May 10 2012

What I miss about Windows Phone 7


So, as those of you who may follow me on Twitter, you might have gathered that I now have the HTC One S, a month or two earlier than I said I’d move on from the Trophy. So, I’ve now been using the One S with Android 4.0.3 and Sense 4 for nearly a week, and am certainly missing several WP7 elements.
When I moved on from WinMo to WP7, I was missing a lot. No multitasking, no IRC app that worked properly, hardly any customizability. However, I adapted. I learnt to live with the closed ecosystem and the pitiful amount of non-expandable storage. In fact, I must take a minute here to thank Microsoft for preparing me for the One S’s limited amount of storage space, which, when using the same syncing ethos as I used with the Trophy, has made me think that there is ample storage space.
So, after that slight diversion, what do I miss about Windows Phone 7, or, what do I find annoying about Android?

1) Awful smiley keyboard. Look, I use smileys a lot, and I much prefer, for example, colon P, rather than colon dash P. On the Trophy, straight from the alphabetical keyboard screen, I could tap a smiley button and instantly add any of two pages of very diverse smiley choices that pandered to anybody’s tastes.

image

The first page of smileys on WP7. The button to the left of Space is there on the alphabetical keyboard to instantly get to smileys.

To type colon P on the One S with the Sense keyboard, I can do one of two things. 1, tap and hold the period key, then shift then P. Or 2, hit 12#, 1/2, :P , ABC. Either way is long winded and rather stressful. Stressful in that typing a smiley should be a thoughtless task, a break from the mental exertion of typing and trying to get autocorrect to stay away from words it isn’t welcome to touch.

2) It isn’t friendly. WP7 was a very apologetic operating system, all the errors seemed sincere and as if they were to blame rather than the user. But that isn’t my main point here. When I got a text message, the Trophy would buzz and the screen would stay off. Then, when I took it out of my jacket’s top pocket, the screen would warmly turn on within a certain time frame and I could see the text. With the One S, as far as I have tried, it doesn’t do that. I liked that feature, it meant I could just lift the phone briefly out of my pocket, see the text, and let it drop back down into my pocket, without pressing a single button. Coincidentally, once again, WP7 providing a way of doing things with as little exertion as possible.

3) Live tiles. Now, I don’t miss this as much as some people may if they made the transition, but it was nice having tiles on the home screen automatically update. I had and have an unlimited data plan, so I am not at all bothered by the system fetching new data. The HTC people hub doesn’t seem to automatically update, which just adds.waiting time for the user.

There are other such minor things as the lack of a hardware shutter button, the space bar being far too keen to insert a . between words (the double tap space timing on iOS is perfect, the Sense one waits no time at all before inserting a period, and I’m a pretty fast typer). Also, the Sense app drawer is unbelievably unintuitive. I know I can order it by install date etc., but on iOS you customize the entire layout, and on WP7 you can jump to the letter in the alphabet. All in all, the shortcomings are bearable, though the lack of a fast smiley keyboard is infuriating. Congratulations Microsoft, in hindsight, you created a very friendly and usable OS. The dictionary may have got in the way all the time, but all in all, it was how a smartphone should be. Smart.

Apr 29 2012

HTC website refusing to publish my review, claiming “inappropriate language”


I have just spent a fair amount of time painstakingly spilling my views on my current phone to the HTC form-based review system. However, when it came to clicking “Preview”, it rejects my review, citing “We’re sorry, but we have encountered the following issue(s): Your review text contains inappropriate language.” Does it tell me where? Well, it does to the extent of ‘which box on the form the offending text is in’, but any further than that is anybody’s guess amongst the 722 word-long review.

Please feel free therefore to read what I wrote, copied below, and please do point out to me where the “inappropriate language” is. Was it because I ticked the “no” box for “Do you recommend this product?” ???

“

Features? WP7 rather limits that, but with Mango it’s a bit more bearable (though don’t expect any proper multitasking, and do expect it to get slow).

Ease of use? Well, WP7 is seemingly designed for kids, which doesn’t help. Also, If you have a reading age above that of a two-year-old, you’ll constantly be frustrated by it changing real, legitimate words that you type, with ones that are irrelevant and simple. The so-called ‘dictionary’ and keyboard fill up about 80% of the screen, and if you want to type in say, IM+, say goodbye to being able to see anything other than the keyboard and word ‘suggestions’ in landscape view. The auto ‘correct’ is a complete nightmare for even the slowest typer, especially with the form OVER function keyboard design. Always tapping space, backspace, enter… always when you aren’t trying to.

Battery life? Appalling. Doesn’t last me through the day, its usually turned on power saver by midday. I bought a 3500mAh battery for it, which makes it last a whole day, but ruins the entire form-factor of the device, which brings me on to…

Design. Beautiful. The actual design of this phone is, in my opinion, the best looking of ANY Windows Phone out there, 7.0 or 7.5. If you don’t mind your battery dying after some usage, you’ll really appreciate the elegant stealthy design of this phone. It is rather prone to scratches all over, including the screen, and I’d buy a second battery cover if I were you, y’know, one to pop on when showing it off to people rather than showing them the smudged, scratched, and soon-to-be-incomplete “HTC” lettering, as it will inevitably fall off. Not that I personally show my Trophy off of course, I don’t find it anything to boast about, as it’s not just the cover…

It’s the rest of the book. The OS can become ridiculously sluggish. I’ve been using Windows Mobile since WinMo 2003 and this is my fourth Microsoft-powered pocket device, so I’m no stranger to the inevitable slowness. However, WP7 removes all the power-user functionality of WinMo, and replaces it with an undeniably smooth and original UI. However, it still slows down. Just try having internet sharing turned on and three devices linked, see your battery vanish and the tiles on the Start screen take time to jitteringly load. I know that would slow it down, but even when you don’t do that it can just get really slow.

Also, syncing with the Zune software can welcome you to a new hell you thought was only possible with iTunes. It’s not awful, but it can be incredibly restrictive.

Now onto the pros… the speakers, so long as you have the right setting in the HTC sound enhancer on (personally I find Dolby Mobile for phone speakers and SRS enhancement for headphones provides the fullest, clearest sound), they are superb. The entire design looks fantastic, and I genuinely do find this phone to be the perfect size, the screen is ample enough for videos, but doesn’t even come close to bordering on the tablet-size phones that are becoming increasingly common nowadays. You will probably find yourself accidentally brushing your hand on one of the capacitive buttons though, pulling you right out of whatever app you were in. My Trophy’s screen is pretty scratched, but unlike my iPod it isn’t at all noticeable when the screen is on.

The bottom line is, if you aren’t a power user but are a “social fiend” with a good sense of taste, this IS the phone for you. It looks really nice, it’s fast if all you do is social stuff (the “what’s new” area on the people hub can keep you in the know with everything on twitter and facebook all in one fluid feed).

if you do:

-Facebook updating (text or photos)

-Facebook liking and commenting (as well as viewing text and photos)

-Tweeting (posting and replying/retweeting)

-Quickly emailing people

-Snapping a quick photo of a passable quality

-Like listening to music with the opportunity to use great inbuilt speakers

-Like getting to everything quickly

-Group people’s social streams, e.g. twitter and Facebook view of just your closest friends,…

…then you will love this phone. If you are looking for a business phone or a device to heavily consume media on, look somewhere else.”

Mar 7 2012

It’s not about what you make, it’s about what you do.


Once again, Apple is in the process of announcing some new products, in this case the new Apple TV and the new iPad. As usual, they are using facts and figures to rubbish their so called ‘competition’. I’m being flippant with the competition in inverted commas, obviously. But Apple does have a knack for bending the statistics to their advantage. For a company that has for so many years provided for a niche, they do like to try and go all-out these days. It would be fairly hard to argue against the typical statement that “Apple don’t invent, they merely innovate through providing a better solution to a problem created by those who didn’t get it right the first time”. So the new iPad has a better graphics chip in the form of the A5X processor. I can imagine that the first real game to utilise the new retina display and graphics capabilities will be Real Racing by Firemint… Other companies may make better graphics chips, or provide devices with higher specifications, but as this post is titled,

“it’s not about what you make, it’s about how you do it”

Apple is good at making things work well with the lowest specifications possible. My 3rd generation iPod Touch can play Real Racing 2 just fine, with better visuals than my HTC Trophy. The iPod has a processor clocked at 600MHz and 256MB of RAM. The Trophy has a 1GHz processor and 576MB RAM. No, my iPod doesn’t have retina display, so I can still see the pixels, whereas I can’t on the Trophy, but the games just look better. The games on WP7 and for that matter, Android, just aren’t as visually appealing. I’m fairly sure many die-hard Android users would claim otherwise, even after they’ve used an iOS device, but they are usually being just a bit short sighted. If i showed them two identical screens, and all they could see was the screens,   and I showed them NfS Hot Pursuit on an iPod with retina display, versus, I guess, NfS Hot Pursuit on an Android device, they’d say the iOS one was better. You have to hand it to Apple, they really do know how to do it right.

Jan 30 2012

Chuck – the end


(warning – spoilers, if you haven’t yet watched the final two episodes)

First off, what? Right, the Chuck crew had the seemingly perfect opportunity to wrap things neatly up. They were granted the rare pleasure of knowing the show is going to be cancelled in advance of the final season. Which makes me ask “what??”. Did they wrap the whole plot up neatly? No. In Season 5, they did more unraveling than raveling. So Chuck and Sarah were happily married, with their eyes on their dream house. So, wrap it up? No. They decided not to be predictable. Fair enough. But did the writers really have to make it all turn out the way it did? So Sarah loses all her memories and forgets she loves Chuck. The doorpost? I called that the second Chuck fell down the stairs. So, that’s not predictable? Well, it was. Unless you pull off ridiculous twists like the Hustle writers, most of the audience will guess where the plot is heading. We watch TV to enjoy it, right? Call me old-fashioned, but I would’ve preferred it if there had been a fourteenth episode, in which we find out that the kiss did bring back Sarah’s memories; Ellie, Devon and Clara go off to their dream job (they do, but would’ve been nicer if the job was closer to home keeping the Bartowski trio tie strong); Morgan and Alex move in (they do, so that’s happy); and Casey and Verbanski get together, but close to the rest. Even better, how about even as close as El Cabrillo? Oh, and the Buy More? Yes, Jeffster’s collective dream coming true was okay, but breaking the Buy More up like that? I know TV shows often end with rifts throughout the ‘verse, but Chuck didn’t deserve a Friends ending.

(in a good way of not deserving it, not an “it wasn’t good enough to deserve that” way)

Jan 17 2012

iOS USB cables


The fourth cable's demise

First off, I’ve never used any other brand of cable for my iPods other than Apple, based on the last time I bought a third party cable, for one of my old Palms, it snapped.

I’ve got through three or four Apple USB cables over the past few years, ll of them eventually dying due to the cable seemingly being bent too much over time, always at the device end. One of them died, despite looking completely intact on the outside, the first died because the plastic/rubber coating over the wire had come away and it turns out taping it up only makes it worse (at least, with sticky tape it does, never tried electrical tape), and the third died for a similar reason to the second.

My fourth cable just died. It’s been visually on its last legs for several months, with the covering ’round the device end wearing back, and a crack in the covering at the USB end appearing. There I was, sitting at an old Compaq D310, happily running an OS that it shouldn’t have been capable of running given that it’s a PC, if you get my drift… ;) and as the only USB ports are on the rear (plus I didn’t want to mess up the stability by putting in attaching front panel  USB ports to the motherboard), I had an aprox. 10CM flexi-hold USB cable extension plugged into one of the rear ports, with my iPod sitting on top of the PC connected to the computer with the Apple USB cable and extension, plus there was a standard audio cable plugged into it going into my speaker setup. So, I pick up the iPod as I’m about to go to bed, and hear a *krzzzzzt* noise, which I’m fairly accustomed to what with the speakers hardly being connected in the most conventional manner. However, a blue flash in the corner of my eye isn’t typical. Well, only when I plug something into the wall extension leads :/ . I look down at my hand, wondering what the smell is, and there’s the iPod, with the cable smoking away. Literally smoking away, without a care in the world, smelling, I guess like, you know those model N gauge trains with motors? Kind of like the smell of one of those burning out. So, naturally my first thought is “damn, now I’ve got to buy another cable”, with my second though being “thank goodness it’s stopped burning, I hope the iPod wasn’t damaged by a surge or anything” (doesn’t seem to have been).

I wish the cables were a bit longer-lasting :(

Jan 14 2012

Please HTC, I’m begging you.


First off, happy new year. Secondly, long time no see. Sorry about that, but there hasn’t been much happening in the world of Apple. Next, apologies for the following post not being Apple-related, I just find it stress relieving to air views like these.

As you may have read before, my main mobile phone at the moment is an HTC 7 Trophy. Before that, I had an HTC Touch Pro2, and before that, a Qtek 9100 (effectively an HTC Wizard). I also have a 3rd generation iPod Touch running iOS 5.0.1.

Windows Mobile always did what I needed. Well, it did what I needed in its hey-day, but when the web became more social, I became more restricted. The Qtek was fine for IRC and the odd tweet from Opera Mini, but I wanted something a little less brick-like. After having several years of productive joy with a physical landscape keyboard, I knew there was no alternate. So, I went for the latest Windows Mobile phone by HTC that had a landscape keyboard. Now I was able to have a fair amount of storage (the Wizard’s miniSD card slot never seemed to work) and less of a brick in my pocket. I missed the presence of a tab key, but a five row keyboard and tilting springing screen was worth the sacrifice. Now, firstly, who at HTC thought this phone had adequate specs?? I know I’ve gone on about this before at great length, but SERIOUSLY?? If you can’t run TouchFlo 3D smoothly all the time, the phone doesn’t have good specs. Being one of the few who actually utilises WinMo to its full potential, I had to disable TouchFlo. I am not alone when I say that on boot, 48%+ of the RAM was in use; and it NEVER drops below that. So, it was a painfully sluggish device and for a 2009 phone, really didn’t cut it on the twitter etc. front.

Some of you may remember my initial hatred for Windows Phone 7 when Microsoft announced it. Well, there was no way in hell I was sailing over to the Android ship, and there was no better WinMo device. Well, the HD2 isn’t bad and I do really want one, but it wouldn’t be a large enough step forward. I decided to go a little different and go for a phone with no physical keyboard. I still regret that choice on a daily basis when, for example, I’m busy pressing enter rather than backspace or send. I have an unwritten list of about five things I would really like to see in WP7, which I doubt I’ll be seeing any time soon. I loved the openness and flexibility of Windows Mobile, and after years and years with WinMo (even before the Qtek) and a year of jail broken iOS, I didn’t quite feel like stepping into a world arguably more locked-down than iOS. However, I made the leap and I don’t fully regret it.
The Trophy is undeniably a lovely looking phone. It doesn’t have any naff silver stick-on grille or buttons where the icons get rubbed off. What it does have is a perfect hand-held size (and I mean PERFECT), nice weight to it, classy slim silver outline around the screen (not quite the bezel?) and a simple-yet-elegant feel to it, but beneath the battery cover conceals its bit of orange flair. Unfortunately, mine does have rather a bit of cosmetic damage as it was second hand, but nothing to stop functionality. Whoever it was at HTC who designed this phone deserves a huge reward, as this phone beats all the typical HTC mode of plastic/rubber/metal/easily-damaged.
I can’t take a good photo (typically blurred from slight motion) and does holding the focus button make a difference when recording a video, or is that just me thinking it does to pass the time while it automatically tries (and fails) to re-focus. So, the camera isn’t great (true, but the shutter button is perfect). As everyone else, I too keep accidentally touching the capacitive buttons, especially the search button. I don’t like being trapped in an operating system. Yes, it makes you feel like there’s less chance of it going wrong, but I like freedom. I liked being able to transfer a file onto the microSD card of the TP2 with any computer instantly. And then I’d be able to open the file, in whatever I like. On WP7? No. It would be nice if there was an expansion slot, as it’s a real pleasure to watch, say, a TV episode on the Trophy’s screen rather than the iPod, but 8GB vs 64GB? iPod wins hands down. Well, TCPMP never worked smoothly on the TP2 and putting videos on the Trophy makes iTunes seem like a breeze. WP7 is great at keeping me in touch, mostly, and is incredibly fluid at performing social sharing tasks. Exceedingly slick. When the Titan was announced, I thought “imagine TV shows on a screen that size…”. And I still held that longing desire for the Titan… until I used one. It’s beyond big. I knew it was big, but it’s not big, it’s huge.

Look, my sincerest apologies Microsoft, we’ve had a really good run for goodness knows how long, but you just didn’t quite keep up when Android appeared. You thought you had, but all you did was create a better version of iOS. I remember your USP for WP7, and how I loathed the adverts. Then I owned a WP7 device, and accepted just how slick it was. Then I updated to Mango, and saw that you had abandoned the unique slickness and were trying to head down the other path and catch up with iOS and Android. Fair enough,

“the public gets what the public wants.”

 

“But I want nothing this society’s got”

The phone I want doesn’t exist. The mobile OS I want has been murdered. And it was a homicide, not a suicide. I don’t want to ditch the Trophy, as while it doesn’t do all the job, what it does do it does perfectly. The iPod fills my media needs just about. But I do think that Android is on the horizon for me… I would say “okay, if not the Titan, then the Sensation XL”. Umm, it’s white. And slow. And a complete copy of the Titan. The Titan looks good in black, just like the Trophy. I really don’t want a white phone. You know what was a factor of me being put off the Titan? The phone right next to it was the XL. Same price, same physical features. I had known for a long time about how much of a copy it was, but SERIOUSLY?!? I’m fairly sure HTC will have lost more than one potential Titan customer due to “well, the Android version is exactly the same, and Android can do more”. But HTC didn’t let the XL do more on the hardware side. On that front, the XL sucks, so that’s no contender either. And whilst I would be lost without my iPod, I really don’t see myself being able to cope with an iPhone. So, until July, I shall be sticking with the Trophy. Please HTC, have a GOOD Android phone out then. One that is genuinely good. Better than the Droid 4 (doesn’t take much effort beating), better than the Galaxy S II. Something genuinely brilliant. I want a good camera, a physical shutter button (two-stage like the Trophy), microUSB, a microSD slot, 1GB+ RAM, 1.5GHz+ single core/1GHz+ dual core (per-core clock speed, not total), lovely design (same colour scheme as the Trophy would be nice), and a large-but-not-as-large-as-the-Titan screen. I suppose a device that looks like the Trophy, perhaps a teeny bit bigger screen, 0.1/0.2 inches bigger perhaps? Do what you want with the four OS control buttons, as I can’t decide, but please make them look nice if they’re physical. Oh, and a directional pad of some sort would be fantastic :D Look, if you bring out a device like that, I’m fairly sure you’ll gain a LOT of fans. Everyone who cares about mobile phones has a phone like this on their mind, but to them and I it’s just a wild dream. Please make it a reality.

Oct 25 2011

New MacBook Pro update


As usual, it seems to be time for they frequent and rather unanounced/secretive. This latest lineup includes faster processors and better graphics, along with new hard drive brackets (in the sense of tiers, not affixing). It’s another one of their ‘fairly big improvements, but secretive updates’ that I suppose would annoy those that had recently bought a very expensive and powerful MacBook Pro. But hey, that’s the risk you take with Apple. I guess die-hard fans should be happy they got 16 months of the iPhone 4 being the latest rather than the tyical 12 months and then the next update being rather insignificant. Is it though? I think it does bring several better feautures to the table, the camera alone.

Oct 13 2011

iOS 5 – first impressions


Strangely, the iCloud side of things seem to be my favorite features. I’m sure I would be a huge fan of the previous purchases IF us unfortunate people in the UK could actually access our past TV shows (will we ever be able to??).

So, 5GB of free iCloud space, a free me.com email address and awesome synchronising. It would be nice if all my calendar events now didn’t occur three times for every occurrence, but iCloud seems to have been to keen to merge all my already-linked calendars.

Anyway, being able to download one app update at the same time as another app update is installing is an awesome timesaver and the notifications area is fairly cool. It does feel a lot more slick, but guess what? Not a fan of newsstand. I though I would be, but all it seems to be is a homescreen folder that just has bookshelves instead, specifically for magazine/newspaper apps.  Overall, not as impressed as I though I would be, but my first impressions could have been tinted by the nine hours of hell needing to be justified by something that would need to be little short of 100%-awesome, which did not happen. Instead, it was something 100%-meh,-it’s-got-some-cool-features-but-I-could-probably-live-without-this.-Though-iCloud-is-pretty-neat.

Oct 12 2011

iOS 5 updating hell


(UPDATED as of 9:23AM GMT with ‘conclusion’)

yes, it’s that time of year again. I’ll write this from the present perspective.

so, it’s 10:44PM GMT. I, like many others, had been expecting iOS 5 to be released around 6PM GMT. It was released (aprox.) 6:10GMT. I instantly tried to update, first running into a similar issue as I had done late last night with the iTunes 10.5 update, but it quickly sorted itself (unlike iTunes). 200MB into the download, the internet connection died. So, I tried again. Just under an hour ago it had finally finished downloading (it took ages).

The first thing I saw was along the lines of “iTunes failed to backup this iPod, will wipe now”. I thought “fine, I wiped it two or so weeks ago anyway, so I won’t lose anything important”. However, it wanted to ‘restore’ (to be honest Apple, what you class a ‘restoring’ is FAR from the real definition) it. And, just as had happened when I was un-jailbreaking it trying to update to 4.3.5, it failed to ‘restore’ it.

I had actually encountered this “failed to backup” message twice before in the last few days, but thought nothing of it as it worked the next time. Who knows, maybe if it had been a successful backup rather than third time unlucky, there’d be no issue.

So, what am I doing now? Waiting ages for the 32-bit version of the standalone iTunes setup to finish downloading. Why? Well, the tower PC failed to work, so I had to switch to a second rather unused computer. Which a) doesn’t have the latest version of iTunes and b) is unbearable to use. But why the standalone installer? Apple Software Update is only showing quicktime and safari. and despite iTunes saying 10.5 is available, it seems to be a repeat of last night’s non-existent update.

Once that finishes, what will I have to do? I have no idea. I guess I should wiipe the iPod beforehand, as there’s nowhere near enough space on the second computer’s HDD to back it up. Then, I’ll have to wait another 3 1/2 hours for the iOS 5 update to download again. With Apple, the fun never ends…

As a side note, do you know how easy it was to update to Windows Phone 7.5, even when my phone wasn’t yet ‘cleared’ for the update yet? Incredibly simple. No wiping, no restoring, just trick it into thinking my phone can have it right then, download it, wait a bit, done.

UPDATE:

So, I waited another three and a half hours for the update to download again. Then, it gets halfway through the restore progress (it really shouldn’t be restoring anyway) and says no more disk space on C: to restore the iPod. Not specifically Apple’s fault (this time), but it would have been nice if it could have told me BEFORE I wasted 3 1/2 hours.

I have never been a ‘fan’ of the shift-click on update or restore to select an ipsw file, solely because it had never worked for me (always said it was invalid, even when downloaded from Apple). So, I faced a few options. Re-partition the hard drive (would take hours as would have to shift 30GB+ to the left) and try again (re-downloading the file a third time in total, so yet more time taken), boot into XP (larger partition size with more free space) (tried this, but internet wouldn’t work in XP) or, shift-click.

I decided to go for shift-click. So, I located the ipsw in the AppData>Roaming etc. folder and copied it to the desktop. Then, I removed all large files from the iPod. eventually, I was ready. I held shift and left clicked on ‘update’, then selected the ipsw. It went smoothly at first, but then came up with an error (I think it was 3002? I definitely saw 3002 last night and I think this was the occasion). I really couldn’t be asked to try again, so I just did shift-click restore (already had a backup of the iPod on the computer that refuses to do iOS updates for some obscure reason). At last. After NINE hours of constant issues, I had finally managed to update to iOS 5. I waited for it to update, and once it came to the ‘Set up new iPod’ screen in iTunes, I unplugged it and plugged it back into the syncing computer, managing to restore the backup onto it. So, thanks a bunch Apple for a ‘fun filled’ evening, night and early morning. Unbelievable.

Oct 6 2011

Visionary Steve Jobs dies, aged 56 :(


I switched on my computer monitor, which had live.twit.tv on it. I wasn’t expecting anything apart from to see This Week in Radio Tech about to start (not that I watch that). The first thing I saw was Tom Merritt talking, which I wasn’t too surprised by as he had just been doing Triangulation. However, I then read the red banner at the bottom of the video feed:

“Steve Jobs 1955-2011. Apple confirms Steve Jobs’ Death”

I was completely taken aback. We all knew he was ill, but I for one didn’t expect him to die soon, especially this soon after stepping down. Yes, he had been seriously ill on several occasions, but he always (seemingly) recovered. He hadn’t been looking too well in recent keynotes, but had been his usual enthusiastic enigmatic self.  Nobody cared back then if a product was a repeat, as it was a joy to see someone so truly enthusiastic about a product. Everybody complained about the lack of anything large at yesterday’s keynote, but I expect the reaction would have been slightly different had Steve presented it. Anyway, this isn’t about Tim Cook’s presentation skills (or lack of, debatable), this is about Steve Jobs death.

It is fairly hard to argue that he “wasn’t a great man”. He was. Whether you’re a serious Apple fan or a serious Apple hater, you can hardly argue against his genuine enthusiasm and great visions. Not only did he make Apple what it was early on (with others, but his ‘guiding light’), but then worked Apple back up from almost the ground in 1997.

I can’t really think of much else to say right now, as I’m still ‘in shock’ over it. All I can say is, rest in peace. The world lost a great visionary today.