The evils of the iPhone

As my friends will doubtless be able to testify to I am a big fan of the iPhone. Being a fan of the iPhone often leaves one open to accusations of being a fanboy who has been duped into buying something that is over-hyped, and of course inevitably leads to lectures on the evils of the iPhone. Here are the common arguments, and my answers to them.



1. "The iPhone doesn't run flash."

Only people who don't own an iPhone seem to think this is a problem. I guess if you wanted to access video sites like YouTube, Veoh, BBC iPlayer... oh wait, no, those all work on the iPhone, either through a free app or a non-flash mobile page.

There are flash games on the internet, true, but by the nature of flash none of those are really designed for a touch screen interface or to be viewed on a mobile phone screen anyway. Why not just spend 50p on a decent game that actually fits the screen and uses the phone's accelerometers and multi-touch interface? There are also free games in the app store if you don't mind the odd advert - just like flash game websites.

After videos and games the only thing left is those annoying flickering adverts. Oh no! My phone browser won't display them!

Flash is not an open standard anyway, it is closed and owned by Adobe. The iPhone does support and run all the common open standards for video and other web content like MPEG, Java, HTML5, etc. It is in Apple's interest, as a minority player in computing, to promote such universal standards.

2. "The iPhone is chained to iTunes."

I think the iPhone is best thought of as an iPod that's also a phone. This is because all of the data resides on the parent computer, and is synchronized when the phone is connected to it. This makes it very easy to choose what content is on the phone and automates the whole process. Music (with cover artwork), video, pictures, applications, calendars, contact details, notes, basically everything on the phone, is backed up and copied across with minimal effort.

There are some huge advantages to this philosophy. For example, new podcast episodes are automatically added and old ones deleted. If you lose or wipe your phone you haven't lost your data.

Software updates also come through iTunes and are installed with just a click.

In my opinion the iTunes connection is a good thing.

3. "There's no way to manage files on the iPhone."

You don't have to manage files on the iPhone because everything is done automatically; this saves hours of faffing. Why do you want to waste your time pushing all your jpegs and mp3s around into folders? With the iPhone you just tick what folders you want to sync in iTunes and press go.

4. "But I want to use my phone as a mobile disk. The iPhone is useless because it won't let me do that."

Okay, so you want to carry around a USB cable around with you just in case you want to plug your phone into any computer you want to get files off? What's wrong with a flash memory stick? I have one, cost me £20, very small, lives in my wallet. Much easier.

5. "The iPhone has no removable storage."

I have had had several phones with removable storage cards. Such phones inevitably come with cheap, low capacity, memory cards which admittedly makes the phone seem cheaper to buy. Having subsequently bought a high capacity card for such phones I have never once changed the card from then on - because all the phone's files are on it! I do not not know anybody who has changed cards in mid use.

Most anti-iPhoners argue that they want "the option" to remove the storage. Most do not use this option on their existing phones where it does exist, and those that do are a tiny minority of phone users.

The iPhone's memory is built in and cannot be changed. This means that there is no confusion as to where, say, application and music files are. The easy sync with iTunes wouldn't work if the phone's memory could be changed during use, so I think losing the ability to remove the storage is quite an acceptable tradeoff.

6. "The iPhone has no removable battery."

The iPhone's battery is built in and cannot be removed. Here, again, we are into the "I want the option" territory. I have been told by people that they want "the option" to pop a couple of spare batteries in their bag if they're going on holiday - presumably to antarctica where there are no wall or car cigarette lighter sockets.

I have never met anybody who owns spare batteries for their phone, or indeed carries around spare phone batteries with them. I certainly never have either. It's an option that nobody ever really uses. Don't forget that making things like batteries and memory removable also requires infrastructure inside the phone making it heavier and bulkier for the same level of performance. In my opinion Apple have made a good tradeoff.

For that tiny minority of people who do want to be able to top up their phone on the go there are relatively compact external battery packs available for the iPhone that will charge it up again several times. Apple, or several 3rd parties, also offer the service of replacing worn out internal batteries if that's ever needed.

7. "The iPhone cannot multitask."

Every iPhone from day one has been able to multitask. The OS is constantly managing wireless connections, checking email, running alarms, calendars, etc. It can also play the iPod app's music in the background. What's that if not multitasking?!

What anti-iPhoners mean when they say the iPhone "can't multitask" is that up until now the iPhone has been unable to run multiple third party applications concurrently. The trouble with running multiple applications at the same time on a phone is that it runs the battery down very quickly and can impact on performance of the foreground application. Multitasking is easy to implement but it's very difficult to do this well.

Apple's solution until now has been to restrict the phone to running one 3rd party application at a time - there is, after all, only one small screen anyway. iPhone OS4, which will be released this summer, will allow 3rd party apps to run in the background and in a much more efficient way than on any other phone operating system. We will then hopefully cease to hear whinging about the iPhone's lack of true multitasking.

8. "But I want to run a messenger app or facebook in the background."

Apple's solution to the most common multitasking problem, ie wanting to have something like MSN or facebook in the background, is actually a much more elegant solution than simply running the app on the phone.

Run a messanger app or facebook feed application on a phone that does support multitasking and that application will be running on the phone, periodically contacting the server to see if there's new information. This all uses power.

The iPhone has something called the "push notification server", which is provided by Apple as part of the app store and doesn't require any tinkering to set up. It is possible to close the messenger app on the phone completely, whilst instead the server, not the phone, stays logged in to the messenger service. If anyone sends a message to the user, the server receives it and then pushes it as a notification to the phone telling the user that there is a message waiting. The user then fires up the messenger app, which takes all of about 2 seconds, reads the full message, and can answer. This means the user can be online continuously with barely any use of power or processing power. I think it's a much better way of doing things!

9. "The iPhone is expensive."

Fair. You get what you pay for though. It's not much more expensive than the Google Android equivalent phones - the Nexus One or HTC desire, especially after you've also bought a sensibly sized memory card.

10. "The iPhone will only take applications from the Apple app store. This is a bad thing and kills bunnies."

Yes, without jailbreaking at least, the iPhone will only run applications from the app store. This restricts the unfortunate iPhone user to the mere 185,000 apps that Apple have approved.

There are plenty of good things about the app store. It is a highly effective distribution system that allows professional and amateur application developers to write and distribute software easily and get paid for their efforts. It also means that theoretically none of the programs that one can legitimately download and run on an iPhone is going to do anything Malicious as they've all been checked and approved.

Perhaps in principle Apple's monopoly of iPhone software through the app store is not 100% good and perhaps in time users will be able to get iPhone software from other sources. This is not, however, an issue that manifests itself to the man in a street holding an iPhone.

10. "The iPhone is made by Apple. Apple = bad."

This is really the usual argument being put forward, if under the guise of one or more of the above, and the most likely reason why any true anti-iPhoner will not be swayed by what I've written.

Apple = bad. Playing in a loop inside their heads.

This is why, to them, the iPhone is a totally flawed concept, but the Nexus One or HTC desire are the best thing since sliced bread. (Err, it's the same form factor and the same interface guys!)

Apple are a company. They are interested in selling their products and increasing their market share. So are Microsoft, Google, Adobe, Dell, HTC and indeed any other company that makes computer software or hardware. Any company behaves in ways that are both "good" and "bad" to the outsider's eyes. What really matters is what the product does and how well it does it.

Apple believe in vertical integration - their software running on their hardware - and they believe in selling products that are of the best quality and targeted at the average user, priced accordingly. That's their niche in the market. If their products are "locked down" it's not out of some huge conspiracy it's simply because doing so makes them more suited to the people they are designed for.

These conspiracy theories are often wild and illogical anyway. For example I've heard people claim that Apple are "anti-developer", which is presumably why the full suite of software development tools for OS.X and iPhone are available for free from their website!

The average motorist doesn't want to have to strip down and clean their engine very 1,000 miles. That's the final word here; the iPhone isn't designed for a geeky minority who enjoy opening up the bonnet and tinkering with every aspect of their techno-toys, it is designed for the majority of users who want something that does awesome things without that fuss.

In conclusion

There is no doubt that the iPhone was and still is a game changing device. It has set the bar for a new generation of smart phones and brought many new technologies to the marketplace. I am glad that there are imitators like the Nexus One out there because it provides the incentive for Apple to innovate as they continue to evolve the iPhone concept.

There are many myths about the iPhone perpetuated by a very small but vocal minority of technophiles, mostly born from the discord stemming from the fact that the iPhone isn't really designed for them. This wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't for the way in which people who are not hugely technologically savvy will tend to listen to such people and, whilst not understanding the myths, get a bad feeling about the iPhone and be discouraged from getting something that is incredibly sound and better suited to them.

At the end of the day the iPhone is a superb, highly capable, easy to use, and incredibly reliable device. I wish that the nay-sayers would at least acknowledge that, even if they don't think it is for them, but I guess that's just wishful thinking on my part.

Windows 7

I realise I've been raving recently about Macs, so I decided to take a look at what at what the latest version of Windows has to offer.

My first challenge was getting videos on the Microsoft website to play. To be fair both Apple and Microsoft seem to be under the illusion that someone shopping for a new computer and operating system will be browsing their website on a fast computer with a huge monitor, which doesn't make sense. At least, however, the content on the Mac website all worked for me, whereas some of the Microsoft videos didn't.

In any case the selection of features that Windows 7 was being sold with having were also fairly amusing to me. It is true to say that Microsoft is boasting features that Apple isn't; the reason being most of them are features that Macs have been doing for years!

"Windows Search" is possibly the best example of this. It's an incredibly fast search system that finds files on the computer very quickly. You might see it and say "Wow! That's impressive!" until you realise that Apple users have had Spotlight, which is at least as good, for four years.

There's also the new fancy "clipping tool" which is an application that allows the user to capture only a portion of the screen as a screenshot. Nice... but, again, for years Apple users have only needed press Apple key + Shift + 4 to do that.

Overall I've found that whilst Windows 7 has a couple of nice features, there is nothing at all about it that particularly impresses me.

Fanboy!

Something with which I am becoming increasingly familiar with is the various ways in which people respond when I tell them that I have been converted to using an Apple Mac computer.

I wrote on this blog last March when I first tried using a Mac about a year ago and it's fair to say that by now I'm a complete convert. I find they are extremely reliable and very enjoyable to use.

The thing is that, having realised how awful an experience using Windows based systems are by comparison I find myself trying to explain to people that it doesn't have to be that way, and that they should perhaps try a Mac too. When I do this most of them look at me as though I've suddenly gone completely insane.

Not use windows?! Are you insane?!

For the die-hard Windows user there is a stereotype into the shape of which they will try to bend the converted Mac user. This is the poor gullible individual, ignorant to the world of computers, who has been duped into buying an overpriced inferior product by snappy advertising. Apple has brainwashed them into being a "fanboy", who will mindlessly buy anything with an Apple symbol on it. They are to be pittied.

I have been treated to lectures on the evils of being "tied in to expensive hardware", not having "native unicode support" (whatever that is?), which are perhaps true. Also how the file and memory management systems are inferior, which I consider to be less generous in terms of fact given the superior speed and smooth running of OS.X even on lower spec machines than their Windows counterparts.

Most amusing though was the assertion that OS.X is simply a dumbed down version of UNIX for people who are too stupid to use UNIX proper. Anyone making such a statement is completely missing the point.

One has to ask oneself what a computer is for, and the answer for most people is given in terms of performing certain tasks. If an operating system makes doing this fast and easy someone used to a more involved method may indeed call it "dumbing down", but does that really matter if it does the task better and more easily? Apple wins every time not on an on-paper comparison of specs, but when it comes to the so-called "user experience" which is in many respects much more important.

The average computer user frankly doesn't give a toss whether or not NTFS or WinFS is technically superior as a file system to HFS+. What they want is a computer that works well and is easy to use. The beauty of an OS.X system is that it does both of these things, and Apple are very good at improving and integrating the aspects of a computer that most people actually care about.

It "just works", to use their slogan.

On the other hand, every verson of Windows I've ever used has required constant adjustment and and insider knowledge to make it work properly.

A good example was when I commented how much quicker my Mac Mini would boot compared with my PC of the same age. The response I got was "well, you're obviously not keeping your windows install clean are you!". Well, perhaps not. But why should I, as an average computer user, need to know about keeping the system clean of all the small programs that are want to install themselves in the background of a Windows system, and how to delete them?

It strikes me that there are a considerable number of computer users that must actually enjoy the constant tinkering with their systems to keep them working. Either that or they enjoy having the knowledge of how to do it and being the authority figure on computers to those other Windows users around them who aren't in the know.

Apple perhaps annoys those people the most by making the need for such insider knowledge redundant. OS.X is far more intuitive and easier to set up and adjust; no tinkering or regular cleaning up required.

All of this said, I suspect that the main reason most people remain with their Windows PCs, and replace them with new Windows PCs, is not because of a fair and balanced comparitive apprisal of both alternatives, but simply because Windows is something familiar, whereas OS.X is an unknown quantity. People in general like to remain set in their ways.

In trying to convey this I like the analogy of trying to sell a motorboat to an individual who is tasked with rowing heavy cargo across a lake. You can point out that the motorboat with its engine is faster and will make crossing the lake significantly easier, but you'll only be told "No, that's no good! Where on earth would I mount the oars?!"

Indeed one problem that can arise is that using a Mac will often require that the user un-learns a lot of the habitual clunky circuitous ways in which one must things if you were trying to get the same result in Windows. I recall Rosie trying to import her pictures from her Windows laptop onto the Mac Mini. In doing so she'd manually organised all of her photos into folders and moved those folders from her USB stick across into the iPhoto directory, as one would do in Windows, then was confused when iPhoto wouldn't let her load them into the library; she'd spent 30 minutes on this. She was just a little bit miffed when I pointed out all she needed to do was plug in the USB stick and click "add photos" in the menu bar.

Anyone who has gotten used to iPhoto will agree that perhaps "dumbing down" isn't quite so bad after all.

So I will enjoy my motorboat and encourage others to give it a try themselves; if some people like the exercise of having to row hard to keep up as far as I'm concerned they're welcome to it.

New computer?

It has been over 5 years now since I last bought a computer, and so I am now doing something that I have being trying to put off for a while, which is considering buying a new computer.

This is not some kind of inherent urge that must be answered, but simply a changing of the times. The performance that programs and web content demand from computers increases over time. I have a 5 year old laptop and an 8 year old desktop PC, and these are simply unable to cope.

I am one who has defended Microsoft for countless years, but a couple of years back I decided that my next computer would be an Apple Mac. There were three main factors in this. First, my Brother and Dad both have Macs and I was impressed with what I saw, second Windows Vista came out and I decided I certainly didn't want to upgrade to that given the reviews it was getting, and finally I got myself an iPhone and I was so impressed with the interface I wanted to try getting an apple computer.

I replaced my 8-year old PC's tower with a Mac Mini inherited from my Dad recently and I have been very impressed with it. The interface is very intuitive and it's age only shows occasionally when it's asked to run newer programs or streaming video off the internet. In 6 months I have only had one thing that hasn't worked perfectly, and that is that iChat doesn't like the webcam I'm using. Just one issue in over 6 months! The "it just works" reputation is well earned.

Windows is adept at not "just working". For example I am typing this at my lunch break at work and I just had to restart my computer because it refused to eject my USB stick, saying a program was still using it which I was pretty sure wasn't true. Such issues are something that most PC users will find to be a day-to-day occurrence.

The problem I have with my current Mac Mini is that many of the things I want to do with it, including programming and watching movies, would work a lot better with a larger screen. My 15" TFT monitor was far from the largest available when I bought it in 2001. It seems to me that 21" or larger seems to be the smallest nowadays; I use a pair of 24" monitors at work.

The trouble is that getting a new monitor would be limited by the capabilities of the graphics card in my Mac Mini, so replacing the monitor to a worthwhile size will mean replacing the Mac Mini too. I started looking at the price of decent 24" monitors and adding that to the cost of a new Mac Mini. Then, as I browsed apple's website to see what their monitors were like, I considered the new iMac.


The iMac is an all-in-one computer. It's the size and shape of a monitor but everything, save the keyboard and mouse, is included inside the monitor casing. That includes a small set of speakers, microphone, webcam, disk drive, card reader, wireless cards, everything. In the latest version there is only one external cable, the power cable; the keyboard and mouse are wireless.

The one I like the look of also has a 27" screen.

I am quickly falling in love with the idea of getting one of these, not least because I like the way in which it is all integrated. Critics of Apple computers will constantly point out that, unlike windows, Apple controls the hardware. I will point out that a great thing about Apple computers is that Apple controls the hardware, which means that everything works perfectly together because it is designed as such. The more I see of these computers the more I come to think that sourcing the hardware and operating system from completely separate companies is just asking for trouble.

Thoughts here of my windows laptop and its habit of lying dormant as intended with the lid closed, as expected, but then shutting down the moment the lid is opened springs to mind. Or indeed trying to set Windows XP to understand that I have a UK keyboard on my laptop. I am also fairly certain that it is the wireless card on my laptop that is causing it to crash completely, bringing up the dreaded blue screen of death, the windows trademark.

Even the recent release of Windows 7 hasn't changed my mind. It's much more stable than Vista, but then XP has a similar "better than Windows ME" citation that isn't saying much. Frankly I've given up on Microsoft trying to sort its act out.

So, an iMac it is then. Now all I need to do is work out how I'm going to afford it.

Being very un-PC

What am about to say flies in the face of what I believed even just a year ago, and I would have been horrified if I'd heard myself saying it. I am fast becoming an Apple Mac convert.

I have had enough with Windows. I have owned three different PCs over the last decade, running Windows 98, Windows ME, and Windows XP, and a defining feature of all of these for me has been that with a PC there is always something that's not quite right.

Let's illustrate this with an example or two; just the first few that come to mind:

My old Windows-XP laptop currently has an idiosyncrasy whereby if I close the lid whilst it is running it goes into hibernate mode, which is fine, that's what it's supposed to do, but when the lid is re-opened for some inexplicable reason it comes back out of hibernate mode and then immediately shuts down. I cannot for the life of me work out why, let alone try to correct it.

Switching off the login screen, which I really don't need on a computer only I use proved extremely challenging, as the options that control is aren't very well labelled and getting the combination that would not bring up a dialogue box asking me to sign in was a true exercise in trial and error. I finally managed to make the accursed box go away on startup, however any time the computer comes back out of standby mode it still appears and asks me for a password.

My laptop also seems to think it has a US rather than a UK keyboard, which most noteably swaps the " and @, and makes typing the £ symbol impossible. After a couple of hours of trying to figure out how to correct this little quirk, I gave up and decided to live with it.

My PC at work has an intereting little tick in that whenever a USB stick is plugged into it the stick is recognised but it's impossible to access it. Due to way Windows XP assigns drive letters, and the number of network drives on my work computer, windows wants to assign the stick the same letter as an existing drive, and this conflict prevents the stick from becoming visible on the desktop. In order to gain access to the USB stick I need to go into the disk manager application, which Microsoft seem to delight in changing the name, location and format of with every update, and manually change the stick's drive letter to one that isn't in use.

I could go on, but I'm sure you get the point. It's 101 little things like the above that are ever present in a PC that have brought me to this point of complete dissilusionment with anything that's running Windows.

So, what does a Mac do that a Windows PC doesn't?

Well, to put it simply, it works.

Somehow a Mac simply manages to not have any of these issues, or at least has a far, far fewer number of them. I have formed this opinion from playing with my Dad's discarded Mac this weekend, which he recently replaced with a newer version.


This is a Mac Mini, a desktop computer in a teeny tiny case. This is the whole package, and the idea is that it will work happily with whatever monitor, speakers and USB hardware you already have, keeping down the costs of replacing an old computer. The one I have inherrited has displaced the tower of my old Dell desktop, plugging into my existing flat screen monitor and speakers. All I needed was a USB keyboard and mouse, so at the weekend I treated myself to one of Apple's very nice flat keyboards and a new webcam.

All I had to do was plug it all in, switch it on, and it worked perfectly first time! At 4 years old one would expect it to have developed all manner of ideosyncracies, but so far anything that I have come across that I've not been completely happy with has been so incredibly easy to find in the options and change.


I think I'm going to become hooked, and I'm already trying to work out how soon I can get myself an up-to-date Mac Mini, or maybe one of the new MacBooks.

Seeing double

Just before lunch today my boss came into the office and dropped a couple of power cables into my lap. "That's the first installment" he said.

It turned out I was due for a slight computer upgrade, or rather my computer was due for a new monitor. It seems one 24-inch monitor isn't enough for the CAD work I'm doing so I've now got two of them! At 1920x1200 resolution, between two monitors I now have 4,608,000 pixels on my desktop!

More pixels than I know what to do with in fact.