Posts by Ed 309 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Oct 2006
With recent iOS versions you need to do more than just tap through prompts to install an enterprise-signed app. You need to go into the settings and manually approve the certificate. It's a pretty convoluted process - and one that the OS doesn't explain to you (intentionally, I assume, to minimise this occurrences of this sort of issue).
I'd say it saves more than a few minutes, at least with my usage.
On average I make a couple of Apple Pay/contactless payments a day (excluding tube/train travel). If that (conservatively) saves me 5 seconds of having to insert my card, wait, then type in my PIN that's about an hour a year saved.
I've noticed with my parents how Touch ID was often an issue for them. I was skeptical about Face ID, especially for payments but I've actually found it works better in almost every situation. The only real issue is unlocking the phone while it's in landscape mode which can be a bit annoying.
We use Stride in our tiny 3 person startup - mostly because it's cheaper than Slack, and because we used to use HipChat. Given we're 3 people, mostly in the same room, we don't use it a huge amount, but two things seem quite broken with it:
- Uploading files: The UI is really unclear what's going on while a file uploads, this is especially noticeable on a slow internet connection.
- Notifications: These don't seem to reliably come through. HipChat used to support sending email notifications, but this was removed in Stride. We've seen notifications frequently fail to arrive on at least one of our Android devices, unless Stride is running in the background.
Between these two things, it's quite a frustrating platform, and I don't think we'd stick with it if we grow.
I agree, even in our 1 bed flat, having a single thermostat is really suboptimal. It heats the living room quite effectively, but leaves the bedroom freezing (the bedroom is north facing, the living room south facing). We can balance the radiators to some degree, but this just has the effect of making it slower to warm the living room - which isn't great either.
We have very unpredictable schedules, so the nest is useful, but we'd certainly investigate individual thermostats for each room/radiator in the future. This seems a lot more logical.
I switched from the fastest BT Infinity package to Vodafone a couple of months back. BT had been charging me about £50 a month (including line rental), Vodafone are charging me £28. I was a little wary of Vodafone initially - it's hard to find reviews of them online - but they have been good so far, the speed is the same as BT, the router seems a bit more reliable than the BT one and when I had to speak to their support to find out where the router had got to, they were friendly and pretty quick to answer the phone.
The only downside is that it's an 18 month contract, which is quite long for a broadband contract.
We had their cereal version for maybe 6 months, which seemed more useful (there's more of a necessity for cereal than snacks).
The problem with it is that over time, it loses its novelty and you also start ending up with more and more that you don't really like as much as the few that you do.
We ended up screwing with their algorithm and saying we hated all but one of the cereals. As you'd expect, that meant that we got a box with four of the same cereal in (the one we liked the most). Then we cancelled it.
During the 6 months we had it, I don't think they launched any new cereals - at least, not a significant number, so the main value that Graze has - novelty - wore off.
I wonder if that's mostly because more tech savvy people tend to use PCs. I bet most support departments spent a significant proportion of their time with a fairly small group of their less able users - and they're probably the people who aren't confident enough to switch OS.
That's not to say that I don't think Macs are easier to use - but they're not _that_ much easier to use.
The stations all have local copies of the main database, they only sync up with the central database each night (between 1 and 3 in the morning I believe).
Until recently, this data used to be manually uploaded into the system we see, that's not automated. The delay before you see the data should now be shorter too, I believe.
See the comments on http://www.oyster-rail.org.uk/2012/03/journey-history-2nd-update/ by "oysteronline".
I've been trying it out on my commute for the last few days and I like it. It does lack some of the serendipitous nature of a real paper, but it comes closer to that than most news apps. I quite like having to flip through to find what I'm interested in, as often I'll end up reading things I wouldn't normally read.
It's missing parts of the paper like g2 though, which I normally enjoy reading (on the rare occasion I get a paper!)
And the same British Gas that managed to take over £400 in advanced direct debit in 3 months and saying I had to wait 8 months before they'd adjust how much money they were taking each month. That could easily have meant that they had over £1000 of my money. Hardly worth it for saving the 5% or whatever it was for using Direct Debit.
The Metro covered this today and included a list of three phones as comparison in camera quality. Bizarrely they listed the megapixels _and_ the horizontal/vertical resolutions which were completely incorrect. The iPhone was listed as having a 5 megapixel camera but the resolution they listed was < 1 megapixel. Similar with the other phone models. Another example of journalists just trying to fill up space with pointless (and in this case, incorrect) information.
You lose out if companies can't protect their R&D and design investment because they get ripped off by copycats as soon as they release an innovative product.
They'll just stop investing in R&D as it won't be bringing their shareholders value.
I disagree with many patents, but the concept of them is to protect inventors and hence they should benefit you as a consumer.
I use Google Docs quite a bit, but I really like the sound of Apple's approach. I don't know which I'll end up using - perhaps Google Docs still (for the ability to access in a web browser from anywhere, and the sharing).
I'll certainly be using iCloud for all the other stuff though (contacts, photos, calendars etc).
Apple's approach is, I think, more tangible to the average user than the more caveat-laden approach Google has. I'd never want to get a Chromebook, as I don't want to rely on a net connection. It might make sense if you're always in a big city, but if you ever travel abroad, data roaming charges (and availability) varies so much that it'd be impractical to use.
Plus, I can't entirely see what you gain from the Chromebook, except a whole load of compromises. I can see it suits Google down to the ground, but I'm not sure I'd ever convince my mum to use it (or understand it).
Apple will normally just replace your iPhone on the spot if you can get to an Apple Store. They've done that for me for free a couple of times - once in warranty and once for free out of it. They've also replaced it when I smashed the glass, which I think cost about £130.
Their extended warranty isn't that expensive - £61 for an extra year. I haven't got it - risking it!
You can walk into an Apple Store (with an appointment) and be out of there with a replaced iPhone in 5 minutes. I don't think any other manufacturer does this, do they?
I was sceptical before I tried an iPad borrowed from work, but since using one for a few weeks at home, I'm quite impressed. It makes casual web browsing a more pleasing experience than sitting at a laptop. It's hard to tie down, but it's enjoyable to use.
I've used it on the train too - and battery life is very good - it used under 10% on an hour's journey using WiFi and a few games.
I honestly think it could be the future of computing, for a lot of users (probably not the people on here!) and certainly have a use for everyone else.
I think suggesting that a smartphone can do the same thing is missing the point - the extra screen space makes _all_ the difference - it changes how much apps can show and it changes the way you interact with it.
I've been looking at changing jobs recently and there seems to be a lot out there - for programmers anyway, so I'm not sure what they're talking about?
I'm in the games industry though so maybe it's different, but very few games companies in the UK aren't hiring, and a few are hiring for 40+ coders...
Even outside the games industry I've seen quite a lot of jobs advertised.
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