Oh and just as a warning, this one’s a long one, a really really long one!

The new iPod Family

The new iPod Shuffle

Ever since day 1 we’ve loved the shuffle, it’s been Apple’s little plaything for quite some time, and whilst we have our own little niggles with it, it’s always been a very good, if, expensive little device.

The new version has brought something back that just about everyone wanted, buttons. You have no idea how much we’ve missed having buttons. Having no screen is one thing, but no buttons was getting a little silly. Fortunately the iPod shuffle makes up for this in it’s size, being something more akin to an after dinner mint rather than a new MP3 player. It’s also priced very well, for once. At £39 for 2GB of memory, it’s still a little expensive, but the mere fact that it’s a teeny tiny machine complete with some great voice recognition features, means you really could do away with a screen for good. In fact, apples speech recognition is some of the best we’ve ever ‘heard’ and it copes really well with wind, background noise and the like. Even though this machine has no screen, the voiceover works brilliantly, thanks to a range of simple commands, although if you’re not one for making playlists, this isn’t for you.

The new Nano

We didn’t see this one coming! Well, okay, maybe we did thanks to the leaks for little tiny screens but we didn’t know it would look like this!

Ok, I’ll cut straight too it, none of us are quite sure of we like it yet. We certainly don’t like the fact that video playback is gone altogether and so has the camera, but we do like the fact this thing is now almost as tiny as the shuffle.

Up close you’ve got what is essentially an entirely new iPod running iOS with a multitouch screen. Pinch to zoom might not be there, but double tapping and rotating is as well. The screen consists of iOS icons, and from the very noticeable gap in the UI we’ve got a sneaking suspicion it might get some apps. As just about everyone else has said, this thing is perfect to be stuck into a watch, except it has no external speaker, but that couldn’t be hard to fix, right?

It’s hard not to love the fact this thing is so small, but that size and screen come with a price. No physical buttons mean this might not be that comfortable to use at the gym, especially if you know exactly where your buttons should be.

It’s not cheap either, £129 for the 8GB model, and £159 for a 16GB model. It’s not cheap, but then you are getting a full colour multitouch screen with it.

The new iPod Touch

Well, this one comes as no surprise for the little iPhone wannabe. In fact, this version of the iPod touch is everything it should be since it really is now, the iPhone without a phone which is great if you wan’t all the benefits of iOS but no monthly contracts (GPS aside of course).

The new ‘iTouch’ comes with the same great ‘Retina’ display that the iPhone has, as well as front and rear cameras (no flash however! whats up with that apple?) which means it also gets facetime support, and of course, it gets the much touted Apple A4 chip. Including the Gyro, this update is a serious upgrade over your last models.

On top of all that the iPod touch is even thinner than the last one, something we are finding hard to believe! The original was already half the thickness of the iPhone, and this one now essentially makes it a quarter of the thickness of the iPhone 3G.

It does still remain expensive, although a little cheaper than the last model at £189 for the 8GB model up to a whopping £329 for a 64GB model. But then, you do get all the iOS content you get on the iPhone… more or less.

iOS Updates

Well, we finally got a few updates on iOS, so let’s summarise here.

• iOS 4.1 for iPhone / iPod Touch – Coming next week
• iOS 4.2 for iPad – Coming in November

That last one, was a real kick in the nuts, but it does provide us with some great updates. We’ll explain more in just a little bit, although we’re surprised we are skipping straight to 4.2 for the iPad rather than going to 4.1 first.

First up, 4.1 updates for iPhone. Since the whole ‘antennagate’ issue it’s understandable why Apple are pushing this one, but the new update isn’t so much about that, it is however about performance, and one other fix. The proximity sensor. Yes for those of you that had issues with ‘facial cutoff’ we finally have a fix in the work. More importantly however, 4.1 is supposed to fix the performance issues on iPhone 3G devices. All of us here took one deep breath before jumping for joy and screaming at how happy we were about this one! Thank you Apple!

4.2 is the next big update for iPad, and whilst we’re really quite annoyed at the fact it’s going to take until November to get to us, we do finally get to see that it gives us backgrounding, folders, and one additional feature. Printing.

Yup, the one thing that might be holding people back from getting an iPad instead of a netbook is printing. There’s no word on whether this will work with certain WiFi printers or if it will just connect to your Mac and use that as a print server but it’s a heck of a welcome addition. Bugfixes and performance improvements come as standard, but we’re really excited to see this come to iPad… at last.

iTunes 10

Perhaps one of the biggest, most important updates is Apples new iTunes 10 and what comes with it. Be careful people, this is going to be a big one.

The new logo
The icon that has been at the forefront of digital music has finally been changed. Apple decided to drop the CD since they assume everyone will be downloading music in the future. Reviews are mixed, but the theory is sound. Despite this however, there’s a lot of hatred out there for the new icon with lots of people saying it doesn’t fit apples UI ideas, and quite a few just plain hate it. We’re on the bench with this one, we don’t like it, nor do we hate it, so we’re waiting to see if we get used to it, but we certainly agree that it doesn’t quite fit apples current lineup of icons however.

The UI

Along with the new logo, iTunes 10 comes with a slightly revised UI. This too is receiving a lot of hatred on the tubes, and for once we can see why.

With the exception of the ever colourful close, minimise and fit buttons, the entire menu system has been stripped of colour leaving the menu’s barren and sparse. Presumably apple did this to help people focus on the content and clean up the UI, but we think this is a little over the top, we would at least like some very subtle and delicate colouring to help differentiate the icons a little.

The volume icon has too gotten a bit fatter, as well as ‘borders’ between sections, it’s not quite to our liking, but it does fit the build even if it isn’t quite what we would like. Despite this the ‘gone off milk’ colour for the player background (that thing at the top that tells you what track is playing) remains, and we can’t help but wonder why?

Album Artwork

Although we love coverflow, as Steve Jobs himself said, we mostly live in list view. So iTunes now includes something to make it a little prettier. Instead of repeating the album name over and over again, 4 or more tracks will now include a little hybrid view, including some of the cover art for that album. We love this, since it doesn’t take up any additional space and it means we don’t miss out on all that lovely cover art that we all get when we buy an album. It might not be to everyones liking, but you can turn it off if you need to.

Syncing your devices

iTunes 10 now includes a few welcome additions when syncing your Apple devices. At the bottom there’s a new capacity bar that updates in realtime, and although it’s slightly chunkier than the last one, we like it. iTunes also touts some slightly faster syncing methods, although we’re still finding iPad backups to be horrendously slow.

You’ll notice the top bar here is improved as well to more closely match the ‘buttons’ and drop down menus that are in the iTunes store. This ones a real hit with us as well, and makes syncing seem all that more clean.

One thing we don’t like however, is the ‘apps’ pane is now missing it’s search bar. Why oh why did apple decide to remove that? Sorry, but I’ve got over 350 apps, and trust me, it’s not easy finding them so this one is a real blow to all of us.

On the whole however, syncing does seem faster for our iPhones, and it certainly is a more pleasant experience.

Ping

This one’s the big one. apple has now revealed their interest in social networking in a somewhat bizzare way.

Building on ideas of twitter and facebook, Ping let’s you follow your favourite artists and friends, comment on albums you download, and it lets you ‘like’ certain artists, comments and purchases.

Strangely Ping doesn’t let you post your own updates, only comments and likes, and what’s even more disturbing is that it tells everyone what you’ve just purchased and brought, which can be kind of embarrassing if you don’t particularly want people to know about that late night Billy Ray Cyrus or STEPS craving you have. Still it’s an interesting way for you to see what your friends are listening to, and helps you discover more music. We just wish it was slightly more social by letting you post your own updates or comments on music you already own.

Airplay

There is one thing we didn’t mention in the iTunes post, or the iOS post, and thats Airplay. Those of you with an airport express will know all about Airtunes. Airtunes allowed you to pipe your iTunes audio output straight to your airport express and the speakers you plug into it. Airplay takes that one step further by bringing it into iOS.

Not only that but we’re soon going to see speakers enabled with Airplay without the need for an airport express, allowing you to stream music to anywhere in the house.

As far as iOS is concerned, your iPad and iPhone will now be able to stream the movies and music they play to an enabled Airplay device, including the next one we’re about to talk about.

Apple TV

We’ll be honest, we screamed a little when this puppy came up. Apple have unveiled their brand new Apple TV device. It’s nearly a quarter of a size of the original, a slightly better UI and the advantage of playing Airtunes content.

In a break from the norm, apple now works on a pure rental model offering TV and Movies to rent, sadly there are no purchasing options, and neither is there any storage on the device. This could be a little troublesome for some, but since apple are thing to make it a completely independent system that requires no computer at all (minus a broadband connection) .

However, there is a huge advantage here over the storage model. If you want something, buy it on your computer. Apple TV thankfully lets you stream from your computer, all of your music, all of your films and TV. Thankfully apple have now included youtube as well to bring you even more content to watch.

The back of the Apple TV is stripped down, including only three ports, Power, HDMI and Ethernet, but for those of us without a cable connection, wireless is there as well.

US Users will get Netflix streaming as well, but for many of us outside the UK we might be feeling a bit high and dry. Still, prices are lower, £3.49 for a HD film rental and best of all, the new Apple TV is just £99. Yup, thats no typo, it’s £99 all in. That’s seriously good money, considering the last one was near enough £300.

We’ve ordered one, so we’ll let you know just what it’s like and give you a full lowdown as soon as we get it.

What apple didn’t mention

From some close looking on apples website it looks like the Apple remote app will finally get an update and includes a nice trackpad feature allowing you to swipe rather than press buttons. Of course this is just a speculation, but since the application hasn’t been updated since November 2009, it’s about time.

Wrap up

So there you have it, some interesting developments, and some exciting news. We can’t wait to see what apple comes up with next, although still no mention on the White iPhone, nor on whether the case program will continue, and we’re still a little bummed out that we’re not getting iOS 4.2 for the iPad for another two months. But hey, apple has done really really well with this one. Kudos!

1:  Cocoa Packet Analyser
http://www.tastycocoabytes.com/cpa/

If your like me and sometimes need to run a packet scan, then you’ll know and love products like Wireshark. Despite the stigmata attached to them, they really are legitimate tools that are incredibly useful. Got a product you need to introduce to your network and don’t know it’s IP address because your trying to fault find? (it does happen, in fact I’m doing it now) For those of us who love programs like Wireshark, we know that it requires a little “tweaking” to get it to work under MacOS, the current port requires installing a form of X11 window, so it’s not exactly native.

Cocoa packet analyser joins the mac world, being free, and doing much the same job of Wireshark. Although Cocoa packet analyser does not display in realtime, the fact it’s a ‘native’ OSX application means it’s much more stable, and it captures very well, a quick comparison between the Windows Wireshark and OSX Coca Packet Analyser displayed almost the same data, in some cases the Cocoa Packet Analyser data was a little easier to read.

2: SequelPro
http://www.sequelpro.com/

Anyone who knows MySQL will probably know PHPMyAdmin, and quite a few of you will complain about having a web interface and the security, or lack thereof, of having something that could in theory be accessed by anyone on the internet if they were to brute force the page. Up until recently, I did what most of us do, I secured the page with a .htaccess file, but even that is subject to attack. Many of us now like to use the terminal to edit the MySQL databases, but this isn’t exactly ‘user friendly’

SequelPro fixes that, providing a fast dedicated client that does almost everything that PHPMyAdmin does. It even includes a ‘console’ feature to run manual sql clients, and it doesn’t require any additional server side software. Once your MySQL installation is completed, that’s it, you just download SequelPro and enter the details and address of your server, click connect and your presented with rich in depth editing of your SQL databases and users with the ability to export and import easily. It’s a wonderful program that’s made my life much simpler and in my opinion, it blows PHPMyAdmin out of the water in ease of use.

3: iStumbler
http://www.istumbler.net/

If you’ve ever been involved in setting up a wireless network, the issues are far and wide, but one of the biggest is ‘channel mixing’. Mac’s own built in airport system doesn’t let you see the channels of other neighbouring networks, so if your setting up a router, you could impact performance. If your performing diagnosis of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices, you’ll know it’s easier if you can filter out exactly what’s out there to help prevent connection issues.

iStumbler is a wonderful free little utility that uses both airport and bluetooth to scan for wireless networks and bluetooth devices in range. It can also be plugged in with a GPS receiver if your doing field testing, and it even picks up bonjour devices. It’s truly a wonderful little application, with even more information than you would normally need, including MAC addresses and vendor information. It’s great for finding out just what’s on the network and what could be interfering with your wireless, bluetooth or even bonjour connections (especially if you’re having trouble finding one).



4: Dropbox
http://www.dropbox.com

If you’re not using dropbox, you should be, it’s one of the worlds best little utilities and is fantastic for backups, synchronisation or just being your ‘cloud based’ pen drive. 2GB of free space equals the same as your typical pen drive, and is accessible through the web as well as clients on machines. The fact that you can access it anywhere just makes it so much more versatile, at a customer site or even through a server. You never know when you need certain files.



5: Remote Desktop Connection Client
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/remote-desktop/default.mspx

Ok so perhaps this was obvious, but it’s surprising how many people think that you can’t admin a Windows machine from a Mac. Microsoft provided a dedicated MSTSC client for Mac users and have been for quite some time, it’s an incredible simple piece of software that all Windows Admins and Support personnel should know and use. It’s also stable and supports drive and printer sharing. It’s a brilliant application that for once is well written.

Bonus: Real VNC Viewer for Mac
http://www.realvnc.com/

Maybe you’re not a Windows admin at all, but you’re probably aware of VNC. Although it takes some digging through the realvnc site, you can get a RealVNC viewer which is brilliantly simple and contains a boat load of functionality, for free. We thought we had better toss this one in here just in case number 5 isn’t the one for you.

I love the iPad, and so do a lot of people, in fact one of the big sets of people that love it, are IT professionals who don’t want to carry the laptop. Despite this, there are quite a few people who use it for the same thing as IT professionals do in the home, so here’s a list of seven reasons why, If your an IT professional, you should have an iPad if you don’t already.

1: Integrated Exchange mail, calendars and contacts

So it might be the most obvious one and in fact it’s a pretty boring one but it’s one of the most useful things anyone in business uses. Whats neat about it is on the iPad, you can have an exchange account as well as your private emails, something we thought wouldn’t come until iOS4. Bringing with it exchange calendars, exchange contacts complete with a global address list and the ability to set your company signature separately, it’s a no brainer.

2: Remote Desktop

If your an IT professional and don’t use remote desktop, then you will be part of a giant minority. Applications like Jump, Winadmin and iSSH allow you to connect remotely, and wirelessly (and over 3G) to your companies server. To give you an example, I was recently with a colleague driving up to Scotland. A user called and said they had locked out their account. Since we’re the only sysadmins who have access to this, and I wasn’t the one driving, I pulled out the iPad, turned on the built in VPN connection and used Winadmin to RDP to my companies Windows 2003 AD server, and unlock the account. All while driving at 70mph on the M6 (I was not driving!)

3: SSH

Ok so we touched briefly on this in the last post, but SSH is one of those things that Linux admins simply can’t live without, myself included. In fact SSH and Linux are practically inseparable. So an application like iSSH makes full screen remote SSH access to practically any SSH enabled linux installation, you can even have more than one session open, and even better, the program also includes a VNC client, so if your virtualising in the office, you could VNC into that, In fact I use it at home as well for my virtualisation project.

4: Pages & Keynote

On the move? need to write a document? well you’re in luck, pages might cost to buy but given it allows you to format text, insert images, and essentially is a fully featured word publisher that lets you export to Word, Pages and PDF both through email and through the iTunes client. You can pair with a bluetooth keyboard which makes the process easier, but its more or less like having pages and Word on the mac or PC in your hands. The same goes for Keynote, although you can only export in keynote and PDF for this.

5: GoDaddy

Own a few domains? Manage a company website? GoDaddy is one of the largest providers of domain names in the world, and they have their own app, which lets you buy, manage and renew on the move. Perhaps your at a sales meeting and have finalised a deal, perhaps your company website is suddenly needing renewal or not pointing to the right server. There you go, change it. I don’t really need to tell you how to manage a web domain if you work in IT right?

6: CineXPlayer

This one makes a surprise appearance in the list, but if you’ve got company training videos, or sales demos, or even tutorials in XVid avi format, then you’re going to want this on your iPad.

7: RSS Readers

This might seem like a given, but RSS can be used for more than just news. Cyber security alerts also have RSS feeds and so do some newsgroups. So if you wan’t to keep up to date with whats happening in the IT world, RSS is certainly one way to go. But if you do wan’t to keep up with the news as well, it’s even better.

So there you have it, seven simple reasons why you should get an iPad if you work in IT. Know any more? let us know!

Amidst all the issues and hype over the iPhone 4′s antenna problem, Apple have come out strong with the surprise press conference. So I’m going to go through what I see in this, and what was said

Make no mistake, I am posting this not as an apple fanboy, nor as an apple aficionado, whilst I very much like Apple and it’s products, I don’t hold a loyalty to any particular operating system or device. I have an iPhone because it fits my life in the way I want it to. I have a Mac because I’m using it to learn Mac OS for later support roles that might approach me and it has great UNIX and SSH capabilities which are essential for me and my web server, I have an iPad because I like to sit on the couch and browse the web and I didn’t need a keyboard, it fits me. It fits me perfectly. I use Windows 7 in work, Linux, Windows and Mac at home but I have an appreciation of Apple products which I firmly believe are well thought out

First and foremost lets make one thing clear. As much as other blogs and news journalists would have you believe, the iPhone is NOT the only smartphone in the world with this problem. Granted it may seem slightly worse on the iPhone because of the external antenna but believe me, it really isn’t as bad as you might think it is. I can, and have been able to replicate this on a Nokia N series phone, a Blackberry 8800, my iPhone 3G and my iPhone 3G S. It happens on all of them.

With a look on his face that had all the signs of deep emotion, embarrassment, regret and remorse Steve Jobs got up on stage and publicly admitted that it had a problem, that they are and have been working on it, and they have fixes in the works

I am no psychologist, but even I could see a look on Steve’s face that is reminiscent of sadness, regret, humiliation and to some degree, anger. It has been speculated that, because Apple don’t like to reveal their products until they release them, that when testing in the great outdoors, the phone is always in a case, so it’s entirely plausible that field test engineers did not see the signal dropout issues that everyone is raving about

On the other hand, apple tested this in their specially built labs. Even I can see that Apple may have overlooked something here, but on closer examination, if your holding the phone to your head naturally, are you really going to grip that antenna band? Given the way your fingers part naturally, it’s likely that in their testing, they held the phone naturally, and found no loss. It is impossible to gauge everyones ‘grip’ but it is conceivable that in ergonomics testing, they could have overlooked this.

At todays conference, Steve said “We have been working our butts off for 22 days”. In engineering and software terms, 22 days is not much. On stage it was very evident that Steve was pleading with the audience, absolutely begging them to realise that they really have been working as hard as they could and that they needed a chance. Given what I said before about testing, it is plausible that Apple genuinely did overlook this, and that they have indeed been working flat out for 22 days. In engineering, and software programming terms, it really is a short space of time and the fact that Apple have already found an issue and have released a software fix is really quite impressive, especially when your changing code in the core of the operating system.

The fact is that yes, Apple did overlook something. That much is clear and it’s very clear that Steve Jobs agrees with that. The fact is as well that Apple have realised their mistake, and they are doing what they can to put this right. The other fact, is that because it’s Apple, the press have jumped on the bandwagon and as Steve said, it’s been blown out of all proportion. Apple have proven that this isn’t isolated to the iPhone 4. The press need to calm down.

Apple has also always maintained that they are still a ‘startup’. Despite the fact it’s a huge multi national company. Apple has also always maintained that they will remain personal to their customers, and today I believe they did just that. Unlike some companies, Apple has reacted quickly, the CEO has stood up on stage and publicly admitted fault, and said what they are going to do to fix it.

So here is what they are going to do to fix it
- Continually work on the problem
- They’ve already released a software update to help fix the issue>
- They are giving a free bumper case to anyone with an iPhone 4 and will refund the price of anyone who has purchased one>
- They are waiving restocking fees so that if you do want to return the phone, you can

Thats a pretty major investment on the case front. A couple of million easily. Waiving restocking fees? Thats quite a big amount as well. Would other companies have done this? I don’t know, but I do think if another company did have this issue they would be taking a lot longer to deal with this.

I personally feel that Apple has acted responsibly, and acted as quickly as they could. Pulling a press conference off is no easy feat, and it’s not cheap either. Arranging this much in a short space of time, is also very hard to do.

Fanboy or not, Apple has shown itself in more ways than one. They’ve shown that they are affected by this, and taking proactive steps, they’ve taken action, which is going to cost them money and publicly stated that there is a problem, that alone is going to cost even more in sales revenue. Yes, Apple made a mistake, however they admitted to it, and are doing what they can to fix it. As well as all of this, Steve reportedly came back from a vacation to deal with this. Steve was also visibly shaken, embarrassed and unhappy. It’s absolutely fair what Steve said about it being “Blown Out Of Proportion”.

I do not personally believe that any other company would have responded in this way, and as well as Apple have, and whilst this is going to leave a black mark on Apple’s file for some time to come, and no doubt there will be utter idiots who don’t read the full story and don’t realise that this can happen on just about any phone, but I’ve a feeling Apple is going to come out strong from this.

But recently we’ve noticed that it’s not just low stock everywhere, but in fact, it’s no stock.

Almost three weeks after the release of the long awaited iPhone, hundreds of thousands of customers are still sat waiting and wondering where on earth they can get one, and the lucky few that have, may just be facing a recall.

As of 1 o’clock this afternoon, ‘The Carphone Warehouse’ reported there was not a single one for sale in the country, and they have been told that they are looking at a two week wait before they even begin to see them. One person, who did not wish to be named, stated that they have been unofficially told that only four stores within the Carphone Warehouse group will be able to sell them when they do get stock, although they declined to say what stores, they were able to state that one of the them would be London.

O2 has now only reported that the only store in the country’s Omagh in Northern Ireland with a grand total of 1 in stock. Tesco employees were able to say that only the major stores would be getting stock, although nothing would be confirmed, and that those stores, including the Cardiff Extra store, one of the largest in the country, would only be getting a grand total of 6, again this is unconfirmed, and from people who didn’t want to be named.

Both Orange and Vodafone have declined to comment saying simply that they are receiving stock sometime in the future.

Of course all of this is dependant on tomorrows urgent press release, no doubt called due to the current levels of noise regarding the antenna issue. Of course this is all irrelevant, because when the white version comes out we will no doubt have the same issues again.

Apple as of late has not been too good with this ‘just in time’ stock method, the iPad is still in short supply, and the uk is reportedly only getting 17% of the manufactured amount. Make no mistakes, as much as we love apple, this isn’t the way to do things, not only that but quite a few people are considering jumping ship. Not only this but there is no sign of this supply increasing for the foreseeable future.

A few of our editors have been calling Tesco, o2, Vodafone, Orange and The Carphone Warehouse on a daily basis trying to get stock and have been kept waiting with no sign of a single unit entering the running. A few of us are now seriously considering getting something else, and we wonder just how many people are getting the same feeling, remember when the 3G came out there was huge amount of demand yet three weeks after the release I was able to simply walk into a store and get one with no queuing.

We wonder if tomorrows press release will yield further information about the supply chain as well as the antenna, but with some people now unofficially reporting over a three month wait before demand settles, we’re wondering if this is just something that went very wrong on Apples end

We’ve seen it with our own eyes and had a number of comments from people making stiff complaints about the iPhone 3G’s performance some branding it ‘practically unusable’.

The slower processor speed of the 3G is partly to blame but the big issue here really is the actual code of iOS4 which is designed to maximise the use of everyones processor, although we can’t personally see why you need an increase in processor usage for a different dock image and a set of folders.

One user has already reported that she’s jumping ship and downgrading the software back to OS3 and many others appear to be following suit, including me. One of the biggest heartaches is accessing built in applications like mail and settings. In one example a user needed to connect their phone to a bluetooth headset, and totalled up almost 2 minutes getting into the panel. I was able to replicate this on my own iPhone 3G and whilst I didn’t top the two minute mark, I certainly came close.

The general feeling here is if you have not already upgraded to iOS4, then don’t. It’s simply not worth it on the 3G.

The 3Gs on the other hand has also seen major slowdowns as a result of iOS4, although not as dramatic. The accessibility functions on my own 3GS were slow, choppy and failing to render text correctly or speak it aloud.

Only time will tell if the 3G and 3Gs will see another update that cures the speed issues, but for now, 3G owners will want to skip, 3GS users should be fine unless they want to use something system intensive like accessibility.

Is your iPad overheating really easily?

We’ve been getting reports from a number of people that their iPads are displaying the overheat message on a fairly regular basis, although usually only in direct sunlight.

It’s happened to me and Sean, but it is worth pointing out that the units were in a case each time. Could this be something to do with the A4 processor? and could it happen to the iPhone 4?

More news as we hear it!

Well those early adopters might be paying a high price with an 18 month contract and limited data, some of you who have chosen to wait might find a slightly better deal on the high street (and online) so which ones best so far? (hint: Tesco)

For ease, we’re only going to look at 18 month or less contracts. Unlike some people, we don’t like being tied in for two years, neither do we like the fact that apple updates these things every 12 months (ok we kid, we love it when apple does that, but not being able to upgrade is a harsh mistress!)

Vodafone

Vodafone have come in strong offering customers a range of plans from £35 a month to £50.

So lets break it down

You’ll notice we haven’t put three into the mix. Thats because the contracts three offer are 24 month, and not 18 month. Although three have put up a handy guide comparing the 24 month contracts of all carriers on their site, so if your interested, go on over to the three iPhone tariff comparison

Now the sweet spot for people tends to be around the £35 a month mark. With o2 that gets you the phone for £279, on Orange £319, on Tesco £299 and vodafone £269. So the cheapest phone is with Vodafone. But hold on, do you really want only 300 minutes with Vodafone and O2? Orange will give you 600, Tesco, 750.

Suddenly Vodafone drops out of the mix, 300 minutes is great, if you don’t use them. Unlimited texts on all but Orange make this a very alluring deal. If your a big texter, Vodafone comes back into the pot, and Orange drops out, since it doesn’t offer unlimited (although a respectable 750!)

The clear winner for the texter in you, is Vodafone

But what if you like making phone calls? With Vodafone gone, we also drop o2 thanks to the low minutes on offer from both leaving Orange and Tesco. £299 for the phone with Tesco, and £319 with Orange. Tesco offer both more Minutes, and Data than orange and have a lower upfront phone cost making them the clear winner.

What about an all rounder? Like to text, chat and surf? don’t really want to spend big bucks?

As an all round plan, O2 offer 500mb of data, Unlimited texts and 300 minutes. Thats fine as an all rounder, except you need to pay £279 for the handset! We’re not even going to throw Orange into this mix, it may offer more minutes, and data but £319 for the phone (considering what you don’t get for that!) make it a sore looser in this game.

Vodafone on the other hand take joint first place with Tesco. The same number of minutes as O2, but Unlimited texts and 1GB of data and the lowest initial purchase cost of £269 for an 18month contract.

But why joint first I hear you ask? Actually theres a really simple answer for this.

Did we mention the contract with Tesco is actually only 12 months?

Yup, you read that right, Tesco offer the largest number of Minutes too for a paltry £31 more than Vodafone, 1GB of data and that golden 12 month contract.

Tesco wins outright!

So, in short :
Big Texter – Vodafone (£35 a month with £269 for the phone)

Big Talker- Tesco (£35 a month with £299 for the phone)

Best all rounder (18 Month) – Vodafone

Best overall – Tesco (12 Month)

Update: We’ve noticed the image for the tables isn’t working – we’ll have it fixed soon!

Update 2: Fixed!

Just a quick one, but as you can see from the screenshot, I just opened the app store and got an ‘info’ page with a random app that I’ve never clicked on… advertising? real bug?

We’ll post more as we see it

Update: Yup! we’ve had a number of reports from people in the UK and US that have had this strange phenomenon!

iPhone 3G owners beware
As many other blogs have pointed out (and indeed Steve Jobs at the release) iPhone 3G owners will not get the benefit of backgrounding, apparently it’s all to do with the processor power, however there’s a few other things your not going to get either,
- Backgrounds on your screen (don’t worry you can still get backgrounds on your lock screen)
- Screen rotation lock feature

We cant really see why you won’t get the screen rotation lock feature neither can we see why you won’t get a background image either since hundreds of thousands of people jail broke their phones so that they could do just is without a problem (amongst other things)

Still what we can tell you is that you do get some neat little features as well. Digital zoom on the camera for one thing is a welcome addition, although its not the best quality, but speaking as a photography nut, you cant really get anything decent from digital zoom anyway (although the iPhone does seem to do the zooming job a little worse than the others out there)

Still, you guys do get some nice little features to top it off that make the iPhone, somewhat more complete.

And a final point before I begin with a relatively short roundup, Apple have clearly learned from their mistakes and distributed the iOS download over thousands of servers making it easy to download rather than falling over every twenty minutes.

So, onto the first point

The Look And Feel

As you can see, apple put a huge emphasis on making the iPhone OS look a little bit fresher and a little big cleaner. They’ve changed the dock to something that more closely resembles OS X and allowed 3GS users to apply a background to both their home screen and the dock. It can be the same, it can be different, you don’t have to have it but it’s nice to know you can finally make the phone a little bit more personal to you.

On the whole the new look does freshen up the device, and whilst it does nothing for the performance it certainly adds an element of consistency and cleanliness. One thing to note is the calculator app icon has changed. Presumably because the old one looked like their new folder icon which we will talk about later.

As for the feel? The new OS is certainly snappier in parts. It’s not quite as fast as the previous 3.x generation but that is presumably to do with the extra features (although at this stage, we haven’t actually restarted the phone)

Folders

Next, lets talk about the one thing that many of us have been waiting for since the iPhone first came out. Folders. Having come from a blackberry, folders were sorely missed since it was an easy way to categorise your applications and save space.

Each folder will hold a maximum of 12 applications which is Just enough for your applications although I found it a little constraining since I have multiple applications for the same catagory.

Luckily it’s very easy to create folders, drag and drop an icon onto another and it automatically names it for you, and all you need to do is keep dropping them in. At last the iPhone has finally gotten to the blackberry level of organisation. Tap your folder and they will fly out (as per the screenshot) it’s a fairly simple change that apple have needed to do for a while, and I personally think they’ve done it well.

Next up is the biggie….

Backgrounding

Double tap the home button on the 3G S and up will pop another ‘dock’ style box. Slide left or right to see your applications and just tap to go in them, scroll all the way to the left (as in the screenshot) and you’ll find some new icons. Screen rotation lock (Which is an absolute godsend already!) rewind, play/pause or fastforward icons for your iPod and an iPod application. It’s useful to note that if you have a background aware application like TuneinRadio, it’s controls will appear here instead.

If you have application issues, just tap and hold on an application, and press the minus symbol to exit out of the app and take it out of background. Of course, all you need to do to swap applications is tap, and they will fly into focus in a sort of ‘cover flow’ esq way.

At the time of writing, there were not many iOS4 applications that supported backgrounding, but those that do, worked brilliantly.

Unified Inbox

Again this goes back to the blackberry game. Finally you can see all of your emails in every one of your inbox’s in one place. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but if you have more than one email account, it saves valuable time from switching between your inboxes, and sorting by thread, like Microsoft Exchange does, can make things much simpler.

Camera

People have long since complained about the iPhone cameras resolution, lack of features and lack of zoom. At last both 3G and 3GS users get a digital zoom. Sure it’s not great, digital zoom never is, but it at least gives you the option.

Location based services

At long last you’ll soon be able to run location based applications like TomTom and CoPilot in the background, meaning you can take a call and won’t loose your route. Finally! it’s all categorised by a single ‘arrow’ icon in the top right of the screen.

Camera Roll

Yes your photos get a small upgrade as well, you know that every picture you take on your iPone is geotagged right? Well now you can see just where you took them on a places map. Sync from your Mac using iPhoto and it will include the Geotag information there,

This is just small roundup of features, but the best is yet to come with the iPhone 4! In the meantime, tell us your thoughts and how well you’re getting on with the iPhone OS update!