Meet the magical irePhone 4

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

I’ve invented a new smartphone. It’s called the irePhone 4 and it has a ten-hour standby time, which it wiles away by murdering kittens and sending lewd pictures to nuns. Very occasionally it will explode. Despite this, I’m confidently predicting that sales of the irePhone will be stratospheric, because I’m pretty certain the internet will have exhausted itself of apocalyptic hysteria by the time it launches.

I’m sad to say I missed Act One of the iPhone 4 show, though I believe there was clapping. Just in case anybody missed the hijinks, it turns out that once the clapping subsided people discovered their iPhone 4 drops calls, which is a bit like dropping grenades except nobody gets hurt, it doesn’t matter all that much, and we only care because Apple makes people sooooo mad.

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Beware the iPad smallprint

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

I was leafing through the 3G bundles offered with the iPad on Apple’s site when I spotted this lovely piece of small print.

Surely that should read “Unlimited per month – £25[1]”

“[1] Or nearest offer. We’re having a laugh, you might as well, too.”

I mean honestly, what are these people playing at?

Pivot: the future of Internet Explorer?

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

Being a tech journalist, it’s easy to become disillusioned by technology. Mind you, being a person, it’s easy to become disillusioned by people – the trick, in both cases, is expectation management.

I stalk through the tech world warily, automatically translating every “revolutionary” to “uninspired” and every “magical” to “probably pointless” until proven otherwise. Contrary to accusations, I’m neither cynical, nor hard-bitten. I’m experienced. And, more importantly, still sane. Which is why I still throw up in my throat whenever journalists cheer at press conferences.

This tactic had served me well these past years, but even so the recent product launches from Google and Apple have managed to be underwhelming. The iPad is the answer to a question never asked, and offered few surprises beyond the ridiculous price tag. Buzz and Wave were comically inept and so badly implemented I’m beginning to wonder if Google isn’t doing it on purpose to see how many times it has to kick the FTC before the privacy watchdog bites back.

Funnily enough, the only company getting it consistently right is Microsoft. Office Web Apps is shaping up nicely, Windows Phone 7 has a personality all its own and Windows 7 just works, unlike Vista – not so much an OS as a series of really bad ideas explored in painful detail. I’m still dubious about Internet Explorer 9. You can only judge a horse on the races run, which would make Microsoft’s next browser a three-legged mare with one eye and rabies, but otherwise the signs are positive.

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PC Pro perfects the iPad

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

We like the iPad, but there are problems. It’s too heavy for a start, meaning that if you hold it for longer than five minutes your hand falls off. This is most upsetting, especially when trying to open a packet of peanuts on a long flight.

Watching a film or reading a book using the iPad is thus out of the question, which is a real shame because the iPad’s screen is cooler than a rainbow made of  Cornettos. However, where Apple failed PC Pro will succeed.

Taking on the mantle forsaken by Jonathan Ive and his design team, we’ve come up with a solution to the iPad’s problems that’s practical, yet stylish. Elegant, yet simple. A solution which blends seamlessly with the iPad experience to deliver an entirely new, entirely perfected iPad. We give you – the PCProiPad (we’re still working on the name).

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Should Gizmodo have named the iPhone loser?

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010

It sounds like one of those lateral thinking puzzles.

Q. A man loses a phone in a bar and becomes an overnight celebrity. How?
A. When he’s an Apple employee and the phone in question is a prototype iPhone 4.

It’s indicative of the hysteria that surrounds Apple that even a man ploughing into a career cul-de-sac can become the subject of an unofficial Facebook page, uncountable column inches, and have his name printed on T-shirts.

There’s a lot of laughter on the web right now, though I doubt Powell’s joining in. Speculation suggests he’s going to lose his job, which is only right for the man who’ll go down in tech history as being responsible for the worst blunder in Apple’s PR history.

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YouTube embedded video error

Friday, April 16th, 2010

This YouTube error is stalking me across the internet. I’ve seen it popping up more and more frequently on embedded videos on our site, and others. The strange thing is, if you follow the link back to YouTube the video runs fine. Has anybody else experienced this, does anybody know how to make the pain stop?

Apple iPad in depth: the iBooks reading experience

Thursday, April 8th, 2010

How often and why do you read? These questions are crucial when contemplating the iPad’s iBooks app – Apple’s attempt to wrestle readers away from their Kindles and paperbacks.

Click here for our definitive iPad review

I’ve read a number of giddy reviews of iBooks in recent days, praising its layout, page turn animations and speed. This is the problem with asking a technology journalist to review an eBook reader. Nine times out of ten we’re going to review the technology, rather than the reading experience.

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PR, politics and money: the real reasons Google’s leaving China

Friday, March 26th, 2010

Talking about censorship on the internet is a doomed endeavour. Contrary to popular belief, the internet isn’t a forum for discussion, it’s a bullfight. Online articles are taunted and teased, while crowds of anonymous faces spit vitriol. In most cases the importance of the topic is almost directly proportionate to the weakness of the comments posted, as people flock to defend their already entrenched opinion and strike out at imaginary sleights – rarely adding anything of worth to the debate.

Constructive debate requires expertise and open-mindedness. Online debate could almost be defined by a lack of both. We don’t visit online articles to praise them. We come to bury them. This is my belief and I want you to understand how deeply it’s held, because I’m about to talk about censorship on the internet, or the appearance of it, at least.

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Ubuntu 10.4 beta is bloody brilliant

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010

I’ve been playing with the Ubuntu 10.4 beta for the past two days, and it’s bloody brilliant. You’re sick of hearing it, I know. Every Ubuntu release sends fanboys scrambling for the same, old script – the one where Ubuntu cracks the mainstream, crushes Windows and convinces the ignorant public that open source can cure cancer and inspire world peace.

In the same breath, Windows and Mac users tut, admire themselves in their glittering operating systems and wonder why they’d ever bother switching. Canonical is smart enough to recognise that most of us are entrenched with Windows or Mac OS X, and rather than demand you abandon them, it simply offers a ladder and a chance to peek at what lies on the other side.

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My brain can type!

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

I’ve just typed out the words ‘howdy chum’ with the power of my mind – which is incredible really because my mind has the wattage of a dead glow worm.

Credit for this remarkable feat goes to Intendix, a piece of software designed for people unable to communicate any other way. It’s on show at CeBIT, and about two seconds after seeing it demonstrated I’d badgered Clemens Holzner – the software’s developer – into letting me have a go.

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