Eight years and two days ago

I really wonder what I’d be doing now if this hadn’t happened back on 9 January 2007.

The Blank Screen probably wouldn’t exist and I certainly wouldn’t be doing exactly the job I am today. Hopefully I’d have been having as much fun but it’s astonishing how one thing shapes so many others. And you’re either going to nod in agreement or wonder why I’m saying this at all.

Because what happened eight years and two days ago was the announcement of the iPhone. Now, seriously, if you loathe Apple then fine – but look at your Android phone. I’m not impressed with them but even you would be thinking they were crappy if the iPhone hadn’t come along. Google saw this launch and scrapped the plans it had been working on for years.

This is the presentation Steve Jobs made. That’s one man standing up there representing for, what, a few hundred men and women who had been responsible for this phone? But the number of people affected by it is in the billions.

I might be back on the tenth anniversary.

If Microsoft’s video had gone so badly I’d be mocking them

Posted by William Gallagher

Apple’s event today wasn’t really overshadowed by its technical problems, but it felt like it was. I could tell you that the video feed started and stopped, began again, dropped out to colour bars, ran catchup like a Benny Hill sequence and when it would come back would also be accompanied by a Japanese translation soundtrack.

I could tell you all that and it would be true but it doesn’t convey the frustration. I truly do not know why I carried on watching. Actually, I gave up many times, but still I was drawn back. And eventually it did work – but the live feed ran so many minutes behind reality that I had to hide my iPhone to ignore texts that were coming through from people who happened to have a better feed.

But the texts, they did come. Because of the Apple Watch.

By the time that was announced on my screen, the feed was fixed and the frustrations were fading. But I have to wonder: is the reason I’m not fussed about the new iPhones just that they were announced when the feed was down?

Video and systems and launches and infrastructure are crucial – and Apple got it wrong today.

Update: the 1,179 news stories I won’t read

Posted by William Gallagher

Five days ago I wrote about The 319 News Stories I Won’t Read. If you’ve heard me wibble on above ten minutes then you might figure that these 319 are sports stories. No. I ignore sports but just as one amorphous blob of nothingness, I don’t understand it enough to determine individual news stories.

The 319 were the Apple news stories in my RSS newsreader. And right now there are 1,179 articles about Apple. That’s quite a lot of stories and I would like to tell you about them, except I still won’t read them.

I may never read them. You can be sure that a gigantic majority are to do with the launch of the iPhone 6 and whatever else Apple may or may not release tomorrow. I’ve been staying away from the firehose of news because most of it is wrong, much of it is clickbait emptiness as well as wrong, and you end up being convinced that Apple will announce the discovery of alien life.

After tomorrow’s event, there will be many more stories and I might read some of those. But these 1,179 are dead to me.

All of which is a long way of saying that a lot gets written about Apple, that a lot gets read about Apple by me and that is KILLINGLY DIFFICULT to ignore 1,179 articles.

Apple is streaming its event live on apple.com from 6pm UK time tomorrow, Tuesday. I’ve skipped the articles but I’ll be watching the event. If you enjoy these as much as I do, please write in and explain what I get out of them.

One to watch: using AA batteries to recharge iPhone

Posted by William Gallagher

I know barely a pixel more than this: an iPhone recharger that uses AA batteries is coming soon. I don’t think I need to know much more than that, though the price and whether it’ll be available in the UK would be handy.

Here’s the pixel more I know; there will be a launch in nine days time at Oivo.

Go take a look now because the minimal details available so far include a photo of what it’ll look like.

I should say, by the way, that I think there is bugger-all chance that this will also recharge an iPad. In case you were wondering.