Bringing Handwriting to the 21st Century

April 12, 2016 | Comment

Over the years I have had all manner of tablets and writing devices but I have never come across one that did the trick for me. Most styluses either have a big fat end which is fine for replicating your finger but no good for emulating handwriting. Or there are the more “active” styluses that only work with certain apps, or have calibration issues, or have terrible palm rejection. In most cases they suffered from all three issues.

And then along came the Apple Pencil…

I have to admit that I was pretty skeptical about how accurate the Pencil … Read the rest

The developer’s iOS 9 public beta conundrum

September 4, 2015 | Comment

[UPDATE – I’m being trolled by my bank! See the update at the end of the article]

The above is a conversation that I had with my bank about their iOS app and highlight, I think, an increasing issue that developers are going to have with more and more public involvement with beta testing.

I have been running iOS9 for a while now and on the whole it is pretty good but having beta software out in the wild does cause issues for developers of apps. It may not be possible to get fixes that are caused by the beta … Read the rest

Test Driving iOS 9

August 6, 2015 | 1 comment

Update: Almost the moment I pushed the post button Apple released beta 3 of iOS9 so I have added some things to reflect that.

So a few weeks ago I took the plunge and installed iOS9 on my iPhone, despite the dire warnings that accompanied the beta and I wanted to put down my thoughts.

Firstly iOS9 isn’t a radical departure from iOS8, in fact it feels more like a point update rather than a full update. That’s not to say that there aren’t some nice features that are included, which I will briefly cover below.

The first thing that … Read the rest

Thoughts on Apple Watch Battery Life

May 16, 2015 | Comment

I have been wrestling with the idea of an Apple Watch for a while and admit that it is beautifully made but what is really putting me off is the need to charge the thing every single day.

On reflection I can see that could be considered a positive thing. My existing Pebble has what can only be described as a variable battery life ranging from about 2 to 5 days. I have never been able to work out what makes it drain quicker sometimes more than others but it does mean that I need to keep an eye on … Read the rest

Too Much Apple Watch

April 24, 2015 | Comment

I woke up this morning to find that Apple’s App Store has been overtaken by apps offering Apple Watch support. Nothing greatly surprising in that as it was officially launched today.

But does it really have to take up so much precious screen real estate? In fact given that I don’t have a watch and nor am I likely to be getting one anytime soon (due to this) can’t I make it go away altogether?

No, of course I can’t. That’s not allowed.… Read the rest

Resolving “Error 1 – Operation not permitted.”

March 31, 2015 | Comment

Trying to unpack a zip file this afternoon I kept coming across the error message “Error 1 – Operation not permitted.”. When I have had this before I have just switched from the default Archive app to Keka or Stuffit Expander and all has been good but for some reason that wasn’t working on this zip file.

Then I cam across the following tip on Stack Exchange. Drop into a terminal session, change to the directory with the zip file and run this command:

jar xvf <zip file name>

It worked a treat. Give it a go next time … Read the rest

I don’t want a thinner iPhone 6 and here’s why

April 14, 2014 | Comment

So the rumours have moved on and now the leaks are coming thick and fast. A new iPhone is on the way. Of course nobody knows what Apple are going to deliver but all the leaks point to a device with a larger screen… And thinner.

Why?!

It is pretty much acknowledged that battery technology hasn’t kept pace with all the other components in a smartphone. I have an iPhone 4S and have to charge it at least twice a day. That’s a real pain as it means I have to carry with me the means to deal with that. … Read the rest

Designed by Jony from Chingford

September 6, 2013 | Comment

Opening up the latest Wired magazine yesterday I was struck by the double page ad Apple had placed on the inside cover. The ad was the print version of that shown above highlighting that their products are “designed in California”.

Apple are rightly proud of their Californian roots and I’m sure that plays well in the home market (although “Made in the USA” might be better) but I just don’t get the relevance to anyone outside of the US. Why would I care? Especially when the products are made in China and are actually designed by a team led by … Read the rest

What a 5 Inch iPhone Would Look Like

February 21, 2013 | Comment

There are all sorts of rumours swirling around at the moment about whether Apple is going to create a larger version of the iPhone. By which I don’t mean just a stretched version (yeah iPhone 5 I am looking at you) but a properly proportioned version.

The suggestion is that later this year Apple is going to release and iPhone with a 5 inch screen. Why that size? Because its dimensions would mean that they could do so without having to change the user interface. Which is exactly what they did for the iPad Mini only in reverse. Marco Arment … Read the rest

Forcing the Upgrade to iOS6

October 21, 2012 | Comment

I have Bento, the Apple produced database app, on both my iMac and my iPad and it is pretty good for what I need – it’s no SQL Server but then it’s not intended for such heavy duty querying. I decided that it would be useful if to also have Bento on my iPhone so that I could update date a database that I often need access to and when I tried to purchase it the message to the left is what I saw.

I haven’t upgrade to iOS 6 yet for a couple of reasons: my iPad is jailbroken… Read the rest