Tablet and Mobile

Archive for the ‘iphone’ Category

And early night? That was the plan. In bed by 10pm.

By 2.30am the batteries were losing the battle on my iPad and eyes were starting to go… the reason? Broken Sword – Shadow of the Templars of course – now FREE for the iPhone and iPad.

Please don’t confuse “FREE” with “RUBBISH”. In this case the carefully crafted game is nearer to a work of art. I’m assuming they made it free as they’ve now released the next version of the game.

For those of you to whom this is new, Broken Sword was a PC hit many years ago. As described by the designers… “One of the all-time classic adventures, multi BAFTA-nominated ‘Broken Sword: Director’s Cut’ pitches sassy journalist Nico Collard, and intrepid American George Stobbart into a mysterious journey of intrigue and jeopardy. Guide George and Nico on their globe-spanning adventure, exploring exotic locations, solving ancient mysteries, and thwarting a dark conspiracy to reveal the secret truths of the Knights Templar.”

And that about sums it up – the game is easy to control, has voice throughout, the graphics have been redone for the iPad and iPhone with some great animations – and part of the storyboard has been re-imagined to give you everything form the French Nico’s perspective without destroying the original story. Indeed while the original game started in Paris with American George Stobbart, this version begins with Nico. Shadow of the Templars was the first of a series of 4 episodes originally and already on the iPad and iPhone, the second is available for purchase. Lets hope they do all four and keep the price reasonable – if so I have no doubt I’ll play the lot. 

This is not a mindless shoot-em-up like some other excellent-graphic-but-rubbish-storyline games coming out right now, the graphics are cartoon-like, not at all state of the art but for the iPad a refreshing return to true adventure gaming (yes, I have an interest, many years ago I designed one of the very first mechanisms for these games for the PC – lookup “Adven-80”. 

It’s rather frightening to recall that almost everything I know about the Knights Templar comes from a game!! Still – beats learning about killing aliens!

If you’ve any interest in adventure? never been to Paris? yearn to visit a pub in Ireland? Get this free game, be prepared to lose several hours and quite possibly get hooked on the genre!

Pete Scargill

Anyone for a country break?

AT LAST and without even as much as an announcement that reached my enthusiastic ears (I regularly check, Skype have made a FREE upgrade to allow VIDEO calls on the iPhone and iPad.

In an amazingly understated development which was not appearing in any of the usual chatter blogs, an update for Skype appeared today for the iPhone and the iPad, to version 3 – which supports video.  Obviously video OUT isn’t going to happen on the iPad but incoming video works a treat – and on the iPhone it’s down to which model. The 3GS has only the one camera (unfortunately on the wrong side of the phone) – I’ve no doubt now some enterprising Chinese company will come up with a clip-on mirror arrangement to turn the camera around because this development finally turns both iPhone and iPad into serious communication tools. Forget about Facetime, Skype has countless millions of users and apart from last week where they screwed something up, has proven to be an excellent alternative to the telephone and at least for one-to-one video it has for some time worked across a variety of platforms excluding of course the mobile phone and iPad.

All of that is now history, it worked at least for me straight out of the box and I’m now scouring the web for a mirror arrangement so I can do full video calls while I’m out and about.

While I’ve no doubt Skype will eventually get around to supporting the many and varied Android phones, don’t count on instant success there due to the hardware variations – iPhone users on the other hand – not a problem! Needless to say, their website doesn’t even MENTION Windows Phone!

What a nice Christmas present – Thank you, Skype! All you need to do now is add a “Send to Apple TV” button just to round things off nicely.

 

Couple of new things to tell you about… I’m sure most of you have had a go at a putting screen saver onto your smartphone. If not, ask yourself, what are you going to do when you want a new phone – are you going to be smart, look after your phone and sell it on EBay for up to £150 – or dumb and put it in a cupboard – or worse, let it get into a such a state you can’t get a bean for it?  Some months ago shortly after I got my phone, I was lucky enough to be wandering around the London underground and stumbled upon an SME who did phone repairs. On asking him if he could put on the screensavers he delighted in telling me that he was the BEST – and promptly put a screensaver on my phone which I have to say was virtually perfect.  Over time, keys and other items make a mess of even the best screensavers and a couple of weeks ago I started looking for a replacement.

It’s important to get the 3 layer ones because the extra stiff-ness makes them easier to fit which minimising bubbles.  I tried several 2-layer ones – and ended up immediately throwing them in the bin – being impossible to fit without bubbles. Then I was sold a 3-layer model for a fiver which worked reasonably well, except when I got it home it turned out it was a mirror version. Now, these might be good for young girls as vanity mirrors – but for looking at your phone they’re utterly useless. Some the sunshine you can’t see a thing but your reflection!

As luck would happen, Tesco sell 3 unbranded in a pack for under a fiver.. no markings, just a red pack that says SCREEN PROTECTORS and tells you what model they are for. In fact, they are clear, 3-layer units, and really do look good quality. I got them home, got out the air blower and kitchen roll, washed my hands, cleaned the screen, blew any bits of dust away with the blower – and set to work. First of the three RUINED.  Another belt of air, a little more care starting in the middle and working outwards and… SPOT ON, my phone now has a satin finish protector and one ONE imperfection or bubble, it’s better than new in fact. At under £5 for three, who CARES if it takes 2 attempts!

The second item you see in the photo! It’s the JuiceBar! After only a short time in the sun, it is currently – as you can see, charging my phone! It doesn’t come with an iPhone connector – but then it does come with USB socket so you just plug your ordinary iPhone cable into it. It does however come with a connector with a variety of plugs AND a mini-USB in so you can charge IT in the absence of sunshine – think of it as a solar powered spare battery! It’s staying in my car window from now in for emergencies.

Excellent stuff! I’ll report back when we get some proper sun – and it’s coming with me to Spain next time! Comes complete with shirt clip so when you’re out and about you can be charging it’s batteries! Comes complete with internal 800maH battery and a large surface area to collect the sun.

The new iPhone/iPad operating system upgrade known as IOS 4.2 is out NOW and available in UK iTunes.

The new upgrade allows multi-tasking and folders on the iPad just (same as iPhone) and at least in theory including new integration with Apple TV – and remote printing!

As you might imagine along with everyone else I was straight onto the updates… as the iPad was well overdue for this unifying upgrade….. and I was straight into iTunes full of anticipation at the new download – which I have to say took only a few moments… and then – the dreaded backup.

I left the backup running and went off for dinner with some colleagues only to return hours later to find I was no further forward, the little barber-shop indicator was STILL flashing away indicating that the backup had not even STARTED.

This is not unusual but normally you can just scratch the backup – but when doing an IOS update, iTunes won’t let you. I started again and went off to bed for the night.

3.30am I awoke for some reason and went over to the computer, STILL the backup was in operation, STILL no upgrades… so off I went on the web to look for a solution – and there is one… though you can spend ages looking for it among all the entries in forums full of doom and gloom about waiting hours for backups.

To save a lot of hassle – and be this on your own head… go here and grab BACKOFF. Close down iTunes, run this program and turn backups OFF.  VOILA. Load up iTunes… it just works. I managed to upgrade both my iPhone and iPad to the latest 4.2.1 operating system without as much as a hitch.

Having now put all my games in one place (thanks to folders) I’m looking forward to trying out the Apple TV upgrades later this week. In the meantime in the morning I’ll be reporting on my latest tool – the MIFI…. which will finally free my simple 32Gig Wifi-only iPad to roam the streets of Britain.

Rather disappointingly, it looks like AIRPRINT only currently works with a limited range of HP printers – which will be a blow for the millions who DON’T use HP printers.. and AIRPLAY doesn’t yet support SOME applications – no doubt in the coming weeks that will change. As long as it ends up working with StreamToMe, I’m happy.  More on the upgrades and the MIFI unit later.

And for UK users… SKYFIRE app is now available for the iPhone (not the iPad yet)… this browser ferrets out FLASH video web pages in a web page and offers to convert on the fly and let you access the video in an iPhone-compatible format. This browser was released some time ago but they had to back off because the conversions were too much for their servers. They’ve now re-released the browser, I went to the BBC website – the first video didn’t work – I gave feedback, the second video I tried on the site worked a treat!

So… the argument about Android versus Apple can start all over again – I suspect some manufacturers have some serious catching up to do…

 

Don’t you love the Internet… Apple just gets on with it’s job, having merely promised updates to IOS for November, meanwhile web announcements tell us to expect updates on a constantly shifting basis. The last rumours were that updates to IOS would be out today and already there should have been updates for the lamentable iTunes program – yet here we are Friday morning, no iTunes updates and comments are now coming to the fore that due to some issues with the IOS 4.2 update this will be “delayed” for a few more days. Amazingly though one hears of occasional WIFI drop-out issues no-one seems to comment about the very definite access-point swapping issues on the iPad which it’s had since release – if you have a number of access points it just does not want to switch between them to get the best signal –unlike the iPhone which does that seamlessly. The Scargill household can’t be the only one with a number of differently named WIFI access points?

I’m putting the end of the month in my calendar. If Apple keep with their promise of November I’m happy.Gives me plenty of time to finish converting movies and other materials to a format that Apple TV will be happy with in time for the upgrade. Meanwhile I’m definitely getting into using the iPad as a book reader… I’m half way through Arthur C Clarke’s “3001 – the Ultimate Odysey” – and all’s well, though I agree with comments that if the iPad was just a TAD lighter would be nice.. but then I never liked messing about keeping books at the right page – dozing off without a bookmark only to wake up the next morning with the book on the floor, closed isn’t much fun. At least the Apple keeps it’s place.

As I sit here in the early hours there is still no sign of the much-anticipated 4.2 IOS updates. The plan is they will be with us this week and will provide unity among all of the iTouch/iPhone/iPad gadgets. The important recipient of this upgrade of course will be the iPad as it is currently miles behind the iPhone in terms of multi-tasking and folders etc so that will be my first upgrade and I’m quite excited about the prospect!

But there is more as I’ve recently discovered… and what does this have to do with Apple TV you might ask? Well, a lot…

Rewinding a few days, it’s Maureen’s birthday today and I’ve been struggling with what to buy her. She’s an avid fan of watching movies on the go and uses her small laptop for email, music and movies – she’s also a fan of YouTube and we often turn this on when we have parties so folks can pick their own music video selections – it goes down well.  I’d planned on getting on of the new Android tablets for her and accordingly we sold her little Atom-powered netbook. Another option on the cards was a Windows 7 powered tablet… but that option quickly disappeared when I started cleaning up the netbook for sale and was reminded how painfully slow they are. In one of those Eureka moments I twigged that no matter what, a Windows 7/Atom powered tablet is going to be AT LEAST as slow as the netbook – and that’s just not on. So now we’re back to Android or Apple iPad.

Next stop PC World to check out the Android tablets. Well, really, despite the promise, what’s out there is just, well, rubbish. The new Galaxy Tab from Samsung is now available in the shops… and it has a VERY nice bright display, smooth touch-screen – and a camera!!! But hold on it still uses Android 2.2 – the very operating system that it’s designers, Google say is NOT ready for tablet use. Their own site states merely that  “Android 2.2 is a minor platform release including user features, developer features, API changes, and bug fixes”.

It seems manufacturers are jumping on the bandwagon eager to get product out regardless of the suitability or otherwise of the software. “Gingerbread” or Android 2.3 is supposed to be going to be much better – but WHO KNOWS – as we can’t get our hands on it to try it out – it might be no better than current offerings. The lady at PC World did her damndest to convince me that because the Galaxy Tab has a camera, it runs Skype video – which is just absolute TOSH. The Android implementation of Skype doesn’t even have a video SETTING! Of course neither does the iPhone or iPad but I’d be prepared to bet that with the possibility of an iPad 2 with video camera widely touted to appear next year, negotiations will be taking place.  The first fully working tablet with Skype video gets my vote. Why? When there are other alternatives such as Apple’s own video conferencing software? Simple really, the other alternatives have such a small market share they’re not worth a light. If you have Apple’s video conferencing solution it’s only going to work with other people with the same software – and that’s a very small number. Skype on the other hand has for some time been the most widely used of it’s kind, it’s free, it works on a variety of platforms and when I say works… with a good connection it is absolutely EXCELLENT and I can say that with a LOT of professional experience of running meetings over Skype.

But I digress, the point of this is that we decided to become a 2-iPad family, but once Maureen heard of the possibility of an iPad with video she’s decided for now to save up her pennies and wait. Which took us next to the iPad store and Apple TV afte a brief conversation with a fellow enthusiast in PC-World.

You may be aware that the new IOS enhancements will include something called Airplay, a piece of software that allows you to stream video and audio from one device to another… and this is where Apple TV comes in. Far from unique, the new Apple TV device comes in at just under £100 – a small and typically beautiful piece of Apple engineering, it plugs into your HD TV (hdmi only, owners of older TVs can look away now) and the Internet and lets you then, via it’s simple remote control, do a variety of things from streaming movies (an alternative if you like to LoveFilm) for a price (maybe £3.50 typically) from the Internet… but that’s only the beginning. If you’re an Apple user, you will typically have your music and movies on iTunes on one of your PCs. Certainly I’m no lover of the iTunes program, I think it’s slow and clunky but it does make sense to have all your multi-media in one place and I guess this is where Apple TV device differs from the rest – full integration with iTunes. Of course you can download or SYNC from iTunes to your iPad/iPhone/iTouch devices… but with the new Airplay will come the possibility to STREAM the media rather than download it.  Apple TV not only lets you rent movies but will work with your iTunes selection to make the lot (movies, music, pictures) onto your regular TV, straight over your Internet connection. Not only THAT but it will also (apparently, once the devices have been upgraded) allow you to view media playing on your devices ON THE TV by streaming straight from the device. I should point out that like iTunes, Apple TV does not like for example DIVX video and so you have to convert your movies to an Apple-compatible format such as M4V which thankfully works for PCs etc just as well as DIVX – assuming you have VLC or similar.

But it gets better, you can ALSO watch video podcasts, YouTube and Flickr accounts directly on Apple TV – the device uses less power than a nightlight and runs freezing cold.. all this for under £100. So, is this a pipedream? Well, I can’t tell you about Airplay until it comes out but the rest WORKS – and more, a trained monkey could set it up. This then would appear to be a must-have and it’s certainly the best thing I’ve bought since the iPad. Thankfully there is a free solution in the form of HANDBRAKE – a  rather superb free video convertor (Google it). I’m busy converting my movies over now..

And so it would seem that Apple are waking up to competition – rumours have it that iPhone 5 and iPad 2 are merely around the corner – well, given the bodge they made of the iPhone 4, lets hope they get it right next time… here are my suggestions Apple if you’re looking in – my iPHONE 5 WISHLIST if you like:

• Basic hardware of the 3GS but with MUCH longer battery life
• Superior screen of the iPhone 4
• Front facing camera

Of course all of that’s very NICE – but to make use of that – what’s REALLY needed is SKYPE working in video on said hardware – for me that would REALLY make the difference – and scrap this STUPID restriction on tethering – you can tether any Microsoft or Nokia smartphone to the iPad so why not the iPhone (well, I know why but that’s not the point). Finally, changing the rather toy nature of the email app (only storing the last few days email) to something more substantial would win my vote (how about storing the last year’s worth of email).

Having apparently done something about the design team who came up with the iMess 4, hopefully the next model will once again put Apple at the front…  certainly my experiences with Android up to now have not been sufficiently good to make me dream in a million YEARS of deserting my iPhone or iPad – but hey… things change..

Talking of which – GOOGLE GOGGLES – go to the Google App on your iPhone and you have to agree to some terms and you can now get access to Google Goggles – it’s mind-blowing – take a picture of something and it goes off to the web and tells you all about it – voice search is in the same area “scargill bedrock” I uttered – staight off to our Spanish website – absolutely magic.

The iPhone and iPad just keep getting better – and it’s not really anything that Apple have done – it’s more a case of the Apps. Where Apple got it right was in their designs and marketing – everyone who has an iPad or iPhone says “it just works” – and with that basis the App designers have been able to get on with the job. Some of the Apps are so far ahead of anything on the Android or Microsoft markets – it’s hard to see them catching up anytime soon.

An example might be Goodreader.  I bought this for 99 pence right at the beginning when I got my iPhone, great PDF reader but it’s uses were limited on the phone – then out came the iPad and almost immediately they had an iPad-specific version of the software.  One of it’s few limitations was the ability to ANNOTATE PDFs- and many folk said to me – but I need to scribble on my PDFs at meetings..  I conveyed this back to the developers – no doubt many other people did – and only a couple of days ago, upgrades for the iPad came out – with iPhone upgrade coming this morning.

This program ALONE is worth getting an iPad for! It’s still 99p and reads PDFs, reads their bookmarks, works with links, lets you annotate and scribble on PDFs… and it’s not just limited to PDFs, the package can read a wide variety of formats and from a wide variety of sources.

The Android market has a product most likely deliberately named “A Good Reader” – it’s not even in the same class and some of the others out there can’t even handle bookmarks.

The bottom line is – if you need to read documents on the go – you can’t beat an iPad and GoodReader – if you can’t manage that then the next best thing is an iPhone with GoodReader!

HDR Photography and more

Then there is HDR photography, the greatest thing to happen to the amateur photographer since the digital camera. While PC conversion software struggles to work with multiple images (I’ve not seen one package that does the job properly yet) – PRO HDR on the iPhone produces brilliant results.

Take a look at the photo on the left, shot into the sun this morning – the sun is so powerful that hardly any other detail gets through – the sky is completely bleached and you can only just make out the vegetation.

The same photo taken with Pro HDR on the same iPhone… is very different – more detail and the sky is just about perfect. All that for 99 pence or thereabouts – and the patience to left the camera take 2 pictures in a row and automatically merge them for you. 

Consider your average daytime indoor shot – you can have a choice – detail in the room or detail outside of the window – not any more – this package on the iPhone lets you have the best of both worlds.

The last shot here was taken a couple of weeks ago in Bellingham in Northumberland (UK for any overseas visitors) and shows the high street – similar conditions – a normal photo would have netted a perfectly white sky… as it happens this photo – again taken on the iPhone and with Pro HDR – perfect.

More shots of this nature at the HollyBerry Cottage website – most of the shots there were made of multiple HDR photos then run through panorama software.

And there’s more – after having no decent note-taking software, the iPad now has NOTES PLUS – a brilliant innovation that lets you enter handwriting at reasonable size – but using your finger – it has to be seen to be believed.

Meanwhile tests with the Android tablet are not going too well up to now – I’ve a bunch of questions and the dealer has not come back to me today. I can see a return coming on – the screen is unresponsive – no sign of the hallowed Android 2.2 upgrade… and it won’t even play all my movies (oh, VLC is now on the iPad so that’s the limitation on M4V files gone).

And so it continues…

 

Peter Scargill

 

 

Recently made available (Wednesday 8th Sept) the new iPhone operating system upgrade IOS4.1 has something for everyone, apparently. For those souls unfortunate enough to have the new iPhone 4, the operating system will bring new HDR features but you’ll still need that band around your phone – not that most people know what HDR means (but will by the end of this blog)… fear not, there’s “an app for that” for the rest of us.

The operating system upgrade to IOS4.1 also features various fixes and speed improvements.  See the Apple store if you want more info – no point in me repeating it here…  though the details on the site are a bit vague at the time of writing, strange considering they’ve now released the upgrade.

Apple won’t make a big deal about the fact that they’ve also taken the opportunity to plug another hole which up to now allowed jailbreaking of the phone – which you may recall was recently made legitimate! However if you’re not planning on jailbreaking the iPhone, that won’t bother you. I could not see sufficient justification given the rather motley selection of apps in the CYDIA store, so I went for the upgrade.

For those of you who’ve never updated their iPhone – it’s a doodle, just make sure the phone is charged, follow the instructions, be patient and you’ll soon be in new operating system heaven – OR you’ll own a BRICK if it doesn’t work. In my case I plugged my iPhone into the PC, ignored the message about backing up etc… and pressed the update button…  I got a notice on the screen….

and 11 minutes later… and another glass of wine down the hatch… the iPhone insisted on doing a backup which I was convinced was going to take weeks given that I have hundreds of Apps on there – but no, it took only a few minutes. As I was sitting praying for no power cuts, the software effortlessly backed up everything, then upgraded the phone with a few beeps here and there but very little else to indicate that the phone was having a lobotomy.

As I watched, the phone reset (always a worry) and a minute later the PC said “updating the phone software” as a little progress bar on the iPhone moved slowly from left to right assuring me I hadn’t converted my phone into a brick…I’m guessing 5 minutes in total during which I was more tense than during an episode of “24”.

At the end of the upgrade my heart almost stopped when I heard the cheersome “beepBEEP” which indicated that the iPhone was ALIVE AND WELL.

Oh, I should say I was updating from 4.01 to 4.1 – I missed out the intermediate update as it really didn’t offer much except plugging another leak.  You have to hand it to Apple, they do make the updates rather easy and seamless.

I checked the phone – and iTunes to ensure everything was ok. I’m still working on this one…

This is a worry, as it’s a 16Gig phone – on the other hand it says I’ve only used a couple of hundred meg which is rubbish – TomTom uses more than that… so I’m not particularly worried that I have nearly 7 gig left… here’s the important bit…

and on power-up the only thing that’s immediately obvious is… the new GAME CENTRE (or CENTER as some might say).

Other than that, things look pretty much like normal – it would be nice if they’d introduce a little pop-up guide to what’s new. Anyway… that’s it – job done! Rumour has it that 4.2 will be available on the IPAD in November! Maybe they’ll fix the naff WIFI locating software.

Ok, so what about the 3GS users left with no HDR and what on EARTH is HDR anyway?

HDR is not hi-definition as someone suggested today but high dynamic range.

Those of you with long memories may remember cassette tapes – which had low dynamic range (bear with me on this).  At one end of the range, quiet sounds could be drowned out by hiss – at the other end if you recorded too loudly, the sound would distort. Along came CDs and all of that became history, you could now have from the quietest whisper to the loudest bang. Problem solved, no-one even thinks about it any more (except that lots of people still use such rubbishy loudspeakers that it’s all fairly academic and those of us over 50 can only hear half of the notes anyway – my hearing USED to go to around 19Kz, it’s now stone dead above 12Khz).

But we’re still there with cameras – the dynamic range of many phones is TERRIBLE…  so – what does this mean? Look at any scene say with buildings and the sun behind them… your eyes can see all the building details – and with a little effort, the sun. Point your camera at the same scene… you will have an exposure choice of getting the SKY detail with the buildings too dark – or the buildings with a whitened-out sky…  this is one example, there are many.. the fact is the camera just can’t handle the RANGE of brilliance.

So how to get around that… well, the BEST answer would be to have sensors that can handle everything from the dimmest light output to the brightest star – sadly the only ones which do that cost obscene amounts of money and usually sit in space telescopes… getting this on our mobiles phones? Not a chance, for now.

Another way (though it has it’s issues) is to take TWO or more shots at different exposures, one set for the sky, the other set for the buildings in this case, then somehow MERGE the two images taking the best of both. USELESS for fast moving scenes but EXCELLENT for your static shots – not entirely AUTHENTIC but really good looking.

THAT is what the new iPhone will do – and you can get a PRETTY close approximation on the 3GS for the staggering price of under 2 QUID. The APP is called PRO HDR, it does the lot automatically, I don’t work for them, I’ve tried the rest and they don’t do the job well  -this does… so if you want HDR pics on your “old” 3GS phone – there’s your answer.

So on the left, what you’re looking at is a pair of photos the software took automatically at Kings Cross in London… the TOP photo shows the rather grim skyline in September… with some detail in the clouds – but the building – well, nothing. The SECOND photo shows the building – but the sky is totally whitened out. I should say I did NOT do this manually, the PRO HDR software did this totally automatically.

The result, well judge for yourself… personally I’m WELL impressed. Not that sharp as my hand was shaking like a food mixer in the crowd when I took the shot – but notice  – full detail in the building – full detail in the clouds… that’s what you can look forward to with your iPhone be it the new or the old!

 

Update: 11/09/2010

Just as I was about to scrap the older TrueHDR on my iPhone in favour of ProHDR, along came an UPDATE – and guess what – they now automatically take THREE pictures in a row-  the ONE thing that was wrong with that package. So now there are TWO options for HDR lovers.

If you take a look at the photo on the right, normally with two bright screens the background would be utterly black… and without the screens you’d have a choice of seeing the inside or some detail outside. In this shot, you see all three together, just as your eyes would have it. This was taken using the TrueHDR package.

I hope this is helpful, if you find anything better do let me know. If you want to follow my interest, you could do worse than follow @scargill

 

Regards

 

Peter Scargill

At around the same time as Apple brought out the iPad upgrade, along came IOS 4.1.1 for the iPhone. A simply upgrade with, for me at least, no issues at all. One assumes that this upgrade was mainly to fix the rather erroneous  signal bars which tend to over-egg the strength of the incoming 3G signal.

I have to say, I’ve noticed no difference at all, apart from the warm glow of knowing you have the latest upgrades. The big upgrade of course was from 3.2 to 4.0 which gave us multi-tasking and folders. I like folders, having been victim very soon after getting my iPhone to the problem of running out of space for Apps. Good upgrade but as for multi-tasking… well, I’m not sure I see the point. Sure it’s nice to play music in the background but now instead of applications automatically cleaning themselves up when you switch, they now just sit in the background wasting space and I’ve yet to find a utility that will simply close the lot at once at the touch of a button.

Of course the BIG opportunity here was to make SKYPE operate properly, sitting in the background with the phone off and taking incoming calls.  Skype were just about the LAST company to upgrade their products and only this week, coincide with the Apple upgrade, came the notice that Skype could be upgraded.

I was there in minutes, patiently waiting for SKYPE to upgrade and when it finally came together…nothing.. the volume control doesn’t work properly (that’s not unusual, Talking Tom ignores the MUTE button altogether) and as for the multi-tasking… well, you can run other tasks and Skype will indeed answer calls in the background but as soon as you turn the phone off…. that’s it, dead!  Now, it’s not impossible because the iPhone, if you think about it continues to read emails when turned off, it continues to take normal calls – and it definitely leaves the WIFI on because at home I have no mobile signal – and it definitely brings the mail in…  so why can’t SKYPE get their act together and make their produce accept calls with the phone turned off, which would let me abandon the need for a separate SKYPE phone??

Time will tell, no-one else seems to have spotted this yet but they will.