It’s a good game. You should try it.

Today I had lunch at Kainan Cafe, at the end of Royal Avenue. They have a blog as well which impresses me no end.

What you can see there is Pork bellies with Black Pudding, Sour Soup (Yum!) and Pork Brisket. The Pork bellies were a little sweet for me but still very tasty. The brisket had some bones but was delicious. All very reasonably priced as well.

It was intimate, comfy, no-frills and very friendly. Me like.

I do mention the looks of the machine and, let’s face it, that’s not going to matter to someone who’s used to Linux or Windows. But I appreciate a machine that’s well put together, that doesn’t flex and creak when you lift it and which is easy to carry. Again - like Mac OS X, it’s more than just an aesthetic. The Air is very thin which means that if you’re carrying it with books/papers then it just fits in. The eee PC needs a bit more attention because it’s an awkward shape (half A4, 1.4 inches thick at the widest point) and in a bag, the awkward shape is liable to deform or damage other things in the bag. I’d certainly think twice about carrying the two together in a bag.

I don’t like the eee PC. It’s a perfect example of you get what you pay for. The plastic is cheap and ugly, there’s a strange amount of flex in the unit, sleep functions are almost entirely absent and how anyone can work on that keyboard with that screen. And it’s so sluggish. Yes, it boots up marginally quicker than the MacBook Air but then the MacBook Air has better battery life and very seldom needs rebooted (as Sleep works!) whereas the eee PC needs rebooted often. And the wireless? Is it just Linux? Can’t it ‘just work’. Can’t it automatically reconnect to my two different WiFi networks? Why does it need reconnected manually every time?

To be honest, I’d be more likely to wonder where the utility of the eee PC comes in when compared to the iPod touch, the Nokia N810 and other such devices. It’s the bare minimum of a computer - the UI, capabilities and portability of the N810 and iPod touch leave it far behind.

Quite.

Around five pm, I drove to Lisburn (Really. Would anyone miss Lisburn?), picked up my father and brother and drove to Dublin because we were going to see Henry Rollins for his Spoken Word 2008 Tour. He’s also in Belfast on 30th March and even though I’ve seen him this tour, he was that funny that I’d go see him again. Around the time the doors to the show opened, the anaesthetic wore off and I was reminded of the nasty pointy tools that had been poking in my mouth earlier with a dull ache that turned into a pounding headache by the time I got home after two in the morning.

Henry has excellent pacing. He tells heart-breaking stories intermingled with humour so you’re not immediately depressed by the subjects he talks about. This year he’ll tell you about his trips to Syria, Iran, Pakistan and Sweden. He’ll tell you enthusiastically about The Ruts and he’ll do his best to avoid talking about Dubya. (Indeed that section was the only bit of the gig I was unimpressed with. I know Dubya is an asshole. I’m tired and bored of hearing about it.)

Rollins’ enthusiasm for music is probably the best thing about his tours. Sure - there’s a lot this time round (I also saw him 2 years ago) where he’s constantly name dropping: David Lee Roth, huh, Dave Vanian and Captain Sensible, sure, Nick Cave and Jello Biafra, okay, Ozzy, right, UK Subs, uh-huh….and the list goes on. It’s okay Henry, we know you’re a happening guy and you’re in the thick of it during happening times and god knows you’re definitely one of the “Famous People I Admire”. The only thing I really took home from the name-dropping was that Van Halen have reformed with David Lee Roth and they’re on tour. Holy shit. If only it wasn’t US-only.

Rollins remains the only Rock Star who I’d not mind marrying my sister.

MacBook Air

Some correspondants on Damien’s blog don’t think it’s up to much (and this is before touching the device). One commenter wrote “Certainly it’s some kind of breakthrough, but then shit-flavoured ice cream would be, too.” I think that’s more than a bit harsh but then it explains why Apple always dips straight after MacWorld even if the product announcements have been insanely great. A lot of people were expecting Apple to go after the eee PC market and produce a subnote that was cheap. People, seriously. Subnotebooks are not cheap. If you don’t mind running a machine with a 7″ screen, that is light but bulky, only has a 2 hour battery and has barely enough storage for the OS plus any media files, then by all means run, don’t walk, and buy a eee PC. It’s ugly (and yes, I have one here).

The MacBook Air is aimed at people who would buy the Sony TZ series of subnotebooks. No-one would ever accuse Sony of being a cheap brand so I wonder why people expect Apple to suddenly, after years of being a premium brand, flood the market with £200 laptops. The Air would have to be beautiful, it would have to show something new and exciting and it would have to beat the best, not beat the cheapest. It’s thinner than the TZ and cheaper than the TZ.

My beefs with the MacBook air are simple. It’s only got one USB port. Though I seldom have more than one thing plugged into my MacBook Pro, there are times I have two. I might be charging my iPhone while playing Battlefield. And no, wireless mice are not good for the First Person Shooters. This happens infrequently enough that I’m not concerned about it. I’m also not worried about the lack of an ethernet port because, frankly, it’s been months since I plugged my laptop into ethernet and that was when I was at a client site. I usually carry a Airport Express with me if I’m unsure of wireless at the next location. I’m also not that concerned with the lack of RAM upgrades and the inability to remove the battery. 2 GB of RAM is a goodly amount for the target market for this device. I am curious that they didn’t bring out some sort of dock, I guess you plug in your USB hub, your power and your video out and just work on. It’s a sleek machine, underpowered for what I want (mostly in the graphics card department) but tempting. I don’t consider the multi-touch trackpad to be a big deal - if it’s not a touch laptop screen I don’t see the point. That said - touchscreens tend not to be thin if they are of any size.

In all, the MacBook Air is not for me. I’m not THAT much of a road warrior (heck, my laptop is 17″ and seldom leaves the house). It would serve a lot of people I know, probably more than they realise especially when they consider exactly how often do they plug anything into their laptop!

Lack of ethernet? Yes. I really wanted to drop over a grand on a laptop and then run wires all over my house, chaining me to certain parts of the room.

Scores 8/10 in my opinion. I’d have liked a 11″ machine.

iPhone update 1.1.3 (also for iPod touch)

We knew this was coming and it’s just like it said on the tin. Maps will now find your location pretty effectively using cell tower triangulation. You can move icons about. You can add bookmarks to the home screen for the bazillions of web apps out there. Texting to multiple persons doesn’t inspire me in the implementation but that’s a UI thing. Song lyrics? If I had any. iTunes rentals? If they were available in the UK I might care but I have Sky and more movies than I can watch anyway. And for iPod touch owners, $20 for the update isn’t a big deal. Sure, it’d be nice if you didn’t have to buy it but then 5 apps for $20 means apps are being targetted at around $4 each. Is Apple laying down expectations for pricing for iPhone apps bought through iTunes later this quarter?

A solid enough upgrade I guess - I don’t get lost very often though. 6/10

Apple TV update

This makes the Apple TV into an interactive device rather than just something to view media with. It becomes a realistic option for people who have broadband and don’t want to pay for cable or satellite TV or on-demand services. Of course, you can’t buy movies on iTunes in the UK and neither can we rent them via Apple TV. So if you’re in the UK, this is a useless update and another example of how if you’re in the UK, Apple doesn’t really care. Just keep buying their stuff. This is pretty much a 1/10

Time Capsule

The Airport Extreme with built-in hard drive is the only thing that really impressed her-indoors. Everyone should be backing up and with having to plug in disks, it can be a pain having to do so. This removes that pain. This I would place as the most impressive release in the show.

What does this tell me? Apple wants people to have more than one Mac. That seems obvious but Time Capsule is designed to back up multiple Macs. The MacBook Air is not designed as a standalone machine but rather as a portable machine which provides you with a companion to your powerful desktop at home. Leopard options like “Back to my Mac” show that being able to access one Mac from another Mac is an important part of their strategy. They’ve convinced a lot of people to buy one Mac so far and when you’ve managed that, getting them to buy another Mac is a no-brainer.

Time Capsule gets a rather spiffy 10/10 from me. Would have been 11 if it had AirTunes too.

Next?

We’re now counting down to the release of the iPhone SDK.

First off the maps for the GPS are terrible. … and the GPS application doesn’t plot routes either.

Next is the low memory of the device. I only had around 3 applications running at the time so I was surprised that this consumed all the RAM on the device.

The UI is really clunky. I mean really clunky! In this regard I have been spoilt by my iPod Touch experience.

It is slow opening/running applications and the browsing experience is painful compared to Safari on the iPod.

The display doesn’t change orientation if you turn the device through 90 degrees.

It is a brick - big and heavy. Am I likely to carry this and my N95 with me when I am traveling? I don’t think so!

I have most of the same functionality with the combination of the iPod Touch and the N95 as I do with the N810 and the N95 for a fraction the pocket real estate!

Ouch!

Admittedly I didn’t find the N800 to be as much hassle as Tom describes and there are some times I wish it had had the hardware keyboard of the N810 model (Nokia needs to talk to Apple about onscreen soft keyboards). But it did save my geekness while I was in Skegness.

I guess we’ll have to wait until February to see if the iTouch and iPhone really start to challenge the Nokia internet tablets in terms of available software. We’ve already heard that SAP is building their native application for iPhone and there’s the recent news that Sling Media were also building for the iPhone/iTouch too.

The Nokia wouldn’t be enough for me to ditch a laptop and frankly neither is the iPhone or iPod touch. The issues with the iPhone/touch are 90% in software. I need more and better apps. But it’s getting close that these small devices could change our lives.

The other issues with these devices is also their strength. There’s something nice, something essential about using a proper keyboard. Finding a keyboard for the N800 was difficult enough that I eventually gave up after buying one and finding it wouldn’t work. If someone made an external keyboard for the iPhone, even a wired model, I think they’d be onto a winner.

I can’t wait to see what Nokia and Apple are going to bring out next.

The quality of the user experience on the iPhone makes a major difference to Apple’s bottom line. The quality of the Android experience has only a slight connection to Google’s. Sure, everyone on the project would like it to succeed.

It’s not about the users. It’s about the advertising.

The rest of the article describes some of the issues facing customers and developers of Android. The fact it’s a plain-jane implementation of an OS. That the development environments are Java and Javascript. That it breaks no new ground.

A very good read.

When my IMAP server isn’t responding, I still have my local data. And it works. And when things change, they sync up nicely. Yesterday I spent the morning restarting Outlook as it kept crashing every time the network connection went down. Today I have this:

On the other hand, using a more decoupled service like IMAP with subscribed ICS feeds (a la Google Calendar) I’d still be able to work. At the moment I can just sit and look at the wait cursor and the little exclamation mark. Most of my work is, to be honest, in message passing and making sure people are doing things. As such, my reminders lists, calendars, follow-ups and email are crucial. When I can’t access the server I can’t even search my email. (and yes, I know I could change some of this, if I had access in my profile/policy to change things).

This is why I’m keen on decentralised outsourced services. If you’re not an IT company then why have a server on site. Why tie yourself down like that. Use decentralised services so if your broadband goes down you can pop down to any WiFi hotspot and use theirs. If your hosted email service goes down, you’ve still got access to other services and plenty of opportunity to change to a provider that won’t go down. This is why I use Pair Networks - pretty unrivalled in terms of reliability.

I loathe Windows and Outlook.

From the NYTimes, J. Allard, chief of Microsoft’s competing Zune unit whines about the iPhone:

It’s a lousy iPod. You can’t skip a track without looking at it. You can’t go running with the thing. It is the first consumer product that has done browsing [on a cellphone] extremely well.

Actually J, if you double-click the little headphone switch on the iPhone, it forwards one track. You can do this with one hand. And no eyes.

I’d heard the one about not running with scissors but….can’t run with the iPhone?

Microsoft brings out two music players by themselves and they think they can comment? Apple has FIVE. Shuffle, Nano, Classic, Touch, iPhone. You’d have to be Golgafringian to not find one that fits your specific niche.

Wireless carriers kept Microsoft from making good phone software.

Er, right. Who stopped Microsoft from making good desktop software?

The fact is that there was nothing to copy. Microsoft did well with a GUI eventually by copying Apple. They build Windows mobile by copying themselves. Of course it was going to be a disaster. Don’t believe me? What do you get if you put a turd in a photocopier?

This is a plain cop-out.

We didn’t create the Zune because we were dying to get into the hardware business and take inventory risk. We felt we had to do it.

Because you’d tried killing the iPod with the “PlaysForSure” brand and that didn’t work. So you made a handheld that wasn’t compatible with “PlaysForSure” and screwed over your old partners.

See. That’s what happens when you base your lifeblood on Redmond. They screwed Creative, Napster, Yahoo, Real and dozens of other “partners” who bought the party line. Did they honestly think it would play out any differently? When Microsoft enters your market, best thing to do is change markets.

I think it’s funny that they’re not denying the possibility of entering the phone market with more than just software. Wanna bet?

Make hay while the sun shines, guys.

Microsoft has still declined to release the Zune outside the US. That’s because there’s no way anyone outside the US would actually buy it.

Windows was incredible. We got to create most of the magic and take none of the financial risk.

Are we meant to ADMIRE you for this? Going back to the earlier statement of why you couldn’t make good phone software? Who was stopping you from making Windows good? Was it simply that you didn’t have to because there were a million idiots who’d buy it anyway?

Playing all of you for fools.

Remember this is J Allard. Don’t know him?

One of these pictures was taken before he got to work on the cool stuff. Wanna bet they used Windows Live Search for “image consultant”.

Yes that’s my review.