Posts by Alex McKenna

Apple's launch confirms one thing: It's determined to kill off the laptop for iPads

This worrying... I produce magazines using Adobe software, and doing that on an iPad sounds nightmarish. If I can't update to another cheap Mac, like the Mini, I would have to migrate to another OS. After 27 years or so with Apple computers! (Yes, before the Mac there was a Linotype Apple system for print design.)

Nokia sheds light on latest Lumia

Nokia sales guess rather optimistic..

Looking at the recent sales for a related Nokia in the UK, Engadget reported this tragic survey news:

"Nokia Lumia 800 made up only 0.17 per cent of devices shipped.."

WIth this in mind, I can hardly see any iPhone users switching, and the Apple percentage will carry on growing, while the generics fight amongst themselves for the rest.

Ten... Androids to outshine the iPhone 4S

Why settle for 5 inches?

If I were Androidist, I'll be saving my pennies for the next size up - the 6.9 inch, or the super 8.5" Galaxy phone - or maybe the one after that - the 10.5 incher.

Of course it will mean either growing larger hands or using both to hold the darn thing to my ear.

Seriously though, all these phones have one thing or another going for them, but sadly none have the whole lot, and most have nasty flaws.

End-user satisfaction ratings are the best clue to which phone works in real life, and which is just a feature-box-ticker.

Gay-bashing cult plans picket of Steve Jobs funeral

AN Ironic Medal for these guys!

These guys deserve the thanks of all atheists and freethinkers, and sensible people generally, including myself, for their incredible work - vocally and hilariously illustrating the folly of literal belief in the writings of any self-appointed diety, or representatives thereof.

Hopefully nobody will tell them that their absurd, ill-disguised malice does no good to their cause.

Their rustic stupidity reveals the essence of all irrational beliefs, which beneath their saccharine-sweet veneer lies falsehood, oppression and corruption.

London 2012 Olympics: 17000 athletes, 11000 computers

They'll definitely need Techies!

With all those Windows boxes they'll need all the technical problem-solvers they can get their hands on.

What a shoddy decision by the Olympics lot.

Hopefully, the photographers and journos will be able to use their Macs.

45% of Android users to upgrade to rival phone OSes

Your complaint is so unusual, given the satisfatcion figures we all see each time for Apple gear, that maybe you're just extremely unlucky, and live in a weird blank spot, or ...

Did Bahraini activists closet anti-gay bus baron?

I can't imagine why anyone would want to find the site of a spiteful, boring bus conductor like Souter. Who cares WHAT his opinions are?

Coders breathe Android into dead HP fondleslab

Bride of Googlestein

"It's alive! It's ALIVE !!"

Toshiba reveals iPad 2 rival

As the old saying goes....

Pearls before swine.

CATS to be saved by BLASPHEMERS after the RAPTURE

Monty Python moment

nobody expects the Inquisition...

Samsung intros 'skinnier than iPad 2' tablets

My Ideal Dream-Pad

My own mock-up Dream-Pad is even thinner, weighs virtually nothing, runs at an incredible speed, for days, and will cost about £5. It can fold up to fit in your pocket. It will be open to anyone who can write Apps for it. Obviously it is made of cardboard, and the OS is all in my imagination, inspired by various TV series about aliens, but is just as operational as the Samsungs in the pictures.

This may be my last message, cos I'll be put away in a home fairly soon.

iPad 2? Let's be kind and call it iPad 1.5

Alex McKenna

Given the shape of the thing has changed - rather than just the front elevation - I would think a great deal of work has gone into making the innards fit. They started from scratch, so it's a LOT more than just a fiddle with the original iPad.

I think you deserve a bit of WHACKO from my trusty number 4 cane, me lad...

Bend over boy.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/graphics/icons/comment/headmaster_32.png

Alex McKenna

... yes but that's because you're a techie. A fiddler. A car-mechanic type with greasy fingers.

That's fine. A great hobby. I used to take things apart when I was a kid too, to see how they were put together. Clocks. Radios. Gramophones. Watches. Toy trains.. you name it. But I grew out of that eventually :-)

The rest of us just want something that works.

Smaller and lighter is better, in this case.

Steve Jobs in iPhone bitchslap to creationists, Tea Party

Well they have!

We didn't evolve from present-day monkeys. We evolved from the same "monkey-like" creatures that they have evolved from.

And both groups of species have in turn evolved from small mammals, and before that reptiles, and before that fish, and finally from worms and little blobs like human eggs and sperm..

You can follow the course of evolution from the development of all animals in the womb. TO start with most animals on earth look pretty much the same in the womb. Like fish embryos with gills!

Lexmark files patent gripe against 24 cartridge makers

Greedy Ink Makers

I have decided to rely on PDFs rather than print out A4 sheets any more, because of the ridiculous price of HP laser toners.

I used to do laser proofs of every magazine page, and update every time a page was changed or corrected, but now we check everything on screen.

No more "Book" for this magazine.

When the HP inks finally die, I might just get something else for the few items we need prints for.

Queuing for an iPad? Why?

What was this all about?

What a load of irrational, rambling, meaningless tripe. Thank heavens he's not in charge of creating any kind of product. I suppose he might fit in under Ballmer though...

Virus floors Russian-Chinese automated border

What a giggle!

Strangely, the usual over-vocal IT Crowd have gone very quiet. Thinking up excuses I suppose, or just "Multitasking" in their lonely bedrooms.

Steve Jobs: 'Pad? That's my word'

The Bible???

Backed up by nothing you mean.

There's evidence enough in the ground to prove the Bible is nothing more than the sort of stuff goat-herders knew a couple of thousand years ago.

They knew how to herd animals and so on, I'm sure. But they thought the world started just before their grandfather was born. They liked to sacrifice things all the time...

Can Justified Arrogance go too far?

As much as I LOATHE bible types and their disturbing stupidity, even I cannot ignore this rather worrying clue that Apple is in danger of becoming the reverse of its former self.

You know, the free-thinking, freedom loving, alternative type of outfit. (A silly idea of course, when the firm is worth more than Wallmart :-) but we all have to live in our dreams. Reality being so tawdry.)

It's almost like the local hippy vegetarian bookshop suddenly running up a Swastika flag on Hitler's birthday and they all started wearing Burkas.

It won't stop me getting my iPad though when it makes it to London. I just hope Steve recovers from his (temporary) bout of ill-tempered paranoia. We all have bad days.

Experts rubbish iPhone for health use

iPhone battery cradles

You can get these battery extenders with clip under the iPhone for extra power. They re-charge the device I believe.

Anyway, the new iPad would seem to be the perfect thing, with it's larger screen.

Lost Nazi nuke-project uranium found in Dutch scrapyard

Schoolboy Slang

A good article of course, although it doesn't look very scientific to use the slang term "big that up", where there are so many fine alternatives.

Brits take iTablet moniker for 12in iPad rival

Another Fine Mess

If people wanted heavy, ungainly Windows tablets, they'd have bought the existing ones. But they didn't.

Hiding the keyboard doesn't make it any handier. It should come with its own trolley for portability.

HP preps secret iPhone rival

Impersonators

In the 1930s there were loads of Bing Crosby "Killers"... and what happened to them?

Then there were Elvis replacements.... the same fate to them...

and now the iPhone killers...

Analysts slam iPhone security and battery life

Aristotle's donkey..

"Apple products have always been preferred by the vacuous mass that prefers form over function" ??

On the contrary - Apple machines are well-designed FROM THE INSIDE OUT.

The outside is just a result of the entire thing being well thought out.

Frankly, if the outside of my iMac looked like a soggy cardboard box, I would still love it, for its OSX functionality..

Anyway, the idiotic mass are surely Windows sheep...

Ballmer upset by Apple cart

Us against Them? Which US?

Who is this "WE" he is talking about?

The whole computer business?

Apple aren't doing half bad against that lot!

Apple grabs number-three US PC market slot

@Antidisestablishmentarianist

Some cheek - a WINDOWS person I assume - calling Mac types "sheeple".

If anything we've always been the ones who've resisted the obedient mentality of the herd.

But it looks like the Microsoft sheepdogs have finally lost control of their woolly victims...

What's that? Did I hear you say BAAH!?

God makes you stupid, researchers claim

Fairy Tales

You can understand them telling kids to believe in god, fairies and so on, because it's a lot easier than telling them that we don't know the original of the universe, life and everything.

Admitting we just don't know, and never will, is not that positive, so:

The Fairies made us all! And designed the slime on every vile slug.

There! Wasn't that easy.

Or is the meaning of life = 42 ??

Atheist, Denton, Manchester

O2 prices up the latest iPhone

Applications Anonymous

The whole world is waiting for the applications "Anonymous Coward" has written on his PC ! Like hell they are.

Get a life, get a Mac.

Alex, Manchester, UK

Extreme porn bill gets final reading

Labour used to be a freedom kinda party

Murdoch's papers will be immune of course.

Too big. Too powerful.

The law on obscenity has always been vague. This gives the authorities plenty of scope to decide who to raid. This gives them the power they love.

I am even more dismayed with Labour, which used to fight censorship.

Now all they care about is creating office-jobs for pen-pushers. Targets. Watchdogs. League Tables. Reports on Reports. Privatised money-wasters. Endless forms and supervisors instead of investments in trains/schools/health.

The money they've spent on the paperwork for Crossrail so far could have paid for three tube lines by now. Still not one ring of tunnell put in place - in how many years?

Labour needs tearing down and starting again. "Parkinsons Law" explains how it goes wrong.

InPhase finally to phase in holographic disk

Delicious idea but...

In 50 years time we might all be too busy trying to find someone to EAT rather than checking through old mailing-lists...

Governator outs Dubya's global-warming 'time bomb'

Buried Treasure

We found a treasurehouse of amazing chemicals we can use for making all sorts of things! Fertilisers, plastics, medicine - everything.

Must have taken millions of years in the ground. There's no way we could ever make the stuff ourselves.

Hey! Let's burn the lot as fast as we can!

Anti-Scientology crusader vaporized from YouTube

"it's not a religion, it's a con-trick"

What IS a religion, if not a con-trick?

Made by goat-herds FOR goat-herds, but we really shouldn't take them too seriously now. Old ladies, the simple minded and small children excepted of course.

Nokia confirms 'iPhone killer' handset in pipeline

Judas phone?

More like Mary Magdalene phone

T5 opening turns into Airplane 3.0

I wonder what OS they are using on the BAA computers?

Do you think it might be Windows Vista?

About time they replaced Heathrow with an airport on the Thames estuary. NOT run by BAA.

Adobe pulls bug-riddled Photoshop update

Adobe now as bad as Quark?

I am putting off "upgrading" to CS3 - and thereby switching from QuarkXPress to InDesign - because of the cost - and doubts about my magazine PDFs being achievable without more unforseen nightmares.

I did update (briefly!) to Quark v7. That cost loads, but it refused to work properly, so had to be culled. In the short time I used it, it managed to render numerous Quark files unreadable by the older version. Hours of extra work. Don't they understand that software is supposed to help us do our work, not actually sabotage our business??

So I am saving money on anhy more dubious upgrades, playing safe and leaving things as they are - using the old v6.5 of Quark, and old Acrobate Distiller. At least they work, more or less, with no fancy extras. My curse on BOTH their houses,

Apple MacBook Air

Plonker

There do seem to be a few rather bitter techo types here .

They vaguely go on about other laptops being as light, or as cheap or more stuffed with "useful" features like floppy drives or Edison wax-cylinder cutting options, but none of these "great" alternatives have all these plus points.

As usual, Apple is the first to chuck out the near-obsolete drive, remember the shock when they dropped the floppy?

Then the battery thing. I've had my iBook for three or four years. The battery has never been removed, and works fine. So what's all the screraming about?

The Eee PC cuts the mustard at CES

Sorting Photos

I haven't considered my eee-pc for sorting or checking photos yet, because the sport season hasn't started, but would it be able to handle a Photoshop-like thing?

I have Photoshop - and Photo Mechanic for Mac, but obviously this isn't much use on the Asus.

Isn't Gimp a nightmare for non techy types?

Murdoch puts faith in online religion

If the Devil actually existed....

I don't beleive in the Devil, or Hell, but the very existence of Murdoch, and his vile ways, tests my firmly held views.

Why would somebody, who has all the money you'd ever need, still put all his efforts into making the world worse, rather than the opposite?

"SO, what did you do when you were alive Rupert?"

"Oh, I devoted my life to helping the rich and ruthless - made things a little bit nastier for everyone..."

You must be so proud Rupe. Shame Hitler wasn't around when you were in charge of the media... You'd have made some son-of-a-Hun real happy.

Dixons grinches Christmas

They didn't have any Asus eee pcs

Went into Manchester Dixons on search of the new little laptop, which anyone could see was going to be a smash hit...

Not a sign, not even a poster up saying they were waiting for stock...

Hopeless lot. So I went to Micro Anvika, who also didn;t have stock, but at least they knew about it, so I ordered one.

Asus Eee PC 4G sub-sub-notebook

Mac devotee likes eee pc

As a journalist, I have been praying for a lightweight thing to write on, when on my travels.

I have two heavy cameras when I'm on a job, so my iBook stays at home most of the time, because my back can only take so much lugging on and off trains and cabs.

I have ordered the little Asus from Micro Anvika. Hope they get stock again soon.

Thank god it DOESN'T HAVE bloody Windows on it. The less Microsoft I have in my life the better. I am sure this Linux thing will be fine. I am not tempted to fiddle with the thing and break it. Not even sure what these "distro" things are people talk about all the time. If I buy a washing machine, I really don't want to know what rubber bands are inside the thing, as long as it washes my socks!

Alex Mac

Jobs hits London to announce O2 iPhone deal

Aren't they all SCARED !?

I detect a lot of irrational arguments against the iPhone.

Stuff about childish ringtones, daft software and the Edge thing, which is a lot faster than having no portable web at all.

Obviously it is upsetting entrenched people in the business, who are rightly concerned about the impact the thing will have. If silly old sods like me, who have avoided smart phones till now, and only listen to 78s, are serious about getting one, then the sky is the limit.

Adding the cost of the O2 contract is anti-phone propaganda. Every phone, internet connection or landline costs money to run, silly.

I will use the iPhone more to replace my current Vodaphone, and maybe phase out my BT landline and/or Virgin cable internet. This might save a few bob! Also I have a feeling it will be handy for writing notes for my magazine features and stuff when I'm away from the office.

Probably won't use the music and video at all. Unless iTunes suddenly starts selling 1920s dance bands...