I can see the attraction of a tablet PC (which, no matter how they try and dress it up, is all the iPad is) but all Apple have done is dress theirs up with their funky phone OS and a quality touch screen.

None-the-less, because of the drum banging and ceremony that goes with an Apple launch, BBC feel the need to allow people to submit their comments. My favourite is this…

Apple never just produces ‘gadgets’; they engineer solutions that people can see fitting into their lives eventually.

It’s that last word… eventually. What he’s trying to say is that Apple find solutions to problems that don’t currently exist. Whoever could accuse Apple customers of being vain, purchasing style over price and function?

Having said that, I quite like this comment…

You can just hear the money being poured into the Apple bank account as the brainless tech sheep of this generation rush out to by this fantastically overpriced netbook.

<snigger>  The worst comment award though must go to..

Finally stupid netbooks will disappear. But if you’re going to carry around a 10-inch so-called pad why not just buy a Macbook with more power, to do work, play DVDs and all that added functionality?

Yea, those stupid netbooks. Good case against them. Erm. But, yea, if you’re going to carry around a 10-inch computer, why not just buy a much, much bulkier 13-inch Macbook at not far off twice the price of an iPad<snort>?  Stupid consumers eh? And there they are buying 10-inch £200 Netbooks. What are they thinking?

So, the Apple iPad has been announced after months – and months – of speculation.

Many people were expecting some exciting name, with it often being referred to as a “slate”. In the end it’s the underwhelmingly named iPad. You see, it sounds like iPod. How they must have chuckled at their own ingenuity.

The thing is, nobody was really talking beforehand about the software – that’s the one thing that Apple are good at and with the iPhone and Mac OS already available, it was obvious that one of them would be used. None-the-less, most thought it would be the latter as they were expecting a slim, multi-touch computing device. In the end, it’s turned out to be a big iPod.

And there’s the rub – Apple have traditionally not been so good with the hardware so, to me at least, the resultant iPad isn’t very exciting.  It literally is a big iPod. Or iPhone if you buy the 3G version. Look at the picture above of Steve Jobs with the iPad – it does look like he’s got some kind of promotional oversized iPod in his hands. To me, it looks like some kind of bad Photoshop picture.

What does the iPad offer? Well, it’s got a special screen with a wide viewing angle but it’s smaller than the screen on my Netbook. It’s not even OLED – it’s just a bog standard LED with better viewing angles. And, well, that’s about it.

Apple are intending to target gamers and, particularly, eBook readers.

The former, well, I can’t see it working. Gamers either want full scale powerful gaming or a pocketable device – this is neither. Electronic Ink based eBook readers are 100 times¹ better for reading eBooks with. Why spend £500 on an iPad instead of under £200 for a dedicated eBook reader?

Okay, I’m not Apple lover but I can appreciate a good bit of kit and I will happily say good things about the iPod and iPhone, even if I don’t want one myself. But the iPad has left me cold. I just don’t get it.

1. okay, maybe I made that statistic up [↩]

I’m no lover of Apple and I think I’ve made that clear before. None-the-less, I can’t escape the dominance that the iPod, in particular, has. Yes, you can buy other MP3 players, but just try buying an accessory. And it’s not a bad bit of kit – it’s really just Apple and the way that they cripple their products in the name of style or the kind of anti-competitive practise that regularly gets Microsoft into trouble (none-replaceable batteries, making it so that only iTunes will work with an iPod, etc).

Other than that non-replaceable battery, the rubbish headphones (easily resolved, that one!) and having to use iTunes, the iPod really isn’t at all bad. Damn it, even my TomTom will only work with an iPod.

Besides, my older daughter is approaching teenage and there’s bound to come a time when she wants one. Hell, my MP3 player recently broke and even I’ve considered it.

So, I’ve taken my first tentative steps towards it. I’ve installed and began to use iTunes <gulp>.

And, I have to say, it’s not as bad as I thought (I think I might have previously called it “terrible”!). When I installed it on my Netbook and it immediately picked up and started indexing from my wireless NAS drive, I was impressed¹. I wish the iTunes store was available online, if only to peruse, rather than buy, so you don’t have to install iTunes – they might get a few more users that way, who go to peruse and then download when they see something they like.

I was aware that Frankie Boyle had a Podcast on iTunes containing unbroadcastable material he’d recorded during warm-ups for Mock the Week. I was even more surprised to find it was free! That was a really nice find. In fact I was surprised to find free stuff on there at all – quite a revelation. I’ve even bought some iTunes top-up cards (they were on special offer at a particular retailer recently) – not that I’ve used them yet.

You never know, sometime in the future I might be offering a review of an iPod on here. God help us all!

Meantime, if you do want one, the recently announced new range of iPods is available at Dixons. Dixons also has a price matching policy with the usual big internet suppliers (Amazon, Play, eBuyer, etc) so it’s definitely worth checking out.

1. although if anybody knows how to limit where it looks, I’d be interested, as my NAS drive is also used for backups and it’s been indexing multiple copies of music from that as well [↩]

Steve Jobs

Obviously, no one would want anything other than for him to get better soon.

However, the outpouring of sentiments and statements, mainly from the US, is bizarre. Many feel that Apple won’t be able to cope without him and the share price has plummeted as a result. Many seem his a guru, genius, even a God-like figure.

But let’s rewind a bit…. Steve Jobs, as we know, helped created Apple. During this time, under his command, both the Apple III and the Apple Lisa were commercial failures and he had resigned by the mid 80’s. In both cases the computers looked good, were advanced but were expensive and riddled with problems.

After leaving, he moved onto form NeXT, where he created a technologically advanced workstation that sold badly due to its high price. They moved into software but after just 11 years the company failed and, ironically, was bought by Apple. This positioned Jobs back onto the board and after a top-level coup, he became CEO. Under his lead Apple went onto great success with the iMac, iPod and iPhone and the rest, as we know, is history.

But I don’t own a single Apple product. And for a good reason. What Steve Jobs has been able to do is to tap into the current “bling” market, where style is the most important factor. What the iMac/iPod/iPhone have in common is that they look great. But in many cases, the latter two in particular, it’s style over substance. But Jobs hasn’t been some genius in doing this – he’s been doing it all along. Even in the 80’s when he created NeXt he created an exotic, amazing looking office with floating staircases, $10,000 sofas and designer prints. He was doing it when the Apple III would overheart as it had no cooling fan or air vent (as suggested by Steve Jobs for quieter performance).

What all of these iProducts have in common is Apple locking the products to their hardware and their software. The iPod, for instance, has a non-replaceable battery. Indeed, if you can get the case off to replace it yourself, they often solder it in place to make sure you won’t get it out (although I’m sure they use a different excuse). It won’t be surprising to hear that Apple have a poor environmental record.

The iMac is known for its difficulty in being upgraded. The iMac’s graphics chip is soldered to the motherboard and many models make it virtually impossible for you to change the hard disk or optical drive.

The iPhone, like the iPod, has a non-replaceable battery and the operating system is designed to only run software that is approved by Apple (and downloadable from Apple’s “App Store”). Once a developer has submitted an application to the App Store, Apple holds firm control over its distribution so, if they want, they can halt the distribution of applications it deems inappropriate. For example, they have a habit of banning third party applications that enable a functionality that Apple doesn’t want the iPhone to have. Last year, for example, Apple banned Podcaster, which allowed iPhone users to download podcasts directly to the iPhone, bypassing iTunes.

The iPod is also locked to iTunes – a terrible piece of software in my opinion.

This level of “lock in” would get Microsoft pushed into court. Apple, however, seem to remain immune. Microsoft have been forced, particularly in Europe, to remove software such as their Media Player² because it can affect sales of third party products, yet the iMac comes pre-loaded with a whole host of applications. Again, they seem to remain immune to prosecution.

But then again this is the company that agreed with Apple Corps (the Beatles music company) that to keep its name it wouldn’t do anything music related.

Let’s get one thing straight, these are not totally bad products. The iPhone has a fantastic interface. However, it also has no way to change or improve its battery, no SMS facility, a locked and restricted, application store, no video capability, a poor 2MP camera… I could go on. But it sells like gold dust because it’s trendy and looks good. The same with the iPod which is sold by a terrible set of earphones, but people don’t seem to mind. Indeed, so trendy is it to be seen with a pair of white iPod earphones on, that many people don’t upgrade them for just this reason.

The way I see it is that Jobs has struck lucky by being the kind of person who helps design products that are perfect for a throw-away, fashion-obsessed culture. Some kind of genius? No.

Now I can look forward to lots of hate-mail from obsessive Apple fans.

1. although strangely shrouding this in further secrecy by declaring it as “a hormone imbalance” [↩]
2. and there’s further news that IE may be the next target [↩]

Windows 7 Screenshot

I kicked this off under VirtualBox – 985MB base memory (I don’t know why, but VirtualBox wouldn’t let me allocate anymore), 32MB video memory and a 20GB virtual drive.

The installation is simple and relatively quick. A good start. The virtual drive, which I’ve set to expand as required, is 5GB in size, so I’m assuming that’s about the base installation size.

Now, I don’t have Vista but I have seen it and had a brief play. Windows 7 is similar in looks but even with the above virtual hardware it wasn’t too slow. I like the new way of applications in the taskbar appearing as icons – they blend in completely with the quick start tray icons and, indeed, when you launch one, the background behind the icons changes to show it’s in use rather than simply a shortcut. This reminds a lot of the Apple’s OSX.

Anyhoo, it took me a while to get a working network connection (found the Intel Pro/1000 MT Desktop option worked. And then I only got that and sound after installing the Guest Additions (explore the disk and make sure you run the appropriate .exe in Vista compatibility mode).

It’s nice – I can’t really get a proper idea without running it natively and with a decent hardware setup, but I’m impressed with what they’ve come up with in such a relatively short space of time.

My only downer so far is the system tray – or rather the lack of options with it. They’ve introduced new “all in one” system tray options that report issues, etc (this time reminding me of Linux) – however when diagnosing my network issues I was looking for the normal network icons and matching options. Once the network was working all of this disappeared and I was left with… nothing. I’m guessing I have to go into the control panel to then change any options, but I’m just used to havign a nice clickable icon (I bet you can turn this back on with the options, though). I don’t know, my issue is hard to explain, but I was missing some of the more technical options to hand. However, I’m sure all of this makes the OS a lot easier for non-IT minded people.

I’ll keep it installed, have a play occasionally and report back what I find out. All I have to do now is register it… if only the Microsoft site would return long enough to let me do that.