Be Excellent To Each Other

McLaren have publicly denied it which according to general rules for listed companies should mean it's absolutely untrue.

Have they? I read that Dennis had said that Apple weren't going to invest...

Meaning the Apple rumour is untrue.

Under general takeover code rules a company that would be a material investment (or the investor) can't make any public statement that is untrue.

Mrs Hearthly's birthday is coming up and I've decided on getting her a new tablet, she's currently on an original iPad Air and I was really rather hoping the Air 3 would be out by now, but Apple's latest offering remains the antiquated Air 2. I appreciate the 9 inch Pro is an option but that costs, like, a million pounds for something that's largely just a 9 inch iPad. (And the 'Pro' stuff would be of no real use to Mrs H. I don't begrudge the cost of the Pro it's just not delivering anything worthwhile beyond a normal iPad.)

Then again things don't exactly seem to be thrilling in the Android sector, with the Pixel C still apparently the preferred high-end tablet. (Complete with the same AWESOME GRAPHICS POWER that you get in a £150 Nvidia Shield.)

In many regards her iPad Air is still fine, although the 16GB storage is dreadfully limited now she can sort of work around it. However Hearthly Jnr's old iPad 2 is pretty much end of life now, so the idea is the iPad 2 will finally be allowed to retire, Jnr will get the iPad Air, and then Mrs Hearthly will get the new tablet.

I'll probably just get her an iPad Air 2, despite the fact that Apple will most likely announce their next tablet about 4 days later. I do note they have finally ditched the 16GB option so 32GB is now the baseline, but there's no 64GB option, so it's 32GB or 128GB.

A move to Android would be feasible and in some regards desirable, as she's been Android on her phone now for a while, so is split between the two ecosystems, but I guess they can continue to co-exist.

If you're after something light, the Sammy Galaxy Tab S2 is a very good piece of kit.

It probably won't set on fire.

Probably....

Enut with a lithium battery can be verily combustible. Impressively so.

Happy 30k DavPaz!

I didn't notice! My 30kth post was about Dungeon Keeper.

I'm OK with that.

My wife got an Iphone 7 today so I was backing up the old one etc in Itunes

Whilst I was doing this the TV and Media Center (Kodi) where on.

When I was checking my wife's old phone for music I noticed an option to play music through the TV speakers via Kodi from the laptop

Worked a treat quite cool, although I doubt I'll use it again as Itunes is used once or twice a year by me

Surprised no one's mentioned this in here yet - Apple has hiked MacBook and iMac prices by 20%
Telegraph Article

Given how crappy the USD exchange rate is at the mo, that's not a great surprise, and we aren't paying over the odds compared to the US.

From that article "The low-cost 13-inch MacBook Pro, without the Touch Bar, will cost Apple's British customers £1,449, including sales tax. In the US meanwhile the laptop starts at $1,499 (£1,232) before tax."

Add 20% VAT to their price and ours is cheaper.

I'm not surprised by the move - if anything I'm just surprised they didn't include the iPhone and iPad in the increase.
I do keep forgetting how horribly low the pound is now compared to the start of the year, though.

The iPhone went up with the release of the 7, so I expect iPads willl do the same at the next update.
The Air 2 has been around for ages now so they probably felt they couldn't charge more for a 2 year old model.

Speaking of iPad Air 2s I got one from Currys for Mrs H's birthday. Apple only do the 32 and 128GB models now, whereas Currys still had a 64GB model in stock (I guess the 64GB has been discontinued by Apple so this was old stock Currys had hanging around?).

Anyway, the 32GB I feared might be a bit short on storage, and the 128GB was overkill, so the 64GB was perfect, and IIRC it only cost £30 more than the 32GB model at both Currys and on Apple's website.

But yes, Brexit price rises don't seem to have hit the Air 2 yet but as noted by DrZ it is very long in the tooth now.

Mrs H is very happy with it anyway, and Jnr is also chuffed as the original Air 1 is hers now.

Oh yes and how fucking much for those Apple smart cover things? £79.99! For a fucking cover!

Currys often do very good prices on recently discontinued Apple products. I got a 128gb iPad Mini 2 for about £50 less than the new-at-the-time 16gb Mini 3, and the only functional difference was the Touch ID sensor on the 3. I didn't really need all that space, but it was rude not to.

Moral question, comrades.

Is an (functional) iMac without a screen, still an iMac?

Hmmm...

That looks funky...

Better than it did before I took the screen out. Broken backlight.

I would keep it like that.

It's not practical sadly. The Music department is (surprisingly) all about the aesthetics.

Also, with the hard drive temp sensor (which is on the back of the LCD) disconnected, the fans run at 100% all the time, so it's noisy as fook.

Shame.. it is like a modern steam punk...

Just set a photo of it as your desktop wallpaper.

what a good idea.

DP can you take a pic of it for me.?

Will do. Post lunch.

No, post the picture of the Mac.

Message unclear. Eating Big Mac.

Not that you care, but you can fix that with software.

Had to do that with another aging Mac yesterday, funnily enough

How's this, bud? Phone camera quality, sadly.

cheers

Jinkies, that was tense for a second there. I thought I'd buggered up the iMac screen, but I'd actually dislodged the LCD connector that sit underneath some black tape. I was stressing over the motherboard end for about half an hour.

I *might* have fixed the temp sensor issue too. This is a different iMac to the one in the pictures, BTW.

So the new iPhone costs a grand. Blimey. Or you can get a 256GB model for £1,149.

At least they've put wireless charging on it now, so we're up there with the Nexus 5 in that regard at least.

The new face unlock (a feature that no one seems to want 'cause you look like a twat when you do it), appears to work flawlessly.

Also, I'm not convinced by the lack of a real button. A mate who moved to an S8 from an S7 bemoaned the lack of a real button/fingerprint scanner on the front of the phone.

Anyway, a grand for a phone, that won't be happening. I think I'll go PAYG when my contract next comes up anyway, I very much believe we've hit 'peak phone' now.

I wouldn't be too surprised that face unlock failed on the very first public demo. Murphy's law insists on it.

Remember when Windows (98?) blue screened on Bill Gates during the launch? You can bet someone got fired over that

But, yes. £1100 for a phone is ludicrous. That's almost 10x what I paid for my Moto G. Is it ten times better?

I think it was ME wasn't it?

Face unlock is bobbins. Fingerprint scanner on the front of the phone is perfect.

I often unlock my S7 when it's on a flat surface somewhere, like next to my bed or on a desk. The chap who moved to an S8 (from an S7) thinks the fingerprint scanner on the back is a totally shit change. To get rid of it completely is even worse.

As for face unlock, that sure is convenient in the bed/desk scenario. Or indeed, any scenario where you're not holding the phone and looking straight at it.

I used to love the rear fingerprint scanner on the Nexus 5X as that's where my finger goes when removing my phone from my pocket. I suppose you could have two.

Talk to your mate again in a couple of weeks and I guarantee he'll have stopped giving a shit. Having physical buttons is pish and Android's been designed not to need them for years; Samsung's insistence on keeping them up until recently was always pretty odd. Also, having moved between an S6 and my Nexus 6P a couple of times recently there are advantages to both front and back placement of fingerprint scanner but I prefer it on the back.

<looks at Rover 25>
<looks at Porsche cayenne>

Huh.

The face unlock thing is good when it works, but not ideal. I have it on my Lumia and I turned it off after a couple of months. It worked fine but it meant holding the phone at a slightly unnatural angle to your face. Think about all the times you need to unlock your phone, how many times are you looking directly at it?

Nevertheless, I suppose you can always turn the feature off?

But yeah, over a grand for a phone... blimey.

Oh yeah, also... my Lumia doesn't have any physical buttons on the front. Ahead of it's time I tell ya.... **Sigh**

But how far ahead of its time? If only there were a neato calculator function to find this out!

I don't think it did, actually. If you look closely the screen says "enter passcode to enable FaceID." That's the default state of a freshly booted iPhone; you need to enter the passcode at least once to activate the biometrics [1]. So FaceID didn't fail, it wasn't enabled on that phone. He switches to a backup phone immediately afterwards, he doesn't continue the demo on that one.

[1] you're actually decrypting the storage area where the biomoetric data is stored.

So do I, but there's no denying that phone-on-desk and (particularly) phone-in-car-mount scenarios are more awkward.

Having switched from front to back I think I also prefer a rear scanner. I'm constantly hitting this one by accident when I put it into my pocket and it wibbles to tell me it's not figured out my fingerprint so I think I've got a new notification

I think you have that back to front.

I do!

I hope the face thing won't be used to make purchases. Often there's times when I've clicked on something by mistake and it's like "Confirm payment of £99.99 to Ashley Madison using your finger print". It's easy enough to not press a button and press cancel but if I'm looking at my screen to read the text I don't want to mistakenly activate the payment.

Oh course this is a daft example and I'm sure they've thought of this but I do wonder whether some unscrupulous apps might dispense with some checks and balances.

My phone doesn't lock when it's connected to the car bluetooth.

The Facial recognition will replace the finger print for Apple Pay, thinking that will be possibly fiddly when trying to have the phone close enough to the card reader and have it see your face?!

Quite like the idea of the Facial recognition to unlock as the minute you get any water on your fingers the finger print unlock stops working

Don't like the fact Apple have removed the 128GB storage (is that just on the X?) its the same with the new Ipad Pros as well 64 or 256\512

Not hard for me to get an X financially as I manage the phones at work and have a 6 figure credit account with VF as we have just renewed the company contract for 3 years

Phones have peaked. I'll be going SIM only when my current contract is up and only get another phone when my current one breaks.