OK , so I bought an iPad and got it shipped over from the US. I was too tempted and it looked too good.
I must say that I’m very happy with it so far. There are plenty of negative press about this little gizmo if you look around. Some people are waiting eagerly for it, while others are making it known that they will be ignoring it completely, that it’s not a proper computer and that it’s best left to people who aren’t very tech savvy or need something that’s very straight-forward. A Fischer-Price Computer if you will.
They couldn’t be more wrong if they tried.
No, it’s not going to let you run a Terminal session, nor will it let you run a local web server. It won’t allow you to access the 16/32/64Gb Solid State drive to move around your files, no more than it will allow you to edit photographs or run Logic Pro. You see – it’s not a Mac. Let’s see if that can sink in for a moment.
It’s…not…a…..Mac…..
Now we’ve got that out the way, let’s move on.
It is a fantastically convenient and fast Internet Browser, email client, photo viewer, Twitter client, News Reader, personal video player, iPod, eBook reader (yes, both Kindle and iBooks), video games console, Dictionary, Organiser, Word Processor etc etc…the list goes on.
The battery life is great – way over 10 hours depending on use and activities, but really I can’t complain. I get to use it for the whole day and re-charge it overnight.
It syncs with my Mac and iPhone and everything stays together.
A few points on the UK version for anyone lucky enough to get one of these machines before they’re released over here – and perhaps even after they’re released over here. I’m not going to tell you how to do this on my blog, but with a little bit of searching, it’s more than possible to get any and all apps that Apple have decided to leave off the UK Store. I’m talking iBooks, Pages, Numbers and Keynote. Ok, anything with IP address based content won’t work, but *most* things are possible. That’s all I’ll say – and it’s all legit too. No Jailbreaking in sight!
It’s Monday and I have about 24 hours to go before our flight leaves Glasgow for Newark and then on to Austin. It’s a strange feeling knowing that such a fun-packed week is starting – but not quite yet!
Gigs I’m looking forward to? I know of several but don’t want to jinx our chances of getting into them by listing them here! Haha!
Posted: March 15th, 2010 at 8:15am by Geoff Martyn
I’m not quite sure where I stand on this subject. One one hand, it’s good I suppose that the ‘celebs’ are using their ‘celebrity’ to get people to shell out a few £s more for the Haiti relief fund, but on the other hand, they are taking a quite brilliant song and adding several hundred other notes that were never there in the first place.
Every little bit helps and all that, and I’m not knocking it – I suppose…
If you have even an ounce of taste you need to watch this video and listen to Niki King with her interpretation of the Ned Washington, Dimitri Tiomkin classic, “Wild is the Wind”. Fantastic stuff !!
Niki and her manager, Boo Paterson just spent three months in NYC and this is the jewel they came back with. I can’t stop playing it.
Posted: February 2nd, 2010 at 11:37pm by Geoff Martyn
Ok, so the new Apple ipad has been announced. It looks great in my ever so humble opinion. Heck, I might even buy one when it eventually reaches these shores. What I cannot fathom though is the legions of self-proclaimed ‘experts’ who have already dismissed it.
Ok, so it’s not a super computer. No, you won’t be able to play MW2 on it. No, it’s not a phone. No, it’s not a laptop. Agreed, Apple are not the first to release a tablet computer. Yes, it probably won’t have the battery life they claim and yes, they will supercede it with something better in less than a year.
If you don’t think the iPad is for you – here’s a hint … don’t buy one. No need. It doesn’t sound like you could use it. Move on, nothing to see here.
Oh and I was right about them not calling it the iSlate.
Posted: January 29th, 2010 at 1:02pm by Geoff Martyn
Really enjoyed the gig last night with Roddy Hart and the rest of the lonesome fire. It’s been a good week for music-related things, although I hear there was some kind of mix up at the Celtic Connections performance club at the Art School last night and the people who were meant to get in were being turned back at the door.
Posted: January 23rd, 2010 at 10:49am by Geoff Martyn
What is it with Windows 7 and it’s crappy Wifi? Windows XP and Vista was bad enough, but I’ve bought a Packard Bell Dot M running Windows 7 to give me a relatively in-expensive laptop in comparison to my MacBook Pro 17″ beast; one I can lug around with me that’s light, great on battery and runs everything I need it to. Of course, I would buy something by Apple if they did something this affordable and lightweight – but let’s not go there.
Anyway – back to the crappy wifi. I have tried this laptop on several different wifi networks, public and private and the result is always the same. It takes a few minutes from start-up to even see the network, then when it connects you have anywhere up to 10 minutes of good connection before it loses the connection. Although it can still see the network in question – oh yes…full strength, but it’s been bumped off or has decided to disconnect of its’ own accord.
This would be fine if it were just my network, I would change the channel or some other setting on the wireless router (which is in the same room incidentally), but it happens in several other places, which leads me to believe it’s either the laptop, wifi adapter or Windows 7.
I also recently bought a laptop for my Mum – a similar spec, Windows 7 again. Exactly the same thing. Drops off regularly. Also, a work colleague’s new laptop did the same thing the other day. Googling around brought up lots of other people with the same problem. So what’s up Microsoft – why would you release Windows with such a crappy implementation of wireless networking?
Posted: January 12th, 2010 at 9:22pm by Geoff Martyn
This is ‘The Cooler’ – a privately owned studio outside of Glasgow where I engineer from time to time and also where Colin Taylor recently finished recording his new album project ‘The Unsinkable Boxer’, which is due out at the end of February 2010.
Posted: January 11th, 2010 at 9:43pm by Geoff Martyn
Everyone knows, or rather thinks they know that Apple are about to release a shiny new gadget in the form of a flat, touch-screen tablet. We’ve all seen the mock-ups, the photoshop masterpieces that are basically an iPhone stretched out and made to look like it has a whole desktop on it. Hell, some PC manufacturers even beat Apple to it by announcing their own Windows 7 ‘slate PCs’, although I very much doubt if the marketing bods at Apple would ever let the word ‘slate’ enter their copy! Dull, grey, lifeless and boring; something you put on your roof to stop the rain getting in. No, I don’t think that would fly with Mr Jobs and Co – not for one second.
Instead, the guys in the office at the end of infinite loop will instead cook up something altogether different. I’d like to think they’d be like Don Draper and Roger Sterling in TVs Mad Men, although who knows what our 60′s womanisers and chronic alcoholics would have made of the new Apple tablet? Perhaps they would have enlisted the help of the smart and ruthless Peggy Olson, asking her to take it home for a test drive and come back in with some copy to prove once and for all that every girl should have one in her handbag! Or maybe they’d have bought thought up a catchy slogan and created an ad with a happy executive tapping out an email on the Red Eye from San Francisco to NYC.
No, I think Apple will announce it with a fanfare as tightly planned and orchestrated as one of Draper’s many affairs. The lights will go down, Mr Jobs will step up to the platform and then from his top pocket produce something quite unexpected.
A PC?
Posted: January 10th, 2010 at 11:29pm by Geoff Martyn
My name is Geoff Martyn. Most of my time these days is taken up providing Internet consultancy and web development through my company Buchanan Drive Limited. I'm based in Glasgow and specialise in web development (HTML, CSS, javascript, DOM, Joomla, Wordpress etc) and have been heavily involved over the last year with the Netsuite platform, converting an existing eCommerce site to run entirely from Netsuite using advanced site customisation alongside Paul Tindal of Purity Business Systems.
Music and Writing
I'm also a musician and songwriter, having spent the best part of the last 20 years playing in bands and writing music, both alone and in collaboration with other writers (Chris Difford, Adam Levy, Athena Andreadis, Danielle Gasparro etc). I am currently playing keyboards for Roddy Hart as part of the Lonesome Fire), and have also had my own music featured on various TV Shows in the US (Eli Stone, Brothers and Sisters, Scrubs, One Tree Hill, Summerland, Men In Trees, Unhitched etc). Most of these placements have been through two fantastic companies without whom etc...so a big shout out to Tanvi at Crucial Music and Mike at Noma Music.
Recording
Having also had a keen interest in recording studios since working as a Tape-Op at Cava Studios in Glasgow back in 1991, I have tried over the years to keep up with the technologies as they emerged, starting with four tracks, digital multitracks and finally moving into hard disc recording on the Mac using Digital Performer, Pro-Tools and Logic. While I still have my own project studio at home, I also engineer at a privately owned studio outside of Glasgow owned by Colin Taylor, with whom I co-produced and engineered a new album for his project, "The Unsinkable Boxer", which should be released by the end of February 2010.
