Willow Design

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You’ll be aware of the UK launch of the Apple iPAD TODAY, no doubt if you saw the news last night you’ll have heard that the unit is available from today and that they’ve sold a million in the states.

Poor old Beeb, that’s ancient news and a quick look on the web will add at least 50% to that figure! Also they won’t have enough units to keep up with demand so expect delays! If you’re planning a trip to the Apple store I’d ring first! There are 6 models broken into two sets, the first set of 16gig, 32 gig and 64 gig have WIFI and motion sensing only, the second similar set add 3g and GPS into the mix – and of course the cost rises accordingly. Prices will start at £429 (including VAT) for the perfectly capable 16Gig WIFI model.

Meanwhile the iTunes store is up and running, I have had the American version of the iPad since it’s launch over there and everything’s working a treat. If you want to keep up with the latest apps I suggest you take a look at AppShopper, a nicely laid out website that’s easy to use. It has both iPhone and iPad apps and you can select both or just iPad apps.

Apple’s PAGES Word Processor is now available (as of a few days ago) and you’ll be needing that if you want to do any word-processing on the unit.

If you’re thinking of taking the plunge, remember, this isn’t a laptop, it won’t run Microsoft software! It runs only what you can get in the iTunes App store – but as they have countless thousands of Apps in there, some free, some a few pounds, you should find just about anything you need.

Some pros and cons for those of you looking at this miraculous unit for the first time:

The iPad+ Apps CAN:

• View pictures, videos and play tunes
• Read Word, Excel, PDF and many more document formats.
• Read and write Emails.
• Play games (but only the countless games in the App Store).
• Talk to Bluetooth headsets and keyboards out-of-the-box.
• View YouTube video
• View the BBC iPlayer (new and VERY good quality !!)
• Handle TV (tvcatchup) and radio (tunein radio)
• Run Skype
• Provide weather reports (the weather channel)
• Search maps (google maps)
• Control your Sky+ box (Sky+)
• Share 3g/WIFI with many phones (Joikuspot on phone)
• Record audio
• Handle social networks (many Apps)
• Run for up to 10 hours without mains power
• Emulate iPod

The iPad CAN’T:

• Let you access all it’s memory like a disk. Memory is split up into application spaces and of course the place you store your videos, pictures and music. I’ve found no way to “see” this as a single disk drive.
• Run Microsoft software. It is not a laptop.
• Handle USB disks and cameras directly.
• Run FLASH video (though YouTube and iPhone are supported – see CAN).
• Run WiFi super-reliably (sure it runs WIFI but it breaks occasionally – soon to be fixed)
• Share WIFI with your iPhone (deliberate and stupid move)
• Take pictures or video (no camera)

I hope this information helps you make a decision. Am I happy I bought an iPad?  Most definitely YES. Would I pay the extra for the 3G version? No. Am I happy with 32Gig? Can’t even start to fill it up so the base model will do for many people. Music and video lovers with massive collections may opt for the larger models.

Peter Scargill

To order these units online I BELIEVE you go here http://store.apple.com/uk

p.s. If you want to know more about using the iPad, for example with a 3G dongle – see my other articles….

Comparing Android and the iPhone/iPad operating system

Using the iPad with a separate 3G source like an iPhone, MS Smartphone or dongle SIM

With the launch of the iPAD just around the corner in the UK, you might think that there are plenty of WIFI access points to use it with, bearing in mind that the basic unit will NOT allow tethering to your iPhone…..

Well, that’s a worry because the government is doing it’s best to screw up WIFI access in the UK

On the other hand there are signs of common sense when it comes to the IMPLEMENTATION of the Digital Economy Bill (DEB) – but only very thin on the ground at the moment..

Of interest, what of those who buy one of those 3G access points, I refer to the likes of the Solwise 3GWIFIMRW wall server unit. You plug in your 3G dongle and it serves up IP addresses you can use yourself or share with others for a small meeting. Technically that makes you an ISP!!! When the iPAD takes off you can be sure that gadgets like this and the even simpler ones offered by others will take off – or will they – it all depends on how the press plays the DEB.

I recently received an email addressed to myself and half of the western world. It began “URGENT!!! PLEASE CIRCULATE to your friends…..” before going on to describe an attachment which would “burn the whole hard disk C of your computer”.

It’s not the first time of course and it won’t be the last time – I’m sure many of you have had these. Nine times out of 10 they turn out to be rubbish and this was no exception. http://www.hoax-slayer.com/black-in-white-house-virus-hoax.shtml

That in itself is not a problem – that’s why we have DELETE keys. Where the PROBLEM lies is this… in sending to countless people in the TO: field, you ensure that each of those people now has the email address of all the others. MORE’S THE POINT, any of those people might have a trojan on their computers, harvesting email addresses – after all, you have no control over the anti-virus or lack of it on their computers! If any ONE of them has such a problem – you’re now on a LIST somewhere.

The solution is simple… in the case of those sending out such messages – having been THEMSELVES the recipient of said message – CHECK before you send the message out – go to GOOGLE and key in the main phrase, perhaps it’s a hoax.  If, after all that you still want to enlighten your friends, send a copy to YOURSELF and BLIND-CC everyone else – i.e. BCC field.  All email programs have this.  That way, the recipients DO NOT get a copy of everyone else’s email – and you don’t risk being very unpopular as the person who’s action put them on a mailing list!

Simples!

It all began with a cordial invite from the Prime Minister to a select group to attend a reception at 10 Downing Street to “Celebrate the Success of Small Business”. Everyone had a personal invite and we individually had to RSVP directly to number 10.

Arriving at the scene by taxi last night I wasn’t really sure what to expect but I can confirm that they’ve converted Downing Street into something like a prison camp, a sad reflection of our times – you simply can’t get into the street AT ALL without the full metal detector bit. To be fair the police were very friendly with it all and this didn’t really detract from the experience..

After passing security we walked up to number 10 which in itself is quite an experience and from there on it got a lot easier and civilised. We were welcomed inside and asked to leave coats and mobile phones at reception. The place is a lot bigger than I imagined and there is a large entrance-way with lots of racks for coats etc. Everything is well-lit. Having been relieved of our weapons of mass destruction it was each man for himself. Past reception is a large staircase and all the way up are images of past prime ministers – very impressive. I took my time to enjoy the moment. Once upstairs we were greeted not with champagne but simply a choice of red of white wine and very nice too! We were free to wander about the place, I don’t think anyone got to to see the cabinet room which is apparently in the basement (good idea thinking about it) but the place is pretty impressive non-the-less. The inside of 10 Downing Street is suitably impressive.

As colleagues arrived the wine flowed very nicely. Various well known faces appeared including “Sir” Alan Michael Sugar. Next up was Lord Mandleson who proceeded to apologise for Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s absence as he was off on important business and who then gave us a very polished speech about the importance of small business.

As the speech rolled out, those present for the most part stood politely in their lounge suits and merely listened… but looking at their faces one could see that most of us will be happier when there is a change of government, none of which detracts from the excellent experience of actually BEING THERE and of course that was the whole point. I’m sure Lord Mandleson didn’t really believe business representatives would let him off lightly!

Within half an hour or less the speech was over and everyone was pretty much free to network or simply drink more and enjoy the view. I was having a nice chat with one of my fellow FSB directors when a microphone appeared out of no-where..  For the life of me I can’t remember which newspaper or radio station it was but the reporter went through a whole list of questions about how we felt about government, banking, you name it, clearly he was onto a goldmine with the two of us as we were taking turns at the microphone for well over 15 minutes – a MOST enjoyable way to round off the evening.

Several glasses of wine and umpteen nibbles later, though not under any pressure to exit the premises, a small group of us decided it was time to take our leave and wandered back down the excellent stairway and out of the door to be greeted by the official photographer – results you see at the top.

Having had the iPhone 3GS for some weeks now, it is well past my normal “novelty-wearing-off time” in which the greatest NEW thing normally becomes somehow… normal – and yet I still feel that somehow life has changed irrevocably in a small but worthwhile way.

The problem is in the title “iPhone”. In reality these devices have been so much more than phones for some time. I’ve been using Microsoft smartphones for some years and recently there have been times when I’ve left the laptop back at the office and relied on the mobile for email. This works only so well because of the limited keyboards but it sure beats carrying a huge laptop around. The MS phones are also ok for the odd game of backgammon on the train and the addition of WIFI makes them handy for receiving RSS news – ie BBC news etc. But that’s about it. They soon become out of date and Orange don’t exactly fall over themselves to encourage updates.

Exit MS phones, enter the iPhone. Their real innovation is the APP store on the phone, not that horrible iTunes program on the PC. Not only can you idle the hours away looking for new APPS but you’re informed automatically of any updates to existing APPS which then come in pretty much without any attention (preferably on WIFI but I’ve updated a few over 3G without problems). So what is actually happening here is that your “phone” is evolving on an almost daily basis without being connected to any PC.. and that’s part of what keeps up the interest.

Every couple of days I see something new, some new idea that might never have occurred to me – or some gripe I have with an existing app simply goes away due to constant improvement. Who would have thought you could use a phone to monitor sleep patterns or to identify stars or point to restaurants using the camera or remote control your media centre or measure distance or go shopping… the list is never-ending and continually growing.

I have over 120 APPS on my 16G iPhone and the biggest of the lot is TOMTOM which covers all of Europe – yet looking at the graph below as you can see, I’ve used only a small part of available memory, under 3GB out of 16GB on APPS.

I can see where it might be worth getting the 32GB version if you really want to carry around a bunch of videos and thousands of tunes as well. Personally I’m happy with access to thousands of radio stations and my entire music collection back home as long as I have a 3G connection…. yes, a decent 3G connection is perfectly adequate for streaming music to the device.

And that’s really what this is… it’s an “iDevice”, no longer a simple phone but a portable entertainment system. Does this make it any less valid as a business tool? Hell no, email handling is superb, I have multiple email accounts in there along with the ability to read business documents (WORD and PDF as examples) with ease – within the limitations of the screen size of course. The copy and paste ideas implemented by Apple are superb and until you’ve seen them in action along with the associated magnifying glass, it’s hard to describe other than to say they are completely intuitive and need no training to use unless you’re very, very slow.

Let me say that the phone itself is NOT perfect… the battery life is ATTROCIOUS, fortunately there’s a way around that and so my phone is permanently carried around in a MILI sleeve which fits snuggly over the phone and includes a battery, taking the combination to well over 24 hours operation and removing the need to use the ridiculously complicated Apple connector in favour of a bog-standard mini-USB socket. Thankfully the iPhone power supply is one of those mains plugs with a USB connector on the bottom so it’s just a case of ditching the Apple lead (curiously white even though I bought a black iPhone) and replacing it with a usb lead.

From serious business using multiple email accounts including MS Exchange (which the iPhone handles flawlessly including email, contacts, notes and the all-important calendar) through novelty business applications to full-on gaming this is in my mind currently the best option for a mobile device – loving every minute of it.

Anyone for GOLF?

Those of you who know me might be inclined to to assume I’d automatically pick a Microsoft Smartphone – and indeed I use one of these, the HP Touch Pro 2 – and very nice it is.. as a phone. I’ve been using Smartphones since day 1 so I know what to expect. The HTC handles Exchange mail very efficiently, it handles Google mail slowly and as for calendars and contacts I have no problems. It runs Tom-tom and other sat-nav software and when you stop the car it hasn’t a clue where it is facing.. and that perhaps starts to paint a picture.

When Apple developed the iPhone 3GS they included not only a sat-nav but also a compass and an inclinometer.  Sat-navs only work if you’re moving – because they compare your location at one moment to that at the next moment and hence calculate your direction and speed.

So to go back a little… the later HTC smartphones have sat-nav, inclinometer, touch screen and sound.  The only thing the iPhone adds there is a compass and multi-touch. These simple changes form a large part of the improved experience.  What seems to be the other important item is a strange one.. LACK of multi-tasking. HTC phones almost always feel underpowered – you find yourself thinking.. wouldn’t this be great if only it was a little faster.   It may be horsepower or the fact that the iPhone only seems to want to do one thing at once, but it IS fast enough.

No-where can this be bettered than when performing that most urgent of business tasks – PLAYING RACING GAMES!

I present to you “GTI Racing” – the best racing game I’ve seen for ages. I’ve played DOZENS of these in my time – the PC versions are great but using a keyboard is not the best way to steer and there is not much room on my office desk for a steering wheel (though I hate to admit I do have one somewhere gathering dust). Then there is the X-BOX 360 – I just do not like those controls at all. How about the WII?  Had one of those – sold it – generally speaking the graphics are pretty awful – not a patch on the X-BOX… so I’d just about given up when I spotted GTI racing for the iPhone – the demo is free and so I thought “why not”. It’s brilliant! Acceleration and braking is automatic though putting your thumb on the screen gives you manual control over the latter… it’s the steering that does it for me. Holding the phone in both hands (or one if you’re clever) you simply TURN the iPhone to the left or right to steer – it’s as intuitive as it gets… 

You’d think on a phone the graphics would be limited and a little jerky? No. They are marvellous. On the basis that a picture paints a thousand words, here are some pictures of me totally blowing a race. There is FAR more that can be said of the iPhone and no doubt given time I will – but this one game makes it worthwhile.

Regards

Peter Scargill

This will be part of a regular series of blogs on a variety of subjects from programming, through web design and more.