The Author – Bart Busschots
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Nov
15
Another One of my iPod Touch Gripes Dealt With
Filed Under Computers & Tech on November 15, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Another one of my iPod Touch gripes has been fixed by Apple with the release of the new 1.1.2 firmware for iPhone and iPod Touch. You can now add calendar events from the iPod Touch. For some insane reason the calendar app on the Touch was re-only before. Since the iPhone has had a full calendar app since the start it just never made sense to me why Apple had removed that feature from the Touch. Maybe it was an oversight or something. What ever the cause was, it’s fixed now anyway.
[tags]Apple, iPod, iPod Touch[/tags]
Nov
8
Apple Care Update
Filed Under Computers & Tech on November 8, 2007 | 3 Comments
Yesterday I reported that I’d made my first ever call to Apple Care and that they had promised to get a new battery to me within three working days. That was at about 3:15pm. By 11:30am the next day (i.e. today), my new battery arrived along with a return shipping label and instructions for calling UPS to pick up the old one for return. That’s less than 24 hours, you really can’t do much better than that!
[tags]Apple, Apple Care[/tags]
Nov
7
MBP Battery Woes – My First Call to Apple Care
Filed Under Computers & Tech on November 7, 2007 | 3 Comments
About two weeks ago the battery in my MBP started to behave strangely. It would work normally till it got to about 50% and then die instantly. The battery would die so quickly that the machine would not have time to enter sleep mode and just die. This was starting to annoy me and I was thinking of putting in a call to Apple Care anyhow but yesterday evening it became urgent. While packing up my machine after giving a presentation I noticed that the battery had swollen and warped it’s casing. This was obvious because the better no longer sat flush with the base of the laptop and the metal skin on the top had separated from plastic body of the battery (See pictures below).
[tags]Apple, MacBook Pro, Battery, Apple Care[/tags]
Nov
7
When I got my iPod Touch I started by outlining in detail all the little gripes I had with it. I did note that most of these little things could be fixed by future software updates. When I wrote that I envisioned these updates coming in the form of firmware updates to the iPod itself, I hadn’t expected that something as simple as an iTunes update could make any sort of change. Today Apple proved me wrong.
Probably the biggest gripe I had the with the photos feature was that the iPod Touch ignored the new Events feature added by iPhoto 7 (the version of iPhoto in iLife 08). This has now been fixed in a trivially simple way. When iTunes imports your photos it adds each event as an album. This is a very simple hack that is near-perfect. The only minor drawback it has it that it’s not possible to tell which albums are real albums and which are events. But, like I said, that’s a very minor thing. I’m really happy with this update as it makes photos much easier to find on the iPod but if I could really have my way I’d change one more thing. At the moment events are sorted with the oldest events at the top of the list and the newest at the bottom. I’d flip that the other way round.
P.S. This is my first test post with MarsEdit. I’ll be reporting on how I get on with it soon.
[tags]Apple, Mac, iPod Touch, iTunes, iPhoto, iTunes, iLife[/tags]
Oct
29
Second Leopard Update – Spaces Feels Beta
Filed Under Computers & Tech on October 29, 2007 | 5 Comments
One of the first new things in Leopard I’m really giving a run for it’s money is the new Spaces feature. It’s basically virtual desktops the Apple way. If it were not buggy it would be fantastic, even with the few bugs I’m currently experiencing it’s still the first virtual desktop program that I’m actually finding useful. No other virtual desktop system I’ve used places as much emphasis on the relative locations of your desktops. Believe it or not it’s this real feeling of working within a grid that makes Spaces work. This feeling of working in a grid comes from a number of interface elements. The most of obvious of these is the bird’s-eye view of all your spaces brought up by hitting F8. This metaphor is further emphasised by the icon that shows up on the screen when you shift Spaces and by the animation employed to make those switches. Your feel as if your view is sliding from one space into the other. In addition to these graphical cues there are also some interactions that further re-enforce the grid metaphor. Firstly, you can drag a window from one space to another by dragging it to an edge of the screen which borders another Space and hold it for a second. When you do this you move to that other Space and bring the window with you. Secondly, you can navigate around the Spaces use the ctrl+arrow key combinations. This much all works perfectly, however, many other aspects of Spaces are a lot less polished. The rest of this article is dedicated to detailing the bugs I’ve found so far.
[tags]OS X, Apple, Leopars, OS X 10.5, Spaces[/tags]
Oct
28
First Leopard Update – Application Compatibility
Filed Under Computers & Tech on October 28, 2007 | 5 Comments
Since I chose to format my drive before installing Leopard I’ve spent much of today installing and testing software. The news is good, in fact, the news is very good, out of the twenty 3rd party apps I installed nineteen worked. The only thing that didn’t work was the Logitech drivers for my ergonomic keyboard and it turns out that doesn’t matter (more on that in another post). Everything else, including the drivers for my scanner, worked perfectly. Below is the full list of 3rd party apps that I’ve successfully installed and tested on OS X 10.5 Leopard.
[tags]Apple, OS X, Leopard, Compatibility[/tags]
Oct
27
My Very First Thoughts on Leopard
Filed Under Computers & Tech on October 27, 2007 | 1 Comment
My copy of OS X 10.5 Leopard arrived yesterday, so I spent the evening backing up, and then installing. I’m sure I’m going to be posting plenty more about the new cat over the coming weeks and months, but for now, I just want to give you my very first impressions. I have a number of Macs but I’ve only installed Leopard on one for now, that way I can be sure everything I need works before I install it on my Mac in work or the Mac I’m using for my PhD work. So, that means I’ve installed Leopard on my oldest and lowest-specked Mac, my fist generation G4 Mac Mini. This was one of the first Mac Minis to make it into the country so it’s not at all a new machine. It’s a G4 so it’s three processor architectures behind (64 bit Intel, 32 Bit Intel, and G5 PPC), it does however have 1GB of RAM because I was quite forward thinking when I bought it. By anyone’s standards this is an old machine, so, if Leopard runs well on it, it will run even better on modern machines.
[tags]OS X, Apple, Leopard[/tags]
Oct
24
OS X 10.5 Leopard Security Features Explained
Filed Under Computers & Tech, Security, System Administration on October 24, 2007 | Leave a Comment
How Leopard Will Improve Your Security – a great article explaining the security enhancements brought by Leopard in plain English.
Oct
14
Three More Little Gripes With The iPod Touch
Filed Under Computers & Tech on October 14, 2007 | 7 Comments
At this stage I’ve run the Touch through everything I ever do with iPods and have found three additional annoyances to the ones I described in yesterday’s article. Two can be fixed by simple software updates, one cannot. None of these are show stoppers and don’t affect my over-all conclusion that this is a great iPod and a taste of the future.
- Poor Support for Older iPod Accessories – I recently bought an iPod compatible stereo thingy for the kitchen and the touch only half works with it. It charges and the sound comes out but the remote does not allow you to play/pause or go forward/back a track. Not the end of the world, but a bit annoying. I believe the iPhone suffers from the same problem.
- Long Names Don’t Scroll – On my previous iPod when ever it encounters a name that is too long to be displayed the name scrolls so you get to see all bits of it. This works in the menus and on the now-playing screen. The Touch does not do this and it’s a real PITA for audio books in multiple parts.
- No Sleep Timer – This probably only affects a few people but I normally fall asleep to my iPod so I set a 15 minute sleep timer on it. I can’t do that with the Touch so my old iPod now has a permanent place next to my bed 🙂
Update (26 October 2007): As Jon has pointed out in the comments below, you can get sleep functionality, just not in an immediately obvious way.
[tags]Apple, iPod, iPod Touch[/tags]
Aug
28
New Aluminium iMac – WOW!
Filed Under Computers & Tech on August 28, 2007 | 3 Comments
The new iMacs look great in the ads and on the Apple web page, and, on paper, they look like good value for money. That was all I could really say about them until this afternoon, when the first of them arrived here in work. Believe it or not they look even better ‘in the flesh’, they just make you go ‘WOW’. Within moments of the box being opened there was a crowed of curious windows users gathered around it! Apart from the aluminium and glass being nicer materials than the old white plastic, the new case is much better proportioned so the old ‘chin’ that people complained about with the previous generation of iMacs is effectively gone. Sure, there is still space under the bottom of the screen but it doesn’t look out of proportion any more. The second thing I noticed is how much I like the new glossy screens. I’m a big fan on them on the MacBooks and MacBook Pros and I think they also work well on the new iMacs. Everything you load on it just looks shiner than on the old iMacs. The model I played with had the 20″ screen, a 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 1 GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, and cost around €1,200. I didn’t get to play with it for long but it seemed very fast and very snappy. I would have no hesitation in recommending this machine to family and friends.
The one thing I was a little worried about with these new iMacs was their new hyper-thin keyboards. So, I opened up Text Edit and started typing. Shockingly the feedback from the teeny keys is fantastic. The keyboard is an absolute joy to use despite how odd, and indeed un-usable, it looks. One of the lads in the office is even thinking of buying one for his PC!