Tablet and Mobile

Archive for the ‘upgrades’ Category

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.

 

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…

 

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.

Having had the same difficulty as others with the iPad WIFI, which works but which tends to forget passwords on occasion and generally is not very happy with a multi-router environment, I had high hopes when yesterday I noted that an upgrade was available.

One of the biggest issues I have with the otherwise excellent Apple iPad is the notoriously bad iTunes program. It may be that my computers are all 64-bit, I don’t know, the iTunes on Windows 7 must be the least reliable program I own. It is so slow it hurts, even on a top notch computer and you never know if it’s thinking or it’s crashed. And so yesterday morning I proceeded to try to upgrade the iPad using iTunes on my main PC. Several hours later it was still working on the backup, a process I’ve never really understood because some people say backups take 20 minutes, for others like me it seems to take all day.  The PROBLEM with that of course being that most USB ports don’t have enough get-up-and-go to actually power the iPad so you’re constantly running into the problem that as your iPad is slowly backing up, the batteries are rather more rapidly discharging.

Eventually I gave up and tried again on the laptop. This time the backup took a couple of hours and then off we went into upgrading. The process itself took next to no time and before I knew it I had a brand-spanking new 3.2.1 operating system on my iPad.

The thing is, I can’t actually say I notice any difference whatsoever. In the 24 hours since then it has forgotten the password once and still prefers to stick with the router signal it has instead of hopping to a stronger one. The iPhone simply doesn’t suffer from this problem.

Don’t get me wrong, none of this is a major inconvenience, it’s just a pain when you wander around a large house with several routers (my house is made of very old, very thick stone and WIFI signals simply won’t penetrate this, so I have 4 routers, one in the ceiling, one in the living room, one in the bedroom and another in my office).

So while the upgrade was smooth and relatively trouble-free, in this case for the life of me I can’t tell you why I bothered..