iOS 6 Wifi Plus Cellular

So apparently Apple as introduced a "Wifi plus Cellular" option for data in iOS 6. The idea is that data can be sourced primarily via Wifi but if Wifi is spotty it can be backed up by using the cellular connection as well. While this idea sounds great I am not sure how well it will work in practice. Firstly, how many applications are designed to take advantage of such redundant connections resolving to different IP addresses and the like. Unless the switch over is transparent and instantaneous, more time may be lost with flipping and application recovery than is gained by the dual channel feature. Ideally I'd like to see the feature go further and say bind specific applications to either Cellular only, Wifi only or both. Consider the situation where you are using your phone for work, you'd like your work emails to come through immediately but you're probably not too concerned if Facebook updates slowly in the background. Secondly it will be interesting to see how the carriers respond to this, there are lots of efforts underway to push users off the RAN and onto Wifi, this setting will ensure that a user on Wifi still consumes cellular resources beyond those required for voice termination. This is particularly a factor in networks where voice is still circuit switched but data is packet switched.

Synology Disk Station 211J Setup Part 2

As promised in my earlier post it is time for part two of my Synology DiskStation 211J setup review, continuing on from where I left off my next thing to do was setup shared folders so that, among other things, I could use Media Rover for backing up and syncing iTunes between my desktop and laptop.

I attacked this the same way that I usually attack these things, poking around in the control panel and seeing what jumped out at me. I suppose I should start with the interface actually, once you have everything setup with the Synology Assistant as I mentioned in part 1 the rest of the administration is done via a snappy web interface. It feels like a simplified linux desktop, which is exactly what it is really, just on a web page. There are four main icons, the file browser, control panel, help and quick start, which just links you to things in the control panel.

I started by setting up a shared folder, just opened up the control panel, selected shared folder and followed the prompts. Then I ran off to try and play with the Media Rover setup. Unfortunately while it did allow me to setup a shared drive I couldn't access it properly, I hadn't even given it thought but I forgot to setup a user, I just set everyone to read only. But then I couldn't access it with the guest account and it seemed stupid to use the admin account.

So back in the control panel I added a user, again just following the obvious prompts from the control panel, and tried to assign permissions to the folder I created. I thought I did it properly but then from my PC I couldn't access it. At this stage I figured I might as well just make a new shared folder and assign the user properly from the outset, that worked straight away. So I guess the lesson from me here is to add your users before you try and do anything else really. The new folder worked perfectly (although the old one hung around on the Windows PC till it was restarted, I couldn't access it but it was still there) and I was able to setup Media Rover and have it sync across to the NAS with out a fuss. You can read more about the Media Rover setup over here ... when I finish the post that is.

My next step was to install and configure the Windows backup tool, Data Replicator 3, on my desktop PC. Installation was a breeze, run it off the disk and you're away in about ten seconds it was all done. Configuration was a matter of selecting a shared folder on the NAS, selecting which files I wanted to back up and clicking go, very straightforward really, at least to do the initial backup. With approximately 55 Gb of data the initial back will take around 4 hours or so, well that's what it told me anyway, but it did go a little quicker than its progress bar would have had me believe.

I also wanted to setup the Time Machine Backup from the Power Book, I had to add another Shared Folder and then in the Win/Mac/NFS setup, under Mac File Service its a simple matter of selecting which shared folder you would like to use, in my case the ingeniously named "TimeMachine" folder. Somewhat annoyingly selecting a folder requires that you restart the network service on the NAS which I would have to wait to do as I am still replicating the Desktop PC. Once I applied the settings my Powerbook quickly picked up the new "TimeMachine" folder on the drive and it was a simple matter of clicking start to get it all working.

I grabbed a power meter from Aldi the other day so I thought I would put it to use monitoring the power draw of the NAS. On power up it power usage peaked at 24 Watts and then settled back to around 15 W when the drives where spinning but nothing else was happening. When copying an individual large file power usage spiked to 16.5 W, when completely idle and no drives running the power draw dropped to 7 W.

In terms of transfer speeds I can't be bothered sitting down and calculating heaps of them, although I am sure a lot of you are interested in that. A 1.28 Gb file transfered comfortably in around 3 minutes and a 55 Gb backup of my Windows PC via the data replicator took 2 hours and 45 minutes to complete. Not the most scientific but I rate it plenty quick enough for me.

I have to rearrange a cupboard to get the system setup in its permanent position and when it is in there I will get it backed up to the external disk as well, the Story Station.

EDIT: I've now got the external drive connected and backing up, you can read the setup info in my new post.

Unboxing my new Mac Book Pro :D

I'm not going to post a whole heap of pictures there are plenty of other unboxings out there on the interwebz for you all to find. I just wanted to point out a few things that I thought where cool with my shiney new Apple MacBook Pro. Firstly, I'll just say,

"Wow"

This thing looks awesome, the screen is bigger than I thought it would be and I'm glad I got the high-res antiglare version the clarity is great and I can fit a whole lot of stuff on the stuff on the screen at once. Which for me is great as I work with dual 24 inch screens at work and always struggle when I have to go back to less screens. (I've been afflicted like this for a while, ever since I found an old PCI video card back in the day and had a 17 in Trinitron and an 'awesome' 14 in fish bowl CRT hooked up at home, going back to one screen even with more res just doesn't seem as good. Although the new shortcuts in Windows 7/Server 2008 are awesome (half screen etc)). Also, I'm loving the back lit keyboard, it looks schmick, although it must be said there seems to be enough room to put in a number pad. Not that you really need one and its probably better than squeezing it in like they do on some other laptops and sacrificing key size or usability.

I've always admired Apples sense of design (although as we can see it has apparently affected the reception on the iPhone 4, you can read my take on that here) but still, they pursue form and usability to an almost insane degree, both in their hardware and their software. They even put a lot of effort into their packaging, in the past they have won design awards for this.

Again, I'm impressed by their package design, first when you open the case you notice a large piece of foam stuck to the top of the box that protects the top of the laptop and holds it in place in the box, the second, which I admit is a total wank is the little popup tab that says "Designed by Apple in California".

It is a wank, but it makes sure that you all know who designed this beast and where, also it serves as a tab to allow the easy removal of the computer from the plastic that is holding it in.

A few things will obviously take some getting used to, the one mouse button thing and getting back into the feel of Expose and the dock, its been a while since I used OS X. On another note this could be my last update for a while as I am off to New York for a friends wedding and a two week holiday. While I'm there I think the first purchase on my list will be a case, something like this one.

Which still allows full access to everything but'll prevent me from denting the case, especially behind the screen. Thankfully I'll have some cash back after gertting my GST refund from the friendly folks at Australian customs (there is more info on that in an earlier post)

Maybe the Apple Product Managers shouldn't "Just say no!"

Alright, so some of you may have seen my earlier post Apple Product Manager? Just say No! but I am starting to think that perhaps, they need to listen to their engineers occasionally. It hasn't come out yet but there has got to be an RF engineer somewhere around Cupertino that is sitting there at the moment thinking

"I told you so!"

In case you've missed it, I am referring to the "debacle" surrounding the funky antenna design on the new iPhone (I am guessing that the "funky" new design hasn't been used with any other phones because, well as we can see, holding the antenna directly causes attenuation issues.)


It would appear that the culture of saying no has spread to the customer service and PR ranks of the company, now it isn't just the Product Managers saying no, the PR flacks are now saying

 "There are no reception issues with the iPhone4"

 And in the latest blow to the companies image the Boy Genius Report has managed to get some leaked documents for how Apple Care representatives are to deal with calls regarding the antenna issues. The full text is:

1. Keep all of the positioning statements in the BN handy – your tone when delivering this information is important.

a. The iPhone 4’s wireless performance is the best we have ever shipped. Our testing shows that iPhone 4’s overall antenna performance is better than iPhone 3GS.

b. Gripping almost any mobile phone in certain places will reduce its reception. This is true of the iPhone 4, the iPhone 3GS, and many other phones we have tested. It is a fact of life in the wireless world.

c. If you are experiencing this on your iPhone 3GS, avoid covering the bottom-right side with your hand.

d. If you are experiencing this on your iPhone 4, avoid covering the black strip in the lower-left corner of the metal band.

e. The use of a case or Bumper that is made out of rubber or plastic may improve wireless performance by keeping your hand from directly covering these areas.

2. Do not perform warranty service. Use the positioning above for any customer questions or concerns.

3. Don’t forget YOU STILL NEED to probe and troubleshoot. If a customer calls about their reception while the phone is sitting on a table (not being held) it is not the metal band.

4. ONLY escalate if the issue exists when the phone is not held AND you cannot resolve it.

5. We ARE NOT appeasing customers with free bumpers – DON’T promise a free bumper to customers.

Which certainly does seem bad, but really that is pretty much how I would expect them to react. Two things surprise me the most about this issue, one is the fact that Steve Jobs doesn't give a shit and the second is the vehemence that people have reacted to the problem. I am not surprised that that there are issues with the new phone, its a new hardware platform, the only thing mature about the iPhone is the OS. The Evo has a 12 second battery life but we haven't seen the same level of vitriol surrounding the issue. I guess the main difference is that they have at least made a noise about attempting to fix it in the next revision.

I can't help but think if Steve had said something more along the lines of we'll investigate the problem instead of hold the phone like you're a contortionist on a lunch break then we wouldn't see this level of reaction.

At the end of the day, the new iPhone has much better reception than the 3GS and most people will probably shove the phone in a case anyway, rendering the whole issue moot. Of course, if AT&T's network didn't suck balls then this whole issue may not even have been noticed.

$4.99 a month? They just don't get it!

So, I got this email on Friday..

Dear Me, At The Australian we are committed to delivering our world-class journalism in new and innovative ways. That's why we have launched an iPad application to coincide with the release of Apple's new device in this country today. This exciting technology will give readers the opportunity to enjoy the best reporting and analysis in the nation using the unique functionality of the iPad. The Australian's app brings together the best elements of both print and digital news in one convenient and seamless experience. If you thought there was only one way to read the news, think again. To purchase at $4.99/month, go to the App Store on your iPad and search 'The Australian'. In association with our launch partners: Commonwealth Bank, IBM, Emirates and Optus.

As you can see it is from the Australian trying to plug their application for the iPad at $4.99 a month. Now, I don't know about you but this just seems over the top. I mean, I already subscribe to a couple of their mailings list for free, which deliver content to my email everyday for the princely sum of nothing. Then there is their website, which has all the content which is going to be in the app.

So I'm not really keen to stump up the cash for content that I can get for free and I know pretty much all my other tech minded friends think this way. Then there are other problems that the Apps face, which have been covered pretty well in this post. The basic summary is that using an App instead of using the browser destroys the interconnectedness that makes the web awesome. You can read this post, open that link in another tab in the background, flick back and forth between then, send out a tweet about the link etc, all without leaving the browser, the App has to be awesome to do all that and until there is good multitasking support in the iPad this isn't really going to happen, it'll be hard to get it as easy to use as you can with tabs.

Then again, me and my circle of friends probably aren't who this is being aimed at, I read this morning that 10000 people have subscribed to the Online version of El Mundo which is a Spanish news paper and they are paying around 4 times the price of the Australian iPad App. Perhaps there are ten thousand people out there, who like my dad, like gadgets and like to be parted from their money. But then again there are key differences, El Mundo has a paywall, they don't have everything straight up on the website. They only have summaries and you need to subscribe to see the whole article on line, just like the WSJ.

In the end I do see a place for the paid content apps I just don't think they've hit the price on the head with this one. I'd probably be happy to stump up $1 a month or $20 a year but $60 seems to steep to me.

MacBook vs MacBookPro?

Uh oh, if you saw my earlier post "Should I buy in Australia or in the USA?" you would know I was all set on purchasing a Mac Book Pro, now with the new line of Mac Books, I'm thinking I'd be better off getting one of them and chucking a bit more memory into it.

So the question is whether the extra stuff you get with a Mac Book Pro is really worth it. Here is what you get.

1. Display: SAME
2. Processor: SAME
3. Graphics: SAME
4. Memory: 2Gb Standard versus 4Gb. Would cost $140 to upgrade to 4Gb.
5. Battery: SAME
6. Hard Drive: SAME
7. Optical Drive: SAME
8. Ports: Two USB ports versus Two USB ports and a Firewire Port and an SD slot
9. Wireless: SAME
10. Ethernet: SAME
11. Keyboard: Normal keyboard versus back lit keyboard.
12. Case: Polycarbonate versus Aluminium
13. Size: Slightly larger versus slightly smaller.
14. Weight: 90g. Slightly heavier (2.13kg) versus slightly lighter (2.04kg).
15. Price: $1249 ($1389) versus $1499

So basically are those differences worth the extra $110?

I'm not sure. I'm not going to be carrying it around too much (couch surfing FTW!) so weight probably isn't a big factor. Back lit keyboard is kind of cool (especially for the aforementioned couch surfing!). Who uses Firewire? Not me.

Does anyone know the differences in case longevity?

Does the Aluminum case cool better?

Should I buy in Australia or in the USA?

So I'm looking to get a new laptop and well having been an early Mac user (Mac Classic FTW!) and slightly more recently an iBook (circa 2001 G3) and also deciding that I'd like to try my hand at maybe developing an iPhone App or two I've pretty much decided that it'll be a 13in Mac Book Pro. I don't need anything fancier than the base model so that should do it. Another important factor is that I now have sufficient funds to get back into the Apple world. It still feels odd that I have money after being a money scrounging, penny pinching student for so many years.Whatever you think about Apple the word cheap usually doesn't immediately to mind.

Anyway, as I am heading the states in July I could purchase it over there. So I'm going to compare buying it over there to buying it over here and all the extra savings I can squeeze out of it. Because despite having more funds I still like to use them as little as possible.


So, to start with lets just compare basic prices. I can get it from the Apple Store in the States for US$1199 and I can get it in the Australian Apple Store for AUD$1499. So converting both to AUD (using todays conversion rate of 0.87281 from Oanda I get

US Apple Store AUD$1,373.23 versus AUD$1,499 from the Australian store.

So, looks like a no brainer at the moment, but the US price does not include sales tax, so lets check where I am going.

Sales tax in New York City is

City sales tax rate is 4.5 percent (in addition to the New York State sales and use tax of 4 percent and the Metropolitan Commuter Transportation District surcharge of 0.375%), for a total Sales and Use tax of 8.875 percent.

So that'd make it New York City Apple Store = 1,373.23*1.08875 which is AUD$1495.10, suddenly it doesn't look so good there.

Now, sales tax in Washington, DC is 5.75% so in DC we get 1,373.23*1.0575 which is AUD$1452.19. Hmm still not that much better.

What about in Boston? Sales tax is 6.25% so we get AUD$1459.06

Lets dig a little deeper. Here in Australia I can get an Educational Discount which knocks $100 off the price and brings it down to AUD$1,399 which already looks better than the US prices.

Also, in Australia if you're about to travel overseas and you purchase something you can get the GST back via the Tourist Refund Scheme the catch is that you have to take the goods with you to present at the Airport to get the refund. There are other requirements, which you can see on the website linked but they are all met by this purchase anyway. So if you're eligible you can get a refund as follows.

The GST refund is calculated by dividing the total amount of the purchase by 11.

So, if I get the laptop for AUD$1399 and take it in my carry on luggage with me on the trip then I'll get 1399/11 = AUD$127.18 cash back. Which would bring the grand total for purchasing the laptop here in Oz to 1399- 127.18 = 1271.82.

So basically we get

US Purchase = AUD$1452.19

versus

Australian purchase = AUD$1271.82

I know where I'll be getting it.

Why Engineers Suck at Usability

This post actually follows on a bit from my earlier post Apple Product Manager Just Say No where I discussed how some of the success that Apple enjoys flows from their ability to deliver core product well without all the extra crap. The problem is

Engineers Love Features

They crave the latest technology, they need the latest widget and given the option an engineer that is developing a product will go all out to solve all the technical challenges that they can think of and incorporate them all into the product.

The problem here isn't really that the Engineers want to solve as many cool problems as possible and jam it into whatever product that they are developing, it is rather that they don't recognize that most end users don't want them all. And also to pick up on my earlier post, that the Product Managers don't exercise enough control over their product.

The paradox here is that when the Engineer is a consumer of a product they recognize well designed products over badly designed ones and will probably choose the former rather than the later. I say probably because there could always be that one kick arse feature that they want in some crappier product (Div X support in a DVD player for example).

The reason that Engineers don't see a problem with the product or program is

They have a much higher Threshold of Complexity.

Basically they don't tend to be bothered by a device having 48 buttons instead of 4. One example that springs to mind is a washing machine. Before the advent of fancy control circuitry a washing machine probably only had one controller, a knob you turned to the desired wash cycle, now you can get ones with LCD displays and a menu system and 20 buttons all controlling different specific features. Now while the Engineer may not be bothered with this display of controls the average user (my mother for example) would look at it and have a slight panic attack.

Apple Product Manager? Just say No!

So it occurred to me the other day as I was chatting to a former colleague what it is that makes Apple good at delivering products that your average consumer goes gaga over, makes the average bogan rush out and spend their baby bonus. The answer is simple.

Their Product Managers say no.


Admittedly it sounds simple. What? The key to their success is the ability to say no? Yup, that is it. They pick core features that they believe the customers will use and don't include all the extra stuff that I crave as an Engineer. Everybody thought they were stupid for releasing a new mobile phone with a camera that didn't support MMS.

How many MMS messages have you actually sent in your lifetime? I remember getting my first MMS enabled phone and sending a couple to friends, of course none of my friends could view them, or if they could they didn't look that good anyway. Every phone seemed to send them in a format that every other phone couldn't read. Overall I probably sent say 10 I would say.

What did the iPhone give you?

An easy way to email photos to people, or through the App store an easy way for you to upload it to FaceSpace or Twitter, or send it via IM. All of which worked better than MMS anyway, because there weren't compatibility issues.

Apple was widely criticised by the geekish elite, by every tech blogger from hear to the moon, except for the odd Apple Fan Boi everyone thought their shiney new phone wouldn't sell well because it offered limited features. But the vast majority of people, the people that Apple sell most of their products to don't care if you can't MMS, or can't transfer files via Blue tooth.

They want a phone they can use!

Initially they bought because it was a well designed phone that made the core functionality intuitive to use. Then more people bought it because you could add games easily, you could have fun with it and it was still easy to use.

So, what does this have to do with the Product Managers saying no? They stopped scope creep. Every Engineer that I can think of loves to add features, countless times I've heard

"Wouldn't it be cool if......"


in a lunch room or a project meeting. We all want to add features, I know I am guilty of it. In fact we wouldn't really be doing our job properly if we weren't thinking of what cool features we could out to what ever product we are working on at the time. I am certain that this also happens in the lunch rooms at Cupertino. The difference is that the Product Mangers don't allow the scope to creep, they also don't allow a partially completed feature in, think about Multitasking for a second.

When the iPhone was initially released there was a very clear statement that multitasking would not be allowed because it impacted battery life and performance too much. This indicates that multitasking was planned and even had been implemented and tested at least at the prototype stage. Clearly the Product Managers and Engineers weren't happy with it's performance and decided not to ship it initially. I'm willing to bet that there has been a team working on multitasking and getting it efficient and intuitve since the inception of the iPhone project and until the 3GS came out and iPhone OS4 allowed sufficient performance there was no mention of it.

Because the Product Managers said no.

Of course I am also willing to admit that there is a possibility that it is just Steve that has the power of veto, but there is still someone within the organisation that is saying it and that is the key.