From a 2006 Macbook to a 2012 Macbook Pro, what a difference!

So, I got a mid-2012 MacBook Pro as a birthday present, yes I know what you're thinking, I'm a Linux man, why have a Mac? Well, right now, making music on Linux is tricky, the JACK control system is a pain to setup, still. I've always made music on a Mac, from my old PowerPC Macs - Powermac G4s, iBook G4 and Powerbook G4s - then eventually to my old white 2006 MacBook (which I got in 2016) and now this Macbook Pro. I still occasionally use a Powermac G4 MDD for older PowerPC-only music software. I have a whole bunch of tools and plugins I have collected over the years. This is the first time I have had a reasonably quick Mac that can run a recent version of Mac OS (and can be made to run the latest, Ventura), and up to date apps too. 

The mid 2012 is still the best choice on a budget, since it, if I remember rightly, was the last to have upgrade-able RAM, up to 16GB na done of the most repairable before everything became soldered and glued together. Mine currently has 4GB but it's still usable for what I want to use it for, Garageband and plugins. And that's pretty much all I plan to use it for, and for any other occasion where I can't find a way to run something on Linux. This MBP is in good condition, other than the rubber feet need sticking on a bit more firmly, they keep falling off! There's no obvious scratches or dents. It came with a replacement 60W PSU which works fine. 

The Macbook Pro came with Mojave installed on a 500GB hard drive, but I decided to upgrade it to an SSD and dual boot two Mac OS versions, Mojave and Catalina, so I can run older 32bit apps that Catalina cannot run. 

I took the SSD out of my old 2006 Macbook, which was already in two partitions (I had it dual booted for awhile but then stuck with just Lion and a data partition), and put it in the MBP. Then I attached the original HDD via USB and booted off it to install the two Mac OS versions on the SSD, including transferring settings and data off it.

The guts of the machine are accessed from underneath, by undoing a bunch of screws and taking the base off, I followed the guide on iFixit. I did also try putting the RAM from my old Thinkpad X201 in it, but it didn't seem to be compatible. One day I will get two decent 8GB sticks to max it out.  

The only thing I am not keen on, hardware wise, is the glossy screen (apparently they can be replaced with a matte one but I am not bothered enough to do that). The keyboard is decent enough and it's the first Mac I have had with one that  is backlit, as is my Thinkpad T430s too. I now miss having that whenever I use a laptop without it, such as my old Acer Chromebook 14.

The MBP feels slightly heavier than my Thinkpad T430s, due to the metal body, which takes a bit of getting used to when sat on my lap. It has almost the same CPU (2.5 GHz i5 instead of 2.6 GHz) and the same Intel 4000 graphics as my T430s.  Naturally the Thinkpad has more ports, it's a bit annoying having only 2 USB ports on this MBP. I usually have USB MIDI keyboard, M-Audio M-Track Solo external soundcard/input box and a mouse plugged in. I prefer the precision of a decent mouse over a trackpad. I've actually been lazily using an old Apple keyboard as USB hub! I should find or buy a proper hub sometime, though I'm sure I have one somewhere...        

I am not that keen on the Apple App Store, it feels kind of bloated and there's a load of paid for apps, including a "Pro" version of FileZilla that I didn't even know existed. Apparently it has a paid cloud service and other cloud plugins. The free version is not on the store but can be downloaded from their website. I've also removed a lot of apps off the Dock I don't plan to use like Apple Maps, Music etc, all I plan to use it for is music production.  

Although Garageband is right there in the App Store, it wouldn't let me download and install because Catalina is not new enough for the latest version. The newest version requires Monterey. I found version 10.3.1 elsewhere to download, to use on both Catalina and Mojave. A dual boot is a little inconvenient when you can't easily share stuff between them, particularly with file encryption enabled on Catalina. And I am still not really keen on Finder, it's a poor file manager compared to the powerful Dolphin on KDE that I am used too. Also, out the box, I miss certain open source tools, like wget on the command-line. To do ad that, you need to install MacPorts, which requires Xcode, which I can't install from the App Store because, yet again, Catalina is apparently not new enough! The newest version it can run is 12.4, old versions can be downloaded manually from the Apple developer site, it is a 10.86GB download.

It's nice to finally have a fairly up to date version of Mac OS that has the dark theme that older versions didn't have. I am not so keen on how Disk Utility seems to have been dumbed down compared to the version in Lion that I was used to.  Also, I chose to have two Mac OS versions so I could still run old 32 bit apps, but sadly Native Instruments B4 just does not show up as an instrument in Garageband, though it will run as a standalone app. it seems Native Instruments moved on and want you to buy their Komplete software and plugins. The organ emulator built into Garageband just doesn't match the B4. I can't seem to find any advanced settings for it. On the plus side, the newer Garageband has better drums, and generally better built-in instruments, I particularly like the Mellotron sounds they've added. 

I couldn't use this Macbook Pro for everything, but it's fine just for music production. Mac OS is just too restrictive for me, it feels like a straitjacket compared with the freedom of  Linux, particularly KDE Plasma desktop. If I don't like the default theme on KDE, then I'll change it, change the icons, change the titlebar theme, or even swap out KDE for something else if I want to. Whereas on Mac OS there's two themes (light and dark), a single set of icons and that horrible file manager, Finder. And as mentioned before, I really like Dolphin file manager on KDE and I don't like basic file managers like Nautilus and Nemo on Linux which are too similar in dumbness to Finder. Having said that, this 2012 Macbook Pro should hopefully perform its one job of making music for a good few years, particularly if I max out the RAM to 16GB and, at some point, use Open Core Legacy Patcher to make it run Monterey and/or Ventura. What I replace with it after that I don't know, but I'll use this until it dies, so watch this space!  

You can find my music on my Audius page.

        

Goodbye Apple… And Good Riddance

I have finally done it. I have broken free of the Cupertino giant. After 20 years of being an Apple user I am now totally free.

I switched to Linux, bought a Dell laptop and I just sold my MacBook Air. It was a big step but the time was right.

I have left several Apple related groups, stopped being an admin in others and even written my final article for my LowEndMac column 'Tech Spectrum' after 12 years of being an avid contributor.

Tonight I pulled the plug on them altogether and deleted my Apple ID, taking with it any history I have with them and anything I have in my purchase list.

Some bad experiences with Apple and a falling out of love with them over the past few years has spurred my decision to leave them.

I am free. I feel quite relieved. I didn’t even feel nervous about parting with my MacBook Air, just glad it was gone and I was able to move on.

The only reminder I have of my two decades of devotion is the small black Apple logo tattoo on my right arm.

Now its time for a new era.

Written by Simon Royal. Follow me at twitter.com/simonroyal

First Day With Linux On My Mac

After a lot of thought and talk of switching from macOS to Linux, today was the day I decided to go for it. I wasn’t brave enough to completely wipe macOS from my MacBook Air, so I decided to slim it down, remove my files and remove any apps I was going to reuse in Linux.

Once done, I resized the macOS partition from 250GB down to 70GB. Once done, I then made two USB drives, one was the bootable Linux Mint installer, which I used Etcher to create and the other I used to put the rEFInd files on.

Because it is an Apple laptop designed for an Apple OS, it isn’t as straightforward to install a different OS on, made even more awkward with the introduction of SIP – System Integrity Protection – brought in with macOS 10.11.

So first I needed to boot to the Apple system recovery (command+R) on boot and use the terminal to install rEFInd, a custom EFI boot manager which picks up multiple operating systems, similar to GRUB for regular PCs. It is easier to do it from Apple system recovery partition because this bypasses SIP.

Then it was time to install Linux Mint. Linux Mint boots in to a live installer and you can then choose to run the installer. This was where I came to my first issue. When I tried Ubuntu a few years back, it detected that Mac OSX was installed and asked if you wanted to install alongside it. Linux Mint is a bit different, it has to be done manually.

I had to wipe the free space, create a swap area and then the rest as an ext4 file format. I could see the Mac recovery partition and my macOS installation and just hoped it would leave them alone. Then I just left the installer to do its thing. I did ask my Linux guru friend and he said everything looked fine and he was correct.

Once done, it rebooted and rEFInd had gone, it just booted straight back into LinuxMint. So I rebooted in to the Apple system recovery partition and ran rEFInd again and it detected all four partitions (recovery, macOS, swap and Mint).

A quick wipe of my brow as it worked and I could pick which OS I wanted to be boot in to, with Mint being picked by default.

Happy with that, I began my mission to get updates and apps installed in Mint. Updates were detected by the system and done automatically. Most apps were in the Synaptic Package Manager, a handy place that you can search, select all the apps you want and then let it install them all at once.

There were a few apps I had to look for on their own sites, but everything worked and installed.

It was the simplest method of getting apps sorted and installed on any OS I have had.

After that it was just a case of tweaking a few things, as everyone likes thing certain ways.

I had three issues. One, I updated the wireless driver and for some reason it knocked out the wireless chip, but I couldn’t put it back without internet connection. This could have been a major issue as my MacBook Air doesn't have ethernet, but luckily I had an old wireless USB stick which I had used with Ubuntu before and knew it worked out of the box.

Secondly, being a Mac user you get used to a giant mouse pad with one button. But with Linux and Windows they use two buttons, with the right one being used for contextual menus. This used to be an issue with running Linux on a Mac, with some bizarre workarounds. However, the Mouse and Trackpad options now allow for splitting the mouse button in to two, but it only works for clicking not tapping. So clicking the right side of the pad gives you the small menus pop up. Getting used to having two buttons again has been a bit tricky, but something that will come with time and use.

The third – and I not sure this is directly Linux related – but Google Chrome will not stay synced with my account. Everytime I close Chrome and open it again, it needs signing in again.

Being quite up to speed with Linux and drive partitions helped a lot. It is not for the novice or someone who is used to just turning on their Windows machine and just using it. The nerdy side of my came out today.

I’m not a gamer and I don’t use commercial packages. So apart from the odd new piece of software – mainly replacements for Apple only iApps – I was already using most of the software I was used to.

The main issue I have had today is keyboard shortcuts. 20 years of using a Mac and your fingers automatically know where to go, I had to keep reminding myself today to use the Alt key in place of the Command key.

Linux Mint is a great user friendly and intuitive distro, which worked straight out of the box with all my hardware – no configuring or issues at all. Even the shortcut OS keys for screen brightness, keyboard backlights, music and volume controls work.

My journey has started. It has been far more painless and stressful than I thought it was going to be and I feel far more at home and comfortable than I would on day one.

I say day one, but I have dipped in and out of Linux and played with many distros for years, however this is the first serious trip I made, the first real effort to leave Apple behind.

Written by Simon Royal. Follow me at twitter.com/simonroyal

Another Dip In To Linux... Could It Be For Good?

I have had an on-off relationship with Linux over the years, dipping my toe in to various distros and then back to my Mac and macOS. In 2018 I even gave Linux a good run for six weeks (leaving my Mac aside), but eventually I caved and went back to macOS.

My distro of choice is LinuxMint, a superb sleak, cleaning looking version of Linux that is gorgeous to look at and easy to use - as well as being superb stable.

I have used a Mac for over 20 years and once a hardcore Apple fan, but over the past few years I have become a user rather than a fan and even ditched iOS a few years back.

With the announcement of BigSur - the forthcoming new release of macOS - and the fact that my beloved MacBook Air wont be receiving it, it has started to put the nail in my Macs coffin. While it will be good for a while just yet, it does make me wonder what my next computer will be.

It certainly won’t be a Windows machine as I detest Windows. A ChromeBook doesn’t fit my needs and I cannot justify spending a fortune on another Mac. So I have two choices, I stick with my current 8 year old Mac or I start seriously looking in to my interest in Linux.

I installed LinuxMint 20 ‘Cinnamon’ in a VM on my Mac this evening and instantly I felt at home. I remembered why I loved LinuxMint so much. It feels like a Mac/Windows hybrid in terms of look. Start menu and task bars being reminiscent of Windows, but with the window handling of macOS.

The thing that has stopped me moving away from my Mac to Linux is software. While software has come a long way and I do use a lot of free, open source, cross platform packages which are easily found on Linux, there are some mainstream packages which I have struggled to find good alternative for.

Being a Mac user you fall in to the habit of adopting Apple ways and I have used iTunes for music management - such as MP3 converting, album organising and ID3 tag editing. This is something I would have to switch from.

Other than that it is pure habit that has kept with macOS. After so long, I know it inside out and what to do if - on the rare occasion - it goes wrong. While I am fairly up to speed with Linux it is still a little daunting delving in to the nix world and if a problem was to arise I would be out of my comfort zone - and I don’t like that.

But with my MacBook Airs life running out, this could be the push I need to further develop my Linux skills and perhaps start a new chapter in my computing life.

Written by Simon Royal. Follow me at twitter.com/simonroyal

Turn KDE to The Dark Side - Dark Theme All The Things!

When Apple announced at WWDC2018 that macOS 10.14 Mojave would have a Dark Mode, my first thought was that in the Linux world, completely dark themes have been around since forever. Anyway, whilst you can make Gnome look almost exactly like Mojave with themes, I have no wish to do that though, or to use Gnome either. KDE has been my desktop of choice for over a year now and it's far less restrictive and more customisable, and has a far better file manager in Dolphin.

I've been using KDE Neon for about awhile now, having previously used Debian Testing before that. It's currently based on Ubuntu 16.04 but with the latest KDE software, so it's more up to date than Kubuntu 16.04 and still has a newer version of KDE than Kubuntu 18.04. The image below is how my desktop looks right now. I think I found the wallpapers on this subreddit but then I found out they are from iOS or macOS, but they work well on OLED/LED/AMOLED screens. And yes I do have an odd arrangement of a 27" landscape orientated monitor and a 22" portrait orientated monitor, which makes screenshots look quite odd too. Sadly I had to swap my right hand monitor for a non-LED monitor as the old one died. I take donations... ;)

I use Breeze Dark desktop theme which you can find in the Theme settings, and my choice of icons is Papirus Dark. Breeze Dark icons work well too. You can start typing what you need in the K Menu to quickly find anything. For a macOS-like dock, I use Latte dock, which is highly configurable and is far less buggy than Cairo Dock.

For Google Chrome, I found a good dark theme that goes well with the desktop theme, appropriately named Dark Theme V3.  To make every website in Chrome dark, I found a good dark mode extension in the Chrome web store called Dark Reader.  I found it recently and was the first one I found that doesn't mess up how Google Photos and some other app-like sites work. My only slight issue I've had with it is I cannot see the cursor input in YouTube comment boxes. The good thing is all my Chrome settings are synced to my other Chrome installs so I have these on my Chromebook too, which is nice. It's particularly good with Facebook and Google Plus which are far too bright normally.

And that's pretty much it. It certainly is easier on my eyes than without all the dark themes, particularly as I use my computer in a mostly dark room. Let me know in the comments about your dark themes and desktop tweaks.

A Month With Linux Mint… On A 2012 MacBook Air

This is a follow up article to my ‘7 Days With Mint’. A month in and I am still running Linux Mint 17.3 ‘Cinnamon’ on my MacBook Air 2012. It is dual booted with macOS Sierra, but in a month I haven’t used macOS.

I had a few teething troubles which seemed specific to Apple hardware, some of which I have ironed out.

The heat issue seemed to calm down shortly after writing the previous article. I am not sure if it was settling in or drive indexing but I now have a quiet cool MacBook Air again.

The poor battery life has been improved, by installing PowerTop and turning everything labelled ‘bad’ to ‘good’. Battery is still not as good as under macOS, but it has drastically improved.

I discovered a problem watching online videos - from various sites - with the video flickering constantly. This was resolved by installing the Intel video drivers, which were in the Driver Manager tool rather than the default ones.

Two issues I still haven’t resolved and may never is the very sensitive mouse tap, which still causes me to accidentally send my mouse pointer to places I don’t want and it still doesn’t always wake from sleep with I lift of the lid, although this has also improved since tweaking PowerTop.

I am getting used to the feel of Mint, slowly the new keyboard shortcuts are becoming more natural rather than having to think for a second before remembering I am not in macOS. The same with general navigation, I now look to the bottom right automatically for the clock rather than top right.

I have ventured a little further in to apps, slowly installing items that I would use everyday in macOS. I have installed software so I can edit the websites I maintain (gedit, gFTP and GIMP) which I managed to do and upload successfully.

I need to dig deeper into tools for music management and video conversion for me to feel totally happy.

I am pleased how the journey is going. Day by day I am learning more and feeling more comfortable, but there is still so much to learn - especially if something goes wrong.

However it has certainly opened my eyes to the possibility of leaving the Apple world behind and when it comes to the end of life for my MacBook Air, it would be a non-Apple laptop I look for next.

Written by Simon Royal. Follow me at twitter.com/simonroyal

Fallen Out Of Love With Apple. But Whats Next For Me?

I’ve been a massive advocate for Apple and the Mac platform for nearly two decades, but of late my love of them has become less love, more habit. Once locked in to the macOS and iOS ecosystem, about 18 months ago I broke free, ditched my iPhone and jumped in to the Google camp.

This was a major step, it meant I no longer required a Mac to take advantage of my phone. The cat and mouse game of will my phone version work with my Mac and will my Mac version work with my phone is no longer there.

My Android based Motorola Moto G4 has served me amazingly for over a year and I can not fault it in any way. It works very well too with a Mac, but it isn’t tied to it.

With every year that passes my beloved MacBook Air gets older and older. A 2012 11” with i5 processor and 8GB of RAM means it is still no slouch and hardware wise probably has a few more years left, but Apple increasingly push hardware and drop older models with each new release of macOS. I am running Sierra, I haven’t bothered with High Sierra and the next version is just around the corner. Whether you want to run the latest or not sometimes you are forced to by software developers or Apple themselves. There is a good chance the next version will be the last for my now 5 year old Mac and that puts it on the slippery slope to ‘low end’.

So what next? I no longer drool over the latest Apple tech and I certainly don’t have the funds to stump up a £1000 for another Mac. Going the used market route saves you a few hundred but puts you closer to the eventual cut-off where you will be in the same position again.

I have had a keen interest in Linux as a desktop operating system for years, dabbling in various distros - such as Mint, Ubuntu, LXLE to name a few - and learning the basics, but it has always been a side interest, a geeky look at what those ‘nerds’ run. However it is no longer spotty speccy geeks who snort with excitement over new kernel releases or wet themselves over the newest LTS release. It has become a real contender in the OS wars. It places itself sandwiched between Windows haters and those who either can't afford Apple hardware or those who don’t want the lock-in you get with them.

Looking at my list of apps sitting in my dock, I see very little that is Mac exclusive. I browse using Chrome, I use GMail for emails, I write in Google Docs or use OpenOffice. I use VLC for video use, Audacity for audio tweaking, HandBrake for video conversion and DropBox for off site back ups. All of which are available for Linux, some of which were originally Linux apps ported to the Mac.

I have a few other minor apps, which may not be on Linux but I am sure there are just as suitable alternatives.

I no longer use iTunes everyday. It is used mainly for editing tags and adding artwork to music and since leaving iOS I don’t use Photos anymore.

Android File Transfer is an awful piece of essential software for any Mac user with an Android, but isn’t required in Linux as most support native mounting with drop and drag.

The one caveat to not owning a Mac would be Adobe Photoshop. Being an ex professional graphic designer I grew up learning Photoshop and despite many attempts haven’t found anything to match it. Perhaps there are or perhaps I am just too set in my ways to get my head around another graphics package. If I am honest it is one of the main things holding me to my Mac.

However, it isnt just about apps. Linux is a large learning curve. It may be nix based and OSX/macOS may share similar ideas, layout and operations - especially compared to Windows - but Mac is 99% GUI. Linux - while it has come a long way to be user friendly - you still need to delve in to terminal and understand what you are doing once in a while.

It is a big step for me, after 20 years of using a Mac, I know the OS inside out. It just works. It never lets me down. It never gets in the way of my every day use. Moving to a relatively unfamiliar operating system I don’t want to be spending time constantly looking up how to perform simple tasks.

Microsoft is definitely not an option. Nothing anyone can say will make me switch to that swiss cheese OS. I may not be an Apple devotee anymore, but I still have extreme hatred for Windows.

The future for me is uncertain, but my love of Apple is no longer where it was. I want the freedom. I want the choices to be my choices and not governed by who makes my computer. Linux is looking more and more appealing as a way to escape the clutches of Apple.

Written by Simon Royal. Follow me at twitter.com/simonroyal

iPhone 8 and X - What is all the fuss about?

It’s that time again, when the Apple reality distortion field is at full force after an iPhone Event, and the mainstream media are gushing over their shiny new toys. So what’s all the fuss about?

Well not much really, the iPhone 8 and 8 plus look almost the same as the old ones but include a slightly better camera, slightly faster CPU, have a few more gimmicks, and now have a glass back to accommodate QI wireless charging, which the LG Revolution had in 2011 and many Android devices have had since. It also has Fast Charging, which has also been around for 4 years in the Android world. The glass back also means more money to Apple for all the repairs they will undoubtedly have very soon when owners drop their shiny new toy. I also wonder if new phone cases might appear to allow QI charging to work properly. Of course Apple could try improving the battery life on the iPhone, which is probably the biggest complaint my Apple using friends have these days...There was also something mentioned about being designed for Augmented Reality, which is nothing new either. Other than that, the 8 and 8 Plus are so unexciting that Apple didn’t even live demo them at the event, instead Craig Ferenghi saved that for something ever so slightly more exciting...

Craig Ferenghi

The main highlight of the Apple Event was the iPhone X, for £999 (yes, practically a thousand quid, and that’s the base model) that celebrates ten years of the iPhone. Unlike the 8 and 8 Plus, it features an edge to edge screen much like other recent Android flagships from the likes of LG and Samsung, and the Sharp Aquos had a few years ago. It’s also OLED for the first time on an iPhone, which Apple calls a “Super Retina Display” in their marketing bollocks.

iPhone X

Yet again, Android devices had OLED screens years ago, (2009 on the original Samsung Galaxy), so nothing particularly exciting there either. LG recently switched to an OLED edge to edge screen on their V30 which has a higher PPI than the iPhone X.

The odd looking brow on the X reminds me of the little bump that intrudes on Andy Rubin’s Essential phone, except bigger, and I don’t like it there either, it’s ugly and will likely get in the way. (I don’t like the lack of a headphone jack on the Essential phone either).

Another feature borrowed from Android is Tap To Wake, which first appeared in 2013 on the LG G2 and subsequently incorporated into many other Android devices. Just tap the screen to show the clock and notifications. I first used it on my LG G3, (which they called KnockOn) which was nice, but LG went one step further and incorporated knock to unlock where you could tap out an unlock code. I really think though that Raise to Wake and Active/Ambient Display are much more useful and I got very used to waving my hand over the AMOLED screen on my second gen Moto X to wake it up and see notifications. Raise To Wake is very handy, pick it up and it shows the clock and notifications. Both these features save battery power, particularly on AMOLED screens, perhaps Apple might steal these features for the iPhone...XI? Or will it be the X2? Or the iPhone XS?...

Another major ‘new’ feature of the iPhone X is that the fingerprint sensor has been replaced by FaceID for securely unlocking the phone. This means users will have to point their mug in front of the screen before opening Apple Pay, creating one more step in the payment process. Unlocking the X now means picking it up, swiping up from the bottom of the screen then holding it up to the face to unlock, that’s two more steps than just pressing a digit on a fingerprint reader. All presumably because Apple, like Samsung, could not find a way to put a fingerprint sensor underneath the screen. For me, the best place for a fingerprint reader on any phone, if they must have one, is on the back, where the index finger rests. As any Android user who remembers the Galaxy Nexus back in 2012 will tell you, face unlock really isn’t very convenient, no matter how much it has improved since then. Of course it also might make it easier for a gang of thugs, like the Police, to hold the owner by their arms and unlock the device with their face. It is also meant to work in pitch black darkness but I look forward to seeing how it all works (or doesn’t) in practice once the iPhone X is in the wild.

LG V30

It’s really about time Apple upgraded other components in the iPhone range, like giving them a decent DAC, something as good as the high quality quad DACs in the LG V10/20/30, though I doubt they will since most Apple users likely use Bluetooth earbuds as there is no headphone jack, and the adaptors are too awkward to use, or they just do not know or care about decent audio quality. In fact, instead of the iPhone X, you could probably save a couple of hundred Dollars/Pounds and buy an LG V30 which not only has wireless charging, facial recognition (should you want to use it), fingerprint reader, and Tap to Wake, but also a higher resolution OLED edge to edge screen, aforementioned quad DAC, arguably better camera, expandable storage and a headphone jack. And for the average user who doesn’t need any fancy features could save even more money and buy a year or two old flagship and not notice the difference, there is certainly plenty of other very capable devices around.

iPhone 7 And The Removal of The Headphone Jack.

So, yet again Apple makes an incremental update to their iPhone range with ever so slightly tweaked design, slightly faster CPU, better cameras and removal of the headphone port, supposedly allowing better quality audio, but actually a ploy to eek more money on accessories, such as their £159 AirPods, and whatever sludgy sounding overpriced crap (Apple-owned) Beats produce these days. And it still does not have wireless charging, which Apple will probably debut that on the iPhone 8, call it new and "magical" and use their own particular incompatible format.

I keep hearing the same arguments by various tech people that removing the headphone jack is no big deal because we used to have phones that had proprietary adaptors for headphones. Those people seem to forget that every device maker had proprietary connectors for charging or headphones so you ended up with a box full of all these different cables. Nowadays, all chargers are Micro USB or USB C, except Apple. We don't want to go back to the dark ages of tech! If you are stuck somewhere without a charger or headphones you can usually borrow a charger off somebody or pop into a pound store and get a micro USB lead or ear buds in an "emergency". And headphone makers will have to have work with Apple to get their Lightning and wireless headphones working with the iphone 7 (and maybe not working with non-Apple devices). I doubt the overpriced wireless AirPods will work properly with non-Apple devices either.

The use of a Lightning port to analogue adaptor cannot really improve audio quality (since analogue is still the destination) and Bluetooth headphones just aren't up to the quality of decent wired headphones. Plus the headphone jack component was pretty tiny and maybe could have been moved back to the top of the device instead. And although headphone jacks can break with abuse, they are still tougher than the awful quality of Apple Lightning cables!   

I have also heard the argument that removing the headphone jack helps with making the iPhone 7 water resistant, but other device makers seem to have no trouble making their devices water resistant without removing it. iPhone 7 users who want to use wired headphones while charging their device will have to buy an adaptor from Apple (£49) or elsewhere, and not lose it. iPhone users tech lives must be all about buying and (not) losing adaptors! 

Meanwhile, outside of the Apple Reality Distortion Field..

Of course the recently released Motorola Moto Z had  beaten Apple to it and debuted with a lack of headphone jack earlier this year, not that is a feature to boast about. Sadly Motorola are a shadow of their former self ever since Lenovo took them over. I have a 2014 Moto X, their last really great non-Lenovo device. 

The day before Apple's event, at a fairly dull, lower key, event, LG announced it's V20 phone with high quality quad DAC audio output, fast onboard modem, 4GB RAM, and fingerprint scanner. The specs are great and it's actually an innovative device compared with the iPhone 7. It brings it's 4 camera setup to the V range and keeps a removable battery, SD card slot, second screen along the top, and still has a headphone port! It's DAC includes a dedicated headphone amp too. The only thing I don't really like with LG is their skin over Android, but it is impressive to see it's the first Android device to ship with Nougat out the box. Having a massive SD card would be useful in the device for those who like to travel with lossless audio and for recording high quality UHD videos, which LG have added "Steady Record" electronic image stabilization (EIS). They have also improved the manual camera settings, including volume input levels on the HD stereo mics. It's also pretty tough device as it has a body MIL-STD 810G Military spec Transit Drop Test rating. Also, I am not sure whether it'll actually appear in the UK, since the V10 didn't. 

But it's Apple that usually get all the publicity, particularly from the mainstream newspapers (for example BBC and The Guardian) who usually fawn over the new iDevices, though with the removal of the headphone jack, that has taken centre stage in the press. Only time will tell how well the iPhone 7 goes down with the public, though of course there always seems to be a hardcore Apple fanboy following that will buy it anyway, even at the higher prices they are now here in the UK. I can only hope sanity prevails and the removal of the headphone jack really won't be a trend for future Android devices.  

Further Reading:

• LG V20's impressive audio setup.
• Features iPhone 7 took from Android

Apple's iPhone 6S announcement in Tweets

As per usual Twitter pretty much exploded with tweets about Apple's latest conference - the #appleevent hashtag stream was a blur in Tweetdeck - about the new iPhone 6S, iPad Pro, new Apple TV and to a lesser extent Apple Watch, here are some of my favourite Tweets:

In a surprise move Apple allowed the conference to be viewed in Microsoft's new and very basic Edge browser, perhaps in a deal with Office on the new iPad Pro. Microsoft also made a surprise appearance on stage at the event.

Microsoft Edge: the only browser that let's you stream the Apple keynote *and* draw on Jony Ive's face pic.twitter.com/zBG4aN1PiM

— Jacob Rossi (@jacobrossi) September 9, 2015

At one point in proceedings, Apple demonstrated the new iPad pro by editing a woman's smile, because they didn't like women having their own emotions perhaps...

2014 Apple: What, women exist? Mid-2015 Apple: Maybe women use our things too Late-2015 Apple: BABIES! ON YOUR WRIST! CONTRACTIONS! LADIES!

— Mark (@shinypb) September 9, 2015

Apple genuinely demonstrating new Adobe tools by changing the smile on a woman cos "they're not happy with it". pic.twitter.com/TCXMBn8QCw

— Guardian Tech (@guardiantech) September 9, 2015

Ah yes, and then Apple unveiled...a STYLUS! Or rather "Pencil" that needs to be charged, and costs $99! Yes, you read that right, ninetynine Dollars!

Well, this is awkward #AppleEvent pic.twitter.com/wPH88QCgda

— Atom Bank (@atom_bank) September 9, 2015

Apple has revealed a stylus. A stylus that you have to charge. Next is Now pic.twitter.com/xD03LwKADj

— XDA Developers (@xdadevelopers) September 9, 2015

$99 for the pencil? Apple is insane! They should have offered Pencil, Pencil Sport, and 18K Pencil Edition collections, just like the watch.

— Reginald Braithwaite (@raganwald) September 9, 2015

And then Apple unveiled their new Apple TV with "tvOS"..

tvOS. To be mispronounced by non-technical media as "tivos"

— Wes Miller (@getwired) September 9, 2015

And this tweet pretty much won my stream today!

Apple never stops innovating. Today they announced a Microsoft Surface, Frogger, and now, the Wii.

— Matt Haughey (@mathowie) September 9, 2015

And finally Apple unveiled the iPhone 6S...

This is all stuff that won’t work unless you use Apple’s default apps. Also, stuff that my parents will never know is there.

— Will Smith (@willsmith) September 9, 2015

 So much truth!...

One of the ways Apple has made their phones desktop class is by making the desktop machines slower and buggier

— Pinboard (@Pinboard) September 9, 2015

And now iOS is copying Ubuntu Phone edge gestures. Remember when people used to copy Apple? #AppleEvent

— Simon Phipps (@webmink) September 9, 2015

Final thoughts

I think I nearly dozed off during the Apple Watch part hence the lack of tweets there. Then Apple showed the iPad Pro which btw does not have the iPhone 6S's "innovative" 3D Touch, I guess that will probably in next years iPad Pro Plus!
And how is it that Apple still makes a 16GB iPhone? With the usual size of that "Other" folder and all the apps and bigger 12MP (really Apple?) photos to store (at least temporarily), that 16GB will be used up rather quickly! Oh and by the way, in the small print from Apple: "Live Photos and 4K video recording not supported on 16GB" - for obvious reasons! I'm more looking forward to Google's Nexus event in October.

Thoughts On Convergence and Why Google and Apple Got It Right and Microsoft Got It Wrong

In a brief interview with Macworld to mark the 30th anniversary of the Mac, Apple's executive Phil Schiller (and his cohort Craig Federighi, I keep misreading his name as Ferengi...) affirmed that the Mac still has a bright future "as far as our eye can see." Federighi went on to say “It’s obvious and easy enough to slap a touchscreen on a piece of hardware, but is that a good experience? We believe, no.” Obviously the Mac will stick around as it would hardly be practical to write iOS apps (or lots of other heavy desktop work) on an iOS device.

 

Now I may not be a massive fan of Apple and I particularly get riled up when it comes to their attitude to patents, but as far as the desktop computer is concerned, Apple have got one thing right. Despite the massive success of the iPhone and iPad, they have kept OSX and iOS seperate, with just a little convergence between the two. There is Dashboard, iMessage, trackpad gestures and the admittedly silly "Natural Scrolling" but that's about it. OSX is still a reasonably usable desktop OS, albeit a fixed, non-customizable one.

Microsoft on the other hand, have, in my opinion, got things very wrong! They basically shovelled the Metro (I refuse to call it "Modern") interface onto phone, tablet and, most annoyingly, desktop with Windows 8. Microsoft has confused and annoyed a lot of users with this abomination. Even 8.1 does not really fix things, it merely brings back the Start button rather than what a lot of desktop users actually want which is the Start menu. Windows 9 will supposedly fix things by putting Metro apps in a windowed app on the desktop but we shall see. By then though it may be too late and Windows will be irrelevant, perhaps it already is...

Google have ChromeOS and Android. They have, at least on their own devices, kept them separate. ChromeOS is aimed at laptops and desktops as the browser is the desktop to Google. Chromebooks are great for those who need a second machine for writing, browsing and other light work. Despite Microsoft's FUD, Chromebooks are actually useful offline too. Things have taken a slightly different approach recently with some OEMs like Lenovo and HP putting Android onto all-in-one desktops and laptops, presumably to take advantage of the huge amount of apps in the Play store. I am not quite sure how I feel about this yet, I have yet to see what they are like in the flesh. If, and that's a big if, they have skinned Android to make it more desktop-like, they might be onto something but I don't think Android is quite right in it's stock form for a desktop PC, at least as a work computer, though it would be great as a touchscreen jukebox or media centre.

For things like photo and video editing, music production though I would rather have a full OS such as a 'proper' Linux distro, my personal preference at the moment being Linux Mint with Cinnamon desktop. With Linux, and pretty much any desktop, I like a top panel with the usual indicators, a searchable menu on the left and a dock at the base of the screen on one monitor, the great thing about Linux is it is so customizable!

Again I am not really keen on Ubuntu's Unity or Gnome Shell as I think it gets in the way of what I want to do, I don't like massive fullscreen menus covering almost a whole screen, which is one reason I hate Metro on Windows 8. And one day Ubuntu Touch might work well on phones and tablets but I just cannot get on with it on the desktop and I really have tried to like it. One thing I would (or would have liked) from Canonical is Ubuntu for Android, it would be great to take my phone, dock it to a HDMI monitor, Bluetooth keyboard and mouse and have Ubuntu instantly load up on the monitor and still be able to use Android apps in a window on the desktop. This would be cool for travelling light for cubicle people.

I love having a (reasonably) powerful, multi-monitor desktop for AV stuff, Steam games etc, then switching over to a laptop for late night blogging and browsing. My Nexus 7 is great for light browsing and casual gaming and my Galaxy S3 is my camera, on-the-go browser, info-finder and above all, phone! Firefox syncs browser history and tabs between all three devices and my files are never far away with Dropbox or Copy or Linux home server on the LAN.

I have also been using PushBullet to receive Android Notifications on the desktop from phone and tablet. It's also good for quickly sending links between devices. It works OK but I wish there was a proper, fully formed desktop app on Linux that would do it better. Something like KDE Connect, but not so tied to KDE, would be great. Overall, I like having different devices and form factors for different purposes but with some synchronicity between them.

When is free not free? When Apple says so

Last week, in case you were living under a rock, announced their new range of iPads, Mac Books and their new OS X 10.9 Mavericks. (Note: I was kinda living under a rock during the announcement and only catching up on it now.) 

During the announcement they flashed the above image. OS X 10.9 is now free. This has been hailed by the mainstream media and Apple centred sites as the best thing since sliced bread. I was only told about it to begin with, and even though I have never been an Apple user I got a little excited. This was my train of thought.

So now OS X is being given away we can all pop over to the Apple site and give it a go. At least that was the first thing that came to my mind when I was told. I was in a lot of shock to be honest. I never saw this coming. Perhaps Apple are not as evil as I thought. Then I started to wonder would my laptop cut it. I expected it not to. However I had a small glimmer of hope. We all need that little bit of hope to get through some days. This was mine.

About now is when the reality kicked in -
                                                       

                                       FREE. With any purchase of any Mac or iOS device.


Back up a moment here. How is this free? The MacBook, their entry level machine, starts at $1000. Right, I get you now. It is free if you buy an over priced piece of hardware and the reason it is free is to stop us catching on to the fact that you (Apple) continue to rip off your customers.

But I understand why you want to make your customers think like that. Nobody wants Windows 8, sales of PC's and by extension Windows 8 is dropping at an alarming rate for Microsoft. That is even before you get into Windows Surface, Surface RT and Surface Whatever we are calling it this week. Then, there is the rise of tablet based users another factor in the why Apple may have gone down this path.

Then again perhaps there is another reason why Apple is taking this clever marketing - Linux.

Linux has from day one been free. Anyone can choose from one of the hundreds of different versions out there, download it onto a USB stick and be up and running in no time. So what is different today? For a start Linux is.

Gone are the days when Linux was for geeks, or those who know what they were doing. Linux is now becoming easier to access for first timers with the likes of Ubuntu and Mint. It no longer looks awful thanks to Pear or many, many others. Don't believe me, check out this great list that TechRadar put together of the 50 best Linux Distros.

Free can be free, not just when it comes to actual money. Check back in a couple of days for part two of this when we take a closer look at what freedom with Linux brings you from a non-geek point of view.