Dom Davis (The Blog)

There was a blog post yesterday, despite evidence to the contrary, and a controversial one at that. It simply didn’t survive long enough to actually get posted. My iPad, which is now the principle method of blogging, only has wifi and I can’t post on the move. What i do instead is compose the entry, then publish it when I get in the office. While this is great in theory there is one element of it that fails to work in practice: should the blogging application crash, or be told to shut down by iOS then the post appears to be lost. What I shall try today is hitting e publish button, watching it fail miserably and hoping that it will still be on the failed publish queue when I get in to the office so I can republish for your edification and delight. As a precaution I shall also be cutting and pasting the post into my trusty notebook app for recovery should my plan fail.

The good news is that is would appear that the new tariffs for the iPhone 4S, which I will hopefully be getting soon, are both cheaper than my current iPhone tariff and include tethering so I can hok my iPad to my iPhone and publish in the move. That’s the theory at least.

While we’re on the subject of fondleslabs its the release of iOS 5 today which is very exciting. I’m not sure if I’ll have to wait until tonight before it’s available but rest assured I shall be upgrading all my iDevices pretty sharpish. iCloud is also arriving soon (new iTunes to support that) and there’s lots of excitement in the land of Apple. That said it may be time for me to bite the bullet and upgrade my main computer from Snow Leopard to Lion. I’m still not convinced with Lion whereas I am still very happy with Snow Leopard (there’s a certain irony that Snow leopards are my favourite cat while lions are my least favourite) but time, tide and Apple wait for no man and to not upgrade is to fall behind.

In the late 90 I was working in a support team for one of the large investment banks. The nature of the job involved having 3 computes on my desk: A Windows NT box, which I hated; a Sun Workstation which, while powerful, was looking a bit antiquated compared to what Linux machines could do; and a black NeXT which was woefully underpowered and my absolute favourite machine for many years afterwards. My love of the NeXT was down to the operating system, NeXT Step. It was just light years ahead of anything and an absolute joy to use.

It’s actually this machine that started my rabid fanboiism with Apple because NeXT was the brainchild of none other than Steve and, when he returned to Apple, it morphed into OSX.

At the time the only Apple I had was a Mac Cube, a gorgeous bit of kit hamstrung by the fact it was running System 9. System 9 was shit. It was old, clunky and crashed lots. It made you yearn for Windows, it was that bad. Then came OSX and it was NeXT on steroids. Over the next few years I replaced every single machine I owned with macs.

OSX has undergone a number of iterations since it first came out and I’ve eagerly anticipated each release, buying it working hours of it coming out (seconds in the case of Lion) and every single release has just made things better… until Lion. The fact is I just don’t like it. Now, I’m hoping that much of this dislike is lack of familiarity but some of it is rooted in the direction OSX seems to be going in. I’ve put upgrade plans for my big machine on hold for now and I worry that, if this trend continues, the next iteration of OSX could lead me to start having a crisis of faith :S

I have a quantity of Apple machines at home, many of which talk to each other. Somehow one of them managed to get itself stuck trying to download a rented film that we’d ordered and watched on another machine. This was quite annoying as it was my main machine and every times iTunes started it would whinge about not being able to download this film. There appeared to be no way to stop this from happening and a brief Google later revealed I’d need to email iTunes support. No problem, an email was duly fired off and, as it was the weekend, I forgot about it.

Monday I was greeted by a long missive which included lines such as:

“Thank you for being so patient as we have had a higher volume recently, But I would like to make you aware that I will be personally taking care of you till all your questions have been answered, so please do not hesitate to reply to my email as I will be here.”

The email also introduced the support member helping me, a reiteration of the problem as they saw it and the actions taken to fix the problem. It was signed off:

“Dom, thank you for your patience and for being an Apple iTunes Services customer. We truly appreciate your business. It was my pleasure serving you today.”

Can’t really fault them for their friendliness. Not going to complain about how long it took them to get back to me as it was a weekend and they did apologise profusely. I didn’t fire up my machine that night so I didn’t know if the problem was sorted but it would appear my support representative was eager to help me. Tuesday I received and email saying:

“I wanted to send a quick note to see if you are still experiencing any difficulties with the iTunes Store. Resolving your issue is important to me, so please don’t hesitate to reply if you need any further assistance.”

Also included were the hours my support representative was working that week should I wish to talk to them and the line:

“Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you.”

Maybe it’s me being British or something, but I’m beginning to feel a bit like my support guy is being aggressively helpful. I really hope they use email templates and don’t need to type all this every time they’re blessed with helping someone. Still, not wanting to cause my support persons stats to slip I email back thanking them for their help and telling them my problem is now resolved. Admittedly I hadn’t checked but they’d done the needful on their side and I could always make another persons day by raising a new ticket and giving them the opportunity to help me. The response was:

“Dear Dom,

You’re very welcome.

Nothing makes Apple happier than to hear that we have pleased our customers. I hope that you continue to enjoy the iTunes Store.

Dom, it has been my pleasure serving you today.”

You can’t fault the service, but perhaps they want to dial down the friendliness and dial up the sincerity for the UK audience

It’s always amused me that people find basic PC maintenance and assembly difficult.  Plugging the bits in? Look at the connector, find a hole with the same shape (and pin count if there are pins), plug it in. Simples If you need a screwdriver then you probably want to be a little confident in what you’re doing, but, provided you take not of what came from where it’s still fairly straight forward and, although the cables may have funny connectors, the game of match shapes to find out where it goes still holds once you get inside the case. If you need specialist screwdrivers then you probably shouldn’t proceed unless you know what you’re doing.

All PC hardware comes with Magic Blue Smoke. If the Magic Blue Smoke escapes then it’s game over for, at the very least, that component and quite possibly for the entire computer.

Finally some bits spin. A whirring noise is good and normal. A rattling noise indicates forthcoming failure (bearings have gone), grinding noises are generally never good.

Even laptops can be handled with these basic rules, the only difference is you’re likely to hit specialist screws pretty quickly and some of the bits can be really fiddly to get back in so proceed with caution.

Once you get more familiar with the hardware you will be able to tell, sometimes by sound alone, what kind of repair you’re looking at. Sounds like a Lancaster Bomber taking off? Not a huge problem, couple of £10 fans to replace the ones whose bearings are on the way out and you’re as good as gold. Rattling, grinding noise when you pop a CD into the drive? Going to need a new drive. Can we guess which one I’ve got? Go on, guess.

Yup, popped a CD into my laptop yesterday and it made a hideous noise, the kind of sound that is only really made when the finely calibrated components are out of whack and a large bit of spinning plastic is ramming into the drive at God knows how many RPM. This is what is known in the business as ‘an expensive noise’. Thankfully the machine should still be under warranty, but it will mean dropping it off and leaving it at the Apple store for a period of time. I might see if they can fix it while I’m away, drop it off Friday on my way home and collect it two weeks later on Monday when I get back.

My iPhone is many things to me, the hub of my mobile digital world. What with all the G’s (3G, EDGE, GPRS, GPS, 802.11g and gyroscope) and the multitude of apps it can do just about anything. Watch films and TV programs? Check. Listen to music? Check. Radio? Check. Read books? Check. Communicate with people via email, facebook, twitter, text and IM? Check. Surf the web? Check. Read books? Check. Play games? Check. Eat money through hardware costs, monthly subscription and the endless handing over of money to Apple (and now Amazon) for new music, films, apps and books? Check, check and check. I dread to think how much money I’ve handed over to Steve, either directly or via o2.

Today that changed. IG Index, who to my mind do the bast spread betting platform bar none¹ released their iPhone app. IG have had a mobile site for their spread betting platform for ages now, even one that’s formatted for the iPhone, but I’ve always found it a bit clunky and the charts (which are a must for the type of trading I do) were buggy and unreliable. The new iPhone app, on the other hand, is very slick, execution appears to be reasonably fast that the orders appear to be executed at the price you hit the button, not the price it’s at when the server finally gets the instruction. The last thing you want is a slow GPRS connection turning your big fat profit into a loss.

A quick check of the forex markets (24 hour, move fast, good for a quick test of anything with small stakes and tights stops and limits) and I spotted EUR/USD was on the up, rallying from a small retracement. 50p a point, stop at 20 points (maximum loss would be £20), limit at 2 points (maximum gain £1) and every intention of bailing the instant I struck a profit or the instant it looked like the trade was going south. A punt, yes, but as punts go not a massively risky one, not over these time scales with the entry and exit points. Worst case I loose connection, the app crashes, or some other disaster, the trade goes wrong and I lose a tenner. Best case the same as before but I get a quid. Actual result: I netted 35p.

The reason why I said the app ‘appears’ to execute at the price you hit the button is because at 40p I hit ‘sell’. Nothing happened. A quick look at the UI and I spotted the close trade button. I hit that instead (35p), a dialogue comes up telling me it’s closing the trade (20p) and the little spinney ‘loading’ icon (15p) followed by a confirmation (10p). Total time to close the trade was about 5 seconds (which is a VERY long time in forex) but a quick check of my account showed I was 35p up.

So there you have it, the iPhone is no longer a drain on the resources. Armed with my new app, a bit of luck and a following wind I might even cover the cost of 3 iPhones (original, 3G and iPhone 4), the GPS dock, the headphones, the mic attactchment, the docks, the stipend to o2 to use their mobile network paid every month since November 2007, the 99p or whatever it is I’ve paid for each and every song I’ve downloaded from the ITMS (and there’s been a lot) and the frightening number of apps I’ve bought (and lets not forget the $15 or so spent on books thus far). Well, maybe not cover, but put a large dent in… well a dent… OK, well 24p more and I can get myself a cheap game for free

¹ Yes, I know the ProSpreads platform can do lots of fun advanced thingies but I defy anyone who doesn’t have a couple of years knowledge to even understand how it’s used. The only thing all the extra bells, knobs and whistles did for me was allow me to blow my £50,000 trial account in half the time it would have otherwise.

I should probably point out that Spread Betting is a leveraged product and the value of your investment can far exceed your original stake. It’s a wonderful way of throwing away money, even if you do know what you’re doing and probably not recommended for those who don’t know what they’re doing. That said, if you really, really want to give it a go let me know because if you sign up for an IG Index account recommended by me I get a bottle of champagne or something. You might also get some money in your account, I can’t remember, all I know for sure is I get goodies if you then go and make a few trades.

Anyone who knows me will know I’m a rabid Mac Fanboi and have been ever since this little baby came out. As a result I tend to run the latest versions of OSX on all my macs. Yes, there have been some early adopter issues, but generally it’s been fine. Unfortunately I’ve just found myself caught by an upgrade trap. I upgraded to Snow Leopard the day it came out, it’s on all 4 macs in the house and, until now, it’s given me no problems. Today I tried to launch Final Cut Studio (which is a very expensive professional video editing suit), specifically Final Cut Pro… and watched it crash. Now I don’t do that much video editing any more, but I do enjoy it and I do like having the power of FCP, Motion, DVD Studio Pro and all the other goodies but after trawling the internetwebs it appears I have very few options:

1. Downgrade my big machine to Leopard – not going to happen
2. Use iMovie ’08 on the big machine – would rather not, great though it is, it’s a hell of a step down from Final Cut Studio and won’t do some of the things I’d like to do
3. Use iMove ’09 in the laptop – kind of defeats the object of having the two stonking great big monitors on the big machine if I’m just going to use a little laptop for video editing
4. Upgrade to iMovie ’09 on the big machine – will cost money as I’d need to get iLife ’09 and not really get me much, and even if I could copy iLife ’09 from my laptop I’m not sure what it gives me over the version I already have
5. Upgrade to Final Cut Studio 7 – Lots of shinyness has been added since version 5, but it’s over £250 and I’m not really made of money any more… but then I’m also loath to give up on the vast amounts of money that was spent getting the software in the first place

Something to ponder. In the mean time I’ll try editing the stuff I want to edit in iMovie and see how it goes.

Steve¹ will, in the next hour, get up on stage and finally release whatever it is that Apple are releasing today. Being a rabid Mac fanboi I’m interested to know what’s being released and no doubt I will absolutely have to have one as soon as I know whatever it is (it happened with the iPhone, the cube, the 30″ monitors to name but a few). The problem is I can’t afford one. This is new to me² and no doubt the fact that I can’t have one will mean I want it even more.

Tempted as I am to delve into my savings to get one I need that money for other things (food for one thing :S) so instead there is a plan, not a great plan mind, but a plan none the less. A small (depressingly small) sum of money will put placed on what can only be described as a punt on the markets tomorrow. Should that punt pay off then all the winnings will be placed on another punt and so on and so forth until either one of the punts fail (highly likely) and I’m left with nothing or I have the money to get the new shiny toy. In theory I could turn £10 into over £700 in 4 trades. In practice £10 will probably turn into £0 in one or two, but hey well, nothing ventured nothing gained, and perhaps the gods of technology will smile on me and grant me the money for the iMustHave before it’s released.

¹Because those of us indoctrinated into the cult of Jobs are on first name terms with him

²OK, I had to wait for my big current computer but that’s because it was stupidly expensive and just going out and buying it when I first decided I wanted one would have left me paying off my credit cards for 5 years at a stupid rate of interest. That’s not to say I was doing without as I had less silly macs to play with in the interim.