* Posts by simon gardener

56 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Jul 2008

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Apple bestows first hardware upgrades in years upon neglected iPad Mini and Air lines

simon gardener

the old jokes are the... old jokes

I love a bit of snark as much as the next man but how many times does the Reg need to pretend that saying "if you a need a stylus to operate a tablet they've blown it" has anything to do with the availability of an optional precision instrument for people who wish to produce art? Newer, better jokes please Reg-people. This one was mildly funny the first time, less so the next few but now... well, just a bit sad. You can do better than this.

iPhone XS: Just another £300 for a better cam- Wait, come back!

simon gardener

The future of the SE

I managed to bag an iPhone SE from GiffGaff for only £199 a week before Apple culled them from their line up. Given the large discounts from retailers everywhere, I suspected that was coming.

As someone with relatively small hands I don't want a bigger phone so I was little disappointed by the fact its gone away but not particularly surprised. And here's my personal theory...

The iPhone SE was too cheap for Apple to upgrade and still make the margins they like to make, so they've taken it away from the market, leaving the iPhone 7 as the 'budget' phone at £450.

They leave the small phone off the market for long enough, about a year, that everyone gets used to the fact the £450 is the entry level iPhone price. Then they bring out a new SE , same size but with no home button and a notch with faceID on the top not at the old £350 but at the new 'low' entry price of £450 or maybe 500. Apple keep their margins and we get a small phone again.

12 months. I'm telling you. I've read the tea leaves.

Apple macOS Mojave: There's goth mode but developers will have to wait for the juicy stuff

simon gardener

Re: Wow! 32-bit Bento borked !

Can't speak to other 32 bit apps but Mojave certainly has done something more than pop up a warning when it comes to discontinued, but still without a good replacement, 32-bit database app Bento.

When I type something in a field in Bento on Mojave, I have to wait 5-10 seconds for the characters to start to appear individually. Whatevers been done under the hood has totally ruined the app's performance.

Annoyingly, Apple has removed the ability to download a version of High Sierra and Sierre from Mojave so I can't build a seperate partition with High Sierra on.

I'm not against change but Apples refusal to let me get hold of High Sierra has me slightly miffed to say the least !

The grand-plus iPhone is the new normal – this is no place for paupers

simon gardener

Re: Exchange rate

currently $999 = 762 + 20%VAT (the US price doesnt include sales tax) and you get £912

It's not as bad as it was when £1 = $1.5, then $999 would have been £799 inc tax.

simon gardener

Re: SE gone - so am I :-(

The SE was £350 on the apple store until they disappeared it yesterday.

In recent months they were clearing the channel through 3rd party retailers at huge discounts - I got mine for £199 at giffgaff a month ago - just checked still available.

Great smart phone at a stunning price.

simon gardener

No surprise the SE vanished

Exactly one month ago I brought a brand new SE from GiffGaff for £199. Lots of stores were selling it for £250, I think John Lewis had it at £270 while Apple were still pricing it at £350. Apple doesn't give its retailers that much of a margin on their devices so it was clear they were using third parties to clear the supply chain of the SE.

Its a fantastic device and for someone with fairly small hands like me the only attractive phone in the lineup.

Hopefully it'll last a good few years :)

Wallet-snatch hack: ApplePay 'vulnerable to attack', claim researchers

simon gardener

count me in the sceptical group when it comes to jailbreaking. i know a lot of people with iPhones and don't know a single one who has in years. I'd be staggered if 20% of the people I know who own iPhones had heard of the concept of jailbreaking their phones.

Who do you want to be Who? VOTE for the BBC's next Time Lord

simon gardener

the missing option in your poll

the best and most interesting actor that can get to commit to at least 4 years

simon gardener

"I'm the Doctor, but probably not the one you expected"

Its time to go back in time and give Paul McGann a few seasons as the 8th Doctor.

The 199x US tv Movie was frankly dreadful on many levels but McGann was great and when they did that very short little online Night of The Doctor episode just ahead of the 50th anniversary episode he shone.

Cant think of a single reason not to give the man a decent run at the role.

MacBooks are so hot right now. And so is Mac OS X malware

simon gardener

Re: been saying it for decades...

oh look - a troll - isn't it cute

Doctor Who: Even the TARDIS key can't unpick the chronolock in Face the Raven

simon gardener

Re: 9/10

Moffat seems to be into his long trails and they've been boring me . The Ponds, who i enjoyed had a half season of they'll be leaving soon. then we go the belaboured dragged out "she's the impossible girl".Then they kept her around for another year, then she was supposed to leave and changed her mind and for some reason we had to have her back for another year. I'm still dreading another press conference where she announces she's changed her mind and will do another season.

Apple quietly swaps out MacBook Retina displays to fix skin-peeling stains

simon gardener

Good as gold when i had this problem

I had problems with the coating on my macbook pro. When I took it in to the apple store a few months back they asked if in had ever used a chemical cleaner on it. I, truthfully, replied "No" and they took my computer and swapped the screen for a new one same day.

I've also had the motherboard swapped out on this machine when it refused to boot one morning.

I had a previous model well out of its 3 year extended warrantee period have a few issues - one a graphics card - swapped out for free as it was a known issue . the other a problem with a fan that had become very noisy - they charged me for the part but not the work - a grand total of about 16 quid, if memory serves me right.

I had a nearly three years old iPhone 5 where the battery was swelling slightly cause an issue with the screen. Sat down at he genius bar 10 minutes later they gave me a brand new phone.

From my experience if you go in and talk politely to the staff and have a genuine grievance then they appear to have a lot of latitude to help you beyond the warrantee period.

Let's all binge on Blake’s 7 and help save the BBC ... from itself

simon gardener

Have you betrayed Us...

Have you betrayed Us... Have you betrayed me ?

Time to face the Apple Music: Spotify looks worried, and rightly so

simon gardener

Re: 13% marketshare

Spotify doesn't need to lose for Apple to win - or vice versa - the market place is big enough for competition.

I would argue the importance of the percentages that you quote.

A large percentage of the Android share will be the very low end of the market, phones that people bought because they are very cheap. That kind of consumer is far less likely to pay for a monthly streaming service.

Apple extends idiot-tax operation, makes devs pay to fix Safari snafus

simon gardener

getting better and cheaper for the average dev

Safari extension developers that are exclusively that must be a tiny number.

At the same time, the changes mean you don't have to pay twice to release mac and iOS apps.

So in all likelihood Apple have probably done something that costs their developer membership revenue substantially.

greedy Apple , bad Apple ???

So long, Lenovo, and no thanks for all the super-creepy Superfish

simon gardener

No, you need to do less

...and we realized we needed to do more."

No, you need to do less. For example, try not accepting money to install crapware on computers.

Show more Canadian made porn, insists Canadian government

simon gardener

I've a Canadian friend who might do well out of this

I've a Canadian friend who might do well out of this. His parents, Mr and Mrs Harder, named him Randy. It wasn't until he started meeting Brits that he knew they had given him a porn name. Apparently randy doesn't have the same meaning over that side of the pond .

Apple fanbois DENIED: Mac Pro deliveries stalled until April

simon gardener

a,b,c or d

Apple pushes back ship date for Mac Pro to April. Is this because

a) Demand is way higher than expected.

b) Apple are having problems building the units.

c) Apple are having problems with getting sufficient components from suppliers.

d) all of the above.

Apple RESURRECTS the iPhone 4: report

simon gardener

seems an odd thing to do

Seems an odd thing to do considering how poorly the iPhone 4 performs with iOS 7. I had one, I know. iOS 7 seriously downgraded the iPhone 4 experience. The 4s is perfectly fine on iOS 7. That might make sense but to keep selling a phone that is, frankly, piss-poor at running the current os makes little sense to me.

Apple plans to waggle iNormous 4½-incher in fanbois' faces

simon gardener

Die "Phablet" Die

Can't we all just agree on Trannyphone and be done with it :)

Same principle as the overlarge glasses used by cross dresser to make their hands appear smaller.

Light, fast ... and pricey: Toshiba's Portégé Z30 – now THIS is an Ultrabook

simon gardener

The hinges - are they white plastics ?

The hinges - are they white plastics? - the thing looks damn ugly

Yes... I'm a sad, macbook pro using, apple worshipper but please , think of the children !

Tube be or not tube be: Apple’s CYLINDRICAL Mac Pro is out tomorrow

simon gardener

Re: I thought I'd seen it all...

I don't think you are Apple's target customer. You are bashing a powerhouse of a machine that is also incredibly transportable, allowing people, whose jobs don't confine themselves to one office space, to take that power with them on jobs.

And your alternative is to buy a load of old computers from schools and link them all up into a render farm.

I can't see old Tim Cook and his mates losing much sleep over your opinion.

simon gardener

Re: Shame

I think you misunderstand the market for this computer. I would be amazed at the price they are if 5% of them were used as desk jewellery. This is aimed at a pro market. And those prices are the base models. The likelihood is the average customer is going to spec their machine way above the minimum. And then use it.

MPs back call to boycott low-taxed tat from Amazon over Xmas

simon gardener

Re: Do what we want, not what we say

Well said - saved me writing it

Like iPads? Like stuff called AIR? Here's our REVIEW ROUNDUP-squared

simon gardener

Re: Quote.... It's just an iPad, FFS

A slightly thinner washing machine wouldn't wash as many clothes and thus be a failure

a portable device that sheds a relatively large amount of weight , loses a chunk of size while improving performance sounds like a win to me , no matter the manufacturer

Digital radio may replace FM altogether - even though nobody wants it

simon gardener

Re: DAB Bashing - landfill

5 years? - possibly for tvs but many people keep theirs for much longer.

When it comes to radios and stereo equipment I would have thought much longer then 5 years would be the norm. At my parents home most of their radio kit is at least 10 years old, some much older. It works as well as it ever did and they have no intention of replacing working equipment. Rightly so.

Forcing people to replace working equipment at their own expense is ridiculous. The waste would be huge. Imagine it tens of, possibly a 100, million radios being thrown away. All working , all adding to landfill.

Mac OS X Mavericks 'upgrade' ruins iWorks

simon gardener

A little confusion here - not as bad as it initially seems

Don't panic !

When your mac updates to the new iWork apps, it leaves the previous versions in place. So, they're not gone and if you found them useful a few days ago then nothings changed, they are just as useful and fully functioned as they were.

What has just happened? Well it looks like Apple has stripped back functionality so that the iOS, mac and the web versions of the iWork apps are 100% compatible.

I'd be surprised if they didn't start adding back in features to the mac version and bring those feature to the iOS and web version in lock step. It'll take time, but i imagine it'll slowly happen.

If it doesn't, they didn't remove the previous version

The one thing to watch out for is the new version will probably update the file format and make it impossible for the old version to open it.

However, if you are on a Mac, you should be using time machine and letting that back everything up so any old versions of files are accessibly anyway.

All this fuss, anyone would think this was FinalCutProGate!

Dear Apple: Want to stay in business? Make an iPhone people can afford

simon gardener

reg@20thCenturyFish.co.uk

Ah yes ... DOOMED again !

Would these be the same bunch of analysts who said apple was DOOMED if they didn't release a netbook for less than 300$ ? Look how badly that worked out for them.

its amazing how often Apple are DOOMED and yet their sales and keep growing and their profits remain obscenely healthy.

<sigh>

Apple blings up new iMac with latest Intel chips, next-gen Wi-Fi

simon gardener

Re: Can we PLEASE get to grips with this "Apple are expensive" line?

I just spent 30s on Dell's site too and could only get a machine that ran something called Windows

Nokia quiz: Do you know what a phablet is?

simon gardener

reg@20thCenturyFish.co.uk

Phoneslab is fine , better than some of the dreadful names out there. However, I'm still plumping for Trannyphone - a phone so large it makes a transvestive's hands look small.

My 10 cents on the microsoft nokia thing - Winokia - sounds like a great place to be from

'Liberator' 3D printed gun enters London's V&A Museum

simon gardener

Misleading headline

Damn that misleading headline !

I got all excited about the possibility of making my own Blake's 7 gun.

Huawei Ascend Mate: The phondleslab for the skint

simon gardener

Re: Christ Almighty

Too right - the word is Trannyphone.

Samsung Mega 6.3: Enter the PHONDLESLAB

simon gardener

can i be the first to propose...

can i be the first to propose Trannyphone as the new noun to describe these larger phones

Stupidly, I spelt it wrong when i submitted it to urban dictionary a while back.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tranyphone

Asus will bung 'Nexus 7 2' fondle-droids on Blighty's shelves this month

simon gardener

Re: Specs make the iPad Mini look REALLY crap.

Yes, quickly now, before the rush !

Chrome, Firefox blab your passwords in a just few clicks: Shrug, wary or kill?

simon gardener

Re: safari too - But it REQUIRES the users system password

Safari requires the user password - just like the keychain does. Without the password all you can see are a list of the sites you have passwords stored for and a bunch of dots.

Review: Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock

simon gardener

really?

Many of us would prefer to have the functionality we need and 280 + a fortune on cables in our pockets

Not quite sure how inconvenienced you've been by a laptop thats a few mm thicker and a few hundred milligrams lighter, but if you then have to carry a breakout box with you then the weight/size argument hold no water at all. Of course your solution could be to have two of these @ £280 so you can have the functionality at home and work. If thats the case I would hazzard a guess that you are earning a lot more than the average person or that your company buys your IT for you and its not coming out of your own pocket.

The idea of thunderbolt is lovely but its failure so far is reflected in how few thunderbolt devices are out there and are getting bought by the average user.

Firewire was great and we paid more for our firewire drives because it was faster - but then we could get the cables for just a few quid.

Thunderbolt is sadly pricing itself out of the market.

Shame.

What happened to comics for kids? Hell, what happened to COMICS?

simon gardener

Re: Am I the only one who was left cold by Halo Jones? It just didnt reach me."

Yes.

Apple iPad Mini 8in tablet review

simon gardener

Re: The screen

I have a 1st generation iPad - it apparently has a camera spaced shape inside where the camera should have sat.

but they kept that for the 2.

Apple do leave out features so they can be in a factor in the upgrade cycle. I would be very surprised if next year there isnt a iPad mini with a retina display. it might get ever so slightly thicker like the old new iPad did.

Apple have a longer history of maximising revenue at the customers expense - and i say this as someone who loves his 2008 macbook pro and his macMini and his 1st gen ipod touch and his hand-me down iphone4 (from GF who just upgraded) and pretty much every other apple product i've bought (except the ipod 3rd gen with those rubbish buttons at the top - what was Mr Ive and his team smoking that day ?).

My favourite trick of theirs was the bait and switch on the old plastic MacBooks - the bottom of the line had a dvd player/cd burner for years after dvd burners were standard and, i suspect with the way volumes of units work out , they were probably more expensive for apple to source than dvd burners - but hey drag them into the store on this price and get them to cough up the extra when they realise they might want to burn a dvd. Typically Apple scummy move

Thats business though - they aren't the only company out there that behaves this way , they just make better more desirable products

<sigh>

simon gardener

Re: Sheltered Life

your pockets are the wrong size.

British judge: Say you're sorry Apple... this time like you MEAN it

simon gardener

I thought it was funny

I'm not sure what the problem is - Apple were ordered to put up the court ruling and they did

thats the first paragraph .

They then quote from the judgement against them - did they misquote the Judge ? Apparently not. Its the Judges statement and quite frankly this must have been the best lose that apple could have had - the Judge says how lovely Apple's stuff is and how Samsung's stuff isn't as cool and therefore not a close copy. Samsung must have been really happy when that ruling came down!

Surely if that is the Judges opinion on which he made his ruling then apple have the right to quote it alongside the verdict. Really, did anyone expect anything else.

as for the other paragraphs quoting their wins in other jurisdiction - cheeky but also truth.

Apples posting has to be the only funny thing in this whole patent fiasco

Dredd movie review

simon gardener

Peckham

I didnt even realise Peckham was a real place that existed outside of "Only Fools and Horses" . Now ill be travelling 1 1/2 hours across London to get to a 2d showing of dread. Drokk this 3D nightmare

Sony deploys 11in Vaio to battle Apple Air

simon gardener
FAIL

El Reg in Apple Troll Clickbait Shocker!

El Reg in Apple Troll Clickbait Shocker!

thats it

Chief Rabbi: I admire Jobs and Apple and use my iPad daily

simon gardener
FAIL

Holy Backtracking Batman

reminds me of two things

1) every cartoon when the character runs off the cliff and realises theres no ground underneath him anymore and tries to screech to a halt before plummeting into the abyss

and

2) that delicious time when the archbishop of canterbury in a disastrously failed attempt to look hip and down with the kids had his staff release a statement saying he could name all FOUR of the Spice Girls

Apple iMac 27in

simon gardener

yes but no but yes

you're probably right in what you could do with the money except possible a tankful of premium petrol - have you seen what that costs today ????

Acer Aspire Ethos 8943G 18.4in laptop

simon gardener
FAIL

eye catching???

greeted by a rather eye-catching keyboard"

eye-sore more like

from the photo the laptop looks like it fell off the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down.

either the reviewer is related to the "designer" who decided to have a silver-ish keyboard area and a black palmrest area or is taking backhanders to say nice things about the product

or perhaps i don't have a clue about aesthetics.

heres hoping its not me

plus doesnt having a numeric keyboard on a laptop mean you end up having to sit off-center to type ?

Apple bins iPhone covers

simon gardener

Thin margins? Not likely ! But who cares. Move Along . Nothing to see here

Jobs possibly (but probably not ) saw a bubble on someones iphone and decided it was ugly and he wasnt going to help that happen. So lets all buy android phones, that'll teach him !

get a life people , if you want a screen protector there are a myriad of cheaper places to buy one

if you want an iPhone or a Google phone go for it . get on on their merits and their usefulness to you

Now, why isnt there a little graphic of someone yawning I can add to this post ?

iPhone ego clash costs Flash at Virgin America

simon gardener
Badgers

downside to the death of Flash

I was chatting to an adobe exec the other day about flash and mentioned that while i didnt have big problems with i do run click to flash to block Flash content because Flash adds really bug me ..

He pointed out that if flash goes away those adds will be implemented in HTML and i wont be able to get rid of them

Go Flash Go!

Designer pitches iPad gaming wheel

simon gardener
FAIL

Poundland

fantastic ! probably end up going for a quid like the Golf Club, Gun, Tennis Racquet and ... wait for it... Yes ...Steering Wheel shaped wii remote holders that i saw this afternoon in uber Tat shop Poundland.

where incidentally you can get 5 curly wurlys for a pound :

(while stocks last

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