On Tuesday I made my first ever visit to an Apple Store. It was the Apple Store located in the Arndale Centre, Manchester. I was on my way back to Bolton from Blackpool and had a bit of time to kill so decided it would be a good time to go and get a DVI to HDMI Cable, Apple Remote and MiniDisplayPort to DVI adapter. It was my first ever visit to the Arndale Centre too so it was a real treat.

I don’t know why Apple don’t do a MiniDisplayPort to HDMI cable or adapter to be honest. Maybe it’s a way for them to make more money by selling more products? Who knows.

The Television I bought ages and ages ago is perfect for being in the halls of residence here in Bolton as it has a huge amount of connection possibilities.There are two scart sockets; one HDMI; one VGA; one set of composite inputes and the old fashioned aerial socket. More than enough for me. (It doesn’t pick up any TV (digital or otherwise) though which is a shame). I’m really impressed with the picture quality that appears when connected via the HDMI port too. It’s super crisp and sharp. If you have the option to upgrade to HDMI, then I recommend that you do, sooner rather than later too.

The Apple Remote works as you’d expect a remote to work. It’s white and about 3 to 3.5 inches long. Being an Apple product means that it has the minimum amount of buttons on it. To be fair, it doesn’t need any more. It has Forward, Reverse, +, -, play/pause and a Menu. Pressing the Menu button opens up Front Row. This little feature is worth the £15 I paid for it alone. It means that I can turn my MacBook into a sort of Apple TV box without having to buy the actual Apple TV. A nifty little feature that I new nothing about until last week.

All in all my visit to the Manchest Apple store was a great experience and I’ll definitely be visiting it again soon. Although, I did find Manchester to be a bit daunting.

It’s that time of year again when Apple have a special event over in California. This year is no different and today Steve Jobs made a welcome return to giving the Keynote.

Steve Jobs has been away from Apple for a while following a liver transplant. He mentioned that he got his new liver from a 20 year old who died in an accident. He encourged people to sign up to become organ donors.

There weren’t any real surprises today, although there were rumours about the Beatles back catalogue becoming available on iTunes after Yoko Ono let it slip to Sky News. But, this wasn’t to happen today. There were also rumours about the iPod touch getting a camera, but that didn’t happen either.

The iPod Nano however did get a camera upgrade. I’m not sure why they chose the Nano over the touch to be honest; it would have made more sense to put it in the superior touch. There has been speculation that Apple were having trouble with the hardware and that’s why ther’s no camera in the touch. We’ll never know I guess.

There’s a new 3.1 update to the iPhone OS and a new version of iTunes (iTunes 9). I’ve downloaded this, but am yet to play with it. Apple were really pushing the gaming abilities of the iPod touch and iPhone today too.

All in all it wasn’t anything spectacular that was announced but it’s always nice when Apple bring out new merchandise for us to all drool over.

I’ve not seen any news that stands out from the crowd recently that concerns new and exciting gadgets. It’s all quiet… a little too quiet to tell the truth.

I’m wondering if the big companies are holding back on releasing new goodies because of the state of the economy and the looming Christmas period (yes, it’s nearly that time again).

There is some exciting news about the Orange and T-Mobile networks merging in the UK to form the largest mobile operating company yet. Hopefully this merger will force the others to look at how they’re going to be keeping their subscribers. I’ve written previously about the lack of 3G Network Coverage in Wales so this might bring good news on that front.

One thing is for sure, O2 will have a fight on their hands to keep the exclusive deal that they have with Apple going. Currently O2 have 27% of the market share in the UK (making them the largest) but once things are finalised between Orange and T-Mobile they’ll have a 37% market share.

I’m quite happy with the service I’m getting from O2 at the moment. I can’t complain at all because their customer service is brilliant. My contract doesn’t run out until September 2010 though, so there’s plenty of time for new technology to come along.

I’m in my final couple of weeks of living in Wales too at the moment, there’s a big upheaval to Bolton on the cards soon. I just need to find a flat to stay in whilst I am there. Hopefully, there’s a pretty good 3G signal there as I don’t fancy having to pay for a phone line to get broadband speeds. I do still have my O2 dongle, so I’ll probably use that.

A few days ago I posted about getting an Apple Extreme Base Station in order to share my external hard disks over the internet. Well yesterday I went about setting up the Apple Extreme Base Station in the house. Everything was going great to begin with. The setup process was a walk in the park, or so I though…

Whilst I was at the house everything was working fine; I could access the disks and printer over the wireless network with no problems. But when I went to my girlfriends flat and tried to access the attached devices I wasn’t able to. I could connect to the Apple Extreme Base Station remotely, but not gain access to the disks (which was the main reason for getting it).

Now I’m not an expert on wireless networks so I’m a bit stumped as to what’s wrong. I did a lot of research on the Internet to see if I could find the cause of the problem but alas, no solution was forthcoming. I even signed up for a full MobileMe account after discovering that a trial account wouldn’t work. I’m going to try a few things out tomorrow when I go back home to see if I can get it to work. I think that turning off the BT Home Hub’s Wireless connection might solve some of the issues.

If that doesn’t solve it, I think I may have to do a factory reset of the Apple Extreme Base Station and do a fresh setup. As I said in my previous post I didn’t want to take the Apple Extreme Base Station with me to Bolton, but it looks likely that I’ll have to if I can’t get this sorted. It will be usefull at Bolton too though because I’ll be able to plug the University network into it and share it wirelessly with my MacBook.

Hopefully though I can get it sorted soon. Wish me luck.

I’ve decided to buy one of these. It’s an Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station. I got thinking the other day when I was looking at the portable hard drive to use as a Time Machine, that an Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station would be a good idea to get.

I don’t really want to take all of the external hard drives that I have with me to Bolton when I move in a month or so, so I decided that a Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station would be a good idea. It can be used as the broadband hub in the house, and in addition to that, I can connect a USB hub to it and then share my external hard drives through it and the printer. This means that I’ll be able to access my drives and printer wirelessly when I’m in the house.

Another major advantage is that I’ll be able to access these drives and printer over the Internet (you need a MobileMe account to do this) so my information will be available to me wherever I am. Investing in an Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station is a good idea for anyone who’s thinking of doing the same thing.

As I said, it’s a great solution for me because when I’m home I’ll be able to have access to the drives physically (although wirelessly) and when I’m away I’ll have access to the files.

PriceGrabber, as always have found the best prices for the Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station so that you don’t have to. Pick yours up today.

I’ve read recently that most of the top mobile manufacturers in Europe have decided on a single universal socket for their mobile phones. This is great news in my opinion because at the moment there are so many different types of plugs out there. Apparently there are around 30 different combination of plug and socket from the different suppliers.

Apple, Nokia, SonyEricsson, NEC, LG, Samsung and Texas Instruments have all backed the move to create a single micro USB style charging socket on their mobile devices from next year.

It will be great to see this because my iPhone keeps running out of battery in the most inconvenient places and I rely heavily on it to keep in touch through SMS, Facebook, Twitter and email. Being able to use any charger would obviously be a great bonus.

It would also be a great move for the environmentbecause people could use the same charger for any number of mobile phones. The manufactures could offer the mobile devices with or without a charger. As I said, it’s a great move to make the socket an universal one for all manufacturers as it’s going to mean that anyone can charge their mobile anywhere there’s a charger available.

This is definitely a move in the right direction for a change.

Recently I had to transfer an old Cassette to MP3 files for my grandfather. This was because the tape was getting old and he wanted a CD of the music to play in his car. I had forgotten that cassette tapes still existed. To be honest I hardly buy CDs these days either, because I have an iPhone I buy digital downloads.

Having a MacBook I thought that burning the MP3 files to a CD would be as easy as everything else is on the MacBook, but I was mistaken. I thought that iTunes or GarageBand would be able to do it, but alas no.

My thoughts then turned to getting the files from the MacBook on to a USB Memory Stick and using a PC and Nero to burn the disc. But before I did that I decided to have a look on the internet to see what was available for the Mac. I found Roxio Toast 10.

Roxio Toast 10 was exactly what I was looking for. Roxio Toast 10 does cost more than your average software, but it was well worth it. PriceGrabber has Roxio Toast 10 Titanium for £56.47. Roxio Toast 10 is so easy to use too as you’d expect from any Mac software. It was simply a case of choosing what kind of disc I wanted to burn (in my case an Audio CD) and dragging the files over, then pressing a red button to burn. That was it, my CD was burned and ready to use within a few minutes.

So, if you’re looking for a solution to burning CDs and DVDs on your Mac, then I would suggest Roxio Toast 10. There are two versions available too, Roxio Toast 10 Titanium and Roxio Toast 10 Pro. The Pro version costs a bit more than the titanium version though.

Today at 6pm I finally got my hands on the new iPhone OS 3.0.I was reallyu excited about downloading the 230Mb file that would transform my iPhone into the best mobile device in the world.

Sadly that wasn’t to be. The things that I had been looking forward to the most don’t actually function properly. For instance, I’ve been going on about MMS for a long while now and whilst it does send MMS messages, it isn’t able to receive them. You still have to go to the O2 website to retrieve any images sent to you.

Another disappointment is the Tethering feature. Whilst it is there and apparently functioning, it will cost you to use it. O2 have decided to charge £14.68 per month for 3Gb of data transfer, or £29.36 for 10Gb of data transfer. I see this as O2 trying to make a quick buck out of us. How can they justify these charges when the iPhone contracts come with unlimited WiFi and Data Transfer as standard?

What does work well is the Spotlight Search and Audio Memo’s, but that’s about it. I’ve been reading on Twitter that a lot of people have been having trouble with activating their iPhones after they updated.

I do sometimes wonder if Apple hype up their products too much and release them too soon before proper testing. I have no doubt that iPhone OS 3.0.1 will be out soon to fix some bugs that have crept in to this all singing all dancing release.

Oh, I’ve not been able to figure the cut, copy and paste out either, but that may be just me doing something wrong. I wait with baited breath and with hope that Apple and O2 sort this out sooner rather than later.

Today is a big day for iPhone users all over the world because the 3.0 Firmware is released. I’ve written about this before, but now that it’s nearly upon us I’m getting excited. The new features that 3.0 will bring to iPhone 3G customers is nothing short of amazing.

I’m not going to list the new features as I’ve already done this but wanted to let you good people out there know that it will be available to download from today (17th June). Many of you might not have an iPhone so don’t know of the benefits (and frustrations) of owning an iPhone.

Some of the frustrations I’ve had with it will be addressed in this new Firmware update though, which is always a good thing. My inability to send picture messages was the biggest one for me, but Apple have included this ability in the update. I would encourage anyone who is thinking of getting an iPhone to wait a couple of days until the 19th when the new Apple iPhone 3G S comes out. This will have the 3.0 formware installed on it already, for those of you who already own a 3G iPhone the Firmware update will be free.

Once I’ve managed to get the firmware on my iPhone updated, I will post a review of how I found the new features. Things like easy of use and intuitivness. I’m really looking forward to this now. Speak to you all soon.

Recently the WWDC 2009 was held and as usual Apple had a whole host of announcements for all us fans. To be honest I had forgotten all about this but watched the Apple Keynote the other day. So what did they have to offer us then?

Well, as usual with any Apple announcement, there were a lot of rumours flying around, but we’ll stick with what was actually said. Firstly they announced that Snow Leopard would be released for $29! That’s $29 for a whole operating system! Unbelievable value for money in my opinion. It will be available in September.

They also announce a new iPhone - The iPhone 3G S (The S stands for speed). This new iPhone will have the already announced 3.0 firmware which has a whole host of exciting features. I’ve written about that before on this blog, so won’t go into too much details about that, but I will mention a few things that I think are important to cover again.

• Tethering - The 3.0 Firmware will allow you to tether your iPhone to a Mac or PC and use it as a modem. This is an excellent announcement. No longer will we all have to buy separate dongles!
• Peer to Peer - This will allow iPhones to connect to each other. Excellent for game playing!
• Cut, Copy, Paste - This speaks for itself really. The ability to (finally) cut, copy and paste on the iPhone.
• MMS - This is the best announcement for me. The ability to send picture messages.

All exciting stuff I have to say. But when are these brand new things going to be available to us the consumers? Well we don’t have to wait that long at all. It will all be available next week!!

On the 17th of June the 3.0 Firmware update will be available for free to iPhone customers. The new iPhone 3G S will be available in the UK on the 19th of June.

Next week could become an expensive one.