Posts by Ivan Headache

@The clue is in the name

"The average user just wants one set of ports to plug they low def webcam/ printer/ 1TB external hard disk into"

You seriously want to move 1TB of data through USB?

I've just spent almost 2 hours trying to transfer 57GB - and it failed - twice.

Why is it impossible (in the UK at least) to buy a SATA drive enclosure with FW ports?

@It is Sad....

is that that Zune person is peer to peering with himself.

How long has it been out? I've never seen one.

@Mark

You obviously don't work in the world of real business. 30% is a fantastic rate. Photo agencies take 55% - they get more of my earnings than I do.

OK

Where's the picture?

@Nicholas Ettel

Shazam has been around for ages and is not phone specific - just dial 2580 on any mobile phone and it will text back - however, in the 5 or 6 years I've been using it, it has never told me what album the song is from - nor who the kick-ass bass player is.. Somehow I doubt that the apple version mentioned above (which I suspect will be Shazam with a different name) will be able to tell either - sleeve notes are now so complicated when it comes to identifying individual musicians. - nor does that info come up on the ITMS.

Seriously, Shazam is pretty damn clever - the only time it failed me was with a bit of Polish jazz that I needed to identify (I guess there were no Polish jazz fans sitting in the shazam call centre that afternoon!) - and as such Apple would have a job to implement something doing exactly the same without infringing Shazam'z patents.

Duck/duct/gaffer

When I started using this stuff in the RAF back in the 60s it was black and was called Bodge Tape.

Why? Well you could bodge anything with it. I saw a Ford GT40 at Le Mans with half its bodywork held together in the 1967 race.)

Next time I heard it called differently it was Gaffer tape, and tended to be silver/gray. This was in the 80s when I was working in radio/TV. (I preferred the black stuff as its adhesive was not as aggressive. you could de-rig without pulling bits of the wall off.)

I never heard or saw it called Duck/duct 'till the americans started sticking it all over the internet.

In Home base they sell is as a brand "Duck".

@That looks like the same connector..

design as the laptops...

Only it isn't. It's a standard ipod connector.

Anyway, considereing the number of iPhones and iPods sold - all using the same connector - this is as newsworthy as the earlier post about the washing machine breaking down.

@ AC @IH

" You seem to have a higher firefox contingent than other sources, so I presume you look after a techy site."

As it happens it belongs to a novelist and the techy content is virtually nil.

Looking at the OS analysis shows that XP has 61% of the visitors, followed by OSX at 19% and Vista at 14%. None of the others get as high as 2% (it lists Win2003 - what is that?)

The high Mac OSX is because that's what I use (and Safari), it' s what he uses and what his wife uses.

I can't explain the high Firefox hits other than what has been posted in others people's comments.

Ease of use

I had a call from an elderly lady last week. She was thinking about buying a computer as she had been taking lessons at the local adult education centre. As she was retired and no-longer had a secretary, she now had to do all her own writing instead of giving dictation.

She had spoken to some friends at her club (a husband & wife, 1 Mac & 1 PC vista) and on the strength of their arguments decided to look at a mac.

I met her at the local Apple store and showed her what was what, and asked her what she had been using at the AEC. Windows XP on some generic box.

When I get a situation like this I tend to advise the prospect to consider what they are familiar with and how easy they find it in use.

This morning she phoned to say that Apple had just delivered her Macbook Pro.

@ Eh?

Spot on!

I've often wondered what the point of 'Rik's reviews' is. Now I've realised it's to drive up hits on the comments pages (in order to charge more for advertising).

Rik, before you start making sarky comments about what software '<i>can't</i> do, just pause a moment and think about what it is <i>designed</i> to do, and the market it is aimed at. Then write your review.

On the Face-recognition feature, there is an interesing user comment over at macintouch. The user reports that iphoto correctly identified faces on photos on the fridge door that featured in a photo.

Don't know if this is relevant but

Clive Sinclair had a laptop called the Z88 in 1988. That would remember what you were doing when you switched it back on. You could be mid-word in the middle of a letter, switch it off, switch it back on next day and the cursor would be flashing, waiting for the next letter in the word.

It also allowed you to change its batteries (4 AA cells if I remember) while in the middle of typing.

Anyway , I don't know if that was a function of the OS or of the machine.

Industrial design

The first Mac I bought myself (as opposed to my that provided by my employer -A Quadra 650) was a Performa 6200 and I had it upgraded with an extra 4MB of RAM (cost another £100). At the time I don't think there was another plastic computer box that looked as good as that 6200. I later upgraded to a performa 6400 and kept that until just over a year ago when I finally went Intel Mac Pro.

But back to the 6200, I started my business with that and over the years collected many other mac (most of them sitting in my loft). Occasionally I would get one that was faulty and often is wasn't economical to repair (Apple spares were stupidly expensive - and hard to get) so I would dismantle them for spares. The Mother-board came out just by undoing a couple of screws and pulling a conveniently provided fold-away handle and it slid out on its runners - no cables to disconnect. The outer case came off next to expose the metal-work and the drives (mounted on plastic slide-out sleds). I seem to remember that everything else came apart by undoing one screw per item.

What I was always amazed by (having seen inside so many PCs at the time) was that the internal wiring was a single harness and could be removed in one piece without any effort.

The emr shield is the bottom of a G3 slot-loading Imac is a work of art (though not many see it) spoiled only by the position of two of its fixing screws (in spaces just too narrow for an average blokes finger to get in).

The silent Cube is a thing of beauty (let down only by its unreliable power-supply) and I still have people asking if I can get them one (and those that have them saying "only when I die").

The G4 anglepoise iMac continues to amaze those who have never seen one before (and in my experience - it has been the most reliable of all the imac models, since its launch I've only had one put down as being BER, and that was a couple of years ago. We still have 2 running 24/7 in this house).

And finally, the MacPro - stunning - both inside and out. (And virtually silent.)

However - they all were not that clever inside, some were a real pain to add RAM to, boards or drives had to be moved first. the iBook is a real pain to take apart (but beautiful once you got it apart), the eMac is a bit dodgy with exposed residual HT inside the case when you take the back off (remembering first to disconnect the on/off switch connector before you do).

BBC Domesday

Is the Domesday Project still available?

I have material on it and would love to have a copy (just to show my grandchildren of course).

@Peter

"Oh, and that's without mentioning that Apple Update is a program that installed itself without my knowledge to start with. "

Are you sure about that?

I've just had to install Quicktime onto a couple of PCs in order to use a HD Video Camera.

In the Install window there is a checkbox to install (or not) the auto-update facility.

Invented? Few using?

"He says it involves a method for compressing synthesized sounds into a tiny package and reproducing them in real time on electronic devices, an approach few were taking in the early 1990s, when he invented it."

I'm no lawyer but...I think that statement pretty much shoots him in the foot.

@Dapprman

"Oh look at how quick the fanbois defend, but ..."

Where?

Before you say @Gary F, that's not a fanboy, that's an argument against a pretty poor article.

"however it's got superb multimedia functionality and it's interface is great for non-technical people."

And there's the point you seem not to grasp. It's a phone. Designed to be easy to use. There are Millions - yes Millions - probably billions of non-technical people out there who just want to be be able to make calls and listen to music with as little hassle as possible.

Have I got an iPhone? No, but the lovely Ivana is getting one for Christmas because I'm fed up with having to show her how to use her Nokia rubbish.

And as for Jesus-phone, it's just plain insulting. Just think what would have happened if el-reg had called it the Mohammad-phone.

@Nope

So you know a phone that runs Win3.1?

@No love for the Mighty Mouse?

"- it's annoying in that you can't lift the mouse off the surface and hold a button down at the same time -"

Pardon? It would be a pretty pointless mouse if you couldn't do that. Just practice a bit - it's all in the finger positions.

With regard to the scroll ball. It does get erratic - particularly in the scrolling-down mode (i.e the most important direction). The solution is so simple - take a piece of slightly damp (not wet) kitchen roll (or if you have access, a paper towel from the bathroom), place it flat on a surface then invert the mouse so that the ball is on the dampness. Now scrub the mouse violently

around as if you were a kid scribbling on your sister's homework for 10 to 15 seconds. As a rule that clears the problem and the ball works as it should.

Against the mouse, I find I get more wrist and lower arm pain with this mouse that with any other I've used.

Someone earlier made a comment about component prices and concluded that the case was a rip-off. Could that person explain what he/she meant? In English "rip-off' can have two meanings. One meaning 'a copy of someone else's work' passed off as your own, the other meaning 'grossly over-priced'.

I can't think of another computer company that makes a case anything like an Apple case that could be ripped off and also I don't know how you can price the case when you can't actually buy one.

Having taken many computers apart over the last 15 or so years, I can honestly say I have yet to see another manufacture who engineers their cases as well as Apple does. The current Mac Pro being possible the best engineered case ever.

@Elrond Hubbard.....Wow!

Surely your post must qualify for flame of the week. It's really well constructed and based on astute observation and reasoned argument.

FYI. Top Gear isn't on 'till Sunday. I'm going to watch QI now - it's all about being mendacious.

is it me or...

I'm convinced that hammond said it first in the sequence where they introduced the item while sitting on their 'sofas'. However, I just watched it on iplayer and it's not there.

Did I imagine it or has iPlayer been edited?

@marketing over content

I'm not exactly sure what that means!

Anyway, "I LOVE all the features. I HATE not having some basic features that should be there but arent and the fact that Apple don't give a shit about you by making you use iTunes (perhaps the worst software ever written), locking down the phone and trying to lock you in to all their own shit."

As someone else has pointed out, basing an entire philosophy on one purchase is not scientific. Now claiming that itunes is the worst piece of software ever written - well what do you expect? It apple software running on a PC. On a mac it is a superb piece of software, intuitive to use and completely integrated and seamless in operation. We have the same issues running MS software on macs.

Something that puzzles me. What is this "the way they treat their customers" all about?

Apple treats their customers a darn sight better than many other companies do. I've been an Apple user for about 15 years and they haven't yet been round to burn my house, rape my daughters or beat me with a pointed stick. (OK it might be their cat that craps on my lawn - but I can't prove otherwise.)

The worst piece of software ever? That honour goes to MS Word.

@Dan Demaine

Quite agree Dan. I had several calls from unhappy clients in the early days of Sky - mostly to do with email issues rather than BB. Now I can't remember when the last call was.

Most of the calls I get know are related to TalkTalk (& AOL) and Orange.

It's interesting walking around with my iPod Touch watching for wifi transmitters. In a residential area probably two-thirds of the visible transmitters seen in a 20 minute walk are Sky. Two-thirds of the rest are generally BT homehubs (or other BT devices) and the remainder are weirdly renamed (or not in many cases) Netgears, Belkins and D-Links. I'm not seeing as many Linksys as I used to.

What I do find odd though, is the number of HP Setup transmitters I come across.

@Dock is still an illogical crock

"Not only is the dock illogical, but it clutters your screen with icons for lots of programs that you aren't even using at that time, therefore distracting the user from the task that they are trying to perform."

No it isn't. The dock isn't even on my screen yet I use it all the time. All the screen space is mine. This browser window comes right to the bottom of my screen. The icons are always in the same place (unless you have magnification turned on - which is for newbies only). There's nothing random about it. I have mine arrange so that the apps I am likely to be running all the time are at one end, My productivity apps are in the middle and my recreation apps are at the other end.

The only time the dock changes is if you open an app that isn't already in the dock. Its icon will appear at the right hand end of the application section and will remain there until you kill it, the others will shrink slightly in size to make room for the newcomer, and then grow a little when it goes away.

The only thing I agree with you about is the stupid fluorescent ball to indicate running apps. In Tiger (the previous version of OSX) and its predecessors, the fluorescent ball was a blatantly obvious black triangle. Clear as day. The ball is too transparent and too easy to not see.

That's why I run an app called TigerDock. It still has the balls but they are obvious and easy to see.

Using the dock is like typing. I've been using macs for a long time now and when I have to work on a PC I get really frustrated that the command key is in a different place, as are the @ and the ". My fingers know where they want to go to find those keys. they dock is the same, my hand knows where to mouse to to get a particular app - even though I can't see the dock until the mouse gets there.

@Mick F

"I love these head in sand comments. I don't think Mac owners know how close they are to the first real OS X virus, when it hits it will hurt - big time. The more people moving to Mac's with this "no-one can hurt me" attitude, the more virus writers will target the OS"

Well Mick, they've been saying that for an awful long time now. Yes there's been some proof of concepts but....

As for me - I'm just going to clean pounds I've saved out of my sand hole.

@Vaidotas Zemly

Been using macs for 15 years and never missed those keys - whatever they do.

Re Bloodhounds

"In reality they didn't live up to their hype, and we are now several generations of manned fighters further on."

Of course they didn't - no-one invaded us to be shot down.

Of course we are - you can't support a national defence industry just producing SAMs.

@Hmmm

I thought it was Nell Flanders

That's one hell of a terrier

to eat a wrapped double-decker bus.

I thought this was about curry.

because there are times.....

@KenBW2

Well excuse me for knowing about places in southern England. I also know about places in France and Holland and Germany - Oh yes and Lancashire!

Did I mention anything about being a southerner - or is that a conclusion you just jumped to - I might be a Dutchman for all you know.

If I were you, I'd get some Boddingtons down your throat before you choke on an errant apostrophe.

@ Webster & several others

Reading through the supplied links about Risc OS predating the dock - that is true but., according to Wiki (or at least the bits I've read), the Risc 'task bar' was NOT drag and drop. an app was used to put an icon into the task bar. Similarly, a document could not be opened by the simple act of dropping it onto the relevant icon in the task bar extra mouse clicking was required.

My first mac came with OS7.1 or 7.2 (I can't remember now) and it had a dock then, it was called Launcher (it's still there in OS 9). It was truly drag and drop. It was configurable so that the user could set up subsets of apps or folders that appeared as buttons across the top with icons from the selected set showing underneath. (mine had buttons for Application, Games, Internet, Utilities, and Images (that contained icons to all my different Portfolio catalogues.)). An App could be added to a button just by dropping its icon on the button or into an open subset by dropping it in the open window.

A document (or group of apps) could be opened just by dropping it on the relevant app icon - regardless of whether the app was running or not - also a document created with one app (MS Word for example) could be dropped onto the ClarisWorks icon (assuming you had the translators installed) and the doc would open up in CW. Similarly a jpeg (which would normally open in picture-viewer if double-clicked) could be opened in Photoshop just by dropping it onto the PS icon).

All that (as far as I can tell) was not available in any other system. (certainly not Windows 95 - which wasn't even around!)

With regard to the magnification 'feature' in the OSX dock - I don't know anyone who uses it after the first week. (Except for those who haven't realised that it can be turned off.)

@ Graham Lockley

"The point behind turn-by-turn traffic systems (TomTom et al) is that you dont need to look at the screen while driving(spoken instructions) and a little common sense usually means you avoid driving into rivers."

Unfortunately, as El Reg regularly reports, common sense and GPS often rarely go together.

@ A fashion 'victem' writes

Too True. I'd much rather get on with my work AND look good than get all sweaty fighting a hideous looking PC.

Once again it's interesting reading the comments on this type of thread - Most of the Mac users (in fact in this instance all of them) are not complaining about the issue - they just get on with life. Whereas the MS crowd start crowing and hurling abuse - really irrational. No not really, they are furious with themselves for having made the wrong decision and feel that this way they can justify themselves.

For those irrationalistas, I've been using macs since time, and I don't have this issue (or all the other issues that allegedly make macs so abysmally awful).

The murder was subcontracted out

So Tesco did it.

Twasn't me

But the first time I heard it was on Radio 4's "The Now Show" during one of Marcus Brigstock's tirades against Blaine (or was it BT broadband?).

MB has had this 'thing' about Blaine for quite a long time so it probably is his invention. Wikipedia has a quote from MB dated 2003 about the London dangle.

I have a feeling that twatdangle came in a piece that MB did after Blaine's failed underwater stunt in 2006.

tomatoes

I'm really confused. What is actually meant by subcontracting? Certainly not "buying tomatoes".

I go to Tesco and buy tomatoes. That's all I do. Or I might to to Mr Patel at the corner and buy some of his tomatoes.

Mr Patel gets up very early and goes to Covent Garden Market to buy his tomatoes from the Wholesaler.

During the night, the Wholesaler took delivery of 40 tonnes of tomatoes he had ordered from Mr Van Der Molen in Holland.

As Fluke would have it, Tesco buys its tomatoes directly from Mr Van Der Molen.

So far I can't see any 'subcontracting' going on. It's all BUYING goods.

Now Mr Van Der Molen has 400 Hectares of Glasshouse growing tomatoes and employs a staff of 80 permanent employees. As tomato harvesting is fairly labour intensive, one of his staff, Mr De Groot is responsible for organising the casual labour needed for the picking.

Mr De Groot has a regular group of casuals that he calls on as and when required and pays them directly. However, he also has a contract with an agency to supply pickers when he requires extra hands.

There is the first 'contract' where subcontracting can start.

As I understand it, this would be the A. B would be between the agency and whoever next and then on to the final casual D who would end up working in Mr Van Der Molen's greenhouses.

I cannot see how Tesco could be held responsible should D turn out to be an illegal.

Following the logic in the article, Mr Patel would also be responsible.

I only wish young Ivana was here at the moment. Contracts and contract law are her cheese and toma... sorry, bread and butter.

@Robert E A Harvey

The day i arrive at work in a fish is the day I.......er...arrive in a fish.

Just a crow a little. I had the pleasure of a ride in an Airship Industries er. fish sometime back in the 80s. They had a couple flying at Farnborough and I managed to bags me a ride over the swimming pools of Weybridge.

@ Austin & popper

Statistics are one thing - but in my practical experience, London isn't well covered.

Image courtesy Car

I've been trying to get one of these courtesy cars for ages - but every time someone runs into me the garage gives me a nasty nissan.

Seeing as there's no exhaust pipe then I recon the other part of the hybrid is nuclear.