There was a powerful thunder storm over Dublin the other night. At 3am I was woken to what sounded like a bomb going off overhead. Of course, little did I know that when I was taking this footage several hours earlier that such a storm was to follow. This beautiful sunset was too much to resist though. I had started taking photos of it when I remembered my camera (a Nikon D90) had a movie mode as well and so here is the result. This is pretty much straight out of the camera, only sped up a bit. Enjoy.
(oh, and the music is the result of my doodling with Garage Band)
Unbelievably this is an actual commercial for IE8. It really makes you wonder who is responsible for microsoft’s advertising. Don’t be surprised if this is gone soon.
If you’ve been using twitter for some time and have built up an extensive collection of people to follow it can be hard to keep track of everyone’s updates. Even with a good twitter client like Tweetie, you’re still just left with a big list of everyone’s tweets, which is fine for most uses. But say there are some people whose tweets you don’t want to miss. Say, a news site or a particular celebrity. You could set up a separate account and just follow those people, perhaps using a second twitter client, or one that supports multiple clients, but there is an even simpler way.
To do this you’ll need an RSS reader. Personally I prefer Net News Wire but you can use anything, even Safari or Mail in Leopard. Start by finding the person who you want to follow more closely (i.e. stalk) in your twitter client. Select their info page and then open that person’s twitter feed in a browser.
Once you have their twitter page open in your browser all you have to do then is click on the RSS feed button, either on the sidebar below the list of followers, or if you’re using safari or firefox, the RSS icon in the title bar (select the timeline RSS feed). Once this opens in whatever feed reader you have you can then create a folder for all the people you want to follow. Of course the only problem is you won’t be able to reply directly, you’ll have to open their tweet in a browser (or the embedded browser if you’re using something like Net News Wire) but it makes it easier to keep track of important people whose tweets you don’t want to miss.
When a new piece of software or hardware comes out people often rush to be the first to review it, but I have found that there are often things that you only find after a while of using something that you don’t discover when you only use it for a day or two. With that in mind I’ve waited a week before writing about the new iPhone 3.0 software. By now, if you haven’t upgraded yourself, you’ve probably read about most of the new features so this is going to be more of a “what does it feel like in normal use” kind of review rather than breaking down every new feature and upgrade that the new iPhone OS has brought.
So then, what does it feel like in normal use? Pretty damn good actually. One of the things that has struck me about using 3.0 is its stability and completeness. Normally with a major new release of any operating system there are rough edges until the first couple of point releases or “service packs”. iPhone 3.0 however is remarkably solid. I have encountered a couple of bugs, but these are pretty minor and in many ways it is more stable that the previous version. The only thing I have had happen to me is the screen stopped responding to gestures once, but toggling the sleep wake button fixed it. Battery life and reception seem about the same, but opening and quitting applications seems faster.
In terms of new features, the things I’ve found myself using the most are cut, copy and paste, and spotlight. Copy and paste is superb. It’s so natural to use you quickly forget that there was a time it wasn’t there. It’s fluid and integrated so well that I’m glad they took the time to do it properly and not rush it. I have found myself using it a lot over the last week and I have no gripes with it at all. It has made the phone so much more useful when you don’t have your laptop with you and if the upgrade cost anything I would say it is worth the price alone. (If you have an iPod touch then it is worth the price!) One of the great things about this too is the way you can copy links. If you come to a page with a link in it or someone sends you an email (or a text message, or an instant message in AIM or Skype or some other IM app) with a link, before there was no easy way to send that on to someone else. Now you just tap and hold on the link and up pops the copy button. Very slick, very natural and very useful.
I thought spotlight was going to be a gimmick to be honest, but I have found myself using it quite a lot. One thing that I really like about it is that you’re able to go straight to a song or a podcast etc. without launching the iPod application first. Here’s an example. The other day I was out for a walk and I had one of the tracks from the soundtrack to the new Star Trek movie stuck in my head. Normally to play this I’d have to launch the iPod app, select albums, scroll to the album I wanted, then go in and select the track. Now I can swipe right type the first few characters and jump straight to the track. What would normally take 20 seconds or more I did in about 5. One of my favourite mac applications is launch bar, and this is like having launch bar on your iPhone.
Speaking of the iPod there have been a couple of changes of note there that are quite useful. The first is scrubbing. Before when you wanted to scrub through a track you swiped with the bar at the top and that was pretty much it. It wasn’t very precise. Now though, you have multiple levels of scrubbing from “high speed” to “fine”. To use it you drag the bar as you normally would then as you slide your finger down the screen you vary the level of precision. It’s very clever, but a bit hard to describe in words, so here’s a quick video explaining the process:
The other interesting thing I’ve noticed is that they’ve changed the options that come up when you’re playing a podcast. You now get the option of sending a link to the podcast in iTunes via email and there’s also a button to re-play the last 30 seconds.
Another, less than obvious feature that is a god send in iPhone 3.0 is the ability of third party apps to use the built in mail sheet. In fact I would go so far as to say this is the single best feature of iPhone 3.0. In the past when an app wanted to send an email it would send you out of the App and into Mail. This was annoying and time consuming and if you were in the middle of something would often put you off. Now though, you can send email from within the app it makes things so much more simple and fluid, and goes at least part fo the way to addressing one of the bigger annoyances of not being able to multitask.
And, while on the subject of not being able to multitask, I was pleasantly surprised by the usefulness of push notification. I have been a little sceptical of this in the past, but it seems to work very well. Two of the Apps I have are making use of it so far. The first is AP Mobile, from the Associated Press. It now sends me messages when there’s breaking news. And they’re pretty quick about it too. I got the message about Michael Jackson’s untimely death the other night (it was midnight our time|) before I had heard it anywhere else and I got a push notification message about Madoff’s sentencing just as it came up on BBC world news (on the TV) so It’s certainly put to good effect. The other app of course is AIM, which is also remarkably prompt. There’s no delay between the sender sending a message and it popping up on my phone as a pushed message. Only time will tell how well it scales but so far, considering what’s actually involved from a server point of view in doing push notification, kudos has to go out to Apple for pulling this off so well.
Some other things of note in no particular order: Note Syncing makes notes finally useful (mind you I used them a lot anyway) but the default error message that pops up warning you every time you sync your phone and you’ve changed so much as one note is annoying. This however can be fixed by changing the settings in iSync, but then this is not immediately obvious either. Having the landscape keyboard is nice, but I never really used it that much anyway. Actually, in some ways it’s annoying because you’ll be reading your email and the screen will swing around because you’re holding the phone to one side. I think they need to include a way to lock the orientation.
Safari does seem noticeably faster too. It’s funny though. Safari on the iPhone works so well, that you really don’t think about it. It’s just there and it just works. It’s one of the things that makes the iPhone such a great user experience. The only other really major change i noticed is in the App store. Screenshots are now part of an Apps description page and it no longer sends you to a separate screen for that. As for messaging, I’ve sent one MMS so I couldn’t really care much about that, although it’s nice that text messages send in the background now. As for tethering, o2 Ireland hasn’t announced support for it yet, so we’ll have to wait on that one. I’m not expecting to to be an economical option either, considering the iPhone’s data cap here is set at 1gb. We’re still waiting on visual voicemail, so I won’t hold my breath about tethering.
So that’s about it really. If this round up has seemed overwhelmingly positive, it’s because that’s how my experience with the new software has been. It is a solid stable upgrade and if you haven’t done it already then I suggest you do. If you have an iPod touch and are wondering if it is worth the price, I would say that if you use it for more than an iPod, then it is. Copy and paste alone makes it worth it alone.
A good article from the LA Times on the disconnect between critics and audiences when it comes to what is rapidly becoming the biggest grossing movie this year, and already has the accolade of the second highest opening weekend box office take ever.
Fake Steve Jobs, Back With a vengeance, has a wonderful piece on Palm’s attempts to woo iPhone customers. Killer quote:
….. So this is your business plan: You’re going to set up a Camaro car lot across the street from the Mercedes dealer, and put up some bright balloons and streamers and maybe some huge signs about how your cuh-raaaazy prices can’t be beat! Oh, and maybe some kind of big inflatable dog or something. And a bouncy castle for the kids! Free hot dogs! Girls with big hair, wearing shiny shorts and tiny T-shirts! A year’s worth of free gas!
Yeah. Good luck with that. Really.
You have to read the whole thing, it’s brilliant. Ah, Fake Steve, how we’ve missed you.
[Read There will be blood]
Here’s a little distraction for a Sunday Afternoon. I was out taking photos earlier and wandered into a Rose garden in the city before realizing it was inhabited by a large quantity of bumblebees. Anyway, I had my D90 with me so here’s a quick clip!
I just came across this interesting rumor thanks to a tweet from Ian Betteridge. Short version: Apple have told Nvidia to go stick their gpu’s where the sun don’t shine. On the face of it this seems unlikely, considering how fundamental Nvidia GPU’s and architecture seems to be to Apple’s latest Laptop Line Up. But then there’s this page on Apple’s support website about the Nvidia Graphics failures that I like many others was the unfortunate victim of. What’s surprising about this is the language from Apple:
“In July 2008, NVIDIA publicly acknowledged a higher than normal failure rate for some of their graphics processors due to a packaging defect. At that same time, NVIDIA assured Apple that Mac computers with these graphics processors were not affected. However, after an Apple-led investigation, Apple has determined that some MacBook Pro computers with the NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics processor may be affected. If the NVIDIA graphics processor in your MacBook Pro has failed, or fails within three years of the original date of purchase, a repair will be done free of charge, even if your MacBook Pro is out of warranty.
This seems uncharacteristically bitter for a support document. You can sense the seething anger filtering through in that, so I guess it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that Apple will say goodbye to Nvidia for a while. Apparently Dell have already told them to shove it. I also can’t help but wonder if Apple’s takeover of PA semi might lead the company to start doing their own GPU designs, as other manufacturers haven’t exactly been jumping on board with enthusiastic Mac support. Interesting times ahead.
I’ve been tinkering with a little project for a while now. I have a two and a half year old macbook pro that I’ve been slowly adding new parts to in an attempt to breathe new life into it. I started by upping the ram from 2gb to 4gb a while ago. I then proceeded to replace the hard drive with a 500gb model, replacing the 160 that was in it. Along the way my motherboard failed due to the infamous nvidia graphics failure, but the upside to this was a brand new motherboard courtesy of Apple. Finally, I have replaced the rapidly failing battery. I would normally have just bought a new laptop, but there was nothing really wrong with this one, bar the above.
There’s nothing dramatically new in the newer machines that I won’t have access to, except perhaps some of the GPU functions in snow leopard, but this is a perfectly good machine. Thanks to my upgrades I have plenty of space, a fresh battery and ample RAM, and it should do me for another year or two. It is a testament to both the hardware design and the durability of OS X that this computer feels in no way old, and still seems as snappy and responsive as the day I bought it. I think it’s also indicative of the stability the move to intel brought the platform. Before the intel switch you were constantly moving processor type, adding vector units, changing architecture etc. Now, apart from the newer screens and enclosures, there’s not that much substantially different from the MacBook Pro I have and the newer ones. Faster perhaps, but nothing revolutionary. Well, except the battery perhaps, but then at least I can replace this one myself without having to send the machine off. I think once there’s an Apple Store in Ireland, and replacing the battery in a MacBook Pro won’t involve sending your computer away, I’ll be a little less skeptical of the non user replaceable battery. Until then I’ll stick with my smooth running upgraded older edition.
Of course if they ever get around to adding blu-ray to their machines then I might have to get out the credit card.
It never ceases to amaze me that every time someone brings out an Action movie, a bunch of nerds on the internet (and movie critics) proceed to berate it for lack of plot, stereotyped characters etc. Michael Bay seems to get an inordinate amount of such criticism leveled at him, but then I guess that might have to do with his directing a number of incredibly successful action movies. And, as Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen hits the theaters the round of hate begins once again.
I went to see it on Saturday night and you know what, it was awesome. Did it have a sophisticated plot? No. Did I care? No, because it’s an action movie. Did it have stereo type characters and cheesy lines? Of course, it’s an action movie. Holes in the plot? Absolutely - it’s a fricken action movie. Seriously, if you don’t understand the genre, don’t go to the film just so you can give out about it afterwords. Action movies are thrill rides. They’re two hour roller-coasters. They’re pure escapism. Give your brain a rest and enjoy the ride. In that vein, Transformers 2 was fantastic. It was two hours and twenty minutes of non stop heart pounding pulse racing action.
I appreciate good drama. I love a good thriller. But I also see the need for a good action movie once in a while. I hate those people who think they have to bash them to feel smarter than everyone. You know the type. Unless the story is shakespearean in it’s complexity they don’t like it, and even then they’ll find something to complain about, some obscure reference that they feel making puts them above everyone else. It’s the idea that if you rail against something popular you put yourself above the plebs. These people complain about Michael Bay, talk about his directing and his movies like they’re universally hated, and yet he has had some of the most successful box office hits of the last two decades. He might not weave threads of literature and poetry into his movies, but no one blows s@%t up like him.
So I leave you with this thought. If you want to have your mind stimulated, enjoy a thought provoking, in depth, complex story don’t go see Transformers 2. If you want to relax, turn your brain off and escape with two and a half hours of explosions, car chases, and some incredible robot on robot fight scenes, then do, you won’t regret it.
Just a thought. How is it Sony can get Blu-Ray into an $880 Laptop, but Apple, whose cheapest laptop is $999 claims that the licensing is too expensive for consumers? (And before you say anything, Sony has to pay licensing fees just like anyone else) Sony aren’t the only ones either. In the current Argos catalogue (if you’re not from the UK or Ireland, just google it) there are several blu-ray equipped desktops for under €800. Mind you, I don’t think anyone that follows the technology ever seriously believed the “bag of hurt” comment anyway, but it’s time Apple.
People don’t want to have to buy multiple versions of their movies. And while your few 720p movies that you have are available for sale on iTunes in the US are great and all, those of us in the rest of the world want to watch HD too. And, before you say, “what’s the point of watching HD on a laptop” you’re missing the point. If a movie is available on blu-ray I’m going to buy that over buying it on DVD. If I then want to watch that movie in bed some night for example or on the train, I can’t do it on a mac. I’d have to buy another copy. While I’m certainly never going to switch to Windows just to bet blu-ray playback, it’s getting a bit silly that Apple, who sets itself as the leader in premium brand laptops, is missing a key premium technology, and the only reason seems to be to protect it’s very limited catalogue of sell through hd downloads, that aren’t even full HD anyway.
Oh, and before someone pipes up with the party line that blu-ray is a failure and it will be replaced by downloads any day now, I have this to say: No it isn’t and no it won’t.
This is the blog of a technology obsessed graphic designer and Photographer, Thomas Fitzgerald.
I cover all sorts of technology and design related topics, but the main focus is on Apple, Mac, iPhone and iPod related stories aswell as Photography, Animation and Design.
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