I really haven’t been delivering anything through my thought hole recently, after I have to live up to my tagline. I don’t want to promise anything that will only happen once, but hopefully I’ll be able to keep doing these At A Glance pieces.

Last night saw Apple unveil their new line of iPods and entertainment products. While iOS 4.1 isn’t out quite yet, one of the more immediate releases was iTunes 10.

I used to loathe iTunes and its iPod connectivity but since moving to OS/X and subsequently buying an iPod Touch, recently followed by an iPhone 4, using iTunes became an inevitability.

Two years on and I haven’t had to switch media players yet – a good testimonial to how good the program has become. I remember using Musicmatch, Sony Atrac3 software, Windows Movie Maker and Realplayer. Constantly switching back and forth.

Ping

There aren’t many more features you would want in a media player, except more codec support. Naturally, it was becoming a tough task of implementing worthwhile improvements and iTunes 10 doesn’t really make any notable ones. The only feature that would come close is Ping.

It’s hard to judge social networks on day one but as it stands Ping is absolutely awful. It’s poorly integrated between the platforms, hard to manage and completely useless as it stands.

The lack of Facebook and Twitter integration is irritating. So many new social platforms allow you to automatically cross-check your friend lists. Apple like to keep it a closed platform, thus Ping is already asking a lot from the start.

Also, I’ve got to question the motive of Ping. Something like Last.FM would be brilliant if integrated into iTunes, I’d probably stop using Last.FM if I was honest. However, like I said you’ve got to let Social Networks grow before they become enjoyable. Not that, that makes Ping recommending me U2 & Lady Gaga any better. That’s not to say I hate those artists, but what is it basing those recommendations on?

Minor Interface Tweaks

Meanwhile the interface as had some minor tweaks to it. The icons aren’t coloured any more but amidst a sea of complaints, I do like the subtler icons. They should probably be in colour when you’re in that section though.

The new artist list is much better. A far greater alternative to the overwhelming list of tracks we’ve had in the past. It’s a brilliant combination of list and grid views. Now, just get rid of that Coverflow view – who uses it?

Making use of more white space around text, makes the whole program easier on the eye. But, the whole program is still way too grey and apart from these minor tweaks there really isn’t any major overhaul of the UI.

That’s pretty much it, the icon change doesn’t really change much in terms of use. It’s nicer than the old one but I’m sure people will revert to the old one quickly in an attempt to hold onto physical media. I wonder if anyone has made a vinyl iTunes logo?

Anyway, that’s about it for now. I’m sure I’ll play around with the wireless streaming at a later date but for now that’s it.

I commented on the Digital Economy Bill (Not DeBill, I hate that name) a few days ago and the whole story has been spinning around in my head for a while now. The problem is that even though the punishments are overly severe, nobody has the right too illegally download content they haven’t paid for.

It’s been really interesting, however, hearing the ISP’s responses to the whole affair, with TalkTalk’s response being the most surprising. For a company that, from past experience, offered loads of downtime and horrible transfer speeds, they seem to be the most vocal when it’s the government that enforces it on their customers. I guess they want to be the ones to do it, losing control or something to that affect.

It’s all just apart of making their customers feel protected. If a BT customer hears TalkTalk spouting all this, well, talk, they’ll be more inclined to switch to them to avoid any wrongdoing. It’s all very clever, whether they’ll actually take copyright holders to court over anything is a different matter though. It’s kind of tough to get someone out of stealing when they’ve been caught three times, no matter how good your lawyers are.

Apple have spent the last few years of gallivanting with iPods, iPads and iPhones. To their credit they’ve built a great infrastructure for these different platforms but isn’t it time that they focus on what really got them to the ball?

OS/X is probably their most important product since turning it all around. Anyone could should be able to build a standalone device that functions decently but OS/X is an entire traditional operating system and a secure one at that.

The problem is that Windows 7, although still struggling under the same Microsoft architecture, is a much better OS and something incredibly close to OS/X. The way to catch up? Include OS/X Apps within an app store, similar to Steam but for the wide range of varying OS/X applications. I know it sounds crazy but hear me out, I come with reasons.

1. iPhone & iPad apps are cheap because people are cheap. It’s driven down prices and I would suspect a similar thing would happen with OS/X applications.
2. It would cut down on piracy.
3. Give those great applications on the platform some focus and advertising.
4. Make installing applications even easier, including easier application management.

Still not convinced? Well OS/XI must be in the works, or at least being thought of, and I can’t think of many features I’d like to see. Maybe that’s a different post though.

I’m back from university this month in good old Basingstoke. After having a look at the parent’s computer, and subsequently failing to fix it, I decided it was probably time to buy them a new one.

Failing to champion a Mac Mini just caused an impromptu trip to PC World. I was never one of those people who had a vendetta against the place, it was a little expensive but I guess you pay a premium on getting components without having to wait for delivery.

However, this one trip has thrown me into the let’s hate PC World camp.

Why? Well because charging £15 for installing memory is borderline scandalous. I mean let’s go through the steps that one would take to install some memory.

1. Unscrew the two thumb screws to open the case
2. Pull open the two memory clips and push the memory into the slot
3. Put the two screws back on to close the case

That’s it. The longest it would take you would be 5 minutes, at a stretch. Now if that wasn’t bad enough I found stickers and posters advertising hard drive recovery – aka copying files off a hard drive onto a DVD. The cost? £95.

The third thing that really had me fuming? £29.99 to “install” an Xbox 360 game. I’m really debating whether I should pay for this, if only to find out what they actually mean.

I know shops occasionally take advantage of people who aren’t well informed but surely some form of ethics come into play. I guess when you’re the only real PC exclusive shop in the country, you can charge what you want.

As university ramps up and the site grows I find myself with even less free-time. I don’t mind, keeps the mind busy… or something. I’m only here to plug something though, if you’ve got a Mac you’ve probably heard of Things.

No, that isn’t the worst anti-Windows joke ever, I wouldn’t do that now, but a horrible plug for an app called Things. It’s really helpful when you’re planning projects and generally trying to stay on top of things. Oh… I get it.

Oohh, edgy. In all seriousness, I think I’m starting to like Windows 7 more than OS/X. Admittedly I don’t use W7 as my main system and it does still have that new Windows smell but some of the features make sense. That and it actually runs pretty smoothly.

I’m actually really enjoying having the option to play all these indie games but I’m starting to pine for something that will really benchmark my new system. That DiRT 2 demo running quite smoothly (1680×1050 Ultra settings DX11 = 34 FPS) scratched some of that itch but I’m still pining for something long term. Maybe the next Steam sale will throw up some goodies for me to download, something else that I’m really enjoying.

This whole experience has made me realise how much I miss PC gaming. Messing around with a ton of settings I’ll never really understand before playing a game, messing around with patching and reading release details. Some things that are just quintessentially related to PC gaming.

In my two year absence I used to moan about all that, it turns out I missed all that faffing around more than I thought.

You might have noticed that the last few posts have been about a PC I’ve speced out and bought. Well today, within 3 minutes of each other, my two orders arrived from different couriers and soon I was knee deep in screwdrivers and computer components.

The build didn’t go without a hitch but it never does. Although for what was my first PC build from scratch, I thought I did alright. It would have been flawless if it wasn’t for the flimsiest CPU cooler that snapped and probably won’t support itself if I put the PC up on the side. Otherwise the build went smoothly.

I guess I had some problems while installing Windows 7 because of the default BIOS settings. Windows 7 was looking for a floppy disk drive and instead of telling me it was having problems, it just kept looking for it while showing me nothing. Not a please wait message, not a loading bar, nothing. Google fixes all though.

The entire thing was worth it when I started to play Colin McRae Rally 2.0 on the highest settings. Yes, I know but the only PC games I actually own now are from my retro PC gaming fad of 2007 because at the time that’s all my PC could handle.

Naturally I downloaded Trackmania soon after along with my Steam version of Audiosurf – the only game I own on Steam, something that I look to remedy pretty soon – and ran them at the highest settings. Surprisingly I haven’t done much tweaking and they run at a smooth 30 and 40 frames per second, respectively.

I’m waiting until I can get some serious gaming on though, I’ll get downloading some demos tomorrow. For now, sleep.

I’ve just been told that both my Dabs and Overclockers orders are on the way meaning that tomorrow I should be set up with a desktop PC. Well providing nothing goes wrong while building it. I’m not really sure what to expect, I’ve installed every part of a computer before, but never from scratch.

The only thing I’m expecting is photos, loads of photos, tons of photos… Don’t worry I’ll post them on here. I know you want them.

Bare with me if you’re not interested in computers, it’s about to get incredibly geeky up in here because today I finally decided to pony up the £347 and buy a new computer.

I’ve always been an avid PC gamer but the combination of MacBook and Xbox 360 just outweighed tweaking settings and frame watching. I mean, the 360 would play games much better than my PC could and the MacBook did the rest without the faffing around with Norton or generally bad operating systems. That combination left me with two years of a PC-less existence.

That will soon change though, I’ve finally taken the plunge and spec’d out and bought the computer of my… well not dreams, I don’t dream about that kind of stuff.

The thing I love about consoles is that they’re incredibly small and well designed. I admit the original Playstation 3 isn’t to everyone’s taste but it looks better than gaming PCs with spikes and glowing bits on them. So because of this I’ve always wanted to build a micro ATX – that’s really small for those who don’t speak computer – in the vein of consoles. I bailed out of getting the £100 Lian Li case that would have achieved that but considering I don’t want to overspend, I’ve done alright.

So what will £347 buy you?

• Corsair XMS3 4GB DDR3 £85
• Intel Core i3 530 2.93Ghz £72
• Gigabyte GA-H55M-S2H £56
• Arctic Cooling Alpine 11 Pro CPU Cooler £8
• Western Digital 250Gb 7200RPM Sata Hard Drive £25
• Best Value S001 Micro ATX Desktop with 450W PSU £30
• Sony DVDRW 24x SATA £16
• Postage £xx
  

I’m still missing the most vital piece though, the Graphics Card. I’ve been debating what one to get for a while, anyone got any recommendations? The cheaper the better, I only want to have the option to play recent games.