Apple should be more like Dell

Last week Apple updated its desktop computers and new iMacs were launched. Initial reactions were not good, at least here in the UK and the two main problems were the lack of innovation (same old box, just a few updated components) and the price. When Macworld reported on the new Macs it received a lot of negative comments.

The exchange rate has made products from overseas more expensive becase a year ago you could get $2 for each UK pound, but now it's around $1.40 and that's a big difference. Apple kit never was very cheap, but now it is even more expensive and the cheapest iMac is £949 ($1,317). The best part of £1,000 is a lot to pay for a computer in the current economic conditions and not many people have that sort of money to spend on a luxury. Yes, it's a luxury. A computer is a necessity, but a Mac is an up-market luxury item.

I have no objections to companies selling high priced kit, but when there is only one supplier, there is no alternative, and only a small range to choose from, then it does become irritating and off-putting. There are only four Mac desktops to choose from - the Mini, 20in and 24in iMacs, and a Mac Pro, all with some minor configuration options and none of which are very cheap. It's market share of desktop computers will surely shrink because the market for top-end kit is shrinking thanks to the recession, and that's a shame.

If only Apple was more like Dell. Go to the Dell site and you can find PCs that cost £3,500 ($4,800) and that's just for a base configuration. Add a few optional extras and the price is even more! But it doesn't matter because at the other end of the range are PCs that cost as little as £200 ($277). Go to Dell and no matter what hardware you want and no matter how much or little you have to spend, you'll find something you'll like. Go to Apple and you've a choice of four high priced desktops.

Imagine if Apple made shoes. It would make four sizes and expect everyone to squeeze their feet into one or other of them. A lot of people would find that they just don't fit.

You want a laptop with a 17in screen? Apple has just one and it's £2,000 (about $3,000). 

Apple needs to be more like Dell and provide a wide range of computers. There should be more computers at more price points, from small, cheap and portable netbooks to big desktops. There should also be more configuration options too. Squeezing the components into small cases as with the Mini and iMacs may produce attractive designs, but they limit the components you can use. With a Windows PC you can take out the video card and replace it with another faster model to boost the performance in a matter of minutes, an option that's not available with Minis and iMacs.

I do like Macs and the latest models are excellent, but they'll only be attractive to a small number of people - ones that can afford the high price tag and whose requirements exactly fit one of the small number of models that are on offer.

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DIY software

In the early days of home computers we didn't have operating systems with easy to use menus, icons, and windows. It didn't come with useful software like a word processor, email, web browser, paint program, and so on. Home computers in the 1980s booted up into Basic (except the Jupiter Ace, which had the bizarre Forth language).

You could load software off a cassette tape, but there weren't many tapes around and what was available were mostly games. If you wanted software you mostly had to type it in and this usually meant using the Basic programming language. Typing in listings - and debugging them - is how many people learnt how to program computers.

Things are different now and if you want a program to do a job there is a good chance that you can track one down on the internet. It might even be free. However, you might find that it's not quite perfect for your needs and you might wish it had some feature or other, or it worked in a slightly different way. Why not write your own? Is programming really that difficult?

Writing a program because you can't find the right tool on the internet, or one that's affordable, is just one reason for learning how to program. You could also do it for money and you could either sell the software yourself or work for someone else and get paid to write software. You can also program for fun too.

Despite the complexity of modern computers and operating systems, programming isn't any harder today than it was 25 years ago. The reason is that programming languages have got smarter and provide lots of cool tools to help you with the task. For example, Microsoft Visual Studio enables you to draw applications on the screen using a form designer and then to write code to make the windows, menus, buttons and other objects work. The Visual Studio Express editions of Visual C, Visual Basic and Visual Web Developer are free.

Back in the early days of computers, Basic used to come with the computer and it was free and easy to use. This encouraged lots of people to have a go at programming. Computers don't come with Basic any more but the free Microsoft Visual Basic Express certainly encourages people to have a go. However, it's not that easy for a novice to learn. It's OK once you have gained some experience, but it's hard to get started. For this reason, Microsoft has produced Small Basic.

Small basic is designed to be used by novices and it aims to be simple and easy to use. It's interesting, but like all programming languages, using it isn't that straightforward and you really need to read the 62-page Getting Started Guide. In some ways it is quite interesting and it is quite easy to write simple games, but Visual Basic is much more powerful and the posibilities open to a programmer are so much greater. Anyway, it's worth a look if you have never written a program before and want to dip your toe in the water.

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Weird Mac file copy bug - or is it a feature?

I use both a Mac running OS X and a PC running Windows and sometimes the differences between the way they work can catch you out. It happened recently and I have only just realised what has been going on.

The Windows part of the website is created on a Windows PC and the Mac part is created on a Mac. Of course, I could simply use one or the other to do the whole website, but it's useful to experience both platforms because I write about both the PC and the Mac.

I keep a copy of the website in a folder on each computer. On the PC it's the htdocs folder in C:\Xamp (Xamp is a web server based on Apache and is handy for testing), on the Mac it is also the htdocs folder, but this time it's in Applications\Mamp (Mamp is a web server based on Apache and is handy for testing). The problem is how to keep them in sync.

One way is to drag the htdocs folder to a USB memory drive, take it to the other computer and drag it off. It can be done over the network too. The way Windows and OS X works when you do something like this has caught me out and files have been going missing on the Mac. Is it a feature or a bug?

If you drag a group of files and folders from one place and drop them on another place there is a conflict if the destination contains files or folders with the same names. Both Windows and OS X ask you if you want to replace the destination files and folders with the source, which is fine, but Windows and OS X work differently.

The problem is with subfolders. When the source and destination both contain a subfolder with the same name Windows asks if you want to replace the destination with the source. If you say yes, then the files in the source subfolder are copied to the destination subfolder and files with the same name are overwritten. Files with different names are kept. What you end up with is a folder that combines the files from the source and destination. This is exactly what I wanted.

Do this in OS X and you are asked if you want to replace the subfolder. If you say yes then the folder in the destination is deleted and replaced by the source folder. It really is deleted and it's not moved the the Trash. What you end up with is not a combined folder that contains files from both the source and destination, but just the source.

This isn't what I wanted. and it's how I have been losing files. I assumed OS X would only replace the files in the subfolder with the ones I'm copying from the PC, leaving the ones I'd created on the Mac, so I'd end up with a synced folder. Instead files I'd created for the Mac part of the website were being deleted because the subfolder was being deleted and replaced.

This is obviously something you need to be wary of when copying files and folders to update a destination folder.

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iPod repeats same song

I haven't had much luck with the iPod Touch. I bought one a few months after it was launched, mainly because I didn't want to pay the contract on an iPhone. The iPod Touch gives you 90% of the features of the iPhone and only the phone and GPS aren't available. Since I already had a good phone, the only thing I have't got is the GPS location facilities. I can live without them.

Anyway, first the earphones died after about six months use. Fortunately, I had a spare pair lying around and so I used those. Then four months later the screen developed dead spots and this meant that tracks and menu options couldn't be selected. I took it back to the Apple store and they replaced it. (It's incredibly irritating how you have to make an appointment and come back later, actually the next day in my case, even when the store is empty and there are staff standing around doing nothing. I could have demonstrated the dead spots in 30 seconds, but no, they said come back tomorrow - when it was actually twice as busy. How crazy is that?)

The latest problem is that it's stuck on the same song. Select any song in any album or playlist and it will play it and then repeat it. It won't go on to the next song. Every couple of minutes I have to turn it on, unlock it, move to the next track, and then turn it off. It's so annoying.

This time, however, it wasn't the iPod that was faulty. Somehow a setting was changed that told it to continuously repeat the same track. I suspected as much, but it's not very obvious where the setting is. I looked for it everywhere for it and couldn't find it and was beginning to think the iPod was faulty. Do a search at Google and you'll find other iPod owners experiencing the same problem. Google also came up with the solution to, at least a link to it anyway.

so if your iPod will only play one track, select a song and play it. With the album artwork on the screen, tap the screen to display the time bar. At the left hand side is an icon and if you tap it you'll find that it switches between three different states. One is to stay on the same track and repeat it indefinitely, another repeats the playlist or album when it gets to the end, and the third turns off the repeat function and it just plays the album tracks or playlist tracks from start to finish. Problem solved!

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How fast should Wi-Fi be?

The speed at which data can be transferred over wireless networks is increasing and there are some tempting new technologies that push the limits even higher than was ever thought possible just a few years ago. An old computer of mine still has an 11Mbit/s 802.11b Wi-Fi network adaptor connected to a USB 1 socket and those standards are positively ancient. They were replaced by the much faster 802.11g standard that offers up to 54Mbit/s and adaptors plug into USB 2 sockets. The latest Wi-Fi standard is 802.11n, and while it hasn't yet been finalised, you can buy equipment today that is based on the draft specification. The upper limit for this technology is 600Mbit/s, but do we need it though?

There isn't a single answer to this question and it depends on what you want to do. If all you want to do is to browse websites, send and receive email, watch online videos, or view online photos, then the old 802.11b standard may be all that you need and buying top-of-the-range ultra-fast networking gear would be a waste of money. The thing is, your internet connection is probably only around 5Mbit/s. Of course, ISPs try to tempt you with offers of up to 20Mbit/s connections, but you never connect at the maximum speed advertised and in the real world it's hard to connect at more than 5Mbit/s.

If you think about it, an 802.11b wireless connection offering up to 11Mbit/s should easily be able to cope with a 5Mbit/s internet connection, after all it's only half the maximum thoughput. In the real world, however, you never achieve the maximum quoted speed and you'll only get a quarter of the maximum for a technology.

It's an interesting exercise to test your connection speed at a website like www.speedtest.net Just click a server and the download and upload speeds are tested. The results may vary slightly depending on the time of day and how many people are using the internet, so try it at different times. My six-year-old PC with an 802.11b Wi-Fi adaptor achieved a speed of 1350kbit/s (1.35Mbit/s), which is actually quite fast when you think about the 512kbit/s connection speeds available when broadband was first introduced. It is certainly fast enough for web browsing, email and other internet activities. You would only notice the slow speed when downloading large files like Linux distros.

A newer PC with an 802.11g Wi-Fi adaptor recorded a speed of 2880kbit/s (2.8Mbit/s), which is roughly twice as fast. It doesn't make browsing the web or email any faster because these operations don't need a lot of bandwidth, but it's certainly an advantage when it comes to downloading large files. A PC connected to the router using an ethernet cable recorded an identical connection speed to the 802.11g Wi-Fi adaptor, suggesting that the limiting factor is not the adaptor or wireless technology, but the router's actual internet connection speed. It usually reports that the connection is 4 to 5Mbit/s, but as always what it says and what you get are two separate things. So clearly 802.11g is perfectly adequate for my 4-5Mbit/s internet connection and there would be no speed benefit from faster Wi-Fi technology until there is some way of estabilishing a faster connection over the telephone cables from my house to the telephone exchange.

It shows that if you have a single PC you don't need anything other than old fashioned 802.11g Wi-Fi for internet access. However, if you have two or more PCs connected using a home or work network and regularly transfer large files between them, then the newer and faster technologies that are available are important because they significantly speed up the process. But how often do you transfer gigabytes of video or audio clips between your computers? If the answer is not very often, then save your money and opt for older and cheaper technology rather than expensive and exotic cutting edge kit. Web browsing is limited by your internet connection speed and not the Wi-Fi standard.

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Firmware update for MacBooks

There is an old saying that goes back many years. I don't know who said it, but it's good advice: Don't buy version 1 of anything. The latest MacBooks are a point in case and it seems that a few owners have been experiencing problems with them.

For example, the new trackpad, which is one of the new features Apple highlighted at the launch, doesn't click for some people. Is it a hardware or software fault? It's not clear. Instead of paying Apple's sky high prices for RAM, some people have bought RAM from popular online memory suppliers, but have found that crashes can sometimes occur. Some MacBooks won't stay asleep. You shut the lid and it goes to sleep, but then it keeps waking up every minute or so. The Nvidia graphics chipset has also been causing problems too and the MacBook might incorporate chips with known problems. You'll find a useful article here that has links to other reports going into more detail.

A firmware update has been produced and if you are using a new MacBook you should receive it through the usual software update facility (there's a direct link below too). It'll be described as an update to improve stability, but it's basically fixing a load bugs in the original MacBook firmware.

It's always a good idea to wait a while after something new is released, even if it is exceeding cool and from a company like Apple. If you buy a MacBook in the New Year it's not just bugs that you'll be avoiding because here in the UK VAT (sales tax) was recently reduced from 17.5% to 15%, so Apple's UK prices have dropped slightly since the MacBook launch. That's great news.

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Cloud computing - is it safe?

Many people say that the next big thing is cloud computing and that we will all be using it sooner or later, if not already. The term 'cloud computing' means the internet and in some ways it is a return to the old days where large computers in a company held data and software and everyone accessed it through cheap dumb terminals.

It's slightly different now because the internet has made large computing centres open to the general public and not just selected employees in a company. There are many online storage services that offer to store your files, webmail for email, photo sharing and video sharing, online applications like word processors and spreadsheets, and so on.

We are increasingly being tempted by offers to look after our files and cool online applications, but these are early days in cloud computing and not all services that are around now will be around next year or the year after. The problem is that running these online cloud computing services is expensive and it's hard to make a profit. You can only carry on making a loss for so long.

Xdrive, an online storage company that you can use to store files, has recently announced that it is to close. It is not the first to close and it won't be the last. When you use one of these services to store files, for email, photos, or whatever, and they close, it can be very frustrating. How are you going to get all your files/photos/email off the service? Can you transfer them to another service? What if you didn't see the closure notice and everything was deleted? It's enough to put you off cloud computing.

At the moment it is not recommended to store your files/email/photos or whatever online without an offline backup just in case the service closes or has a serious fault and loses your data. If you don't want to do this, at least use two different companies so that if one shuts down you will still have your files/photos/email at the another.

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