Kevin Walsh

I decided to start this blog as I was finding on my other blog that I was writing more and more general stuff. My other blog is intended to record my experiences (both good and bad) of owning a lodge on Fallbarrow Park in the Lake District.

This blog will record some more general stuff but also concentrate on some of my specific interests including supporting Bolton Wanderers, playing with computers, red wine, playing golf  and investing in property and stocks and shares.

If you want to comment on any these posts, just click on the title

Just installed the latest version of the WordPress application for android. First time I have seen an android app that looks better than the I Phone equivalent.

Posted from WordPress for Android

After many years of resistance, tomorrow I will officially become a fully fledged Apple fanboi.  If UPS live up to their advertising I will tomorrow take ownership if an I Phone 4S unlocked and SIM free which I will then insert a micro SIM from Three Telecom giving me 300 minutes talk time, gazillions of texts and 1 gb of data.  The SIM is on a 30 day rolling contract allowing me to switch to another network should I so choose.

To go with my I Phone I also use an I Mac desktop system and an I Pad all networked together using an Apple Airport Wireless Router.  So as you can see I will be Apple from desktop to mobile but will still have a Windows 7 Laptop (which also dual boots into Linux) and a cheap PAYG Android phone.

I realise that many will scoff and deride my seemingly slavish devotion to Fruity Cupertino Crowd and for many years I was vehemently anti Apple, especially when I worked for Microsoft.  But, Apple have realised from the very beginning that technology is a means to an end and not an end in itself.  I do not think that any other company comes close in that regard.  If focuses on making the systems easy to use for Joe and Jane Public.

A case in point is upgrades and updates to software.  My I Pad is now running the latest version of OS 5.  This was done over the network without having to connect it to any computer and it virtually upgraded itself.  Today I upgraded the firmware on the Apple Airplay router.  I had no idea an upgrade was available, it just appeared and two clicks and 5 minutes later it was upgraded.  I have used lots of wireless routers in the past and never been automatically informed about a firmware upgrade and never managed to achieve an upgrade with just two clicks of the mouse (well two touches of the Apple magic trackpad).

So contrast and compare to Android and BlackBerry (both of which I own, although the Berry is terminally busted).  Updates for these devices is an absolute nightmare.  In over four years of BlackBerry ownership, there has only ever been one official update from Orange.  In just under a year of using Android I have a device that is stuck on version 2.2 and will never the see the light of Android version 4.

Many people criticise Apple for being a closed system, of locking people in and restricting choice.  Well that is probably true.  But with Apple I get the freedom of being able to use the technology to do useful stuff rather than continually fighting the technology.

Google in the Summer launched Google +, their own version of a social network.  The take up of the network has been quite good with 40 million or so users.  This number does of course pale into insignificance when compared to the 800 million or users on Facebook.  I was one of the early adopters of Google Plus and tend to use it to follow and interact with like mined people interested in technology and photography.

Last Monday, Google also introduced Google Plus Pages (not to be confused with Google Pages which I also used to create one of my first websites several years ago).  Google Plus Pages allow people to create a business presence in Google Plus.  As with the original Google Plus, I quickly jumped in and created a Page to promote the rental of our lodge in the Lake District.

So have played with Google Plus for several months I am quite impressed so far, but I still want more.  So here in no particular order are my top 5 wants for Google Plus.

1. The ability to search for people with similar interests
2. The ability to customise my Google business page – the current design is very basic with very few options to change it
3. Integration with Seesmic – I use Seesmic on my mobile to simultaneously update Twitter and Facebook, I would like to have Google Plus included in the list.
4. Integration with Twitter – so that when I post something on Google Plus, it is Tweeted automatically.
5. Meaningful names for Google Pages.  On Facebook, my business page is http://www.facebook.com/Lodgeonwindermere, on Google Plus it is https://plus.google.com/109667151180422094118.  Enough said!

Now some of these wishes may already have been granted and I have yet to find them.  If you know if any have been granted or if you wish to add any of your wants, then feel free to comment.

Kevin

After briefly trying to buy an I Phone 4S by reserving it at the Trafford Centre Apple Store only to be thwarted by others who were quicker on the draw than me, I took the plunge and ordered it on line.  It is likely to take 2 weeks for it to arrive but at least that gives me plenty of time to sort out extracting myself from Orange in preparation for moving to Three.

So what convinced me to take the plunge?  Well dropping and terminally breaking my BackBerry Bold for one thing.  This meant I had to rely on the ZTE Blade running Android as a back up phone.  The deciding factor for choosing IOS/Apple over Android/Google was believe it or not e-mail.  Android is very competant but unless you only use G Mail then the lack of a decent native e-mail client with a unified inbox is disappointing to say the least.

Now some Android fanbois may well be jumping up and down at this stage saying how can you make a decision based on Android 2.2 (which is the latest version that will run on my ZTE Blade) without considering Android V4 (aka “Ice Cream Sandwich”).  Well, my trusty ZTE Blade will not run “Ice Cream Sandwich” and probably never will.  I only managed to upgrade it to V2.2 by some risky process that could have bricked the whole phone.  The Blade is less than a year old and yet it will not run the latest version.  My trusty BlackBerry was the same.  I had to upgrade the device myself as Orange never published an upgrade.

Now contrast and compare to Apple.  I upgraded my I Pad to IOS 5 on the day it was released and relatively painlessly.  IOS 5 runs on I Phone 3GS, 4, 4S, I Pod Touch and I Pad 1 and 2.  Yes I know that Apple controlling both the hardware and software makes the whole process easier, but you can’t escape the fact that Apple does Operating System upgrades very well and Google/handset makers/Networks do it very badly (especially if you have very limited technical knowledge.

So just need to be patient and wait  - not my strong point.