill now...

Bus/Enterprise

You think that enterprise users individually install machines from a disc, one at a time? I would imagine that anyone with a sufficiently large enough estate to care would be imaging the machines, particularly on Mac where you don't have unique license keys. I would imagine that much like the ability in enterprise to rollout your own iOS gubbins, there will still surprisingly be a way to roll out stuff on a Mac, inc. the OS, without having to download and install individually. They are not going to be filling the keynote with these sorts of details tho, and you would be wise not to settle your opinion of these things on the basis of a limited presentation.

Also, you really think that using a DVD is the zenith of being technically competent? I rather think anyone who knows what they are doing will (shock!) have the skills to burn it to a DVD, or a thumbdrive? I for one will be upgrading, and creating a mirror image boot drive on an external disk, but then I am not technically competent...

Nnngg!!!!

YOU HAVE A MAC! YOU HAVE A DVD BURNER! USE IT!

Or, alternatively tell me you have a household full of airs, and cannot afford a £10 8Gb thumbdrive.

more NNNGGG!!!!

Future purchases will come with the OS on a thumbstick. Do you think they will arrive blank, and ask you to install them from the App Store which won't be on it or something? Please.

Also, because an update won't come on the media you require, you will replace the existing OS to something else as some form of protest? Get real. Either they do what you want now, or they don't, and as you still have 2 macs running Mac OS then clearly they do what you want better than linux or you would already have switched.

While we're at it, tell me, is all your WOW on original media? Nothing downloaded? No DLC, no updates, no new levels, expansions - everything straight of the silvery platter? Best get back to Baldurs Gate or something then, by your logic...

Bogus eh?

Last time I looked, all updates were done online...?

Titles titles, lord of the Andals and all that

However, the big question really lies with the inevitable event of a disk failure. Am I really going to have to reinstall SL and then go through the hassle of re-downloading and reinstalling Lion? If that's the case then a 60min job has turned into one of several hours "

You have a mac? Then you have a DVD burner. Use it. You don't have a DVD burner? Then you have an Air, and therefore cannot convince me you cannot afford a £10 8Gb thumbstick.

"For my personal use I've been testing Ubuntu for the last 6 months, mainly because I've been afraid of this particular scenario, and now that I'm happy that it can do everything I need it to do, I'm going to start migrating away from apple."

I call bullshit. I think you are merely happy to show your current opinion of apple by attaching it to any nugget than you can cast in a bad light, regardless of completeness or accuracy.

Hmmm

so whichever is it, 3000 new ones, be it individual calls or whole groups of functions will be either an encumbrance or overload eh?

Enlighten us, how many would be acceptable. Say, 30 new groups of 25 calls each? More? Less?

Honestly, what a stupid thing to complain about. They are there to be used if you have a use for them. Better to have a million calls available so long as they are all independently useful, even if you personally only need a couple of hundred.

And, for info (straight outta Wikipedia..) API may be used to refer to a complete interface, a single function, or even a set of APIs provided by an organization. Thus, the scope of meaning is usually determined by the context of usage. In this context, I would suggest it means individual calls, as anyone who is vaguely familiar with Apple dev speak knows that the APIs when referred to as a set are given names like CoreImage etc, which was mentioned in some form as part of the keynote.

Quick, think of a complaint!

Hmmm, an OS upgrade for 30 sheets with effectively a site license for home users, this on top of the last OS upgrade at 30 sheets - damn, download only? FUCK YOU CAPITALIST PIGS!

Honestly, some sense of perspective here:

1) Be honest, how many of the people on here haven't got broadband of at least 1Mb? Mines 4/5Mb, and I downloaded the Dev preview in 3 hours. So call it a day at most for shit connections.

2) Be honest, how many of you with slower broadband than this don,t have wifi access via some other means, like work etc

3) 3/4 of Macs are laptops, so add the price of a starbucks or a trip to the apple store to steal their connection to your incredibly cheap upgrade

4) All Macs except the Airs have DVD burners, download once, burn, use again - just like you can with the dev previews. Anyone with an Air that cannot justify the cost of a thumb drive set aside to hold the OS update is chinning you on.

4) Got an iMac, shit broadband, no alternative access to the net at reasonable speed without having to lug your desktop around? Welcome to the 21st Century. Suck it. I feel for you. But I bet there is a USB stick version available to order for a small price premium later in the day, just expensive enough to justify people using the store instead. Willing to bet that the up-to-date program for new purchases will get one this way, just like they do with SL now.

PANIC OVER!

You managed to get the first post in pretty fast...

...for one with such a shit internet connection...

Friendster password emails spark site hack fears

Plaintext passwords

Apparently if you use their password reminder service, it just emails y our the password...so, yeah, plaintext. Nice!

I got the spam and was wracking my brains as to what it was for. Picked it up on my email which matches email addresses then pulls the name from your address book, so I didn't realise at first that they had used my password as my name other than in the text ("Dear Customer PASSWORD"...)

Luckily it's clearly spam (From CFX Group in my case), but it's worrying where else the passwords have got to...

Asda slashes Samsung tablet price

Tesco

Had these on sale at £369 a couple of months ago. Looked very much to be trying to get shut of them. I suspect were I to go hunting for one I would no longer be able to get one, at least not from Tesco.

And hey, so much for the Xoom matching the iPad price!

UK iPad 2 to cost under £400

you recall...

...incorrectly. The price was always £429. Even if it was £399, the increase in VAT would only account for an £8 rise.

Nope

Strange as it sounds, nothing makes you money like selling stuff. If you really honestly think that by holding back stock, they will sell more, than you are deluded. Plain and simple.

Steve Jobs bends iPad price reality

More apples, and more tasty oranges.

Pricing back up then, for a while they had a 16Gb one priced at £450, which would be £20 more than the equivalent iPad, seems they aren;t bothering with it now tho, which doesn't make sense to me because now (spec aside, obviously) the cheapest Xoom is £70 more, which makes it sound more expensive than it might otherwise seem.

As for prices being the same here but different over there, consider that there is no LTE (or 3G) gubbins in the UK version, and no expensive recall program built into the price which is sure to drop once the shipping units get all the gear as standard in...later anyway..

So again, we are comparing wifi apples with LTE oranges. All rather pointless.

Apple V Oranges again

Comparing the lack of updates on one platform, with the free availability of an update on another platform which happened to be slow until it was patched. Not the same.

I had a 3G for 14 months before OS4 came out. It was slow for a while (I had to turn spotlight searches off) but was fixed relatively soon. I still use it now, it's better than it was when I bought it, and all the updates have been free of cost/crapware/pointless carrier delays

Xoom Price != iPad price in UK

And with regards to the first post re pricing, they aren't the same price, the Zoom was £20 more for the base model although all reference to pricing has now been removed, so it could be bollox at that. We'll see when you can actually buy one I suppose.

I can do that for you

Apple TV. $99 and £99. Of course, the US price doesn;t include sales tax, but that is often (New Hampshire for one, I believe) as low as 2.5%. And funnily, since the £99 which already includes VAT recently went up 2.5%, it's actually less than 1:1.

Apple's pricing can be weird. Case in point a few other things that are $99 in the States, like Developer membership programs. £59 over here.

Seems you know...

The price of everything, and the value of, well let's be generous, less things...

Cheaper isn't always better. Expensive isn't always ripping you off.

So when it comes to price, we can see the Xoom is expensive. Hopefully that means it's value is worth the expense. And to that effect, we have a tablet has 3 of it marquee features hobbled straight from the box. Flash will come later. Apparently. You don't know if it will perform anything other than adequately, which is the expectation given the spec of the Xoom. Also, you don't know how much battery pain it will inflict, and you are already starting from a losing position on that front. LTE will come later. Assuming there is any coverage near you to make it worthwhile, and you are happy to give away your kit for 8-10 days (Depending on if you ditch it on a Monday or a Friday). Oh, and SD cards will come, wait for it, later. And you may or may not be able to actually use them properly for storing apps and such, depending on what Google do to the OS....later. Still, at 50Mb lac download size from the Marketplace there are simply not enough tablet apps to fill your internal memory even if you downloaded them ALL. So perhaps that's a moot point?

And to top it off, exactly what will the OS upgrade cycle be? Will you get any updates? Past history says that although Motorola have been less dick-like than many others, it's simply not the same as on iOS.

I say if you want to compare value, take the above into consideration, and come back when all your "coming soons" have actually arrived, and then compare that to the iPad2 with iOS 5. Be interesting to see which comes first at that.

Apple fanbois leak secrets of Mac OS X Lion

Which One?

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium - Retail (Green) 32 & 64 Bit

£115.07 inc VAT

Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate - Retail (Black), 32 & 64 Bit

£170.48 inc VAT

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium UPGRADE DVD, 32/64Bit, Retail

£79.28 inc VAT

Microsoft Windows 7 Professional - Retail (Blue), 32 & 64 Bit

£164.48 inc VAT

Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 32 Bit, Operating System, Single, - OEM £134.48 inc VAT

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 32 Bit, Operating System, Single, - OEM

£72.08 inc VAT

Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 32 Bit, Operating System, Single, - OEM

£106.88 inc VAT

Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit, Operating System, Single, - OEM

£105.68 inc VAT

Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit Operating System, Single, - OEM

£138.08 inc VAT

The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits

I don't think that the fact that Full Screen is available is the thing to take away, it's more the fact that you can still switch around to and from full screen apps to normal windows and so on using standard gestures, without having to alt-enter an app out of full screen for anything. It's just wrapping it all up formally within a defined method. I have yet to test this with 2 monitors, but I believe it will stop the whole 'full screen one app and lose your other monitors problem' that is prevalent on both the windows and mac machines I use - often when you full screen an app your mouse becomes constrained to the boundaries of that app. Not any more, I hope.

Hmmm

Perhaps you have got their attention by posting bug reports or something that makes it look like you are active enough to bother. I was in the fre for all area for years, but I stumped up after the announcement to get it. If I am right, so long as I use the machine for development (I will, a bit...) I an entitled to a free license and download of the latest OS anyway, so it may actually save a little.

Not so

It's there for all. Not just for the Dev Preview/Betas

Bootlegs

I can't believe you are suggesting people download bootleg versions of this, and providing links and instructions for how to do so. OK, we get it, you hate the Apple ignore you and like to goad, but would you have done this for a new Windows release, bearing in mind they have heavily advertised (and co branded colour schemes) on el Reg?

If nothing else, you could see fit to mention that if anyone wants to try it, they can do so by joining the Mac Developer Program for £59 also.

Stay classy.

Motorola 'flagship' Honeycomb tablet to ship sans Flash

Title

The words "Bwah" and "Haha" spring to mind. iPad 2 will be out before anyone brings out anything remotely competitive. The tablet market needs good kit from a range of vendors, only rather than making tablets that are good products by their own right, everyone is doing the exact same "Let's do stuff the iPad doesn't do!" bandwagon, and then failing to actually make good on the promises. The android lot need to both ship a good tablet between them (and prove that they will honour the upgrade paths), RIM needs to shut up and just ship ANYTHING, given that they have already introduced the playbook right up the 3rd generation without a single unit in anyones hands, and the WEBOS one needs to arrive on time with the announced spec. Anything else is just handing the market to apple on a plate. And let's not mention Nokia, eh...

HP rocks Redmond with webOS PC play

Home users are the market

Not all computer users are business users. But I'd wager that most if not all users of computers at work also use them at home. Consumer is the growth market. MS cannot rely on business inertia forever. I wish them luck with it, if nothing else fast mobile OS like iOS/Android and Webos would make beautiful "fast boot" environments on standard PCs, by way of gentle introduction and not freaking users out with change.

Steve Jobs chops student hack down to size

Not biased? You sure?

Just because you don't own any doesn't mean you are not biased. It might mean you are not biased towards a favourable opinion, but given that you are balls deep in the comments section of a largely anti-apple story and taking the mick out of His Steveness, I would hazard a guess that yes you are in fact biased after all.

Apple livestreaming heralds Jobs-to-fanboi brain-linking

Ahem...

Indeed, as already mentioned the standard that will be used is open, non-proprietry, and free for anyone to implement and use. Again, as already mentioned, if you use VLC (those of you beloved of Open Source playback software) you will be able to view said, which is surely the holy grail of your 20 years of progress? Speaking of which, what is the current streaming medium of choice for you? Realplayer? Windows Media? Silverlight? Flash?

This stream is not a TV advert, it's there for the geeks and nerds to want to know what they are releasing next to be able to do so in advance of the resulting media regurgatation. The likely content will be information about the streaming of media to Apple devices, actually via the method that they intend to introduce. It's called eating your own dogfood. And it's intended audience is enthusiastic Apple customers, and media organisations - none of whom are going to have any problems watching this. If you don't care, and you don't own Apple kit, then just walk on by, this event isn't for you.

How this impacts anyone I do not know, much less how it "wipes out" anything either. Although if it wipes out my memory of watching any other livestream via the medium of actually being watchable I'll live with that.

Genius

Haha, how are you, a non-apple customer, being locked down? Genuis. I salute your well thought out argument.

No big deal

If they're dogfooding it in public, I approve. And as for Apple only devices getting in on the act, well come on, but anyone with enough interest (or vested interest) to *want* to watch an Apple keynote live, is probably already the owner of suitable kit to do so on.

Pity the poor Windows/Linux/Android/Anonymous Cowards who want to peep through the window only to find the curtains shut! My heart bleeds for them.

America's top model fights off 'pervert' at Star Wars convention

Er...

Orderly Intoxication? You know, sleeping it off?

Apple as a religion: How the iPhone became divine

IS required.

There are the inherent "Mac user values" that are genuine part of the overall Mac experience, and then there is the shite people blithely put for the world to see on the intarwebs because arguing is easy, safe, fun and anonymous.

Yes, there are Mac users who have an irrational hatred of PCs, Windows, Ballmer, 2 button mice, etc. These are the sort of people who like to spout aformentioned shite on the internet, and they are tits.

Yes, there are PC users who do the opposite, they are equally absurd.

The above example are not examples of "Mac user values", just as they are not reflective of PC user values, but are more in line with just plain old Human values, many of which are selfish, uninformed and self centered.

The real Mac user values are by and large an eye for attention to detail, consistency, and elegance. This applies to the software and the hardware. It a mindset that says "that will do" is not good enough. One that does not merely see there phone/laptop/word processor etc as a means to an end, but as something that can and should be enjoyed whilst in use, not just endured.

The car example is a good analogy (although it breaks down if you push it too far...see what I did there...), and you can see the same arguments about the Mac/PC rivalry happening on motoring forums, whereby the ill thought but easy to spout brand hatred far outweighs any thoughtful commentary on the actual merits of the vehicles in question.

There are BMW drivers that are tits, because they only have one in order to show the world they don't drive common cars like a Focus. And there are BMW drivers who can genuinely appreciate the difference, and who drive one for better reasons.

But there's room in the world for both the "it will do, it's just a tool to get from A to B" and the "If I'm using it all day, I don't want to spend half my time cursing it" types.

And of course, there are more than 2 types, like me. I use a PC all day, and I get on well with it. It's like my work colleagues in a way, perfectly acceptable company for the daytime, but I probably wouldn't want to socialise with them all the time, for that I would rather be with my real friends who I can be more discerning about. So that's why even though I don't hate my PC at work, I'm glad to see my Mac when I get home. I drive my unnamed cheap foreign estate car to commute, and use my expensive british sports car for pleasure.

Diary of a somebody - life in iPhone 4 land

Sim

My sim transfer took up to two hours between 10 and 12 noon. Not sure how long, it was in my pocket most of that time.

What I appreciated most was the ability to restore from a backup of the old 3G. Not only are all my apps and such all there in the same state as on my old phone, but my text history, wallpaper, recent calls - everything. Does anyone else allow you to do this so easily (genuine question not snark) - I think Palms over the air updates will, but they are incrementals, not system wide OS upgrades.

O2 Stock

32 16Gb ones, and 19 32Gb ones at my local. They went up the queue and took names until they were all "allocated", and told everyone else to go away. I was 35 in line and it took an hour of queueing to walk out with one in my hand. Simple.

Orange outs iPhone 4 pricing

Damn My Staff Discount!

I get a 30% discount on some freinds and family staff discount from a mate who works for O2. It's the only reason for staying with them, as they seem to have the worst data deals (after having the best) now. Having said that, paying for a more expensive tarrif and getting the phone for pennies and 30% off is even cheaper than buying the phone outright and putting a simplicity sim into it....

Computing smart-scope gunsight for US snipers

And the connection is?

To Terry Pratchett, I mean...

Terence Conran slams 'appalling' Olympic mascots

Arse

They're just mascots for the kiddies! In no way better or worse than any other Olympic mascot (although the blue sperm things was actually a pretty bad one...)

Who cares, I'll be watching the running 'n stuff rather than hand-wringing about the choice of a carton representative.

And with any luck, I'm hoping for some World Cup Willy action this summer too...