Posted by Ub3rG33k on Apr 4, 2010 in
Apple “Dear Mr Jobs, your work here is now done, it’s taking 2 years for me to fully make the transition to Apple, however my quest is now complete, and apologies for taking so long…”
If I was writing a letter to Steve Jobs, it would go something like that 
Well, my journey started a couple of years ago, with a iPod Shuffle, then iPod Touch, then MacBook Pro, then iMac and finally I’ve got a iPhone.
Every device I’ve bought from Apple has wow’d me in 1 way or another, and they “just work”
I’ve been fighting getting an iPhone but I just couldn’t wait any longer. The last year has been a bit of a roller coaster to be honest. I remember reading tech blogs saying that o2 were due to loose their exclusivity. Then there were reports that Orange would be selling the iPhone, and even Tesco, but no sign from Vodafone. Then finally Vodafone jumped on the bandwagon, and finally started to sell the iPhone.
As I’ve been with Vodafone for as long as I can remember, I wanted to stick with them. My plan was to wait for them to release the phone, then buy a pay as you go version, stick my sim card in this, and wait for you contract to run out, however…..Vodafone for some reason don’t want to do a Pay as you go version ?
Anyway, my contract ran out in January, and though “Well, the next gereneration iPhone will be out in a couple of months, so I can wait. After reading some recent tech blogs, it seems that the new iPhone HD won’t be officially announced until the next WWDC (World Wide Developers Conference) (Monday, June 28, 2010 to Friday July 2, 2010), and each time a new phone is announced, there is normally another month delay….Grrr !
So I made the decision and bought an iPhone 3GS from fleabay, use this until the new phone is out, then extend my contract, and stick it back on fleabay
I think I got myself a bargain, Brand New Sealed, Black, 3GS, 16Gb for £420 delivered, and on Thursday it turned up !.
Now I’ve been a iPod Touch owner for a couple of years now, but the iPhone takes it that one step further, granted my iThingy now makes calls, is able to send texts, and works without being on wi-fi, but it’s the other little thing that really do it for me. The location service is something that only kinda worked on the iPod touch, it’s nice to “select my location” and have everything map to me, and not the local exchange.
Another thing I’ve noticed is the speed difference !….Geez this thing is quick in comparison to my iPod Touch 2G, browsing, gaming, and well everything is just a lot quicker.
I so wish I’d taken the plunge a couple of years ago when they first came out, Love it !
Unboxing photos below, and again hats off to a designers for making the box look so cool !
Tags: 3gs, apologies, Apple, bandwagon, bargain brand, Brand New, contract, couple, dear mr, everything, exclusivity, Fleabay, HD, iphone, ipod, ipod shuffle, ipod touch, jobs, journey, letter, location, Mr Jobs, pay, phone, quest, roller coaster, sim card, something, Steve Jobs, Tech, Tesco, thing, touch, transition, version, vodafone, work, world wide developers conference, writing a letter, wwdc
Posted by Ub3rG33k on Sep 23, 2009 in
IPod Touch As some of you may know, in just over 2 weeks I’ll be heading to the Holiday Inn in Birmingham for Dimension Jump
XV, this year Red Dwarf Convention, and as we do a Red Dwarf podcast (ScutterCast), I thought it might me a good idea to record some footage while I was there.
I’ve been looking at a number of solutions and came up with the idea of using Audioboo from my iPod touch, then picking up the Audioboo feed using WP-o-Matic, which will then post the audio on the Red Dwarf Forum homepage, which will then tweet this out.
One major downside to using the method, was that the iPod Touch doesn’t have a built in microphone, although I do have the “earbud with built in microphone”, which would be find for recording my own voice, but probably a little intrusive if I wanted to record anyone else.
After a couple of days of looking at different mic solutions, I read a review over at iLounge and they did a mic comparison, the audio from the iPill sounded awesome, so decided to go with that. After an evening of trying to buy one, it seemed that these are only available in the states, and they seemed to be out of stock, having heard the quality difference, I was adamant that this was the mic I wanted, in a bid of desperation, I decided eBay it was. Luckily, I found a company in the Republic of Ireland that had these in stock, and instantly bought.
This morning the mic turned up, and I’ve got to say, I’m really impressed. The first thing I noticed was the packaging, and the look of this thing. The plastic container is in the shape of a petri dish, with a small clip holding the pill shaped microphone in place.
The iPill itself pulls in half, to review the 3.5mm jack plug, that plugs into the bottom of the iPods headphone jack, and the other half has a small loop where you could potentially add some string so you don’t lose this thing.
So, the audio quality…what’s it like ?…pretty awesome ! I plugged it into the bottom of my iPod Touch, and it was instantly recognised, and I gave it a quick test in Apples “Voice Memos” software, and attached my recording below
So, the audio quality…what’s it like ?…pretty awesome ! I plugged it into the bottom of my iPod Touch, and it was instantly recognised, and I gave it a quick test in Apples “Voice Memos” software, and attached my recording below.
iPill Test
Final thoughts ?, granted this isn’t the same quality as my M-Audio mixer, and my condenser mic at home, but think it will do an awesome job, of getting some footage at Dimension Jump.
I can highly recommend this microphone to anybody who want to turn their iPod Touch into a decent dictating machine, and for £13 delivered, it’s worth every penny !
Tags: 5mm, Apple, audio, audio quality, Audioboo, Birmingham, bottom, couple of days, desperation, dimension, dimension jump, downside, dwarf, earbud, ebay, footage, forum homepage, half, holiday inn, idea, ilounge, ipill, ipod, ipod touch, ipods, jack, jump, microphone, o matic, ozaki, petri dish, plastic container, quality, quality difference, red, Red Dwarf, Republic of Ireland, stock, test, thing, touch, voice
Posted by Ub3rG33k on Jul 21, 2009 in
Apple Well another week goes by, and I break something else. This week it’s my iPod Touch again.
Over the past couple of days, it’s just been hanging and I’ve had to manually restart it a number of time, however tonight it finally broke…big time !
While syncing my podcasts this evening, it flash on and off a few time, and then all I got was the Apple logo…and this is how it stayed for about half an hour…oops.
So, as I’ve locked up my iPod before, I knew that if it locks up, all I need to do it hold the power and the home button down for about 10 seconds, and this will kill it….I did…and it did !
I fired it back up again, and again, for another 3o mins or so it stayed on the apple logo ! Doh !
Finally I decided, “Recovery mode it is…”, fired it up, kept my finger on the home button, plugged in the cable and waited….and waited, and waited. Previously when I’ve put it in recovery mode, it pops up with the “plug into iTunes please” logo within a matter of seconds, but no, a minute later, still the apple logo !…I was just about to give up on it, and book myself in at the apple store, then the happy “please plug me into iTunes popped up ! Phew !
Plugged into iTunes, and it recognized I’d plugged in my iPod in recovery mode and wanted to wipe it…which was fine as I’d only synced about an hour before.
It got half way through the process, only for me to be met with a Error 1604 !, After doing a little reading it seemed something to do with the downloaded version of the OS..
Anyway, me being me, ignored everything I’d just read on how to fix it, and gave it another try…this time it worked !!!
I had to leave my iPod for nearly an hour to sync everything back up, copy across my apps and music, but we are now all back up and running.
One thing I have noticed with version 3 of the OS, it now remembers where all your icons were when it restores a backup ! Finally !…there’s was nothing worse than restoring a backup, only to spend the next couple of days moving your icons back to the places you like them.
Tags: 1604, Apple, apple logo, apple store, apps, backup, big time, button, couple, couple of days, downloaded version, evening, everything, half an hour, home, home button, hour, ipod, ipod touch, itunes, logo, mode, music, number, plug, podcasts, recover, Recovery, recovery mode, running one, something, sync, time, tonight, touch, version, week