tomphippen.com » Apple

A few notes on iBooks

tom — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 20:48:04 +0000

I’m liking the iPad so far, it’s better than expected as an eBook reader. It has pluses and minuses over the Sony PRS-505¹. One of the minuses is a bug on the font rendering on some, but not all, of my eBooks. The bottom of the g hangs below the page and appears on the next.

And it’s in the correct position as you can see when I take out the bottom/top of the pages.

It’s much more annoying for me than the justified text (at the moment anyway, the iPad’s big enough but it would be crap on the iPhone).

A second issue that all eBook readers have but I was hoping Apple would fix is the crappy way eBooks are sold. See this for and example what I’m on about, I can pay 59p for Doodle Jump or a bunch of other apps on the app store and get it updated free of charge. But if I find a typo, or 100 pages missing, in a book there’s a refund or nothing.

If publishers want to adapt better than the music and film industries surely the best way is to take advantage of the technology. If I see a typo in a printed book I get that it can’t be fixed, but if I’m paying nearly the same² for an eBook that has DRM, can’t be shared and can’t be sold the least I should get is the words spelt right. Right?

¹ if someone releases a 5 inch e-ink without the huge bezel (the 5″ Sony is barely smaller than the 6″) it will be a definite purchase as it will improve the size/weight/readability over the iPad
² part of this is due to the stupid VAT on software, which includes eBooks, paper books exclude VAT

Yes

tom — Mon, 10 May 2010 12:42:50 +0000

of course I did, you can’t have expected anything else.

I Love Apple announcements because…

tom — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:02:59 +0000

…you get to see all the great comments. And people who say “People only buy Apple stuff to make themselves seem cool”, they’re the coolest people on the planet.

Using a CD DVD cleaner in your slot loading MacBook Pro drive works

tom — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 12:13:14 +0000

Well it did for me, and that Google baiting title is because there were mixed reports on whether the cleaning CDs worked or not. I used the Philips SAC2560W cleaner and apart from being very loud when it spins round it seems to work fine. The MBP had been increasing fussy about which DVDs to play, especially rentals which tend to be scratched, but the 4 I’ve played in the last few days have worked first time.

I’m definitely not liable if it breaks your computer

8600 reasons not to buy a MacBook Pro

tom — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:32:54 +0000

Well, there’s actually one sadly my MBP is suffering from occasional blackouts on booting. On the plus side it’s a free fix out of warranty and I got to use the Genius Bar for the first time.

The trip included the least Apple-esque, but most Mac nerdery you can see in an external hard drive. The Steve would probably be unhappy that there’s an external drive which has a sticker with “GPU Test” printed on it, stuck on top of the previous sticker. But I enjoyed the fact the sticker was done in Myriad Pro.

The aim of anyone from Whitchurch is of course to crush Basingstoke

tom — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:08:27 +0000

Thanks to the excellent sigames.com community member Super Bladesman you can install a file and play any team in the top 10 levels of English football, so that includes Whitchurch United who I’ve got promoted to the Conference and most important done the below.

The only thing is that it thinks Longmeadow would fit 2000 people, which would be a bit of a squeeze, and also be 40-45% of the town’s population.

A bigger threat than terrorism and other links

tom — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:47:35 +0000

Obviously it’s lawyers, gagging The Guardian (to help you avoid working with/for, or hiring/buying from, either of the companies make a note that Trafigura are a bunch of cunts, and that Carter-Ruck are also a bunch of cunts)
Getting back to nerd stuff – a good overview of why Tog’s ideas for the Springboard weren’t great the Springboard expose video is very cool.
and the truth about PSDs, stolen from Dom

So by OS 10.8 iCal will be better than it was in 10.4?

tom — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 12:54:39 +0000

still haven’t installed Snow Leopard, but this note from TidBITS is promising

iCal’s New Inspector – Admittedly, this new feature feels more like a workaround hack than a solution, but we’ll take it. The Leopard version of iCal made editing events more difficult than in the Tiger version. To view details about an event, for example, you must double-click the event to reveal only some information in a pop-up box; you then need to click the Edit button (or know to press Command-E) to edit an item’s information. In contrast, iCal in Tiger provided an optional drawer to reveal and edit those details. In Snow Leopard, choose Edit > Show Inspector (or press Command-Option-I) to bring up a floating Inspector that provides an editable view of any items selected in your calendar. [JLC]

The Siracusa review of 10.6

tom — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 09:20:27 +0000

As mentioned in the previous post. Only 23 pages.

Not upgrading is great

tom — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 12:29:23 +0000

According to the SL compatibility wiki CS1 works fine, but 2 & 3 are a bit dodgy. (I haven’t upgraded yet, waiting for the Siracusa review)