Ian Dick

So I bought an Apple TV

Hardly a new device and probably the wrong time to buy an Apple product just two days before WWDC, but I purchased an Apple TV and really only for one reason. Plex, or more specifically PlexConnect. The most notable feature of the latest Apple TV is that it cannot be jailbroken which has lead to the unusual situation that older models are worth 2-3 times more on eBay as they can be jailbroken and you can then install app’s like Plex on it.

So I was surprised last week when catching up on my feeds that PlexConnect had been developed and announced on the Plex blog. It was a hack, and undoubtedly a hack that Apple will stop with a future firmware update but it was enough for me to stump up the cash and give it a whirl. Setup is pretty easy. Set your Apple TV to a fixed IP address, set your Plex computer to a fixed IP address, change your Apple TV DNS to point to your Plex computer and then launch PlexConnect. Boom. (photo’s are pretty poor – hastily snapped from my iPhone as I couldn’t be bothered getting DSLR, tripod etc – blame my cold!)

The reason it’s a hack is that you access Plex via the trailers app on your Apple TV. PlexConnect works as follows:

re-use an already available app (like YouTube, Vimeo, Apple Trailers, …)
re-route the request to your local Plex Media Server
re-work the reply to fit into AppleTV’s XML communication scheme
let iOS do the rest

So far I’ve been impressed. All movies and TV shows have worked without issue. It’s not got the full Plex experience but it’s so close that it’s not really noticeable and all from a £99 tiny box with a dead simple remote. I sold my Mac Mini late last year and the one thing I really missed was having Plex – the bluray player I picked up is great for blurays and for playing content accessed via USB, but streaming is awful.

Some quick thoughts on the Apple TV itself. It’s tiny and quiet and the remote feels nice in the hand, is simple and probably does just enough considering what the Apple TV offers. It’s very much tied to the Apple ecosystem and I guess that what frustrates so many people. It’s a platform waiting to be exploited and the hardware is fairly capable – it’s playing 1080p without much trouble. I do think it’s a next gen device though before we see an App Store. It’s weak link is the remote. It allows you to browse around apps easily enough but thats about it. It wouldn’t act as a good interface for games, browsers etc. You can use the remote application on iOS to control the Apple TV, but I don’t think thats a route Apple would go down – buy a device for £99 and spend upwards of £200 to get a touch controller.

The front end feels old compared to Plex, XBMC etc and allows for very little customisation. You can move the app’s around and thats pretty much it. One way to remove apps is to enable Parental Controls and hide the applications. Makes for a slightly cleaner interface but with so little on the front end it makes only a minor difference.

Parental controls enabled - you can hide unused icons! — Parental controls enabled – you can hide unused icons!

Music playback from a local library or iCloud is fine although again the interface feels simple and lacking some options and customisation. It is nice to be easily able to play podcasts on the TV again. Airplay also works really well – it’s great to throw a video onscreen rather than view on the iPad.

Overall I’m pleased with PlexConnect. It’s early days for it but it already works well for me. Your mileage will depend on where you host your Plex library. Some NAS devices aren’t supported or will struggle if they need to transcode the file to display on the Apple TV. If it wasn’t for Plex though I’d get a limited amount of usage out of the Apple TV. It still feels like a cut down product – Apple could and some day will do so much more with the television market, undoubtedly not with this generation of Apple TV. I really look forward to the day that there is an App Store on an Apple TV where we can buys apps like Plex and have access to a wide variety of apps and games. Until then, PlexConnect will do nicely.

20

8th May 1993. 20 years ago today. 20 years since my Dad passed away.

He’d suffered for over 5 months with throat cancer and the treatment meant day to day living was getting tougher and tougher. It got to the point that the end was inevitable and was in many ways a relief. It was horrible seeing him suffer so much and just fade away in front of my eyes – can’t imagine how he felt through it all.

I was 19 at the time and finishing off second year at Glasgow University. For me it was all a bit of a blur and if it wasn’t for Hamid and Shak I’d have struggled to get through it all. Uni was a distraction as I was two weeks from exams so I knuckled down and cracked on. I didn’t want to let my Mum and Dad down but it was tough on my Mum as she took on a lot after that until I picked up a job and started to bring in some cash. I also wasn’t the best at speaking to her. In many ways I’ve not changed and still bottle up my feelings.

This anniversary more than any other is in my mind. My Dad’s missed over half my life now. Missed graduating, my first job, my first car, moving home and so much more – time really does fly when you start to look back. He also died young – he was only 52 and later this year I’ll be 40 – only 12 years younger than when he died. Makes you think, well makes me think anyway. It was one of the reasons I kicked of the weight loss a few years back.

With all that in mind I keep coming back to Regrets of the Dying. That will not be me. I will also never forget what my friends did for me back then. Who knows what would have happened without them.

Contrast

Apple and Samsung take contrasting approaches to advertising for two similar products – the iPhone 5 and the Galaxy S4.

Apple’s advert is aspirational, focussing on the user and how they get most out of the device and it’s app’s. It appeals to different type’s, from runners to food bloggers, travellers to kids. For me it’s one of their best adverts in years.

Samsung focus on their product but can’t do so without some unfunny dialogue and dinging the competition. Comes across as cheap. Maybe they aren’t trying to target me but that style of advert is a total turn off.

While Samsung have consistently copied the competition when it comes to their products I’m glad that hasn’t extended to their advertising campaigns. Yet.

Mac Updates

I picked up my iMac back in 2011. As usual with Apple products I ordered the smallest RAM possible and picked up some Crucial to take it to 16GB. At the same time a colleague was also buying an iMac so I passed on the Apple RAM at a low cost to him as it was no use to me. That was my first mistake.

Over the last year I was getting infrequent crashes, every 2-3 weeks, almost always when iTunes was running. I put it down to software and looking at the crash dumps I was always drawn to a graphics card driver issue. I dismissed it as that, hoping an OS X update at some point would resolve it. It didn’t. That was my second mistake.

At Christmas I dug deeper, downloading a memory module checker and checking the RAM chips individually. Turns out I had some faulty RAM and that was something that I had introduced to the system. I bought some replacements (RAM is ridiculously cheap now) and in the last three months I have had zero crashes. Happy days but a lesson learnt. I’d still recommend buying a Mac with the minimum amount of RAM assuming you can easily replace it, but keep the Apple original in case your replacement chips are faulty and if you ever have to return the Mac to Apple.

One aspect I’ve loved with the iMac is the screen. 27 inch and with a resolution of 2560×1440 it’s been a joy to use. Despite it’s size though, I’ve often wished for more. A second screen would really help day to day and especially with the podcast. After thinking and researching for a while I finally plumped for the Asus PB278Q.

Why do manufacturers persist with tacky stickers?

I’m quite picky about the kit I use and while it would have been fine I’d have always been a bit ticked off with a physically smaller second screen or one with a lower resolution. The Asus is a 27 inch screen which is the same size as the iMac and also shares the same resolution – 2560×1440. Another obvious choice would have been the Apple Thunderbolt Display but that costs £899 and has no flexibility when it comes to adjusting screen height. The Asus is fully adjustable and can be rotated 90 degrees too. It also cost £467 from Amazon which is a massive difference to the Apple Thunderbolt. Other options were from Dell and Samsung. Although Dell have been making monitors for years looking at recent reviews and also customer comments on Amazon there seems to be an issue with quality control and although most were happy with the product, there were too many who had real issues with their monitors. As for Samsung, it didn’t look the best, the Asus had far better reviews…and it was a Samsung :-). First impressions out the box were good. Design wasn’t a patch on the iMac but it was sturdy with a good base. The only initial negative was the garish stickers that PC manufacturers love to put on cases, laptops and monitors. Thankfully they were easy to remove leaving just the button indicators, the ASUS logo and the unnecessary HDMI and DisplayPort logo’s on the front. When will they learn. The material is black matte plastic and although the bezel is a touch larger than I would have liked, it does melt into the background in use.

iMac and Asus – look small in the pic but they are both 27 inch screens

The Asus comes with lots of connectivity options – HDMI, DisplayPort, VGA and DVI and admirably comes with a full set of cables in the box. However for the iMac I needed an mini-DisplayPort to DisplayPort but there are some great sub £10 options on Amazon. Setup was easy. Plugin the cable, power up the monitor and the iMac auto detected the screen and enabled an extended desktop giving a total resolution of 5120×1440. Thats a lot of pixels and brings me to my biggest fear when it comes to screens. Dead pixels.

I shouldn’t really check as chances are in day to day use it would be unnoticeable…unless you go hunting, but hunting I went. Happily the Asus has no dead or stuck pixels. The screen itself is more matte than the iMac so reflections are much reduced. As for the screen itself I think it’s excellent. Clear and crisp, no noticeable lag with my ageing eyes and I can use it easily all day long without any tiredness. Applications were well sized, nothing too small or unclear and full screen video was crisp and clear – no smearing that I could see. I don’t really game too much on the Mac although have been bitten by the emulator bug over the last couple of weeks, but that’s for another post, but the games I tried all played well.

The menu controls are easy to use and give you full control over screen colour, brightness etc and also allow you to flick between a number of presets. It was straightforward to match the iMac display so it looked roughly the same to my eye’s. You can also control audio levels as the monitor has built in speakers which are ok, but nothing spectacular. You can alter menu positions, menu language and also turn off the power light indicator which makes the display on the front of HDMI and DisplayPort logo’s even more annoying. I might have to find some black tape. Apart from that I’ve nothing more to say technically about the monitor and I’ll point you to TFT Centrals review of the PB278Q which is incredibly detailed and covers all aspects of the monitor. Suffice to say, they liked it.

I’ve had the monitor for a week now and love it. It’s a luxury purchase but delivers a big gain in productivity. 2 years ago I was sure I didn’t need anything more than a 27 inch monitor, I’m now pretty sure that I don’t need a third monitor…but in 5 years time will it be two retina monitors? Time will tell.

Podcasts

I was asked recently what podcasts I listen to, so in alphabetical order…

Above & Beyond: Group Therapy (iTunes link) – Weekly 2 hour mix show, highlighting the finest in trance. Great for getting through boring tasks at work. We all have them!
Accidental Tech Podcast (iTunes link) – Relatively new technology (especially Apple) podcast featuring Marco Arment, Casey Liss and John Siracusa. Can go deep on topics but really enjoyable so far.
All About Android (iTunes video link) – Weekly show that features news and app’s from the world of Android. Great way of keeping up to date.
Answer Me This! (iTunes link) – Helen and Olly, answer me this….funny and rude – a must listen.
Before You Buy (iTunes video link) – Gadget review show which can be a bit hit and miss depending on reviewer.
CMD+Space (iTunes link) – A tech interview show from Myke Hurley. Had a great run of guests making this a really enjoyable show – Myke has real skill at getting the most out of his guests too.
The Crossover (iTunes link) – Hosted by Dan Benjamin and featuring a variety of hosts from 5by5 discussing…anything. Great episodes so far.
Fighting Talk (iTunes link) – Colin Murray hosts, 4 guests from the world of sport and 50 minutes of comedy gold.
Foundation (iTunes video link) – Kevin Rose interviews founders, entrepreneurs and business leaders in the tech community. Roughly a monthly release cycle, Rose has had access to some great people over the years.
Frame Rate (iTunes video link) – How to watch Internet TV and what’s worth watching right now. Tom Merritt and Brian Brushwood are great hosts.
Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 (iTunes link) – Topical news quiz featuring The News Quiz or The Now Show. Much prefer the News Quiz hosted by Sandi Toksvig.
In Beta (iTunes link) – Podcast on tech culture, open source and web apps. Not just a tech news podcast and some interesting topics covered.
Invisible Walls (iTunes video link) – Videogames podcast, a bit hit and miss but best of a bad bunch.
Mac Power Users (iTunes link) – Hosts Katie Floyd and David Sparks take one topic each week and discuss it in detail. Mac focussed and some great software links and tips to get the best out of your Mac.
MacBites (iTunes link) – MacBites is hosted by Elaine Giles and Mike Thomas and is that rare beast – a UK podcast! Informative but great fun at the same time – I love it. Weekly but with frequent breaks, their absence kicked me into doing DigitalOutbox.
Macbreak Weekly (iTunes video link) – A once classic podcast when Merlin Mann took part, stil watchable thanks to Andy Ihnatko and Rene Ritchie. Can go long…too long.
The New Disrupters (iTunes link) – Hosted by Glenn Fleishman this podcast focusses on how the economy is changing and each week he interviews a disrupter who is taking advantage of the new economy.
On The Verge (iTunes video link) – Monthly video magazine from The Verge, part gadget reviews, part chat show with great guests.
Shift Run Stop (iTunes link) – Much loved and much missed, a geek/comedy podcast hosted by Leila Johnston and Roo Reynolds. Tech, gaming, geek culture, UK based and two delightful hosts. And fun.
The Talk Show (iTunes link) – Hosted by John Gruber each week he discusses mostly Apple related subjects with a guest or two. Miss the old days with just him and Dan Benjamin.
Tech Weekly (iTunes link) – Well produced weekly tech podcast from the Guardian.
TEDTalks (iTunes video link) – TED talks, some great, some not so but always informative
This Week in Google (iTunes video link) – Jeff Jarvis and Gina Trapani discuss Google and cloud computing in general. Jeff is great – really refreshing voice.
This Week in TECH (iTunes video link) – Can go long and is very much dependant on the guests but is generally a good round up on the weeks tech news.
Top Shelf (iTunes video link) – David Pierce from The Verge looks at a variety of tech and gadget issues. New but good so far.
Unprofessional (iTunes link) – Dave Wiskus, Lex Friedman and guests discuss anything. Very good.
The Vergecast (iTunes video link) – Weekly tech and gadget show from The Verge.
The Wired.co.uk Podcast (iTunes link) – Weekly tech and science podcast from Wired UK that keeps getting better and better.

So thats what I currently subscribe too. I dip into others as they are linked or mentioned elsewhere and of course I couldn’t write a post on podcasts without mentioning DigitalOutbox in which you can hear my good self and friends ramble on about the weeks tech news but with a distinctly UK focus.

I love finding new great podcasts so if you think there is something I would like please leave a link in the comments.

Bombermine

I’m really enjoying Bombermine. Take Bomberman, tweak the rules, make it playable via a browser….and allow up to 1000 players to join a room. It is so much fun and makes me yearn for games of old.

Bomberman more than any other game reminds me of my University years. A Super Nintendo with a multi-tap and usually Richard, Lewis and Dave (speedy boots) all suspecting that I was cheating to get the hand each and every time I was golden bomber. Honest – no cheating:-)

So Bombermine can lag sometimes and it can be really random at times but I was enjoying it all the same. Then it hit me. It’s running in the browser. A browser that can go full screen. Full screen on my iMac is 2560×1440. It wouldn’t still be playable would it?

I’ve uploaded that at full resolution so if you can view it at it’s native resolution rather than 1080p. It’s amazing when you see so much running while remembering it’s all in the browser. If you don’t want to watch the video, at least click on the screen below to see it in all its glory. There’s also some support for gamepads.

Click to view full screen - looks great — Click to view full screen – looks great

It’s given me an itch to crack out the emulators and pay some classic games – Pilotwings, F-Zero, Zelda etc. When games were fun.

Adverts

I know Google love their adverts but I wasn’t expecting this in Chrome.

Google Glass would be a whole load less appealing if adverts popped up as you walked down the street. Of course, that will never happen.

Pebble Dashed

The Pebble was the first campaign I backed on Kickstarter. It was April 2012 and the Pebble was a breath of fresh air. A watch that would talk to your phone, iOS or Android, that was updatable, not too large, had a good battery life and was affordable at around $100. There wasn’t much not to like so I backed it without much hesitation. It was geeky but I love geek toys!

Despite missing a couple of delivery dates the Pebble team have delivered on their oversubscribed Kickstarter and on Thursday my watch finally arrived. Kudus to the team as they have kept everyone up to date on progress their problems and issues of scale that I’m sure they didn’t expect just under a year ago. So after a couple of days how does the Pebble deliver?

The Good
The watch itself is light and feels good in the hand. It has one button the right hand side and three buttons on the left. The buttons are used to navigate around the menus, dismiss notifications, turn on the backlight etc. The buttons need a firm press to operate which I’d expect to ease over time but gives confidence that the watch is well made.

The Pebble has to well made as it’s waterproof hence the contact power connector. Powered via USB the cable attaches via magnets and powers the Pebble quickly. Battery is rated at 7 days and as I haven’t had it that long it’s hard to know if it’s accurate – it’s still going strong after three days so the signs are good.

The Pebble is easy to connect to your phone on iOS or Android. Via Bluetooth you pair the phone with the Pebble and…thats it really. On iOS you need to make sure that Notifications are enabled and setup properly. For me it’s worked well but it’s a bit of a pain and not the best setup experience. That’s not Pebble’s fault – iOS is more locked down than Android so you won’t get everything you expect. It can also disable if the devices go out of range which I’ve seen once. Pebble have a useful page to help with iOS setup. The music app worked really well – skip tracks, pause – all good.

On Android the Pebble app works differently in that everything routes through the app and it runs permanently. More seems to flow through on Android but it does feel a bit of a hack to get the most out of Pebble.

Speaking of hacks to get all iOS notifications then you can jailbreak your iPhone and from Cydia install BTNotificationEnabler by Conrad Kramer. So instead of just Messages, Phone and Music you will get Tweets, mails – everything. It’s an impressive hack and with the recent evasi0n jailbreak it’s an easy method of improving the Pebble on iOS.

The Not So Good
The screen is clear but duller than I expected. The backlight helps but switches off quickly. It’s also quite blue with the backlight on but thats not a biggie. The viewing angle is narrower than I’d expected but really is fine, just not great.

The strap is a bit industrial but as it’s a standard size it’s easily replaced. Also industrial is the Pebble itself. While not massive like some of the GPS walking/running watches it’s quite tall. Certainly on my wrist I found it quite uncomfortable especially under a work shirt finding it awkward to see the full notification and then clear it.

Pebble Icon

Pebble gets it update via the software installed on the phone. With an update every couple of weeks planned by the Pebble team you can be sure of a watch that will only get better. That doesn’t get away from the fact that at the moment it’s use is limited. The one feature that really appealed to me was RunKeeper support which unfortunately isn’t yet available. In fact from the Pebble front page it’s only notifications and Music that is available.

The menu on the Pebble itself is at best utilitarian but is in need of updating. Clock faces are listed in the top menu alongside Music and Settings. The faces really need their own menu as adding a new clock face clutters up the menu.

One last software issue is that there is no battery indicator. While the watch lasts for seven days without an indicator you have no real option but to charge more often than is probably necessary. Seemingly the battery only appears when it needs charged, but thats no use if you are away for a couple of days and it appears on the second day. For Pebble to succeed it has to be trusted and I can see a future update enabling a visibile battery indicator, or at least a way of checking it in the menus.

Verdict
The Pebble is a great watch. It has so much potential and for a first product the team should be rightly proud. However now that they are shipping hardware in volume they need to focus on delivering app’s and polishing the software. Without that users will quickly tire and the danger is an Apple, Google or Samsung will come along and almost instantly kill their product.

For me the Pebble in it’s current form has parallels to the first iPhone. It was clearly a wonderful phone but without 3G and app’s it wasn’t enough for me to buy…and thats how I feel about the Pebble. Right now the form factor and usability coupled with the lack of app’s means it’s not for me so I’ve sold mine on eBay. However I wouldn’t rule out picking up a future Pebble or smart watch from another provider. Imagine a watch that could do everything that the Pebble does coupled with a Fitbit and a slightly better screen. Add in a touch screen and I’d be first in line. It will be interesting to see where the wearables sector grows to over the next 2-3 years and whether it’s a market just not for geeks. Is the smartphone good enough for the majority of users?

Excuses Excuses

I need another app. Something simpler, something that I can access anywhere. Something to manage my to-do’s. Also need to get my notes sorted, lists etc etc. So I started looking. Maybe Wunderlist, maybe a return to Remember the Milk but nothing seemed to stick. I then read that Apple were doing a promotion on productivity app’s. Maybe I should try Things now that they’ve got cloud syncing sorted?

Does anyone think that this is a great design for an online store? So ugly. Sort it Apple.

Bollocks. Total and utter bollocks.

Instead of, you know, actually doing stuff with the app’s I’ve got I’m pissing around procrastinating. It’s a trap I’ve fell into before and it’s easily done. Mess around looking for a better tool rather than using what I’ve got. Or stopping to use duplicate app’s and settling down on a few core tools.

So Omnifocus will be used for to-do management. It’s iPad app is far better than the Mac client but version 2 is coming soon (and if you are interested in giving it a try there’s a temporary licence available from Omni while waiting for version 2). As for read it later services, Pocket is now my only app. More versatile than Instapaper and available everywhere. Pinboard has become my link saver of choice. Clean and fast and again there are clients on all platforms plus the web. Finally Evernote is for everything else. PDF’s, manuals, guide’s, recipes, audio notes, web pages, scans…the list is endless and I’m making full use of my premium account.

While I’ll still take a passing interest in similar tools I’ll spend more time being productive rather than shifting from app to app. As a certain Raven Storm used to say, focus…or was it concentrate!

2013

Another year has dawned but unlike previous years no resolutions from me. Last years were all a fail due to a variety of reasons so thats brought my public declarations to a crashing halt. The good news is that I weigh less than I did a year ago. Just. The continual weight challenge is still on.

So Happy New Year and all the best for 2013…and if you missed the soundtrack from the fireworks display at London last night then enjoy this. Capped of a great year to be British.