iPhone 4

Well today’s the day, and my new shiny iPhone 4 is here !

Just a little bit of background. About 2 and a half years ago, I bought myself a 2nd Generation iPod Touch 32Gb. Since then, I’ve bought a 2x MacBook Pro’s, 2 x 27″ iMacs,  a Mac Mini, and a iPhone 3GS, a Time Capsule, and think I can be officially called an Apple fanboy.

My contract with Vodafone was up at the beginning of the year but I’ve waited until the release of the next generation of iPhone…and that’s today.

Now to be honest, I cheated a little, I couldn’t wait so bought an iPhone 3GS a couple of months ago. I went halves with C, and was bought with the understanding that it becomes hers as soon as I got the new one.

So what do I think ?……I love it !

First thing I notices was the size of it, having this in one hand and the 3GS in the other, there is a noticeable size difference, almost the same as between the iPod Touch and the 3GS.

The next thing was the screen….there have been may “experts” claiming that this isn’t actually “Retina display” due to the some discrepancy, I don’t really care, this screen is amazing ! Retina or not, it’s an amazing looking screen. The best way I can is switching from DVD to Bluray, but on a 3.5″ screen. Everything looks sharper, crisper with a lot more contrast.

As for the software itself, I’m now quite familiar with that, as the iOS 4 software was released a few days ago, and I’ve been playing with it since.

The camera features (flash, HD Recording, and FaceTime), I plan to put them to use at the weekend, and post shortly after, however initial impressions are a massive improvement over the 3GS, even the zoom functions works without looking too ugly.

The only think that I was kinda shocked with, is that fact that there’s no dock connector in the box, and Apple are charging £7 for a pack of 3.

I’m really delayed in posting this, thanks to Vodafone, I’ll not bother going into a full rant, but after 2 weeks of chasing, calling at the store, and the Apple store, I’ve been unable to get a micro sim…and ended up cutting mine down !

It’s still early days with the phone, and I’ll update with more info and photos later.

Below are the unboxing pics

Tags: Apple, Bluray, camera features, contrast, discrepancy, dock, everything, fanboy, few days, half, half years, hd recording, info, initial impressions, iphone, ipod, ipod touch, little bit, Mac Mini, massive improvement, next generation, pack, phone, rant, Retina, screen, software, store, time capsule, touch, vodafone, weekend, year, zoom

Apple iOS 4

When I moved from my Nokia E90 to iPhone, there were a few features missing that I used a lot. Being a “tidy freak”, I kept my application organised in folder. I’m also a big fan of Google Latitude and had this running in the background all the time, but these were scarifies I was willing to make to move across to the iPhone. As you can imagine I was overjoyed to find that not only were Folders coming to the next OS for the iPhone, but also “multitasking”. Now granted this isn’t the same multitasking that you get on the likes of Symbian S60, however for what I want it for (Background location), this made my day.

I guess I’m one of the lucky ones, I have an iPhone 3GS and on Thursday will be accepting the delivery of my new, shiny iPhone 4. This means I get to use the full functionality of the new OS, other people (iPhone 3G and before, iPod Touch 2G and before), will only have limited functionality (No multitasking).

So today’s the day, and iOS 4 is available for download, and obviously I’ve now downloaded it and have it installed.

The first think that stands out is the customised Home Screen Wallpaper. Now I know it’s a simple thing, but does really help to personalise your phone. This is something that I took for granted on the Symbian OS, and until it was gone, I started to miss it.

The next thing I did was created folders and started to drop apps into them, this was a god send, Apple have made it as easy as possible for you to do this, simple drag one app on top of another and voila a folder is created. The folder names are automatically named, eg Games, Reference, Social Network, and can only assume it does this based on the iTunes category, this can however be changed . Before I used to organise my application using the screens, Social Media, Weather (yeah, I have multiple weather apps), Shopping, Fitness, Media, Game Tracking, and Games. On OS3 you can have 16 apps per page, however the folders are only 12 apps. This does really clean up the iPhones real estate.

The Spell checker works a treat, I prefer it to it just randomly correcting as I type.

When I saw the email was “Even Better Mail”, I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I only have one mail box with all mail in (I use email forwarding for all my accounts, and have my google apps account as the central repository, and splitting my mail accounts using labels), so didn’t think I’d see a benefit, however, being a gmail user is was good to see “organize messages by threads”. It felt a lot more familiar. You get a number at the side of the email to tell you how many are in the chain, clicking on email brings up the “conversation”

Functions like iBooks, the ability to create playlists on the move weren’t something I was really interested in, as I’m more of an Audio book reader, and I prefer to organise my playlists on my Mac.

As for the other functions like Facetime, I guess I’m going to have to wait until Thursday.

I think I can now finally say, there are no features that I’m missing, and glad to be an iPhone owner, I’m sure that over the next few days, I’m going to find features I’ve not initially noticed, but will tweet about them as and when I find them.

edit: After playing with iOS 4 now for a good few hours, I’ve found a few more features. The 3GS does support the digital zoom function on the camera app, you just need to tap the screen once, and you’ll get a slider bar allowing your to zoom in.

The camera app has also been upgraded to include similar features to the Mac software iPhoto, in the way that it now sorts your photos by places and faces, and seems to be loads more accurate with the GPS location.

You also have the option of having 2 different wallpapers, one for the lock screen and one for the home screen. This option can be found on the 3GS under Setting >> Wallpaper.

You can also now change your Safari search engine by going into Setting >> Safari >> and changing the search engine from Google, to Yahoo! and Bing

Currently I only have 1 app on my iPhone that supports “background processing” and that’s Dropbox. If I set something uploaded, then close, this will continue to upload in the background.

Tags: 2g, 3g, 3gs, Download, drag one, Fitness, folder names, folders, freak, functionality, god send, google, ios, iphone, ipod, location, media game, media weather, nokia e90, one of the lucky ones, option, os3, page, phone, Safari, screen, screen wallpaper, screens, search, something, symbian os, Thursday, time, touch, type, voila, Weather, yeah

1password

For years now, I’ve been experimenting with different types of password management/virtual wallet software, but never found one that I’m 100% happy with…well, not until now !

When I bought my iPod Touch a couple of years ago, I found the most painful part of browsing, was entering my username and password into websites (as you can imagine the email address of ub3rg33k.co.uk isn’t very iPhone / iPod touch friendly). I tried many free and cheap iPhone apps which sort of did the job, but at best I could copy and paste the details to the site, 1password however just works !

1password comes from Agile Software Solutions, and to be honest is an absolute god send, not only is it a very good virtual wallet, it’s also a bookmark/username and password manager for the iPhone.

I tend not to carry my wallet around with me (unless I’m going shopping), and like the idea of still having all my details safely locked away in an iPhone app protected by AES encryption, for if I need them when out and about.

There are 2 levels of protection, either a simple 4 digit pin, or 4 digit pin and master password (for your more sensitive information)

Currently I have all my card details, my driving licence, passport, and logins to the majority of the sites I use, with username and password saved. I currently have my iPhone set to “10 attempts that the pin code, then delete”, this option is also present on the application too, so if somebody did get into my phone, they would then have the crack the next 4 digit pin, then my master password with 4 attempts.

The iPhone app is good, and I was quite lucky to have picked it up when it was free (now £3.99 for the standard version and £7.99 for the pro version), however I would be more that happy to pay the £3.99 now, if nothing else, I alway have my personal info with me, and never have to punch in my username and password into a site again.

Where 1password really excels is the desktop application (Currently only Mac, there is a beta version out for Windows). I recently wiped my data from my iPhone, I couldn’t really be bothered entering all my details back in to my previous virtual wallet software (Lockbox), which led me to look at other solutions. I googled 1password, and found there was a desktop app, that could sync with the iPhone ! Result !. Not only would this allow me to quickly populate all my information again, it also has browser integration too.

Once installed, it took me an hour or so to enter all my personal details and sync up, Success !

Now the browser integration, whenever I go to a website I get an option to save the login details, or if I’ve already got this saved, I have the option of logging in. If you don’t already have the details saved, you are given the option of adding the details to a folder, and to add tags, for easier searching at a later date.

Another massive benefit to me of using the browser integration is the fact that with it storing all your card details, it makes online shopping a breeze, just a simple click on the icon, select your credit card, and this will enter all the relevant details for you !

As I’ve got both an iMac and a MacBookPro, I wanted to find a way of syncing between the 2 machines, as I use them both an equal amount of time. I didn’t really want to keep backing up, copy to other, etc, as every time I go onto a new website, I would be adding to my database. This was were I discovered Dropbox, a pieces of software that allows you to sync between multiple machines, and with the cloud, however more about that in my Dropbox post.

1password may not be the cheapest option out there, but if works fantastically, and only wish I’d discovered it sooner. The single user licence is $39.95 and the Family version (5 users) is $69.95, however the iSlayer code will save you 20% !, I think the 5 user licence version cost me only £34, there is a fully functioning 30 day trail available from the website, and can’t recommend this product highly enough.

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