He slips out of his lair. Sticking to the shadows he creeps ever closer waiting to make his presence felt. It starts painlessly, confusing and distracting so he can stay hidden. Is that him? He soon unleashes a blast of light confirming the worst. He’s back. Slow moving he intensifies the brightness before falling silent. Minutes pass.
Then it begins.
Stabbing at my eye. Over and over and over. The pain spreads. He’s now hammering my head with a bat. I feel sick but when I do vomit it doesn’t help. Only darkness can save me. Darkness and burying my head in a pillow. Darkness, pillows and drugs. Sleep. Please let me sleep. My saviours.
Hours pass.
I wake and he’s gone. Back to his lair. Back knowing he’s won again. Back knowing he will strike again and there is nothing I can do. What’s left are wounds. An aching head that will take hours and days to pass. Constipation thanks to the drugs. A lack of appetite and a massive drop in concentration. If that’s not enough the next night is usually light on sleep so even if the head has cleared a couple of days later I’m left drained. He wins again. The migraine always wins.
I’ve suffered from migraines for over 10 years now. They are far less frequent than when they started, when I used to get clusters of 2 or 3 per week, but probably average out at one a fortnight. I’ve got used to the pain and can spot the symptoms easily now. What I’ve not got used to is the disruption they cause. Take today. A lazy Saturday planned, trip out for some shopping and out of nowhere a migraine struck mid morning. Boom. Day spoiled.
I’m lucky in that I’ve an understanding boss that lets me work around the migraines when they strike during the week but the disruption to mine and others life really frustrates me. I always prided myself in not giving in to an illness but a migraine knocks me for six. I’ve never found my trigger and the majority of mine occur through the night or I wake up with the migraine already under way. For many stress is a trigger and I’ve always dismissed that as a cause as I never really feel stressed. Angry and frustrated at times but I’ve never thought of that as stress – maybe it is. Maybe I need to face up to that and deal with it better.
I’m also lucky as many migraine sufferers have it far worse than me. That doesn’t stop me dreading the next time the migraine leaves his lair.
It’s been a few weeks since Apple released iOS 7. Has it caused much change?
My iPhone home screen using iOS6Home screen on the 5s
It surprises me in that short time how dated the iOS 6 screenshot looks. Not sure if thats down to familiarisation from day to day usage of iOS 7 but it just screams ‘old’ when I look at it. On the surface many app’s look the same but most if not all the home screen app’s have seen updates over the last 6 weeks with some bringing considerable new functionality.
Take Fantastical for example. A new version came out with not only an updated look for iOS 7 but integrating reminders alongside appointments. A small change but one that has led me to using Apple Reminders rather than Wunderlist which I’d moved to from Omnifocus as it was over the top for my needs. iOS 7 has kickstarted a simplification of my app’s and services I use.
Next was removing my reliance on Apple for podcasts and switching to Instacast – should have done it months ago as listening to podcasts is a far better experience and iTunes is more stable now that I’ve removed podcasts from it. Coincidence?
Unfortunately there are still some ugly aspects of iOS 7 that irritate all the time. That Safari icon is one of them. It annoys me so much that I may switch to using Chrome on iOS as that’s what I use on the laptop and desktop. iOS 7 is also quite crashy, especially on the iPad. Hopefully a 7.1 update will remove the stability issues if not the ugly icons (agreeing with Shak that Contacts is ugly too).
Overall though I’m happy with iOS 7, the updates it’s made and the new direction it’s taking alongside the many many great app updates from third parties.
iPad iOS 7 on the iPad
Alongside the crashy nature of iOS 7 on the iPad there’s something about it’s look that just doesn’t feel right. There is so much space and the app’s look lost on the bigger screen. Why not a fifth row? Why do folders only show 9 app’s at a time – it feels like a toy town O/S in some of the views which I’d never say about iOS 6 or the current versions of Android. Performance on my third gen iPad is also spotty so I’ve disabled most of the animations which helps but I still notice keyboard lag and stutter from time to time.
Of course, the iPad Air is now out and performance of the new device is amazing thanks to the new chip’s being used. I popped into the Apple store at the weekend and what stood out the most was the weight of the new iPad Air. More to the point, the lack of weight.
Not the screen, not the smaller design, the thinner design or the lack of Touch ID. The weight difference compared to my gen 3 iPad was more than I expected. I was convinced that a Mini Retina would be my next iPad but it will probably be an iPad Air. Yes, probably.
I’m not yet 100% that I need to replace the iPad right now. While I may want to replace it, need is something entirely different. So I will hang fire for the time being, compare it to the Mini Retina to make doubly sure and wait and see what app updates will come over the next few months that take advantage of the new chipset. Once I do decide I will definitely pick up one of these Logitech keyboards for the iPad – I think they are awesome.
Four weeks from now will see the new consoles available in the UK from Microsoft and Sony. I’m looking forward to seeing what both offer and to wet the appetite both companies have started their advertising blitz.
Sony
Perfect Day and focuses purely on games and people playing them. It’s a core theme that Sony has been consistent on throughout the year and pushed again with a UK ad to celebrating 20 odd years of the PlayStation.
Microsoft
Microsoft focus on the different capabilities of the console. Games first but then watching TV and movies and Skype chats with friends. Much better than their showing at E3.
Who Wins?
The adverts highlight the clear difference between the two. Sony is all about games and Microsoft is games first but so much more…but more that a lot of people will not be interested in. Despite the missteps from Microsoft over the last few months there really isn’t that much between the two new consoles.
If I had to decide based on the adverts above I’d be picking the PS4 as it focuses on the games and for me thats still what a console is all about. Ironically though the first party games on the PlayStation look to be weaker than those on the Xbox and online which is important for me still looks to be better on Xbox.
Both adverts also show that Titanfall and Driveclub were both expected to be launch title exclusives that have missed their date. Shame, although for Driveclub it may be a blessing as Forza 5 looks so much better.
So four weeks from now I should have an Xbox One and at the moment I’m picking up Fifa and Forza only. I’ll decide on Battlefield or COD nearer the time. At the start of the year I said I wouldn’t be buying a PS4 but I can see that changing over the next 12 months as there are loads of indie games that look to be Playstation only. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen anything new in consoles so it’s great to say there’s less than a month to go. Can’t wait.
One of my favourite cartoons is Calvin & Hobbes. Next month a new documentary, Dear Mr Watterson, looks at why Calvin & Hobbes was so successful and the impact it’s had on a generation of readers. Bill Watterson created the strip and stopped publishing in 1995. He is very private and the film seemingly respects that privacy. Looking forward to this.
Calvin & Hobbes takes me back to my time at uni. Lewis let me borrow a copy of one of his books and I was hooked. So good.
I picked up an Apple TV a few months ago and I’ve got far more use out of it than I expected. The following are some app’s and tricks that I’ve found handy in that time.
PlexConnect
The sole reason I picked up an Apple TV was PlexConnect. PlexConnect is a hack to allow an Apple TV to playback media from you local Plex library. It works by routing requests from the Apple Trailers app on the Apple TV to your Plex install and sending back results that the Apple TV expects that is really your Plex library. A clever hack but as with all hacks at risk of Apple making changes to disable it in the future.
An update a couple of months ago to add new channels changed the trailers app to only work with https. This was enough to break PlexConnect. Bad Apple. A few days passed before a fairly straightforward work around was published that looks worse than it is. Follow the steps and PlexConnect was back up and running.
At this point I found some issues with playback – stutters, frame drops. I was convinced that PlexConnect was no more and I would need to move to another solution – Roku or perhaps invest in a Mac Mini. It turns out my network switch was at fault so a swift replacement later saw PlexConnect returned to it’s former glory. I love it, all my movies available on the Apple TV without having to worry about converting to a compatible format.
Beamer
If Plex and PlexConnect seem like hard work but you want the flexibility of playing back any media on your Apple TV without converting to a compatible format then Beamer for Mac is a great option. Install and launch Beamer on your Mac and you are presented with a small window. Drop a movie of any format (AVI, MKV, MOV, MP4, WMV, FLV) on to the window and a few seconds later it will playback on your Apple TV all via Airplay.
Like any other movie on the Apple TV you can control playback via the Apple remote and Beamer supports 1080p and also 5.1 surround sound, both Dolby Digital and DTS. Subtitles are also supported.
On the movies I tested there was no issue at all. Smooth, quick and great sound. Considering this removes the need to convert films, jailbreak older Apple TV’s or mess around with PlexConnect the £12 cost is trivial.
iOS Setup
Setting up the Apple TV can be painful. Typing in the wi-fi password is an exercise in frustration with the remote. One shortcut is to use your iOS device. Switch on the Apple TV, connect it to your TV and touch the Apple TV with your iOS device. The Apple TV (once you zap in a password) will then copy wifi settings and automatically configure itself. Smart, and the touch isn’t really necessary as it’s not done via NFC but it’s just Apple’s way of ensuring that you get the iOS device in close enough range for bluetooth to work effectively.
Apple Remote for iOS
If you do have an iOS device, download the Apple Remote and use it to control the Apple TV. It makes for a far better experience and if you’ve used the physical Apple remote to search for music in a large library you will find the iOS version infinitely better.
Wrap-up
For £99 the Apple TV is good value and I’m getting a lot of use out of it. However I think I’d point people to the Roku 3 that has finally come out in the UK as it offers a lot more for the same money and a store where you can pick up app’s like Plex to further improve the Roku. Hopefully the tips above thought will make for a better Apple TV experience…and maybe one day Apple will bring an App store to it’s TV platform.
Chvrches new album is one of the best I’ve heard this year. Lauren Mayberry is their lead singer and writes in the Guardian about the daily abuse she gets from social networks. So sad.
That sense of satisfaction as the robotic female voice kicks in and proclaims ‘workout complete’ has become familiar over the last 9 weeks. Using a RunKeeper beginner 5k training program I’ve went from struggling to complete just 1km without collapsing to running 5k’s, not with ease or quickly, but regularly and unexpectedly looking forward to my next run.
5k run along the canal
The workout program was excellent as it kept the run’s varied and gradually stepped up pace and distance. I’m actually surprised at some of the distances I managed through the 9 weeks with a couple of 10k runs thrown in to the mix although I did feel the impact on my knee’s and legs the following days. However now that the program has come to an end I am left wondering….what now?
The 5k was a target to aim for and I really enjoyed reaching that goal. However I have zero interest in running a 5 or 10k race. Don’t know why but it just doesn’t appeal to me. I do however want to keep on running especially during the autumn and winter months. I can already feel the chill in the air on some of the morning runs, so much so that I popped down to Achilles Heel and picked up some running tights. That’s something I never expected to be buying!
I’m sticking with RunKeeper and have selected a fat burning program which I hope has enough variety over the coming weeks to keep me interested. I may also try a parkrun as it’s worked so well for Henry. The aim for the next few weeks is to look at improving my 5k times and keep running regularly which I’m sure will be more challenging as the weather turns but then again, this running lark is weirdly addictive.
Quick post to say I’m finally getting around to removing Feedburner from the blog as well as tidying up a few bits and pieces around the site. When I switched the podcast over earlier this year it seemed to go ok but a few app’s struggled with the change even with the redirect in place at Feedburner’s end. So if you want to guarantee your fix of irregular musings point to http://www.iand.net/feed/. Feedburner will hopefully disappear over the weekend.
Samsung copies much of what Apple does, right down to the S4 being released in Gold, but in so many ways I’m glad they are polar opposite of everything that Apple does.
While it’s been outed for quite a while I’ve kept quiet on iOS 7 but with a release next week here are a few thoughts on what is the biggest change since iOS was first launched.
New Look
Much has been made of the flat design in iOS 7 which I happen to like. Gone are the textures that had become the butt of many a joke to be replaced by a flat colourful operating system. In general use it’s quick although there are a few animations that on first use are lovely touches but soon start to irritate as they get in the way when you just want to do something.
Over the course of the beta’s many of the jarring aspects have been toned down or improved like the ambiguous swipe to unlock that irritated so many pundits. While the design of buttons are flat there is a depth to the overall system in that panels like notifications appear on top of the current display blurring out the background. It’s an effect I really like. Wallpapers are also clearly behind icons and as you move the phone there is a slight animation highlighting the depth with icons and alerts moving slightly. Nice at first but feels a gimmick over time. Speaking of gimmicks, iOS 7 now supports dynamic wallpapers which react to the movement of your phone. Nice on the lock screen but thats about it.
A quick point on the new icons seen throughout iOS 7. Some I really like. Most are ok. A couple I think are so jarring, so much so I was convinced they were placeholders for WWDC and that they would be ‘fixed’ over the coming months. Alas, I was wrong.
iOS 7 icons
The examples above really jar with me in day to day use. They feel amateurish especially Newsstand. I mean, what where they thinking? Game Center – what do the blobs mean? At the end of the day they are only icons but you can’t change them and you see them all the time, constantly niggling away that they look like crap. It’s funny, I never really gave any thought to the previous icons but thats whats a radical change does to you – makes everyone a design critic. Another change is with folders – the old restriction of 16 apps per folder have been removed but less are now displayed on each folder page which I don’t like.
Another tweak is the removal of buttons and also the reduction of touch area’s. It takes a while to get used to and I really think it’s going to hit the casual user. The mums and dads, the grandparents that we’ve all convinced to use iOS devices as they are easy to use. This update is going to take them a fair bit of time to get used to and is probably the biggest risk for Apple but it’s a risk they had to take as iOS was in need of a restart.
New Features
There’s a lot of new in iOS 7 compared to previous releases. Control Center allows you to quickly toggle wi-fi, bluetooth, do not disturb and also launch the camera, a flashlight and control your music. Nice implementation of something that Android users have enjoyed for a few years and great to have in iOS. Notification Center has also been tweaked to surface more relevant content and also make it easier to segregate the many notifications you receive. It will show you upcoming appointments more clearly and also tell you when to set off to meet your appointment on time.
Another updated feature is Multitasking. A new card view allows you to easily swap to applications and dismiss others but iOS 7 promises to analyse your usage and ensure that app’s you use at certain times of the day will already have their feeds updated. Intelligent updates sound great and I’m looking forward to some of my fav app’s being updated to support this. The camera app has been updated and so like every other photo app it now has filters. Who would have thought filters would have become the must have feature. The Photo app also has does a great job of helping to sort your images by grouping photo’s into Years, Collections and Moments. A visual way of browsing through photo’s and it’s one of my favourite new features. They’ve also finally added shared photo streams via iCloud. A no brainer and shouldn’t have needed a new version of iOS to introduce this.
Airdrop finally allows you to share data with those on the same wi-fi network easily. Was a feature of Mountain Lion (maybe even Lion) so good to see it finally coming to iOS. Worth mentioning is iCloud Keychain which is a secure way of sharing passwords, credit cards, logins between your Mac and iOS devices but it’s now marked as coming soon – probably waiting for Mavericks to be released. Facetime now supports audio only calls too – free audio calling!
Finally app’s can now update automatically. Hurrah, although you miss understanding new features if you switch this on.
Updated Applications
All the existing app’s have seen their design changed to support the new look iOS. Some are quite subtle where as others feel very different. Almost all of the app’s have lost the skeuomorphic textures and design that had been favoured by Steve Jobs and Scott Forstall. Calendar, Maps and Weather fit in very well and even the refresh on Safari and Mail has seen some new gestures added to help with the usability of the app’s although Safari has a habit of hiding a lot of the UI which will cause confusion. Thankfully it’s finally got a unified search field. Thanks Chrome ;).
Updated applications in iOS 7
Reminders and Notes have been refreshed but unlike almost everything else have seen a paper texture applied. It looks weird in context with the changes. The Clock app has also seen one radical new feature – the icon is live and shows the current time with a swooping second hand. Mmm…great.
Verdict
So should you update? Well it’s a moot point as most will update over the next few weeks due to iTunes prompts or the pressure of app’s coming out that require iOS 7. On the iPhone 5 iOS 7 is a really nice upgrade. My 3rd gen iPad hasn’t faired so well. There were lots of rumours that iOS 7 on the iPad was ‘behind’. Apple have never demonstrated iOS 7 running on the iPad and there may well be a good reason with everyone pointing to new iPads in October. iOS 7 updated fine on my iPad but any text input, from unlocking the iPad to searching in Safari, adding text in Drafts or creating an e-mail would cause a 15-20 second pause where any typing was detected but the screen would be frozen. I eventually had to wipe and re-install which cured the issue but I’ve had a couple of reboot’s since. I’m convinced that iOS 7 on the iPad is a bit flaky so if you don’t need to I’d wait until the first patch release or the Apple event in October.
In general I like iOS 7 and despite the odd animation it feels fast on the iPhone 5. What I’m most looking forward to are the applications that will take advantage of the new features and also redesign to fit in better with the new look and feel. It will be an expensive few months as the reset will also be followed by many refreshed app’s that won’t be free. Time to get saving or find some iTunes card deals.
New iPhones
A quick word on the new iPhones. The iPhone 5c looks a solid phone but doesn’t interest me as it’s the same as an iPhone 5 with a colourful shell. What is nice is that iOS 7 knows the colour of the phone and selects a suitable background on first launch – makes the hardware look transparent.
The iPhone 5s, while sharing the design of the 5 features a few new features. Fingerprint unlocking is very nice as I unlock my phone so often with a passcode. The camera updates look great especially the slow motion video and the ability to take 10 photo’s per second. 64 bit should herald faster app’s over time and all this without a drop in battery life thanks to a small increase in battery size without any increase in the overall weight of the phone. I’m far more interested in a 64 bit iPad though.
Instead of black and white the 5s comes in white, gold or space grey which reminds me of the original iPhone. There are enough new features that I’m tempted to pick up a white 5s…but there’s still time to change my mind as there are no pre-order options this year. A solid update of a classic phone.
