How To Train Your #Apple 2.0
It’s hard to believe I worked on this graphic all by myself.
Tim Cook struts out on stage. Music plays. He holds up a device which has 99.9% of the same DNA as a device you already own.
You update that device to the las test and greatest operating system which is essentially the same except it provides more ways for money to flee your wallet and join up with the mothership wad of cash at Apple.
That update makes your device no longer worky.
What does Apple call a person who updates their software on the same day a new version is released? An unpaid beta tester.
Now I ride in like the Lone Ranger 2.0 to save the day. Here’s how to survive an iOS update.
First, take a deep breath. The principle of patience must come into play. Life is short but if you update too quickly it’ll be even shorter.
So you wait. At least one day.
For the one reader who has stuck with me until now, what then?
Go to Twitter and figure out the hashtag for the update. For example, this week it was #IOS81. Click on that hashtag. Read up.
What’s the general consensus? What’s the mood? If you see a lot of statements like, “Thanks a lot, Apple, now my iPad is a brick,” waiting might feel just a little easier.
Repeated this procedure when they release the incremental in the next two hours. Did they just throw fuel on the fire?
Avoid zero day released and the first incremental or two. By the point three it just might be time to start taking it seriously. Are batteries lasting longer again? Does wifi actually work?
During the wait time you’ll feel very along. You’ll feel abandoned. There will be no official word from Apple. They won’t be on the forums. They won’t send you an email. They won’t reach out with a tweet. So you’ll sit and wait. I recommend during this period of time that you invest in a bottle of Templeton Prohibition Era Recipe Rye.
After several months of waiting it’ll be congratulations. Your long term strategy has paid off. You’ll be the proud owner of a working device. Just in time to watch the next Tim Cook floor show, too.
Moved
“You’ve got a keen eye, my man. This baby is hot.”
The salesman had seemingly materialized out of thin air. Suddenly he was saddled up and comfy cozy with the customer, on his elbow, and so shoulder-to-shoulder they were actually touching. The customer, in awe of a shiny object, missed the intrusion, and in so doing, a tiny layer of self-protection had been peeled back inside his brain.
“Nothing else can touch her,” the salesman boasted in a silky-smooth voice. Suddenly the object was personified with a female pronoun. We’re all just friends here and getting friendlier every moment. Desire in the customer imperceptibly kicked up another gear.
“Bluetooth ready with seamless integration for all of your devices. Phone, calendar, and email, of course. But also Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and our latest innovation: hands-free texting. She generates her own wifi hotspots, too.”
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Top 10 things to do during a Twitter outage
What? I can't hear you! Something about fail and a whale?
Have you prepared your Twitter Disaster Response Kit yet? Hint: When Twitter is down, that might be a good time to think about it. Suddenly you’re going to have plenty of free time. Not that you’ll be able to microblog the experience.
Okay, first things first. Twitter is down. Maybe you get the legendary “fail whale.” Maybe it just sits there and just sits*. (Trust me. It’s not thinking.) Maybe the little circular “wait” icon keeps spinning and spinning to let you know it’s doing something. I tried to out-wait the icon but gave up after a quarter hour, thus burning any shot I ever had at my 15-minutes of fame.
If you merely get a blank screen, try to refrain from punching your monitor. That won’t help anyone.
Twitter is down. The first thing to remember is: Stay the fuck calm!!!!!! Do not bludgeon the heads of passerby unless absolutely necessary.
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I have a voice: Twittering whispers to myself
I added an app to my iPod Touch called “Dragon Dictation.” It’s free so at least I know I didn’t overpay. This app converts speech to text. So now I can talk to my iPod (which feels a little weird), have my voice converted to text, then easily send that text as a tweet.
The other night I was at a restaurant and decided to take it for a spin. Let’s see how it did.
Tweet: Hey Twitter this is my voice converted to text. How exciting
Analysis: Not too shabby. That’s what I said, although I’m pretty sure I implied a period at the end of the sentence.
Tweet: Hi text max’s voice tweet from a rest salon marvel at my greatness
Analysis: This is so mangled I can’t remember my exact words. But I do know that “rest salon” was supposed to be “restaurant.”
Tweet: There’s a guy here at the restaurant with the laptop will ask for his e-mail address so I can tweet
Analysis: This one is almost decipherable. It was actually: “There’s a guy here at the restaurant with a laptop. I will ask for his e-mail address so I can tweet him.” I was feeling pretty damn high tech and social at the time.
Test: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Nailed it.
Test: Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country
Nailed it again.
Tweet: I sure hope you’ll enjoy the best tweets to you by dragon dictation. Peace out
Analysis: This was the end of my test. It think it was “you’ve enjoyed” but I’m not sure.
Conclusion: The app worked fairly well. I noticed that it works by recording audio then processing it. The longer you talk, the more you record, and the longer the processing time. It was a bit annoying it didn’t keep up in real time.
Overall, I recommend this app at the price of free. It’s a good value for making your tweets look like they came from someone with English as a second language and/or an elementary school dropout.
Roku: A New Hope
Even the Adams Family likes it!
Say hello to my little friend!
Today I would like to introduce Roku. I don’t often gush about electronics but this little guy has got me all hot and bothered.
I think it was maybe a year ago when my wife and I stopped by the local home theater store. Those are always fun places for me. We were looking for a nice set of speakers.
My current home theater consists of a $5 receiver my wife found at a garage sale, a set of used speakers that were a gift from my gerbil (also from a garage sale), and an older smallish TV since our ultra-cool 42 inch plasma died a few days out of warranty. The cable box from Charter Communications is also in there somewhere but I detest the bloody thing.
At the home theater store the salesperson gave us a demo of a device that would play internet music on your home stereo and even included on-screen menus. I believe it played Shoutcast radio stations. It was love at first sight!
Since then I’ve also fallen in love with Pandora and I pay the $3 a month for “Pandora One” which includes higher-quality streaming and removes the limitation of 40 hours per month that comes with a free Pandora account.
So, when my wife recently asked what I wanted for a present, I spouted off the usual logical and responsible ideas: A remote control helicopter that would fit on my hand, a gaming keyboard that glows in the dark, and bottles of Kahlua, Baileys Irish Cream and Grand Marnier – something I have affectionately have dubbed “The B-52 Kit.”
Aside from such practical ideas, however, another thought began to tickle my brain. Perhaps, just perhaps, the time had come to find one of those little devices to play Pandora music through my home stereo. That would be the bomb. I’ve seen Pandora boom boxes and such, and something like that would be cool, but playing Pandora music through my home stereo would be so much cooler.
My search criteria was simple: It had to work through my wifi, would not require my computer to be turned on, and would absolutely not require any subscription service with monthly fees. (Like a Tivo.)
I began to scour the internet but quickly became dismayed by how complicated things seemed to be. There were too many choices and too many horror stories of products that seemed to be almost what I wanted but also difficult to work with your computer, hard to configure, etc.
So I gave up. It wasn’t long after that when, completely by chance, I heard of something called a “Roku.” (Which is also the Japanese word for “six.”)
I quickly learned more and became very excited. This is a device that hooks into your home theater system (both stereo and TV) and grabs music and video from your local wifi router. (It also has a jack for a network cable.) And your computer does not need to be left on, either.
This thing does everything I wanted and more. So we got it.
It’s so small it was easy finding a spot in the cabinet. There is a power adapter and luckily I had room on the power strip. Then two RCA cables connect the audio out to my receiver. Lastly, a yellow “composite” video cable connects the Roku to my TV. (It also supports HDMI but does not include the cable. Unfortunately my TV is too primitive for that.) Installation done!
The thing hooked up, we turned on our TV. We selected our wifi using the remote control (also provided) and setup was a breeze. I did have to go to my computer to create a Roku account, and a computer was required to connect channels, like Pandora. But there were no glitches and it went amazingly fast. Within 5 minutes of power up we were listening to Pandora through my home stereo and never had to do anything excessively geeky. It was great!
The Roku account was completely free and did not ask for credit card information. I can understand why it is required. It is how they tie channel access to your device.
I love listening to music through the Roku. Not once has it ever glitched or paused to “buffer” or anything like that. I like to listen to music when I do the dishes and switching out CDs is a pain. Now my wife says I can do even more dishes! (Curse you, Roku!)
The extra fun, though, it how much other stuff the Roku can do. We were already Netflix subscribers and now we can stream Netflix movies right to our TV. And it works way better than Charter’s “On Demand” ever did. The only bummer is that only certain movies and content are available for streaming. If you can watch something from Netflix on your computer then you can watch it with your Roku. We watched an episode of Saturday Night Live and with no commercials!
There is also something called Hulu Plus. I’d never used Hulu before, but apparently Hulu Plus (which costs $8 a month) does NOT include all of the Hulu content. I signed up for a one-week trial and found very little that I was interested in. In my opinion most of the content is pure crap. Plus, even after paying $8 a month, the content still includes commercials. Yuck! I doubt we’ll be keeping Hulu Plus at this time. I think it still needs to improve.
We also found a free channel called Vimeo, which seemed to be a lot like watching someone’s home movies. We found a video of a family riding around in a boat. I think it might be like another YouTube, but it was a little hard to find anything interesting to watch.
Even more fun – there are lots of free channels. You just select a channel you want, and it adds it to your channel bar. One of those we found is called “Chow.” It’s a channel about food and has even won a James Beard award. And it’s completely free. We watched a show called “How to eat Sushi” and it was pretty good. Something tells me that more free content may show up over time, too.
There are three different Roku devices to choose from. Roku HD is $59.99. The Roku XD is $79.99. (This is the one we got.) And there is one called the Roku XD|S for $99.99. (Which is discounted by $10.00 if you order online for the next day or so.) You can learn more here.
We’ve only had the thing for a week now but we love it. I think it is one of the coolest electronic devices I’ve ever owned. We’re even buying another to give out as a gift. If you like this sort of thing I don’t think you can go wrong with a Roku.
Roku is going to enable me to dump my cable box from Charter Communications once and for all. Yeah!
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Roku in any way and received no compensation in any form for writing this post. These are all just my opinions and my actual experiences with the device.
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