Category Archives: Apple

Internet Explorer – the world’s most popular browser?

Posted by David Hurst on January 13, 2010 5 comments

Question: is Internet Explorer the world’s most popular browser?

Let’s look at the stats for the major players (correct at January 2010)…

(EDIT: no doubt these stats will be completely inaccurate by now, particularly given the massive security flaw in IE that allowed Google email accounts to be spied on by Chinese hackers, and the subsequent warning from the German Government that people should find an alternative browser to use)

62.69% – Internet Explorer
24.61% – Firefox
4.63% – Chrome
4.46% – Safari
2.40% – Opera

Internet Explorer still has a considerable lead in the market share (although this is steadily decreasing), but this is simply because the PC buying public are force-fed the IE browser as it comes built into their Windows installation. So, Internet Explorer is certainly the most used browser, but I wouldn’t say it was the most popular, particularly when you consider that Firefox is not shipped with major operating systems (it is usually the default browser in most Linux distributions, but Linux as an OS only has 1.02% of the world market). So, in order to be using Firefox, the user has to have actively voted with their feet and installed the Firefox browser, rather than use the default browser forced upon them by Microsoft. In my opinion, this makes Firefox the most popular browser, if not the most used. I don’t think you can call something “popular” if it’s something that’s foisted upon people – people who probably don’t realise there’s an alternative.

Some might call this semantics, but for me it’s about getting to the core of the issue. Serious computer users, and anyone with any sense or IT knowledge, will most likely not be using Internet Explorer.

IE as a browser is the worst of the five listed above. Microsoft resolutely refuse to abide by standards set by W3C and others. When W3C compliant code doesn’t work as expected in Internet Explorer, the Microsoft support stance is that their browser is flawless and it is the developer who is at fault. This means that web developers everywhere are having to develop code twice: once to standards, and then a second time to adapt it for Microsoft’s flaws. Microsoft’s arrogance beggars belief! It’s equivalent to buying a car that doesn’t support highway standards, then when you complain to the company involved that your car doesn’t work with the road network in your country, they just turn around and say “change the road network to suit our car”. What a joke!

Worse still, IE is the principal reason for many of the viruses and trojans that plague Windows users (but not Mac or Linux users). Do a Windows update and you will notice that it runs through Internet Explorer. This means that it is possible for a remote computer to access your files and setup details, and update those files and configurations via your web browser! Microsoft may occasionally patch and secure it, but this is a totally flawed mechanism that will always have vulnerabilities no matter what they do.

If most Windows users were told the truth about Internet Explorer, I think the market share data above would be very different. If you are currently using Internet Explorer, I strongly suggest you try Firefox, Chrome or Safari – they’re all free, faster than IE, standards compliant, feature rich and more secure than Internet Explorer.

Microsoft is losing it’s global dominance, albeit very slowly. Apple are selling more computers than ever – in fact every quarter they post record sales of Apple desktops and laptops. Linux has also properly arrived in the mainstream – the latest version of Ubuntu is exceptional. Consumers are getting more savvy and will start to demand better. Why should you have to put up with a virus-riddled, unreliable dog of an operating system when the competition is more secure, more stable, faster and cheaper?

Beats me why anyone would choose to use IE or Windows. My business partner swears by a PC with Windows… well actually, he swears at his PC with windows. A lot. There is continual talk of “rebuilds” (re-installation of Windows and wiping of the hard disk), whereas my three and a half year old Apple MacBook Pro is still going strong despite never being re-installed, and never having any anti-virus software whatsoever installed. It’s a no brainer.

iPhone 3G for sale

Posted by David Hurst on November 23, 2009 2 comments

SOLD!

As I’ve moved to a Palm Pre, my Apple iPhone 3G 8Gb is available for sale. I will be putting it on eBay this weekend, but any sensible offers received prior to that will be considered.

I have the box, cables etc. – everything it came with.

The iPhone is in good condition, with some minor surface wear to the rear and a tiny hairline crack by the connector port. Not noticeable in general use. The screen and front is completely clear of scratches. Comes with a hard leather slip case.

The iPhone will be wiped to factory settings before sale.

It has OS 3.0 on it and is currently locked to the O2 network. You can get it unlocked at any O2 store if you wish to use it on Orange instead. (You can use it on other networks too, but you’ll need to check with your network on the compatibility).

Looking at eBay, these are fetching anywhere from £150 – £220. I’ll take less than that. Make me an offer using the comments box below (if you can’t see a comments box, click on the title of this post and then scroll down), or email me at davidhurst dot co dot uk.

Stupid things you hear in PC World #1: “Macs don’t have 2 button mice”

Posted by David Hurst on July 16, 2009 3 comments

I do love to have a browse around PC World from time to time, or as I like to call it, “The Toy Shop”. Such an occasion for mindless wandering and perusing of gadgets I want to buy but don’t need, occurred today, and with it the customary experience of hearing somebody spouting forth crap about computers. Often it’s the PC World staff that are the guilty parties, but on this occasion it was a kid, or rather, group of kids. Anyway, I figured this might make a nice periodical feature for my blog, so without further ado…

I was just having a look at the new MacBook Pro 13″ (very nice looking laptop I must say, but my aging MacBook Pro 17″ has some life in it yet) when a group of kids saunters over to stare at the 24″ iMac. I know this to be the very pinnacle of home computing, because I have one myself, and what’s not to like? The 2 foot screen is very nice. The performance is fabulous. The design of it is awesome. The new keyboard I will admit to not liking at all – why have Apple chopped the number pad off? I have several of the newer aluminium keyboards (with full number pad) and it is definitely the best keyboard Apple have ever made. It is the one area they struggle with. Don’t even get me started on the Mighty Mouse – I have a drawer full of ‘em as they invariably get swapped straight away for a Logitech.

Anyway, first of all this kid calls the screen “crap”. Are you kidding? And the design he labeled “ugly”. Neither statement could be considered remotely accurate. The screen is fabulous, with vibrant colour reproduction and excellent even brightness levels. The design of the iMac is an example of genius. You only have to walk down the PC aisles in PC World to see a plethora of tacky copies of the elegant iMac.

Next to come out of his mouth was: “Macs have only just got a two button mouse”. What? General rule of thumb: don’t present yourself as some sort of expert when you have zero knowledge of the subject matter. Apple were the first computer company to offer a computer with a mouse, and all Macs have supported two button mice for years. The Mighty Mouse has been out for at least 4 years, and that is a two button mouse. In fact it has four buttons plus a scroll ball (first to do that too). All modern Apple laptops also have a right click function – you tap the trackpad with two fingers. Failing that, just hold CTRL and click.

Then, the real reason for the Mac slagging – the price. As they gasped at the thought of paying £1,149 for a state of the art home computer, it became evident that a 24″ iMac was far beyond their expectations. Well, you get what you pay for fellas. My first laptop, at age 18, was a basic machine (Olivetti Echos P100 to be precise) and it cost me £1,500 and took me four years to pay for. Today, you can buy basic (and very crappy) laptops for £280, so yes, maybe £1,149 seems like a lot. Look at what you get though: it will out-perform a same-specced PC and run Windows; it comes with a load of quality software – not crappy bundled trials and second rate packages; it runs a stable and secure OS that doesn’t crash or contract viruses; it’s a pleasure to use, and; much more. All this makes the iMac a very sensible choice for a home computer and worth the asking price.

Not convinced?

Consider this: I have an iMac G5 17″ here in the office. It’s over four years old and it is still in daily use, running the very latest OS happily. Find me a four year old PC that can run Vista. In fact, my brother still has my old PowerMac G4, which is now six years old. That too is running the latest OS. The 24″ iMac will last easily 5 – 6 years, whereas most PCs are done after 2 – 3 years. On top of that, Macs have a second hand re-sale value, whereas second hand PCs are virtually worthless.

Factor in all these things and you will find that the iMac represents extraordinary value for money, particularly when you can get the 20″ version for £949. Can’t expect the average PC World punter to understand that though – they buy, and are sold to, purely on numbers. This one has more numbers so must be faster, right? Wrong actually. But that’s another post for another day.

What if there were Microsoft Windows stores?

Posted by David Hurst on April 2, 2009 1 comments

I was up in London on Monday and, as is the norm for me, made time to slip over to the Apple Store on Regent Street. Sometimes I just go in to look around and dribble, but on this occasion I had a singular mission: buy a copy of Aperture for my wife. Obviously I found a bit of time to wander around and stroke some of the goodies on display too.

I happened to be with some colleagues who had not yet had the privilege of visiting an Apple store, and one of them (www.robswan.com) mused upon what it might be like if Microsoft opened a similar store…

When you go to the Apple store, you can make use of one of the many computers and laptops without ever being bothered by a sales rep. All of them are connected to the Internet, which makes the Apple store a great place to just go check your email if you happen to be passing by. Windows users though might be surprised to notice that all the computers work. In our fictitious Windows store, a proportion of the machines would presumably be showing some sort of blue screen of death, whilst others wheeze under the weight of all the malware, spyware and viruses they have contracted.

In the Apple store, they have the “Genius Bar”, where you can book an appointment and get FREE help with your computing problems. I just can’t ever imagine Microsoft doing such a thing, but they could have a “Idiot Bar” where you could book an appointment to kick the crap out of a Windows coder for all the pain in your life?

Also in the Apple store, you will find free theatre presentations on how to use various aspects of your Mac. Whilst for the pro user these are of little use, the average home user will gain much from these presentations.

Frankly, a Windows store wouldn’t work because Windows just doesn’t work reliably. I’m not saying Macs are trouble free or that Apple are some kind of deity, because they are not, but I’m glad I made the shift to Mac, and I’m never going back.

I love being able to use my computer without feeling like I’m fighting against it. I love knowing that I’m not going to have to re-install it (my MacBook Pro is 2.5 years old, used daily, and has never been re-installed). I love the not having to worry about viruses, malware, worms and all the other crap Windows users have to put up with.

Sure Apple stuff costs more, but it also holds its value and lasts well. It’s a no brainer.

Apple iPhone 3G Review

Posted by David Hurst on September 7, 2008 None comments

I resisted buying the first incarnation of the iPhone, due to the lack of 3G, which always seemed utterly bizarre in a “breakthrough communications device”. That, and the non-subsidised price ensured that my cash stayed firmly in my pocket. Both of these issues were resolved with the iPhone 3G, so I have relented and bought one, and after living with it for a few weeks, I think I’m in a position to write a review.

I think it’s important to remember that the iPhone is primarily a mobile phone, so I think it’s appropriate to judge it first of all on that basis. So, what do we need from a phone? Quick and easy dialling; an easy to use contacts list; portability; battery life; signal strength, and; call quality. Let’s see how it measures up on each of these points…

Quick and easy dialling
Most phones on the market have a series of number buttons, and making a call is no more complicated than pressing the buttons for the number you want and hitting the dial button. The iPhone has no buttons. To make a one-off call, we have to press the home button, slide the “button” to activate the screen, press the home button again if we’re not already at the home screen, tap the phone icon, tap the number pad icon if it’s not already selected and finally we can dial the number. It doesn’t take that long, but it’s not exactly quick and I can’t help but wonder how that might affect someone trying to call the emergency services when in dire need of emergency assistance.

I’m happy to trade off speed of dialling with all the additional features I get with iPhone, but not all users will feel the same.

Having said that, most calls will be to someone in your contact list, and the iPhone makes this nice and easy to do. You can also assign contacts as favourites, and these appear in their own shortcut list.

Easy to use contacts list
I can’t fault the contacts list at all. It’s easy to use, and allows you to store multiple numbers per contact, and all sorts of other useful information too. Adding and editing the data is easy on the iPhone, but as it syncs up with your computer, you can just add all your contacts there more quickly and then they will just appear on the iPhone. If you subscribe to Apple’s MobileMe service, they sync across all your computers and the iPhone.

You can add photos to contacts, much like you can with any modern handset, but I like the way these are also synced up and applied to emails as well as phone calls. I like the way you can also add custom fields of your own, and these are remembered so that you can use them across multiple contacts.

Grouping contacts and sending messages to groups is also possible, as is setting individual ring tones for each contact or groups of contacts.

Portability
The iPhone is lightweight, and surprisingly compact considering all the features it has, but there are certainly lighter and smaller handsets on the market. Given that most people will buy the iPhone partly because of the way it looks, I don’t think many prospective purchasers will spend too much time thinking about its portability.

It is worth thinking about how expensive the iPhone is, and how easily it could get damaged. It would be pretty easy for the iPhone to slip out of sweaty hands, hit the floor, and end up horribly scratched and disfigured. A case is essential! The one I have is a bit fiddly, and getting the iPhone extracted before the caller has hung up can be a bit of a challenge.

Battery life
This is a really important aspect of a mobile phone – after all, you can’t be very mobile if you have to plug it in all the time. Surely though, this won’t be a problem with an Apple product, not if their laptop battery performance is anything to go by anyway. So, how is the iPhone 3G battery life?

Crap.

There’s no other way to describe it. If you use the features of your iPhone regularly, you just won’t make it through the day without a charger and convenient power point. Mine is perpetually plugged in when I’m at home or in the office, and I’ve now taken to carrying a pay-as-you-go handset with me when I’m out and about, just in case the battery fails.

You can’t buy an extended battery. You can’t buy a second battery. You can’t even open the iPhone to get at the battery. When you consider that rechargeable batteries have a life span of around 500 full charges, I have to wonder if it will even last out my 18 month contract before it has to go to Apple to be replaced.

This is a very serious fault that needs addressing. I’m fed up with seeing the red battery icon.

Signal strength and call quality
I can’t fault either of these things. The phone is quite happy making reliable calls even on just 1 bar of service. Clarity of speech is excellent.
Now, it’s time to look at the iPhone’s additional features. Bearing in mind that Apple are trying to capture some of the corporate market, the iPhone 3G will be competing head to head with XDAs, Blackberrys and Smart Phones, so how does it hold up?

Connectivity
Pretty important for the internet and push email features of the iPhone 3G, and I have to say it is brilliant. It switches seamlessly between GPRS EDGE, 3G and WiFi, automically picking the fastest/cheapest connection within range. Internet browsing on 3G is perfectly acceptable, although you probably wouldn’t want to browse YouTube or any other high bandwidth sites.

National 3G coverage is pretty good and most major towns and cities have good 3G signals. There’s plenty of free WiFi around too, so getting online is never really a problem with the iPhone 3G.

Internet
The Safari browser on the iPhone is certainly the best browser I have ever used on a mobile device. You can open multiple windows, and easily zoom in on any part of the screen. The keyboard only appears when needed, and the iPhone neatly detects the orientation of the device in your hand and displays pages in portrait or landscape format accordingly.

That said, it does have limitations. You can only open 5 windows, and if you switch between the windows a lot, you will notice a rather odd bug where the window you switch to will load the content from the window you switched from, rather than showing the content you wanted to see. It’s bizarre and Apple need to sort it out.

There’s also no Flash support. Apple have been rapped by the ASA and forced to change their TV commercials as Flash is an important part of the Internet, and the iPhone 3G simply won’t display it.

Email and push functionality
The email client is excellent and supports all the major standards perfectly. When the iPhone first syncs with your computer, it will automatically import the email settings and set it all up for you – utterly painless. It makes most sense to use IMAP, Exchange or MobileMe with such a device so that your email syncs up. MobileMe is great, but there is an annual fee for the service, and it really warrants its own review. I think the big draw of the iPhone 3G, particularly for corporate users, will be the Exchange support.

For most users, the Exchange setup will be simple and painless, but for some, it will be difficult. I don’t think this is particularly a fault of the iPhone, it has more to do with Exchange and the plethora of different possible configurations. I couldn’t get my iPhone 3G to sync with my Exchange server as we use Windows Small Business Server (SBS) 2003, which doesn’t have the right service pack for Exchange as standard. Once upgraded, it worked perfectly and now my email is pushed directly to my iPhone. (I have written a guide elsewhere on my blog on how to get connected with SBS. Do a search in the box above if you need help.)

In fact, everything now syncs perfectly. My work email and calendar syncs with Exchange. My home calendar, email and contacts all sync with MobileMe. I have everything I need in the palm of my hand and then replicated across my iMac, MacBook Pro and Windows laptop. Perfect!

Camera
Many people are concerned with having a great camera in their phone. If that’s the case, then you will be disappointed with the iPhone camera. The resolution is poor and taking photos is fiddly, particularly self portraits. On the Mac, iPhoto opens every time I connect my iPhone and tries to import my iPhone photos. This is a pain in the butt. Frankly, I don’t want to take photos on my phone. I have a camera.

Horses and courses of course, but I’m sure Apple could do better here. Surely a forward facing camera would be sensible on a 3G device? Have Apple missed an opportunity with video calling?

iPod
More and more phone handsets now have MP3 players built in. Again, I have an iPod for my music, and using my phone for music is not my first preference, but if you’re going to have a music player and phone together, this is the one you want. The iPhone has all the same features as the iPod touch, with a beautiful coverflow system for browsing your music by album cover. It works well, and I must confess that I have loaded some tunes on to listen to at the gym.

In fact, you can also load full movies onto your iPhone, and in the USA you can actually rent movies on the iTunes store. For some reason, in the UK you cannot yet do this, which is pretty poor.

The real problem is…

Memory
The iPhone has no memory card slot. Presumably this would have detracted from the smooth lines of the gadget, but this just smacks of form over function to me. I have the 8Gb version, mainly because I refused to pay the outrageous additional cost for one with slightly more memory. Flash RAM is cheap. Why not allow users to expand their device as they wish?

GPS
A very welcome addition to the second generation iPhone is GPS. This hooks up seamlessly with the Google maps application to show you exactly where you are anywhere in the world. The iPhone can also triangulate your rough position from cell towers if it can’t see any satellites. The application does provide step-by-step directions, but it does not actually direct you through each step like a vehicle sat nav system. It seems to me that it wouldn’t take much to add this, and then with the help of a car cradle, you could make better use of the GPS. No doubt this would also dramatically boost iPhone sales.

Office documents
The iPhone has viewers for all the main Office document types, but you cannot edit the files. This is a huge disappointment as every other smart phone, XDA, or PDA I’ve tried has had this capability. Apple could easily resolve this, and I’m very surprised that they have not provided a mobile version of their brilliant iWork office suite.

Files
I am rather staggered by the complete lack of any sort of file storage or browsing functionality on the iPhone. OS X, upon which the iPhone interface is built, has Finder – the best file broswing and searching system of any modern OS, and yet the iPhone has nothing. I can’t copy files over to the device and organise them, and Apple has missed a serious trick here. I still need to carry my USB flash drive around with me. Very annoying.

Applications
One of the great features of the iPhone 3G is the downloadable applications. Be warned though that the quality of the apps is wide and varied. Some are fantastic (Apple’s HoldEm poker game for instance), but there are many utterly rubbish third party apps, some of which cost money, so you need to pay attention to the application rating and reviews before splashing the cash. The Apps feature does add serious capability to the iPhone, and the SDK that Apple provides for developers is excellent, so expect to see better things from the App store in the future.

The applications highlight another limitation with the iPhone: that of multi-tasking. It doesn’t have any. You can only run one application at a time, which makes things like mobile MSN, iChat or Skype completely impractical. This is something they may solve with a future software update – I certainly hope so.

Interface
The touch screen interface really needs to be seen (and touched) to be believed. It is truly stunning. The keyboard in particular is worthy of mention. With the “buttons” on screen for the keyboard being very small, it is very easy (and common) to make typos. However, the iPhone is extremely clever at working out what you wanted to type and automatically correcting this for you. Unlike T9 predictive text messaging systems, it is reliable, accurate and rarely gets in the way, which allows you to type quickly and with confidence.

The iPhone also boasts two accelerometers (is that spelled right?) which detect movement, and this means you can play games like Super Monkey Ball by actually moving the iPhone around in your hands. I hope to see some more innovative use of these features in future Applications.

Summary
The iPhone is not perfect, and it is not far enough ahead of the competition to warrant their being excluded from consideration. It’s not for everybody. I can live with the niggles because the overall package is so good, but the battery life really riles me. I can’t understand why it is so poor. I would rather have a slightly thicker iPhone and a much longer battery life if such an option existed.

As an everyday work tool, the iPhone works well. Invariably, the average worker will have it plugged into their computer or car regularly through the day, and therefore the battery won’t be too much of a problem. In a purely social setting though, the iPhone doesn’t make as much sense. There are other handsets with Internet, better cameras and better battery life. Whether or not their better features will be enough to overcome the draw of the iPhone’s sheer beauty and desirability is another question.

If the battery was good, I would score the iPhone 9 out of 10, with the dropped point for the lack of Office software and file browsing. With the shoddy battery, I can only give it a 7 out of 10, and I think I might have been better waiting for the 3rd generation.

Apple iPhone 3G with Microsoft Small Business Server SBS 2003

Posted by David Hurst on August 1, 2008 66 comments

If like me you have encountered problems setting your iPhone 3G up to sync with Microsoft Exchange on SBS 2003, read on.

Judging by the posts in forums all over the Internet, many people are having problems connecting their iPhone to SBS 2003 Exchange. You may be getting a certificate error come up (due to having a self-signed certificate on your SBS 2003 server), but you accept this and the account appears to verify. However, your calendar and inbox remain defiantly empty. I managed to solve this, so check out the following steps and see if it can fix it for you.It’s important to bear in mind that Exchange is something of a behemoth, and different configurations abound. Our server is running Small Business Server 2003 with a single network card and is standard configuration from the SBS setup wizards. If you have a similar environment, your chances of success are high.

Caveat: whilst this all worked smoothly for me, I cannot guarantee this will be the case for everyone – Microsoft products can be tempremental at the best of times! So, if anything goes drastically wrong, it’s not my fault – you use these notes at your own risk.

I don’t know for sure whether the iPhone will work smoothly with the SBS 2003 self-signed SSL certificate. It may work with it, and it will probably work if you switch SSL off, but I took the decision to buy an authenticated certificate as they’re not much money. I can arrange an Equifax certificate for anyone for £50 – get in touch if you want me to do this. Or you can do it yourself. Just avoid intermediate certificate providers like GoDaddy, as these require extra configuration on the iPhone. If you are going to buy a certificate, here’s the process:

  • On your SBS box, go to Start > Administrative Tools > Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager
  • Expand the server tree on the left, and then the Web Sites tree
  • Right click on Default Web Site and click Properties
  • Click on the Directory Security tab and then click Server Certificate to start the wizard
  • If you don’t have a certificate you can create one (unlikely) – if you do have one, you will have to remove it. This will kill secure connections until you replace it.
  • After removing the self-signed cert, run the wizard again and create a new request – don’t choose the option to send it directly to a certificate authority.
  • The wizard will create a CSR and save it in a text file. Open this text file and copy the certificate then paste it onto your chosen certificate provider’s order form. Copy the whole certificate request, but only the certificate request (extra spaces will kill it) – it should start and finish with five hyphens —–
  • Order your certificate and use the same wizard to paste in the certificate sent to you by the provider – job done

The certificate alone is not enough to fix the problem. The real problem is that SBS 2003 ships with Exchange 2003 SP1, whereas iPhone requires at least Exchange 2003 SP2. So, we need to install Service Pack 2 for Exchange, but before we do this, we need to backup our information store – just to be on the safe side. Choose Start > Run and type ‘ntbackup’ (without the apostophes) then press enter. Follow the wizard.

When you are done with your backup, we need to patch Exchange. You cannot do this with Windows Update as Microsoft have not released an official Exchange 2003 SP2 for SBS 2003. However, you can download the service pack separately and apply it – it works with no problems.

Download SP2 here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=535BEF85-3096-45F8-AA43-60F1F58B3C40&displaylang=en (link opens in a new window)

Extract the service pack to the desktop or wherever suits, and find the upgrade.exe – double click it. When the upgrade finishes, reboot the server just to be on the safe side.

Now you should be able to add the Exchange account to your iPhone. Give it a few seconds and your inbox will start filling up.

If it doesn’t, and you’re connected with WiFi to the same LAN that the server is on, it could be that your router doesn’t support loopback. Remember that you put in an external DNS name for your server address, and some routers can handle external DNS names that loop back to the same IP address. If this is the case, switch off WiFi on your iPhone (it’s in the settings) and it will connect via EDGE or 3G instead.

This might seem like a lengthy solution, but the key is really the SP2 thing. The vast majority of SBS 2003 servers out there will be Exchange 2003 SP1, which just won’t work.

Much thanks and kudos must go out to my lifelong chum and Microsoft guru Mike Southby, as he gave freely of his time to help me sort this out.

Let me know if this helps anybody else.

How to dismantle / open an iPod HiFi

Posted by David Hurst on July 23, 2008 58 comments

UPDATED 28 August 2008

As I was relaxing on the sofa last night, I became aware of the general silence in the room. For the ordinary guy this might not mean anything, but when you are sharing the room with a 10 month old who’s just started walking, silence is usually a fair indication of a misdemeanor being committed. In this case, the little darling had pulled the cover of the front of my iPod HiFi and was busy prodding the middle of the speaker cone. Result: one deformed speaker cone, and one angry daddy.

So, I figured I would just dismantle the iPod HiFi and push the middle of the cone back out from behind. In fact, if I had thought about it for any amount of time I would have realised this is not possible as the center of the cone connects directly to the magnet, preventing any rear access. This is pretty much the case with all speakers, but I wasn’t focusing properly, and having decided to open the damn thing and got my toolbox out, then it was coming apart and that’s that.

As it turns out, opening up an iPod HiFi is not a simple task. I spent ages looking at it from every angle trying to figure out where the screws are. I eventually decided they must be under the rubber foot on the base of the unit, but after prising part of it off (it’s glued on), and seeing no screws I gave up on that notion. It took some extensive Googling, but I eventually found a Swedish website with a couple of photos that pointed me in the right direction.

So, here are my instructions. If you are suffering the depressed centre speaker malady like myself, please don’t go to the trouble of dismantling your iPod HiFi – it won’t get you anywhere.

Instructions to dismantle or open an iPod HiFi

WARNING: The plastic box of the iPod HiFi is soft and easily damaged. Dismantling your iPod HiFi using these instructions WILL leave marks on the white plastic. You have been warned, and I am not responsible if you cock it up.

  • You will need a couple of thin edged flat tip screwdrivers – the wider the end, the better. It may work better with a strong and thin putty knife.
  • Take the fabric cover off the front of the iPod HiFi.
  • Take a look at the black front – you will see that it doesn’t sit perfectly flush with the white box. In fact this is just a veneer that is glued to the front of the iPod HiFi. It’s a piece of metal about 2mm thick and it hides all the screws and fixings.
  • The join line is just beyond where the black edge meets the white box. It may be possible to prise this cover off from the edges around the speaker cones, but I was too scared of damaging a speaker to try this.
  • You need to work your screwdriver or knife between the white outer box and the black speaker workings. Again, this WILL leave marks on the box – the plastic is soft – it would be a good idea to work on the bottom edge of the unit. The fabric cover will hide the marks.
  • Once you have worked the screwdriver in a couple of milimetres, you need to lever case out a bit. Whilst you are doing this, you should be able to see the join line where the veneer is stuck on. Slide your screwdriver back towards this line and start prising it up.
  • Use a second screwdriver or knife to widen the gap. Work along the edge a few inches until you can start pulling with your fingers. The metal will bend a little, but the glue is strong enough to stick back down afterwards. Still, it would be sensible to bend it as little as possible. You may need adhesive anyway.
  • Once you have completely prised off the veneer, you will be presented with a number of screws which hold the iPod HiFi together.
  • Fix / play / experiment at your leisure.
  • If you pull the main works out, you will invariably pull the cables for touch controls and LED away from their connectors. This is because the cables are impossibly short, and you may spend significant amounts of time trying to re-connect these. The simple way to do it is to take out the centre speaker, and reassemble the box. You can now put your hand through the aperture and plug the cables back in. It’s easy to then plug the centre speaker back in and screw it back in.
  • When the time comes to close it back up, you just stick the veneer back on and apply firm pressure all over the surface to ensure it’s stuck properly – it probably won’t stick properly, depending on how much you bent it, so you may need additional adhesive. I suspect this part was always designed to be throw-away.

Kudos to Apple for designing such a good looking and great sounding speaker unit. However, they have singularly failed to accommodate their customers or provide any kind of lasting support for the iPod HiFi. It has been discontinued, and there are very few spares or service options available. You can get new battery covers, fabric fronts, or clip-in iPod mounts, but that’s it. If your speakers die, you’ve had it.

Fair enough to discontinue a product, but to also eliminate all service options on a unit that is clearly very difficult to open without damaging it, is just poor. They could at least describe the dismantling process on their website so that third parties can offer service options.

I use Apple computers and have done for many years, and I always recommend that Windows users switch. I’m not one of those Apple devotees that think they can’t do any wrong though. They’re famous for this closed box – no support nonsense. It really is pathetic given how much you pay for their kit. Their laptops are getting harder and harder to service (try upgrading a hard disk on a Macbook Pro yourself), and this is the wrong direction to head in.

Anyway, I hope these instructions help somebody get their iPod HiFi working again.

Oh, and if you have a young son who has just dented the middle of your speaker cone, the solution lies in the humble household vacuum cleaner. Suck. Pop. Simple. It’s so frustrating that I now have little marks on my iPod HiFi yet I never even needed to open it. Just be careful that you don’t over suck and turn them inside out! You may need to fabricate a tube to fit precisely around the centre dome of the speaker cone to get the right amount of suction. You can easily cut toilet roll tubes and gaffa tape them into a suitable shape to fit both the speaker and your vacuum cleaner hose. Blu-tack makes an excellent air sealer.

mde has posted a link to photos of the procedure: http://www.flickr.com/photos/42224102@N06/sets/72157624734180975/detail/

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

Posted by David Hurst on June 17, 2008 None comments

Apple have announced the new version of OS X (10.6 to be called “Snow Leopard”) is due to launch in 2009, and with this they have given a brief overview of the expected features in the new OS. In a rare move for the computer industry, Apple appear to be focusing on re-writing core portions of the OS in order to decrease its footprint and provide better performance. This is in stark contrast to Microsoft’s policy of increasingly bloating the OS so that it requires ever more powerful hardware. So, here’s a quick summary of the changes (which may not be final yet):

Increased RAM support
The new OS X will support RAM up to a theoretical limit of 16TB. Yes, 16TB! 64 Bit technology always promised leaps like this, and it’s good to see Apple finally implementing them. I can’t see why any user would ever want 16TB of RAM, but it’s nice to know you can.

Better multi-core support
OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard will have core components re-written to make better use of multi-core processors. In fact, the entire system will make use of the available processing power, which should show the end user real speed increases in daily usage.

Open CL
This new technology allows the computer to make use of unused power in the GPU of your graphics cards. GPUs have phenomenal computing power, hardly any of which is being used unless you are playing the latest game. This is a feature that developers will have to implement in their software, but if they do, it promises even better performance from existing technology.

Media and Internet
The new Mac OS X will include Quicktime X, the media technology used for iPhone, presumably also lighter in weight than the current Quicktime. In terms of Internet performance, Apple claim the new Safari will run Javascript 53% faster.

All of these changes amount to what borders on thriftiness from Apple, and frankly I think it’s great. I have an Amiga 1200, of mid-90s vintage. It has a ridiculously slow processor by today’s standards, virtually no RAM, no hard disk and just a low-density 720KB floppy drive. Despite this, the Amiga always had a rich array of games and software that wasn’t so far behind current technology as the figures might suggest. Developers just had to be space-conscious. Their games had to fit on tiny floppy disks, and be carefully optimised. The current trend is nothing like this. Hardware is so cheap, that the developers just demand that you upgrade your hardware to pay for their laziness in development. This is proved by looking at something simple like word processing. Can you type your letter any faster on the current version of Word than you could on the first version? No. And yet you have to have a computer significantly more powerful to run it.

So, I welcome this return to common sense. I’ve paid for two processor cores, I would like my computer to use both those cores at every available opportunity. If I’ve paid for a 200Gb hard disk, I don’t want to find huge portions of it consumed by a bloated operating system. Making existing technology faster through better written software, now that’s common sense computing. Microsoft can keep their touch screen nonsense – Apple are actually listening to what computer users really want.

There isn’t a raft of new features and innovations in this latest version of OS X, but Snow Leopard will include full support for Exchange 2007, and this is great news for people using Macs in a corporate environment with Windows servers. I’ve been waiting for this for ages. Entourage really is crap. I would much rather just use Mail, iCal and Address Book with my Exchange server. The only downside I can see, is that there is no mention of support for Exchange 2003, which is what most businesses will be using. Still, it is progress.

In the computing world of the future, Apple users will compute faster and more efficiently on their existing technology, whilst Windows 7 users wave their arms around in front of their expensive (and newly upgraded) touch screen, wondering why on earth they can’t just use a mouse like they always did.

Here’s the information on the Apple website: http://www.apple.com/macosx/snowleopard/?sr=hotnews

What’s the song on the Apple MacBook Air advert?

Posted by David Hurst on February 17, 2008 8 comments

You’ve just got to love the look of the new MacBook Air, and I just love the music on the TV commercial. It’s by a singer called Yael Naïm and the song is called “New Soul”. You can buy it on iTunes or give her a search on YouTube. Apple do seem to have a knack for finding amazing tunes to go with their amazing gear.

Time Machine in Leopard without an external hard disk drive

Posted by David Hurst on November 21, 2007 None comments

I installed Leopard on my MacBook Pro the day it came out. I pre-ordered, obviously. I have an external backup drive that I use with my MacBook, so that was Time Machine sorted there, but I also have a PowerMac G4 at home and I don’t have another decent size external USB hard disk. However, the PowerMac does have a second backup hard disk inside, and I thought it would be really cool to just have Time Machine running on this disk. Apple does state in all its literature for Leopard that you need an external USB or FireWire hard disk to use Time Machine.

Well, as it turns out, Leopard is perfectly happy to use the second internal hard disk. Just open System Preferences and go to the Time Machine pane and you can select an alternative internal disk. If this is true, it should also be possible to run Time Machine on a single hard disk that has been partitioned. This is a much better way of working, particularly if you are a mobile worker. Frankly, I can’t be bothered to lug an external mains powered hard disk with me everywhere I go, which means my machine is only backed up when I’m in the office. I would partition the disk, if there was enough space, but the 120Gb disk just isn’t big enough for my needs.

Whilst we’re on the subject of Leopard, and having mentioned my PowerMac G4, you may be wondering how the latest OS runs on these older machines. My PowerMac G4 is the MDD (mirrored drive doors) version with FireWire 800. It has a G4 1GHz processor, 1.5Gb RAM and a 64MB ATi Radeon 9000 Pro AGP graphics card. I have to be honest, it is slower than Tiger. I guess that should be a given considering all the extra features that are running. It could probably do with a bit more RAM and it almost certainly needs a graphics card upgrade (which I won’t be doing due to the outrageous cost of such an upgrade). I think the main problem is the glass dock. It seemed to really slow the whole system down. But… there is a solution!

Did you know you can turn off the glass dock in Leopard and replace it with a simpler version that doesn’t tax your graphics card? It’s pretty simple to do, and I think the alternative dock is still attractive and nice to use. You need to open Terminal and type the commands below. You’ll find Terminal in your /Applications/Utilities folder.

To switch Leopard’s glass dock off:

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES
killall Dock

Take care to write the two lines exactly as shown.

To switch the glass dock back on again:

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean NO
killall Dock