Official iCreate Blog > 2008 > March

Boo-hoo, Ben. I thought this blog was created for a bit of creativity and the like, not a place for the editor to complain about microwave meals for one. Loner. You need a good woman, son, to look after you, like my old mum looks after me. Chips on tap, that’s what I’ve got and the odd kebab thrown in when she fancies a walk.

Anyway, this week I’ve got a couple of cool products to chuck your way. If you love big cans and you’ve got an ear for a good choon then you need to take a look at the SK Pro’s from super-fashionable brand Skullcandy. These guys have a very cool reputation, so you know that once they’re on your head they’re going to look good. They also have all the specifications you’d expect from a pair of £96 headphones: 50mm drivers and a frequency response of 20-20,000Hz. Comfort wise, you won’t have to suffer for the fashion as these have soft leather earcups, and 90-degree swivelling action. A very nice pair.
For more information head to www.skullcandy.com

Portable speakers are all the rage these days. For iPod owners the sensible choice is one with a dock. However, if you want to look further toward speakers with just a line in cable then you should look at the Parrot PARTY. This cool looking speaker system can be battery or mains powered. It delivers a surprisingly good sound for its size, and as well as the line in you can stream music from a Bluetooth device, like your phone (sadly not your iPhone). Definitely worth a look if you can handle losing a dock. A smart little unit with a with a cracking sound. They’ll set you back £79.99 so they’re not cheap, but if you’ve got the cash then give them a go.
For more information head to www.parrotshopping.com

Since Adobe priced Creative Suite outside of the budget of even the wealthiest of consumers we’ve been left with a few other options when it comes to photo manipulation. The company has now released Elements 6 for Mac which, while nowhere near as powerful as its big brother, does offer a number of useful tools for perfecting your images.

Of course, we all have iPhoto as standard which does a great job of organising pictures and also has the skills to clean and tweak them too. So is it worth jumping to another application just because of its relationship with the world’s most popular imaging tool?

Hold on a second… another contender has entered the ring. Still touted as a “professional app” Apple’s own Aperture is back for another outing and the price tag it demands is far from extortionate.
 
Now there are even more questions to deal with and decisions to make. Do you:
Insist on iPhoto - It’s free and its always done what you need and it integrates well with other iLife apps.
Entertain Elements - It’s made by Adobe, doesn’t cost much and offers a bit more than iPhoto. 
Apply Aperture - It keeps you Apple-centric, it’s a great step up from iPhoto, it’s fast. 


Fortunately, you don’t have to decide now. Wait for issue 54 of iCreate and let us help you with full reviews of Aperture 2 and Photoshop Elements 6 as well as the usual set of tutorials in iPhoto. Find out more at www.icreatemagazine.com 

In the meantime you can also swing by www.adobe.com and www.apple.com to download trials and read about the new features in both applications.  

iCreate deadline week is usually a tough one and, being the well prepared editor that I am, I headed to Marks & Spencer at the weekend to stock up on ready meals for the late nights infront of my Mac.  
I’m heartened this evening, as I lovingly check pages, that my food doesn’t offer the standard stamp that confirms you actually have no life. Last night I enjoyed a cottage pie - it tasted fine and had a lovely set of compartmentalised veg with it but it bore the awful, soul destroying slogan: 
“Meal For One”
I could figure that out from the size of the container, do you have to label it so embarrassingly?! Plus, which “one” are we talking about? I’m sure there are a few chunky sorts, the kind who waddle back and forth from sofa to McDonalds, who wouldn’t even consider this an appetiser… 
Tonight’s steak and ale casserole has no such branding and makes me feel far better about working into the wee hours. 

I’ve also just noticed that the latest episode of the iCreate podcast has pushed its way into the Top 25 Tech Podcast chart on the UK iTunes Store. Another short “Easter Special” episode from Jimmy and I before he jets to Dubai and I pop home to visit the family and I think we’ll be knocking on the door of the top 5 again. 
Right, back to the Mac and some reheated meat and dumplings…

Hang on a minute, has a Tuesday been and gone without Apple releasing anything? What’s going? I feel empty….

Luckily, we’ve heard rumours that there are going to be updates to the iMac and Mac Mini. They will be getting a little speed bump with some new processors.

Also, a quick note to let everyone know that the latest podcast is out and available to download from iTunes or the iCreate website. Why not log in to iTunes and write a review and let us know what you think…

I thought I’d share a little iPhone tip that you may or may not find useful. 

If, like me, you listen to a lot of music on your iPhone you probably find yourself stopping, starting and skipping tracks using the button on the headphones. 

For those who don’t know, here are the facts:
One click: Pauses currently playing music. One click (when paused): Resumes music playback. Two clicks: Skips current track.

The annoyance I’ve found is the way in which the headphone button becomes unresponsive after the music has been paused for a little while and the iPhone heads back into regular standby mode. 

This often happens when I’ve been listening to music and use the headphone button to pause while I talk to someone.  Usually, by the time I’ve finished talking, the button doesn’t resume playback because the iPhone has gone into standby mode.

So, a cunning plan for those who carry their iPhone in their pocket. Find the home button on your device (either inside your pocket or through your chosen garment) and double click it. You will now find the button on the headphones will work again and you wont need to remove your phone from your pocket to start playing music again. 

Simple yet effective. 

If anyone cares about the plight of the piece of scrap metal I bought from Microsoft (XBox 360 for those who didn’t read my earlier post). I made it work again. 

How did I do this? Did I fold under the pressure, void the warranty and open the case to fix it? No. I did what any self respecting Apple fan would do when confronted with a piece of hardware from Redmond - I gave the thing an almighty punch. 


I’m not kidding, I hit the thing so hard it made my knuckles red and suddenly the whirring noises stopped and it could read discs again. It’s true, Microsoft hardware hasn’t progressed much further than the typewriter when it comes to crucial updates and quick fixes. As far as an entertainment platform goes, my XBox 360 is the jukebox at Arnold’s and I’m the Fonze (Check out some old Happy Days episodes if you don’t catch my drift).  


Talking of Microsoft incompetence, what’s this I see? A “Critical” update to Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac? Surely not.


Not only was Microsoft the last of the major players to release an Intel-native version of its software for Mac (probably due to the giant delay-fest that was the disappointing Windows Vista) when it finally does deliver the product, it needs to bash out an update to prevent applications from quitting unexpectedly or stopping responding.






Once again, hats off to Steve Ballmer, Bill Gates and the rest, you’ve brought us yet another half-baked, unfinished product. What would we do without you? 
 
 

I admit it. I bought an XBox 360.

Well come on, until Apple really goes for it and launches a games console (not the Pippin!) I didn’t have much choice. I had a Wii for a while (because it seemed the most Apple-esque choice) but it didn’t quite cut it against the next-gen breed. 

So…I’ve had this Microsoft product in my home for a fortnight now. All has been good and, I hate to say it, I’ve enjoyed using it. I bought the top of the line Elite model and a bunch of games and, despite it looking like a VCR or some kind of high tech shoebox, things have been fine.Today I come home looking to settle down for a quick game of Call of Duty and what happens… the disc drive is emitting some kind of buzzing sound and no game can be read. I knew the last 14 days had been too good to be true.

Online I hop and, lo and behold, literally hundreds of people have had this problem if not thousands. Apparently it’s my fault. I should have made sure my XBox was kept cool and rested on its side!

What the @$%&!? 

There are some things I don’t need to be warned about. I know the coffee in my cup is hot and I know that smoking kills.What I didn’t know was that if you position an XBox in one of the ways it’s built to sit/stand it will break. I also didn’t know that if you allow an XBox to heat up to anything close to room temperature, it’ll break.

So Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is sitting out in Vegas at the moment complaining that the MacBook Air is too heavy, he’s moaning about the iPhone price, always dissing Apple. Ok Steve, at least when Apple brings a product to market, “It just works”. The bastard child of Sloth from The Goonies and an albatross can blindly tout Vista as a revolution and Windows Mobile as groundbreaking but can he honestly say that any of his products really face up to actual use and tests of functionality?

I’ve had a MacBook for two years. No faults. An iMac which I’ve had fixed once in 5 years of ownership and an iPhone thats been dropped, knocked and had a cigarette put out on its screen and it still works, still looks great. All of the above run Mac OS X by the way. Any problems with that? No. Even after upgrading to the latest OS which (unlike Microsoft’s effort is better than the previous version).

I’ve had an XBox less than half a month and its stopped working.

Another admission: I’ve owned an XBox before. The original model. What happened to it? The drive broke. Then the HD. Then some kind of video fault developed. All within one year.

I’m the idiot here. I naively thought that, as much as its operating system is a pile of the proverbial, Microsoft had its games devision nailed and would certainly have been committed to more stable hardware after many issues with the original XBox model. Man was I wrong.Knock it together, fire it out to the masses, pay the price when a huge percentage of the products fail.

The guy who sold me my XBox tried to push me onto a PS3, citing the “hundreds” of returns he’d been plagued with since he began stocking the XBox 360. I wish I’d listened to him. I wish I’d taken his advice, given my money to another company that cares about the end user, cares about products standing the test of time and cares about quality.As we well know, Microsoft is not a company on that list. 

I’m the sucker for thinking things couldn’t possibly get any worse.

So, to Evil Steve (Ballmer): Screw you, your stupid dancing antics, your sweating and your mangled vocal chords.

To Good Steve (Jobs): It’s time to bring out yet another device to shame the morons at Microsoft.

Alright, you lot? We’re talking protection today, not the kind you need on the mean streets where I’m from, but protection for your beloved Apple gadgets. So, the two products I’ve got for you are from PDAir, one for your Al Capone (iPhone) and the other for your fishing rod (iPod).

The first, called the Pouch Case for iPhone will set you back £14 and it’s not for the timid. Be proud, you own an iPhone – so wear it on your belt as a beacon of your technology bling. If you love your iPhone and want everyone to see you displaying it proudly about the hip, then you need this case. Premium leather, white stitching and a belt clip provide all the ingredients you’re gonna need. If you prefer to be subtle then you can remove the belt clip, but there’s not much chance it will fit in your sky rocket (pocket). This is a good all rounder that’ll stop you scratching the iPhone should you get in any scrapes or scuffles.

JFTB rating: Nugget – Score – Pony - Bullseye – Monkey

The next offering from PDAir is their originally named iPod Nano Case and it will set you back £12.50. In my opinion this is the best case they make. Flip cases are a bit hard to manage on the bigger iPods – there’s no cool factor when there’s tons of leather and plastic flying about while you’re trying to navigate menus on a packed tube train. On a small and compact case they’re actually very lemon-tart (smart). This nano flip case is excellent. It may look like one of those key rings that holds a picture of your cat, but it actually holds some swanky technology. Nice.

JFTB rating: Nugget – Score – Pony - Bullseye – Monkey

For more information on PDAir cases check out their website at www.pdair.com

This is a weekly column that I will be writing for iCreate so watch this space for more. You may get to hear from me on the podcast too…. Laters.

 I’ve been entertained, since upgrading to Leopard from Mac OS X Tiger, to see that Apple’s latest OS genuinely believes it can do no wrong. 

Remember when there used to be a standard “The Application XXX Unexpectdly Quit” message? No more. Leopard now apportions blame to plugins and applications that may have caused such a crash. Heaven forbid anyone would suggest that an OS X app crashed on its own.  
Take a look at this:  

 

This happened while I was trying to watch some WMV streams of Gordon Ramsay berating hapless chefs online.  It wasn’t Safari that caused the problem, no, no, no. It’s that pesky Flip4Mac plugin (a plugin that, if anything, adds functionality and compatibility to Mac OS X). 

I love Macs, I love the Mac OS X operating system and I love Apple. I’m quite happy to tout how great they all are and I’ll argue their corner whenever I can. What I don’t need is the software trying to do the job for me. 

We all make mistakes, sometimes it’s best to simply admit them. 

 
 There’s a bumper episode of the podcast coming this week.
Not only is there all the usual fun to be had but we’re introducing a mystery guest and behind the scenes coverage of our trip to iTunes Live: London Sessions. Check your iTunes podcasts list or our website this week for episode five…