I have had five days with the iPhone now and after an initial period where it was almost un-put-down-able whilst sat on the couch it has already fallen into the “fucking phone!” category, where you shout at your device for refusing to complete the most basic of tasks and long for your Nokia 6150. The iPhone has taken a quick descent into said category even by my standards.

I won’t rant on about it, I mean of course I dislike the random pauses, the fact that it can’t keep an app open in the background whilst you swap to another (the reason why my google latitude hasn’t updated in 5 days), lack of copy and paste, no MMS and other fundamentals. All of these are well documented and in fact most are now resolved with new software but the main thing for me is the feel of it.

It’s not a good fit in the palm or against the ear. It’s not easy to pick up if it’s screen side down on a desk or the couch and it’s slipped out of my hand a few times. Even pressing the buttons on screen can be awkward, it’s not easy to use with one hand.

Things I need from a mobile device:

Make Calls / Texts
Occasional web browsing (that should be as laptop-like as possible on those occasions)
Good gMail & Exchange support
Google Maps

I’m almost certainly getting hold of an HTC Magic in the next few weeks so watch this space. The search for the perfect phone continues.

Picture the scene, you work on a movie for three days straight and you’ve finally got it doing exactly what you want. You’ve even managed to cajole the “duck audio” option into behaving (christ knows why they took away the direct waveform editor) and you just want to start rendering the film and go to bed.

So off you wander, up to the “Share” menu with visions of exporting your creation in HD for all the world to admire but low and behold.. every single option is greyed out and un-clickable. It’s a bug, you haven’t done anything wrong it’s just a bug and it means that you can’t export your work.

This is a problem.

Well no longer! I have stumbled upon a solution. If you click the back arrow in the top left to go back to your project list and then do a single click on your projects name the field will become editable. Just delete the last character from your title then click off the box to lock it again.. voilla. The share menu is available again! Awesome bug.

Prior to this I was copying the whole thing into a new project, re-importing audio and re-doing titles so I guess this is a fletch top tip. 60% of the time, it works ALL the time.

PEACE

Probably the worst thing about going to the Apple store is being surrounded by customers trying a bit too hard to be cool. Plus, the queues are always massive because the guys walking round with the quick-pay machines can’t deal with computer orders.

Never the less, I got the standard config 2.4Ghz version and upgraded the memory and hard drive myself so it’s a 4GB 320GB (7200rpm!) monster, it utterly flies and I’ve been using it at work with the help of Remote Desktop Connection for the odd bit of Windows stuff I have to use (Remedy, Outlook and the Intranet that requires internet explorer :/).

So far it’s eaten everything I’ve thrown at it without complaint although I might be in for a re-install shortly becuase I just overwrote /usr/local/bin/ with the contents of a file I was editing so it’ll be interesting to see if it reboots..

The new unibody macs feel really solid and although the keys are widely spaced on the board, after about ten minutes you get used to it and it’s definitely improved my typing.

Upgrading the hard drive was ridiculously easy; just unclip the base, take out the battery and unscrew one tiny holding bracket. The memory required the removal of the whole back of the laptop but that’s also very easy and there are even instructions in the Apple user guide for how to do it. Just take your time.

If you’re interested I went for a Western Digital Scorpio 320GB 7200RPM 16MB S3 disk from Dabs and 2x2GB RAM modules from Crucial. This worked out cheaper and faster than waiting for apple to do it and the Western Digital drive is actually a bit faster than the standard 5400Rpm disk Apple provide. Wins all round!!

Spot. On.