Last week I received an iPod touch, this is going to form part of my latest project so the University paid for it and I get to use it for a couple of months before the project goes live. I have never liked the iPod range and I was never the greatest fan of the iPhone, not because I thought they were bad devices but because Apple was and is so restrictive with everything, for example you can’t put your own videos or moves onto the devices.
When I received the iPod touch I was expecting to find it cool for a day or two before the novelty wore off but I was pleasantly surprised, the interface was far more intuitive that I expected and very responsive especially coming from a background in windows mobile devices. Connectivity was also my other concern, only having wireless an not mobile connectivity meant it was no more useful than my laptop as I could only get online at home or at work. Whilst this is a problem I find myself using the device a lot around the home, checking things online when before I might not have bothered simply because of the convenience, I even found myself watching a whole BBC program on iPlayer.
The device supports an Exchange connection so its brilliant for checking and replying to emails, the keyboard took a bit of getting use to but the auto correction software makes up for the inaccuracy of it, the only downside is the calendar software, even with the Microsoft Exchange link it leaves a lot to be desired.
I don’t think I would change my phone for an iPhone as I do prefer a proper qwerty keyboard but I can see myself having both devices. At the moment I am waiting for another Android phone to be released which will hopefully fix the flaws of the current one, namely no Exchange support and no support for bluetooth headphones, if this doesn’t come soon I may have to go for an iPhone.
Yesterday my MacBook was delivered, I haven’t owned a Mac before but thought I probably should as it seems to be the machine of choice for developers and is a requirement for developing for the iPhone.
I have picked up the way the system works fairly quickly, its relatively intuitive but a few things bug me, the US keyboard for one, the fact the copy and past doesn’t seem to work (just figured this one out, cmd rather than ctrl) unless your using the mouse and the way tabbing works or doesn’t work between form items on web pages. These are just silly problems and things I have quickly worked around.
This morning one of the first things I went to download after letting the machine update overnight was the iPhone SDK, finally having the platform it was designed to work on I expected the process to be straight forward, alas it wasn’t. I went to the developer site and clicked the download link, the login box popped up and I logged in, the login box popped up again which seemed a little strange but I did what it said and logged in again, I was then returned to the site where I clicked on the download link again. When I clicked the download link I expected the download to start but instead I got a box saying my session had expired, a few moments after logging in. I tried this several times but I haven’t been able to get it to work, rather stupidly I am having to download it on my windows machine which worked fine using IE!
I have finally joined the Apple club and bought my first product, a MacBook. I had never been interested in Apple products as they always seemed over priced and in compatible with everything, I still think there a little on the pricey side but I bought mine through the Apple higher education store so I only paid £713 instead of £829, a very reasonable discount. I have been in several situations recently where I have needed a Mac so I think this was the right time to make the move.
A couple of weeks ago when I was at the Google Developer conference in San Francisco the majority of people had Macs so I kind of felt out of place sitting there with my HP running Windows, there are also several bits of software that will only run on the Mac, Google have an uploader for there App Engine and the SDK for the iPhone only runs on the Mac as well. My only problem is that I have never properly used a Mac before so it will be like learning to use the computer all over again.
In addition to this Mac I am also considering getting the 3G iPhone when its released next month, the previous iPhone didn’t seem very good especially in comparison to the phone I have but the new one has fixed most of the iPhone’s limitations. I have 2 contract phones at the moment and I really don’t want a third, I will have to wait and see how tempting it is next month.
Last week I received an iPod touch, this is going to form part of my latest project so the University paid for it and I get to use it for a couple of months before the project goes live. I have never liked the iPod range and I was never the greatest fan of the iPhone, not because I thought they were bad devices but because Apple was and is so restrictive with everything, for example you can’t put your own videos or moves onto the devices.