Michael Henley

Well I am here in the Regents Street store. I love this place if I am honest. The reason I came this afternoon was to play with the new iPod touch, and my God was it worth it! They are fantastic. Everything I knew and loved about multi-touch technology is true, and I think that everyone should play with it. I found some things a little difficult to get used to, and found typing worked best if you used your index finger, as thumbs tend to obscure the keyboard and you end up hitting the wrong key…

Another thing I couldn’t figure out, although that may just have been me, was how to click links when you have zoomed in on a webpage. It seemed no matter how much I tapped the link it wouldn’t open… This may just have been a glitch on that particular touch, because I tried another and it seemed to work. I was slightly disappointed by being unable to click the links, as I wanted to try posting to the blog on the iPhone, but sadly couldn’t get to the log in screen on WordPress!

The queue to even get to the iPod touchs was amazing, and I happily stood in awe for 20 minutes to get my hands on one (which I subsequently did a second time, because there were a few things I didn’t try the first time!). One thing I did notice, was that many people were coming up to the guy selling them straight from the display stand, and asking him if it was the iPhone. He was then having to explain that it wasn’t. That said people didn’t seem to be dissuaded, and they were flying out the store – from the looks of the amounts left in the case, they were selling in roughly equal quantities.

Will I be getting a touch? Probably yes – I was (and still am) tempted by the iPhone, but the smaller capacity, combined with the lack of 3G (and EDGE depending on coverage!) makes it a bit pointless. The only thing (and I know this sounds stupid) that is making me want an iPhone more than a touch is the ability to edit and add calendar events on the iPhone, which has been taken out of the touch. This is something I can already do on my SLVR in a very limited capacity, and I was looking forward to managing my calendar on the new iPod… One thing I wonder, is if once people are able to write successfully to the iPod touch’s drive (through hacks etc.) whether they will be able to copy the iPhone’s calendar app over to it, considering they are basically the same device running the same software. We will see!

P.S. See pics from our trip here, and here.

Firstly my thanks to Thomas Ricker, and Engadget for their live-blog of the event, which I followed this morning. Really good, as ever.

Well, as expected, we saw the announcement of the UK iPhone, running on the O2 network. My prediction of them launching immediately was (sadly) off, and they will be available from November 9th. This begs the question what the curtains, and the store closure until 4pm, is about. I am off to Regents Street this afternoon with some friends anyway, so we will see what (if anything!) is different.

The UK iPhone is the same as the current US model, and so we did not a see any form of hardware upgrade. Steve hinted that by this time next year we will have a 3G iPhone, in saying that they expect the battery life issues to be resolved by then. It is therefore running EDGE, which is bad news frankly. The EDGE coverage on O2 in the UK is shocking – indeed the demo model that Journalists saw this morning wasn’t even detecting EDGE in the Apple Store Regents Street, in Central London! While EDGE may be the major coverage service in the US, here and in much of the rest of Europe 3G is the way the networks have gone. It is a shame that this hasn’t been taken into account, as it will mean that the iPhone will probably get bad press from day one when it goes on sale officially here, with the features like Internet Browsing and Song Download needing WiFi connection to be remotely useful. Note that O2 has said that they have partnered with ‘Cloud’ to provide free WiFi in over 7,000 locations. Whether this makes up for it I am not sure…

While the announcement was good, I can’t say that I was wowed by any of the announcements related to Apple. Indeed one of the only ‘at last!’ moments was O2′s announcement that as of October 1st they will make all of their contract plans unlimited data.

Regardless this was a great morning, and I am hoping that by the time I get there at 4pm today, they will have put out the iPod touchs in the store for general consumption. I get to play with a multi-touch display at last!

Well the plot thickens! From what I have seen it looks like Apple have closed the Regents Street Store and put up large black curtains over all of the windows. An announcement outside says that it is closed until 4pm tomorrow for a private function. We know that this is an invite-only special press event. From all of this I will happily speculate that Apple are setting up the iPhone displays, possibly as I type, and they will launch tomorrow morning immediately. Whether this will be a ‘Gen. 2′ with 3G and larger capacity we will have to wait and see.

The other question on my mind is who will give the announcement. It could be Steve Jobs himself, or it may be someone else, such as the ‘head’ of Apple Europe. Either way I can’t wait if I am honest – I have been wanting to play with an iPhone for a long time and this looks like it may be my first chance.

I am also wondering whether they will launch the iPod touchs in the UK, as not having them out until the 28th once the iPhone is out seems a little counter-intuitive, to me at least.

Regardless, I finish early tomorrow and so will be heading off straight to the Regents Street store to be in line to play with Apple’s latest shiny new toy!

Apple have scheduled their first ever UK press event for Tuesday at 10AM BST, taking place in the Regents Street Apple Store. What will we see here? For them to do it in Europe, or the UK, suggests that they will announce something UK or Europe specfic. Therefore I am thinking that they will announce the iPhone 2nd Gen. (whatever that will entail… 3G, 16GB?), or they may announce the Beatles on iTunes (why that is such a big thing I am still not sure, and yet it seems to be something which we are all just waiting for…). Seeing as the UK is the ‘home’ of the Beatles it would make sense. The killer would be if the almighty Steve himself flew across the pond for the event. Anybody got his itinerary?…

I thought I would jump on this bandwagon, if only to prove that I don’t approve of or agree with everything Apple does from on high at Cupertino. As you will know, Apple held their special event on 5th September at Moscone West. After the first few months of iPhone sales figures etc had come in, Apple knew what we all said from the beginning – a 4GB iPhone was simply too small and the demand clearly wouldn’t be there if there was a larger capacity version around. Indeed the only reason I believe anyone would even contemplate buying one of the smaller capacity phones would be the price.

Having said that, if I were an iPhone owner (and one of the only reasons I am not is that I am in the UK), I would not be best pleased with Apple at the moment. Of course technology moves on, and buying at the wrong time is always a risk – I waited 6 months to buy this laptop simply because I read the rumours of an update on the horizon. Equally I would say that buying on the day of a product’s launch can’t possibly be too early. The early adopters were screwed over by Apple. Of course this won’t stop them from buying another Apple product – and it wouldn’t stop me. We all know the risks. I do object to the half-hearted measures Apple and Steve have put out there to try to placate their customers.

If they are $200 out of pocket, then how is a $100 store credit going to go anywhere to solving that? I would say that it should be either just paid back into their accounts so that they can spend their money anywhere, or they should be getting more. Profit is profit, but sometimes I wonder how long Apple’s rock-solid fanbase will keep the shit from sticking to them… This is the summary of Apple’s whole ethos though. They know that regardless of what they do, their ‘fanboys’ will keep defending them better than any $5,000/hr lawyer could, and so they are willing to sit in their airtight campus, not informing anyone of their upcoming products, and doing whatever they want. Their products are revolutionary, but that can only keep them safe for so long.

In saying this I am being quite hypocritical. I am writing this on my 3 month old MacBook Pro, listening to music on my 3rd Gen. iPod, and eagerly awaiting the 29th September when I will travel for over an hour to go to the Regents Street Apple Store simply to play with the new iPod touchs and worship at the altar of Steve. That said if I had bought a 4GB iPhone a few months ago, to have it discontinued, or if I had bought an 8GB iPhone only to have it dropped in price a few months later I wouldn’t be happy. This is primarily because I have found that Apple does not rush any decisions. This is one of the reasons I believe they keep so quiet about new products – so that they can plan out in minute detail what they are going to do over the few months after launch etc. This means that they have intended for a long time, possibly even before the launch of the iPhone, to drop the price in September. This is no doubt why they have only released the iPod touch now – they can now use the consumers of those as Guinea Pigs, and see if the demand for it, and for a 16GB iPhone, which I expect is on the horizon, is there. As John C. Dvorak says, never buy the first gen. of an Apple product. For once I am thankful I live in the UK, because we will probably get the 2nd Gen. of iPhone.

I wonder why Apple ever launched the 4GB iPhone – the only reason I can think of is that they were desperate to prove from the word go that their phone would beat all the competition simply because they made it, and so introduced a cheaper option to maximise sales figures of the iPhone as a whole. Still, I look forward to the 16GB (or larger because although more acceptable, 16GB is still too small for a device where video playback is one of the key features) iPhone and iPod touch, and will be buying one. It just hope that Apple don’t ‘suddenly’ figure out how to fit 32GB inside the 8mm thin case and revise the iPod touch up to Gen. 2….

Well I, as any loyal fan should have done, sat watching the Engadget live blog (as well as using Scott Bourne’s Jaiku – he was getting stuff out faster than Ryan Block over at Engadget at times!) of Apple’s ‘The Beat Goes On’ special event this evening (6pm – 7pm BST). I must say overall I was astounded. Steve and Apple seem to have done it again, and credit to them because their total secrecy on product development always could end up coming back to bite them on the backside…

The iPod nano refresh was unexpectedly the rumoured, and leaked nano, which for the past few weeks has been called ugly and fatty, among other things! The traditional iPod became the iPod classic, and saw relatively minor updates apart from the increase in size options to 80GB & 160GB, along with the new interface which includes that old favourite – CoverFlow. The renaming also meant that for the first time Apple could release two types of full size iPod. This came in the form of the much rumoured, and desired, iPod touch – the iPhone without the phone. This comes in 8GB and 16GB varieties, and is available (in the US at least) for pre-order, to be dispatched before 28th September.

On an aside there is no notice of these new releases on the Apple UK site, or on the Apple UK Store. Hopefully these will materialise soon!

Update: The new iPods, including the iPod touch, have since materialised on the Apple UK sites

Apple event tonight (6PM BST) at Moscone West. The fact that they are holding it here suggests it will be a fairly big affair, as this is where the hold their annual MacWorld Expo. Predictions for this evening seem to be that we will see new iPods – flash-based, new nanos & a full-screen touch video iPod (iPhone without the phone…). As well as this the title suggests that this event will also herald the addition of Beatles Music to iTunes. We will see…

The second option I tried, and the one which worked for me, was using the Last.fm client. Before I did this, I bought my latest shiny new toy – the 15.4″ Santa Rosa MacBook Pro – and so this section is using the Mac OS X version of the Last.fm client. Having installed the program I noticed that there was an iPod section in the Settings menu. Once I set up my (Dad’s) 5.5G 30GB iPod to sync with the MacBook Pro’s iTunes, to a playlist called ‘iPod Music’, I tried to get it to scrobble. According to the Last.fm website, the iPod must not be manually managed for this to work, and this was how I found it to be as well.

In my experience, iTunes on the Mac must be closed before the iPod is connected. Whenever I have had iTunes open the ‘scrobble your iPod’ window hasn’t appeared. Remember that this is still an experimental feature at the time of writing, and so this may change in the future. If you do have iTunes closed when you connect the iPod, then it will automatically open when the iPod is connected, and the Last.fm window will also open (although sometimes it opens behind the iTunes window, so make sure to look for it). Also note that the scrobbling process is not totally automatic. The scrobble window presents you with a list of your plays, with checkboxes next to each so that you can choose to not scrobble some tracks, because for example, you have scrobbled another play later than that one, and so scrobbling it would trigger Last.fm’s spam protection. When you are happy, simply click ‘Scrobble Selected’, and these plays automagically appear on your Last.fm account. Simple as that.

I have not yet been able to try this with Windows, because the only Windows-managed iPod we now have here is my brother’s 2G Nano, and this is manually managed. I will at some point sync one of the iPods to Vista and see if those plays will scrobble too, although Adam Zethraeus has told me that he can’t get this working on Windows with his 5G.

Good Luck and Good Scrobbling…

I am a big fan of the music social networking site Last.fm (find my profile here), but one thing that I was never able to get working satisfactorily was ‘scrobbling’ of my iPod plays.

The first path I tried was taking my (ancient) 3rd Gen. 10GB iPod, and installing the open-source Rockbox firmware. This was a disaster. Rockbox was not originally designed for the iPod, but was ported over – while the programmers that work on it have done an amazing job – and bear in mind that the iPod I was trying this on was very old, and very battered – it wasn’t working well for me. It frequently crashed, forcing me to do a hard reset. When it did eventually play it would hang every 10 seconds, or so, while playing. I found the solution to this to be not having the song info open while listening, but to simply have the display set to the main menu – playback was then flawless (mostly…). The reason for this experiment was that the Rockbox firmware has a built-in option to create a ‘.scrobbler.log’ file which contains all the information of what you played, for how long, when etc. This is then uploaded to Last.fm either by a php script written by Paul Stead (found here), or by a .NET application called LogScrobbler (found here). The scrobbling side of things worked perfectly, and for the adventurous who want to try it, and who may have more success than I did, I wholly recommend it. If you have a DAP that is fully supported by Rockbox then this could be the way for you to scrobble your plays.

Part 2 – The more successful scrobbling attempts to follow later