Missed this yesterday but on the BBC Internet Blog Eric Huggers has posted their intention to adopt open standards for audio and video web content. Specifically AAC and H.264 were mentioned. That means (to me) great Mac support will eventually come and hopefully an end to BBC use of Realaudio. Happy days ahead?
Category: Blog
iPhone Clusterfuck
I’ve had the iPhone almost four weeks now and thought it was time for an update. Well, that’s bollocks really. Yes I’ll detail how it’s been so far but this week has seen a few screw up’s for my iPhone that have left a pretty bad taste. Seen as a whole the iPhone 3G is turning into a clusterfuck for Apple.
The first three weeks of use were very good. The range of app’s in the store is good unlike their stability. However most of the app’s have now had point releases which has improved stability. There’s still an occasional crash but not nearly as many as was seen in the first week. The Apple app’s have all behaved pretty well but with the occasional slowdown and glitch. Texting for example usually works well but every 1 in 5 texts would see the keyboard input lag terribly behind my typing. Restarting the texting app would sort that problem but it was very annoying. Since the 2.0.1 update I’ve not seen the slow keyboard lag again so not sure if it’s coincidence or if it’s actually fixed. As with most Apple updates they don’t detail exactly what’s been fixed, just vaguely write that it addresses numerous bugs.
Speaking of updates, iTunes and the Appstore app should keep your iPhones app’s up to date making management of the software on the phone a trivial task. However I’ve had mixed results with these features over the month. A couple of on iPhone updates via the Appstore have went less than smoothly resulting in the phone crashing. iTunes also seems to get it’s knickers in a twist as to how many updates are available. iTunes tells me I have one update available but on checking properly in iTunes it then say’s there are six updates available (there is actually only two updates I need – the rest I already have) and it also lists the app’s multiple times. Looking in the iTunes folder under Mobile Applications I can see that multiple versions of the app’s are stored but they don’t tie up with the number of updates that iTunes wants to download. Very weird. Downloading just one of the application updates removes all the duplicates for that application so it looks like a graphical glitch only.
Browsing the Appstore via iTunes or on the iPhone is pretty easy but they don’t make it easy to see what’s new. There are almost 1500 app’s now available for the iPhone yet the only way I can see what’s new is to visit iTunes, goto the store and view All iPhone Applications sorted in date order. Unfortunately updated app’s are included in this sort which can make tracking down new app’s tricky. Surely it’s not hard to add a category called New Applications that only lists, you know, new apps? I can make use of third party RSS feeds for new app’s but I shouldn’t have to. Also, there needs to be trial versions of software. If it’s free then it’s fine. I delete it if I don’t like it. But for paid app’s I’d like to try before I buy. Twitterrific and Exposure offer free versions supported by adverts so you can see how good (Exposure) or buggy (Twitterrific) is before parting with cash. There’s a few games also taking this route – cut down free versions to hook you in but the reality is you can see what your getting before you part with some cash.
However as a whole the phone has worked really well. The keyboard input for me is a lot quicker than normal phones, e-mail and Safari browsing is superb and I’ve used the internet on the iPhone lot’s over the last few weeks – so much more than on the old k800i. The media playback can’t be faulted. Calling it a phone is selling it short really. It does so much more than my other phone’s and it’s a lot more convenient to check mail and send out a quick e-mail on the iPhone than it is to launch the laptop or desktop for a quick task. I still think battery life is pretty poor though. It needs to be charged every day if you use it at all. Talking to N95 owner’s that’s what they are used to as well but it feels over the top for me. Oh, how could I forget the backup. It takes waaaaaay to long. Those aside, best phone I’ve owned and I can’t see anything on the market to compete with it. However I then had two separate issues this week that have left me unimpressed.
On Monday I tried to update one of the app’s I had paid for and had been updated. On trying to do this via iTunes or the iPhone’s Appstore I would get an error. On iTunes I would get the following nonsense message:
MZCommerceSoftware.OwnsNoneSoftwareApplicationForUpdate_message
You cannot update this software since you have not owned the major version of this software
Strange. On the iPhone I would get the following different messages. I love that in the first screenshot I’m told to click OK – I’d love to if the button existed.
So for this one app it looks like iTunes/iPhone thought I didn’t own it. The app itself didn’t run either but other app’s seemed to run fine. I put it down to a problem with the application itself and left it at that. On Tuesday 2.0.1 came out so I upgraded hoping it would address a number of issues including fixing the app update issue. How wrong I was.
The update took around 30-40 mins and on restarting all looked well. Swapping between screens showed there was a bit of zip like the forums had suggested. I tried a few text input’s and couldn’t see any lag. I then tried updating the app again – same problem. Now there were a few app’s in iTunes available for update – all reported the same ownership problem. Worse, no third party app on the iPhone worked. Not one. They all launched and then crashed back to the home screen with no error message. Nothing to go on, nothing to check. I looked around the forums and could see other folk with the same issue. I also started digging into the updating problem which seemed to be related to de-authorsing and re-authorising your computer in iTunes. I tried this a few times and it made no difference. I rebooted the Mac and the iPhone – still buggered.
I then checked my purchase history in iTunes. All gone. Nothing. I checked I was logging in properly and that my receipts e-mailed to me were using the same account. They all were. I could now understand why nothing was updating. I wanted to get a free update on a purchased app but iTunes/Appstore on checking my account thinks I haven’t bought it. My receipts and credit card tells me otherwise. I logged the issue with Apple who said they would get back within 48 hours. They eventually did to tell me that this was a serious issue that they want to help me with and it’s been passed on to someone else for assistance. We’ll e-mail you once this has been investigated. Nice. No indication of when to expect that e-mail but take comfort, “Apple wants your iTunes experience to be as enjoyable as possible”.
On searching the forums the app’s not launching and the app’s not updating seemed to be two different issues. Some success was had by people doing a restore. I tried this but it made no difference. In fact the restore was a major pain. It took three attempts before the restore fully worked and took the best part of the morning to get back to the point of having app’s and music/video’s back on the iphone. Not slick at all.
The next way of addressing the launching issue was to remove all your app’s then reinstall. Except I can’t reinstall as I need to buy them to install them (well, the paid ones anyway). I tried the buying just in case it was another crappy dialogue box with the wrong button – I’ve now paid twice for an app so expect a refund. However removing and re-installing a free app got it to work. So the solution to getting an app to launch (if your having this problem) is to remove all app’s in iTunes and also removing them all on the iPhone one at a time, syncing the iPhone, then downloading the app again. Ouch ouch ouch. This is like Windows. This is like a typical support line which wants you to use the disks that came with your computer to wipe, format and start again. Checking the forums this morning and there’s an alleged solution from an Apple rep – http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=7816054#7816054. That’s not a nice solution to work through and I can only hope that the bug(s) that are causing this are being worked on for 2.0.2. I guess it will be hit and miss as to which applications lose saved data. Sigh.
So has my Apple bubble burst? The iPhone is a great piece of technology but it doesn’t measure up to the reliability of the other Apple products I’ve used. iPhone’s OS 2.0 is buggy and really should have been held back for further improvements and testing. 2.0.1 seems to be more stable than 2.0 but it’s hard to see past the problems people are having and think everything is OK. I’ve not even mentioned the issues with MobileMe which resulted in Apple giving all users an extra month free and now the admission from Jobs that MobileMe shouldn’t have launched at the same time as iPhone 3G tell’s me that Apple is stretching itself. What about the reception issues? I know of 2 iPhone 3G owners that have had 3G reception problems that they don’t experience on other phones. What annoy’s the most is that the phone as a whole is great. I can’t see an equivalent on the market that can do all it can despite it’s hardware shortcomings (camera, keyboard etc). The launch issues however are now rumbling into a second month. For customers new to the Apple platform they’ll see this as standard Apple, the way all their products work. Customers that Apple are unlikely to see again unless they get on top of these issues quickly.
I’d still recommend an iPhone but it’s not for everyone and if your in no rush I would wait until nearer Christmas so that the issues can be ironed out. Of course wait until Christmas and you’ll not want to upgrade as there will be a ton of rumours about next years iPhone. So roll on Christmas – maybe I’ll have my iTunes account fixed by then.
Geometry Wars 2
I loved the first Geometry Wars (Retro Evolved to give it it’s full title) which has been out for ages on XBLA. The sequel came out on Wednesday and it easily surpasses the original. Geoms are now dropped by each shot enemy which changes the gameplay ever so slightly. Collect geoms to increase your multiplier. There are also a couple of new enemies. Rockets fire both horizontally and vertically across the playfield which I’m sure is added to stop you rolling clockwise through the game racking up points. Local multi-player has been added but the biggest addition is there are now six different game modes.
- Deadline: Score as many points in three minutes. You get unlimited lives but if you want a decent score don’t die.
- King:One life and no bombs. Safety zones appear randomly which enemies cannot enter while the player can only fire and cannot collect Geoms while inside a zone. The zone shrinks and disappears a short time after it is entered, forcing you to move zone to zone. Think strategic chicken.
- Evolved: Similar in style to Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved, score as many points as possible with no time limit. The old classic but with more enemies on screen than before. I think.
- Pacifism: One life and cannot shoot. Fly through gates to destroy nearby enemies, and earn extra bonus points by flying through gates in rapid succession.
- Waves: You have one life and must avoid and destroy waves of rockets that fly horizontally and vertically from the edges of the playfield.
- Sequence: Twenty levels, each with a predetermined pattern of enemies. You have thirty seconds to destroy all of the enemies in each level. If the player loses a life, they are taken directly to the next level, but the game ends if the player loses all of their lives.
Each of these is pretty unique and add’s a depth and variety that the first game didn’t have. Also polished is the graphics and sound. Screenshots are pretty pointless as they don’t show the game in motion. When the screen is busy the game looks amazing. So colourful, no slowdown, all in HD. Sound has also stepped up from the original – each mode has it’s own soundtrack which fit so well, especially deadline.
However Geometry Wars claim to fame was it’s gameplay and that’s been retained…in spades. Even more so with the new modes which only add to it’s charms. There’s also some subtle little touches that add to the game. It supports online scoreboards which can be accessed as usual but while playing each of the modes your friends highest scores, not yours, alongside their name is displayed at the top right of the screen. Just to niggle you that bit more as you try and better them. Genius.
This game is like a drug. Each and every time you have just one more go, each and every time thinking you can better that score. For me it’s as pure a game as you can get. Simple, addictive and great to play. Remember that this only costs 800 gamerpoints…£6 or so. Unmissable.
Monkey Magic
The Olympics are only a few days away. I love the Olympics – so many different sports, so many heroes and increasingly more villains. The TV coverage by the BBC is usually excellent and this will be the first to be broadcast in HD. I’m already impressed with the marketing and titles that the beeb are to use:
They were produced by Jamie Hewlett and Damon Albarn and are so different from the norm. That’s a good different by the way as there are lot’s of moan’s from traditionalists about the titles. Good to see the normally staid BBC doing something different. Let’s hope the GB team can be as successful. More importantly, let’s hope China do a good job of hosting the games.
Already there is doubts being cast on the full internet access that journalists were promised. Will they all stick to sport reporting or try and use this opportunity to report on what China really is like?
From the iphone
So I’m writing this from the iPhone. The WordPress app for the iPhone came out this morning which I installed over 3G onto the phone. I can now write up posts on the move, adding tags and categories too.
Seems to be working well so far although will only truly work if it posts to the blog successfully. The over the air app install was a bit hairy though. Two resets required before it finally installed. That’s what I get for adopting early.
iPhone One Week On
One week done and it’s time to share some thoughts. In no particular order:
- The iPhone 3G uses a lot of battery. For the first few days I had to recharge daily. However with some careful management that seems to be stretching to two days now. The biggest difference for me was made by managing 3G and wi-fi networks. At home I use wi-fi, elsewhere I use 3G/Edge. So at home i switch off 3G, outside home I switch off wi-fi and only switch on 3G when I actually want to use faster access. Management of these settings has made the biggest difference to the battery life.
- The on screen keyboard is really good. Much faster than I imagined and great for texts, e-mails, tweets although I’m sure a long blog post/document creation would be pretty painful.
- iPod is great. Coverflow really works well on a screen this size. Music sounds much better than my old iPod.
- Some of the AppStore app’s have been pretty buggy. I guess that’s to be expected but it’s still annoying when you launch an app and it either repeatedly crashes or, worse, requires an iPhone reset.
- Call quality is excellent and taking phone calls while listening to iPod works well.
- Twinkle appeared on the app store yesterday and is a great Twitter client. Looks good and has a nice location based feature where people in 10, 25 mile radius to you can see your tweets and easily respond. For me it’s work so much better than Twitterrific which is buggy and allow in comparison.
- App’s launch quickly and it’s easy to move between sending a text, getting mail, browsing and then back to some video’s or music.
- When I’ve been typing I occasionally notice some lag. It’s like the key’s are taking a half second or so to register and then appear. Nothing to bad but there are reports on the net than some people are seeing scary 20 second delays in typing. Hopefully these issues are firmware fixable.
- Love the text’s layout. Just makes so much sense when you see then laid out as an iChat sesion.
Great phone and despite it’s shortcomings it’s the best I’ve owned. It’s easy to do and does so much more than other phone’s despite it having inferior hardware.
Thank You SuperDuper!
Since I bought my Mac I have backed it up using SuperDuper! which was one of the recommended Mac backup applications. I’ve tested the backup to make sure I could boot from it but I’d never needed to use it in anger. Until today.
I had to reboot the iMac. It came up fine displaying the Apple logo and the spinner. Then the hard disk switched off and I was left looking at the logo and the spinner. That’s not right. Switched off and on and it was the same again. Feck. Another couple of goes and it was still the same. Time to reset PRAM. No difference. NVRAM? Still buggered. I booted from the Leopard DVD and ran a disk check. No issues. I ran a disk repair – no difference. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. I did some surfing from the laptop and couldn’t really find any other step’s that would help. So it was time to finally use the SuperDuper! backup. It was time to restore!
I erased the disk and restored from the firewire drive. A couple of hours later I rebooted and I was back in business. Kind off. The backup was taken before the iPhone, iTunes and MobileMe updates and one they were on I synced with the iPhone…which wiped all the app’s from it. I had to download them, then install and set them up again. Annoying but nothing compared to the hassle and data loss had I not had that backup.
So thank you SuperDuper! for saving me tonight and hopefully this is a small lesson for anyone reading who doesn’t take regular backups. It also show’s that you should never assume a Mac is full proof. I just hope it was a one off glitch I experienced and it’s not a sign of impending hardware problems.
Some more app’s anyone?
More iPhone chat unfortunately. I threw on three more app’s tonight and all of them are working really well. The first is Vicinity. Using the location services on the iPhone it works out where you are and provides easy access to a list of local services.
The first list is to Wikipedia providing snippets to articles from around your locale with links to the full Wikipedia articles. You can also see a list of nearby places. This is a mish mash of all the different important buildings and services that are close to you. You can then see different services in more detail – banks, hotels, restaurants. The list generated was pretty accurate for me and selecting a restaurant allowed you to easily call it and then get a map with directions from your current location. This will be really handy for me as I’m working away from home quite a bit more. Couple of issues though. The list of services is often missing results and those returned can be out of date. Secondly, reading the reviews on the Appstore shows that it’s results are very hit and miss. While it’s only £1.79 to buy, it would be nice to have a demo for some of these app’s.
Next up is Tuner from Nullriver (the people behind the excellent Connect360 and Medialink). Tuner has one role in life – let you browse and listen to internet music streams. The range of streams is massive. In fact it’s pretty bewildering just how many there are but you can bookmark favourites you find over time. Streaming worked really well over wifi and was pretty good on 3G too. What’s really nice is that for £2.99 I have easy access to almost any music I want.
Finally, some humble pie. I posted at the weekend that I was tired of last.fm and didn’t really mind not being able to scroble from the iPhone. The last bit is true but the free last.fm app for the iPhone is superb. Amazing. My favourite iPhone app so far. You login in to your last.fm profile and via the app you can listen to a radio station based on your previous listens. You can also see what your friends have been listening too and listen to stations based on their tastes. What I really liked was browsing to charts, seeing artists and listening to music from them or similar to them. It worked really fast on wifi with small buffer pauses only. On 3G it worked but was less effective. Buffering was longer and moving to the next track started the buffering process again. But the app is free, the music is free so hard to be too picky. No scrobling either but I’m sure that’s down to the background process nonsense from Apple. Music can be bought from the iTunes store with ease if you like what you hear. Did I mention this was free?
Do you need Last.fm and Tuner? Probably not but each does generate different results and Tuner wasn’t to expensive. Lot’s of travel tomorrow so be interesting to see how the iPhone performs away from home with more usage and a different, less populated, location.
Weight Update
Back in December I posted the last update on my weight loss. I’d lost over two stones and decided it was time to at least post an update, set a target and give me something to aim for. Well, it’s just over 10 months since I started trying to lose some weight and I’ve hit another milestone.
In total I’ve lost 25.5kg, 56.2 pounds or 4 stones 2 pounds. The fourth stone was a lot more difficult than the others but in truth the biking has calmed down recently so I kind of know why. There’s also been some blips along the way (Christmas, some illnesses etc) but overall there’s a nice shape to the graph above.
So my total weight is now 98.6kg or just over 15 1/2 stones. Another 1.5kg will see me reach my true target, a BMI under 30 which would mean (according to the BMI scale) that I’m no longer obese but overweight. To some reading this that will sound crazy but for me it’s a massive difference to what I was less than a year ago.
What brings it home are things like clothes – some of them are hanging of me now and look really baggy. My waist size has dropped a few sizes and the belts are to big now. The neighbours had their two kids in yesterday and their combined weight is 4.5 stones, just over what I’ve lost. When you see the physical space that they take up and that has disappeared of me over the last 10 months. Well, it made me smile. Reactions from friends and colleagues have also been good, especially those I don’t see often.
I also feel a lot fitter. Two hours of non stop badminton holds no fears, something I couldn’t say last September. On the bike I can now push for a solid hour cycling for just under 19 miles. Some might laugh but it works for me and I’m pretty pleased the way my weight loss and fitness is progressing.
So what next? Well I expect to lose that kilo and a half over the next 3-4 weeks. I thought I would really struggle to hit this target but it’s not been too bad. So I’ll crack on and try to lose another stone by year end. And then? Maintain it!
iPhone 3G – First Impressions
So after Friday’s fiasco yesterday went a lot smoother and I picked up my iPhone without a hitch. Apple called, I went in to the store, was taken by the queue’s and processed within 10 minutes. Sweet but a shame that couldn’t have happened on Friday. So how is the iPhone? Beyond expectations so far.
Setup was straightforward and unlike Friday Apple weren’t activating in store. I popped in the sim, plugged the iPhone into the dock and registered the iPhone via iTunes. O2 then sent three texts with O2 logins, passwords and welcomes. The phone came half charged so you could use it right away. That all took 5 mins. Using the touchscreen for the first time is a joy. The phone feels great in the hand. It’s not too sllppy but it does grease up very quickly. The screen is easily cleaned but the back isn’t. It collects fingerprints and dust/dirt which is hard to remove. Anyone who has a PS3 will know what I mean. I’ll be picking up or ordering a case protector – probably won’t bother with a screen protector though. It looks really durable and if it’s like the last iPhone will be good at resisting scratches. What’s also notable is how loud the speakers are and how clear the reception is. I was impressed and according to Shakeel it’s a step up form the original iPhone. So what did I do first? Hit the Appstore.
I guess I went a little bit crazy and picked up a fair few app’s. I did this via iTunes and they sync’d quickly…but then again they are all pretty small. Since that first splurge I’ve downloaded via the Appstore application on the iPhone. Works really well even over 3G. The nice thing is the Appstore will tell you when updates for your purchases are available. Previous phones have depended on me to update the software which I never did. So, some quick thoughts on the apps.
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