Enjoying Apple TV in the UK

January 12, 2012 Apple Mac OS X / News
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It January 2012 and Apple TV (second generation, also know as iTV) has taken three major leaps forward I the UK and really has become the heart of the AV setup in my sitting room.

First came iCloud support in the UK. I’d always been. Put off downloading films and TV shows in iTunes because I knew I’d soon run out of disk space. Now with iCloud you can delete the content when you’ve finished with it and download again from Apple if you ever want to watch it again. The Apple TV is actually even better than that. Instead of streaming the content from you Mac or PC it now streams the content from iCloud so you no longer need you Mac switched on. Indeed the average consumer no longer needs a Mac or PC in their home. It’s still annoying that photos can’t be stored in iCloud forever, as this is as far as I can see the only reason an average consumer still needs a PC or Mac. So for me the ability to buy content, not have to worry about storing it and backing it up whilst still having access on demand is really amazing.

The next great improvement came when the BBC updated their iPlayer App to support AirPlay. To watch BBC programmes I used to connect up my MacBook Air to the HDMI port on the TV which works but is a bit of an annoyance. Now I can just sit down with my iPad or iPhone, find the programme I want to watch on iPlayer and the press the AirPlay button to transfer it to the big screen and audio in the sitting room. This works really well and is amazing. I just hope that ITV and Channel 4 now catch up and allow this in their player apps.

Finally this week NetFlix have arrived in the UK. Netflix has been integrated into the Apple TV in the US since it launched. I immediately signed up for Netflix and enjoyed cancelling by LoveFilm subscription. Films and TV program’s stream smoothly from Netflix and are integrated really well into the Apple TV. I was really impressed that they have fully embraced the Apple TV menu system and maintained the whole Apple look and feel. Netflix isn’t perfect at the moment. They have a lot of content but equally lots of notable TV shows and films are missing. That said I’m sure that now they have launched in the UK they will quickly start putting the deals in place to make more content available in the UK. Either way it’s great for consumers that LoveFilm finally have a serious competitor in the UK. I’ll also happily live with Netflix because it’s integrated into the Apple TV so neatly.

For me, it’s as if very little changed during 2011 and then in the first few weeks of 2012 everything I’ve been waiting for arrived at once.

CMD Tab and CMD Space stopped working on Mac OSX

January 9, 2012 Apple Mac OS X
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I find that I mostly use CMD Tab to switch between apps on my Mac and frequently use CMD Space to bring up Spotlight so I can launch apps.  Anyway these both suddenly stopped working.  I Googled this and the common advice is to go into the Activity monitor and do a forced close on the Dock.  This didn’t work for me.  I was just about to do a reboot when I noticed that I still had a VNC session running in the Dock.  As soon as I quit the VNC session CMD Tab started to work normally again.

Unable to sync iPhone Unknown error E8000065….

November 28, 2011 iPad
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For some reason after upgrading my iPhone to iOS 5.1 I was unable to wirelessly sync with my Mac which is running the latest version of Lion.  I tried Googling the error code and could not find and real solution anywhere.  In the end with a little trial and error I found that enabling home sharing on the iPhone so that it matched the settings on the Mac fixed the problem and allowed the wireless sync to work.  I thought I’d make a quick note of the problem and the solution here incase anyone else is having the same problem.

Web Application Security Policy Document: Mozilla Web App

October 9, 2011 PHP Development / Web Development
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Just a quick post to let you know about an excellent security policy resource I have found.  Mozilla have published a set of  Web Application Security Guidelines.   This is an excellent document.  If you are a developer then you should be familiar with all of these issues and should use this as a check list.  If you manage a web development team then you should consider building this into your in house standards.  Finally if you are a business person who commissions web development projects then I suggest that you seriously consider making compliance with this set of guidelines mandatory the next time you give a developer a contract.

Who commits to five nines 99.999% availability?

June 14, 2011 Hosting
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Can anyone point me to a cloud hosting provider who will really commits to 99.999% availability? From what I’ve seen some offer this but only back it up with meaningless compensation if they fail such as refunding a months hosting fees which for any business which really needs 99.999% availablity will be out of propotion with the damge unscheduled downtime brings. The other catch that you often see is 99.999% planned availablity which means that they can schedule as much downtime as they like as long as the plan it and let you know in advance.

I ask this question because although i’m very much in favour of cloud hosting i increasingly feel that where clients really need 99.999% availablity they need to look at a hybrid solution which eiether combines your own hosting scaling out to the cloud which has been done succesfully or maybe ultimatley a mix of hosting over two or more cloud providers which as far as i know no one has really done on a large scale successfully yet.

So while contracts often call for five nines can the client afford that extra nine, are they prepared for the complications it brings and even if they are is it more of a target than something anyne will actually commit to in application hosting today?

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