Design

The design of the MacBook Air is not particularly new to Apple however, over the last 3 years or so nobody seems to have been able to replicate it. This is a telling indicator that Apple’s R&D department have a plenty of capital and time to go after future thinking design concepts, coming to market with something other manufacturers don’t seem to even thought of yet. The day this approach to hardware dies, is the day that Apple becomes run of the mill.

Even thinner and more precisely put together than my old MacBook Pro I find myself wondering how a computer can fit in a space this small! The keyboard is laid out perfectly (I love Apple’s keyboard design so much I even bought one for my work PC a few months back), the space between the keys helps you to avoid mashing two at once. There is a good feel to the scissor keys and while they have relatively shallow key travel, there is no doubting you have made the keystroke you intended to. The LED backlighting under the keys is very welcome and in my opinion essential on a portable. The display is still glossy but not the glass glossy panel that makes the MacBook Pro hard to use in bright spaces or near windows.

Apple’s unibody design has shone through again as being strong but incredibly light – holding the laptop by one corner while moving between rooms is natural and no flex or weaknesses are apparent. The one thing instantly apparent is the lack of ports – there are now 6 in total, that’s four less than the 13” MacBook Pro. Unless you are someone who connects to high-speed peripherals or needs wired network access often, this shouldn’t be a problem.

If anyone was looking for a compact well-designed ultraportable – this is it.

Speed

The new MacBook Air has already been hyped for it’s benchmark scores the world over – “2x faster”, “better than the 2010 13” MacBook Pro”, “biggest leap Apple has made in a long time”, etc, etc but that speed in performing image resizes and intricate maths for a score translates incredibly well to daily computing tasks. I ran a GeekBench test myself and the results put this Macbook Air in the same league as the base 27″ 2010 iMac.

Booting from power off takes under 20 seconds, opening Mail or Safari is faster than you can reach from the trackpad to the keyboard to input the URL you are looking for. Even more complex applications such as Photoshop CS5 and Aperture open snappily and respond quickly. I can’t name any task which this MacBook Air could do faster or better.

Bloggers and pundits put this down to the SSD and the i5 processor (I opted for the BTO i7 option) but I put it down to a great meeting of the hardware and modern OS. Apple is at the pinnacle of optimization with their personal computers – they have taken realistic hardware and paired it with an excellent operating system to create a winner.

“Never has so much supercomputing firepower been engineered into such a small space. The remarkable Power Mac G4 Cube, measuring less than eight inches per side, delivers more computing power than PCs four times its size. Yet while it’s packed with advanced technology, there’s still room for more inside.”

I am writing this post to celebrate my acquisition of an Apple Power Mac G4 Cube.I have always loved these computers and have longed at listings on eBay.

I’ve always been drawn to the Apple Cube because of it’s simplicity. One small box houses your whole computer. It makes no noise, has no fan to remind you this is a computer you are sitting in front of. It’s nice to have on your desk – quite a departure from the old beige boxes Apple used to make before Steve came back and a nice change of scenery from almost every PC of the day. And, despite being spec’d at year 2000 speediness it still handles general use very well, certainly browsing, email and music.

This is now a cult collectors item and rarely found in a full set as it is here. I am most proud to own this amazing computer.

[For extra fun value, check out the original PowerMac Cube product page]

So the idea I’m running with is that we all love sales and discounts – real ones.

Say you are at a party or gathering of your favourite people, and you remember a great carpet sale you saw on the TV yesterday. Do you whip it out and dazzle your friends with your utilitarian charm? Perhaps not, but what if it was cheap flights to London or that iPhone 4 you’ve been pining over. Bit more likely?

I think people want to know about sales, daily deals and bargain deals. They would like to save money and have the opportunity to jump on awesome stuff at a good price. The problem lies here – who can be bothered trawling a million sites and bringing the junk mail to mull over? Radio and TV ads? I think there is a better way.

Why not have them announced to you via Twitter or Facebook! Follow @NZonSale or check out the Facebook Page and tell me what you think. If you’re not keen on following just yet, check out www.nzonsale.co.nz for a taster.

At this point my aim is to simply see where this can go. Perhaps one day I can sell slots for the day or monetise in some other way, but that’s all to be decided!

So please, check it out, follow for a bit, let me know what you think and if you would be so kind, tell your friends!

Pixel for pixel, this is a screen shot of my iP4.

A lot of you reading this will probably have seen the ads around the web for completely anonymous, secure, proxy, VPN and whatever else they like to call it..

I wager your first reaction would have been, who would need that? Only kiddie-porn rings and undercover agents right?

There is a less publicised and far more legitimate reason that you might want to use one of these services – to obscure your location. Services like Pandora, Hulu, Spotify, Netflix, Veoh, ABC and many others employ IP checks on their users, to protect themselves from getting in trouble over their lisences, but where does that leave people like me, in New Zealand, who want to use these awesome services, who are willing to pay for them?

Out to dry.

There is an answer! Pay for (safer) or otherwise procure a free VPN service which will send all your traffic to the US or wherever it is you need to comply with the IP checks. Be aware – all your personal traffic is going trough someone else’s server. This means, should they have malicious intent, they are in a very good position to hijack your info.

As long as you are careful, choose and trustworthy provider and be sure to employ SSL on your email and web logins you should be more than safe.

There is an added bonus to this setup – should your ISP be trying to throttle your torrent downloads of all that open-source software, this will obscure the type of traffic and you’ll be home free!

Mac, Windows, Linux, iPhone and Android all support VPN so get to it!

Thanks to SuperVPN for giving me a free VPN account, you guys are awesome.

There was an update from RazorianFly talking about how to get free VPN.

I followed the link and it lead me through to SuperVPN’s free VPN offer page.

All I had to do was Digg their page and a few other social niceties and they hooked me up with Free VPN. How kind!

So far set-up has been easy and I am able to browse quickly. I will post up a review soon after I have used it a while but so far it seems to be great!

The iPhone 4 is what we have been waiting for in a phone all these years. The hardware is beautiful, stunning even.

iOS4 has matured and become what everyone always hoped it would be. With multitasking added it’s reached a whole new level of awesome and it’s Apple awesome not generic battery wasting all at once awesome.

Can’t wait for them to be released in New Zealand!

Are you getting one? Let me know in the comments below.

Calls, texts AND data (This is quite important for smartphone and iPhone users like me).

Carry on like this and you might just become the new favourite underdog network like Vodafone made themselves out to be. (Good move targeting the Indian and Chinese demographic in New Zealand, just by the way)

Looking forward to 3G!

I know I am near the 120mb cut off mark but I expect to get some sort of notification if I go over. Dail *333, press 2 for data.

“You are on the 120mb data plan. You have used 135mb, that’s 15mb over your cap and you will be charged 50c per mb.”

Why did I not get any notification? Oh well, better buy some more data.

I look for a text facility and end up using a form on the website, clicking on 120mb in the hopes to get more data.

Nope, text plan gets canceled and no more data. I call up for some help and get told I can’t get the text plan back without paying again and I can’t get any more data till next month. Period.

No sir, you cannot have an account credit, sorry there is nothing else I can do for you.

Confused? Frustrated?

Yes.Yes.

4G refers to the fourth generation of cellular wireless standards. It is a successor to 3G and 2G families of standards. The nomenclature of the generations generally refers to a change in the fundamental nature of the service, non-backwards compatible transmission technology and new frequency bands. The first was the move from 1981 analogue (1G) to digital (2G) transmission in 1992. This was followed, in 2002, by 3G multi-media support, spread spectrum transmission and at least 200 kbit/s, soon expected to be followed by 4G, which refers to all-IP packet-switched networks, mobile ultra-broadband (gigabit speed) access and multi-carrier transmission.

So that all sounds nice but what will 4G actually mean for day to day use?

4G hopes to provide the following:

• A nominal data rate of 100 Mbit/s while the client physically moves at high speeds relative to the station, and 1 Gbit/s while client and station are in relatively fixed positions.
• A data rate of at least 100 Mbit/s between any two points in the world.
• Smooth handoff across network cell towers.
• Seamless connectivity and global roaming across multiple networks.

Sounds really good doesn’t it?

Vodafone and Telecom intend to deploy 4G networks in 2012, though they are likely to have to wait till 2013-2015 for radio spectrum to be released. So it’s a bit far off…

Do we think it will suffer the same overloading/not-as-good-as-promised fate as 3G?

I think I have found the magic recipe.

Ingredients:

- Apple Airport Extreme (or Time Capsule)
- PPPoA to PPPoE bridge to handle your ADSL (I used a Draytek Vigor 120 and highly recommend it, buy here)
(Depending if your unit has been pre-configured or not, you may have to pop into the web interface and just switch on the bridge function)

Instructions:

1. Plug everything in (make sure you plug your bridge into the WAN port on your Airport)
2. Set up your Airport with the utility (use PPPoE for internet and add your usual ADSL login/pass)

and now, ENJOY!
You have one of the simplest and fastest connections possible, and with a good wireless setup you will be able to get internet and media all over your house without all the pesky wires, neat!

The reason I recommend the Airport Extreme is this, it is really fast AND it does Wireless G/N on separate radios (this means it is not a hybrid AP which will slow down for G devices or force you to use 2.4ghz, it will do them both, simultaneously).

The use of the PPPoA to PPPoE bridge means the Airport will be in control of the connection, free to do the port mapping and not slowed down by your normal modem. There is one more reason. As you may or may not know, IPv4 (think 192.168.1.1) is about to reach exhaustion point, there will be no more addresses left to give out. The solution is IPv6 allowing more addresses than the world will ever need, and the Airport Extreme has full support for this standard.

So go ahead, splash out and set yourself up a network all the neighbors will envy (the range will be so good they will be left no choice).

For those interested my connection is now ~13mbps down, 0.8mbps up (it was ~3mbps down).

NOTE: After having this set up for a few days I have discovered some other perks to having your network set up this way.

Did you ever wonder how much data you have stored on Google’s servers?
There is a way to find out.

Direct your browser to https://www.google.com/dashboard

Once you log in, you will get a list of almost every single service you have tied to your google account, it will also tell you if this information public or not.

Check it out.

500 any network texts – $10
50mb of EDGE data – $6
(you can buy as many of these data packs as you like)

No special conditions, that’s it.

Steven Morey noted:

So I topup $50 and get 1000 texts 50MB data and 77 minutes of calling to anyone. Not bad.

I’ve just done a quick speedtest and I won’t be taking my iPhone over just yet, but I am very excited about these new deals and once 2 Degrees has 3G i’m there:

The Android operating system has Google products integrated in every app, this is especially important when it comes to the Personal Information Management features ie. Contacts, Tasks, Calenders etc.

In the iPhone OS the equivalent is MobileMe, while you can set up Google Sync via Exchange the experience is less than optimal. The answer is MobileMe, I have used MobileMe and the sync is flawless, set and forget.

I believe MobileMe should be free for anyone who owns a Mac, iPhone or iPad, this would complement the ‘Apple experience’ really well and make the iPhone (and your new iPad) an even better device to own.

Or is that Ask.com?

Was the ever-standing white homepage not Google’s trademark on every computer screen around the room?

Here are the reasons why:

- I was disappointed with the speed I was getting over 3G. While I wasn’t sure of the reason for this, I wanted to give another network a try.
- I found the customer service I was getting with Vodafone to be average. I got what I needed, but nothing more.
- I didn’t like the way there were many hidden charges in Super Prepay, and now Simply Prepay.

Here is what I have found with XT so far:

- The 3G speed is much faster in most cases, and at least as fast as the service I got with Vodafone.
- Not only is it faster but it works well in all the locations which were previously dead spots for me.
- The prepay pricing seems to be very honest and straight forward.

Check back and I will update you with some real data, speed tests and comparisons.

The best way to do this is to use a shortener which tracks your clicks. For this purpose I use bit.ly

Bit.ly will shorten your links with no setup necessary, but the magic happens when you make an account and input your API login into your twitter apps.

Here is an example of the shortener on the bit.ly site:

Just some of the stats you get on your link:

You can also use a bookmarklet right from the page you wish to tweet, neat!

This add-on will be replaced with a new Prepay plan where the user gets:

- $0.49 per minute voice calls to ANY NZ mobile or landline at ANYTIME
- $0.12 per TXT to ANY NZ mobile

The release goes on to note some disturbing extra charges and terms:

- Customers will be charged $5 to move from Simply Prepay to Supa Prepay. Moving from Supa to Simply does not incur a charge.
- Supa Prepay Add-Ons such as, BestMate 1000 and TXT2000 are not available on Simply Prepay
- Simply Prepay customers can top up for free using a range of Vodafone’s electronic top up services including phone and online credit card top up, Hotlink and eligible banks ATMs.
- Recharge voucher top ups purchased from retail outlets including petrol stations, supermarkets, dairies and Vodafone retailers/dealers will incur a $1 fee per top up.
- For charging purposes, Prepay calls are rounded up to the next minute. For example if you talk for 1 minute 10 seconds, you are charged for two minutes and any bundles of minutes are reduced accordingly.

I can’t help but feel this is worse not better than the Talk add-on the Commerce Commiossion objected to when you take into consideration the extra charges which restrict your choice.

What do you think? Please comment.

OK so I’ve just installed the new Twitter app (that replaces Tweetie 2) for iPhone and here are my first quick-fire thoughts and observations.

1. It’s *much* faster than Tweetie 2. Perhaps it’s been prioritized on the API?

2. New “reply all” function so everyone mentioned in the tweet gets the reply, not just the person who tweeted it

3. Retweet has been made a main button

4. Search page now has sponsored tweets

5. It’s an update, not a different app.
Once you update, you lose Tweetie 2

6. Follow button has moved to prominent top position, and now the app tells you if they’re following you back.

7. Retweet has been added to the flick bar

8. It now warns you if you’re geo tagging your tweet

9. No old-style retweets when you hit Quote Tweet, now they are in quote marks with new RT.

10. You can now search Twitter and view trends without logging in

We are net crazy in New Zealand but a lot of us dont know (or care) about what is going on behind the scenes. I have noticed a trend lately and I want to share it.

Wikipedia says:

Network neutrality (also net neutrality, Internet neutrality) is a principle proposed for user access networks participating in the Internet that advocates no restrictions by Internet Service Providers or governments on content, sites, or platforms, on the kinds of equipment that may be attached, and on the modes of communication allowed, as well as communication that unreasonably degrades other traffic.

Building on this post from Ben Gracewood, I too feel net neutrality is dying in New Zealand. Already we have all sorts of special deals depending on who your ISP is, where you live and how you access the internet.

Where does this leave me? Confused.

Who do I sign up with? Why can I get free TVNZ On-Demand on Orcon and Snap but not on Vodafone?

Our sites arent restricted in NZ at the moment (we dont have many sites with pay walls and exclusive access), but they effectively become restricted once you are paying for them. Wether by extra cost, or influencing your choice in other ways, we are paying.

Why would you pay to watch TV3 On Demand when you can a watch TVNZ On-Demand for free with Orcon or Snap? How do TV3 feel about that? Why would you *hypothetically* pay to browse Sella on your Vodafone mobile when you could browse Trade Me for free?
(This feature was available for a while in 2008)
Turns out if you would like to stream TV on-demand on your Tivo without paying a fortune, you only get that if you are on Telecom.
How is all of this fair?

Would you pay to browse Stuff on your mobile, when you could browse the NZherald, for free? How would Stuff feel about that?

More importantly, when we are influenced where/how we get our news, or at the basic level our information and media, where does that leave freedom of speech if we are persuaded through our wallets (or even without us knowing) not to listen to that particular person or article? How is that just and right?

The chance for ISPs to be influenced by different media companies and then directing your attention to their payees’ sites is there, it is probably happening right now.

Ben Gracewood has this to say:

it’s also a barely discernible line between‘it’s good for you’ and ‘it’s for your own good’. I can easily imagine the statement becoming “YouTube is the single biggest site used by our customers” … and it’s affecting our other traffic, so we need to charge extra for full-speed access.

Please comment below and add to this discussion. I would really like to hear what you have to say.

UPDATE: Facebook has just announced a partnership with 50 mobile operators worldwide to provide un-metered Facebook access via a newly-developed portal 0.facebook.com, and in New Zealand that partnership will be with Telecom.

Did you need any more reasons to be confused about which operator to sign up to?

If you are looking for a way to have your say online I would highly recommend setting up a WordPress blog. They are super flexible and really popular. If you can, buy a domain and get your blog hosted somewhere you trust. Having access to your blog via FTP makes things so much easier when you want to upload custom themes or edit the themes you already have.

Here is how you do it:

1. Find a webhost. I got my domain through godaddy.com and my blog is hosted in New Zealand by a kind friend who already has a server running near to where I live.
2. Get someone who knows what they are doing to point your domain name to your server and get it all meshing nicely. I say get someone else to do it because the process is quite technical and not something I would consider trying to figure out myself.
3. Download the lastest WordPress installation from WordPress.org and upload it to your server. This isn’t as complicated as Step 2 but again could much better be handled by someone more qualified. If you get stuck check out the WordPress Codex for help.
4. Log in and explore your new WordPress blog!

If you get lost, send me an email and I will help where I can.

If all is set up correctly you should be able to login and see your WordPress dashboard. Get used to this, you will be seeing it ALL THE TIME.

From here you will want to decide what your blog is to look like. Web designers and developers can see here the format for creating their own theme.

For the rest of us there are a few options.
From the safety of your WordPress dashboard you can navigate to Appearance and click Add New Themes. This will present you with a portal to the WordPress.org themes gallery where there are many great options to get you started. If you’re still not satisfied, there are plentiful sites out there like bestwpthemes.com which you can download themes from and upload them to the /wp-content/themes directory, once there they will display on your dashboard when you click Appearence.

Once you have decided on a look for your blog you will want to peruse the plugins section. I am not going to pretend I am any sort of authority here but I will run through what I have installed and why.

- Akismet – Akisment is great for blocking spammers from posting on your blogs. (Akismet is not only for WordPress blogs, it can be used anywhere people post comments.)

- Fast and Secure Contact Form – I use this on my contact page.

- Google Analyticator – I love stats. Especially web stats. While there are loads of alternatives, I find Google Analytics simple enough to understand and manipulate but also amazingly powerful, even after just one post I am already seeing some very interesting things come up on my reports.
This plugin will insert the required javascript into your posts so you can track your readers. The bonus you get with this plugin is an option in the setup which allows you to set a keyword to be included when an admin is logged in. Inside Google Analytics you can exclude that keyword (and therefore your visits from skewing your numbers).

- Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog.

- WPtouch iPhone Theme – This plugin may seem a little trivial, I thought so too but I am convinced otherwise after reviewing my Analytics. There in the numbers was a statistically  significant number of people who visited on an iPhone or other mobile, but more importantly they stayed and read my blog. Generally I find reading lots of text on my iPhone tiresome but this plugin makes it very readable and friendly to touch screens.

Now you have your blog set up, here are some tips from Tim Ferris on what works in a blog.

For new bloggers, “the most important thing is to have a voice” — that is, to identify a writing tone and style that reflects the real you rather than try ing to write the way you think others may want you to.

Make sure your post focuses on just one idea. If you dilute your post with multiple top­ics, it won’t have the same impact.

I think the iPad is as much an idea as a product and Apple seems like the perfect company to deliver that idea. Before you ask, “Isn’t this just a big iPod touch?” I will say, to use an iPad is like nothing you have ever used before, the fluidity of the interface and the beautiful large display make the only similarity to the iPod touch the tried and true system of Home Screen, App then back to Home Screen workflow. The first time you touch an iPad you will realise this device could change the way you think about computing and your use of the internet.

To look at, the iPad seems quite plain. The design does not interfere with usage in any way, more is almost transparent. Once awoken the 9.7” touch panel shines. The colour is amazing. The image is crisp. Reading on the bus, using at home and also using outdoors, it seems to perform more than appropriately.

Don’t be fooled — this device is a game-changer, even my iPhone could learn more than a few tricks from the iPad.

Books.

The iPad is a perfect device for reading. I can’t decide if it’s the high resolution display or the automatic backlight about it but something makes it unlike a normal computer screen to read on. I can happily send extended trips on the bus or in the car reading. You have the ability to change the type size and typeface. This did not seem significant to me until I demoed the iPad to a tutor of mine (he wears glasses and has difficulty seeing small type). His eyes widened when he was able to make the typeface bigger and was he beaming. If only he could have used this in his working days on the London tube!

Apps.

To use apps on the iPad in New Zealand you don’t need to jailbreak or anything like that. What you do need is to have a US iTunes account. This will let you take advantage of the numerous apps that bring to the iPad the same “there’s an app for that” feeling as already exists on the iPhone.

To set up a US iTunes account is fairly simple, Apple will even tell you how to do it. Just choose US store from the little globe flag on the lower right hand side of the store and set up! (I used the address of the Bellagio for my new US account.)
Since the method tells you to set your payment method as ‘none’ you will need to buy iTunes vouchers through an intermediate service, I find MediaWoB works as advertised.
Once you have procured a US iTunes account you will see the content available is far richer and more comprehensive then what we have in New Zealand. (bonus: it’s available sooner!) If you can be bothered with the vouchers setup, using a US account is much better than a New Zealand account and your devices will use either/both without issue.

If you need any help with this Lance Wiggs has written a really good post on how to do it or just flick me an email.

This brings me to the question, where can I get one of these?
The iPad on which I have based this review and the only one I have seen in person was an early US import for a friend, by a friend. The total cost to import the iPad was around $1000 due to various taxes and other costs of bringing it over.

Recent news from Apple indicates the pricing in Australia to be:

iPad Wi-Fi – 16GB A$ 629
iPad Wi-Fi – 32GB A$ 759
iPad Wi-Fi – 64GB A$ 879
iPad Wi-Fi + 3G – 16GB A$ 799
iPad Wi-Fi + 3G – 32GB A$ 928
iPad Wi-Fi + 3G – 64GB A$ 1,049

The exchange rate to New Zealand dollars puts that at $785 for a 16GB Wi-Fi model and $1000 for the 16GB Wi-Fi + 3G version. These prices seem about right but Apple will surely price them at nice-looking, round values.
If you can’t wait, Mighty Ape and Parallel Imported are selling them right now.

There is no news yet as to whether Vodafone or XT will resell or subsidise the iPad Wi-Fi + 3G model, but both operators have confirmed [link & link] they will have micro-sims available to the public by the time the iPad lands here. If you are considering the Wi-Fi + 3G model I would recommend using XT over Vodafone. The iPad supports 3G over 850, 1900 or 2100 MHz and while XT operates the on 2100 MHz in the city, falling back to 850 MHz band in rural areas, Vodafone operates on 900 MHz in rural areas meaning you will be crawling on GPRS if you have an iPad (or an iPhone for that matter).

Some of my favourite New Zealand sites on the iPad:

Suggestion for improvement.

The iPad could really benefit from user accounts of some sort. This would give the benefit of each user being able have their mail calendars etc set up.

Oh and you already know what to do with it: