Posts by Joey

Apple's iPad - fat iPhone without the phone

Camera WTF!

I don't want a camera in a iPad, neither forward nor backward facing, however, if I did, I would buy one of the little forward twisting to backward cameras that plug into the docking socket on the bottom, turn the iPad 180 degress where the picure will twist to match. Of course, they are not available YET but producing the iTab at a $499 price point is the magic in my eyes.

If you look at the accessories that Apple have announced, there is a camera adaptor to connect to any camera via USB or SD Card.

Steve Jobs uncloaks the 'iPad'

Multitasking, Flash

Multitasking is coming in iPhone OS 4, the iPad runs 3.2 at launch.

Flash is old hat technology being replaced by (open source) HTML5, supported by Firefox 3.6, Google Chrome and Safari already.

For all the naysayers, sit back and watch how to make money - but you will never learn!

Apple's iPad - the tablet with the data center soul

Newton

The Newton MessagePad was before its time. Yes, the handwriting recognition was a joke and Apple's big mistake was to oversell that particular feature. Without the handwriting recognition, the Newton was used very successfully by sales forces up and down the country as an intelligent clipboard where they could make menu choices and use tick boxes to configure systems and take orders. Tapping words in with the stylus and on-screen keyboard was not as bad as it sounds and considerably better than most modern mobile phones. There was no WiFi or BlueTooth in those days, the Newton could only be synced with a Mac by network or modem. So, forgetting all the entertainment uses and even the ability to enter text, a device that can be held and used in one hand has a great many practical uses for which a phone is too small and a netbook/laptop too clumsy.

Boffin calculates pi to 2.7 trillion digits

Of course there is a purpose...

Rounder circles. I hate those half-baked approximations they keep churing out. But the question is, can I get an iPhone app for that?

Tories swallow Web 2.0, spit out £1m crowdsource prize

Ford Edsel

Ford tried to produce a car based on popular opinion buildng in all the features that most people wanted. Pioneering market research based design. It was ugly as hell and a total flop. Much as they like to think they are, the public are not experts at anything other than what they individually like and any mass polling of anything gives only the lowest common denominator - which is no way to run a country! The country needs good leadership, not popular leadership and Joe Public is an idiot!

Apple angling to transform TV?

@Citizen Kaned

"most english people are well aware that apple products are crap and expensive"

That statement is not backed up by consumer satisfaction and reliability results in the UK or anywhere else, quite the opposite in fact.

BMWs and Mercedes cars are expensive. All that means is that some 'successful' people can afford them and low achievers can't. Maybe you can't afford an Apple because you are a low achiever, or maybe you are a low achiever because you are not using Apple products.

Stargazers spy super-Earth waterworld

Excellent environment...

...for cooking vegetables. A natural pressure cooker. Pity it's so far away, everything is going to get cold on the way back.

Fanboi site squeaks on crocked iMacs

Design fault?

It is clear that the 'design fault' is not with the computer itself, it is the packaging. Considering the size and weight of a 27" iMac, it does need to be suspended in a shock-proof box. I had exactly the same thing happen with a 40" Sony Bravia tele, arrived with a cracked screen. Although the carton contained the television, it was never going to protect it from a drop or face on impact in the back of a lorry. Expanded polystyrene has virtually no shock absorbing qualities and transmits the energy of any impact to the contents very efficiently. The iMac 27" packaging is not fit for purpose and Apple are finding out the hard way! It's a lovely machine in the flesh.

iPhone anti-malware stuck in state of denial

Huh?

"The only alternative - ironically - would be for us to make it available as an unauthorised app, meaning that iPhone users would have to jailbreak their iPhones to scan them for security problems. This is obviously not ideal," he added.

No they wouldn't, stupid. If the need this crap, the phone has been jailbroken already!

MS exec gets shot down after 'inaccurate' Windows 7 spiel

Look what happens when somebody doesn't copy Apple...

...there's ugly, and ugly and Ubuntu!

his comments were inaccurate and uninformed

Just like their coders then!

Irish brogue voted world's sexiest accent

Well...

John and Edward are Irish, so that proves something?

Apple Magic Mouse

I've got mine...

All this talk of ergonomics and 'fitting in your hand' is utter claptrap. It is not meant to fit in your hand. It is not hand-shaped. It is meant to fit on your mouse mat, which it does perfectly. You slide it around your mouse mat with a thumb and finger, there is no need to grip it or surround it with a hand. Your forefinger and middle finger can lie on top in a natural position or you can let go completely. Stroking front to back scrolls down a web page and stroking back to front scrolls up. If you are on a wide page, you can scroll from side to side. A two finger swipe left is the same as the back button in your browser and swiping right gives the effect of the next page button. There is no visible light from the bottom apart from a tiny 'ON' led. It is much better for pixel accurate editing in Photoshop than any other mouse I've used. It seems to work on any surface including my shiny white desktop and trouser leg but a spongy mouse mat makes a more comfortable rest for the ball of the hand.

meeces

I actually like the standard Mighty Mouse. I had previosuly used a Microsoft Intellimouse but that seems so clunky by comparison. Yes, the side buttons are best left turned off and I never use the middle button. The scroll nipple can get clogged, like an old roller ball mouse would, but it is fairly easy to clean it by just turning the mouse upside down on a piece of cloth and turning it round a dozen times. A little squirt of lighter fuel will disolve any grime. I did get the wireless version of the Mighty Mouse but don't like it. The battery life is only about a month and it feels heavy because of them. I have a little USB battery charger which I just leave on all the time so there is always a spare set of batteries when they are needed.

I've ordered one Magic Mouse to try. It does take a while to get used to a new mouse, just like a pair of shoes. If it is radically different in shape or weight, it will take longer but the human brain is remarkably adaptive.

Nokia sues Apple over iPhone

Nice work if you can get it....

It would seem that the only people making more money than Apple at the minute are their lawyers.

Windows 7 - the Reg reader verdict

Installed on Mac, no probs...

Just installed 7 on my Mac Pro running Parallels desktop 4 (alongside XP and Ubuntu). Fairly painless by MS standards. No option on browsers though, it is IE or nothing. Surely this is a bit naughty? Just had to turn off all that tasteless 'Aero' eye candy. Are Windows user's life so colourless that they need all this razzamarazz going on within their peripheral vision?

Apple plans turbocharged Mac Pro speedster

Not Overkill!

Contrary to popular beliefs, there are people who do serious work on MacPros instead of playing games. What they do earns good money so 'most budgets' do not apply. They will pay for themselves in no time and even have a decent residual value after four years.

Snow Leopard data-munching bug predates Snow Leopard

Rare...

Must be, doesn't happen here!

Most Mac owners getting Windows on the side

Re: In other research

"100% of Apple product owners had so much spare cash that they didn't mind paying double the going rate for a piece of electronic bling."

Err, why do you think they have so much spare cash? Maybe because they are not underachievers that don't waste their time fighting their OS and can get some money back when they sell their old machines!

Apple squeezes video camera into iPod nano

They don’t like us.

Well, you do try hard but your tabloid style journalism is not doing you any favours. Whether is is your team or not, you can't deny Apple are sucessful and raking in the cash.

Good Day Sunshine as Beatles hits iTunes? Er, nope

Never was a Beatles fan...

... althought the did do some brilliant stuff. I have just one vinyl Beatles album from the old days and whether they appear on iTunes or not, I couldn't give a toss. I loved Jonh Lennon's book 'Spaniard in the Works' and can, to this day, recite long passages from it from memory - 'Jesus El Pifco was a foreigner and he knew it...' - brilliant stuff. Their films were utter crap, except for Yellow Submarine, but that was down to the animation style. Somehow, I can't see youngsters buying Beatles records, even digitally. Will anyone really buy compilation CDs in this day and age?

US Navy boffins invent aircraft-to-sub laser phone

Simple...

This technique is just perfect for sending morse code. All you have to do is turn the 1s into dashes and the 0 into dots ... and wait.

YouTube Lad from Lagos gets a bite

Sorry, not funny!

Ham acting not even worthy of YouTube!

Apple security lags (again) with critical Java patches

What's the hurry?

When we all know that Steve's Reality Distortion Field extends to every Mac on the planet keeping all malware at bay. It's quite clever actually, just like in World War 2 when the British Navy poured green and blue paint into the sea when there were U Boats around. This affected the German periscopes so, thinking they were still under water, kept rising and were shot down with anti aircraft guns. Personally, I would ban Java altogether. Who needs it?

Apple sneaks malware protection into Snow Leopard

Considering...

...that hackers are more proactive than your average underachiving 'gamer' they will most likely find something more fulfilling to do.

iTablet to rake in $1bn, claims analyst

Expensive?

Yet again, Apple comes first in tech support (as well as customer satisfaction)

http://www.laptopmag.com/mobile-life/tech-support-showdown-2009.aspx?page=1

You just can't do that with Dell's price model (and quality).

Fanbois, and rightly so!

Apple blueprints warranty Big Brother

Nothing new

How many times have you seen a label over a screw hole that says that says "Removal of this label will invalidate your warranty". It is to stop idiots messing around with something that they have neither the knowledge nor the tools to work with. Of course, it is their decision, they have a choice - do it yourself and lose your warranty or let the company fix it. Fair enough, but you can't have it both ways.

Apple denies censoring App Store swear words

Not very consistent

Safari can be used to access all these words. Why was it allowed? I can write filty words with Pages, tsh tsh. Quicktime can be used to access porn movies - ban it. Of course this kind of censorship is not new, we see it everyday with religous biggots in many countries - including the Taliban.

High spam response powers junk mail economy

What about the credit card companies...

Spammers must make their money via credit card transactions, they can't be anonymous to the credit card companies. What's to stop a law enforcement agency from buying spamvertised viagra and then getting the details of the money trail back to the seller? I'll tell you why, the credit card companies want the business and the law enforcers are not interested. Makes you wonder who the criminals really are!

Foxconn answers critics over suicidal iPhone engineer

Standard of living

There are huge discrepencies in the standard of living across the World. There is no simple solution to this but one thing is for sure, boycotting those who already earn the least isn't going to make things any better for them. You COULD offer to pay more but I don't see that happening elither!

Average UK broadband just over half advertised speed

VirginMedia

I get a pretty decent speed out of Virgin, about 15Mb/s on downloads, unless I download a large file in which case the speed decreases as the download progresses. What I am more concerned about is the upload speed as I often have to upload large files to my server, and that is pretty slow.

Microsoft airbrushes anti-Apple ad

Here we go again...

You lot keep falling for the old Mac vs. PC vs. Linux trap. The slighest inkling and you are off. "My computer's better than yours!" Fer christake, it's a tool. It's what you do with it that counts! If you want to pay the price of a Parker pen instead of a cheap Bic, that's fine. Most of the best books in the English language were written without a computer. GROW UP!

Coffee break...

"We always go up to town for our coffee beans. We get them from a specialist shop in Piccadilly. We enjoy good coffee and serve only the best to our guests."

"You must be mad. I can get Nescafe at Sainsbury's for a quarter of the price. It's the top selling brand you know. All those people can't be wrong."

"Meh! I can get perfectly good coffee at SupaSava's - their own brand is only a quarter of the price of Nescafe. If I got anything better, the kids and their friends would just drink it."

"I grow my own dandelion coffee down the allotment for next to nothing. Admittedly, it wouldn't be to everybody's taste but at least I can recycle it on the compost heap for next year."

Security researchers unpick botnet economics

Re: A question I've often wondered...

Western Union is the favoured way to be paid for scammers. Western Union, it would seem, are quite happy to take the business with minimal security.

Apple nabs 90% of all 'premium PC' dollars

Underachievers!

A number of people have said that they can't afford a Mac. Why not? It is perfectly obvious that they are wasting time tinkering with their hardware and OSs and 'playing games' fer fechsake. It is no wonder they haven't got any money! To make money you have to be productive. It also helps to have a bit of talent.

Using a computer should be a transparent experience like using a pen, you should not have to think about it never mind having to 'work' to make it work. Computers are a means to an end. It is what you do with them that counts - and if you do something of value, you will be paid. It doesn't matter if they don't have the fastest processors or the most memory, unless that impacts on the speed you can do you work.

I will happily pay a premium for a computer that does not impede my ability to make more money!

NASA orbiter returns first shots of Apollo moon sites

Missing tapes...

The contents of the 'missing tapes' are on the NASA home page

http://www.nasa.gov/home/index.html#

but that is centainly not my idea of 'high resolution'. Why are shots of moon walks and flying saucers always blurred?

Microsoft stores to get in Apple's face this autumn

Geniuses?

I wonder what MS will have instead of Apple's Geniuses? It's usually something along the lines of "Sounds like a hardware problem to me, contact your device's manufacturer" or "Sorry, you need Windows Professional or Ultimate version to do that!".

Users claim iPhone 3.0 GPS mis-map mishaps

Just tried mine...

...3G with 3.0 upgrade. The location is about 7 metres out as it was before upgrading, not as good as my TomTom but I can live with that. I'm not going to be using it when I'm driving!

3D TV will won't go primetime in 2011

Nah...

...it was a flop when they tried it with radio, it will flop again!

Microsofties lose their iPhones

Maybe...

... they will also insist on them using Windows too. What is THAT going to do for their productivity?

WD drops 4TB whopper

@Chris Harris

I don't understand this misinformed attitude about buttons on Apple mice. You are obviously criticising something you have never used! The Apple Mighty Mouse has been out for many years and ships with all Mac desktop computers. There is also a wireless option.

They have right-click, left-click, center-click, a center scroll nipple that works left and right and up and down plus two side buttons. The buttons are all totaly configurable in the System Preferences.

It doesn't have one button, it doesn't have a roller ball, it needs no special drivers, it works equally well for right and left handed people.

iPhone 3G S in the UK: what you need to know

@ Paul Naylor

The TomTom app on the iPhone won't be a satnav. It only uses triangulation of phone transmitters which is slower and less accurate and you could be in big trouble in 'the sticks' if you are out of range of a transmitter. My car came with a TomTom built-in. It will pair but it will not communicate with my G3 iPhone over BlueTooth to do anything useful at all.

Fanbois squeal over Mac OS X upgrade

Four okay

Updated 4 Macs yesterday from the 10.5.7 combo updater. No problems whatsoever. Since 1984, I've never had a problem updating Mac OS - worked first time every time.

Apple brands UK tabloid 'obscene'

Re: Page 3 isn't porn

It is exploitive and demeaning to the girls who agree to be exploited and demeaned for hard cash regardless!

Blunkett to press for cyberwar probe of BT's Chinese kit

Never mind the hardware...

... think of the armies of Chinese Chefs and laundry workers already 'sleeping' in the West. That Monosodium Glutamate could well be doctored±

Microsoft records first ever revenue drop

three...

"The Windows 7 Starter edition planned for netbooks will only run three applications simultaneously"

So after the anti-virus and security packages load, what else can you do? I suppose that not being able to run a browser or email program when the security programs have loaded will enhance their effectiveness.

Apple +15% : Microsoft -6%

Start-up Bee pledges 'affordable' British e-car

Nice but...

It's nice to see some UK initiative in this area and good luck to 'em. Living and driving in London, though, I would rather the it reflected the design principles of the fairground dodgem. Whoever thought of painted plastic bumpers really needs to be sent to the back of the class. As for the companies that will only sell you a complete wing mirror assembly when only your glass is cracked...

McAfee: Save the planet - use a spam filter

Even better idea...

Treadmills. Spammers (and any other type of miscreant you care to choose) should be made to walk on an electricity generating treadmill for X hours. Treadmills should be installed in all penal institutions (and schools) and the nerdowells made to work off their debts to society by generating eco-friendly electricity.

Microsoft promises 'lessons learned' on IE 8 download day

Nothing special...

I've been designing web sites from day one and I have NEVER pandered to IE. I have designed in a Mozilla Browser, checked in IE and if something doesn't work, I do it a slightly different (web standards only) way. Knowing not to use vertical padding in CSS is one of those things and being slightly more explicit with selectors generally keeps all browsers happy. I hand-code all my pages in BBEdit, never liked Dreamweaver and indeed, it is the (ab)use of Dreamweaver that cause a lot of the problems in the first place. If I need something trickier, I use Perl and (very rarely) PHP if I have to.

Adobe expects disappointing Q1 sales

No surprises there then...

Adobe should sack their interface design team and get the cleaners and tea ladies to do it in their spare time - for biscuits. The current mess that is the Creative Suite GUI is enough to put anyone off buying their products!