Category: Computing

I jumped in with both feet and upgraded both my iPhone 5 and my iPad2.  The phone worked great, actually seems slightly faster and there are some great improvements.  The iPad2 was a little sluggish but did have a major issue.  I could not get iCloud Drive to work which meant I could not update any of my cloud based spreadsheets.

Reboots, turning iCloud off then back on again; login out of iCloud, I tried it all but nothing seemed to work, so tonight I backed up the iPad and did a full system reset, setting it up as a new device, it was much quicker and iCloud drive worked.

I then reset it again and restored from the backup I had took, this time iCloud worked as it should and the sluggishness had gone.  Not done much other testing yet as I have been checking out the Photokina announcements.

I’ll try and post a few thoughts from the show on Monday but Fuji and Leica really seem to be a roll and know where there going, I get the feeling Canon and Nikon are just treading water not wanting to upset their SLR sales, unfortunately for them SLR sales are looking like the only way is down.

Today saw the release of iOS8.  Less of a visual change then iOS7, more polish and tweaks, but lots of under the hood changes and more api’s for developers to better integrate with the system.

I think many are disappointed that its not a radical change but that is rarely Apple’s way.  A bombshell onto the market with the initial product then polishing it enough to keep it ahead of the competition.

With the tighter integration with the new Mac OS coming we hope next month plus iCloud improvements and the Apple Watch next year, then for Apple users it makes it a powerful combination of products.  If your not fully into the Mac ecosphere then the updates will make much less of an impression to you.

I updated my iPhone5 and it seems a little quicker, I updated the iPad 2 and switching between apps is much more sluggish, i’ll update Caroline’s iPhone4 latter in the week.  I have made sure I have an image of iOS7 for the iPad2 and the iPhone4 so if I need to roll back I can, always a good move for such old hardware.

I possibly made the mistake of upgrading my iCloud documents to iCloud Drive, for now may Cloud documents are only available via a web browser and my iPhone5, I cannot seem to get them on the iPad, and the Mac will not get that function until next month.  I may just have to download them all and work on them locally for now.

 

This week we had the Apple announcements of their new phones and the Apple Watch.

Many may say these are me too devices, the phone is a copy of the large Android phones and the watch is just a copy of other smart watches released.

The difference with Apple is as always they have thought about the user experience and with the integration with the Apple Ecosphere.

The original Mac introduced the mouse to the world, the iPod was not the cheapest mp3 player but putting the user experience first made it the worlds number one.  Since then we have had the iPhone.  I have had smart phones since the very early days.  All of them were more powerful in what they could do then the original iPhone.

But why did people buy the iPhone, well a simple example is that you could hand any of my previous smart phones to a none smart phone user and they could not have made a simple phone call.  The email was basic and the web browser was a joke.  The iPhone was a good phone, had real rich html email and a real html web browser.  No other smart phone had that.

One of my old smart phones had cut and paste and a todo list.  The iPhone went through several versions before cut and paste appeared and a todo list.  People made fun of the iPhone because of this, but how many used cut and paste.  On several of my other smart phones cut and paste was there from the beginning but it did not work.  You could only cut and paste from within the same application even the system application did not support cut and paste within the different sections.

When Apple give you a feature is normally works very well.  Yes Apple are restrictive, you either do it the Apple way or use another product but very often the Apple way is the most effective way.

Finally after many years Apple finally announced a personal wearable computer device.

The Apple watch once finally available next year is likely to be the most expensive of all the smart watches available.  The new Moto 360 was the smartest and best smart watch of the bunch, if you did not use it too much it will last a day but use it as you would want to then you will find yourself charging it at least twice a day.  The few things the Apple watch does it will likely do very well.

A few of the features mentioned that people testing it had used: some had used it as a remote to his Apple TV, another used it instead of getting his phone out to see who was texting him and quickly replying, anther as a viewfinder and remote to his camera.  You make of it what you will.  I am interested just because I am thinking of getting an iPhone6 Plus, its a little to big for bringing out all the time, using the watch as a remote for the larger phone makes sense to me.  Also I am interested in fitness,  I have a very nice and good looking analogue watch for best and a fitness watch, it also has an additional chest strap you have to wear to measure you heart beat.  The data has to be manually transferred from the watch to a spreadsheet and into an App on my iPhone, the Apple watch will do that that quite well.

Am I an Apple Fan Boy?  Well yes I suppose I am, as well as being a Leica Fan Boy, I also use Windows, Solaris, Ubuntu and Redhat and love them.  If the tool does the job well then yet I am a Fan Boy for that tool.

Oh and do I think some parts of Android and Windows Mobile are cool; Yes I do so you can accuse me of being a fan boy for them too.

Use the best tool for the job, if like me you need Unix, are a Photographer and need powerful portable devices then I am afraid to say Apple devices are the best; for me, you may have a different option and that is fine.

 

On Sunday I updated a number of my old passwords, I try to change my passwords at least every year and important ones every month.

Cloud security is on the news a bit this last week as a number of celebrities have had their accounts ‘hacked’.  The problem is that people choose simple to remember passwords and the other big issue is with the security questions.

You get questions like ‘what was my first school?’.  The questions are generally personal but the answers are likely to on your Facebook page and that is the issue.

Some sites now offer two factor authentication, iCloud has offered this for a while but not many use it.  If you want to set it up check out Apple’s support site here.

Since moving villages I no longer get a mobile phone signal at home. My current mobile phone contract is up next month and the excuse of not getting a signal at home plus the fact they will not unlock phones for free has pushed me away from my current provider.

So this month I had my phone unlocked and have been trying other networks.

As part of this testing I made a number of interesting discoveries.

Dependant on whose sim you have in and if you restore your phone from a backup or set up as new you get a few minor differences.

The first thing I spotted was the Cellular Menu became a Mobile Menu, also the options in here differed but not really surprising.  No the surprising thing was things like security options, on the old sim I only had auto lock from instant to 15 minutes, but when the phone was setup as new with the sim from another network it had options up to four hours!

I would have thought the functionality would have remained fairly constant.

Now that my testing has finished I have a few choices to make.  A review of the main UK networks was published this week, and the one I am on came top, but this network does not work at home and I still need to use my mobile at home.  The network that works best at home came worst and in my testing was worst for data.

With those results in mind I am not quite sure what I am going to do.  I could remember to put a divert on my mobile before heading home but what if I forget, and there is the cost.

I could just change networks and put up with a better service at home but poorer data elsewhere (though things are looking like changing in the coming year).  Or even go to two phone.  A basic mobile with my main number on it and the best data sim in my smart phone.

Not sure yet but I have till the next month to decide.