Tablet and Mobile

Archive for the ‘iPad2’ Category

Some time ago, I took my (then) Apple iPhone 3GS and jailbroke it. Why? Because I could and because I was sick of Orange trying to charge £10 a month for letting me share the 3G connection with my laptop.

That’s all history now, Orange have been kicked into touch in favour of the vastly superior THREE company and I now share unlimited 3G with my various devices.. When I moved up to the iPhone 4 I really could not see the point of jailbreaking the phone – but the Apple TV2 is different.  One of the biggest uses for Apple TV is to watch movies and guess what – you’re stuck with iTunes on your PC and Apple format movies.

Neither of the above is a problem for me – but converting movies to Apple format is not something your average person has much time for (couple of hours per video)… and so I took the plunge and had the thing jailbroken using the latest Sn0wbreeze (yup, that is spelled correctly).

The process is easy enough and takes a matter of half an hour including setup but the results are spectacular. Now I can watch movies and listen to music in a variety of formats. Not only that but I also have access to a NetGear ReadyNas Duo, an inexpensive and rather neat network backup device which just happens to be able to stream to the Apple TV – which means no more need to leave a computer on to access movies, pictures and music on the Apple TV. Between the low cost of Apple TV2 (sub-£100) and the Duo ~(sub-£100 excluding disks) – and the nature of the Duo which means with 2 disks you have redundancy (both store identical content – so if one disk goes down you continue on as normal) I now have a reliable solution for handling media at home without using a PC and without lengthy media conversion to suit Apple. It just so happens that software is available for both iPad and iPhone to handle this scenario also.

So is it worth jailbreaking the Apple TV2?  Most definitely – but if it turns your box into a stone – you are of course on your own – follow the Sn0wbreeze instructions carefully.

Update – at the time of writing – Apple TV 2 on the latest software (IOS5) cannot be successfully and usefully jailbroken – which is a shame. Of you want to use jailbreaking – don’t upgrade!

The title of this blog is misleading as the two tablets are not in the same league – but this is no doubt how the press will play this for a while until we all get used to the idea that Amazon has finally decided to go into the colour tablet market.

Feel sorry for those who’ve just bought a Kindle as the price of the existing models is about to drop – considerably!

So – what IS the “Kindle Fire” and how does it stack up against existing models such as the iPad 2? 

Firstly price, you can’t beat the expected retail price of $199 or around £130 IF the display quality is up to it – and that we’ll only find out with time.

The Kindle Fire is a 7” (as against 9.7” for the iPad) display Android Tablet that comes fully set up for getting you to buy Amazon products (books, magazines, movies etc. – the latter being something the existing Kindle could never handle due to the slow screen speed). The resolution is lower than the iPad at 1024*600 as against 1024 * 768 but frankly this is not as important as screen quality – I’ve seen many 7” tablets with similar but watery displays that you just would not wish to own.

So what does it NOT do? The Kindle Fire has NO cameras, NO Bluetooth, NO HDMI, NO expandable storage and we don’t yet know how much memory it will come with though STORAGE-wise it will have 8Gbytes.

At 0.45” it is a little thicker than the iPad but then, being physically smaller, at 14.6 ounces it is refreshingly LIGHTER than the iPad 2’s 21.1 ounces  (sorry to give measurements in old-fashioned imperial, I’m getting the info from US sites as there’s not much on the UK front yet, given that the tablet has only just been announced).

Processor is at this time unspecified but will be dual-core and the claimed battery life is 8 hours though that does not say under what conditions. The unit DOES of course come with WIFI.

The format of the tablet is WIDE – ie cinema-style and so this is much better suited to movies than the iPad – though conversely way LESS suitable for book reading.

Release date, sometime around November – though the UK launch might take a little longer, who knows at this stage.

Will it do well – of COURSE it will do well, given the marketing punch of Amazon – it CAN’T FAIL.  Is it an iPad-killer? No, not a chance. It’s not even in the same league – however it might make those who’ve been put off by the limits of e-reader screen technology (and it’s lack of capacitive touch technology) finally take the leap away from reading paper.

For me, the main areas I’d be concerned about at this price would be screen quality, touch experience and battery life. We’ve no information on that yet.

Would I buy one? Well, NO, because I have an iPad – but if I didn’t? That would depend on a number of things – very tempting for movies for example for travelling – but is 8Gb going to be enough? No, not unless you only want to keep half a dozen movies on there – so that leaves the question – will the USB connection allow for external storage? Preliminary specs say NO but we’ll take that with a punch of salt.

The iPad has the fantastic Apple store – the Kindle is not going to have that – and the VAST bulk of APPS available on the Android market are of no great use to tablet owners – certainly Android has nothing to touch the likes of GoodReader and many of the other Apple-based tools – for streaming media, for doing work etc. –but then we’re not comparing like for like.

At the end of the day however it may be APPs that make or break this product – we’ll soon find out  – but not until AFTER the great Christmas rush – surely they can’t fail to sell millions this Christmas?

Well, not a lot really…  not the iPad as such – we’re all assuming we’ll get the operating system upgrade in the near future – but in APPS… one of my favourite Apps SPLASHTOP REMOTE has stopped working because they’ve messed up the PC end… other apps continue to run but nothing exciting, there hasn’t been a show-stopper new game for months unless you like RAGE HD which ok, is quite fun for a while. Incidentally Splashtop when it’s working is great as it allows you to view and control your PC remotely and it’s FAR better than Logmein, even allowing full speed video (Flash) playback in a local network.

I’ve also been playing with ISMESTORAGE – if you need to access information remotely this is one handy application. Microsoft now give away 25 gigabytes for free as part of their SKY DRIVE and ISMESTORAGE is one of the few iPad Apps that can make use of it – I’m hoping GOODREADER will get their act together and hook into this shortly.

Other than that very little to report, I still think the iPad(2) is the best tablet on the planet and they seem to have successfully headed off the only competitor (Samsung) – indeed, industry reports suggest that they’re not going to play with Samsung at all in the future (Samsung currently supply the A4 and A5 processors). Could really do with some new, original APPS around now…

The new iPad2 just keeps going from strength to strength!

For new readers, no I’m not an Apple Fanboy, I’ve been a Windows man since, well, DOS! But then there is the concept of “the right tool for the job” – Windows has it’s place – and so does the iPad2. Tonight I was sitting here getting on with some work on my Windows 7 PC (if anyone is still using XP or Vista, do yourself a favour if it’s not cost-prohibitive – bin them – Windows 7 is light years ahead) and my wife (who is currently in the USA while I’m here in sunny downtown Wark in Northumberland) rang me on Facetime (which for those of you not in the know is Apple’s kind-of equivalent of Skype).  I picked up the iPad2 and pressed the connect button and there she was – in a Barnes and Noble somewhere in Chicago – for all the world you’d think she was next door and we had a nice chat as I went off looking for the new kitten (she’s been away for a week and kittens grow quickly).

After waving to our pal Debby I asked her to switch cameras to the back camera – at which point I got a good look around the shop before ending the (free) call.  I recall before we got married you were talking a dollar a minute thanks to greedy BT (well, their predecessor) and their US equivalent.. thankfully – those times are gone forever and BTs claim to owning the Internet went no-where – what a joke.

Maureen and I chatted for a while as I got a good look around the store..  and then we ended the call and I noted a new update for Splashtop – which is a program that sits on your PC or PCs at home which then lets them talk to your iPad (for the techies, much like LOGMEIN but about a century ahead of the latter). I popped into the house and upgraded Maureen’s PC.  Some time and a glass of wine later I figured I’d give it a whirl. For the uninitiated, Splashtop and Logmein are programs that let you access the screen and keyboard of one PC from another – in the case of the latter – you can access your PCs from your iPad or iPad2.

Well, I don’t know if it was the upgrade or the extra speed of the iPad2 but I’m here to say that sitting in my office, I accessed Maureen’s Windows 7 PC from the iPad2 and went off to the BBC website – selected the latest news video (Flash – which the iPad doesn’t support natively for good reason) and ran the video. You would NOT believe for a SECOND that you were watching this remotely – PERFECT video, PERFECT audio, PERFECT sync – the power of a desktop PC in my hand!

The future of computing… remote access to any PC you own – and video access to those you know… on a lightweight, all-day-battery tablet – is here! It actually blows away the original Star-Trek concept which was limited to boring technical data only – but then that was a generation ago.

What we need now – is better, more universally available WIFI (FAR more important than 3G and it’s successors IMHO) studio lighting on the tablets so you look good in a pub when video conferencing – and that’s simple –strips down both sides of the tablet that light up white (high efficiency but WARM LED lighting – now readily available)… UTTERLY practical due to the low power requirements of warm white LEDs. and hey – this was MY IDEA!!!! Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Technology that works – warm sunny weather in APRIL… what MORE could you want?

 

http://www.apple.com/uk/ipad/?cid=mc-uk-ipad-g_ipad2_brd_uk-ipad2

http://www.splashtop.com/remote

http://www.apple.com/uk/iphone/features/facetime.html

It’s upgrade time again, though this time nothing major. Apple have put out a fix (ios 4.3.2) which solves an issue with Facetime (their video conferencing software which unlike Skype is designed for the larger screen – it is about time Skype got their finger out). The release also fixes some 3G issues but even at this late date does not seem to address the tablet’s utter inability to pick out the best WIFI signal from a range of available access points.

Anyway, the update takes (on my 5 meg connection) around 10-12 minutes to download and just a few minutes to do the upgrade with no user work involved – just sit back and watch. The upgrade runs smoothly just as the last one did.

To coincide with the launch of the iPad2, Apple’s latest IOS release is up and running – simply head off to iTunes to grab the software and update your i-device.

Upgrading the iPhone 3GS was simple – a matter of a few minutes download and off we go. Upgrading several devices at once, the upgrade went quite smoothly for me – all sorts of drivers being loaded and resets being done completely automatically in the background… I just went off for coffee and let it get on with it.

The software upgrade really doesn’t do much but fix bugs – the main upgrade was 4.3 – and of course this upgrade includes the previous one -  allowing you (at last) to play videos and imagery on Apple TV directly from the iPhone. The setup is amazing – once upgraded, all your videos, pics and tunes on your iTunes computer are immediately available on your iPad or iPhone etc… and typically Apple – it just WORKS…

Also at the 4.3 upgrade, the browser was speeded up thanks to the new “Nitro Javascript Engine” and it’s claimed that this alone doubles browser speeds –though that of course will all depends on whether your target website is making heavy use of Javascript – many do. The hated change to the mute button now allows users to select whether they want to use that button for muting or rotation control…  and apparently iPhone 4 can now serve up WIFI to other devices-  though no mention of  the 3GS – BUT this DOES APPEAR TO WORK over Bluetooth and USB on the iPhone 3GS which is interesting. No idea why you can’t do this over WIFI on the 3GS as that facility was built in from day one but Orange wanted to charge extra for it! I think a deal with the phone companies is the main reason.

Similarly iPad and iPad2 – the upgrade just works…  video quality from videos on your PC iTunes setup is amazing.  So – for free, faster iPhones and iPads – get updating!

 

Peter Scargill

p.s. I don’t recommend this but I didn’t go through any lengthy backup procedures and all worked well regardless. Upgrading the phone and iPad each took all of 15 minutes from start to finish with virtually no interaction required. So why are you waiting.. go get IOS 4.31 now!

 

 

48 hours from now I plan to have my hands on a pair of iPad2s…  specifically the plan is to have a black one for me – and a white one for my good lady!  Why two? well, I have to say I didn’t have to convince Maureen – the Apple Keynote speech did that, within minutes she’d decided to sell the laptop – and my iPad went off to Ebay.

So, there is the original iPad and now a host of imitators including the XOOM and the Galaxy Tab to say the least – WHY would one want to upgrade?

Ok, first things first – compare the all important BROWSER of the iPAD to the Android “competition”. The iPad’s browser has been described as a “top rate, no compromises HTML5 browser”. HTML5 is the new standard to work to, enabling many new standard features in your web browsing experience and also enabling for the first time, a standard for handling VIDEO without having to resort to FLASH.  By contrast the Android browsers are described as “not ready for prime time, even for HTML4”.

So that leaves iPad against iPAD2… why spend the money to upgrade or why buy one at all. Well, for those just coming into the game, the iPad 2 is CHEAPER than it’s predecessor and feature by feature not only blows away the competition, it also blows away the original iPad. Graphics up to NINE times faster, 33% thinner, 11% lighter, front and read cameras… the list goes on. For the foreseeable future this is going to be the tablet to have.

As soon as I get my hands on these devices I’ll put more info up here. Wish me luck in the queues.