Yesterday I took sometime out to update my apple stuff with the recent release of iOS5. I’m pleased to say that the update went relatively smoothly, but I did wonder about how a company who loads of iPhone4 uses would manage such a hefty update.
The download for the iPhone seemed to take longer than the iPAD. I’m not sure why that might – perhaps its the sheer volume of iPhone to iPAD users – but you’d think Apple would factor that into their equations. It’s hard to think that the build of IOS5 for the iPhone would be significantly bigger than on the iPAD… As far as I could tell the deployment more or less wipes the device, and then synch’s content back. There does appear to be a backup process – that backs up metadata. I found the quality of the “restore” process a bit variable – with either the iPhone or the iPAD saying the restore had failed – only to find that the device was actually in a functional state.
One thing that was irritating was on both the iPhone/iPAD the layout of my icons was messed about. Like many people the first “page” on my iDevices usually has my most popular apps – and generally group them by type – so all the media-on-the-go stuff such as the BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, CH4OD, SkyGo are all together. After the end of the upgrade process they were all over the shop. Hardly the end of the world, or as massive as an outage on a core switch in Slough… I wonder if Blackberry users know Sir John Betajamin’s poem?
One of the best things about the iDevice update is a lot the applications have received an upgrade as well. I won’t bore you with all the details you could read on Apple’s website or in their release notes. It’s great to see finally see fully functional Facebook application for the iPAD.
There was two things I was looking forward to with the new software. Over the WiFi synch and fixes for the AppleTV. With the first I’ve not been disappointed. It’s not a default to synch an iDevice by WiFi. It something that needs to be enabled in iToons.
Note: There appears to be some sort of polling mechanism which automatically updates every N-minutes. You can still force a manual sync. Also the sync is limited. A photo taken on your iPhone winds up on your iPAD… but it doesn’t end up in iPhoto. That’s a shame as I often use iPhoto to bulk upload photos to my FaceBook…
The option to backup to iCloud is enabled on the device itself when it first boots after the update. So you think it would be smart to have done that for the WiFi synch as well. Incidentally, you get 5GB of free space on iCloud – and I’ve found that just backing up the metadata of two devices has taken up 2.5GB already. I don’t plan to synch all my content to the iCloud – I have too much and I consider Apples prices are to expensive for a feature I can find little use for…
UPDATE:
I found turning on the “Backup to Cloud” and “Sync with this iDevice over Wifi” option was the only step to finally not having to bother with USB cables anymore. There are number of places both on the iPhone and iPAD where this sort of stuff needs to be enabled. So its a bit of an Apple two-step. Enable it on the iDevice generally with iToons, and then enable on service or application level stuff you want to sync. The screen shots below give you an idea of what I mean. A lot of these “on” options were off…
WiFi update was only previously available if you “unlocked” the phone, and used an uncertified application. It’s nice to see it natively support for customers like myself who don’t like the idea of unlocking devices.
On the down side the AppleTV update over the wire was a failure. It took about 30mins to download the bundle and apply. On reboot the unit was in a failed state, and I was forced to do a recovery and reapply via a micro-USB cable at the back connected to the MBP with iToons…
Even this upgrade said it had failed at the end. But when I connected the HDMI cable to my plasma TV it there was a welcome screen from AppleTV. Sadly, upgrade process had clobbered the unit. So I had to input again the password for the WiFI and Apple ID [Have you tried inputting case-sensitive complex passwords with an Apple Remote? - Fun and Games!]
Sadly, after all this effort I was not really rewarded for my efforts. You see since getting the AppleTV I’ve been disappointed. Both in its functionality and reliability. I think I would say its probably the worst product Apple have in their range [apart from the Michael Kors Jet Set Case for iPad which retails at $129 - honestly who has money to burn like that except losers in the fashion industry?]. I find the on-demand movies pricey when compared to other services out there.
There are couple of things I don’t like about the AppleTV. Firstly, there’s no way to display a webpage on the iPhone/iPAD through to the AppleTV [Yes, I know there's an app-for-that - I tried it and it doesn't work very well]. I see the AppleTV (and device like it) as filling a niche for folks who want “internet on TV” but don’t want to buy a new telly to have it. The other thing I’ve found inconsistent & unreliable is remotely displaying video content to the AppleTV. The native “video” application works fine. My AirVideo streaming server now works since the update (it converts any media format in real time, to play over your WiFi on a iPad/iPhone), but the CineXplayer (a popular DivX/AVI player for the iPAD) refuses to redirect (I get audio but no video). What that means is to watch a movie on the iPAD and/or the AppleTV, I have to go for a media format that can be as much as 4 times the size of DivX file. I guess you could argue that’s “by design” as Apple explicitly don’t support AVI/DivX or Flash on natively – a case of Caveat emptor.
The irritation is applications that deliver video content are by and large not AppleTV aware. So at the moment NONE of the big four in the UK:
- BBC iPlayer
- BBC New24 Live
- ITV Player
- 40D Catchup
- Sky Go
support AppleTV. It was my hope that I could make the switch from TV delivered from an Ariel+decoder or from satellite dish – but unless I can easily get online content delivered to a 42″ plasma – what would be the point. I think you would get more flexibilty from a cheap laptop connected via HDMI to a TV. You would have to live with Apples restrictions over media types, and if it were a MBP you could control it with the Apple Remote over IR….
So the AppleTV update is done very little to improve this situation – and you I think you could save yourself £80 by buying a HDMI connector for the iPAD for £20.
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