Today's Review: Apple's AssistiveTouch

Yes, despite keeping my iPhone in a Griffin case since the day after I got it, it has still managed to break in some way. Namely, the lock button on top has become stuck, and I can't push it no matter how hard I try. Like most things, you don't know how much you need it until it's gone, and I was suddenly faced with the inability to turn off the damn screen, which in turn could lead to all sorts of unfortunate situations like app opening or pocket dialling.

Still, Apple have programmed in a workaround, albeit for disabled accessibility purposes. It's called AssistiveTouch, which when activated gives you a relatively unobtrusive circle no matter which app you're on. While it may get in the way sometimes, it's easily moved with a drag. Touching said circle opens up a menu displaying a variety of options normally associated with the physical buttons on the iPhone. You can activate Siri, lock the screen, take a screenshot, you can even rotate the screen or pinch zoom, all with just one finger. It's pretty good stuff for me, so I can only imagine what relief it gives those who lack the motor capacity to push the buttons or turn the phone. It's a great set of options that is intuitively applied, and it's certainly made my life easier until I can find my way to an Apple Store to get the phone looked at.

My rating: 5/5

Today's Review: Tesco's Scan As You Shop

I love a bit of technology, I do. I was pretty excited when the self service tills came along, but now look at what we have. It's a handheld scanner you can take around Tesco, scanning each product as you go, and you simply pay at the end. Awesome stuff. You have to agree to their lengthy terms and conditions, but they're pretty much summed up as "scan everything, steal nothing, but if you do we'll fine the shit out of you". If you're cool with that, just scan your clubcard on the large wall of scanners, and a receptacle glows for you, willing you to pick up your one true scanner.

It's a pretty neat piece of machinery. It fits nicely in your hand, or in the little scanner holders they've put in each trolley. It's touchscreen, and has quite a few buttons as well, so it's quite easy to cancel any items you've mis-scanned or don't want. It updates the price as you go as well, letting you know how much you've saved through offers. It even lets you know which products are on offer when you scan them, I was mightily impressed with all the things this little device could do.

One of the best things about it is that you can pack as you go. No need to bundle it all stressfully into bags at the checkout, you can methodically pack as you make your way through the aisles, providing you grabbed a few bags on the way in or brought your own. You may think this would arouse suspicion from employees, but we had no trouble. Of course there are staff members on hand to make sure you pay for everything at the end, and there is a random check they carry out, but this just involves scanning a few items to make sure they've been registered. All in all it was a pain free experience, and the kids were pretty entertained by scanning our groceries. Here's to the future of the supermarket. What next, RFID tags that charge your card as you walk out of the store? Yeah, that'd be awesome. But this will do for now.

My rating: 5/5

Today's Review: Apple's Magic Mouse

I got this mouse with the Mac Mini I bought last year, and so far I've failed to mention just how awesome it is. I was dubious at first about a mouse with no discernible buttons, but you can left click and right click just like any other mouse, so that's all good.

It's the trackpad function that really makes the mouse special. You can scroll just by swiping your finger up ad down the top of the mouse, go forwards and backwards on our web browser with a left and right swipe, it's so smooth, feels awesome to use.

Apart from that, what really wows me is the battery life. They can last for pretty much a few weeks, and this mouse gets pretty heavily used, so to think that a couple of AAs in a Bluetooth mouse can last that long is astonishing really.

So good on you Apple. If you're in the market for a mouse and are apprehensive about the high price point, I understand, but it's probably the best mouse purchase you can make. Apart from one of them fancy gaming mice I guess, but what are you, some kind of massive nerd?

My rating: 5/5

Today's Review: The Official Blogger App

Hallelujah, the Lord has delivered. Oh wait, not the Lord, the internet. After lamenting the lack of this app in an earlier review, here I am writing a blog post on the official Blogger app. Seems quite snazzy, the only snag so far is I almost keep walking into things, but I can hardly blame the app for that.

This app is very good for me. I rarely get to sit at a computer until after 11pm most work days, but now I can write proper entries from my phone, with pictures and no spelling mistakes and everything. I could even do it on my break.

Hmm, I just went to add an image, but it appeared in a separate bar underneath the writing space. So who knows where it will end up. Anyway, it's the earliest picture I have in my camera roll, and it was easy to add. But if the placing is wrong you lose a point, Blogger.

All in all, this seems like a pretty neat app. I can't see a way to look at my blog stats though, as I am wont to do when I want to feel popular, but this is the first version, things can only get better. There aren't many text options either, I can't make words impossibly huge or change colours willy nilly, but I rarely do that anyway because apparently I am quite boring. But this is a good first try, Blogger. Let's see what else you got.

My rating: 4/5 (Or 3/5 if the picture ain't right)

EDIT: What the hell is this? The picture is right at the end, and so huge it covers up the sidebar, and apparently the title doesn't know what an apostrophe is. Shame on you Blogger app, now you get a 2/5

Today's Review: My MacBook Surgery

If there's one thing kids like to do, it's to play with all of your expensive electronic equipment until it breaks. Well, I assume all kids like to do it, because mine love it. Since bearing children we have had two broken iPhones, two broken cameras, and a dead MacBook. Thankfully my iPhones were replaced via insurance and nice Geniuses, but my first MacBook died after a puke related incident, a week after my warranty expired. Boom, £800 for a new one. Which I then promptly dropped on its screen. Hence my current FrankenMac.

So my new MacBook has been slowly degrading since my son was born. Cracks are appearing, and the screen has gone a bit wonky. Until the other day when I entered the living room to find the MacBook on the floor with the screen half hanging off. I thought that was fantastic, because even if I wanted to get it fixed I couldn't close the screen properly to take it anywhere. So I took it upon myself to find the problem.

So after much unscrewing, and shards of plastic and metal falling out all over the place, I had managed to free the screen from the rest of the casing, and could identify the problem. Somehow the screen itself was still intact, but the hinges connecting it to the base had snapped, despite being made of metal. The plastic hinge cover had basically been destroyed too, meaning there wasn't much connecting the screen to the base at all. I briefly thought about taking it to an Apple store, before realising that they'd probably charge me hundreds of pounds for it. So off to eBay I went, and found the parts that I needed for £26. Two days later, they were delivered. Now the fiddly bit.

Mmm, shiny new parts. I thought it might be simple enough to replace the hinges, but they're rooted pretty deep inside the machine, so of course I had to disassemble the whole thing. I'd done it before with my completely busted MacBook, but this one is still working, so I had to trust myself to not break stuff while I was rooting around inside.

Having lost every precision screwdriver set I've ever owned, I had to root through around 15 random screwdrivers lying in my tool box in order to find one to take out the screws. There are a lot of screws. On the side, round the back, inside the battery compartment, inside the memory compartment. All quite small and fiddly. Since my kids were running around at the time, I for some reason thought it best to connect them all to a magnet that fell out while I was examining my screen, just so I didn't lose any. Because I'm a bit thick like that.

After much screwing and prying, the guts were revealed. Thankfully the keyboard disconnects very easily, and there's direct acces to most thing you need. Taking off the hinges was easy enough, but the problem came when putting in the new ones and working them around the wires leading into the screen itself, and the ones running to the camera and mic. But eventually I sorted it all out, screwed on the plastic cover and voila.

Look at those shiny new hinges. Of course, I still have to actually connect the screen back onto the base, but that was as simple as just sliding it on top of the hinges.

Hooray, it stands up again. My work here is done. Oh wait, the guts are still exposed and I have to screw all those infernal screws back in. But no biggie. Apart from I'm not sure which screws went where...

But I did it. And I didn't break anything. Except the keyboard and trackpad didn't work. Probably should have tested that before I put all the screws back in. But no problem, I'm like a pro now. So off came the casing, keyboard disconnected and reconnected, and all back together again. Like a boss. Except I have a few screws left over. I'm sure they're not important. I can hear the collective exasperated sigh of technical minded Mac people. Haters gonna hate. 

My rating: 4/5

Today's Review: The iPhone 4's Resistance To Tea

You know what I've always wondered? What happens to an iPhone if you dunk it in tea. Haven't you? No, me neither, because I'm pretty sure that would kill it dead. But, as science states, you can't know anything for sure, but you can back it up heavily with empirical evidence. So my son decided to take it upon himself to test this hypothesis this morning by taking my uninsured iPhone 4 and dropping it in a mug of leftover tea.

Turns out I was correct in my hypothesis. So don't try this at home, unless you're set on replicating the experiment for further validation. In which case you're an idiot and deserve everything you get. I can also describe my feelings upon finding out my phone was submerged in tea. It consisted of hurriedly trying to find ways to get it dry, then finding out that in fact it would not boot up at all, at which point I stuck it in a bag of rice and spent several hours moping and trying to figure out how to buy a new phone without declaring myself bankrupt. So see if you can replicate them too. It's fun, I'll tell you.

But while I'm on the subject, what the hell Apple? You're meant to be creating awesome phones that never go wrong. You've got the reinforced glass and everything, and one little splash of tea compromises the whole system? I can only conclude that Apple are xenophobes. I bet if you splash a massive cup of slushie on an iPhone it'll bounce off, because this is a phone for Americans. I also heard that if a businessman spurts his espresso over his phone while laughing at an ironic piece in the New York Times, the iPhone will absorb it and inject it into his brain when he takes his next business call. I heard that from my own mind, but it's probably true.

But no, tea is for old British people who sit around tutting at things and genuinely believe that on a hot day a hot drink will cool you down. These people shouldn't own iPhone, it brings the demographic to a place that is distinctly uncool. So upon contact with even the tiniest amount of tea, the iPhone shuts down automatically and refuses to respond. Therefore Apple are bastards. Unless they give me a new iPhone once I confront them with how I worked out their plan. I'll let you know how it goes.

My rating: 0/5

Today's Review: The Nintendo Wii

I saw an advert tonight with a woman showing the audience how much weight she's lost while playing Wii Fit. That has to be the final straw for me. Nintendo are dying slowly, and i've just sat back and watched for too long. Let's start at the beginning.

Well, not quite the beginning, I didn't actually own a proper console until I got the N64. But my word, how amazing it was. Mario 64, the Zelda games, Donkey Kong, Smash Bros. Nintendo were at the top of their game, and this had built up from a vast former library of awesome games. I've gone back and played all the classics, and it's so good. Nintendo games were a force to be reckoned with, they were game changers. Even though the GameCube was not the most successful venture, there were still some great games on there.

But then came the Wii. Everyone was excited about it, after they got over laughing at the name. Motion controls, ohmigod! Think of the possibilities. Nintendo were about to rise to the top once again. But not in the way we all wanted them to. We wanted new Zelda, we wanted new Mario, and sure, we got those, and they were great, but they have been buried by an unmitigated avalanche of total crap.

It all started with Wii Sports. It's the highest selling game of all time, but only because it comes with every Wii. Basically, it was a tech demo, which showed what the controls could do. But since it sold so well, everyone thought "Wow, these puny little mini games where you swipe your arms around could make us a lot of money", Nintendo included. They also noticed that whereas their key market before was large sweaty nerds, now old people, nay, whole families were getting in on the action. Not only on the Wii, but the DS too! Nintendo had hit a jackpot, creating a home console and a handheld that appealed to everyone. And they jumped all over it.

So now we have Brain Training, we have Wii Fit, we have another Wii Sports, we even have Mario Sports Mix. I dont blame Nintendo, they're making a shit load of money. But they've abandoned we hardcore gamers in the process. I bought a Wii on release date, I loved it at first, but after the novelty wore off I went out and bought an XBox because I was scared of missing out on proper, awesome games like Dead Rising and Gears Of War. And while the XBox and PS3 market has settled almost exclusively on Call Of Duty style multiplayer games, there are still some seriously good title that a real gamer can get involved in. That's the trouble with gaming becoming more mainstream. You get these casual gamers, who want nothing more than to wave their arms around for a couple of hours or spend days shooting people over the internet and then swearing at them.

Nintendo occasionally lure me back. I loved both of the Mario Galaxy games, they made me more frustrated than I have been in a while by Nintendo. They were challenging, they were great. But for every legitimately good Nintendo game, we have hundreds of others that suck balls. Nintendo have opened up the floodgates, and the old school gamers are left swimming through trying to look for treasure in a shipwreck, or something else that's a better metaphor. Nintendo have even managed to screw up some of their greatest franchises, Metroid: Other M is considered a pretty poor outing, but then they went and made a Kirby game where you don't eat people.

I respect Nintendo in a way. They shied away from the specification aspect of the console wars and opted to make something revolutionary that forwent amazing graphics for gameplay. But it was too soon before it was massively abused and the market was flooded with shit. Trouble is, Nintendo got caught up in it, so now we're treated to crap like the aforementioned "I played Wii Fit and now i'm thin!" ad. But when they have stuck their neck back into the classics and provided us with respectable games, they've even moved away from motion controls, even making some playable with the GameCube controller. We want more of that, Nintendo, we want some great games that don't involve us sweating after half an hour. We play games because it's our hobby, not to lose weight, and you've almost lost sight of that. But with the potential announcement of a new HD Nintendo console on the way, perhaps we're gonna get what we're looking for. Or maybe they'll just use it to enhance the sweat on your Mii's eyebrow. Only time will tell.

My rating: 2/5

Today's Review: iPhone Message Tones

I like Apple. They make awesome stuff. It doesn't just look amazing, it just works. Haters gonna hate, and they regularly do, but shut the hell up and get a Mac, assholes. I wish everything I had were made by Apple. If they had Apple life support machines at hospital I'd probably find a way to self induce a coma, 'cause being hooked up to one of those is surely better than real life.

 I got my first iPod when I was about 14, then I got another one when that one died about 4 years later. That one's dead now too, sad face. I currently have my Frankenstein MacBook made from two broken ones that I mentioned in a previous review. Apple stuff doesn't break easily, I just have a tendency to break nice expensive stuff. With that in mind, I am currently on my fourth iPhone. I dropped my first 3G while trying to take a picture of otters. The screen smashed on some grit. It still worked completely fine, and once i'd swiped out the tiny shards of glass it was fine. But it was also insured, so I got myself a new one. Then the iPhone 4 came out, and I queued for 6 hours to pick it up because clearly I am awesome. Alas, a misconnection in the button forced me to take it into the Apple Store where they supplied me with a spanking new one. Almost three years, four iPhones. How impressive of me.

My iPhone does everything I want it to. It Facebooks, it tweets, it knows what songs are when I hold it up to speakers, it tells me where places are, what movies are on nearby, scans barcodes and gives me the best prices, and supplies me with teh lulz and many pointless games. But despite all the things I can do on my iPhone, there is one thing I lament. I can't change the damn message tone.

The iPhone 5 is close to being announced. FIVE. It's been almost four years since the first iPhone was brought out, and since then it's been fitted with 3G, two cameras, a compass, retina screen, and software updates that make it much more awesome each time. But still I'm not able to make my own message tone. Custom ringtone? That's fine, but somehow Steve Jobs has an awfully big problem with letting people choose the sound of their text message.

He's not completely without compassion though, there are about twenty message tones to choose from thanks to a previous update that added to the original six. The problem is, every single one of them sounds like shit being scraped on sandpaper. Which I assume just sounds like shit, but with a grating tinge to it. So, I've had the Tri-Tone message tone for the entirety of my iPhone ownership time.

Problem is, I don't know anyone with an iPhone who doesn't use the Tri-Tone tone. It wasn't such a big problem a couple of years ago when iPhones were quite rare, but now you can walk into a busy shop and be guaranteed that at least five people have an iPhone in your vicinity. So when one person gets a message, everyone gets out their phone. I'd find it mightily hilarious if I weren't one of the people who has to check, but I am, and it's annoying. The tone also matches the sound that Macs make when something's finished installing, so that's not much help either.

I want to make my own message tone. Is that too much to ask? I could, if I jailbroke my phone, but that seems a lot of effort for something that could have been implemented a long time ago by Apple. What are they doing? Putting a third, sideways camera on the new iPhone so you can have Facetime conversations including an awkwardly angled shot of someone standing next to you? Here's a hint. Stop all production on the iPhone for what, five minutes, and make it so I can have the "I found a secret" theme from Zelda play every time someone texts me. Then you will have my complete, unwavering love and attention.

My rating: 1/5