Posts by Kevin Smith

O2 buckles under 3G iPhone demand

Interesting comments...

I pre-registered online weeks ago, I then pre-ordered at the beginning of this week with no problems shortly before the system borked.

My order was in progress until Thursday when finally at about 4.30pm I got 2 test messages from O2, one explaining the situation and telling that not all orders placed had been successful, those that were would be informed by the end of the day. The second text just ten minutes later informed me that yes my order was indeed successful and would be delivered by courier on Friday.

I had the day off work already so that wasn't going to be a problem (before I get mocked for being a fanboy I'd booked the day off because it was my birthday... And perhaps 5% because of the iPhone ;o)), DHL arrived at 8:50am and I was activated and restored from my iPod touch backup by 9.30am.

I hit the App store and downloaded a few games etc. played them until I drained the battery about 2am and let it charge to full which only took about 3 hours.

The only issue for me is MobileMe, I can log in online but not via my Mac meaning I can't yet push my email and calendar.

Overall a very positive experience for me.

O2 starts 3G iPhone stampede - and runs away

I ordered mine at about 8:20am...

No problems for me at all.

The site has been down for everyone else I know who is trying for hours now.

Steve Jobs' Macworld Expo spiel spied on web?

A good effort but definitely fake.

For starters the Mac Pro has already been put out there, the MacBook is very unlikely to get a refresh before the MacBook Pro, the magsafe adaptors are even more unlikely to have aluminium ends as this is likely to be a safety issue.

Good spoof but not good enough.

Burned by a MacBook

I empathise with your problem.

I bought a revision A MacBook and as soon as I got it home noticed the noisy fan and "mooing" that plagued the MacBooks at that time.

Within a few weeks I was having random shutdowns and I, despite my better judgement ignored them because I needed the machine for work and being without it would lose me money.

Six months later and I was having a shutdown daily and problem after problem was arising, however it wasn't until one day when I couldn't get the machine to boot that I finally took it for repair.

I went to the nearest Apple Authorised Service Centre, Micro Anvika on Tottenham Court Road, anticipating this would be faster than booking an appointment at the Apple Store on Regent Street and having it appraised by a genius, I was wrong. I was without the machine for 29 days for a replacement logic board, 30 days later the hard drive died taking with it a months worth of work I hadn't backed up due to losing the backup applications while it was in for repair and not having got round to replacing them.

This time I took it straight to the Apple Store and was told that yes the hard drive had died and I'd have to wait ten days for repair.

I declined to leave the machine with them and instead went home, transferred some money from my savings account and returned later with £1100 in cash to buy a replacement Core 2 Duo MacBook.

I've since sold the CrapBook, as I affectionally named it, on eBay for £250 less than I paid for it from the Apple refurb store ten months ago and have been overwhelmingly impressed with the new model. It's rock solid and what the previous one should have been.

Prior to my MacBook I had an iBook G3 12" from 2002 that was plagued by the failing logic boards, my one had 5 replacements during it's lifetime, and you'd think that I'd have been warned off Apple hardware by now, but, the fact is Apple hardware and software fits my need like no other product on the market. It's not perfect, not by a long shot, but it's what works for what I do.

I work as a designer and write copy for several online publications, no windows or linux solution fits what I want and need like an Apple product and that's why, despite their problems and quibbles I stick with them.

I use a windows machine at work during the day and an Apple machine at home and when on the road, it's not that I don't know windows well enough, I know Windows inside out and backwards, but I don't enjoy using it. Windows is a chore to use, I will have to go and tinker with something or other at least once a week in order to keep things going as they should, not that I don't ever have to tinker with OS X, I do, but it's far less often and something that generally isn't critical to get the job done.

At the end of the day, Apple have been propelled to this god like hardware manufacturer whose products NEVER die, of course that's utter bullshit. All electronic products have their lemons and Apple suffer like every other manufacturer out there. No matter how painful at times my relationship had been with Apple, my experience with Windows and generic x86 hardware has been just as bad if not three times over.

Apple have their flaws, as do Microsoft, HP, Dell and all the other wintel manufacturers.

The point is, and this is what I've been getting to, you, as I have, returned to Apple and OS X without throwing your hands up and returning to Microsoft and it's poor offerings under the Windows umbrella.

Hardware fails, all the time, but it's an equation of whether those hardware failures are worth dealing with for the overall user experience.

That my dear is the question.

Virgin Media tech support goes premium rate

All you people do realise that this company is still NTL right?

Just under a different brand...

Just because Richard-Teflon-Branson happens to be the largest shareholder as a result of the acquisition of Virgin Mobile, doesn't make him a majority shareholder with that much clout in the company.

The merged NTL:Telewest board was 9 NTL members 2 Telewest members.

The Virgin Media board consists of 9 ex-NTL and 1 ex-Telewest member.

Same shit different shovel.

Just because they scored a lucrative branding deal doesn't mean it's suddenly a whole new business with a different company culture. People now bitch more simply because they expected better of the Virgin brand.

Why Apple won't sell 10 million iPhones in 2008

Locked in?

"Apple will still be faced with the other issue that does put people off iPods and that's locking them into iTunes and making them re-convert their entire library - er, no thanks."

The only people who will have to "convert their entire library" are those people who got "locked" in to PlaysForSure WMA by Microsoft using a proprietary format.

If, like any sensible person would have avoided buying crippled downloads and ripped your music as MP3 or even AAC, which contrary to popular belief isn't an Apple proprietary format at all, but an MPEG standard developed by Dolby, Nokia, Sony et al, had you done that then you wouldn't have a problem.

If you're looking for someone to blame look at the record companies for their stupid rules and Microsoft for developing and then abandoning the PlaysForSure DRM format and making the default settings in WMP to rip to WMA.

Interesting article.

The trouble with it is that you're missing several important points.

The main one being that Apple are currently selling about 40m iPods per year. The iPhone is, as has been stated several times by Mr Jobs, the best iPod Apple have ever made. If the IPhone can take just 10% of Apple's current and future iPod customers then they've got A minimum of 4m sales straight off the bat.

Add in a few disillusioned smartphone users, a bunch of Mac users who will at last have a mobile that will properly sync with their computer etc.

You're missing the core market.

The fact is, the iPhone isn't aimed at people with smartphones, it's aimed at people with iPods & Macs. You said yourself the smartphone market is tiny, so why would they aim the product at that audience?

People know that they can shop around and won't hesitate to jump to a new network for a good deal or the phone they want, the trouble is that phone often turns out to be lacking in many important departments.

I just bought myself out of the arse end of an 18 month contract just to get rid of the crap-fest that is the Nokia N80, it was another phone that promised loads and delivered little.

If the iPhone is up to the expected standard, all bugs ironed out within a month of launch, and it impresses then it's guaranteed iPod like success.

There is a reason that the iPhone got the new touch screen and interface first, logic would dictate that you throw that innovation at the iPod and milk it for every penny it's worth but instead it's being gambled on the new product.

I know what result my money's on.