SBBrit

Game Center for appleTV

2010-08-25T22:54:00.001-07:00

There has been a lot of speculation lately regarding a new appleTV, I am one of the few that owns an original appleTV and although it is still connected to my tv and is used a few times a month it has been a pretty underwhelming experience.

In all honesty, I am not sure switching to iOS is the way to go with this product either, iOS is wonderful on a touch device but it works because it was built from the ground up for a touch device, also the interface on appleTV currently isn't bad since the last big update.

On the other hand having a library of apps for the device could be stunning, I would love hulu+, netflix or even Plants vs Zombies on my big tv controlled by an iPad or iPhone/touch. The thing that excites me even more is the idea of game Center being integrated with the OS, I don't think it's a coincidence that this new product looks like it will arrive right around the time that game Center will go live, it might even be the one more thing moment ...

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Where in the world is iOS4

2010-08-19T23:55:00.000-07:00

I love the iPad, however 6 weeks ago I bought an iPhone4, it's not my first iPhone, I have owned all but the 3G, it is however my first iOS4 device. It is fantastic but I have one issue with it... no its not the antenna, not had one dropped call, its also not the proximity sensor or yellowed photos. My only issue with the new iPhone is that after using iOS4 on such a snappy device the iPad feels thoroughly crippled and has really taken a back seat in my everyday life even when the larger screen would be a much better fit for the task at hand.

There are two specific iOS4 features which really push me to the phone ahead of the iPad, namely the fast app switching/backgrounding and the unified inbox in mail, without these navigating the iPad has begun to feel clunky and the faster we get a build on the iPad the better as far as I am concerned.

iMovie on the iPad

2010-07-07T20:57:00.000-07:00

So I picked up my iPhone 4 today and started to add some apps to it, later I decided to sync my iPad (mainly for the angry birds HD update) and this is the message I saw.

I haven't had time to play with iMovie on the phone yet but the idea of having it available on the 10" screen of the iPad sounds great to me, I wonder if this means there is a build of iPad OS out there somewhere right now that supports it.

iPad - control my life

2010-05-03T23:36:00.000-07:00

So a couple of weeks in and the iPad is still my constant companion. I have a number of apps I use for work, a few games that keep me amused and some great apps that help me consume content at home, more about some of them later.
There is a glaring omission from the apple iPad and I haven't seen anyone mention it so far. The app I really really want is a supercharged iPad version of the apple remote app. To me it just seems like this thing is dying to be used to control all of my content consumption. I am one of the crazy few who actually bought an appleTV, a very basic piece of kit which became infinitely more worthy after the last OS update and which really became part of my living room when I became able to use my iPhone to control it.
What I want is to be able to browse and order content for the appleTV through the remote app on the ipad while watching a movie on it, this was never going to be an option on a tiny iPhone screen but with this beautiful 10" touchscreen I think it becomes a real option. This functionality could also be extended to controlling a mac mini media centre running iTunes or front row.
Please apple deliver on this for me.

-- Posted From iPad

Vive la Revolution

2010-04-28T22:35:00.000-07:00

I wasn't going to buy an iPad, it was a just big iPhone, it seemed like an evolution of the iPod touch, nothing too exciting there... Then I held one.

The iPad disappears, you no longer interact with a computer you interact with an app. The iPad becomes the app in a way that no mouse based system could and that the iPhone never quite managed, it is the most immersive user experience that exists today.

I have read a lot of comments about the iPad that call it a crippled netbook, the problem with this is that I owned a netbook and it felt like a crippled laptop, it failed because it tried to be a laptop, the iPad doesn't try to be a laptop, it exists as a bridge between the smartphone and the desktop, a revolutionary product designed to fill a niche we didn't know existed.

Vive la revolution

NetNewsWire

2010-04-22T23:22:00.000-07:00

I used to use NetNewsWire on the Mac and the iPhone and FeedDemon on the PC, then they moved to use google to sync feeds and I moved to using Googles web interface on the Mac and PC and Reeder on the iPhone.

Next I got the iPad and after looking in the still sparsely populated app store, my old friend NetNewsWire popped up again.
I like this app a lot, the interface is really clean, in landscape you have the feeds/articles listed in the left third and content fills the right. In portrait the content fills the whole screen and the feed/article list are accessed via a popover. I primarily use landscape mode, it is the perfect setup to browse content, I can skim the list of articles, pick one and while it loads continue to skim headlines. I find Portrait mode is useful only for exceptionally long articles where it feels more natural to read like that.

Portrait mode also has a UI element that I dislike, in landscape to mark all as read you click a button at the top of the screen and then hit a mark all as read button in the same place, in portrait you click the same button at the top but then the mark all as read button appears right at the bottom of the screen, forcing you to move your hand farther than necessary. This minor change feels like it was designed prior to actual use, which it most likely was, I hope it is corrected in a future release because other than that this app works like a charm for reading.

Another area where this app excels is in the ability to integrate with instapaper, two clicks and the article is saved. This is a huge bonus which wasn't available on the iPhone app when I last used it and is especially useful on a WiFi only iPad. Other options in the app are to mail the article, post it to Twitter or open in Safari, all of these work well.

All in all this is a great app made even better by the fact that they managed to get it together right around iPad launch time, at $9.99 it wasn't inexpensive so I am hoping for big things from updates although this does appear to be almost the default price point for iPad native apps at least until we get some real competition in the app store

-- Posted From iPad

Synctoy

2009-10-16T21:52:00.001-07:00

My workflow consists of a single "in progress" folder and a system of project based archival folders. This system works quite well for me, I always know where the documents I am working on are. However I work in a lab and therefore work at multiple networked instruments throughout the day. My "in progress" folder contains way to many important files to leave network access open to it. So, to help organise this chaos I use a network accessible public folder on my computer as a drop point. I then use Synctoy to sync files from here to my "in progress" folder.

Synctoy is a great little piece of software and it is free from Microsoft. It allows you to link any two folders on your PC and have them sync in one of three ways.

Synchronize - sync's both ways including both renames and deletes

Echo - sync's one way includes both renames and deletes

Contribute - sync one way includes renames but not deletes, this is the one I use for my drop folder.

I highly recommend Synctoy, give it a try.

Rocket Dock

2009-09-27T12:07:00.001-07:00

I discovered Rocketdock by accident one day. Stumbling onto it I had no real idea what I had found, I downloaded it anyway and started to play. It seemed like a nice little add on for XP, however, I don't use the dock a whole lot in OSX and wasn't sure it would be very useful. As I delved deeper into Rocketdock I realized there is a whole world of user driven icons and add-on's which make it incredibly useful, to the point where it is now an integral part of the XP OS for me now.

Extensions such as stacks are fantastic, allowing you to view the contents of any folder in the dock as a grid or fan, much like in OSX, tip-o-the-hat to mantonga's for that one.

All in all I would say Rocketdock is a must for anyone wishing to have a more Mac like experience on a PC.

The Dell

2009-09-22T12:16:00.001-07:00

So for the first 6 months with "The Dell" I whined a lot and carried my personal Mac around a lot, switching to it when I actually wanted to get anything done. I was irritated by the non-stop software updates and constantly annoyed at how long the shutdown process became because of this (I won't leave my desk until I can shut the laptop lid).

After a while I realized that the Dell wasn't that bad, it was no Mac but at least it had XP installed and not Vista, I could get up to three hours out of the battery when connected to wi-fi - others in the office who installed vista struggle to get to one hour.

I started to switch the applications I used to get cross platform utility, I downloaded Safari, iTunes, Dropbox, Evernote and FeedDemon (NetNewsWire on the Mac) and I tried to build myself a PC user experience that emulated the function of my Mac even if I couldn't get the elegance of the OS or the simplicity of the Dock and Expose.

Finally one day I found Launchy it isn't quite Quicksilver or spotlight but at least I could get rid of all those horrible shortcuts from my desktop, maybe it wouldn't be as bad as I thought...

PC - Mac - PC

2009-09-10T23:14:00.001-07:00

So here it is, I have been a Mac user now for 5 years - before that computers were a necessary evil. It started when I was told I had to use a mac on my first day of new job in 2004. I was given a pretty substantial budget and told to get online and order something. I panicked, I hadn't used a Mac since the classic, I was in a new country, an entirely new continent, I was starting a job I had no idea how to do, and I did not have the time to learn a totally new OS.

I ended up blindly ordering a Powerbook G4 12" with an external 20" apple monitor, to this day the best computer I have ever owned (including the current 13" MBP) it's still going strong.

I hated it. Everything was different, similar, but different. That was the problem, keyboard shortcuts were all the same but used the command button not control, I couldn't find any of my files and winamp wasn't an option for the music I needed to keep me sane. In a lot of ways it was like the change from England to America, everything is almost the same but just different enough to upset your balance a little and make day-to-day life challenging again.

Six months later I vowed never to go back (to PC's not England).

Fast forward four years.

New job, new office, new Dell...