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Macworld Team

>> Postings for January 2007

Vista 5% as exciting as Apple

Tue, 30 Jan 2007

November 2004: Over 400 people queued round the block to witness the opening of the Apple Store in London.

January 2007: 21 people queue outside London's PC World to get their hands on the latest version of Windows, Vista.

Simon Jary | Read more...


Floppy still in use

Tue, 30 Jan 2007

You're not going to believe this, but some people are still using floppy disks...

The PC World chain of computer stores is finally stopping selling the 1.4MB floppy, so someone out there must have been buying them as recently as yesterday. Who are you?

Simon Jary | Read more...


PC funnier than the Mac

Mon, 29 Jan 2007

Apple's Get a Mac advertising campaign has now made it over the ocean, featuring UK comedians Mitchell and Webb as PC and Mac.

I like the fact that Apple is pushing the benefits of the Mac rather than just the speed difference, but this campaign is virtually a carbon copy of the US one - with the same pitfalls.

Simon Jary | Read more...


Why 79p tracks are bad for music

Fri, 26 Jan 2007

iTunes dominates the download market and drives the official UK singles chart, but fixed prices are bad for art.

Yes: Apple is fighting the pirates, and yes, iTunes does offer a legal, good-to-use alternative to stealing music. That's a good thing - artists deserve to be paid.

Jonny Evans | Read more...


What's the point of AppleTV

Thu, 25 Jan 2007

I hate to say it but I think that the AppleTV is going to be a bigger flop than the Cube was... I think that the whole concept is flawed and the market it is trying to address just isn't there.

First up - what's the point? All AppleTV does is put your iTunes library on your TV. That's all. It means we in the UK can watch our music, music videos, photos, and podcasts on a widescreen TV... (Yes, it seems it has to be widescreen). Big deal. If I really wanted to do that I'd have found a cable that let me...

Karen Haslam | Read more...


Apple should have kept iPhone secret

Mon, 22 Jan 2007

I was working on a feature about the iPhone this weekend and I kept getting back to the same question. Why did Apple announce the iPhone at Macworld San Francisco?

Why not wait until June (or maybe earlier) when it’s ready, and ratified by the Federal Communications Commission? If Apple had waited until June it could have taken its competitors by surprise. Announcing the phone now has given Apple’s competition a heads up on what they need to be doing to match Apple’s offering.

Karen Haslam | Read more...


Where is my Apple Universal remote control?

Wed, 17 Jan 2007

These days when watching Channel 4's Celebrity Big Brother I have been making ever-more use of my remote control. It's complex and clunky and I wish it had an Apple iPhone interface.

I have been using the remote to silence Jade Goody's bovine chatter, and the terrible vision of her and her supporting witches engaged in a full-time attack on beautiful Indian megastar, Shilpa Shetty.

Jonny Evans | Read more...


Schadenfreude on the Mac

Mon, 15 Jan 2007

Sometimes it's hard to be a multinational convergence consumer electronics company.

It seems the more success you generate, the more distractions emerge from nowhere to derail you. It's enough to make you think sometimes that the world doesn't want you to succeed.

Jonny Evans | Read more...


Poor the Apple TV

Thu, 11 Jan 2007

Wandering round the Apple stand at Macworld Expo it’s hard not to see which device has got people hooked. You have to sharpen your elbows to get anywhere near the new iPhone (sealed inside a glass case next to a burly security guard who shouts at anybody who dares to reach out and touch it). Consequently the Apple TV is easy to stroll up to and play with. Most people seem distinctly nonplussed.

So why the change of heart? Surely a Mac video device for your TV would be amazing. Partly it’s the price. At $300 the Apple TV isn’t far off a Mac mini, which would offer infinitely more flexibility. Partly it’s the lack of a secret ‘wow’ factor. The Apple TV does pretty much what Apple said it would do back at the WWDC. And, sadly, little more.

Sure, it plays 720p for your high definition television (but not the more commonplace 1080i format). When pressed the Apple representative didn’t really seem to know why. You can’t buy movies in 720p format from the Apple store, or convert them for your iPod. Above all it cannot record from television – Elgato EyeTV style – and record TV to its hard drive before shunting it to my iPod.

Read more...


iPhone is the just the start

Thu, 11 Jan 2007

It’s fair to say that the iPhone exceeded all our expectations of what an Apple mobile would be like. Yes, we knew it would be an iPod; yes, we knew you’d be able to make calls on it. We even guessed it would have a touch screen from Apple’s patent (see the mock up on our cover).

But what we didn’t know was just how sweet it would look when it all worked together. Everything on it just seems to work beautifully – guess that’s Apple for you.

Mark Hattersley | Read more...


iPhone breaks Apple's design bore

Thu, 11 Jan 2007

Everyone's started saving for an iPhone, even though I'm sure that version 2 will be much more stable and actually have 3G support for a truer multimedia experience, and probably cheaper.

Jonathan Ive, Apple's British hardware designer and rightful winner of numerous industrial design awards, has finally come up with a design that blows away the competition. It's been a rather long wait for another standout Apple design, and in the past couple of months only the new-look iPod shuffle has got a gasp out of the waiting world.

Simon Jary | Read more...


iPhone: I'm not convinced...

Wed, 10 Jan 2007

I was able to hold the iPhone for an amazing four minutes today (that is, Wednesday, San Francisco time). It looks nice, it’s slim, has a huge wide screen, great graphics. A bit fiddly to use, but I guess you need more than four minutes to figure it out.

That's beside the point though. Because if the way that Apple's share price shot up yesterday is anything to go by, Wall Street loved it. But is it such a wise bet?

Karen Haslam | Read more...


CES: The iPod product trade show

Tue, 09 Jan 2007

It's been an interesting few days, poring through the web, my email and getting into a series of phone calls with "sources", and it seems pretty likely now that Apple will surprise us later on today. And it looks like CES is pretty much an iPod product showcase.

But to be honest, despite all the guesses, conjecture and half-whispers, Apple has done an outstanding job keeping its cards close to its chest. Everyone knows something is coming. No one quite knows what it's going to be.

Jonny Evans | Read more...


Zune crashes on take off

Mon, 08 Jan 2007

iPod killer? The Zune joke continues...

Even given Microsoft's cautious approach to Zune success ("long term", blah blah blah...), the following can't be too pleasing to all the people who are so desperate for Apple and the iPod to fail:

Simon Jary | Read more...


Are you going to San Francisco?

Fri, 05 Jan 2007

To quote Russell Brand, "I'm 'cited" right now. Why? Put simply, Macworld Expo. Next week, Apple CEO Steve Jobs will deliver his annual home town speech to a rapt audience.

Mac consumers, professionals, business partners, analysts and an ever-expectant media will be full of expectation. This year's keynote's scheduled to last two hours - and Jobs is going to use that time to discuss a few of the products and strategies Apple will pursue in the coming year.

Jonny Evans | Read more...


Digital physical photography

Thu, 04 Jan 2007

Digital photography. Let’s face it; we’re never going back to the days of shooting in film and then queuing up in Boots or Jessops to collect the prints from our holiday.

Now we can take as many photos as we like, limited only by the size of our memory card. These snapshots can be stored on our Macs, shown in glorious slideshows on our Mac or TV, or hosted online to be shared with friends and family. We need never again buy an album to protect our photos from greasy fingerprints.

We might be saving a few trees but does this mean that generations to come will not be able to enjoy looking through fading photo albums from distant generations? Will what will become hundreds of thousands of digital photographs collected over the years be forgotten, or even worse, deleted?

Karen Haslam | Read more...


Why DJs should use iPods

Wed, 03 Jan 2007

I went to a New Year's Eve party in a pub in North London. It was a great night and the DJ had a good selection of tunes... Only problem was that she was using vinyl.

This meant that everytime someone got a little bit too excited near the turntable, jumping up and down to celebrate the arrival of 2007 for example, the record would jump.

Karen Haslam | Read more...


Broadband made easy

Mon, 01 Jan 2007

I've moved house and set up broadband over Christmas, which is now running at a fairly fast 8GB (5.5GB realtime) speed. Anyway, here are two recommendations/shameless plugs:

1. After hearing countless disaster stories regarding other venders (notably Sky) I went for a reliable ISP that doesn't sell gas, television, electricity, or household products and do a spot of broadband on the side - but one that provides people with the internet for a living. So thanks to Madasafish for providing a fast, efficient and pain-free broadband connection service.

Mark Hattersley | Read more...


What's in a name

Mon, 01 Jan 2007

I was having a conversation last night about the iPhone, which - just before Christmas rudely interrupted all manner of tech things - Cisco Linksys revealed it held the copyright for.

As I see it, there are two things that will happen:

Mark Hattersley | Read more...


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