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My Top 10 iPhone Applications

Published

on 24 December, 2008

. 2 Comments

As you might know, I have an iPhone, and I love it very much. It’s only a 1st gen one, but it’s still fast enough for everyday use and serves me well. Since the iPhone App Store has been up and running since Apple launched it earlier this year, I thought I’d post a list of the 10 applications that I use the most. I have not included screenshots, as there are ones on the iTunes store listings, and, finally, this list is not in a specific order - it’s random.

• Twitterrific Premium (£5.99, or free ad-supported version) / Twinkle (free)
These two apps are tied, because I probably use them both equally, and they’re both pretty much the same thing. They’re clients for the popular site, Twitter. If I had to choose only one client, it would be Twitterrific Premium, because it’s the nicest looking and it’s very easy to use. However, Twinkle is also easy to use, but it has in the past not shown some tweets, so it comes second place. It does have one feature which Twitterrific does not have though, which is location-based Tweeting. It works by sending all tweets through Tapulous’ servers, and when you open the app on your iPhone, you can see any nearby tweets. This is handy for meeting new people, however if you live somewhere like me, you might be surrounded by retards.

• Facebook (free)
No guesses as to what this is for - it’s an iPhone client for the popular social networking site. It’s also one of the best iPhone apps that I’ve used - it’s pretty to look at, easy to use, and has yet to crash a single time on me. It does lack some features of the desktop-based Facebook site, but for what it is now, it’s fine for casual use.

• Movies (free)
Again, it’s pretty obvious what this is about. Movies shows current films showing, as well as nearby cinemas, with times, and DVD releases. It’s pretty handy for finding nearby cinemas, and checking times, however I’ve found that more then once, it’s shown the wrong times for a specific film then the cinema’s official website does. Also, the movie dates (such as the “released this week” films) are targeted toward the US market. I think this would be a great app if you live in the US, but otherwise, don’t rely on it 100%. It’s still worth downloading though.

• Night Stand (free)
Simply put, this is a clock. It displays a large LED clock, and does it while looking stylish. It also has the ability to disable the iPhone’s turn-the-screen-off-after-X-minutes function, so it can stay on all night long. However, it WILL kill your battery so it’s best if you use the power adaptor and USB cable to keep it charged.

• 1Password (free)
The iPhone based client that works very well with the desktop based password manager, 1Password. This is an extremely handy app for storing passwords, usernames, credit card numbers, and so on. It’s also protected by a PIN when you open it, and you can also assign a second password to specific entries, such as credit cards. While you don’t need the Mac-only desktop software to use this, it’s handy if you’re an OS X user, as you can sync them both over WiFi. This is also easily the most useful and productive app I have on my iPhone, and I would highly recommend both it and the desktop app if you have a Mac!

• TV Forecast (£1.79)
One of my very favourite apps, this program grabs info from (I think) TV.com, about when your favourite TV show is next on. It’s more suited to the US market, as it doesn’t allow you to choose, say, Prison Break on Sky1 in the UK instead of Fox in the US (season 4 of Prison Break has been shown on Tuesdays here, 24 hours after it’s aired in the US). It can show other shows though - it’s successfully worked with the UK’s “Top Gear” and “The IT Crowd”, as well as “Rush”, which is an Australian cop drama type show. Overall, very useful if you live in the US (or live outside of the US but know what bittorrent is ), and only 75% useful if you live outside the US. There’s also a dashboard widget for OS X, made by the same guy, which I also have. It’s pretty much the same thing as the iPhone app though.

• TV Plus (£2.99)
As far as I know, this is a UK-only app, which is a huge guide of all the TV channels available on Freeview or Sky here. Where the other apps fail though, is where this one is great - it has built in support for Sky’s “Remote Record” function, which allows you to set stuff to record when you’re not at home onto your Sky+ or Sky+HD box. However, this app is buggy, and crashes a lot, so it could do with some bug fixes.

• AroundMe (free)
Simply put - this shows points of interest around you, similar to what a GPS does. There are several categories available, including banks, bars, coffee, gas stations, hotels, cinemas, parking garages, pubs, restaurants, supermarkets, and so on. Data is provided by Google Maps.

• Shazam (free)
We’ve all at one time heard a great song, but have no idea what it actually is. Shazam is perfect for this - hold it up to your speakers (or wherever the music is coming from), and it’ll attempt to identify the track. Most of the time this works fine, but I’ve had several times where it’s failed on obscure music off a TV show. However, it works fine most of the time.

• Moonlight Mahjong (£2.99, or free “lite” version)
Last, but most definitely not least, is this great game. Other people might not like it too much, but I find myself addicted to it all the time. It’s also very pretty, has good performance, doesn’t crash, and there’s a frequent stream of new user-created layouts on the blog that you can load and play.

Note: Prices were correct at time of writing. This post is my personal opinion and is not in any way influnced by the developers of these apps. However, developers, if you want to give me a comission for posting this, feel free to do so.

MacBook Issues

Published

William

on 18 November, 2008

in Blog

. 6 Comments

Up until last week, I had been running Windows XP in a virtual machine, using VMware Fusion, on my iMac, and then, when I got it, my MacBook. However, on Friday, the virtual machine just suddenly gave me a BSOD (OS X itself remained fine though).

Before I go on, some people have asked me why I run a Windows virtual machine on my MacBook. The reason I do it is because I still can’t find OS X alternates for mIRC and Microsoft Visio that I like, and other programs I use, such as mkv2vob, are Windows only. Plus, I keep it running because several people I know are *only* on Steam and/or Xfire for IM. Crazy, I know, I use WLM, YIM, AIM, GTalk, Jabber, MobileMe, and Facebook for IM, and yet a small handful of people still only want to use Steam and Xfire for IM. Oh well.

Anyway, I wasn’t doing anything amazing just then, just mIRC and Steam. That was it. So, I rebooted the virtual machine itself, and that worked fine. Until about 60 minutes later, when OS X itself decided to kernel panic (which looks something like this). And it kept doing it over and over again, even with VMware completely closed. So, I decided to try a reinstall of OS X, and started backing up all my stuff off the HDD. However, by the time I was almost done, I’d had several crashes, and by Saturday night my MacBook refused, outright, to boot up.

If I pressed the power button, it would turn itself on, but the screen didn’t turn on at all. I tried all the suggestions on the Apple support site, including clearing the NVRAM or whatever it was called, I tried booting up in “safe mode”, tried booting to the Apple Hardware Test (this requires the OS X install DVD, which my MacBook decided to eat and not give back, too)…nothing worked! So, I decided to go to the Apple Store where I had got it, at the Bullring in Birmimgham (this was on Sunday). The guy who helped was very friendly, however all the Apple Geniuses were booked for that day, so he said I’d have to come back another day, or, if I wanted, he could swap the machine on the spot for a new one. I chose to do that, but, I took it back home first, plugged the HDD into my old iMac, and got all the remaining files off the HDD first. Took it back on Monday, and they swapped it out for a brand new MacBook, all in about 10 minutes. Easy.

Brought it home, and installed all my apps again, copied all my music to the HDD, and this time, I’m not running Windows XP in a virtual machine. I’ve decided to just use Linkinus for IRC, and if I do need Visio, Steam, Xfire, or mkv2vob, I’ll use my old Vaio laptop for those.

So far, so good. Except for one thing. On the now dead MacBook, I had one issue with the keyboard, and one issue only - the F keys at the top were all slanted slightly to the left. Other people have had the same issue too. There’s a discussion on the Apple support forum too, somewhere, about the same issue. However, I can live with that. What I can’t live with, however, is that on this new MacBook, both the N and M keys keep coming loose. And the O key squeaks against the aluminum.

Now, in no way do I type roughly, I think my typing could be considered “moderate”. I don’t type “super lightly”, but I don’t hit the keys hard either. However, after just 4 hours or so with this replacement, the O key sqeaks (the top of it is rubbing against the aluminum unibody), and the N and M keys, if I type quickly, keep coming loose. This is extremely annoying, as I type fast, all the time. While typing this blog post alone, the keys have popped up about 20-30 times! The easiest way to explain this is that if I type something, and my finger hits either key and slides even slightly to the left, the key pops up! Here’s a pic of them both popped up:

The only way I can seem to get around this is to type slowly (which is annoying), or to not use the N or M keys at all (which is just stupid). It’s easy to fix, all I have to do is push them down again. But doing that over and over and over again is EXTREMELY annoying. And, because Apple class the keyboard as part of the whole unibody, if I get it fixed they’ll probably insist on giving me another replacement. Great. This is also annoying because every time I go to the Apple store, it costs £8.30 in train fares to go from Stafford to Birmingham New Street.

Hopefully though, they can somehow replace the individual key itself (because I think the two clips on the bottom-right of they keys has broken or something). Regardless, I’m going to forward a link to this post to the boffins there, and, HOPEFULLY, they can post me the two keys so I can maybe try and replace them myself. Please, Apple?

I also don’t seem to be having much luck recently. First my PS3 dies last month, and now this. What next?

Swap!

Published

William

on 10 November, 2008

in Blog

. 2 Comments

Last month, I swapped my iMac for one of Apple’s new aluminium MacBooks. I’m pretty happy with it overall.

This month, I’m swapping my Dell 2407WFP-HC monitor for a Sony Bravia LCD TV - the KDL32V4000. Reason being, I originally purchased the Dell as my main monitor back when I had a PC, and I used it for that, but on both my iMac and MacBook I wasn’t actually using it for all that much other then IRC and the few movies I used to watch while I browsed the web. So, since I’m getting Sky HD installed next month, I thought “what the hell”, put it on eBay (for £260), and I’m swapping it for the TV. Considering I was going to use it all the time with Sky anyway, and 1080p is kindof wasted for Sky, I think it’s worth it. Only issue is, I need to reshuffle my room around a bit to fit it in somewhere.

Sometime this month I’m also going to put my Thecus NAS on eBay - unless anyone wants it now (for £220). Reason? I’m running out of space on it (it only has 1.56TB of space), and if I sell it, I can get two 1TB Western Digital MyBooks, which also have the advantages of 1) being quiet (the fan in the Thecus is noisy, to my ears anyway), 2) more HDD space, and 3) it’s USB, so I can bypass OS X’s network file sharing, which, honestly, is horrific compared to Windows. Plus, with USB HDDs, I can swap / add to them more easily.

Almost a week with the new MacBook

Published

William

on 30 October, 2008

in Blog

. 4 Comments

On Saturday the 25th of October, I took a train ride down to Birmingham New Street to pick up the new Late 2008 Aluminum MacBook, from the Apple Store in the Bullring. As always, upon going into the Apple store I was greeted by one of Apple’s staff, and asked if I needed any assistance, so I said yes, and asked for the new MacBook. 10 minutes later, I walked out the store with a rather heavy box containing the MacBook, and a Mini DisplayPort to DVI adaptor (which was £20 - ouch!).

Itching to open it, I arrived home, took it out the box, took a few photos, and turned it on. Instantly, I was greeted by the Apple setup wizard on the lovely bright display. I must say, after using this for a week, I’m very happy with it. It’s a much better display then any other laptop I’ve had, however, it does still fail to display blacks as vividly as the iMac did, or my Dell 2407WFP-HC does. In fact, overall, it seems a little off on several colours, but it’s not that bad - I’ve gotten used to it so far. If you’re seriously into graphic design, get the Pro. But if you just use it as a general day-to-day machine, it’s fine.

The design of the notebook itself is fantastic. The curvy edges when it’s closed make it feel thinner then it is, and the whole notebook feels very strong - much stronger then the old Vaio laptop that I’ve had (but not used for the past two years+). Whereas the Vaio felt like the screen was going to snap at any moment, the MacBook feels nice and strong. The overall design is nice too, I like having all the ports on the one side (and it’s the left, too - I hate it when the ports are on the right side, where I usually put a mouse and mousepad). However, I do have one complaint so far. When I’m typing, if I put my wrists on the edge of the laptop, the edge is actually pretty sharp - you don’t notice it if you have a jumper on or anything but if you’re just wearing a T-Shirt or something, and your wrists / arm are rubbing against the edge, I can imagine it would get irrating after a while. However, it hasn’t annoyed me that much yet.

In terms of the software, well, it’s OS X. Same as using my iMac. No real difference there, apart from the speed. Dropping down from my iMac’s 2.8GHz to the MacBook’s 2.4GHz isn’t that noticable - Photoshop and H264 HD video playback seems slightly slower, but not that much - both are still perfectly usable. Again, I think Photoshop would be much better with 4GB of RAM, versus 2GB. However, that’s another topic for another day.

Another thing that I love about the hardware itself, which is a very small feature, but it’s great nonetheless - if you plug the iPhone earphones into the audio out jack, you can use them for audio, but, and here’s the good part - you can use the microphone, too! I’ve been using it for the past week with Skype (calling my dad, in the Netherlands), and it’s pretty much perfect to replace my large and bulky headphones - the audio quality, according to him, is very good. As for the built in speakers, they’re very very good for a laptop, some of the best I’ve heard, but, of course, I’ll stick to using my speakers for music. They sound a hell of a lot better.

I’ve not yet installed XP on here to play any games yet, but I plan on doing so in the next week or so.

Now - the bad points. So far, I have a few issues.

Firstly, the trackpad is great, it’s huge, it feels good to use, however, it’s loud if you click. Seriously, if you’re in a quite place, like a library, and you click, I’m guessing everyone would look up and stare at you. The trackpad is just loud.

Secondly, and this seems to have been reported by other people - the function keys seem to all be slightly tilted to one side - the left is lower, and the right is raised.

Finally - and this one annoys me a lot - well, take a read for yourself: Apple Support - Discussions (I know it says MBP and the Cinema Display, but it’s happening to me too, on my 2407WFP-HC).

Other then those few issues, I think it’s been well worth switching from the iMac, and I’m very happy with my purchase. I just hope Apple can fix the issue I’ve been having with the external monitor issue, and soon, because it’s annoying.

I think that covers everything.