I only bought it in November and two days ago the microphone stopped working. I could hear others when they called but they couldn’t hear me.
Yesterday a friend who called claimed that my voice sounded like that of a Dalek from Doctor Who. So now I’m left with what is essentially an iPod touch. All going well it should be under warranty given that it is only 5 months old.
Other strange glitches started to appear lately as well. The wi-fi connection kept dropping on me despite being in the same room as the router. Applications would start to hang with alarming regularity requiring frequent reboots. Grr.. extremely annoying so it is.
Apple today have unveiled a plethora of updates to most of their computing product lines. A complete list of what has changes and what is available is here.
Now what about pricing? Using the 320GB Mac Mini as an example it is listed in the U.S. Apple Store for $799, the U.K. Apple Store for £649 and on the Irish Apple Store for €749. So let’s compare the U.K. and U.S. prices taking currency conversion into account shall we?
At the time of writing one Euro is worth 0.894 U.K. Pound and 1.258 U.S. Dollars.
A 320GB Mac Mini therefore will cost the equivilent of €726 in the U.K. and €634 in the U.S.
As usual we are being ripped off over here. But what about a MacBook Pro?
The 17in MacBook Pro is listed on the Irish Apple Store for €2499. In the U.K. Apple Store it is the equivilent of €2178 and on the U.S. Apple Store it retails for €2223.
If anyone is planning on buying a Mac Mini I suggest it may be worth your while popping up to Northern Ireland to save yourself €73. If it’s a 17in MacBook Pro you are looking for then you will save yourself a not too shabby €321.
My few regular readers will have noticed that I have changed my theme. The more I looked at the old one, the more gaudy it looked so in came this one. However while browsing through some plugins, I came across a rather brilliant one called WPtouch.
It detects if you are using an iPhone or iPod touch and makes it look more like an iPhone application. So no more squinting or pinching or squeezing to read as you can read in the screenshot.
Incidentially, if you have an iPhone and are wondering how to take a screenshot?
Well it is a simple matter of holding the home button and then pressing the the power button.
The Apple Mac is 25 today. Hard to believe it was that long ago. I can remember when they first came out although I was only 7 at the time. I really wanted one but the price was off the wall. Back in the recession hit 1980′s you could have probably bought a house for the same price. I could only dream of getting a PC or a Mac back then so I was cutting my teeth with an Oric-1 instead.
Skip forward 25 years and I finally have a Mac (Macbook) which I’m using to write this post. My Macbook is actually my second Mac; back in 1999 I bought a lime green iMac in anticipation of OS X which was due for release. Unfortunately I had many a bad experience with the iMac which was finally put to pasture when the CRT failed. You can see the autopsy photos here.
So in celebration of the Mac’s quarter of a century i would direct you to this page on The Register which celebrates the best and worst of 25 years of the Apple Mac.
Image from Wikipedia
I’ve had another hard disk failure on my primary workstation so until I get a replacement disk I will be using my Macbook. Now while I love my Macbook as a laptop it becomes a bit difficult and uncomfortable to use all day. So seeing as my main workstation is lying idle I hooked up its LCD, keyboard and mouse to make things a bit easier.
I’ve done this before but if you haven’t or would like to I have this little tip for you:
Hook everything up to your Macbook or Macbook Pro, turn on the power and immediately close the lid!
This will enable you to use your external display at its proper resolution. Otherwise you will find that your external display will mirror the built in one. And the resolution which on my Macbook is 1280×800 will be the same. The only other option under System Preferences is to use it as additional screen space under which it will work at its ideal screen resolution.
So if you only want your external display to be your primary display there you go!
I got myself an Apple iPhone 3G recently. It’s a truly wonderful thing purely from an aesthetic point of view but it does have a few tricks up it sleeve too. Like most new mobile phones these days, the Apple iPhone has built a built in GPS receiver. It is fairly accurate too.
This got me thinking of some interesting things to do with it. While browsing through the iTunes store I discovered a neat little application called GPS tracker and best of all it is free to download. It ties in with a free service from Instamapper.com. Once installed you can configure your iPhone to update your own personal map which wil display your location along with other details such as speed etc. It’s not just limited to the iPhone however so you can check to see if you can install it on your GPS enabled mobile here.
While this may not be to your liking if you value your privacy you needn’t worry as by default your own map is set to private to default. You can also embed a map into your facebook profile or onto your blog.
It is a bit gimmicky but then I love these gimmicky things. If you are curious as to how it looks you can view my location over on my personal blog 
One final thing to be aware of is that the application needs access to the internet. So just be aware of your data charges from your mobile phone provider first!
