Category Archives: Apple

iOS 5 expectations

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Apple iOS 5 announced. Five things I’m looking forward to:

  1. Reminders/ToDo – synced with Outlook
  2. Able to send messages to groups (I assume this includes SMS – but not clear yet)
  3. Syncing with iTunes over WiFi
  4. Quick access to the Camera when the iPhone is locked
  5. Week view in Calendar

Update 20 Feb 2015: It’s interesting, nearly four years on looking back at what I wished for, and was it worth it?

  1. I don’t use this feature (I no longer sync with Outlook)
  2. I use this feature quite a bit.
  3. This feature turned out to be a dud. For it to work the phone had to be plugged into a power source, like a docking station, but as I only ever charge my phone via a cable connection from my PC …
  4. I use this almost every day. It’s hard to imagine iOS without this.
  5. It turns out that although I wanted this, when I got it, I never actually used it.

So it turns out that I only use two of the five things I was looking forward to. I guess the lesson here is the things you wish for are not necessarily the things you need.

[This content was originally posted to Google Buzz, #146]

Leeches

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Last week the music of the Beatles became available on iTunes. Yay! But while citizens of the U.S. pay $12.99 USD for a single album, we poor Aussie mugs have to pay $20.99 AUD for a single album, despite the fact that the US and Aussie dollars are pretty much at parity!

Once again, the music industry demonstrates its uncanny resemblance to a bloated, parasitic, blood sucking leech.

[This content was originally posted to Google Buzz, #91]

Galactic appleness

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If I were elected to office …

I’d outlaw smugness in Apple’s advertising. On reflection, I suspect that Apple couldn’t manage that. Let’s make it simple and ban Apple from advertising at all. Undoubtedly all the Apple fanboys and fangirls would continue to buy Apple products in astonishing numbers, while the rest of us can be spared the endless stream of “the spin of the galaxy just came back into alignment” rhetoric that marks Apple’s promotion of newly released products.

For a world free of Jobsian hyperbole, Vote 1, Me.

[This content was originally posted to Google Buzz, #60]

Apple fail

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Just got an iPhone (through work). Followed the instructions and connected it to my PC. Message saying that there was no SIM installed, please disconnect and insert a SIM card. But how? The ‘Getting started’ instructions don’t say anything. The iPhone screen doesn’t help me. The iTunes program doesn’t explain. Examining the phone there is no obvious spot to insert a SIM card. Googling it found me the answer – insert a paper clip through the little hole in the top to eject the tray. No big drama, but once again the idea that Apple products are intuitive and “just work” is exposed as a big fat con job.

Update 13 Feb 2015: To be fair, 5 years on and an upgrade later, I still have an iPhone and I really like it. But that doesn’t change the fact that my first interaction with an iPhone was exceedingly frustrating.

[This content was originally posted to Google Buzz, #27]