My MacBook is home and all fixed. My couple of days being laptopless have been interesting. Here’s what I learned:
Old windows laptops suck
I have a very old (8 years) laptop with a massive 500mb RAM and 20GB hard drive which lives under the bed. It would have been as well staying under the bed! By the time it had installed its 47 updates and then decided Service Pack 3 was in order I’d wasted a day. Don’t bother. A pen and paper work better!
iPhones are great… except…
My new iPhone appeared the day after I spilled coffee on my MacBook. Just as well. The email works great with exchange so all my work email and calender was all there when I needed it and appeared like magic when I started up my laptop.
But there is stuff missing that I had on my Palm m130 years ago that you just expect to be there on what reports to be a ‘business tool’.
I want to be able to access documents from my server or laptop and edit them. How hard can that be? I can get my email from my server, why not my word docs? I know dataviz is working on documents to go for the iphone but seriously, is there no Word app out there? I’m sure Micro$soft know there are big buck for the winner of the iPhone mobile office race. What’s taking so long!!!
What about presentations? It’s great I can use my phone as a remote… but my Nokia N95 runs powerpoint with a video cable out to a projector.
Come on Apple. The iPhone is brilliant. The interface is amazing, the email and web apps for twitter and facebook are all good. The games are smart and quirky. But I want business tools too!
Old laptops do suck! My Dad just gave Linda his old laptop, it too is 8 years old. 2 weeks worth of life, and it pretty much fell apart! Had to completely reinstall the OS, and it still sucks!
BTW, you can access and modify word, excel and powerpoint docs on bolds. 😉
And will you be paying for the new version of the iPhone firmware that’s due out soon or do you get a free upgrade? It seems a bit much to have to pay for the ability to cut-n-paste and forward txt messages.
But, so long as it looks nice… 😉
have a word with Revd Dave Downing (he’s in the yearbook). He linked his iPod to a projector (had to buy a cable from Apple) so I assume it’ll be the same with the iPhone .. of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll play PowerPoint files…
my biggest gripe with the iphone is the restricted bluetooth stack. I use bluephoneelite, but its not compatible with the iphone, so no point in getting one 🙁
John – firmware is free on the iphone but $10 on the ipod touch.
Leo – had an investigate… you can get slideshow app and a cable (HD). You can only use Apple’s cable. No surprises there!. It’s £28!!! What is it with Apple and their twisted ‘let’s make all our cables different’ thing? I got a video out cable FREE with my Nokia N95 more than a year ago!
Niall – I feel your pain!
Hi
the iphone lead is pretty handy. I got on cheap in john lewis cause the box was burst.
it allows you to connect the iphone to a composite out, TV or Hifi, or PA desk (with a much better signal than you get from the headphone socket.
It does allow you to show Movies from youtube, but doesn’t allow for other content. video podcast I think are okay and I think movies are okay. but powerpoint etc needs an app of some sort.
My question would be why do that.
Slideshare.net now has a mobile version of their website which allows you to upload your generic slide show to the web and then be viewed on any internet accessing mobile phone or computer. The days of a powerpoint lecture led from the front are dead, or at least dying?
http://www.slideshare.net/
http://m.slideshare.com/
http://www.slideshare.net/3rdsun/third-sunday-october-presentation
Hi Scott. I’m sure they are dying and your right about web enabled devices and downloading slides… but we’re light years away from that in the church! Most churches don’t have a phone never mind wi-fi. So until then not lugging a laptop just to show some slides would be great!
If you can play flash files, try this:
http://www.ispringsolutions.com/products/ispring_free.html
Converts ppt to flash. Very neat and it’s free.
Right… You’re just at it now Mr Orr! The iPhone famously doesn’t have flash yet because for whatever reason Steve Jobs didn’t want Flash Lite on the phones. Adobe are develoing a full scale version of Flash but it ain’t done yet!
I found a Slideshow app but would need to spend £28 for the Apple leads…
Ooops!
I genuinely didn’t know the world-conquering messiahphone didn’t do such trivial things. I’ve never been tempted by the cult of Apple. I did play with Lisa when she first appeared (if anyone can remember that far back) and was very impressed but because of their closed-system mentality we never adopted them for our equipment controllers.
I really can’t be bothered with the ‘we know best’ approach. HP are exactly the same. It’s reasonable kit but you can’t change anything from the way it’s set up and since they ‘know best’ then their way of doing something is obviously the only way to do it.
I’d probably be more forgiving if Apple’s hardware was actually half-decent, but it’s only now that the ipod sound quality is on a par with some of the better players. And the iphone is only starting to get the features that most phones have had for years (but not in the US, which I think is at the root of it).
But they do look nice.
Oh, yeah…. hope your wifi works.
My phone’s wi-fi is fine but I didn’t update the firmware on my router cause the last update was fatal for loads of folk! I have to say that if you’re going to insist people only use your kit then it has to work! Apple are maybe becoming a victim of their own policies?