Thanks Steve

Steve Jobs - 1955-2011

Like a lot of people, I woke up this morning to hear the incredibly sad news about the death of Steve Jobs. We all knew he was ill, probably very ill, but I wasn't expecting it so soon. The way he'd been talking when he stepped down as Apple CEO a few months back, I figured he still had years ahead of him.

So many people have said so many poignant and truthful things already today. Friends like Rich, Oli and Sam - just regular, everyday Apple fans - have already paid tribute to a man who touched their lives in a unique way. I can imagine others (those who obviously don't understand) saying "But you never even met the guy! What's the big deal?"

I'll take a moment to share my perspective on Steve, and what he did for me.

I've used Macs for a long time. Back before the original iMac. Before the iPod. Before they were cool. For me, there was always something great about them, even those monochrome Mac Classics that I used in the early nineties. They had character. They were different.

And then, Steve came back to Apple after his "wilderness years". He launched the iMac, and what a machine that was. Then came OSX. Then came the iPod. In those revolutionary products, Steve captured the attention of the world and showed them something that they didn't even know they wanted, but simply had to have.

Through my job, I got to buy and play with a lot of Apple kit. The G3 iMac, in particular, revolutionised my view of what a computer should be, and should do. I was never going back. I'm sat here typing this on an iMac right now.

Apple's meteoric rise has been astounding. Only recently, Steve's guidance saw the iPad become their next massive success - and again, a product that "experts" thought wouldn't sell because there was no market for it.

Today, it seems like everyone is brandishing an "iDevice" like a style accessory. The majority don't have Macs, and never will have. They probably don't know the first thing about the history and evolution of that piece of technological wizardry they're holding, and nothing of the contribution Steve has made to their lives.

If I've got one regret about how massively successful Steve made Apple, it's that not enough people will look down at their Apple product on this monumental, awful day, take a brief quiet moment and think to themselves, "Thanks Steve".

2010 Gadget Review of the Year

Back in both 2004 and 2005, I wrote "Reviews of the Year" on my old blog, summing up the previous twelve months and the gadgets that had come and gone. I must admit, there was much more to write about back then (probably something to do with the disposable income I had burning holes in my pockets) but I've decided to revisit the concept for 2010, because it has been a pretty good year for new and shiny tech. So, here goes...

Apple iMac - February 2010

I finally decided to part with my much-loved G5 iMac at the start of the year, and went on an eBay selling spree to raise funds for a replacement. I opted for the 21.5" Intel Core 2 Duo iMac, and I've been incredibly pleased with it. Admittedly, every time I see a real-life 27-inch model I covet it greatly, but the 21.5" is fine for my purposes. It's a massive leap in performance from its predecessor, and I've not regretted the purchase one bit. (Original post here)

Firestone Audio Fubar IV DAC - March 2010

After getting a pair of Grado SR80i headphones for Christmas, I was looking for a way of combining them with my existing Apple Airport Express to give a proper high-fidelity listening experience. I decided the best way to do this would be via an offboard digital-to-analogue convertor and eventually plumped for the Fubar IV. I fell in love with it straight away - superb sound, compact size, built-in headphone amplifier. Perfect. (Original post here)

Firestone Audio Supplier - May 2010

Following the success of the Fubar IV, I went one step further and purchased the matching dedicated power supply, The Supplier. Connected up to the Fubar IV, it just took all of the things I already loved about it and improved them. I think the Fubar/Supplier combination has been my best gadget purchase of 2010. Brilliant. (Original post here)

HTC Legend - May 2010

Also in May, I decided to stop procrastinating about getting a new phone and decided to take out an 18-month contract on an HTC Legend. Running Android and sporting a very fetching all-aluminium body, it has recently been updated to 2.2 Froyo and has proved to be a brilliant little phone. I see my friends toting their new iPhone 4's, but I think the Android/HTC combination can match the iPhone almost every step of the way. I will admit that I would love the iTunes integration of the iPhone, but other than that for the money I'm really pleased. I still have another 11 months to live with it, and I hope it'll continue to go from strength to strength. I'm wondering if it'll ever see 2.3 Gingerbread though... (Original post here)

WDTV Live - July 2010

A cracking deal from eBay meant that I took the plunge on a Western Digital TV Live media streamer for the bedroom TV, and on the whole I've been quite impressed with it. Since getting the new AppleTV (see below) my enthusiasm has been tempered somewhat, but for less than half the price of the ATV it has proved more than capable. I don't like the interface, and if there was better integration with iTunes (rather than just SAMBA sharing) it'd be much better, but generally it's pretty good. Wouldn't buy one for the full £90 RRP though - that's AppleTV money.

Sony STR-DA2400ES AV Receiver & Sony BDP-S373 Bluray Player - July 2010

I got a bonus at work and promptly blew it all on these new bits of home cinema kit. I managed to resist the urge to start replacing all my DVDs with Blurays, and I'm glad I did because I've discovered that on my 720p 32-inch TV, there's really not a lot to be gained in terms of picture quality. HD audio is nice, but I'm still fairly impressed with Dolby Digital 5.1 to be honest! I do like having the convenience of HDMI switching on the receiver though, and having automatic sound calibration is superb. Although I'm not using the player for Blurays, the DVD upscaling is excellent and the network features are a nice touch.

2nd-Gen Apple TV - September 2010

After the new Apple TV was unveiled at the beginning of the month, I immediately preordered one. It was exactly what I was looking for to bridge the gap between iTunes on my iMac and the TV in the lounge. And, having used it for a few months, it does this job admirably. I haven't bought or rented anything from the iTunes store, I'm just watching my own content on it. The whole experience is very "Apple" - simple and slick, and using it alongside my iMac and Airport Express makes for an excellent multi-room music solution too. (Original post here)

Amazon Kindle - December 2010

Having only got this a few days ago, I can't write anything particularly in depth about the Kindle, other than on first inspection I think I'm going to really like it. Some people have bemoaned the fact that it's "just" an e-book reader (apparently I should have bought an iPad at five times the price) but ever since I first clapped eyes on the new model, I've wanted one. If it gets me back into reading again, it'll be a superb gadget. Full opinion to follow, once I've actually used it in anger...

All in all, it has been a year of very satisfying gadgets. I'm hoping that 2011 will be more of the same.

Swype for Android (plus UK workaround!)

I've been waiting patiently for a while for the Swype keyboard for Android to become more readily available. Up until recently, you could only use it if you were lucky to have it preinstalled on your phone or you were privileged enough to be part of the very limited beta programme.

However, as of today they've opened the beta up to anyone who cares to register for it.

Head over to http://beta.swype.com and sign up, and you'll be sent an email to download the software. Because it's a beta, it isn't distributed through the marketplace, so it's downloaded as an APK file. As such, you need to enable your phone to allow non-marketplace software sources but once you've done that it's all plain sailing. If you do get stuck, there's a very thorough tutorial.

Having signed up, downloaded and installed Swype on my HTC Legend, I have to say that my first impressions are that it must be some kind of black magic! I haven't found a word that it doesn't get right first time - I've even been trying to trip it up with obscure words. You don't even need to be that precise with your gestures, it still seems to know which word you wanted.

Now that they're allowing more people to use Swype, I can see it becoming the default Android keyboard for most people. I wouldn't be surprised if Google licence it and build it into the OS itself. It really is that good.

Got an Android phone? Get Swyping.

*** UPDATE ***

As you can read in the comments below, Dave has pointed out that there is no UK localisation at present. Which means that you're going to get American spellings for some things. I actually hadn't noticed - I guess there aren't *that* many words that are spelled differently for it to be a constant annoyance (I reserve the right to change my mind on this of course....)

*** UPDATE 2 ***

Having now done a bit of research, I've discovered how to teach Swype new words. This gives you a workaround for the lack of UK spellings. To teach it a new word, tap out the letters individually followed by a space - this is then added to the custom dictionary. So if you, for example, create a new text message and go through and manually tap in a few UK spellings of common words - things that end in "-ise" or "-our" - Swype will then recognISE (see what I did there?) them the next time around. Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but better than nothing while we wait for a proper UK version?

Opening up the Market: HTC Legend UK update

I was pleasantly surprised to discover my new HTC Legend alerting me to the fact that it had a firmware update waiting for me earlier today. I knew there was one in the pipeline to address the Market issues that I alluded to in my last post (a number of mainstream apps missing for the Legend) but I wasn't expecting it so soon. As far as I can tell it's an update specifically for UK Legend users on the Vodafone network.

I was given the option of downloading it there and then over my 3G connection, or to wait until there was a wifi connection available. It was only 9MB but I decided to go for the wifi option. The update sat patiently in my notification bar until I returned home, and then it promptly started downloading.

About 5 minutes later, after download, install and restart, I checked the phone's Software Information screen (to get there, go to Settings -> About Phone -> Software Information) and then listed at the bottom was the all-important Software Number, listed as 1.32.161.4. I had been upgraded!

I promptly checked the Android Market and sure enough, all those essential (but previously missing) apps I had been looking for had now appeared. I'm now set up with the full complement of apps that I wanted and pleasingly, they're all pretty much identical to their iPhone counterparts. I've got a few Android-specific ones in there for good measure as well. In no particular order then, here's what I've got (links are to the webpage specific to the Android app):

Evernote - Note-taking app, allowing you to upload photo notes, audio notes and text notes to your online scrapbook for later reference and searching.
Dropbox - Access to your Dropbox and its contents, and again letting you upload files direct from your phone
Shazam - For quick and easy identification of music that you hear, but don't know what it is!
Wordpress - Blog tools and management
Opera Mini - Good browser for when your 3G connection is slow
Google Listen - Podcast downloads, playback and search
NewsRob - RSS reader that syncs with your Google Reader feeds with excellent user interface, and offline caching
BBC News - App for direct access to all of the stories on BBC News
Google Sky Map - Point your phone at the night sky and the app will tell you what constellations you can see
c:geo - Geocaching app allowing you to locate and manage Geocaches, also syncs with your geocaching.com account
My Tracks - Lets you record your journey on Google Maps, complete with times, speeds, elevation etc and upload it
Barcode Scanner - Useful for price comparisons, and increasingly for finding and downloading other apps via QR codes
Astrid - Task manager and to-do list

Any others I should have? Let me know in the comments.

72 hours with the HTC Legend

As you'll be aware by now, I took the plunge with a new phone at the end of last week and got myself an HTC Legend.

Having spent three days setting it up, using it and tinkering with it I thought I'd report my findings so far. Here goes...

The first thing to say is that the phone itself, in terms of its hardware, is absolutely beautiful. The unibody aluminium casing is great to hold, and gives the phone a sense of class. I don't know how long it will remain scuff-free, but I definitely get the sense that it's rugged enough to withstand day-to-day abuse. I got a nice Proporta case for it, so hopefully that will keep it safe.

Next up - initial set up. As any one of a number of YouTube videos will testify, setting up the HTC Legend is an absolute breeze - with one important caveat as far as I'm concerned. The Android OS is so heavily integrated with Google's cloud-based services that I think you might have a more difficult time if you're not a Google account holder. However, I am, and as such everything was very straightforward. Enter your Google account name and password and the phone sets up your email, calendar and contacts without needing any further prompting. Then it asks you if you hold an account with any of Facebook, Flickr or Twitter. Having all three, I proceeded to enter usernames and passwords for those services too, and it went about importing all my contacts from them as well. I was pleased to discover that whilst there is a useful amount of integration between all four of these destinations, contacts are kept distinct on the phone so that you don't end up with an unwieldly amalgamation of everyone from everywhere. You can also select how often the phone syncs those services, and how verbose you want it to be in telling you about any updates. I particularly like the way it gives notifications in the status bar across the top - subtle, but effective.

Setting up the seven home screens is very simple - you can either choose from some presets, or just go ahead and configure your own, which is what I did. You can choose from widgets, programs and shortcuts to provide you with a layout that is unique to you and the way you work. I've got the most common apps on the home screen (calendar, text messages, gMail, Twitter client, Facebook, camera app etc) and then a selection of widgets and shortcuts spread liberally across the other six screens.

I then went on to download some apps from the Android Market - and this is where my first hitch arose. Because the Legend is such a new phone, it has not yet been officially ratified (if that's the right word) by Google, and as such not all the apps are available just yet. I resorted to directly downloading some of the ones I wanted rather than going through the Market because of this. I got hold of Evernote, Dropbox, Shazam, Opera Mini and a few others (all of which I will tell you about in a subsequent post once I've tested them out).

The most impressive App so far is Google Navigation. By upgrading the built-in Google Maps app to the latest version, the phone becomes a fully fledged turn-by-turn SatNav. I was slightly annoyed that it didn't read instructions out loud, until I realised that you needed to also install the text-to-speech synthesiser before it can do this!

I had a bit of a nightmare with getting music tracks onto the phone - but this was a self-induced nightmare really. Copying music across is as simple as drag and drop, but I discovered a lot of my tracks didn't have embedded album art. This is a quirk of iTunes, in that if you rely on automatic retrieval of artwork then iTunes stores it in a separate linked database instead of embedding it. I could have just lived with missing artwork, but my computer OCD got the better of me and I had to fix it. I will detail how I did this in a later post (it's too in-depth to explain here in this overview!).

So - initial impressions after a 72-hour running in period? Well, firstly - and perhaps most importantly - it's NOT an iPhone. There is quite a bit of fettling to be done to get things the way you want them. Without the symbiosis of iTunes, this is very much a hands-on piece of kit. However, the Google integration with the cloud-based services is very impressive which in some ways more than makes up for the lack of iTunes, and I rather like the level of customisation and freedom that Android allows. On the apps front, the Market is very barren by comparison with the Apple App Store, but so far I've got most things that I need. If your need is first-and-foremost for your phone to be a media player, then again this isn't necessarily the phone and/or the OS for you. However - for what I need it is perfect, and the cost saving over the mighty iPhone is a big bonus.

I'm sure there will be a lot more discoveries, joys and frustrations to come, but it's definitely so far, so good.

The stuff of Legend

Just a quick post, but I'm sure you will be heartily relieved to know that my mission to seek out a new mobile phone is all but over.

The trusty Nokia E63 will be handed down to GeekWife, and in its place I shall be wielding a gorgeous new HTC Legend.

After much wrangling with various networks, Vodafone came up with an absolutely corking deal on the Legend. This means it'll be by my side for the next 18 months, so I shall be sure to fully document the ups and downs of Android ownership in graphic detail for your reading pleasure.

Expect a post on the setup process in the next few days.

All change

So it took T-Mobile less that 24 hours to render my last post about the HTC Desire almost entirely useless - they've changed all their price plans.

So now the entry level tariff is £15 a month, not £10, and the handset price has taken a hefty hike. Instead of £164, it's now £226. So my previous calculations are all wrong. If you want an 18-month contract at £15 per month, the total cost to you is now £496. If you're prepared to put up with the phone for 2 years, then you can have 300 voice minutes instead of 100 and only pay £191 for the phone (total cost £551). These prices, needless to say, are still substantially lower than the iPhone, but they're not quite as marked as they were.

To throw another spanner into the works, I've had some quality time with the Desire's rival sibling, the HTC Legend - and let me tell you, that phone is quite something. Although the specs aren't quite as high as on the Desire, the interface and OS are identical and the big plus point is the beautiful aluminium construction. Add in the fact that it's smaller, more pocketable and cheaper, and there really is now a genuine contest for my affections. It is, however, exclusive to Vodafone, and only on a 24 month contract. It is only £20 per month though, and with a free handset (total cost: £480 for 100 minutes, 500 texts and unlimited internet).

From reading a few forums, people have been getting some very good deals on both phones by dealing with Vodafone's web relations team directly (getting hold of them is a bit of a convoluted process) so if I can secure either the Legend or the Desire for less than the standard prices, then I'll be ordering immediately. I'm awaiting their phone call any time now...