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Tuesday
Nov092010

Almost makes me want a Windows PC

I have in my time enjoyed the odd first person shooter. I have even been know to partake of on-line gaming with friends, but my skill level means that more often than not I end up a virtual corpse on an imaginary battlefield. My interest wains as the difficulty level increases and after a few weeks the launch icon gets moved to somewhere never to be double clicked again.

And then I see a video like this!

 

There is no actual in-game footage, but that was a great advert for a computer game. Even thought I know it will follow the same pattern of gradual lack of use followed by a decision not to delete the game it in case I might play it again, I want this game. The bigger problem today is that even with a boot camp install of Windows XP I suspect it may be just too much to ask of my two and half year old iMac. So I sadly will not get to experience the limitations of my gaming skills for this latest version of Call of Duty.

Although, my MacBook is newer. I wonder....

Saturday
Oct302010

Land Rover Ho!

After 11 hours and 450 miles, Nick and I safely return with his new Land Rover from the far North. Well, Leeds to be exact. Who knew there were parts of England between Birmingham and Scotland?

Some photos from the trip

http://www.conormulhern.com/one-man-and-his-land-rover/

Wednesday
Oct272010

"is that an iPad, is it any good?"

It's been seven months since the Apple iPad went on sale in the US, and almost 5 months since the iPad I ordered turned up at my front door. Despite being 5 months old I still get people coming up to me in restaurants asking me can they have a look at the iPad and what do I think of it.

My usual answer is to explain that while the iPad is a computer it needs to be thought of more as an appliance. If you can cope with the iPad's application model then it is capable of doing 90% of the tasks people typically use a laptop for, but its great advantage is that it hides the fact that it's really a computer and focuses on the task at hand, all while being small, wonderfully portable and offering battery life that no portable computer can offer.

Looking back it's interesting to recall the many predictions of impending failure that greeted the launch of the iPad. Most of the negative reviews revolved around the cost of the iPad, missing features and the proprietary nature of the iPad. What has become clear since the iPad started to make its way in the hands of end users is that the things the iPad does well more than make up for those limitations. A lot of those negative reviews missed the fact that for a large number of people the computer actually gets in the way of the things we want to do with our computers. Whether it's the 10 minute boot time on a corporate laptop or the constant battle with virus, malware and system updates on our home PCs before we can get to the task at hand, there are few devices in the home nowadays that require as much attention as our computers. With the iPad Apple is offering a device that can perform a wide range of tasks very well rather then the traditional PC platform that can do anything, but requires a lot of management. Ignoring those who have ideological issues with the iPad or Apple, there will always be a group of users for whom the iPad won't work, either because the 10% of activities the iPad can't do are too important to them, or they believe they are too important.
Enjoying photos on an iPad while on holiday
The iPad's ability to perform a subset of normal computing activities better than any other device was brought home to me during a weeks sailing Holiday this year. I had previously travelled with a 15" laptop so that I could view and backup photos taken during the holiday, but this year I used my iPad to view those photos. While this is a task that is easy to do on a laptop, a laptop is a rather intrusive device and isn't the easiest thing to hold in you hand. But this year I found that the iPad was being passed from person to person around tables in bars and restaurants. Never had so many people been able to look at photos I had taken on the day I had taken them, and I believe that it was because the iPad was so easy and convenient to use. But as great as the iPad was for sharing photos, I had to bring a Netbook running Linux so that I could backup those all important holiday photos. While the iPad and Netbook together were smaller and lighter than the 15" laptop I used the previous year, there was still that 10% of tasks required an additional computer.


I have started travelling abroad for work again and a computer is important not just so I can do my job but also as a communication and entertainment device. My company provided laptop is simply a work tool and is not the easiest of devices to live with, so when working abroad I tend to leave my work laptop locked in a drawer or chained to a desk and use a second laptop for the things I want to do. Over the years I've had laptops of various sizes running Windows, Linux and OS X that I used to entertain me and keep me in communication with friends and family. I've always been comforted by the fact that had I wanted to, I could do almost anything with these machines. But it was on rare occasions that I actually did anything that required the power of a 'real computer' and I never weighed that 'freedom to do anything' against the fact that I was lugging unwieldy laptops and accessories through Airport security twice a week.

So for the next few weeks I will be conducting an experiment. While working abroad I will travel with only my iPad. The corporate laptop will be chained to my desk and everything I want to do while outside the office will be done on an iPad. I will read books, watch movies, make blog posts, communicate using email and Skype, all while using only an iPad.

I don't think tablet devices like the iPad will replace 'fully functional' computers, but I truly believe that for most of us they offer a easier way to do the things we actually use our computers for today.

 

Wednesday
Oct132010

Really: A good Windows advert?

Now that the Microsoft answer to Google's Android and Apple's iOS is almost here Microsoft's advertising people seem to be awake. They never had the most compelling adverts for their products, but then they never needed to, when you have 95% of the market you don't need really great adverts. As clever as Apple's "I'm a Mac" adverts were they never came close to helping Apple get even 10% of the desktop OS market.

But Microsoft now finds itself in a real fight. Despite a 10 year head start their share of the smart phone market has collapsed to 15% and Apple's iOS has grabbed 25% of that market in just over three years. Microsoft are spending $400 million on the product launch and when you compare that to the $200 million spent on Windows 7 or the $100 million on Windows 95 it's clear that Microsoft want/need smartphone market share. And so we get to the advert, and in this case, an advert that I actually rather like.

 

 

However, as much as I enjoyed it, I don't actually get the message. The advert tells us that "Windows Phone 7 is the phone to save us from our phones", but I don't need saving from my phone, and while Windows Phone 7 may be "designed to get you in and out and back to life", I'm not exactly sure what that is supposed to mean, I'm rarely not 'in life'. My suspicion is that Microsoft are now selling us on the idea that the vast range of applications for Apple's iOS devices are distracting and preventing us from getting back to our lives. Which is rather ironic given the years they spent selling us on the idea that the vast range of windows applications was one of the key advantages of the windows eco system.

 

Having watched this advert I don't see what would make a Windows Phone 7 a compelling purchase. People need a reason to give up their iPhones, Androids and Blackberrys, and apart from being shiny and new, the advert for Microsoft's latest offering doesn't show me why it's different to what we already have. Apple offers a unified hardware software experience, Blackberry has the corporate market sewn up and Android is free (and can be customised by the manufacturers and network operators). At this point I see no reason to buy a Windows Phone, but to be fair, unless Steve Jobs burnt my house down, I'm unlikely to give up my iPhone for anything else on the market.
Tuesday
Oct052010

1 in 3,161

After 6 days of sailing in mixed weather conditions, 120 Nautical miles as the crow flies (rather than as a yacht sails) and a total of 3161 images captured on my camera, this is my favourite shot from my recent holiday in Greece.

 

We hadn't planned to anchor just off the town of Koiladhia where I took this shot, but the previous day our flotilla's skipper discovered that another flotilla was heading to the same town as he had planned to, so to to avoid having to find space for two flotillas in the original destination he changed our plans and we headed to Koiladhia . 

 

By the time we had dropped anchor in the bay and opened our beers it was just after 5:30 in the evening. We didn't have the greatest weather all week and there was some cloud creating interesting effects with the sun.  I had tried to get a similar shot just after we arrived but despite some experimenting I wasn't happy with the results, the shots seemed boring or empty. This shot was taken at 6:15pm, about an hour before sunset. Rob, our engineer for the week, was heading from the lead boat to check on one of the other yachts in our group and as he made his way he passed between me and the sun. Despite my previous lack of success at capturing what I wanted, I picked up my camera, composed, focused and fired off a few shots with little expectation of success. It wasn't until the following day when I imported the JPEG versions of the previous days shots onto my iPad that I realised I had captured the shot I was looking for. It's not that dissimilar to the earlier shots I had taken, but capturing Rob in the tender added what was missing from that earlier attempt. Despite taking a total of 3161 shots that week, this is the one shot that I looked at and knew I got exactly the shot I had imagined.