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tech, music, food

Some Lion impressions

Mac OS X 10.7 — aka Lion — is some achievement. Quite how Apple managed to take something so well loved, time-honoured, proven and functional and turn it into the dog’s dinner that is Lion’s interface beggars belief.

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Because I have nothing to add

Which might strike some as unlikely, but, much as I would love to pontificate on the future of the Mac and touchy-feely iPhone, iPad and iPod, I really do have nothing to add.

Since I’m not a registered developer — or programmer as we used to call them — I don’t yet have access to the latest test versions of OS X (the software that makes Macs works) and iOS (which does the same for touchy-feely). So I’m breaking the first law of blogging, which says that ignorance should never be a barrier to opinion, and declining to register an opinion on the the all-round awesomesness of wireless sync, iCloud and free — free FFS — SMS. Damn, failed.

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No Schengen for iTunes

You’d think that moving an iTunes account from one country to another, as I’ve had to do three times, would be straightforward. But unlike international travel in much of Europe, it’s not.

Due largely to media companies’ archaic licensing regimes, Apple is forced to maintain a separate store for each country in which it operates, and restrict shoppers to the country of their credit card’s billing address. So of you physically move country, that means scrolling to the bottom of the store window in iTunes to make the corresponding virtual relocation.

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Apple secures iPhone location data

Panic over, Apple has released an iOS software update that makes important changes to the way location data is stored on an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.

Only a week’s worth of data will now be stored and if you disable Location Services on the phone, all that data will be wiped. Crucially, that data is no longer copied to a Mac or PC when you sync with iTunes. So as long as your iPhone, iPod or iPad is secure, the data is safe.

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A last word…

…on the iOS tracking foofaraw.

The stored tracking data does not map your precise location, as it does not use GPS. Rather, it logs the mobile/cell phone masts that your iPhone or 3G iPad connects to. The result is a map that shows trends, but also includes a lot of noise.

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On the move

siPhone tracked using iPhoneTracker and the location information that the iPhone inadvertently leaves lying around (see previous posts).

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A sense of perspective

The following data is stored on any smartphone: contact names, addresses and phone numbers, calls made, text messages, emails, calendars, browsing history and a whole lot more.

The fact that an iPhone records the user’s movements¹ — data that Apple neither takes nor shares — seems rather trivial in the circumstances.

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Big Brother is watching you

A useful FAQ on the implications of the recent discovery that iPhones and 3G-enabled iPads keep a record of your movements, and how to protect that information: petewarden.github.com/iPhoneTracker/#faq.

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On Apple v Samsung

Apple is suing Samsung, alleging that certain of the Korean company’s products bear more than a passing resemblance to its own.

Apple spokesman Tim Dowling:

It’s no coincidence that Samsung’s latest products look a lot like the iPhone and iPad, from the shape of the hardware to the user interface and even the packaging. This kind of blatant copying is wrong, and we need to protect Apple’s intellectual property when companies steal our ideas.

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Not so Flash after all

Wired reviews the Playbook, the Flash tablet from BlackBerry-maker RIM that was going to kill the rubbish iPad 2.

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about

smithsocksimon is the alter ego of Simon Aughton, former editor of MacUser.co.uk, iTunes hoarder, English teacher and domestic goddess.

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All the music on this site is posted to encourage listeners to enjoy it and then rush out and buy as many songs by the artist as they possibly can. Any artist, record label boss, publisher or other rightsholder who doesn't want their works featured here only needs to get in touch and the offending file(s) will be removed at the earliest opportunity.