When the iPad was first announced, I really didn’t see the point. Like a lot of people, I was hoping for a tablet-style version of a MacBook; surely it wouldn’t be too hard to take a MacBook Air, put a touchscreen where the keyboard is, and sell that? But Apple had other ideas; iPhones have been so successful largely because they are so easy to use, so they decided to build on that instead.

So is the iPad simply “a large iPod touch”? After my first day of use, I’ve got to say that yes, it is-and yet, it isn’t… It’s all the good stuff we’re used to (apps, touchscreen, browser, email, ease of use) plus some extra good stuff (speed, larger screen area, better keyboard, increased battery life). There is a small amount of added bad stuff: it’s a bit heavier than I’d like; I can’t hold it in one hand for as long as I can hold my E-reader, for example. It only has one speaker, despite it being billed as an ideal way to watch movies on the go. And the dock connector is in the wrong place for using the iPad as a video player or photo frame- would it have killed them to put a second connector on the side so it could be docked in landscape mode? The last bad thing I can think of is the price- I know first versions of products do tend to be more pricey, so hopefully we’ll see the price drop by £100-£150 or so in the future.

All that aside, though, I’m pleasantly surprised by the iPad. It’s a fantastic way of surfing the web, doing email and updating a blog whilst on the sofa. I’m not convinced that it will make a good ereader- I’ve tried some sample books and as I expected, the screen is nowhere as good as the one on my Sony ereader. Add in the increase in size and weight and the dedicated ereaders have nothing to worry about.

I’ll post another blog once I’ve had some more use out of it, but so far, I’m impressed. And yes, this was written on the iPad, using the Wordpress app.

You're not tied to O2

My iPhone 3G contract with O2 ran out a few weeks ago, and while I wait for the next model to be announced, I thought I’d see if the other networks were any better. Now that O2 is no longer the only network for iPhone, there’s the opportunity to switch provider – O2 has been ok, but sometimes texts are delayed, calls don’t reach me, and 3G performance has not been great.

Fortunately, O2 have made it quite easy for iPhone owners to switch provider, so anyone can give it a try. And, since I’m not actually ready to switch provider just yet, I’ve got a couple of tips if you’re thinking of staying with O2 after your contract has expired.

Read on to find out how you can set up your iPhone with another provider, or switch your O2 contract to something cheaper.

How to unlock your iPhone

First things first: you need to get your iPhone unlocked. This not as scary as it sounds – you don’t need to visit one of the dodgy little shops you find on most London streets these days, or answer some dodgy eBay advertisement – it’s dead simple, and O2 will do it for you. If you’ve heard about jail-breaking, don’t worry – this is NOT jail-breaking your iPhone; it’s perfectly OK and O2 are actually the ones doing it, so there is NO PROBLEM AT ALL.

If you’re on contract, you can unlock the phone at any time FOR FREE; if you’re a pay-as-you-go customer it will cost you £15, and if you’ve had the phone for less than a year you’ll also lose the web & wifi bolt-on. Obviously if you unlock the phone before your contract runs out you’ll still need to pay O2 for the remainder of the contract – you can’t just stop paying the monthly contract charge – but that just means you keep paying your monthly bill as normal. There’s no lump sum or sudden charge if you unlock your contract iPhone, whether it’s after 19 months or after just one month.

All you need to do is fill in this iPhone unlocking form on the O2 website and they’ll take care of the rest; you’ll receive a text a week or two later telling you that your iPhone is now unlocked. It’s that simple – no phone calls, and you can do it even if you’re perfectly happy with O2; but now, if you travel, you’ll be able to put a local SIM in your phone and cut your overseas calling costs when on holiday.

Using another SIM

Anyway, once you’ve received the “We’ve unlocked your phone” message from O2, put in another network’s SIM (use the little tool that came with your iPhone to get the SIM tray out) and connect the iPhone to iTunes – you’ll get a message confirming that your iPhone is now unlocked. You should now see the new network in the top left of your screen. If you don’t, go into your Settings screen, tap General, and then Network – try switching off 3G. I couldn’t get a Vodafone signal until I turned off 3G – this was because the 3G signal was very faint, so my iPhone kept trying to connect to it; as soon as I told it not to use 3G, I got a full-strength GPRS signal instead.

Job done? Nearly…

Vodafone data settings for the UK

Check your cellular data connection settings

There is one more step. When you put in another network’s SIM, the phone will recognise it and change the network settings for you. However, it’s worth checking the data settings for your new network – the Vodafone settings that were automatically applied to my iPhone were incorrect. I kept getting the message “you are not subscribed to a cellular data plan” whenever I tried to access the Internet.

For Vodafone in the UK, the “Cellular Data” section should have these settings:

APN: wap.vodafone.co.uk
Username: wap
Password: wap

Want to stay with O2 after your 18/24 months, but not pay as much?

Although my O2 contract has run the 18 months, I’m going to wait until the new iPhone is announced later in the year before I decide if I want to switch networks – but I don’t want to keep on paying £35 a month.

My wife and I mainly use our iPhones for texting and surfing; we don’t use all of our voice minutes, so it’s not really worth paying that much every month. Well, it turns out that O2 have a new range of iPhone tariffs called “Simplicity for iPhone”, and they’re ideal for people like us – prices start at just £15 a month for 300 minutes, and you still get the unlimited data, free wifi and visual voicemail! That’s for a 12-month contract, and from what I can tell it’s the best deal around at the moment; Vodafone PAYG would work out at £15 just for data alone, no calls (they charge 50p per day for data).

My wife has switched to the £15 plan for 12 months, whereas I’ve gone for the 1-month rolling contract (which means I can cancel at any time with 30 days’ notice) in case I do want to switch network later – that’s £20 per month but don’t forget, it’s just a 1-month contract – I’m not locked in. And it’s still cheaper than PAYG. Even the equivalent contract to the £35 one we both had is now only £20 (per month for 12 months; the one-month version is £25) – and that’s with unlimited texts, not the 600 we originally had.

So, unlocking your iPhone is easy, and assuming your contract is now finished – which a lot of them will be around about now – you can either switch to another network or save yourself some cash! Simples!

iHome IP99 clock radio

Looking for a decent clock radio that is iPhone 3G certified? So was I. So my wife gave me one of these for my birthday – but is it any good?

Although the iPhone holds all my favourite music, I still prefer waking up to the radio – mainly so I can hear the news. At night, though, it’s nice to have some iPod music, so I started looking for a clock radio that was also an iPhone dock. That way, I wouldn’t need two sets of speakers by the bed.

It turns out that there are quite a few iPod-compatible clock radios out there, but not many that are iPhone compatible. The difference is that an iPhone-compatible device has extra shielding, to prevent the annoying bip-bippy-bip-bip-bip noise that you get when a mobile phone comes near a speaker.

So that narrowed my choices down – and then when i started looking at the few that were left, almost all of them had pretty poor alarms. I eventually settled on the iHome IP99, as it had the ability to set an alarm that only worked Monday to Friday – most other clock radios only gave you the ability to set one alarm that went off every day. That might be OK for most people, but I’d spent the last few years with a Pure Bug DAB radio which let me set a different alarm for every single day, if I wanted – so I wasn’t used to turning off the alarm for the weekend.

So, after living with it for six months, what do I think of it?

Sound

The IP99 produces really nice sound. Whether it’s presenters talking, or music from the iPhone, the sound is very impressive for something that’s quite small. I can turn it up to louder-than-a-bedroom-needs levels and it doesn’t distort. I’m not an audiophile, though.

Operation

Here’s where the problems start to appear. The IP99 has a pretty simple button layout – most of the controls are on the top of the radio. A very nice touch is the little switch on the back, which instantly flips it between GMT and BST. It only gets used twice a year, but it’s so simple you wonder why more companies don’t do it. The IP99 comes with a remote control, but I don’t use it because this is a clock radio – not a home entertainment centre. It’s right beside my bed; I don’t need a remote!

Sadly, the rest of the iHome IP99 isn’t as well thought out.

Let’s start with the volume and tuning controls – these are large rings that surround the Power and Play/Pause buttons. If you want to adjust the volume in the dark (like if you’re trying to go to sleep, or don’t want your alarm so loud) then you end up slapping your hand onto the top of the radio and sliding it around until you find the ring, and then trying to rotate it – the rings are very smooth and you have to press down to get them to move. First off, it’s far too much work for what should be a very simple job, and secondly, it’s too easy to end up turning the radio off – and if it was in “alarm” mode, you’ve just lost your snooze capability.

Speaking of snooze, the snooze bar doubles as the control for the light intensity. The IP99 follows the annoying trend that a lot of manufacturers have jumped on recently; that of having a backlit LCD display. You have to wonder if any of them actually test these things; if they did, they’d realise that a backlit LCD is basically a big light – not ideal for an alarm clock! Even at the lowest brightness setting, the IP99’s display is too bright to have by the side of your bed. I’ve ended up turning off the light altogether. If I need to know the time in the night, I can press the snooze bar to turn it on again, which is OK, but it comes on at full brightness – I then have to press it another six or seven times to turn it off again. And, since it’s the snooze button, if you do that when the alarm has activated, you’ve just snoozed it.

The problems don’t stop there – even the seemingly simple act of choosing an input has been ruined. You can switch between radio stations by pressing one of the three radio buttons to access a stored channel. If you’re not listening to the radio at the time, pressing the button will switch over to the radio. Similarly, pressing the line-in button will switch you to the line-in socket (useful for attaching something that isn’t an iPod) or, if you’re on line-in, it will switch you back to the radio. But, and here’s the weird bit, there is no way of switching to the iPhone’s dock input. You CAN press the play/pause button, but this is less than ideal – it activates the iPod playback function; useless if you don’t want to listen to the iPod! If you want to listen to, say, internet radio via an App in the iPhone, you have to press the play/pause button, go into the iPod app, stop playing, come out of the iPod app, switch to the radio app and then play. A simple way around this would be to have the line-in button double as a “dock input” button – press once for line-in; press again for dock – simples. But no, iHome make it hard. Why do you need another way of switching to the radio?

If you’re lucky, sometimes you can get the iPhone’s non-iPod audio by launching whatever app you want, and then docking the iPhone into the IP99 – after a few seconds it will usually detect the iPhone and switch the input for you, but not always. And on some of the occasions it does switch, it will also start playing the iPod as well as whatever other app you’re running- very annoying.

Finally, there is one last problem – and it’s the biggest: the IP99 is not suitable for use with an iPhone 3G. There are two reasons why I say this: First, sometimes the iPhone will pop up that little “This device is not iPhone compatible” message when you dock the phone. Oopsy. Second, the IP99 STILL emits the horrible bip-bippy-bip bip-bip-bip noise if the radio is on while the iPhone is docked. It’s OK if you’re using the iPod, but terrible if you want to listen to the radio. And it does it LOUDLY. Even if the IP99 is turned off, you can still hear it – especially at night. When you’re trying to sleep.

So, to sum up:

Pros

• Great sound
• Remote control is pretty comprehensive

Cons

• Terrible controls
• Not iPhone-friendly
• Display is too bright for bedside use
• No way of switching to iPhone input

Opinion: Don’t bother

I have been trying to figure out how I can stop my iPhone from launching iPhoto every time I connect it. I love that it comes up when I slip in a memory card from my camera, but the extra time it adds on to an iPhone sync bugs me. The only solution I could find previously involved Applescript, but annoyingly it would only work with USB connected cameras – not memory cards in the MacBook Pro’s ExpressCard slot.

Finally, though, there is an answer. Get it here: http://www.flexibits.com/

Cameras, a preferences add-in, does exactly what I, and many, many other Mac users, have wanted. You connect a device (such as a camera, card or iPhone) and it will ask you what you would like it to do with that device in the future. If you want it to do nothing when you plug in your iPhone, but load an app (such as iPhoto or Aperture) or perform an action when you connect another device, then it will handle it for you.The best bit is it will even recognise the ExpressCard34 slot, so if you’re like me and have an SD card reader in there, it’ll work just fine. It can’t tell the difference between different cards (which could be useful if you use SD cards in your camera but MS Duo in your camcorder) but quite frankly I don’t care!

Download Cameras from the Flexibits website now.

Previously, I’ve blogged about the issues I’ve had getting 4Gb of RAM to work successfully in my unibody 15″ MacBook Pro. For a while, I ran with 3Gb using an original 1Gb and one of my new 2Gb sticks, but it wasn’t ideal for running Windows under VMWare at the same time as other stuff. In the end, I’ve given in and just bought the 4Gb RAM upgrade from Apple – not cheap, not ideal, but at least now it’s – so far – working. I definitely think that Apple should have taken more ownership of this problem, as it’s been reported and discussed at some length on their support boards, though.

As expected, Apple recently announced the next iPhone – the unexcitingly-named “iPhone 3GS”, the “S” apparently meaning “Speed”. Of course, the question on everyone’s mind now is… is it worth getting?

In short, I’m going to go with “no” if you already have the 3G, and “yes” if you still have the first iPhone, or indeed don’t have one at all. Read on to find out why…

Why “no” if you already have the 3G? Well, if you already have the 3G, chances are that you’re on a contract. To get the 3GS you’re looking at around £600, either to pay off your current contract or to buy one on PAYG and swap the SIM. The improvements over the 3G basically amount to extra capacity, a better camera, faster processor and the compass. Since there will, most likely, be a fourth iPhone announced this time next year (see my thoughts on that below), I don’t think the 3GS is worth bothering with – it’s not quite the step up the 3G was compared to the original model. You could probably sell your old iPhone on eBay for £250 or so, so that would bring the final cost down to maybe £350 or so, but I don’t think it’s worth the expense or the hassle.

If you don’t have an iPhone and have been holding off to see what the new one is like, then I’d say it’s worth getting. The iPhone, in my opinion, is the best smartphone around. I’d just say that you should get the shortest contract possible if you’re bothered about upgrading to a probable fourth model in the future – here’s why…

It goes without saying that there will be a fourth model, probably summer of 2010. My hunch is that the 3GS is only a minor refresh because Apple are aware that most iPhone users are on contracts of 18 months or two years, and that if they brought out a significant update to the phone now, a year after the 3G came out, it would be very disappointing to their users (look at all the moaning now, and all they’ve really done is slightly improve the camera and stick a compass in – it hasn’t even got a new shell!).

Instead, by bringing out the 3GS – the name itself implying it’s only an update, not a whole new model – they’ve left the way clear for an all-new iPhone 4G (pure speculation on the name, but it would let them slip back into the nG naming of their iPod models) next summer. Of course, by next summer, all the early adopters will be at or near the end of their 3G contracts and will be easily able to upgrade to the new model at subsidised prices again. I would then expect a 4GS a year later, and a 5G a year after that and so on.

Obviously this is just a guess, and Apple will never confirm or deny it, but it would be a  good way to manage expectations. Even-numbered years = new model; odd-numbered years = model refresh.

In the meantime, of course, we’ve got OS3 coming out soon – built-in support for bluetooth headphones at last!

It’s been six days now since I put my 4Gb RAM upgrade back into my 15″ MacBook Pro (Late 2008, Unibody). So far, I have had one Kernel Panic, but no freezes or other issues. It wasn’t really being stressed when it had the Panic, but it had been on permanently since the memory went back in (I usually don’t reboot unless I do an update, the Mac seems waaay more stable than any PC so I never have to). That Panic was two days ago.

I’ve alsdo just done the firmware and SMC updates from Apple, although I don’t think there was anything in them related to the 4Gb issue.

Another issue I, and others, have come across, is that the new “unibody” MacBook Pros don’t wake up external displays after going to sleep.

I’m using a HP w19e LCD monitor attached via the mini displayport > HDMI adapter (I used it just fine on my previous MacBook) and it will usually not turn on when I wake the MBP from sleep (the laptop’s built-in display comes on just fine). Normally it’s as simple as the display staying in “no input signal = sleep” mode, but sometimes it will display brief flickering “static”, for want of a better word. Plenty of others on the Apple Support forums are seeing the same thing.

I’ve discovered a work-around which, whilst not ideal, does get the external display working again:

In “System Preferences”, go to “Desktop & Screen Saver” and set up a Hot Corner – I use the top left – to “Sleep Displays”. Then, if the external display doesn’t come on after the MacBook has been sleeping, I force the displays into Sleep again by using the Hot Corner, then wake them up after a couple of seconds by moving the mouse. This usually brings the external display back.

Other users have suggested setting the MacBook to use the 9600 graphics card (“Higher Performance” in Energy Saving preferences) or turning off the ambient light sensor. Some also suggest turning off the “Dim display before sleep” option, but turning it off hasn’t made any difference to me.

So, along with the 4Gb RAM problems, it looks like Apple have a bit of patching to do with these new laptops!

Having upgraded to a Macbook Pro, the first thing I did with it was upgrade the hard drive and memory, just like I did with my first Macbook. However, after a few days of use, it suddenly started suffering Kernel Panics and random freezes. After running diagnostics and swapping the hard drive back, all with no improvement, I checked out the Apple support site and found a number of people saying exactly the same thing was happening to them – they’d upgraded to 4Gb and now their Macbook Pro was crashing.

Some posts claimed that certain brands of RAM – Hynix & Samsung in particular – seemed to be OK, whereas others, even Crucial, would cause problems. My RAM is Transcend. On the plus side, a few posts suggest that 3Gb – an original 1Gb and an upgraded 2Gb stick – would work OK whilst we await news from Apple of a fix.

Out of curiosity, while I was buying a sleeve for my laptop in Albion, an Apple reseller on the Strand in London, I asked if they’d come across this problem, and was told they had and that it was a fault with the logic board in the late 2008 Macbook Pros. They also suggested that Apple might be recalling them, but didn’t give me any more information such as where they’d got that information from, so I have no idea if it’s true or not.

Anyway, just to check it was the memory causing my problems and nothing else, I put the original 2Gb back in, and the laptop was fine for five days. Today I decided to try the 4Gb again, just in case I hadn’t seated it correctly or something daft like that. So far, after about 12 hours of usage, it has been fine, but then it was fine for a few days after putting the RAM in the first time, so time will tell. If it does play up then I’ll drop down to 3Gb and see how that goes.

I’ve got a tough (well, from a geek point of view) decision to make – I’m going to upgrade my MacBook, but do I upgrade to a new aluminium MacBook, or go all out and get a MacBook Pro?

My wife has just bought herself her first Mac – one of the new aluminium MacBooks (the top one), and it is very nice indeed. A bit lighter and slimmer than my current MacBook (a late 2007 white one), and a touch more powerful – 2.4GHz compared to my 2.2GHz. The thing is, it used to be very easy to decide between the MacBook and the MacBook Pro – the Pro had a ‘proper’ graphics card, whereas the smaller one had ‘integrated’ graphics which weren’t really capable of 3D-type stuff.

Now, though, both MacBooks have 3D-capable graphics chipsets – the GeForce 9400M. Suddenly it’s harder to see why spending the extra £250 is worthwhile.

My first thought was to get the same MacBook as my wife – not for any soppy his’n'hers reason, but because it’s a stonkingly good spec for the money. Sure, there are PC laptops of equivalent spec for less, but they don’t have OSX (legally) and they don’t have the same stylish design as the MacBook. Plus the main reason why Peggy got her MacBook is because she was fed up of Vista and a bit jealous that I never had the same frustrations with my MacBook! So anyway, I was originally going for the 13″ 2.4GHz aluminium MacBook. The illuminated keyboard – previously found only on the MBP – is very handy; it’s well equipped in terms of processor, graphics and memory (2Gb); it’s got a decent, LED backlit, screen; it’s slim and lightweight; has a dual-layer DVD burner; and is generally a nice package.

But then…

There are some nice extra touches on the MacBook Pro. First off, it has a larger, higher-resolution screen. The 1280×800 of the MacBook is fine, but 1440×900 is better. I’ve been doing more video since getting my first MacBook and it would be nice to have a bit more screen to play with. However, although the larger screen means it has to be bigger than the MacBook, it’s not that much bigger. Then there’s the option of turning on the more powerful graphics card for some gaming – I was quite happy with the performance of my desktop PC for games – the MacBook Pro beats it hands down. Finally, on-the-go gaming is a reality. The MBP has a Firewire socket – that’ll come in handy for a Firewired Final Cut scratch disk.

All of that is nice. It’s worth a few extra quid. But there’s one thing on the MBP which, as soon as I realised it was there, made it a must-buy in my eyes – and it’s something I’d never paid attention to before.

It’s called an “ExpressCard/34 slot”.

If, like me, you hadn’t come across that before, you might be wondering what in blazes it is. Well, basically, it’s like a PCMCIA (also known as PC Card) slot – which has been around for years – only much faster. The MacBook doesn’t have it, and this means that the one flaw in the MacBook’s design can be overcome. There is one thing the MacBook is crying out for, and for some reason Apple still haven’t included – a memory card reader. However, stick an ExpressCard/34 card reader into the MacBook Pro’s ExpressCard slot, and memory cards are yours for the reading! No more having to lug around the USB cables for your camera and camcorder and so on – a feature that PC laptops have flaubnted for years is now available to Mac owners too!

So, for the sake of my sanity, it’s got to be the MacBook Pro. Are the larger screen, better gfx option and ExpressCard slot really worth £250? It’s a tough call, but I’m going to pay the extra anyway – I don’t want to go on holiday, realise I’ve left the stupid Kodak USB cable behind and wish I’d bought the Pro instead!