Dear Apple,

While I am delighted to have an update. I seem to have gained a useless US-centric option at the top of my Internet menu. Myself and the majority of UK residents have no interest in your terrible American sports.

Please remove it.

Best Regards,

An AppleTV user

I have however had had a problem with similar names. No matter how much I tried to pronounce Jayne Smith it always came up with James Smith. It wasn’t until I realised that the leading S of Smith was causing the problem and causing Jayne to sound like James. The solution was very simple. Instead of saying “Dial Jayne Smith Mobile” I just said “Dial Jayne Mobile”. Luckily I don’t have any other Jaynes in my phone, or Janes for that matter but if I did I suspect that at that point I would be told of the multiple matches and I could clarify with a full name in the knowledge that James Smith was no longer in the possible results.

I didn’t find any instructions on voice control in the box but the following is available on the Apple support site.

Call someone in contacts:
Say “call” or “dial,” then say the name of the person. If the person has more than one phone number, you can add “home” or “mobile,” for example.

Dial a number:
Say “call” or “dial,” then say the number.

Make a correction:
Say “wrong,” “not that one,” “not that,” “no,” or “nope.”

Control music playback:
Say “play,” or “play music.” To pause, say “pause,” or “pause music.” You can also say “next song” or “previous song.”

Play an album, artist, or playlist:
Say “play,” then say “album,” “artist,” or “playlist” and the name.

Shuffle the current playlist:
Say “shuffle.”

Find out more about the currently playing song:
Say “what’s playing,” “what song is this,” “who sings this song,” or “who is this song by.”

Use Genius to play similar songs:
Say “Genius,” “play more like this,” or “play more songs like this.”

Cancel Voice Control:
Say “cancel.”

For best results:

• Speak into the iPhone microphone as if you were making a phone call. Or use the microphone in the included headset.
• Speak clearly and naturally.
• Say only iPhone commands and names, and numbers. Pause slightly in between.
• Use full names.

By default, Voice Control expects you to speak voice commands in the language that’s set for iPhone (the General > International > Language setting). The Voice Control settings let you change the language for speaking voice commands. Some languages are available in different dialects or accents.

Change language or country:
In Settings, choose General > International > Voice Control and tap the language or country.

Voice Control for the iPod application is always on, but for security you can prevent voice dialing when iPhone is locked.

Prevent voice dialing when iPhone is locked:
In Settings, choose General > Passcode Lock and turn Voice Dial off. Unlock iPhone to use voice dialing.

I have a mate who develops iPhone apps and I occasionally do some graphic design for him on icons, etc. I suppose because of that you could officially class me as part of his team and a developer also. Anyway this opened the door to the 3.0 beta and I’ve been living with it since March.

There are still a few features that I need third party support or account activation on such as Push notification, peer-to-peer, in app purchases, third party accessories and MMS but I can impart my experience and opinion on what I have seen.

The 3.0 for starters isn’t a groundbreaking update in the way 2.0 was. Its more polish and much has been made of how only Apple could make cut and paste a main feature. However it does fill many holes and improve of a number of features that keeps it ahead of the competition.

The cut and paste does actually work really well and I have used it a number of times. It is easy to take for granted after having it for a while. I’ve used it mostly where I want to chuck web page text back into a google search. Funnily enough i only found the shake to undo the other day by accident when I dropped my phone

The landscape keyboard has increased my texting speed on SMS and its nice to have that option consistent across more apps.

I’ve only used the spotlight search once to try it out. I tend to forget its there. You can browse to the left of the home screen with a swipe or from the home screen, press the home button which will take you to the search. I think its the nature of the phone in that the stuff I would search for is either notes or contacts so in each case I would tend to go direct. Its not like a computer where I have a load of documents to search.

Having just mentioned the notes, this is one of the biggest features for me. Note synching. I have loads of notes mainly because my memory is shit and to finally have them sync is a godsend. Its the little things with 3.0 that make the difference and its also nice to see public calendars sync also. However I would have liked tasks. As it is I’ve resorted to the Things App both on the iPhone and desktop. It was nice to see Things winning an Apple design award the other day as it is a great app.

What else deserves a mention? I turned shake to shuffle off as it shuffled my music once purely by putting the iPhone in my pocket a little more forcefully than usual. I don’t use the voice recorder much although I have tried it and its nice to see the voice notes sync with iTunes.

A final thing on 3.0 is the find my phone feature. YOu have to have a MobileMe sub for it to work and you then can enable it on your phone. It went live the other day so I tried it last night. I logged onto MobileMe on the web and withing a few moments it told me exactly where my phone was, on the desk next to me. I had the option to make my phone bleep (even if set to silent) and to send a message. I typed in “Give me my phone back, you bastard” and within a few minutes it was displayed on the phone with a beeping noise. What was also nice is that having confirmed that it had been displayed I then got an email.

“Dear MobileMe member,

The message sent at 6:02 PM on June 10, 2009 has been displayed on Martin’s iPhone at 6:06 PM on June 10, 2009:

Give me my phone back, you bastard”

That’s pretty much it. If you have any questions I’d be happy to answer them but you’ll know yourself by next Wednesday. Just in time for the next podcast no doubt.

It was interesting to see people agonising over the options. What they often fail to say is that most 3G owners who upgraded from the original iPhone are in an 18 month contract. I know that mine expires in Feb 2010 and I have seen that £35 customers only get the option for a 1 month early upgrade. Jan… f*cking fantastic.

The suggested option is to get a PAYG, but at that price?! I do have a further option as my wife uses a PAYG sim in my original iPhone and she is spending upto and in excess of £35 on credit so I plan to sign her up for a contract, put her sim in my 3G and have the 3GS for myself (its only fair.. I will have paid £270 odd).

I do however keep stepping out of the Apple “must have” hypnosis. What will the 3GS really give me?

Video. Nice but I rarely used video on my phone pre-iPhone

Compass. It may make Tom Tom more accurate, but isn’t Tom Tom still going to be available on 3G (even if slightly less accurate – my Go700 doesn’t have a compass does it?)

Battery life. Mines ok as it is. Its regularly on a cradle and having turned off pull mail every 15 mins my battery capacity has increased ten fold. Those who want me NOW! send mail to my MobileMe push account or SMS me.

Faster processor. Mines fast enough and I can’t think of a 3G app that suffers from speed to any great degree.

Better camera and auto focus. Happy with the one it has now. If I want a better shot I’ll break out the Nikon.

Tethering. On O2′s prices? Don’t take the piss!

I think I’ve just talked myself into keeping my money in my pocket. What else am I going to spend it on now?

Oh, and don’t forget to sign the Twitter petition

So the way it usually goes. New computer, new bag and an office clear out. That exposed another need. My old office chair was looking decidedly ragged. The seat was ripped and cracked in far to many places and the foam was exposed and flattened from years of my backside squashing it. I can be notoriously hard to buy for and when I show a need for anything people jump at the chance so without too much prompting a new chair was bought. It’s soooo comfy and a million times better than its predecessor. I think I’ll stay sitting here all evening.

But for now I will just enjoy where I am right now

Doing the job I do it irks me to ‘retire’ any computer before its time but thats just what I did this weekend. I’m not sure if its just a Mac thing but I feel a certain sadness at moving on from my old trusty PowerBook G4, more so that I could feel for say my PowerMac. It may be down to the traveling we did together and the adventures we had along the way.

I could give any number of reasons as to why I moved on early. The obvious one is that new things are shiny and Apple to their best to get that magpie behavior out of us but I’d like to think that the real reason is much more justified. Much of my work over the last year has been out of the office and the focus of primary computer had shifted from the PowerMac to the PowerBook. There was still no replacement for sitting in front of my big HD Cinema display but using the PowerBook day in day out was an enjoyable experience.

Over the last few months I’ve come across a number of applications that were Intel only, I’ve also had one eye on Snow Leopard and with the occasional situation where I could have more easily provided support if I has a copy of Windows in front of me the tide was turning and I felt I should consider a new MacBook. Having toyed with the idea I had initially thought that I could go for a bit more portability with a 13.3″ MacBook but I decided I couldn’t live with the screen size and went for a 15″ MacBook Pro which was a direct equivalent of my previous weapon of choice. In hindsight I may have been able to get by with the MacBook as despite its smaller stature it had it in the pixel department. I had never considered this and had failed to check and only noticed when getting a new desktop picture. The new MacBook Pro runs at 1440 x 900 where as the old PowerBook ran at 1280 x 854 which is not too dissimilar to the current MacBook which has a 1280 x 800 native resolution display.

So thats what we have up top. Under the hood is where I opted to have a bit of an upgrade and chose to go with the 2.66GHz model. The reasoning being to give it a bit more longevity and to help out more when I were to have to run a copy of Windows under VM Ware Fusion. The faster processor also came with a bit more memory, topping out at 4GB. I left the standard 5400 rpm HDD as the 7200 rpm would have only given negligible performance enhancements with the stuff I do.

So all thats left is to find a new home for the PowerBook. It shouldn’t be hard and while I was initially a little sad to be moving on its nice that its going to have plenty more adventures with a new owner. It has as I said plenty of life left in it. I just hope that this change doesn’t bring around a premature end to the reign of my PowerMac.

While in the Apple Store I took the opportunity to browse the new batch of FM transmitters. I was looking for something to use in my car as I not really used my iPod/iPhone in a musical capacity for some time. My old car had a tape drive and I used a tape convertor to attach my iPod and regularly listened to my music. Its in my car where I tend to listen to music more than anywhere and I rarely use my iPod with headphones (although I recently bought a set of Bose foldaway headphones). When I changed cars I lost the ability to use the tape convertor as it had a CD player and while I had considered losing the multichanger in preference to a Dension cable I never got round to it. In the end I bought an FM transmitter which did a job but it was never perfect. With the loss of my iPod and the incompatibility of the accessory with the iPhone I was left with nothing again. It was probably a good job that I didn’t go to the trouble of installing the Dension as it may have gone the same way.

So I bought a Griffin Roadtrip and I have to say that it markedly better than the previous devices I’ve used both in performance and usability. Tuning is very easy with a good display on the cradle and the sound is clear ‘most’ of the time. I wouldn’t say it was perfect as you do still occasionally end up in areas where the airwaves are so busy that it has an effect on the sound quality.

With a regular 45 minute commute I think that I can finally start to get my teeth into some regular podcast listening.

I got swept along on Monday with the elevated levels of excitement generated by O2′s text offering me my new iPhone 3G. I was one of those repeatedly hammering refresh and getting more and more frustrated. I was also one of those that saw red when I was finally given a screen that told me all stock had gone. But with a few days to reflect its easy to forget one of the iPhone’s major draw points. Its user interface and OS. Sure there will be phones out there that can give a more accurate location and there will be phones out there that can get faster data while out and about but the biggest change will be the release of firmware 2.0 and that’s something we ALL get. So I’m disappointed not to get my free upgrade from O2, who doesn’t like something for nothing, but I will still have a phone that will be just as capable while I wait.

The .me domain and the Mobile Me rumour had been knocking round for a few weeks before the WWDC and during that time it had been bugging me at how kak it sounded rather than dot Mac.

It wasn’t until I saw the keynote that I remembered that it hadn’t been conceived this side of the pond.

moh-buhl me sounds easier on the tongue than moh-bahyl me. You’d have thought that Jonathan Ive would have let them know. tsk.

1. Time Capsule

I’m not getting overly annoyed about this one as I don’t think that it would make one scrap of difference but it does leave me frustrated that the Airport Extreme Base Station (AEBS) that I invested in, and that was being touted by initial Leopard specs as being a Time Machine target (having had a USB HDD attached), was left out in the cold. Sure Time Capsule is no doubt an excellent product factoring aside that you are fixed to initial capacity and it does make so much sense as Steve told us. The point is, we know. That’s why so many people bought the AEBS. There is no way that I can accept that there is any reason that if the Time Capsule works then there is any difference between that and a AEBS/USB2 HDD. Its essentially the same product. Besides, Time Machine should only need network visibility. I have a Mac Mini here that is backing up to a USB HDD attached to and shared from the PowerMac.

2. iPhone and iPod Touch

Mail on an iPod Touch. Fantastic! Seriously. For anyone not in the market for an iPhone for whatever reason it makes it so much more of a complete Internet product, well nearly. Where’s the instant messaging? You can also level this at the iPhone which to some degree hides behind SMS with its iChat like SMS conversation history. It’s still not ‘instant’. It’s a massive omission.
Cost wise I do have an issue. I’ve seen it pointed out that the iPhone and AppleTV have subscription based models and as such can offer ‘free’ software upgrades, and sure the new iPods are discounted to compensate but why not a token $1 (or 50p over here)? All this to me is academic as I couldn’t hope to consider a Touch with the current storage capacities.

3. AppleTV and iTunes Movie Rentals

This is one that I’m particularly happy with. Not because I will be making use of it any time soon (ok, so its not in the UK yet anyway) but because its brought AppleTV back from the brink. Apple TV had to survive because its a basic building block of a distributed media environment. In my case its not an issue that it can now sit independent to any host computer, its not as if i even need one as I currently use an Xbox 360 with Connect360 but if it wasn’t for that it would be an essential purchase. I listen to my music while working and do so when out and about with my iPod. I even watch the occasional bit of video when travelling but I have no desire to sit in my study and watch a film on the Mac. No I want to sit in front of my big TV on a large comfy couch with a beer (other drinks are available).
So, that’s why it had to survive and with yesterday’s announcement it has. Bringing all the major players on board is a great achievement yet to be matched by the current physical HD formats it should be said and while I’ve read grumblings on the time model of this I don’t have a problem with it. The 24 hour limit is no different to other similar models I’ve seen and you do get 30 days to start that 24 hours in case of any unforeseen change of plan. For me as one who enjoys films I want to enjoy a film as it was intended. Not a TV show that you dib in and out of but an end to end experience. Sure you have the liberty to pause a film for a quick toilet stop but if in the cinema you would never dream of standing up and asking if you could watch the rest tomorrow as you’re a bit tired. If you can’t put time aside and respect the film then don’t watch it.

4. MacBook Air

This all brings me to the big one. The MacBook Air. The one that had all the channels buzzing and I must admit that I got really drawn into it. But now the dust has settled I’m a little more objective on it. Its not that I wouldn’t dive out and buy one tomorrow. Apart from cost and having a PowerBook that has loads of life in it yet (that’s one of the reasons i buy Mac after all), its just that for me small doesn’t just mean thin, it means small. I heard Steve talk about there being no compromise in the screen and keyboard but if i wanted that size of screen and keyboard I’d get a MacBook, or even a MacBook Pro. When I look at my notebook bag the thickness of it has never been a concern. Its the other dimensions. Ok, so it may look ok to have a despatch bag or record bag over your shoulder, and while I’d never admit to having or even considering a ManBag, my last notebook before going to Mac was a Sony Vaio C1 pictured here. I never found there to be a compromise on the keyboard, it still needed an external drive (no problem with PCMCIA, USB, Firewire, etc) and if it had been built today it would have had wireless built in rather than the card adapter I used. The only compromise was not the size of the screen but its aspect. It was very letterbox and very non standard which made it a little awkward with some applications but it was a small price to pay. Now I know that someone will point out something in the current range of PC notebooks but I’m coming from a Mac perspective. There is a demand for a smaller Mac and there is certainly a user base of people still using their 12″ G4 PowerBooks waiting for that replacement.