Spalpeen

O2 follows iPhone success with deal for next must-have gadget by Richard Wray in The Guardian

“Stocks of the device are limited, however, which is why gadget fans outside the US will have to wait several months before it becomes available.”

True, stocks of the device are likely to be limited, but since the Palm Pre is a CDMA device, it’ll need to be converted to GSM and go through all the different approval processes for different countries. See also: the iPhone, which took 5 months to come to the UK after its US launch.

“It also has an eye-catching way of recharging: rather than being plugged in, it has to be placed on what Palm calls its Touchstone and charges through magnetic induction.”

Touchstone is an optional and expensive extra. It doesn’t have to be charged on the pad. The base model comes with a USB charging cable.

“The new version [of the Blackberry Storm] does away with one of the original device’s most annoying features – SurePress, which required the user to press down the screen in order to type or select icons – and opts instead for a traditional touchscreen feel.”

This is a bit touch and go, but isn’t the addition of tactility to a touchscreen a good thing? I wouldn’t be surprised if the Storm’s implementation sucked though (I’ve never used one).

Paul over at Online Journalism Blog wrote up a little points based rundown of the iPhone vs. N95’s capabilities as a tool for journalists. Here are my counter-points to Paul’s points:

The iPhone is my personal phone, although I’ve used the N95 pretty extensively (see: Mahalo Daily’s Qik Account and Jcal’s live stream of the Tesla).

1. Yes, I agree about the iPhone’s camera. It should be better. I don’t use it really. That said, although the N95’s camera is better, the ergonomics of the phone, and the kinda flaky software means the N95 is hardly a breeze to use.

2. Moot point. iPhone doesn’t have built-in video functionality, so you’re not going to buy one to use it for that purpose.

3. Qik and other live streaming services are massively overrated. The N95 BURNS through batteries while live streaming. If you’re doing a quick, staged video for 5 minutes you’re good. But if you want to cover anything longer than a short one-off shot, don’t bother. Signal drops out all the time. Qik drops out all the time (requiring a reboot of the software).

4. Why would you want to look at a web page on the N95?! Seriously, browsing is godawful on that thing.

5. Opera’s good, but it ain’t nothing on the iPhone’s web browser.

6. Battery power ain’t great on the iPhone, but neither is it great on the N95. If you’re shooting video consistently, you’re gonna need 2,3 or 4 batteries, which means turning off and on the camera 4, 6, or 8 times.

7. iPhone does record audio. http://www.iphone-recorder.com/ Plenty of apps on the iTunes Store do it.

8. Getting apps on the N95 is a pretty dreadful experience. Far more convenient on the iPhone, and you pretty much have a guarantee that they’ll work as they’re supposed to.

9. Subjective. I can type faster on the iPhone than I can on the N95.

10. Ewww. What’s the point of a mobile if you need to lug around a clunky, plasticy keyboard thing?

Bottom line: the iPhone cannot be used as a tool for journalists, although you can email, twitter, send photos, record audio, and keep track of things perfectly well on it. The N95 supposedly does work for covering live events using video, but in reality it’s a complete dog. It’s fiddly, it gets hot, the battery runs out quickly, the UI is dreadful. Doing thing like twitter, email, send photos, is much less efficient on the N95.

If I was a journalist covering an event, the combo I’d prefer is an iPhone, coupled with a decent HD cam (like the Xacti HD-1000), a decent camera light, a Seinheisser wireless lavalier microphone kit, and a Mac laptop with a good 3G card. Which is coincidentally the exact combo we used at Mahalo Daily to cover CES and Comic-Con 2008 at what I’d like to call “near live” speed (edited videos went up between 5-50 minutes after shooting). We shot over 50 videos of 50 products at CES (Alienware Curve Video, 900,000 views, Optimus Maximus video, 500,000 views) getting over 5 million views, and although it was crazy hard work for everyone, it would have been as impossible to pull off with an N95 as it would have been to shoot it on DV.

I posted this as a comment over at MacWeek in response to the question how long could you live without your Mac?

“Y’know, I’ve been without my MacBook so often because of its hardware failure (11 of them), that I’ve learnt to live with my PC. I now actually work more efficiently on my PC than I do my Mac.

Yes, I do miss expose, the dashboard, the better multitasking capabilities of OS X (my Mac has two cores and 2GB of RAM, my PC has one core and 1GB of RAM), and I do enjoy using my Mac when it’s around, but I’m rapidly starting to think that maybe when I get it back next that it should go straight onto eBay.

If I can get used to it not being around (and I have to, because I’ve gotta do my job), then what’s the point in sticking with this unreliable piece of junk that could get me £600-700 on eBay?”

Specifically, I’ve calculated that I’ve been without my Mac for 2 months out of the approx. 9 or so that I’ve had it due to repairs. During those periods I usually switch to my PC, which I keep around for situations where my Mac breaks. It’s been a reliable little bugger that whole time.

Honestly, I’m starting to get the feeling of relief when I sit down to my PC. Sure, I know it’s not perfect, but the mere fact that it keeps running and doesn’t conk out (even if it did, I could replace a component) makes me happy to use it. I’ve also discovered that the PC is a whole lot faster for blogging, especially in conjunction with a big monitor. Yes, that’s right: I find the workflow a lot smoother for blogging at Engadget. Surprisingly, I also find that my 1 core, 1GB PC is a whole lot snappier when it comes to window movement, and browser activities (especially flash) than my 2 core, 2GB Mac — although recently that may have been attributed to this.

It’s got to the point now where my Mac has broken so many times through no fault of my own (and I’m quite fault prone: I’ve killed at least 3 Mac laptops before) that I honestly can say that I don’t miss expose, dashboard, Comic Life, Photobooth, or anything else about Mac OS X. The reason for that is because I don’t freaking remember the last time I used them due to repairs! 

Why can’t I have it both ways: the rugged, modular, no nonsense PC approach coupled with the sexy, attractive, and fun Mac? I think Apple have seriously sacrificed reliability with the MacBook range, and they have therefore then lost a customer.

I discovered before I sent my MacBook in for repair the other day that when the battery isn’t plugged in, the CPU automatically clocks down to 1GHz. So for the past week I had it, it’s been operating at half speed. I wondered why it was so slow.

It’s still out for repair at the moment, and it definitely won’t be back before I go home tomorrow. Bummer. Lets see if I can get the repairpeople to send it back to me.

I’ve recently requested an Apple replacement for my battery (read more about my ongoing MacBook problems here) and I discovered an interesting fact whilst doing so.

The Apple representative I spoke to said that Apple would charge me £71.00 if I did not pack up the old, broken battery — which wouldn’t take charge after I got an AC adaptor replacement — and send it back to them (which I will be doing). I had to give them credit card details to this end.

Interestingly, a quick trip to the Apple Store UK shows that a new, 13-inch white MacBook battery is £99.00. So technically, by opening a “fake” repair request, you can save £28 (~$60) on a new MacBook battery. If you were feeling particularly brave, you could send your old MacBook battery back and swap it for a new, factory fresh one at no extra charge: although admittedly Apple might spot that it is in fact not broken, and charge you the money anyway.

Yeah, so this is very likely to constitute fraud, but Apple has seriously screwed me over with a complete lemon of a MacBook (the customer service rep refused to replace the MacBook, despite it having a total of 11 components replaced in 6 months), so I wouldn’t feel particularly bad if they lost some of their bottom-end with a few owners of worn out batteries playing dumb and saving a bit of cash.