The Internet tubes today were mainly full of comments about two things: Gmail going down and Apple releasing a public beta of Safari 4. Had the Gmail outage coincided with Twitter going belly-up at the same time then I think that productivity levels around the planet would have rocketed. As it was, Twitter stayed up as people whined about Gmail and I bathed in some smugness as I rarely use it because of this exact scenario. Then Apple came along with something to distract the Twitterverse from bemoaning their complete lack of emails: a new version of Safari.
From my early impressions, Safari 4 has taken the best bits of other browsers and added a bit of Apple polish to them. The Awesome Bar from Firefox, Opera’s Speed Dial, Chrome’s Tabs-on-Top, Webkit’s blazing fast JavaScript engine (but with a sensible name) and Developer Tools. Notice the glaring omission from that list? Yes, nothing from Internet Explorer made the grade. Funny that.
The new functionality that is included in the version 2.0 software release fixes a couple of the few things that annoyed me with the iPhone. I installed it last night after people with too much time on their hands found the software on Apple’s servers thanks to examining a bunch of XML files. I was in two minds as to whether or not to go ahead or wait for the official release from Apple but I was starting to adjust my body clock and needed something to do. I did have problems and was kicking myself for being impatient but after a few restarts of software and reboots of hardware I managed to restore my iPhone and update the software successfully.
Continue reading ‘iPhone software 2.0′
Is it really though? Those of you who know me well enough would probably be expecting me to rush out and buy the iPhone 3G as soon as I set foot back on British soil. There’s no denying that I’m an Apple fan boy but I’m also not stupid. The next generation of the iPhone doesn’t represent enough of a change over the original version that I already own. Sure it has GPS navigational capabilities but I tend to know where I am most of the time anyway. The obvious upgrade is the 3G bit – it’s obviously a big enough revelation to even be included in the product name instead of it being simply iPhone v2 or something.
I have never found the EDGE (2G) speeds to be all that crippling to be honest. Besides, like most people with an iPhone, I use the wifi connection a lot. I’m usually at home, in the office or within range of a wifi hotspot from The Cloud or the newly announced partnership with BT Openzone.
That’s the new stuff on the hardware front far as I can tell apart from a crappier back to allow the GPS signal to be of any use. No new camera (optic or sensor), speaker, microphone or chipset. There will need to be something pretty awesome to make me upgrade to the next version too – whenever that may come be pass.
This was the best response I heard given yesterday to the question posed by one of the many bemused passers-by that looked at the queue forming for the opening of the first Apple Store in the southern hemisphere with a mixture of derision and pity: “Why are you lining up for a computer shop?”
Continue reading ‘“Because Microsoft just aren’t worth it”’
