Apple Keynote: Response

It’s that time again. The Mighty Steve has delivered his opening keynote for WWDC, and unveiled Apple’s latest raft of products. All, erm, three of them?

As anyone who knows me, or who’s read this site for any length of time will know: I’m a big fan of Apple. I use an iPod. My home PC is now a Mac Mini. There’s something about their products, applications, and philosophy that just appeals to me. I use Windows all day at work; OS X is a nice antidote for that when I come home.

So what do I make of these three products? Perhaps more importantly, in the case of Apple’s new hardware, does it matter? These products aren’t aimed at me. The Mac Pro is an awesome looking machine, with a fantastic spec, but I don’t want one. I’ve just relegated my Dell workstation to file server-dom, so why would I spend the best part of £2000 on a machine that I’ll not drive to its fullest potential. Yeah, I’d like one, but this machine doesn’t put my credit card in jeopardy.

The Xserve is the same story: It’s not for me, I’m not supposed to be interested, and I’m not. But if someone offered me one, I’d take it.

So, well done Apple - your migration to Intel is complete, and you’ve got two very nice looking high spec products to offer to those that need it.

The third product is far more interesting for me though. The Leopard features on display are things I’ll be using when the product ships. And yet it’s interesting to see that many features weren’t on display. By the sounds of it - and despite their tongue-in-cheek digs at Microsoft - Apple are quite annoyed that Microsoft have stolen many of their ides for Vista. As a result, it sounds like they don’t want to unveil a whole new set of innovations before Vista has shipped.

Or maybe it’s the opposite of that - maybe Apple want to wait until Vista’s launched, and steal Microsoft’s ideas this time? I doubt it, but who knows? One thing is for sure, Apple’s bravado and taunting of the Beast of Redmond is certain to annoy more than a few people, and draw the collective attentions of faithful Windows users, for better or for worse.

MDA Vario tweaks

I'd been somewhat plagued by slow performance on my Vario over the last few days. The thing started taking forever to respond to key presses, which got very tedious, very quickly. Launching the inbox to send a message locked the device for a few seconds while it caught up with itself.

I'd read a while back that there was a way of stopping Activesync from randomly launching itself, but hadn't really paid it much attention; Activesync wasn't hurting me, so why should I get all medieval on it? With this in mind, when my Vario started to come over all sluggish, I'd try killing Activesync and see if that helped performance. Funnily enough, it did.

Next step, find the solution I'd come across before, and make it so. The process is basically: Go into Activesync on the Vario, create an exchange sync with a dummy server (so 127.0.0.1 then) and once that's done set both options to "manual" in the schedule dialog. In order to be able to access schedule, you need to have an exchange server configured - once you've set the two options to manual, you can remove the exchange server again. I did this about a week ago and so far haven't had anything like the slowdown I had before. Which, in my book, is a good thing.

Activesync still launches when I connect the phone to my PC, although it does hang around again afterwards, which is quite annoying. I've installed the very handy vBar so I can kill it swiftly and with minimum effort, which I highly recommend (vBar, not killing things swiftly and with minimum effort).

Acer 19″ Widescreen Goodness

Yesterday, I received my shiny new AL1916W monitor. For the last 18 months or so, I've used a LG 17" Flatron screen, and it's served me well. With the arrival of the Xbox 360 though, my trusty LG wasn't cutting it. You see, the 360 is unashamedly a beast of widescreen proportions. Trying to shoehorn its widescreen goodness into a standard 4:3 screen is like trying to watch this summer's next big blockbuster on your video iPod - unsatisfactory.

So I started to wonder whether I should get a widescreen monitor. There's nothing wrong with my LG, and I've grown quite accustomed to it, so what if I change my screen for the 360 and it makes using the PC something of a chore? After much research, changing of minds, and scratching of heads, I decided to go for the Acer AL1916W. There are other options; there's an equivalent Viewsonic screen, and there are a variety of 20" screens (such as the Dell 2005fpw), but they're all far, far more expensive than the Acer (which retails for roughly £170). Tales of backlight bleed, ghosting, and other such undesirable qualities lurk in the darkest corners of the internet, and I had some concerns as to whether the screen would satisfy my needs. Our friend the Monkey also ordered one, although the purpose of his purchase was to replace his 14" 4:3 television. I had no doubts he would be ecstatic with his purchase, for obvious reasons

So it was with some trepidation that I carefully unboxed my full 19 inches of potential widescreen pleasure. The screen looks very nice, it certainly doesn't betray its relatively cheap price tag. The power button is a little on the spongy side, but I can live with that. The screen is significantly wider than I had expected too. It has a native resolution of 1440×900 - exactly the same resolution as Apple's widescreen powerbooks (and presumably other widescreen laptops). Thanks to the talent behind PlasmaDesigns I was able to get some very slick looking desktop wallpaper, specifically designed for this resolution. So far, so good. Windows looked nice - although getting used to extra width took some time - and the screen is clear and responsive for typical Windows activities (browsing, email, etc).

802.11g on the Wizard?

According to this thread, it's possible to enable 802.11g on the HTC Wizard (so Vario) using a couple of simple registry tweaks. You'll need to register for xda-develops before you can see attached binaries on posts.

I haven't tried this yet - I'm posting this on my iBook and it's somewhat tricky getting activesync running on an Apple machine Needless to say, as soon as I get back to my Windows PC (such a long way away, all the way up those stairs) I'll try it.

The inevitable response

As long as Steve keeps doing his thing, the bloggers will write about it. I've posted my reaction to Apple's keynote (are they really keynotes?) presentations before, and I'm sure I will do again. The last time, I moaned about how unexciting the new iPod With Video was, and how it hadn't convinced me to buy one. And then I bought one. This time things are different.

I had hoped Apple would release a new and improved Mac Mini, or perhaps an Intel equivalent to its current PowerMac G5 line, but instead they've launched the "MacBook" and the new, Intel based iMac. Um…wow? I do realise how significant the shift to Intel is for Apple, I applaud the impressively swift migration from PowerPC to Intel, and I appreciate the potential benefits of using the Intel platform. The thing is, the two products Apple have launched are, for users who've not yet "switched", quite dull. Surely only the more techy users care what's "under the hood"?

On the one hand Apple achieve mass-market appeal with the iPod, and are attempting to make web-publishing and photo sharing easier with the launch of iWeb (although many of their iPhoto "innovations" are "borrowed" from Flickr), while on the other they devote a whole presentation to the launch of two uber-powerful machines which are unlikely to convince any iPod-owning Windows users to make the jump to Apple's OS. The two new machines are far from cheap, and sport specifications which appear to more aimed more at the power user than the average home user (indeed, demonstrations of Aperture and Final Cut were displayed, which are undoubtedly "power user" apps).

I can understand why Apple have done this; their goal for this particular announcement was to demonstrate how powerful the Intel hardware is, how clever they've been in porting everything across to it, and how exciting the future will be. For the vast majority of us though, it wasn't terribly compelling.

That said, I fancy one of those FM-radio, iPod remote dongles Damn you Apple…

New phone

Recently, I flogged my M500 (the Orange equivalent of the I-Mate Jam) and got myself a T-Mobile MDA Vario. The key differences, in brief, are that the Vario has a slide-out (qwerty) keyboard and runs Windows Mobile 5. I've had the device for a few weeks now, and I think the time has come to document what I think of it.

For starters, it's slightly bigger than the Jam, M500 etc. (From now on, I'll just say M500, and you can infer the other models). The sliding keyboard adds a little extra depth and the end result, especially when placed in its case, is that it's a little bulky when carried in the trousers. The application of a decent screen protector, presence of mind to not place it in the same pocket as keys, and sufficient trouser capacity to carry it negates this problem. Typically I'm wearing a count with sufficiently voluminous pockets to not really notice a bulky phone.

The keyboard is an absolute joy. Texting on the m500 was a genuine pain in the arse. The stylus was required all the time in order to achieve any sort of accuracy, and made sending even the smallest messages a bit of a chore. On the Vario, you just slide out the keyboard (and the screen will handily shift through ninety degrees when you do) and type your message using the full QWERTY keyboard. Send text, close keyboard, put phone back in pocket.

Windows Mobile 5, whilst not without its quirks, is a massive leap up from Pocket PC Phone Edition. Whilst PPPE always felt like a phone application running on to of the Microsoft's pocket OS, Mobile 5 feels much more like a complete phone solution. It's been more intelligently designed so as to use context sensitive "left" and "right" buttons (as do many phones) to carry out the most common functions. Dismissing those pesky battery low, or message sent/received notifications is now possible without using the stylus, simply by using these context buttons. Upon viewing a contact, you're presented with options to call them, send them a text, or email them, rather than simply viewing the contact a la Outlook on the PC. It all feels far, far more elegant than it did before.