MacWorld KeyNote

Here are some notes from the MacWorld KeyNote this morning

New iLife
iPhoto
iMovie
Garage band
ships at the end of the month
All 3 new apps look fantastic and I can’t wait to start using face recognition and the places features in iPhoto

Guided Tours can be found Here
New iWorks
Page
Keynote    (With keynote app for iPhone so u can control your Presentations)
Numbers
ships today

iWorks, iLife, Leopard all for $169

iWork.com
(GoogleDoc for Apple)

New 17″ MBP
Unibody enclosure for the 17″. Sturdier, thinner, lighter.
I’m proud to show you the new 17 inch MacBook Pro — it’s the world’s lightest and thinnest 17 inch notebook.
1920 x 1200 display, 700:1 contrast ratio, 60% greater color gamut.
A $50 anti-glare option will be available for the laptop.
Showing off the i/o — Same as the other Pros. Mini DisplayPort, USB, FireWire 800, MagSafe… and it’s got the glass trackpad. Didn’t think they were going to go back on that one.
Integrated battery display on the side. Includes new glass trackpad, 40% larger.
Inside we have a new generation of C2D CPUs — up to 8GB of RAM… new NVIDIA graphics options, discrete graphics onboard.” “You can upgrade to a 256GB SDD.
Up to 8 hours of work time, 1000 recharges.
We wanted to deliver our longest lasting battery ever, but we wanted to keep it thin and light It’s obviously not removable... now a video on the tech.
Same pricing — $2799 for the base model, 2.66Ghz/4GB RAM

iTunes
New Pricing
$0.69
$1.29
$0.99
Next, iTunes Plus — it’s DRM free, and much higher quality. We’ve worked with all the major companies… starting today, 8 million songs will be DRM free.
By the end of Q1, all 10M songs will be DRM free.
iPhone
The music store is no longer just on WiFi — it’s over 3G as well.

Early Learning

100_0443.JPG, originally uploaded by delboycarter.

I never think that it is to early to learn the right road to take. So at 6 months old I am teaching Caroline that she will be a Mac user and not a PC. Now I have to teach her to keep her hands off my Mac

Do American Airlines Care?

2 Weeks ago I book tickets for me and my family to travel back to the UK. Once the tickets were booked I was told that the tickets for my wife and I would be sent via email, but my kids tickets would be sent by normal mail. I asked why and they told me that all kids tickets have to be sent this way for security they said. What a Joke.

My tickets arrived via email with in the hour but after a week I was still without the tickets for the kids. Then I received a letter in the mail from a rail company in Texas. I was just about to shred the letter when I thought I would check what is inside and there were my 2 tickets for the kids air travel.

I was just about to Google the connection between AA and this rail company in Texas when I found an enclosed letter. The letter told me that my kid’s tickets had been enclosed with another ladies tickets in Texas and she was kind enough to forward on the tickets to me.

This was all very nice I thought then I realized that someone that I don’t know now has my address, the times I am going to be out of the country, where I will be, my kids names and part of my credit card number.

I decided to call American Airlines to inform them of their error and complain about this issue. The first lady I spoke to was very nice and when I told her what had happened she sounded very worried and told me she was going to get her manager.

When I spoke to the manager and told him what had happened I was stunned to here his response was “So”. I was a little taken back and when I asked him what he meant by that he told me “Well you have your tickets think yourself lucky that this nice lady sent them too you”. After a long conversation with this manager I realized that AA couldn’t careless what they had done and all this manager would say is that I was lucky to get my tickets. Yes I was luck my $1000 tickets turned up.

The manager was kind enough to tell me that of all the information that this lady could have there was nothing that she could do with it. So when I asked the manager to give me the same information on him he got very defensive and told me he could not give out that sort of information. Strange how he was happy for my information to be out there but not his.

In the economic climate that we are in I guess AA must be doing fine if this is how they treat a frequent flyer and maybe it is time for me to look at a different airline after this trip with American.

I would like to say thank you to Vicki who forwarded on my tickets as for American well this was just some of the worse service I have ever received.

John McCain the Clown.

So watching the debate tonight we are just 20 minutes in and I just can not believe what John McCain is saying. So far I have tried to keep quiet about the election, but after hearing this I just can not anymore.

John McCain has said tonight that when he is President the 1st thing that he will do is get the government to buy up all the bad mortgages and then renegotiate that mortgage with the owner so that the owner now gets the house for what it is now worth. So let me get this right, if you are not paying what you signed up for and you have fallen behind, McCain will let you off with that and reward you with a cheaper house. That’s great, but what about the people who have paid there mortgage on time every month what do we get. Oh we get to keep paying it. This doesn’t sound fair to me.

What happens in the future when me and my neighbor what to sell our houses, because nice John paid for half his mortgage? Who will be better off? Yes, the person who did wrong. I feel that McCain will punish me for doing things right. Now I feel sorry for these people that can’t afford there houses, but maybe these people should not be rewarded for being greedy in the first place and buying a house that the clearly could not afford. Yes, give them help, but give the people who have played fairly and do the right thing the same help. I might be up to date on my mortgage, but why shouldn’t i get a break on it? Why should I suffer for doing the right thing?

I guess if McCain gets in on November 4th I should do the right thing for my family and STOP paying my mortgage. I will just wait for nice John to turn up and pay it for me and then sell me it back at a much reduced rate.

Unbelievable it really is.

iPhone 2.1

OK so I now have the 2.1 update and here is what I have found so far.

It took about 20 mins to download and install
Backup is much faster but still slow it took 6 mins to backup
All the Apps that wouldn’t update STILL will not update VERY POOR
Looks like I will have to delete Apps and reinstall or restore my iPhone as new
As soon as I turn on 3G I get no service NO CHANGE THERE it did find the Edge network after a few mins this is a LITTLE better

Just noticed that I again have no service. After leaving it for 20 mins and still no service I turned 3G off, straight away I had 4 bars. Looks like this is no better.
iPod App Looks alot better
Genius Playlists work well but you are limited to 25 song playlist
You can expand them when they are synced back to iTunes
I will monitor the Battery over the weekend
Doesn’t look like there is Push data for IM

More Options under Sounds
Contacts are faster

I decided to do a full clean install so that my Apps work and update OK. After I finished the install it took just 30 mins for 1 of my Apps to crash.

iTunes has just crashed syncing my iPhone, is this a new feature?

GREAT Job Apple

Any thoughts?

Apple “it just works”*

* iPhone “it just doesn’t”

iPhone Why Back it Up?

OK so after I have had MORE problems with my iPhone and it continued to crash I figured it was time for the MONTHLY restore, yes since version 2 I have to restore my iPhone at least once a month.

After previous restore having problems with corrupt backups I decided to let the backup run, so after 2 and a half hours the restore started.

After the restore it ask’s me if I would like to build the iPhone as new or restore from the backup, I opted for from backup. After another 1.5 hours the iPhone rebooted and asked me the same do you want to rebuild new or from backup. The iPhone is fully restore and working problem is iTunes thinks its in a state of rebuild I have no option but to restore from the new backup. After another 2 hours Yep you guessed it I have the same options.

The only way I can get my iPhone back and iTunes to see it as working is rebuild as new.

So my question to any one at Apple is why oh why are we taking 2 hours to backup the iPhone when the restore does not work????????

Come on Steve give me an answer……….

I really am getting sick of this Beta phone, Please Please let the update fix all these problems. Again I have no faith in Apple at this moment in time.

Apple “it just works”*

* iPhone “it just doesn’t”

OK now I have had my rant I can go back to setting up all my App’s, oh and thanks Apple for loosing all my App data so happy about that.

Photo problems with my iPhone

Anyone else having problems with photo’s on there iPhone ????

After I take pictures with any app, mainly airme but I have tried others including the official camera app, I get a corrupt photo and then my photo app just crashes when I try to open it. Then all I can do to get any of these apps to work is connect my iPhone to my mac and delete the photo.

I have tried to rebuild the iPhone but still get the same problem. I have tired a restore and a whole new install with the same results.

I am really starting to HATE my iPhone now as I am loosing to many great photos.

I really can’t wait for the next release this month but have a bad feeling that it isn’t going to be much better.

Starting to loose a lot of faith in Apple right now.

Apple “it just works”*

* iPhone “it just doesn’t”

iPhone 2.0.2

Well update 2.0.2 to out and after 24 hours of using it I have to say it is no better than 2.0 and 2.0.1.

I still have all of the following problems

• The ring volume sometimes works sometimes doesn’t
• Backup is still very slow
• Battery life is still as bad as ever lucky to get 8hr’s on standby right now
• App Store still doesn’t updates my Apps

On the plus side over the last 24 hours I have only had 1 App crash and that is a big improvement.

Lots more work please Apple, I think there is a long way to go yet!!!!!!!

The Special One is Back

New Season and the Special one is back.

The iPhone getting WORSE

So after Apple sent out the iPhone update (2.0.1) I was so hopefull that the software would be far more stable but boy was I so wrong, so so wrong.

One of the first thing I noticed after the update is I was having problems opening applications. The I was unable to update any Apps as the phone was telling me that my iTunes password was wrong. After speaking with support I was told to try and rebuild my iPhone so this I did.

After the restore of the phone I was then asked do I want to restore my old settings I said yes at this point I was told that ALL my backups were corrupt (NICE) so I had to start from new.

I manually loaded everything, songs, apps, movies, etc.

I then deleted all my backup and let the iPhone backup again. I was under the impression that one of the fixes in 2.0.1 was to speed up the backup after an hour of backing up I found out that wasn’t the truth. I not had a true backup at least I hoped so.

Now I have the problem when I try to look at some of my Photo’s the Photo application now crashes. The first time this happened I deleted the pictures in the camera roll via iPhoto, this fixed the problem so i guessed it was a corrupt photo. The 2nd time there was nothing in the camera roll, I was told that the only way to fix the problem was to, yes you guessed it, restore the iPhone. I then found out my backup was corrupt again. GREAT. 5 hours later I got my phone back.

Well after a week with 2.0.1 I have had to restore my iPhone 4 times all taking at least 4 hours and only once has the backup actually worked. Tonight I got the application cannot be opened again and I only restored the iPhone earlier today.

Well I was a huge fan of the 1st iPhone and v1 of the software I am starting to dread using the App’s of my new iPhone as I really don’t want to restore my iPhone again.

I have had more App’s crash since they updated to 2.0.1 some that won’t even update without a full removal and not just from the iPhone I have had to remove the App from iTunes and download again. Now with the error above I have to remove and reinstall the App, a simple reboot is not even working. Oh the worst App for crashing is the App Store App itself that crashes way more than it works.

I have also noticed that the phone sometimes never rings and very rarely gets the individual ring tones correctly.

Then there is the battery life or the lack of it. On Saturday I was taking a few pictures using AirMe (One of better Apps) I took 12 pictures all loaded up to Flickr over an 8 hour period and that’s all I did with the phone and it was OUT totally OUT of power. In a few weeks I am off to Vegas I just hope I have enough power so I can watch a Movie on the 3.5 hour flight. Notice the battery in the graphic, that after it was fully charged just 3 hours ago and I haven’t even used the phone apart from trying to open 1 App and that didn’t work. 3G is also turned off as that never works when I am in doors.

I can’t wait for version 2.1 lets hope that works better

Apple “it just works”*

* iPhone “it just doesn’t”