Reviews

A collection of my thoughts on the latest gadgets and software releases

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Review: Apple iPadJune 2nd, 2010

Apple iPad

Photo by johncatral, used under CC licence

It seems that one of the fastest selling items that Apple have made is also one that has split everybody firmly into two camps. Those that think it’s the best thing that Apple have ever done, and those that don’t see the point and think it’s little more than a giant iPod Touch.

Well, it is a giant iPod Touch. But once you get on it it really doesn’t feel like it. I would have preferred a better home screen and some other interface elements don’t quite work well, but it feels right. Every built in application has been reworked, and they all work very well with the extra screen space. Third party applications have yet to perfect this, but it’s to be expected with developers being unable to use a real device to test their application.

Let’s get this out of the way: the iPad is not a laptop replacement. Don’t expect to be able to write more than a few sentences on the keyboard, and don’t expect the iWork apps to be any good. In fact, I don’t think iWork should be on the iPad at all: I found all of the apps either hard or impossible to use, and I don’t see the point in them.

The iPad is for using on the couch, something to use quickly to surf the web or check your email. Something you use to look at your photograph collection — or show off your photograph collection. It quickly turns on, doesn’t need any thought, and does exactly what you need it to do before you put it back in its home — on the coffee table, next to your cup of tea and by the remote control.

The screen really is magic. The multitouch responsiveness is exactly what you expect from Apple, and after two years of using iPhones and iPod Touches it still blew me away. It’s incredibly smooth and quick, and is best experienced in Maps. The pinch to zoom really comes into its own here, and you can get a clear (and large) map which just moves along with your fingertips. I would love to use it for real, I genuinely think it would match both the iPhone and paper maps for finding your way around.

iBooks is a fantastic entrance into the eBook reader market. Although I still love the real thing, I like the idea of electronic books. But there just isn’t a reader that cuts it. They’re all slow and cumbersome to use, mainly because they use electronic ink. Well, electronic ink is a dud technology, at least until the next generation starts to appear commercially. At the moment a regular LED backlit display is the best we have. Which isn’t so bad. You swipe across to turn the page, and instantly the page is turned. You can’t get easier to use than that. It’s not perfect, but the iPad is the only device I would truly be happy to use to read eBooks night after night.

Some of the criticisms thrown at the iPad are a little unfair. For a start, its lack of features I don’t care about. I don’t need half a million ports to plug countless devices into it. And I don’t need the ability to read from a USB stick or DVD drive. Nobody ever uses optical discs anymore, and cloud computing is far better than a USB drive. For a start, you can’t lose cloud computing or leave it at home.

And Flash is a rant for another day. I hope iPhone OS never includes it.

But it’s still version 1, and buggy. It didn’t take long for me to confuse the accelerometer and the interfaces aren’t quite there yet. These issues I hope will be fixed in future releases of iPhone OS, and they aren’t enough to stop you from enjoying the device.

The iPad is a first class entrance as both a truly portable computer and ebook reader. It won’t replace your laptop for work, but it might well replace it at home.

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Review: mflowMarch 29th, 2010

mflow

It’s a mixture between Twitter, Spotify, and iTunes. Simply, it’s Twitter for music, and it’s pretty cool.

Keep an eye out for invite codes (they aren’t hard to find – just keep an eye on twitter), and check it out. It might sound naff in a “what, another music/twitter mashup?” way, but this one has legs. It’s a great way to hear music recommendations and suggest music yourself

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Review: Blackberry Curve 8900February 26th, 2010

Blackberry Curve 8900

Blackberry Curve 8900
Photo by O2 UK, used under CC licence

This phone is definitely a businessman’s phone. It concentrates on email, is the right size to fit in your pocket, and looks sleek and smooth. The keyboard is nicely tactile and the keys feel lovely, even if I personally find them a little small to quickly type one-handed.

If only the good design went further. The only other method of input is through a trackball, which is awkward and cumbersome to use. This does mean you get a mouse pointer while browsing the web, which is great, but it also means navigating between menu options (especially on the homescreen) is a chore. The keyboard layout could also have done with a little more thought: I struggled to find how to enter digits, the full-stop is shoved away behind a modifier key, and I kept hitting return rather than backspace.

The menu system consists of rows of icons, which looks very nice and with a touchscreen would work well, but again it’s ill thought out. There’s at least two menu items to change phone preferences and options, and I struggled to perform such a simple task as turning on the mobile phone reception.

Overall, there’s too much wrong with the phone (without even going into the inferior technical specs for such a phone, such as the lack of 3G) which sadly overshadows what is a good looking piece of technology which is a pleasure to hold. With a little more thought, this would have been a decent business mobile phone.

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Why I think the Google phone was a bad ideaJanuary 7th, 2010

The Nexus One: known by its friends as The Google Phone. Let me explain why I don’t get it.

It was hoped to be an iPhone killer. The first phone designed by engineers at Google. Something that would shake up the mobile phone industry. It wasn’t just a smartphone, it was a superphone. What happened? It’s designed and manufactured by HTC, it has no real killer features, and Google’s involvement seems to be that they provided the operating system and are selling it on their website.

The Nexus One was a let-down. There’s nothing new or groundbreaking there at all, save for the voice recognition, the media were wrong when they said that Google engineers designed the phone, and this new entry won’t shake up the industry one iota. Having an ad-supported cheap phone would have been the answer, as many people simply won’t pay £400 for something that they can buy for under £100, or get for free on a reasonably priced contract.

Let’s face it: we’re getting too many phones that are being touted by the media as being “iPhone killers” whereas in reality that just means “it has a touchscreen display”. Design elements are blindly copied from the iPhone, innovation seems to come solely from Steve Jobs and co, and we’re back to before 2007 when mobile phone manufacturers just stopped coming up with new ideas and churned out phones that simply looked good and had a 10 mega-pixel camera.

I might be a big Apple fan, but I’m also a big technology fan. If there was a phone as good as the iPhone I’d be all over it like a child in a sweet jar. I still think the Palm Pre is a great phone, I was happy to forgive the shortcomings because it innovated with its operating system and the designers copied the iPhone screaming “We can do better than that!”

But instead, the innovation we get from the Nexus One is that it’s only being sold online. I wouldn’t consider that innovation: I’d consider it a step back. Technology is meant to be felt. It’s meant to be used. It’s meant to be part of your everyday life and you’re supposed to enjoy using it.

So why can’t we try it out first?

Again, Apple has this right, and I’m pleased that so does o2. Retailers should not only be putting their products on display, but customers should be encouraged to try them out. The screensaver shouldn’t be password protected and the phones shouldn’t be demo models that don’t actually work. I care much more about how easy it is to use a device than I do how it looks tethered to a shelf. I want to be able to choose my purchase with confidence that I know how it works, and that I won’t be frustrated a month down the line when the menu system is awkward to use and it takes longer than it should to write a text message. But I have to deal with it, because it cost me £300.

A Google Phone in principle is a great idea. Google are full of great ideas and they’re always trying to make things better. But with the Nexus One, I think they’ve dropped the ball.

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Review: Palm PreOctober 23rd, 2009

Palm Pre

Palm Pre
Photo by O2 UK, used under CC licence

Finally available in the UK, the Palm Pre is touted as the iPhone killer by many. And for good reason. This smartphone looks good, feels good, and works really well.

First, the physical design. The Pre looks very cute, and fits smugly in your hand. This is a phone you’ll want to hold, and it’s a phone you’ll want to use. The menu button is a joy to use, the keyboard nice and smug, and the touchscreen is one of few that actually works properly.

However, I found that the actual usability of the keyboard lets it down, but I’ve never been a fan of physical qwerty keyboards on phones so it’s a very personal taste thing. I did, however, realise very quickly when having to type out ‘.com’ that soft keyboards have their advantage when it comes to being able to quickly enter url shortcuts.

The new webOS is a very nicely made and thought out operating system. It takes ideas from the iPhone OS, but it isn’t afraid to improve and go one step further. The ability to quickly flick between open applications with your finger is lovely, and the quick access to the network options by simply pressing on the top of the screen makes me wish the iPhone had this. Having to quit the running application to mess around with my wifi settings is perhaps the single most infuriating problem when using my iPhone.

The phone does have its faults, of course. It’s noticeably slow and it takes a while to work out how to do things, but it certainly deserves its reputation of being on-par with Apple’s iPhone. If it wasn’t for Apple’s massive App Store, the Palm Pre would certainly be a worthy alternative.

Pros:
Good looking phone that’s pleasant to hold
Well thought out operating system
Very responsive touchscreen

Cons:
Keyboard takes a bit of getting used to
Can be a bit sluggish
You can’t help but wonder where the instructions are

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Review: Nokia 5800 XpressMusicOctober 2nd, 2009

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic
Photo by nechbi, used under CC licence

The Nokia 5800: Nokia’s answer to the iPhone. If the question is “how do we make money out of touchscreen, quickly?”, that is.

The phone seems like they’ve taken the operating system and placed a touchscreen on top of it. The look and feel is very similar to those Nokias that aren’t touchscreen, with a menu driven system and screens that scroll down. If you’re used to the Nokia way of doing things, you’ll be feeling very much at home here.

There’s many small niggles with the operating system, and it doesn’t seem as polished as a specifically designed touch operating system such as the iPhone OS. But the on-screen keyboard is the biggest let down: It’s very ill thought out, resulting in tiny targets for your fingers which caused me to keep missing the key I wanted, and the screen is forced into landscape mode. Having to turn my phone sideways to write a text message is a big hassle for someone for me, as I prefer to use my phone in portrait mode.

But really, these are all minor problems when it comes to the biggest downfall: the hardware itself. It seems like the operating system is constantly playing catchup with the phone; there’s a noticeable wait when you do things like go to read text messages, and surfing the web is almost impossible. Maybe it was a bad connection, but I found myself waiting for ages to load up even the Google homepage.

I also wasn’t very keen on the touchscreen. I have boyish short nails and whenever I use a touchscreen I use the front of my finger. However, for this phone I had to use the tip of my nail, as using something as fat as my finger meant either the wrong button was pressed or nothing was pressed at all.

As with most other Nokia phones, the camera is also of questionable quality. The resolution isn’t very high at all which results in relatively small photographs, and the image looks very grainy. It’s not bad as a point and shoot camera, but I wouldn’t use it as my main camera.

The Nokia 5800 tries hard, but it’s let down mostly by the hardware. There are better products out there if you’re after a touchscreen music player (namely the iPod touch), and there are much better cameraphones out there. The price might make this a tempting phone, but personally I wouldn’t go for it.

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Review: iPod nano (5th generation)September 25th, 2009

iPod nano 5th gen

5th gen iPod nano
Photo by mightykenny, used under CC licence

When I first saw Apple’s new iPod nanos, the first thing that came to mind was shiny. Literally. The new finish of the iPod is very shiny, and the colours are very sharp. Year on year the colours get better, and year on year the products are looking even more impressive.

Other than the slightly taller screen, there isn’t much more difference to the overall look of the nano. It seems that Apple have finally settled on a design for this range of iPod, as once more the nano is long and thin, with most of the front containing the screen.

A video camera is the biggest new addition, which appears to be of high quality. Although probably due to the difficulty of fitting a camera behind a screen on such a thin device, it is located at the bottom of the iPod, right where you’d place your fingers when shooting video. As great as it is to have a camera in your iPod, the location is a very bad decision. If you want to use the camera you need to hold the iPod quite awkwardly ensuring your hand covers neither the screen or the lens, and considering the thinness of the thing it’s not an easy thing to do.

I’ve never been a fan of the iPod scroll wheels, and this new nano is no different. I’ve always found them awkward to use and would much rather use a click wheel or touch screen. But this is me, and I’m certain that most other people have no issues at all.

I like the fact that the 5th generation design is similar to the 4th generation design, it works well and provides a nice big screen in relation to the iPod size. I love the new colours but as a whole it’s not for me simply because of the scrollwheel. As a camera, even though it’s good quality again I’m not a fan, the lens position makes for very awkward handling which might make for shaky videos.

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Review: Safari 4March 20th, 2009

It looks like it’s a time for new browser releases, with Opera, Internet Explorer and now Safari releasing public betas for their next major upgrade within the last few months. Obviously I have to throw in my two cents, don’t I?

The biggest change you’ll notice on start-up is the new tab/url area. The buttons have been given a refresh to make it even nicer, and as with Chrome tabs are now at the top of the window. Those who use the Windows version will also find a skin more like the Windows look and feel. At first I wasn’t so sure about the new tab position (I still don’t see the point), but you do get used to it. Well, I say that, but you now can drag tabs only from the corner to move them around, which I still forget and I end up dragging the entire window around.

The default start page also takes a leaf out of Chrome’s book, with a rather nice ‘wall’ of the most popular sites visited for you to choose from. But with the nice graphics comes slowness, and I’ve found that since the start page actually visits the site, ‘since last visit’ features (such as on messageboards) don’t work so well. So I’ve disabled that particular feature.

One very positive change is the new engines (particularly the javascript engine). Safari 4 is quick. Any delay in loading the page really is only waiting for the server now, which is amazing stuff. I can see a lot of people migrating from Firefox and Chrome because of this, and I think the only thing to stop this is lack of plugin support (but perhaps Safari’s simplicity is a good thing?)

Another amazing change is that Safari uses a recent version of Webkit, which passes Acid3 compliance. This means that HTML and CSS standard compliance is at 100% as far as can be measured; websites look how they are supposed to look according to W3C, not how the browser developers decided they should look.

I’ve seen a few reports on Twitter of people having problems after installing the beta, but I can’t say I’ve had any at all. In fact, I’ve found it smoother than Safari 3. Should you update and try it out? Most certainly, but take a backup first just in case!

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Review: Internet Explorer 8February 20th, 2009

The next version of Internet Explorer will be with us before long, bringing us improvements in security, privacy, search, and usability. And I know people will give me funny looks for this, but I actually rather like this version. For once Microsoft are making an attempt at following standards, and the browser is more stable than ever before.

New features as listed by Microsoft include:

  • Quicker performance— Both with quicker page loading, quicker javascript, and better ways to navigate around the application
  • Better security — As well as domain name highlighting which makes it clearer if you are in a phishing site, IE8 provides “SmartScreen Filter” which will give you a warning if you are visiting a known unsafe website. Although warnings were given in IE7, this warning is much more obvious and looks similar to Firefox 3′s warnings.
  • Webclips and Accelerators — Which shows portions of a website on the click of a menu option or bookmark link

When it comes to standards compliance, IE8 is better than the previous version, but still isn’t perfect. When running the Acid3 test (the latest test for standards conformance), Internet Explorer actually performs worse than other current browsers with a score of 20/100 (Safari managing 75/100 and Firefox 71/100).

The newest CSS standard — CSS3 — is another way of comparing browsers, albeit a slightly unfair one since the different browsers are introducing different elements of CSS3 and the code in your CSS file differs between browsers.

So, what CSS3 elements do IE8 have? Sadly, not many. The only feature in IE8 is box resizing, which in my opinion isn’t that useful. Although this might sound like a reason to start saying how IE8 is rubbish, it shouldn’t really be. Agreed, IE8 is behind the times when it comes to the latest and greatest technologies, but CSS3 is presentation that isn’t widely used, and so in the great scheme of things isn’t very important.

So, what do I think of IE8? I actually think it’s quite nice. Admittedly there’s a long way to go until it catches up with Firefox and Safari, but we need to realise that a large percentage of users will still use Internet Explorer. Giving them a version that’s at least half decent with security and usability and which isn’t painful to create sites for is better than nothing, and at least Microsoft is finally sitting up and taking note.

There are however a couple of things that I don’t particularly like, one being the URL domain name highlighting. I know it has a security purpose and so it’s actually good to have, it just looks untidy. I can’t think of any solution, but I’m sure there’s a better way of doing this. Now that the idea is out there, hopefully the other browser manufacturers will be able to build on top of this feature.

IE8 also really is quick: I was surprised at how fast it was. Pages seem to load quicker than Firefox 3, so there must be some very good changes to the engines behind the scenes. I also like how tabs automatically restart whenever a site crashes the browser, so that you don’t even realise that a crash has happened. This is a real step forward for software development in general, and my hat goes off to Microsoft for managing this.

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Review: Windows 7January 23rd, 2009

Screenshot of Windows 7Microsoft have finally allowed the general public to beta test Windows 7, so hoping for an improvement on Vista, I downloaded it and checked it out.

I didn’t really get to play around with the operating system too much, since Windows 7 requires a hefty 1 GB of RAM. I was only able to dedicate half of that amount to my virtual machine, so things were extremely slow. This is not an upgrade for people with older machines.

First of all, the install. Microsoft seemed to have finally learnt lessons from Apple and make the install simple; all I had to do is boot up, tell it I wanted a regular install thank-you-very-much, and leave it going. After about an hour (keeping in mind I had half the recommended RAM) and a few configuration questions, I was all set to go. I’ve also been told that installing hardware is a lot less painful than in Vista, with no issues with drivers.

First of all, the things I like. The new taskbar and behaviour of the windows is much nicer: the taskbar now acts more like Mac OS’s dock, showing application icons rather than a tab for each open window. Commonly used programs also now look no different to active programs (again, just like the Mac OS dock), which looks a lot better than previous versions. Windows can now be more intuitively maximised and minimised, presumably a side-effect of introducing touch-screen support.

Gadgets are no longer confined to a sidebar, and instead can be placed anywhere on the desktop. This is a good step in my opinion, since I was never the biggest fan of the sidebar. I’m undecided if I prefer this to the Mac’s Dashboard; I guess they’re both good ways of showing small applications.

I’m unsure on the new window chrome, although I think this is a personal thing because other people have mentioned how they like it. It’s certainly clean, but it’s a bit too clean and rounded for me. It’s certainly not bad (it works), I just think they could’ve done a better job.

One thing I don’t like at all is the new Start Menu. Just as with the new menu system, the whole Start Menu now changes when you press buttons such as “All Programs”, rather than using the classic drop-down method. To me, it seems to require more clicks, which is a bad thing.

Windows 7 is certainly an improvement on Windows Vista, and certainly looks and behaves a lot better than Windows XP. However, I’ll be sticking to XP for now, primarily because of the large amount of memory required to run the operating system. I would recommend people upgrade if given the choice, since it does appear to be a better and more stable OS than Vista.

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