From the category archives:
Apple Technology
Apple Technology
Having issues with the battery life in your iPhone 4S? Take a read of these tips to try and improve your battery life.
If you had a read of my iPhone 4S review, you would have noticed my mention of the poor battery life. Since I posted, the battery life has hovered between dodgy and horrible. This has also been noticed by a lot of users - in fact there is a 192-page thread on the Apple forums about it, with plenty of suggested fixes. After trying a number of these, I *seem* to have nailed the problems. I won't guarantee these as complete fixes - as I'll detail later, I think there is more afoot than just a few settings. First, I'll bore you with a bit of history, my first day with the iPhone 4S.
After reading about the improved battery life in the 4S, I had a great first day with the phone. After actually getting it and turning it on from about 8:30am, playing with it for the morning, and then doing a full restore from my old phone. Apart from the charge while the restore was going on, I didn't charge it for the rest of the day. Played lots with it in the afternoon and had about 10% charge left by 11pm that ...
If you've been living under a rock, you would probably know that Apple released the iPhone 4S on the 14th of October, to much noise and hullabaloo. I was one of those who trekked out early to pick one up on the day of release. Now the noise has gone away, and I've had it for just over a look, let's take a look at it and see how it goes.
If you've been living under a rock, you would probably know that Apple released the iPhone 4S on the 14th of October, to much noise and hullabaloo. I was one of those who trekked out early to pick one up on the day of release. Now the noise has gone away, and I've had it for just over a look, let's take a look at it and see how it goes.
As a point of reference, I had an iPhone 3GS for over 2 years, didn't upgrade when the 4 came out, and have been struggling with iOS 4 on the slower processor for some time. So naturally, an upgrade to a 4S would be a sizeable one, regardless of the features of the new phone.
Image (c) Apple, 2011
The Apple iPhone 4S is the latest smartphone from Apple. In many ways an upgrade from the iPhone 4, the new device sees Apple enter the dual-core mobile processor era, with the 1GHz A5 dual core chip with 512MB RAM. Apple claim the A5 processor improves graphics performance by up to 7 times, and while it's hard to ga ...
Remember when having a camera on your phone was a novel feature?
Nowadays, almost every phone has at least one camera, and some even
have two. Then, phone cameras started featuring a flash, and we
wondered how phone photography could get any better. If the rumors are
true, Apple will be releasing a dual-flash for its upcoming iPhone.
This is a cross post with http://www.dootar.com
Remember when having a camera on your phone was a novel feature?
Nowadays, almost every phone has at least one camera, and some even
have two. Then, phone cameras started featuring a flash, and we
wondered how phone photography could get any better. If the rumors are
true, Apple will be releasing a dual-flash for its upcoming iPhone.
Whether it’s going to be called the iPhone 4S or the iPhone 5, the
word is that the phone will have a dual-LED flash. Taiwan-based LED
firms Everlight Electronics, Edison Opto and Lite-On Technology have
been put forward as possible suppliers. Apple has reportedly decreased
its orders for the Lumileds high-power LED flash products it currently
gets from Philips and has recently switched the orders for LED flashes
to one of these companies. Edison is said to have a foot up in the game
since it has already started shipping its high-power LED flashes to
phone vendors.
The dual-flash setup wi ...
Show those non-Windows mobile devices who's boss with SCCM 2012 :-)
Yes, it's totally true - with SCCM 2012 you can now reign in those pesky consumer mobile devices running rampant in your precious organisation, and stamp your mighty will upon them from on high. Yea, they shalt tremble and quake at thy new policy sets :-)
But first, you've got to actually get them into SCCM first. Fortunately, it's pretty straightforward, so read on to see how it's done.
...
A light hearted look at the iPad 2 and it's new features. Part opinion, part technical specs, but fully poorly written and thought out!
It's an Apple product launch day, so fanboys and haters are all excited to see what's come out of the pome factory (an apple is a type of pome, thanks wikipedia).
The iPad 2 by all accounts, is a whole 1 better than the iPad 1, even though the iPad 1 wasn't actually called an iPad 1. What does this extra 1 mean?
It's thinner, 33% smaller. Smaller is better.
It's faster, 100% faster CPU. What that really means is it's a dual core. It's also 900% faster in the graphics department, which to me indicates the iPad 1 didn't have very good graphics. I think part of this is that some high graphics quality games have started to come out in the App Store, and really a lot of people want an iPad as a casual gaming device.
It's got cameras. Two! Just like your iPhone 4! The front is VGA, so facetime chats are the only thing it's good for. The back camera will take 5 megapixel stills, and record video at 720p. At least that's what I can make out, there's so much misinformation on th ...
In response to an article by Mark about how he's configured his new Mac Pro for TTFN's video system, I posted the following comment. I figured, after reading it, that it has wider appeal than just in that thread, so I have re-posted it below. Please note, Mark had configured his Dual CPU Mac Pro with 4GB, 1GB, 1GB modules per CPU, which is what prompted my reply. Also, the following information applies equally to Intel-based Mac Pro systems (and possibly other Mac systems) and Intel-b ...
In response to an article by Mark about how he's configured his new Mac Pro for TTFN's video system, I posted the following comment. I figured, after reading it, that it has wider appeal than just in that thread, so I have re-posted it below. Please note, Mark had configured his Dual CPU Mac Pro with 4GB, 1GB, 1GB modules per CPU, which is what prompted my reply. Also, the following information applies equally to Intel-based Mac Pro systems (and possibly other Mac systems) and Intel-based PCs and servers.
.-=-.-=-.
G'day Mark,
I need to bring you up to speed on how RAM performance works with Intel chipsets and Nehalem/Westmere CPUs as it seems you're a little confused here.
Without knowing exactly what chipset is in your Mac Pro (or which CPUs) as there's no mention of this information in your article, I'll need to be a little more general than I could if I had more of this information available about your particular system.
The exact type of C ...
Cross posted from my blog: http://matthewhatton.id.au/?p=706 - The Daily is set to be the litmus test that determines whether or not online news publication has a business model.
Rupert Murdoch’s iPad-only
digital newspaper, The Daily, is going to be the litmus test for paid, online news
when it eventually launches sometime in February or March this year.
While online delivery of news
has been around forever and we’ve even seen companies like Crikey deliver paid
content exclusively over the internet, this is the first time that we’re going
to see a popular, mainstream outlet attempt to embrace online distribution and
attempt to find that elusive business model that seems to have been largely
lacking.
The uptake, or lack of it, is
going to determine whether or not publishers and news organisations can see a
way to turn exclusively online news (and we’re going to be forced that way
eventually) into something that they can derive a profit from.
If it doesn’t work – we go back
to square one and will be left asking just what is going to happen as we
continue to watch traditional media outlets die off.
We haven’t se ...
Personal devices like the iPad are pushing their way into enterprise, but what are the implications?
I recently wrote a piece on the influx of consumer technology into enterprise IT, and some of the hidden problems which (from my experience so far) most businesses are failing to address.
The original piece was more general in tone, looking at ALL personal devices rather than just those products sold by Apple. However, the editor thought (and I agreed) that as the current conversation tends to be much more tightly focused around iPads and iPhones, we should narrow the article's scope.
But my original thoughts still stand, and the criticisms I raised are valid against all personal devices, whether they're running some flavour of Windows, Android or something we've yet to see go mainstream.
Ultimately, consumer devices and consumer device vendors don't subscribe to concepts like lifecycle management or ROI. Users look ahead to the next cool product but, for the most part, businesses can't afford to. Or at least, not without some serious overhauling of their intern ...
The aim of the SMBiT Professionals "Future Directions of Technology" seminar series is to generate discussion between the small to medium business owners in our target regions and their existing IT consultants around utilising Virtualisation, Cloud, Communications, Green Technology and Remote Workers with the objective of improving their bottom line through better utilisation of resources and technologies available to them. As these seminars are not tech-focussed, they do not contain much technobabble that makes business owners’ eyes glaze over – it is a much more business-focussed “how this may be able to enhance my business” seminar.
Well, we've delivered our "Future Directions of Technology" seminars to Brisbane, Alice Springs and Darwin so far. The feedback so far has been overwhelmingly positive, which is great! :)
We've pretty much got our presentations down pat now, so should only be getting better as we head to Cairns on Monday 15th, Mackay on the 16th and Toowoomba on the 17th November.
If you know any business owners in these regions who are interested in learning more about Virtualization, Cloud, Communications, Green IT and Remote Workers and how these things can result in a better bottom line from better utilization of their IT budgets and resources, please pass the link above to them as we'd love to have them register and attend.
The aim of the seminar series is to generate discussion between the small to medium business owners in our target regions and their existing IT consultants around utilising Virtualisation, Cloud, Communications, Green Technology and ...
Maybe new job. New device. Many challenges.
Well, the contract has been delayed. The iPad is still getting much use though, but hasn’t moved into its intended position of my primary computing device yet. But all is not lost.
I was at a workshop on Friday, and had the chance to talk to a HP rep about the upcoming Slate they are releasing & how interested I was in both versions (Personal version running WebOS from Palm due out Nov 2010; Enterprise version running Windows 7 due March 2011). He laughed in recounting a conversation he had with someone about an iPad: “Here, can I share this file with you on USB? No?! What about these photos on SD card? No?! Can I plug my USB keyboard in to type with it? No?! Oh, so many things it can’t do…”. Oh how he chortled. He’s right too, you can’t interface any of those things with an iPad. That said – you wanna give me files? E-mail them to me or point me at your SkyDrive/DropBox/iDisk/Public online storage space. Do we really still share files b ...
New job. New device. New challenge(s).
Next week I’m starting a 6 week contract that will have me travelling a fair bit. Knowing I’d be sitting on planes & in hotels for a big chunk of that I know I wanted to be able to entertain myself easily, and I figured this was as good a chance as any to get an iPad. You know: play games, surf the web, play games, watch movies/TV, play games, etc. Consume rather than create. Then I remembered listening to @Rog42 being interviewed in a @CoalFaceTech podcast (Ep14) talking about he uses his iPad for creation so much more than consumption. This got me thinking – can I do it too? A self-declared #Geek evangelist who has a very obvious lean towards Microsoft technologies?
So, the challenge I’m setting myself is to use the iPad as my laptop for the next 6 weeks. In the office, out having coffee, as I travel, onsite nationally and internationally. You can follow my progress as I’ll tweet using #iPadAsLaptop hashtag, and I’ll be dropping posts here for ...
In which I compare Parallels Desktop 6 and VMWare Fusion 3.1 under Mac OS X, as a virtualisation platform for Microsoft Windows Server operating systems. In this, Part 2 of the review, I install Windows Server 2008 R2 under VMware Fusion 3.1.
We start this entry with a nice clean profile and a fresh install of VMWare Fusion 3.1.1. If you'd like to catch up with where we've been, take a look at Part 1 of the review.
Part 2 - Using VMware Fusion to Easy Install Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise
You can't help but notice that Parallels and VMware might have been looking at how each others product operates, because many of the processes for creating Virtual Machines are very similar. Nice easy installation steps - just like Mac people want/need.
After selecting Continue at the 'Create New Virtual Machine' window (Fusion had detected my Windows Server 2008 R2 disc), you get to use the Windows Easy Install feature. This allows you to enter an account name, password, and Windows Product Key for your Windows version. This will then automatically install drivers, product key and tools. You can also choose to allow the VM to have access to your Mac ...
In which I compare Parallels Desktop 6 and VMWare Fusion 3.1 under Mac OS X, as a virtualisation platform for Microsoft Windows Server operating systems. In this, Part 1 of the review, I install Windows Server 2008 R2 under Parallels Desktop 6.
There have been many reviews on the internet performing competitive comparisons between Mac virtualisation tools, but they generally compare features and performance with consumer based OSs like Windows 7, and gaming performance.
I'm not really interested in one-off VMs, and if I want to run games I'll reboot under Bootcamp or use a PC. But what I do want to do is run up a few Windows Server machines to mess about with different tools, such as Exchange, OCS, SQL, Forefront, etc. Normally you'd configure a PC to run Hyper-V or ESXi and sit it in the corner somewhere.
Being a Mac person, I don't have spare PC hardware laying about and can't justify going out and buying equipment to build a PC that will do justice to a decent virtualisation platform. However I do have a Mac, and TechNet subscription so why not use virtualisation software for OS X for the same job!
Parallels and VMWare have generously provide me with 'Not-For-Resale' serial numbers for their respective ...
A number of people (OK, mainly Nick…several times) have asked me how to do a force reboot on an iPhone.
This can often fix a few issues:
1. Memory clogs
2. Unresponsive phone
3. General odd behaviour
4. Slowdown
If a normal shutdown won't fix the problem, you can try a forced reset.
Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button and the Home button at the same time for at least 10 seconds, until the Apple logo appears.
And there you go.
Nigel ...
Following on from my iPad review, here's my opinion of the iPhone 4.
Good %timeofday%,
I'll start by voicing my opinions on what I expected: a 3GS with a 'torch' and a slightly nicer screen, and a waste of money for anyone with an existing 3GS. Was this the case? Read on!
My new iPhone 4 (again provided by my lovely workplace) arrived. Packed in a rather small box, I removed the clear plastic and eagerly slid off the lid. Why was I getting excited again? It's hard to avoid all the hype, and even though this is not a device I would pay for (I'd love an Android!), I still do enjoy the iPhone experience.
The phone is, of course, boxier looking than previous models, but I must say I prefer it. It looks cleaner and neater - the volume buttons, being separate, are nicer to press too. Apart from that, there's not much difference apart from needing a micro-sim. It's a bit of an annoyance to have to swap sims over, but I'm sure that extra several millimetres of space saved is utilised somehow. *cough*
Anyway, as I wa ...
Well I bit the bullet and upgraded both iPhone 3GSes to iPhone 4s. Yes, I *did* do it on the launch day here in Australia, but not by lining up – granted, some people enjoy the experience, but I can’t think of a more useless waste of time. I like my warmth and comfort !
Especially when I called my local Telstra store and asked them to reserve two if they had any left – they did, and apart from a minor porting hassle getting one of the numbers over from Vodafone, all went well. T ...
Well I bit the bullet and upgraded both iPhone 3GSes to iPhone 4s. Yes, I *did* do it on the launch day here in Australia, but not by lining up – granted, some people enjoy the experience, but I can’t think of a more useless waste of time. I like my warmth and comfort !
Especially when I called my local Telstra store and asked them to reserve two if they had any left – they did, and apart from a minor porting hassle getting one of the numbers over from Vodafone, all went well. The lovely Natalie and the slightly less lovely Nick were brilliant.
No evidence of the signal issue yet, despite using any and every possible variation of the so-called “death grip” that I could think of.
Interesting side note: Both the phones I got were made in Week 30 (as signified by the 4th and 5th digits of the serial number) – the only people I have seen having demonstrable signal problems related to grip are owners of phones made in ...
Apple's latest gadget, the iPad. It's shiny and lots of people want it, but find out the details below!
This review is about the new Apple iPad. I am lucky enough to have one from my place of work for testing purposes (thats what IT professionals call it when they get new toys to play with). I have been testing the 64gb 3G version. The six different models are:
16gb, 32gb and 64gb all with and without 3G.
The 3G model requires a micro sim, which is a normal sim card but Less plastic around it. As our provider Optus was unable to get any, they unofficially advised us just to cut up a regular sim down to size. I did this, and it worked first time! I have no idea why Apple decided to go against the current standard, it's not like normal sims are very large anyway.
So, I opened up my sparkly new iPad and powered it up. I am immediately told to connect it to iTunes... Great. Another thing that I'm not sure why apple forces, but it only takes a few seconds and the ...
I think I've finally worked it out, at last ....
Those who follow me on Twitter would know I’m not the biggest fan of the iphone (or ipwn as I am fond of calling it). I’m also not a fan of the Windows Mobile phones, and I’ve been pretty negative to date about the upcoming Windows Phone 7 (which I’ve dubbed Mongophone*).
To put it in perspective, I persevered with Windows Mobile from around 2003 through to 2009. I went through a massive number of phones – many of HTC make, which I now view as a plague on the success of any phone – and although some came close to being usable, I ultimately realised that I was evaluating each phone on a basis of “Oh thank good, it doesn’t do X like the old one did”. That’s a terrible way to judge how your phone works!
As a recent convert to Blackberry, I freely admit my surprise as to the functionality and usability of the Bold and Bold 9700 models. I *hated* previous models, but these are surprisingly good – even though they& ...
I know a lot of people are wondering why on Earth I’d want to build a Windows server out of a Mac mini.
A few perfectly good reasons really :
I wanted to see if it was possible.
Was the performance any good?
You can’t beat the size and power consumption
It dual boots as a Mac!
I started with a perfectly good Mac mini. It’s a recent nvidia graphics Core 2 Duo model, 4Gb RAM and the standard 120Gb drive.
Voila, a Mac mini.
It was running a standard OS 10.6 install with a small Windows 7 Boot Camp partition. First of all I ran the Boot Camp Assistant and reverted back to full Mac volume to start with a clean slate. Then I created the largest Windows partition I could, which ended ...