deKay’s Blog

Yesterday, Apple announced the iPad. Not that anyone was really surprised, as all bar the nitty gritty specifics had been leaked already over the last few weeks.

And, although I was looking forward to the reveal, I didn’t think I was going to be especially interested in the product. After all, I’ve had tablet PCs and PDAs and an iPhone and laptops and netbooks and stuff in the past. So it wasn’t going to be anything new.

I was wrong. I really want one. I’m right in that it does nothing new, but that’s not the point with Apple kit – little of it is actually new. The iPhone did nothing new. The iPod did nothing new. But Apple are masters of mastery; Of doing things right. The proof is there: mp3 players didn’t take off until Apple’s iPod, and now half of the competition are trying to duplicate the iPod. Touch screen phones had been around for years before the iPhone, but now every phone is an iPhone wannabe. So it is with the iPad.

Everything it does, has been done before. But it’s how it does it. How easy it is to do it. How powerful it is in doing it. How slick, smooth, seemless and shiny Apple have done it.

I can see the naysayers and iPad haters already making complaints and rubbishing it. It might well flop yet – after all, every other similar PDA/tablet/touchscreen device before it have already flopped – but this feels different. It gets so many things right that even if some of it’s functionality doesn’t take off, there’s loads left.

Take iBooks. It’s just Kindle mixed with Delicious Library. But then this is Kindle which can also play films. And games. And surf the internet.

Or it’s a portable movie player. That lets you read books, check your email, and do your online shopping.

Or it’s a games console. That doubles as an electronic photo frame, lets you view YouTube and plan a holiday.

Or it’s all of those things, and everything else the App Store can provide for you. As with the iPhone, it’s all the “value added” stuff that will make the machine. The iPhone without the App Store is a basic, but pretty and functional, smartphone. With it, it does everything you can imagine. If you can think of a need, there’s a pretty good chance (as they say) there’s an app for that.

If you’re the sort of person who wants a mobile office desk, with your desk diary, email, internet, notepad and so on, with features for when you have “down time” or are travelling (that’s your music, books, films and games then) it’s great. If, like me, you love the iPhone but when playing games or reading web pages you just want something… bigger, then it too is great.

Imagine playing the sort of games Microsoft were showing off with Surface – only without having to spend ten billion pounds to own one!

My only concern with it is the lack of a camera on the front. This would be ideal for Skype, but I’m betting there’ll be a camera add-on for the expansion socket available at some point.

Will I be getting one? I’d like one, certainly. But I might just wait until the second revision. If I can.

After scraping together all my Club Nintendo stars loyalty points at the end of last year (some were due to expire on the 31st of December), I had a look through the Club Nintendo Stars Catalogue for things to spend them all on.

Of course, it had to be this:

It’s three old Game & Watch games – Oil Panic, Donkey Kong, and Green House – all for the DS. Which is oooh shiny enough in itself, but becomes even more oooh shiny when you realise it isn’t available for sale anywhere. Excellent.

I teased it a bit yesterday, but here’s some more information on the best games console since the original Game King – the itek! I paid a STAGGERING ¬¨¬£19.99 for this from local supermarket “Roys”. The price says ¬¨¬£39.99 – but that was how much it cost last year when they started stocking it. I knew if I waited long enough they’d drop it a bit, and I was right! Worth the wait? Of course!

Unboxening

It’s the law of the internet that every Ooh Shiny ever has to have a gratuitous unboxing photoshoot. I didn’t do that really, but here are a few pictures:
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LOOK WHAT I JUST BOUGHT OMG AMAZE

Yeah, late to the party. But look! Just £8.99 from Gamestation too!

After trying lots of apps, these are those I’ve settled with – for now, at least. What does your iPhone look like? What apps do you recommend?

The answer, of course, is “very lovely indeed”.

My previous phone was a T-Mobile Vario III, a replacement a year ago for my Vario II. To be honest, I’ve never really had a problem with it. Ok, so it didn’t really work well with my Mac (until I bought SyncMate, anyway), and sometimes it forgot to type double letters, but it was great for everything I wanted to use it for.

Or so I thought.

After using an iPhone for a few days, I can now see all the faults and flaws with my previous phone. Swapping between apps was slow. Playing music took ages. The screen resolution was rubbish (especially for web browsing) and none of the available browsers were especially quick. Most of all, though, it wasn’t anywhere near as slick or easy to use as the iPhone.

One thing I’ve always needed in a phone is a keyboard. I simply can’t type using a keypad. My Varios had great little keyboards, but you could only use them two-handed. I was a bit concerned about how I’d take to the iPhone’s touch-screen keyboard, but as this blog post will testify – it’s lovely. It’s quick to type on, and the autocorrect features are great for when your finger slips.

Another thing I love is the integrated iTunes and Apps stores. You can just buy tracks and software straight on the phone! The selection of games and apps is huge too – not the mere handful that you have to trawl the Internet to find for Windows Mobile devices.

Then there’s the text messaging. All texts sent and received are recorded as a conversation – very useful!

Finally (for now), there’s Flight Control. A simple, but incredibly addictive little game which makes excellent use of the touch screen and currently costs just 59p. Amazing.

I do. And it’s great. I only got it a couple of days ago, but already I can’t imagine how I managed without one.

Here’s the very first photo I took with it. It isn’t very exciting though.

Some more gushing praise for my iPhone will be posted soon!

After what must be around 6 years of loyal service, the time has come to finally replace my ageing (and broken once and repaired) Canon IXUS II digital camera. Well, I say replace – it isn’t going anywhere. I just wanted a new one. Yes, even having just bought a new camcorder.

There was nothing especially wrong with the IXUS. It takes good quality pictures, is pretty quick, and has plenty of options and functions I rarely even needed. It just lacks a decent optical zoom (only 2x), and is 3.2 megapixels, which is somewhat weedy these days. Especially if I want to be taking photos of, say, my soon-to-be-born baby, and I want them printing on A4 or larger. Or something. And the battery now only lasts about 1/3 as long as it should, and doesn’t hold its charge for more than a few days if you don’t use it.

The new camera then? A Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5. Which, somehow, I got from the BT Shop online for less money than the slightly lower spec previous model (the TZ4) was selling for.

And very, very nice it is too. It’s a bit bigger than the IXUS, but that’s hardly surprising considering the huge 10x optical zoom the lens can do. The gigantic LCD screen on the back is bigger than the whole of the back of the IXUS too, but is of really high quality. Just as well, as there’s no viewfinder. Not that I ever used it on the previous camera.

It has a million more functions than the Canon too, although I doubt I’ll ever use most of them. Something it does have, which is really useful, is a set of pre-programmed settings for various types of shot. Tell it you’re taking a picture of the sky at night, or some candles, or a baby (no, really), and it’ll pick suitable shutter speeds, flash settings, and other things to help get the best shot. Clever!

So far, I’m very impressed. The only downside (and it is a bit of an odd thing) is that when the camera is connected to a computer, you can’t use the computer to delete or rename files on the camera’s card. This makes importing images into iPhoto or Picasa a bit of a pain if you have older pictures on the camera still, as you can’t import-and-delete. Photos can only be deleted by the camera, on the camera, or by taking the card out and using a card reader. This is only a minor complaint, however. Everything else is just lovely!

Here are a couple of comparison shots. First up is a photo of the new Lumix, taken by the IXUS. The second is a photo of the IXUS taken my the Lumix. Click the images for (huuuuuge) full size versions!

My new camcorder, despite Pixmania and Parcel Force’s best attempts to thwart it, arrived today!

I’ve got myself a Canon MV30. There was much reading and weighing up the pros and cons of various HD camcorders, but I finally decided that the MV30 was the best choice. It’s had some excellent reviews, isn’t horrendously expensive (although it was pushing ¬¨¬£600!) and works well with iMovie on the Mac, which I’ll be using.

The only concern I really had was that it uses MiniDV tapes, rather than a hard drive or a memory card. However, tapes are cheap, and most of the reviews seem to suggest that tape is still the best option.

So, here it is, merrily CHARGIN’ MAH BATTRY:

I’ve only had a quick play so far, both recording onto tape and playing back through my HDTV (the camcorder has a HDMI port, which is nice), but I’m very impressed at the picture quality – even under yellowy artificial lights. That is, those in my lounge.