Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Subscribe to Killing Pixels

“Multitasking is the art of distracting yourself from two things you’d rather not be doing by doing them simultaneously.”  -  Eideteker

Ok, so we missed another week. But we’re back, and it was straight into….

The iPad – Gareth got his sweaty mitts on one in an Apple store, and he was pretty stoked about Apple’s, self styled, ‘magical’ and ‘revolutionary’ device.  It could be the end of the month before the rest of the world get to join the party.  The reviews have been overwhelmingly positive, and it’s selling by the bucket load. Gareth admitted he would have left the store with one, if it hadn’t been for the security. I mean an iPhone fits nicely in to a pocket but this thing.

Apple scrubs Google from iPhone OS 4 – The Google button is just labelled search in the new OS. It seems not even Steve and Eric getting together for a coffee can prevent the spat between their respective companies deepening. Are Apple positioning the iPhone for a new search provider, or are they just that pissed at Google. But it segued nicely into the other big topic of the show.

iPhone 4.0 OS – It’s getting harder and harder for iPhone haters to come up with convincing reasons not to get one. First it was copy and paste, then multitasking. Now it’s…. well it’s nothing. The new OS 4 will have multitasking along with several other new features. Folders, unified inbox in mail, better Exchange support, iBooks and iAds. Ok, I don’t think anyone but the admen are excited about iAds, but the rest of the OS rocks. Yeah, we’re getting multitasking, in your face Android and WebOS.

Twitter abuse candidate removed – So you’re a perspective Labour candidate for parliament. You’re young and tech savvy, you even tweet. But you have to be savvy enough not to tweet what you really think of your political opponents. We’ve seen it with people being canned for status updates on Facebook. You post something it’ll come back and bite you on the ass. The clue is in the name ‘social’ networking, get with the program people. Then it was nicely on to…

Twitter buys Tweetie – The darling of Mac twitter users Tweetie is the one twitter app to rule them all. It’s also now the official twitter app to rule them all. Twitter themselves having bought the company behind it, they intend to rebrand it and give it away for free. So all the other Twitter app developers have seen their market disintegrate faster then a chair in the room with an angry Steve Ballmer.

Chinese ISP momentarily hijacks the internet – I thought this was a good example of the vulnerability of the internet to bad DNS servers, Border Gateway Protocol data in this case. Gareth on the other hand saw the source and immediately assumed it was a trial run at Internet armageddon. He’s not so much a glass half empty kind of guy, as a glass smashed on the floor, and him lying next to it in a pool of blood, kind of guy.

Zune HD 64 goes on sale – So MS released their newest Zune in the same week as the iPad. We only mentioned this in case you missed it, like the rest of the world. and almost like we’d thought this through, next came…

Microsoft not adopting their own standard – Yet another Redmond based story, this concerning the OOXML standard that they practically rammed through the ISO last year. After all that, they aren’t even using the full standard in Office 2010. I know is was just a sop to the big government and institutional users of Office, to stop them migrating over to open source alternatives. But they could have at least put it into their own software. Come on Steve, bust some heads, not a chair, and get your engineers on to it.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Subscribe to Killing Pixels

“But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.“  – Robert Frost

This week both Gareth and myself commented on the lack of juicy stories.  I know that plenty of things were going on, but nothing that was really grabbing our attention. And if it doesn’t float our boat, it ain’t getting on the show, that’s just the way we roll around here. Tech wise nothing was happening with me.  Meanwhile Gareth was busy outfitting his iPhone for an all out assault on April the first. Then it was on to the stories we did find.

I kicked them off this week with…

Google stops censoring search results in China – After all the hoopla which followed Google’s announcement that they were going to stop cooperating with the Chinese authorities.  And the claim and counter claim over the hacking attacks which provoked it. The guys in Mountain View actually followed through, and have switched off the filters. Will Beijing shut them down? We shall see. But most amazing of all Google went from announcement to market in 2 months, without the usual 3 years of ‘beta’ in between.

iPad App Store screenshots leaked – So the first screenshots of iPad apps show that, surprise, surprise, they’re going to be more expensive then their iPhone equivalents. Ok maybe that’s not that much of a shock. Given that developers have a whole new environment to code for, and the problems and opportunities that can bring. We should begin to see the software that will prove the iPad is not just a big iPhone. I just hope they don’t start charging by the screen inch, or Photoshop CS6, for my fantasy 50″ multitouch iMac will set me back about 40k.

Security researcher reveals 20 vulnerabilities in Mac OS – Right everybody panic, run screaming for the hills. Windows fanboys flame all you want, we are undone. Charlie Miller veteran hacker / security researcher exposed 20 zero-day security holes in Mac OS X at CanSecWest. So it’s only a matter of time until we see the first virus’ (should it be virus’ or virii, I just don’t know) in the wild. Malware destroying our operating systems on a regular basis. Botnets spewing out spam and DDoS attacks. Human sacrifice, cats and dogs living together….mass hysteria. Oh hang on, apparently he did the same last year, and, nothing, zip, zilch, nada. Seems like the script kiddies really have a hard-on for Windows.

Steve and Eric seen at ‘Central Perk’ – So what gives with the photos of Eric Schmidt and Steve Jobs having coffee together. Are all the stories way off base, Apple and Google aren’t mortal enemies. Did I miss a memo? Have Steve and Eric made-up, is there something big coming. Are they meeting on neutral ground, to set up a rumble. Maybe Steve’s just caught up with him to get the key to the executive bathroom back. Maybe, just maybe they’re friends really. Did you see what I did there, Central Perk, Friends, hilarious. Pardon….what do you mean…..up the dosage?

MS pulls Bing app from international store – Apparently the Bing app was pulled from every store but the US App Store. The reason given by MicroSoft was that the app needed to be ‘localised’ for the various international markets. Not a serious gaffe in and of itself, but I think it raises a shocking, shocking question. Did anyone else know there was a Bing app at all? Let me just Google that.

Tivo reboots its DVR’s – New, from the people that made DVR’s work, the Tivo Premiere and Premiere XL. The latest, all singing, all dancing, HD and network aware DVRs are out. In my part of the world they are like rocking horse pooh, but Gareth, who has owned all three previous versions, assures me they are, to use a bit of slang, the mutts. And if it only it were possible he would sling his u-verse box and install this new one post haste. Yet another case of you damned Yankees, enjoying all the shiny new goodies, and us poor Brits languishing without.

MS loses Word appeal – Having lost the original lawsuit, against the Canadian company i4i, for infringing an XML patent. MS will have to stop selling Word, that cornerstone of the edifice, that is MicroSoft Office. Hurrah, I hear you shout, but not so fast. Redmond have said that nearly all currently available versions will be patched to avoid the injunction. Boo, I hear you shout, but not so fast. On top of they’re legal fees, it’s going to cost MS a cool $240 million in damages. I’ve been following this one for a while, and talking about it on the show, was the first time I’ve used the words MicroSoft and appealing in the same sentence.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Subscribe to Killing Pixels

“I think it’s wrong that only one company makes the game Monopoly“  – Steven Wright

So, we’re back after another enforced break, my fault this time. Parents are a bad idea, and I don’t think they’ll ever catch on. Anyway we dived right in to the big story, the iPad is available to buy, on Gareth’s side of the pond. If you buy it now you still won’t get it till the 3rd of April, but will have the satisfaction of being the earliest of early adopters. Tech wise it’s been pretty slow for both of us, I came across a fab HTML5 drawing app called Harmony, and we both bought the MacHeist nanobundle, and as always, it was great value.

Then on to the stories proper…

Apple selling 20,000 iPads an hour – So, the ‘magical’ device is available for pre-order, and it seems plenty of you are happy to splash the cash. In the first few hours they sold, at an estimated, 20,000 an hour. And after the initial surge, they topped out at 150,000 in the first 24 hours. The makers of hotcakes were quick to point out that, their products were selling like iPads.

The Mac is a gaming platform, seriously! – After years of being frankly derided, in gaming terms anyway, the Mac is being considered again as a serious gaming computer. Valve are porting their Steam platform to the Mac. With the improvement in graphics cards standard in most of the recent Macs. It looks like us Mac users can lose days of our lives fragging zombies, just as well as our PC using friends.

Tech site recommends IE5 to mac users – Mark this one down under bizarre. ‘Tech site’ Soft Sailor has suggested that mac users run IE5 as their browser of choice. It is said to be ‘doing a fairy good job’ and ‘lots of features’. Where this came from I have no idea, I checked the date to see if it was April the first, but apparently it’s a serious recommendation. A 7 year old browser, that even MS have abandoned, hell I’d rather dual boot with linux so I can install Mosaic.

A ‘David versus Goliath’ story, with a twist – The particular twist in this case is that the self-styled ‘David’ is Microsoft, yeah that’s what I thought, and the ‘Goliath’ is Google, the battleground, search. MS are going to spend a huge sum of money to try to push Bing into the consumer mind-space, and break Google’s 90% market-share in the UK. I know that someone has to take them on, but can Bing and all those advertising bucks defeat Mountain View? Let me just Google that.

XP needs some TLC to use next-gen hard drives – The aged and now out-dated OS, Windows XP is starting to get a little ragged at the edges. As the inevitable march of technology goes on, more and more things turn out not to be compatible with the older software. This time it’s next generation hard drives, traditional mechanical and newer SSD’s, which are causing the problems. I almost feel the pain of these users, as I’m trying to wring the last useful life out of my G4 iMac, but these are windows users, they should be used to pain.

BBC ‘breaks’ iPlayer – The wonderful, wonderful BBC iPlayer has been crippled, and unfortunately in this case it’s the BBC doing the hobbling. They have enforced ShockWave Flash (SWF) verification, thereby breaking ‘unauthorised’ open-source software apps. It used to be the case that I could download and re-encode BBC programmes out of Flash and into a less processor intensive format, for later viewing, but now I have to use the Flash based iPlayer software. It enforces the DRM, that is stripped out by the open-source software, which limits the time you can keep the shows. Also it means Gareth is going to run screaming back to the bit-torrent sites to get his fix of Doctor Who.