No more Steve Jobs Keynotes in January

Well, that's the end of an annual tradition for me.

Apple quitting Macworld Exp, no Jobs keynote in January

See also the official press release.

Mac OS X Leopard - the Rees view - for Mac geeks only!!!

As I only just bought my new Mac I was eligible for a £5.95 upgrade to Leopard when it was released (last Friday). It was delivered to me on Monday and I installed it on Monday night. So I've had it on the machine for the last few days and thought I'd post some brief comments about how I'm finding it.

Apple claim that this is their biggest operating system upgrade yet with over 300 new features (compared with Tiger). Here's my initial thoughts:

Time Machine : this has got to be one of the key new features. Having recently paid a heavy price for not backing up my data (see earlier blog entry) this is a great feature. You assign an external drive (I have a USB 160GB portable drive) as your Time Machine drive and the computer automatically mirrors your entire hard drive updating the mirror every hour. There's now a Time Machine icon in the dock and when you click on it it opens up a dazzling Star-Wars-esque (the beginning bit where the writing scrolls upwards through space) screen. This is where you can see all the back ups of your drive (most recent at the front going back into the distance with previous back ups behind it). You can then scroll through 'back in time' to previous dates and times to see your system as it was then.

This is a great feature although I'm not sure how much I will use it except for the security of backing up my system in case of hard drive failure. Apple seem to think that random files might just go missing for no reason and that you can then go back in time to retrieve them (searching for them 'through time' via Spotlight) - but in reality how often does that happen? I will still be using Time Machine to back up my system though.

Spaces : This is a clever new feature that allows you to organise what you're doing on your computer in up to 16 separate spaces - so you can group together certain applications in clusters according to different things you are doing and then just switch from one space to another (with useful keyboard shortcuts) as you complete different tasks.

This has the potential to be a great utility but I think Apple have really missed a trick here. Here's why: you can't open the same application in more than one space at a time. What I would really find useful is to set up, say, a work space and a leisure space. In the work space I would have my web browser open with various web-pages open that I was referencing for work stuff + any other apps I was using for work - my word processor etc. In the leisure space I would have my browser open with maybe some football news sites, for example, + maybe a game or whatever. But you can't do that with Spaces. You can only have the web browser (or any other app) in one space at a time.

It's a shame as I could see myself using this utility a lot of it had that functionality but as it is I probably won't use it much.

Stacks : the dock now has the ability to hold folders e.g. your downloads folder or recent documents and then, when you click on them they open out in a fan configuration. This is pretty neat and tidy but I haven't had much opportunity to use Stacks yet so can't really comment.

Finder with Cover-Flow and Quick-Look : this I really like. You now have the option in the Finder to browse your folders, documents, pictures etc. using Cover-Flow i.e. seeing a small version of the actual file not just an icon of it and you can even blow it up to readable size with Quick-Look. This is great if you're browsing through a folder of documents to find the right one - you don't need to keep opening Word (or Pages) to view the documents. Nice.

iCal and Mail : The new versions of iCal and Mail are really sweet - particularly Mail. It has smart data recognition so if someone sends you an e mail with details of a meeting/appointment you can hover the mouse over it and Mail will recognise it as a calendar event and instantly give you the option of making it an iCal entry. You can also now highlight any portion of text in an e mail and instantly turn it into a To-Do which will go straight into your iCal To-Do list (and then, in my case, get synched to my Blackberry). You can also now compose notes and To-Do's in Mail).

So there's my early take on Leopard. No doubt I will get into it more as time goes by. There are a few teething problems I'm already noticing - I use PocketMac to sync my Blackberry and it looks like it doesn't work that well with the new OS. And I've had a couple of issues getting on to Airport networks that are normally fine. It also did something really wierd when I upgraded and wouldn't let me empty my trash - I spent an hour and three quarters on the phone to Applecare sorting that one out! (I needed to as I had about 40GB of data in the trash due to accidentally importing three copies of my iTunes library).

All in all I would say to Mac users out there that it's well worth getting the new OS - it's probably worth it for Time Machine alone let alone the other stuff.

thanks Nan!

My nan rocks. Many of you will know that the hard disk on my computer died a couple of weeks back. My nan has bought me a new mac which is incredibly generous of her.
So I am the proud owner of a new MacBook - complete with inbuilt camera so I can take zany photos like this one.
Thanks nan!
Hopefully I will be back to better blogging ways soon.

iPhone about to get UK release?

It seems that the long awaited and much hyped iPhone is about to get a UK release - macworld.co.uk are reporting that there is a special press conference scheduled at the London Apple store next Tuesday and the speculation is that it will be to announce the launch.

I am waiting to see what the price will be and which network it will be on. My Blackberry is now due for a new contract but I'll wait to see if the iPhone is affordable before deciding what to do. If it comes in at a reasonable price I might be tempted as my iPod is still one of the now very old (in technological terms) black and white ones - the iPod equivalent of a black and white telly I guess!

does enjoying new (apple) technology make me a hopeless consumerist sell-out, enslaved to the spirit of the age? anyone else planning to get one?

new iPods

so - only just been reconnected and I'm having a quick look through my regular websites - which include macworld.co.uk and apple.com/uk and what do I find? they've just announced a new generation of iPods including the 'iPod Touch' which basically just looks like the iPod bit of the long awaited iPhone (you certainly wouldn't need both!).

iPhone or iFlop

I've just finished watching Steve Job's keynote address at Macworld, San Francisco (had to watch it in 3 goes cos it was sooo long). And there was at least one moment where it's similarity to a Benny Hinn crusade was quite freaky (the moment where Jobs announced the iPhone - there was whooping and hollering, hands in the air and Jobs on the stage had them eating out of the palm of his hand...I'm sure if he'd have done an altar call then people would have signed up to whatever he wanted them to!)

Anyway, here's a few thoughts on the products:
I'm slightly disappointed with Apple TV (or iTV as it was previously known) - it seems like it's just a box to enable you to watch your iTunes content on your TV instead of on your computer. Which is fine - and it's got a nice user interface as you would expect from an Apple product - but if it had also incorporated a genuine PVR hard disk recorder (like TiVo or Sky+) then it would really have been something. Apple TV has just 40GB of hard disk space - used to store movies and other content which you have sent to it. I've just bought a hard disk PVR with 160GB of disk space on it, and it can record 2 channels at once while you are watching playback of another recording as well as a whole host of other features, and it cost considerably less than what I imagine Apple TV will sell for.

Secondly, the iPhone. Now this does look good, really good. And I'm sure it's going to give my Blackberry a real run for it's money. A couple of questions though:
1. I'm not sure about the touch screen when it comes to inputting text. One of the reasons I switched to Blackberry was that I really went off my last smartphone because it only had a touch screen. Over time the screen became increasingly unresponsive and letter recognition became more and more inaccurate. I really like the 'plasticky little keys' on my Blackberry that Steve Jobs was ridiculing and have found them to be a much faster way of typing than the touch screen.
2. The memory size. 4GB or 8GB are the iPhone options. When it was first announced I seriously thought it would mean I could upgrade both my phone and my iPod at the same time (I have an 'old' black and white, non-photo, non-video iPod). But if the maximum memory I can get on it is 8GB then I'm not sure it will work for me as an iPod. I would have hoped they could have found a way to fit 30GB of memory in but they are using flash memory so perhaps it's just impossible to offer that much space with flash.
I still want one though!!!