Blue Chi’s

I have to admit that I am very excited about the recently announced Apple iPad, and just like the majority of people I am not sure if I really need one, but I just want it! I think that it is the best couch/bedside computer, it is just a device you keep at home to check your email while laying in bed or on a coach, maybe carry along when chilling at Caribou while having a cold drink…. damn that sounds cool!

I can’t say that I’m super upset about multitasking, I’ve been using the iPod Touch and iPhone for a while now and I am really not bothered about it all that much. I think that not running Flash in the browser is a drawback, but not a deal breaker for me because I don’t play web Flash games, and because YouTube has its own application.

Strangely my most favourite feature of the iPad is the new calendar, it looks really awesome and makes me think the iPad could be used as a serious office organizer, especially if you sync Google Calendar using Exchange the same way I do using the iPhone.

All of that said, I am going buy one the second it comes out, I am looking forward to read the reviews and see what the developers do with it.. and then I will seriously have to think about whether or not spending money on a coach computer is really a good idea!

So I’ve been on Mac OS X for a couple of months now and I think I’ve adapted my workflow to the way it works. Mac OS X has some awesome features that are not available natively on Windows.

The feature that changed the way I use the computer the most is Spaces. This feature lets you have a number of virtual desktops to which you can launch specific applications that do not appear on the other ones. I work with two screens all the time, so this makes a huge difference for me as I usually have different applications launch in specific screens, and this lets me switch both windows instantly instead of attempting to minimize and maximize a number of applications on Windows OS.

My second most used feature is Active Screen Corners. This feature lets you assign an action to be executed when you move the mouse cursor to a screen corner. I use this in conjunction with Spaces and Expose. This makes it possible for me to switch spaces and applications using a quick mouse gesture instead of using the keyboard or clicking on the spaces icon. I have another corner assigned for Expose and another one to show the desktop.

I also like customizing the dock. I only have the applications which I regularly actually use their permanently. These are Firefox, TweetDeck, and iTunes. I have the essential CS4 Applications in a grid folder, my work applications in another grid folder, and then I just have all the installed applications in their original folder.

Another feature I like the screen capture tool which I have configured to work with an extra button on my mouse. Using it I simply click my scroll wheel to the left and then select the outline of the area I wish to capture. Really helpful when writing web tutorials!

Anyway, in addition to all these things I like I also have a number of issues with the Mac OS X. The first problem I have is when Expose does not work. For those who do not know what this feature is, it is a quick method to switch between programs in a single space which spreads out all the applications in a zoom-out grid like form. However, some applications have a lot of floating panels, example all Adobe CS4 applications. Using expose here makes each panel appear as a separate window screen making it impossible to know what is happening on the screen. The screen below is supposed to have 2 applications and 1 window opened.

The Mac OS X separates the upper file menu from the actual application window. For most users who use a single screen, they will not think that this is significantly different from Windows, however, because I use two screens, this difference becomes a huge issue, because the file menu only appears on the primary screen, any applications opened on the secondary screen will have their file menu on the other screen which is plain weird and confusing.

I am also irritated by the crazy number of shortcuts built-in the system. Almost all the F buttons already do a system-wide function that override any function to these buttons in other applications. I had to disable them one by one in order to be able to do any work. Some other crazy ones like renaming any file you select by pressing Enter cannot be removed or edited. I also still cannot get over the fact that you cannot maximize folders and apple applications such as iTunes. Not sure if I ever will.

The new iPhone OS came out a couple of days ago, and for some reason, most people are talking about the really boring copy-and-paste feature which barely anybody ever uses on the go. For me personally the most significant feature of this new OS is the official support for Arabic. Not only can the iPhone now read and write Arabic text, but you can set the whole OS to use Arabic as the system language.

I use the iPhone OS 3.0 on my iPod Touch. The only major difference between the iPhone and the iPod Touch is the iPhone has a sim card and a built-in camera while the iPod Touch does not.

In order to set the system language to Arabic you have to go through Settings>General>International and from there pick Arabic as the language of the system. You can use an Arabic Keyboard without changing the system language by going through Setting>General>Keyboard Layout and check Arabic. That would let you switch the keyboard to Arabic at any time.

Once you set the Language ot Arabic the system will restart into Arabic. All the default applications, except Safari and Mail, use Arabic names:

I don’t have access to a wifi network when I was writing this, so I can’t show you how the browser works in Arabic, but I have a random Arabic email in my inbox from a random stupid girl who spams me with forwards sent to an account I use for sending website newsletters. Anyway, you can see Arabic in mail here:

(Of course I did not forward the stupid message, I’d rather go to hell).

The Arabic keyboard is very similar to the PC layout with some changes in the lower row to fit all the letters:

The coolest thing though, in my opinion, is how the music library uses the Arabic alphabet to sort the music and then follows it with English. I rewrote the name of a single song in Arabic to see how it looks like:

All the song meta data appears in Arabic during playback.

And what’s even cooler is that you can have the lyrics in Arabic as well!! Of course you would have to add these manually one by one. There are programs to do this automatically for English songs, but the program will obviously not work for Arabic songs.

Finally, you can also see Arabic meta data on Cover Flow as well:

The other significant additions in OS 3.0 for me were the landscape mode typing for all applications and spot light search everything. I found the shake to shuffle feature annoying as the songs started shuffling randomly as I walked around with my iPod in my back pocket.

I don’t write much in Arabic, but I would certainly like to read Arabic on the thing even if I don’t necessarily write much. I don’t have many Arabic songs on my iPod, but I would also like to have the meta data for these in Arabic just for the fun of it!

(Pic Credits: Niklas)

Something weird has happened to my HP laptop, out of the blue the screen flickered, got some pixel noise and then it froze. I tried restarting, into Windows Vista, the pixel noise is everywhere and it freezes before even showing the login screen. I booted into Windows 7 and the same exact thing happened. Somehow though Safe Mode works, and occassionaly the noise would be gone from the boot menu and I can login to Windows before the screen randomly freaks out and it freezes. It feels like a hardware error because of the randomness of it and the fact that it affects both of my operating systems.

I’m happy this thing didn’t happen last week during my exam period, I don’t know what would’ve done. Luckily I’m taking this week off and just not doing anything, but I need to start working on my dissertation soon.

Heard from Diablo that the same thing happened to his HP machine and his only solution was to replace the motherboard of his computer. I emailed HP and their instructions indicate that I need to ‘service’ my system because the problem seem to effect everything even the BIOS menu.

I am going to email HP again to see how the “service” process takes place and how much it will cost me to replace a part such as the motherboard. I can’t believe this happened just two months after the warranty expired. Well, at least it didn’t happen exactly the day after it expired.

I think fixing this is going to take a while, and I’m not sure I can trust it with my work now that I have to start writing my dissertation. I thought I’ll just buy a new computer. I thought I’ll go for a Macbook this time, I have some Windows applications which I paid for, but I can install Windows 7 on the Mac as well, so I guess I can still have Windows as my primary OS and try the Mac OS X from there.

I just ordered the aluminum Macbook online, got a student discount for it as well, but they expect to have it delivered in ten days or so. I might send my HP laptop for service once I get that one so that I don’t remain stuck without a computer during the transition.

The majority of you must have already heard of Apple’s upcoming iPhone: the iPod, cell phone, and internet tablet all-in-one gadget. It is a sleek touch-screen wide-screen device that can make phone calls, play music and video purchased from the iTunes music store, and is equipped with some built-in GBs, WiFi, and a Safari Internet browser. Geeks and Apple fans are over the moon about it, the hype is getting crazier as the release date gets closer (the end of this month).

But it’s really pissing me off.

I am really irritated by how many stupid people are ready to believe everything they read or see in an advertisement. First of all, the iPhone is not going to run OS X in the way that we know it. You will not be able to run any application that you have on your OS X on the iPhone, the fact that Apple names the thing that runs on the iPhone OSX does not have any practical meaning at all.

The phone is going to be expensive as hell. With a 2-year contract it will be sold at a subsidised price of $500. This means that the price of the phone outside the US sold on its own without any phone operator could easily be 3 times that price = $1500. I would not be surprised if it costs way more than this.

The revolutionary iPhone is not a 3G phone – it won’t do video calls or video messages, I do not know if it would even do MMS.

What really got me pissed is the recent comparison chart Apple posted on their website here. It is very normal for companies to pimp their own devices in these sort of charts, but come on, not only that the comparison is irrelevant, who the hell would compare the N95 a multimedia phone to a Blackberry – a business communicator? And so, who does Apple target with this new phone? Enterprises or casual users? I think that it is really stupid for them to omit all the obvious features found on all those other devices such as 3G, Voip, 3rd party apps, changeable batteries, AND WEIGHT.