A couple of Sundays ago i noticed something wrong with my iPhone 5c (which is called Rachel - all of my computer and gadgets have names). Rachel was starting to warp, something appeared to be pushing the screen out from the back. I assumed it was a glue issue or maybe warping caused by heat so i taped the screen back in and all was fine again (apart from sellotape over the screen!)
I was due an upgrade on my phone contract with Vodaphone anyway so got a new Lumia Windows phone (which is called Hazel) but hoped that Rachel would be able to continue, albeit with tape, as a spare phone. Unfortunately the phone warped again. I went online and found it was probably due to the battery expanding after a gas build-up! Suffice to say it was time to contact Apple...
And everything was sorted out very quickly. Apple sent me a box with pre-paid postage to send Rachel to them. I posted it on Monday and on Wednesday night i took delivery of a brand new iPhone! So now i have Rachel 2.0. Its easy to moan so i thought i would write a blog post to praise Apple for sorting my phone out so quickly. Now all i have to do is try and remember all of my passwords again...
Incidentally Hazel is a very nice phone, i like Windows Phone OS too. Hazel is very good, but just not quite as good as Rachel.
Showing posts with label apple. Show all posts
Showing posts with label apple. Show all posts
Thursday, August 13, 2015
Friday, June 6, 2014
Return of the TwiggyMac
The Twiggy Mac is the stuff of myth surely? Macintosh prototypes up until a fairly late stage in the project to produce the Apple Macintosh in 1984 were going to use the same 5 1/4 inch "Twiggy" disk drive as used in the Apple Lisa. Unfortunately the Twiggy drive was rubbish and often failed. Luckily Sony had just bought out their new 3.5 inch floppy drive format and the rest was history...
But it was assumed that none of the Twiggy drive equipped Macintosh prototypes had survived as Apple had them all recalled and destroyed in 1983. However one was found and later on another one turned up too! After some restoration work the Twiggy Macs now work again and could boot from the original Twiggy system disks which included a beta version of Mac OS from August 1983. This version of the eventual first release of Mac OS included some intriguing differences from the final version including "Steve sez" in dialogue boxes. The whole story is recounted in the highly enjoyable Twiggy Mac website.
I don't have any original Macs but i do have the second version, a 512K, and here it proudly is (serves as a clock stand these days to be honest)...
But it was assumed that none of the Twiggy drive equipped Macintosh prototypes had survived as Apple had them all recalled and destroyed in 1983. However one was found and later on another one turned up too! After some restoration work the Twiggy Macs now work again and could boot from the original Twiggy system disks which included a beta version of Mac OS from August 1983. This version of the eventual first release of Mac OS included some intriguing differences from the final version including "Steve sez" in dialogue boxes. The whole story is recounted in the highly enjoyable Twiggy Mac website.
I don't have any original Macs but i do have the second version, a 512K, and here it proudly is (serves as a clock stand these days to be honest)...
Friday, July 19, 2013
Flightradar24
A couple of weeks ago i installed an app on my iPad that had changed my life... Well a little bit anyway, its the Flightradar24 app which allows you to track flights and find information out about them. I live under one of the flightpaths for Birmingham Airport and so get a lot of aircraft flying overhead. Others fly (at a higher altitude) bound for the likes of Heathrow, Charles de Gaulle and ...er... Southend.
The information gleaned from the app has helped me recognise whats flying overhead. When i was younger i was a huge plane spotter and could tell every type apart, its harder in the modern era where the basic template of a metal tube with an engine under each wing has been used for the majority of airliners these days. However thanks to the app i am starting to tell my 757s apart from my A321s...
The variety of what flies overhead surprised me a bit actually. I knew there were a lot of 737s and A320s but the number of 757s was a surprise, plus the odd A310 and 777. High up has been even more of a surprise, i often assumed the faint specks that fly high overhead were all big transatlantic jets but although i have seen a few 747s and an A380 many of the specks are smaller planes flying from the likes of Edinburgh and Shannon to airports in the South.
Great app anyway, i always have it open if i've got the iPad in the garden. Its just a shame not every plane shows up on it. You can see some photographs i've taken of planes flying over my house over the years here.
The information gleaned from the app has helped me recognise whats flying overhead. When i was younger i was a huge plane spotter and could tell every type apart, its harder in the modern era where the basic template of a metal tube with an engine under each wing has been used for the majority of airliners these days. However thanks to the app i am starting to tell my 757s apart from my A321s...
The variety of what flies overhead surprised me a bit actually. I knew there were a lot of 737s and A320s but the number of 757s was a surprise, plus the odd A310 and 777. High up has been even more of a surprise, i often assumed the faint specks that fly high overhead were all big transatlantic jets but although i have seen a few 747s and an A380 many of the specks are smaller planes flying from the likes of Edinburgh and Shannon to airports in the South.
Great app anyway, i always have it open if i've got the iPad in the garden. Its just a shame not every plane shows up on it. You can see some photographs i've taken of planes flying over my house over the years here.
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| Easyjet 737 |
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Early microcomputer nostalgia
The appearance of some of the earliest (if not earliest) known Apple computer photographs on-line has sparked some early microcomputer nostalgia for me. If you haven't seen this article about the Apple I then its well worth a read, especially some of the comments below the article.
I'd love to have an Apple I though i am content to own a pair of Apple ][s! The mid-70s were the true genesis of the personal computer revolution though my own story started in the early 80s when my Dad bought a Sinclair ZX-80 and i started to program.
The original Apple I was a kit as were many microcomputers in the mid-70s, in fact the ZX-80 also came in kit form. My Uncle bought and built the kit, i don't know whatever happened to his one though.
I'd love to have an Apple I though i am content to own a pair of Apple ][s! The mid-70s were the true genesis of the personal computer revolution though my own story started in the early 80s when my Dad bought a Sinclair ZX-80 and i started to program.
The original Apple I was a kit as were many microcomputers in the mid-70s, in fact the ZX-80 also came in kit form. My Uncle bought and built the kit, i don't know whatever happened to his one though.
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Here she is
As i said in an earlier blog post i thought it was time i bought a new computer and yesterday i did just that when my shiny new Macbook Pro arrived! My old Macbook has served me well but after 3 and a half years is starting to slow a bit especially on the likes of Photoshop, software bloat drives forward computer sales like nothing else after all...
It took me a few hours to get everything transferred across and the applications i needed installed but everything seems up and fine now. Hopefully in another three and a bit years we'll be doing the same dance (i buy these computers in installments over 36 months hence the 3 year and a bit upgrade cycle) again. I suspect the next one won't have an optical drive (few computers in the Apple line-up do these days though my new one does) which is a shame as i found burning a DVD on the old one the best way to transfer files as the over-the-internet migration tool didn't work... oh well they have 3 years to get it right!
It took me a few hours to get everything transferred across and the applications i needed installed but everything seems up and fine now. Hopefully in another three and a bit years we'll be doing the same dance (i buy these computers in installments over 36 months hence the 3 year and a bit upgrade cycle) again. I suspect the next one won't have an optical drive (few computers in the Apple line-up do these days though my new one does) which is a shame as i found burning a DVD on the old one the best way to transfer files as the over-the-internet migration tool didn't work... oh well they have 3 years to get it right!
Friday, October 26, 2012
Time for a new Mac
For the last few years i have been happily using my little Macbook but i have been thinking of upgrading for a few months. I did think of getting another notebook but i hardly ever move the computer around, especially since i got an iPad a couple of years ago so i am thinking that the next computer should be a desktop...
So perhaps the new iMac when it comes out next month. One problem with it is that it does not have an optical drive and (gasp!) i still buy a lot of CDs though an external drive connected via USB will do the trick. I do like the convenience when required of a notebook so nothing is set in stone yet...
So perhaps the new iMac when it comes out next month. One problem with it is that it does not have an optical drive and (gasp!) i still buy a lot of CDs though an external drive connected via USB will do the trick. I do like the convenience when required of a notebook so nothing is set in stone yet...
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
iPhone o'clock
Finally my exhausted c510 mobile phone has been retired (or put into reserve anyway) and i have got a new phone, an iPhone 4S no less. I love it of course, the only question being why did i wait so long to get one. Well of course the answer to that is i didn't actually buy it myself but it was bought for me by my wife. I did buy a rather nice and funky case for it though.
It is of course a big step up from my old phone which was barely a smart phone (though was OK for its time) but the novelty of nonsense like FourSquare hasn't yet faded away. I'm the mayor of the patch of canal i walk most lunchtimes of course.
It is of course a big step up from my old phone which was barely a smart phone (though was OK for its time) but the novelty of nonsense like FourSquare hasn't yet faded away. I'm the mayor of the patch of canal i walk most lunchtimes of course.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Getting down with the iCloud
Over the last few days, and after the downloading of many megabytes of operating system updates for my Macbook and iPad, i have started exploring Apple's new cloud based service, iCloud, which is intended to supplement your assorted Apple devices, the cloud becoming a kind of glue?
So the basic premise is this, your "stuff" is available on whatever you use, you don't have to worry about your files being on device A when you want to use device B and if you make changes on device B you can later view and edit them on device A, the cloud makes it all work without you noticing. Well that is the theory anyway, does it actually work?
So far i am pretty impressed, my bookmarks have been seamlessly synchronised between the Safari instances running on both devices, as is my iCal calendar, which i can also view online and edit the calendar there if need be. I installed Pages, Apple's word processor, on both devices though found that only the iPad version can save to the cloud. Yet anyway.
There is still work to be done, especially programs getting iCloud support, but hopefully this will happen over the next few months. The Mac version of Pages able to write to the cloud would be good, especially when i start writing essays again later in the year.
So the basic premise is this, your "stuff" is available on whatever you use, you don't have to worry about your files being on device A when you want to use device B and if you make changes on device B you can later view and edit them on device A, the cloud makes it all work without you noticing. Well that is the theory anyway, does it actually work?
So far i am pretty impressed, my bookmarks have been seamlessly synchronised between the Safari instances running on both devices, as is my iCal calendar, which i can also view online and edit the calendar there if need be. I installed Pages, Apple's word processor, on both devices though found that only the iPad version can save to the cloud. Yet anyway.
There is still work to be done, especially programs getting iCloud support, but hopefully this will happen over the next few months. The Mac version of Pages able to write to the cloud would be good, especially when i start writing essays again later in the year.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Lion talk
I upgraded the operating system on my Macbook to Lion yesterday (or 10.7 if you prefer numbers). It was fairly painless and cheap, being done all online, i just had a 3+ GB download to do first. There are apparently over 250 new features i can now play with.
Many of these new features i am not that interested in though such as Launchpad (Applications from the menu does the same thing already) but the overall look and feel of Lion is nice and it seems to run pretty swiftly too. I have yet to take advantage of some of the more interesting new features like Auto Save and revisions but hopefully my apps will catch up with the OS.
I think this will be an upgrade that will take some time to be fully appreciated but i'll let y'all know if i have any problems or otherwise.
Many of these new features i am not that interested in though such as Launchpad (Applications from the menu does the same thing already) but the overall look and feel of Lion is nice and it seems to run pretty swiftly too. I have yet to take advantage of some of the more interesting new features like Auto Save and revisions but hopefully my apps will catch up with the OS.
I think this will be an upgrade that will take some time to be fully appreciated but i'll let y'all know if i have any problems or otherwise.
Monday, June 6, 2011
Apple now and then
The Apple keynote by iSteve and friends at WWDC was very exciting and interesting and my Macbook will be running OSX Lion and my iPad iOS 5 within the next few months i am sure. iCloud might be something i use though i do prefer to "spread my bets" when it comes to technology and data a bit (for example all my photos get uploaded nowadays to Flickr, Facebook, Picasa and burned to a DVD!) Anyway all this modern Apple mayhem is all very exciting but what about something a little more retro?
I bought a new bookcase yesterday and placed it at the top of the stairs, in doing do it displaced the Mac 512K which had been an "object d'art" atop the stairs for the last few years. This is real Apple archaeology, whilst OSX Lion will work on my Macbook it won't on the 512K which was the second ever model of Apple Macintosh released back in September 1984.
It had a whole 512K of RAM and an 8MHz M68000 processor. I'm not sure what to do with the 512K, i shall likely clean it up a bit (its been used as a plant stand for a few years and is a bit grimy) and place it elsewhere in the house to provide a bit of retro street cred. Incidentally the last time i did try this Mac it did work though it needs a special power adapter as its a US model and thus needs 120 volts not 240. I guess it would explode if plugged into the mains, especially after a few plant pot water overflows...
I bought a new bookcase yesterday and placed it at the top of the stairs, in doing do it displaced the Mac 512K which had been an "object d'art" atop the stairs for the last few years. This is real Apple archaeology, whilst OSX Lion will work on my Macbook it won't on the 512K which was the second ever model of Apple Macintosh released back in September 1984.
It had a whole 512K of RAM and an 8MHz M68000 processor. I'm not sure what to do with the 512K, i shall likely clean it up a bit (its been used as a plant stand for a few years and is a bit grimy) and place it elsewhere in the house to provide a bit of retro street cred. Incidentally the last time i did try this Mac it did work though it needs a special power adapter as its a US model and thus needs 120 volts not 240. I guess it would explode if plugged into the mains, especially after a few plant pot water overflows...
Friday, May 6, 2011
AppleCrate II
Now this is properly awesome, Michael Mahon has built a parallel computer out of 17 Apple IIe motherboards! That is the kind of Apple / Microcomputer hackery geekfest i can only applaud and wish i had the mad skillz to emulate. Mind you i have had my moments playing around with retro tech but this is truly the super league.
I do have an Apple IIe in fact along with a //c but its motherboard is staying in its case! The latter does work the one time i did boot it up though unsure about the IIe. It probably does work though even though its been gathering dust for decades. I must do a blog post about my Apple and microcomputer collection soon...
I do have an Apple IIe in fact along with a //c but its motherboard is staying in its case! The latter does work the one time i did boot it up though unsure about the IIe. It probably does work though even though its been gathering dust for decades. I must do a blog post about my Apple and microcomputer collection soon...
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