Be Excellent To Each Other

Never, ever, ever buying anything from this company again. I bought my iPad 3 on the under standing it wouldn't be replaced within a year. If I had known they were going to release a faster model and making the port obsolescent within 6 months I would never have bought it, given that I'm using it for synths. Between that and not being able to download from the App Store more than half the time, I'm done and out.

At least with Android you know something slightly better will be out in a fortnight. This is another USP pissed away.

New iMac is out in December, and no optical drive...

Do I still need an optical drive?

I'll soon(ish) find out I guess.

Naaa! I haven't used mine for literally years. The only thing it's used for is Mrs Bulge's Sims 3 expansions.

Yeah, I think I've only used the optical drice on my MacBook Pro a handful of times in the 3 years I've owned it.

God bless torrents. Thanks for the Green Light Apple.

My immediate response to that would be that the music software isn't there for Android, but then I can't imagine using a Korg iMS20 on a 7" screen.

I'm not sure what sort of thing you're after specifically, but my buddy at work uses an Android app called WaveSynth, which he says is "preetty goud sheet".

What synths? How does the new device make your one no longer usable? It's a bit shitty when this kind of thing happens, but Apple does fast updates less than most other companies. You could always try flipping your device on eBay and taking a hit—I'm certainly going to be interested to see how iPad 3s hold their value (or not).


What's going wrong? The App Store is sometimes an arse, but I've not had any long-running problems with it for a long time now.

I'll get a the Ipad mini and 4 once the release dates come out for 4G.

Won't spend any of my money, will get them through work via the "evaluation" chestnut

The 4's we will get anyway once Apple either pulls or reduces the range of 3 and some the more senior people at work will like the mini.

I have some Surfaces on order and the Windows 8 Phones Nokia do as well.

Looking forward to the gadget fest as it doesn't happen that often these days

Must confess to being a bit narked at the iPad update. Waited around long enough until the iPad reached a spec I was happy with and then bought on release day. I know it is an irrational annoyance, and has nothing to do with having the latest - just to have waited patiently on yearly refresh cycles, judging when to buy based on that and then six months later it is changed is very, very annoying. This isn't an Android type arms race.

http://blog.fosketts.net/2012/10/23/app ... -software/

Interesting, if this is correct (and I see no reason why it isn't) then Apple aren't just dropping in a hybrid drive, they are putting in both an SSD and a standard drive and showing it as a logical disk in the OS and letting the OS handle the swapping of apps between the two drives as necessary.
In theory this is good. In practice I use OSX on a daily basis, and their memory management is pretty crappy when it comes to handling inactive and active memory allocation (slow machine? lots of space taken for inactive memory? Purge the inactive memory and the machine magically speeds up, even though it shouldn't make any difference.) i'm wary of their ability to get it right.

Ooooh, when did iMessage get read notifications? I only used to get "delivered" notices, but that changes to "read" now.

iOS6

That's been around since iOS 5, but it only works if the person you are messaging has turned it on, and most people don't (it defaults to off).

Except it is. Apple's now going to be competing against tablets closer to the new iPad in the Android and Windows 8 space, and so MOAR POWER is a clear requirement. It's also pretty clear Apple wants everything shifted over to the new connector as soon as possible.

I'm a bit narked too, but then the better reviews at the time did wonder whether the iPad 3 was a 'compromise' device to some extent, and it looks like the new model proves that to be the case. I'm still happy enough with mine though, despite it getting a bit warm at times when playing games on it. Had the new iPad also been significantly lighter, however, I'd have had a bit of a hissy fit.

The processor upgrade in the ipad4 isn't enough to tempt me to upgrade from the 3, but I'd have been a little peeved if I'd only just bought it.

The new macs are a bit more likely to get my money though.

Those are a bit of a mixed bag for me. The mini's a straight speed bump, the MacBook Pro looks good but I'm waiting for a Retina Air, and the iMac… Well, I admit to going WOW when I saw that initial render, but then when Schiller started going around the machine, I saw that lump. And then I realised this was another appliance-oriented Mac (with, I suspect, no ability to upgrade RAM), so I wasn't quite so excited. That said, if SSD prices drop quickly enough, I might be tempted by one more iMac next year, rather than making the leap to a laptop/external display set-up.

The 27" iMacs are easy to add ram to. Just a cover abover the power inlet. The 21.5" ones need to be taken apart. They all come with 8gig though.

And I'm getting one.

Allegedly the 21" isn't user upgradable but the 27" is (for RAM at least).

I'm tempted by the 27" version but I would want to play games on it too and the unremarkable laptop graphics card they've used is probably going to be underpowered to run stuff at the native resolution of the panel.

I think that heat dissipation is going to become a serious problem for hand-held devices really soon. When my phone is working hard it gets silly hot - it's gone into thermal shutdown twice.

All of the synths... and in my experience synth makers have been VERY quick to drop the iPad 1. Obviously with the current versions of apps, my current iPad is very useable, but I'd have waited if I knew the iPad 3 only had six months. I'd upgrade via eBay but I don't have disposable income anymore. I am pretty much going to stop using this for anything but music as soon as I can afford a google tablet, mind you. I have have little but bad progress from apple since buying this otherwise very capable device. Apple have fucked their chance to make a good impression on me.

As for the App Store, since iOS 6 I get cannot connect errors, with no explanation, nine attempts to get something out of ten. Really. I can often check back later and it works, but this is a near-constant problem. It was fine before iOS 6 and so I repeat: iOS 6 is shit.

Indeed. I'm not on 6, and I have it. Didn't realise I'd activated it, though.

No -- it only works if the person you are messaging has turned it on. So if you see "delivered" turn into "read" in your iMessage thread with someone else, that means the other person has it on, not you. You don't see anything change your end when you turn it on. So you don't have it on, the person you are messaging does.

It's a really useful feature (at the very least, it means you never need to send any "OK" style "I got that" replies) that I encourage people to enable.

It's a horrible feature if you can't be arsed to reply to someone's messages, though. Which is me all of the time.

Apple covered this too - by making iMessage less reliable than a pension fund invested in Dublin real estate.

Clearly I'm not reading one sentence.

I haven't activated it, then. Yay, the 'sometimes it says "read"' mystery is solved!

Heh, good point! I simply don't use it for this reason. I get unlimited free texts anyway so I have absolutely no reason to use iMessage.

Free international messaging, free picture messaging, picture messaging that doesn't downsize images to crappy resolutions, group messaging that actually works, true read receipts, integration between OS X and multiple iOS devices, ... Lots of advantages of iMessage over SMS.

Given the amount of picture messages I send and receive, iMessage is awesomes.

So you're going to ditch Apple, because it updated a tablet after six months rather than a year, and move to a platform that updates sporadically, erratically, and often without providing access to OS upgrades (and in many cases, not even shipping with the current OS)? Sorry, but all sounds a wee bit cut off nose/spite face. It's not like your iPad's suddenly rubbish.


That on the other hand I can't explain. I've had no such problems here.

I've seen those App Store problems GY describes. It was quote common just after iOS 6 shipped, but hasn't happened for a little while now.

TBH, I think it is more the latter than the former. Apple, to my memory, have never competed on specs. The iPhone has - again, IIRC - never been the most powerful phone and I couldn't tell you how much memory or what the CPU is in my iPad.

The iPad mini really strikes me as following the pack rather than leading it as well as pandering to analysts and commentators rather than users. Both of which are unusual for Apple.

Went and had a play with an ipad mini today. Cor... it's lovely, it's definitely more than the sum of its parts. However I have problems with hitting the right bits of webpages on the current bigger version, so i'm not sure just having everything smaller will be a good idea. Plus it is still fucking expensive, especially for the 32gb 3G version, which is the one I would need.

How many Apple users does it take to change a lightbulb?

None, you have to replace the whole house.

I went to the Birmingham Apple store yesterday to have a look at one and to buy an iPod Nano as a present, and agree that it is *very* nicely assembled, and had I never had a full size iPad I'd have been more tempted but as it is I wouldn't want to lose the screen size.

More annoyingly, the store was much quieter than normal because they had several staff outside asking people to queue despite it being empty, then they were asking you what you were there to look at before deciding how long to make you wait! One chap said he was there to buy a macbook and was let straight in.

Fuck that for a game of soldiers! I refused to answer and just asked if they were going to let me in or not, which threw them a bit. While they were thinking about it, I just walked past them, had a quick nose then fucked off to the Currys Black store nearby and bought something from them instead.
It's pretty bad when they have better service than Apple.

Although if it's under a year old, you can pop into any Apple Store and they'll just give you a new house; two years old if you argue a lot.

Couldn't find a generic Apple thread, we seem to have a million of them all with slightly different focus, so i'll post this is here and rename the thread I think.

I've bitten the bullet and ordered an internal SSD caddy, an SSD drive and an external optical caddy for the iMac. Unfortunately mine is a late 2009 model so I can't add an extra SSD drive into it without removing the optical drive, but needs must. It's £150 to do all that, compared to the £1000+ it would cost for a new iMac, and should give me all the performance upgrade I need (plus let me keep the iMac as the display for my windows PC, can't do that with the new iMacs as I understand it!)

Doesn't seem too fiddly to do when you actually look at it, regardless of the instructions online.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp7_AP0wc7s

Now, do I set the SSD and internal drive up as a Fusion drive or not? I'm saying no at this point, early days for that hack and i'm concerned what happens if one of the drives fail. Seems like doubling up the possibility of issues if you hard link the drives that way, at least if they are separate and I manage what I put on each drive myself, then if one goes it isn't a major hassle to get back up and running again.

Given Apple's erratic QA right now, I'd strongly recommend a wait-and-see approach to the Fusion Drive thing. I'd sooner control it myself until the quirks are more widely known, and until back-up software beyond Time Machine is confirmed fully working with it.

Aye, that's my thought too at the moment

Dear Apple

Let me have a fucking 27" iMac now.

For fucks sake.

I'll sell you mine for a grand.

LOL the old one is SO THICK!!!!!111111111

I KNOW!!!! It constantly pisses me off when i'm looking at it from the front and can't see the sides...

I hear the new iMac uses its FaceTime camera to check your location and the computer's orientation. Unless you have the Mac at a 30-degree angle to you, a video of a sobbing Jony Ive and angry Phil Schiller ("LOOK AT WHAT YOU'VE DONE!") fills the screen.

http://lifehacker.com/5964613/how-to-us ... tunes-look

For people like me who installed iTunes 11 yesterday and wondered what the fuck happened.

Apart from the fact iTunes 10 not only had a list view but optionally enabled you to load icons into it, which made app trimming significantly easier than in iTunes 11. Still, good to see that website obviously got someone to write the article who was familiar with what they were talking about. *seethes*

Why would you wonder what happened? You downloaded a new version of a programme; it was new.

Walked past the local Apple retailer on the way home earlier, my goodness the new iMacs are so thin it's unbelievable.

Ooooh they're available to order on the site now.

And interest free for 10 months too.

Because although my old settings were still possible, the new version changed away from them.

So, I can't seem to find a way to display the album artwork in a 'now playing/currently selected' window in the sidebar.

The 'amazing new' feature to have it play the selected song after the current one finishes is only a decade and a half behind Winamp letting you do that. Maybe in 2027 they'll catch up again and add Winamp's 'stop playing after current song' option too.

The new search function is shit... before it would narrow your song list based on what you entered... now it appears in a separate search window and it just doesn't work as well. If you rightclick it and choose Play Next, it plays it next all right - and then stops without resuming the rest of your library or playlist. If you actually go into it and choose the song, it plays it but sometimes decides to turn the shuffle mode off.

It seems the nearest way to get it to work is to type in what you want and then click at the top to 'show in music' and then it kinda does what it did before.

Bleh.

You can't. Apple killed that feature. As far as I can tell, the closest equivalent, bar the current art showing in the main bit at the top, is clicking said art to get a cover art window. Curious point about the search, too, which I'd not noticed. Live filtering was really useful, so getting rid of that for a sub-Spotlight 'here are a few things that might represent what you want' is a bit annoying.

I do like aspects of iTunes 11, and it's a hell of a lot faster and more responsive, but it does oddly feel a bit 1.0.