Siri, is she all she's cracked up to be?

I upgraded to an iPhone 4S predominantly because I saw Siri as a great way around my MS symptoms when having a bad day, because on those days my nerves and muscles combine to make my left hand feel very weak and tired. Therefore making holding my phone while I type quite hard work. My thinking was along the lines of Siri doing my typing for me when I'm not feeling up to it.

So, unboxed my shiny new (white!) 64Gb iPhone, set it all up, re-logged in to all of my readers, social network apps, etc and proceeded to ask Siri banal questions such as "what is the meaning of life?" (It took me about 10 tries before I got an answer that involves chocolate, I still haven't heard 42 yet!). I learned how to give her instructions so that my text message recipients got something that made sense.

Everything seemed just brilliant, and what was a big bonus - whoever programmed Siri definitely had a sense of humor!

Until I returned to work. I sparked Siri up as I was driving along in my dump truck and remembered something I needed to do later on that I would forget if I didn't set myself a reminder right now! Imagine my dismay as I received the message "Siri not available, connect to the Internet".

HUH???? I don't need to connect to the Internet, I don't need a search performed or a message sent - I just want to remind myself to do something later. What about that needs an Internet connection? Apparently Siri herself does. Which may also explain why I went over my data limit on my phone account in less than a week that first few days I had my shiny new phone.

I work in a very remote part of Western Australia - for two weeks out of three I live and work on a mine site where digital tv hasn't even been heard of, let alone cell phone service! We have Wi-Fi piped around camp and the site offices but that's it for my style of communication.

Even when we're at home our "broadband" is rubbish and only works with any speed sporadically. I've stated in a previous rant how that affects Apple software update downloads - hopefully iOS 5 lives up to the hype and those days are now gone.

But seriously Siri, what's up?? Why so dependent on an Internet connection? I guess I should have been a little wary when I downloaded Dragon Dictate and had the same result. If anyone knows of a dictation type program that doesn't require internet access to function can they let me know in the comments?

RIP Steve Jobs

It only seems fitting really that I follow up my last blog with my little tribute to the co-founder of a pretty amazing fruit company (according to Forrest Gump).

I'm a late comer to the Mac revolution (?) only really having signed on when my (older - but don't tell her I said that) mother was threatening to buy a Mac laptop at the insistence of another of my siblings, and I warned her that I would no longer be able to perform as her IT specialist as I knew nothing about them.

Needless to say my septuagenarian mother ignored my dire predictions, purchased the aforementioned Mac and proceeded to make excellent headway with it. So the next time I went to visit, I had a play and became a convert. The only PC's in our house now are an old desktop that is useful if you need a bit more space to store things on, a couple of long dead laptops and my husband's current laptop which is about to be replaced with a MacBook of some description yet to be determined (he doesn't know about that yet, but after he commandeered my old iPhone and my iPad (necessitating the purchase of an iPad 2) - there's no way he's getting his grubby little mitts on my nice shiny new MacBook Air!)

As you can see, Mr Jobs has been quite the contributor to our household: at last count an iBook G4 that has definitely passed its use-by date, a 750Mb(approx) iPod shuffle, two G2 iPod Nanos, a G1 iPod touch and the latest gen iPod touch, two of the latest gen iPod Nanos, an iPhone 3G, an iPhone 4, a G1 iPad, an iPad 2 and the pride of the fleet - the MacBook Air. The only reason there's not another MacBook in the mix is that my mother bought it when I abandoned it for the Air.

There's not many people in the world that have the sort of impact on every day life as Steve Jobs and his little fruit company have done. Granted - I'm talking in a very commercial sense but impact they have. I believe that Apple's stock took a bit of a dive when they announced the iPhone 4s a couple of days ago instead of the much anticipated iPhone 5 - I can only imagine what this news will do to it. I can only hope that Apple can survive their leaders' passing and continue to pump out the game changing technology at a blinding rate.

I wish Steve Jobs family & friends my heartfelt condolences. I hope they take comfort from knowing how much life has changed for billions of people because of the man they knew and loved.

iPhone 5 day?

I am a self confessed geek. Note, not a nerd - a geek! And for some reason (maybe it's all of the technology blogs I've been following lately on Twitter) I am ridiculously excited about today's announcement from Apple about iOS 5 and the next generation iPhone.

Like many others, I would be quite disappointed if Apple confirmed the very latest rumors and only announced the arrival of an iPhone 4S as the iPhone 5 is so anticipated with the "loss of the prototype in a bar" incident.

Do I sound skeptical about that??? I can't think why I would be. Except maybe that it happened two years in a row with almost exactly the same scenario occurring, and apparently the security footage is "missing". Oh hell no - me skeptical? Hardly. But I digress.

Today (or yesterday as it's after midnight on this side of the world now) is the day of Apple's "Let's Talk iPhone" event and how much of a geek does it make me that I've set a reminder on my calendar to check Twitter and a couple of blogs when I'm near the wi-fi at lunchtime (10.00am Oct 4 Cupertino time) so I can catch up with the announcement details. I sure hope someone's gonna be in there tweeting their little thumbs off because I'm only gonna have a window of about 20 minutes with the wi-fi!!! I really am SUCH a geek!

The sad thing is that I won't even be able to post this until it's all over (I think) but I'm in such a state of anticipation that I just had to get it out of my system!

Not that it's the new model iPhone that I'm looking forward to even. I really just want iOS 5. I can do without the new model, just gimme the software upgrade & make it snappy (if you don't mind Mr Jobs). There are some pretty cool sounding toys in there, full Twitter integration, voice control that may or may not have been designed in conjunction with Nuance (the Dragon Naturally Speaking etc people). I'm just hoping that when I get home desperate for sleep from night shift I'll be able to set my download going!

Why can't it be simple to update technology?

I get increasingly frustrated with the gap between the technology companies and the internet connections they expect you to use to download their software/updates.

Apple have decided to use only their App or iTunes store to supply their software & updates. That's all very well & good if you have a great internet connection. I only have access to a fairly slow wifi internet connection that has a fair-use policy which disconnects you after 60 minutes. Now it takes 80+ minutes to download even the smallest iPhone software updates, and if the connection is interrupted, the process starts all over again from the beginning! Why can't it pick up where it left off? That would make life so much simpler!

Anyway - that's tonight's whinge over & done with.