Personal View On The Apple Sport Watch 42mm

 

 

After months of deciding did I or did I not want one, I finally made the plunge in January 2016 as I had a bit of money left over from Christmas and also Apple had a good deal on via PayPal credit which was 0% interest for 12 months.

I think its best to start off with why I wanted one. I wanted it for a few of its features, the fact it could give me notifications on my wrist rather than getting my phone out every 5 minutes at work because it was going off (I get a lot of rubbish tele sales calls due to my business), it would allow me to track my day to day activity via the fitness tracker which I thought would be good to know and finally anyone who knows me knows I love watches so it felt like the ideal thing for me to buy as it was the closest thing to replicating a watch. Also the reason I went for the sport watch rather than the other two options is because it was going to be mainly for use at work so it would get bashed about a lot.

So how easy and straight forward is it to set up? For anyone asking or have asked me YES you do need an iPhone and it needs to be an iPhone 5 upwards, once you get it out of its packaging you need to connect the watch to the charger mains and then use the app (that is pre downloaded if you have upgraded to iOS 8) on your iPhone. It is then a simple to follow guide to set up your Apple Watch asking you various questions such as what do you want to sync and what wrist are you going to use your watch one.

So you have read the reason behind wanting one but in reality how well does it work for me? To be honest I do have a love-hate relationship with it. I Love that it has a very sleek and lightweight design and is comfortable to wear, it is very easy to use (like most apple products) and it is very easy to set up. It deals with the job of notifications and phone calls which is very convenient for me in my day to day job but my one criticism on this topic is that it doesn’t handle emails as well as I expected as it only shows a preview of that email and when you click on the preview it then shows a message to view the rest of the email on your iPhone, which kind of defeats the object of the whole email function surely? The fitness tracker is a very good feature and very responsive, it tracks three main things which are Movement, Exercise and Standing Time. It also counts active calories, total steps and distance traveled that day which are the main things I look at. Apple have also added a feature that gives you virtual badges for when you have achieved certain goals which does spur you on to try and be more active but the novelty does ware off over time and other features within this include when you have been sitting for to long, you get a slight vibration to remind you to get up and have a move around.

Like I said at the start it isn’t all good and it isn’t the perfect wearable device just yet. My biggest and by far most annoying reason for disliking the Apple Watch ever so slightly is the use of apps on the device. It is very slow at loading all third party applications along with some of the built in apps and just doesn’t seem up to speed with Apple devices as we know them. There is even occasions where an app won’t load at all and just crashes then takes you back to your home screen which is very frustration considering the cost of this device. Hopefully this is a fix that will come in time via an update as it is a software related problem and just needs to be optimized better but it does make you question why hasn’t this be done prior to release and why has this not been fixed considering its been out for nearly a year.

As a conclusion, It is a good device and has a great potential but it’s not a brilliant device considering the cost of it to start with (£339 but has recently been reduced by £50). Considering that there are a lot of other wearable watch tech devices I would probably be more inclined to get one of these lower costing devices until Apple sort out the software issue’s. If you are getting this device for tracking fitness and having it as a general watch my advice would be to go for something like a Fitbit HR (£99.99) or the new Fitbit Blaze (£159.99,which looks more like an Apple watch and traditional watch) along with the lower cost it is also not restricted to the one device so it can be used with Apple devices and Android based devices so it does not tie you down to one company.

 

Apple Event 21st March

So like clock work Apple have had there first event of 2016. They tend to hold 3 events each year based around different products, the first one is between January – March which we see the release of a new iPad of some description, second one is normally June which is a developers conference so we see the likes of a new MacBook or iMac along with a new operating system and a preview of the new iOS coming to the iPhones and iPads and the final one is September which is the big one for many as this includes the next generation iPhone and sometimes a little surprise of a new product with it. It has also been shown that they have skipped the January-March one and put one in October instead.

So back to it the event, here is a quick summary of what Apple talked about:

•  iPad Pro (pre-orders 24/03/2016 release date 31/03/2016)
•  iPhone SE (pre-orders 24/03/2016 release date 31/03/2016)
•  iPhone and iPad update iOS 9.3 which includes some new features including nightshift, updates of the health app,notes can now be password protected and more. (available to download immediately)
•  New straps for the iWatch and reduced price slashed by £50
•  Apple TV Software update tvOS 9.2
•  Apples new robot called “Liam” (I know a great choice in name) which is used to dissemble your old iPhones in an environmental friendly way via Apple Directly.

So…The two new products is what I’m going to explain in more depth and these were as expected before it was even announced and that was new iPad called the ‘iPad Pro‘ in the standard 9.7inch size form and a not so secret iPhone SE (a lot of images released online before hand).

Let’s start with the iPhone SE….It has gone back to its roots with a 4inch display which is retina of course and it takes the design of a iPhone 5s rather than the slimmer iPhone 6 etc.. so it is replacing the popular iPhone 5s which I think will appeal to a lot of customers that didn’t want to take the jump to the bigger screen on the iPhone 6/6s/6 plus/6s plus. It comes in 4 colors silver, space grey, gold and rose gold and has an aluminum shell (same as iPhone 5s).

Some of the main upgrades which I like from the 5s is it includes an updated Retina Display,Touch ID, Apple Pay technology, Improved Battery thanks to the new processor, 12mp Camera with a quick auto focus which is capable of 63mp panorama images, supports Live Photos which we have seen on the 6s, Records in 4K at 30fps and 1080p at 60fps and whilst recording you can take 8mp still photos at the same time.

Who is this device for? Well from my perspective it is the perfect upgrade for those rocking at iPhone 4/4s (yes people do still have these) and those with the iPhone 5/5s and 5c. You will feel at home with the size of the screen, the familiar design but there will be a noticeable change in the speed in the iPhone SE compared to these current devices as it is practically a iPhone 6s in a iPhone 5s shell. It also for those people who don’t need to have the best phone out there and would rather save some money than have the top phone from Apple. Obviously there are some things that are missing from the iPhone SE compared to an iPhone 6s which includes 3D Touch, a faster processor, a better front facing camera, and 2nd generation Touch ID (it’s faster) to name a few but in my eyes these aren’t massive sacrifices considering the starting price without a contract is £359 compared to the 6s which is £539 (this will mean contracts will be less as well). That’s a huge £180 saving for a powerful little device so if you are in need of an upgrade, prefer the 4inch screen size and you like the Apple devices and the easy to use operating system, this is the one for you.

 

Now let’s move on to the new iPad Pro… You may have already seen an iPad Pro 12.9inch which came out in November, so why are the releasing a new one already? I hear you ask, well this is a smaller version and a more recognizable size at 9.7inchs and It is an absolute power house compared to the older generation iPads and even its bigger brother the iPad Pro 12.9inch. It has many new features which include a new processor which clocks at 1.8x faster than the air 2, 2gb Ram, an updated True Tone Retina Display, 5mp front facing camera, 12mp rear facing camera, Live Photos, Recording in 4K Touch at 30fps & in 1080p at 60fps and 4 speaker audio system.

Who is this device for? Well Apple have labelled it as ‘The Ultimate Laptop Replacement’ which I think for an everyday user isn’t quite true mainly due to the cost. This thing isn’t cheap with a standard 32gb iPad Pro starting at £499 and then on top of that if you want a keyboard to go with it and give it that laptop feel, that’s an additional £129. I feel this device would be ideal for a designer of some variety as you can purchase the apple pencil again an additional cost at £79 but it allows you to design on the move and with ease and it is all stored on a digital device and not loads of paper and files everywhere and it certainly has the power to further develop your designs with a whole host of apps whether it is video editing, photo editing or other forms of design and productivity. The only other type of person I can realistically see this being for is that person who has to have the latest Apple thing going and it doesn’t matter on cost. Personally if you are just diving into the world of iPad and don’t need all that power and extra features I would go for the iPad Air 2 for the now lower cost of £359.

Cost-effective Ways To Speed Up Your Painfully Slow PC

Another popular question that I plan to tackle in today’s post. ‘How can I speed up my computer’ or ‘My computer is slow what can be done’. Well luckily there are a few things out there which deal with this matter, all either free and some that cost a little bit but can make a massive impact.

So lets get started:

1. SPYWARE- Spyware is one of the most common reasons into why a PC is slowing down or becoming sluggish. Spyware commonly comes from software downloaded but can also come from simply surfing the web and can come in many forms either as a system monitor, adware, tracking cookies and other forms. To tackle this there is a free bit of software that deals with this job (you don’t need the paid version) and can be downloaded from https://www.safer-networking.org/. Just download the home version, install is and then click system scan. Let it do its thing, once it’s found everything make sure everything is ticked and click fix. Restart your PC and that’s it, simple as that.
2. VIRUS PROTECTION- Everyone should have this before even reading this but unfortunately I have known people to have NOTHING at all (I know crazy) if you are someone without virus protection there are a few out there which are free which do just as good a job as the paid ones. My personal choice would be AVG and you can download it from here http://download.cnet.com/AVG-AntiVirus-Free/3000-2239_4-10320142.html. Again once downloaded just install it and then there is a button to scan now once clicked let it do its thing (can take upto an hour first time round) and it will find and eliminate any virus’s. However if you are on Windows 10 there is a more than capable virus protection built in called Windows defender which is automatically activated but always worth checking by clicking the search bar on the bottom left of your desktop and typing Windows defender and turning on.
3. SORT OUT YOUR FILES- This one can be a bit time consuming but it is worth it. A lot of people store a lot of old files on there PC which they will never use so first things first is go through them and delete what isn’t needed or if it is a file that is needed but not everyday it may be worth purchasing an external hardrive or USB stick to store important data, you can get 16gb Sandisk USB (always use a known brand) for as little as £8. Secondly if it’s a hardrive rather than an ssd it’s worth doing a defrag to sort out fragmented files as this happens over time (for how to do this on Windows 8/8.1/10 Go to the search bar-type ‘optimize’ or ‘defrag’-click on defragment and optimize drives-select your hardrive-click analyze-if above 5% click optimize for Windows 7 start button-all programs-system tools-disk defragmenter). Again this process can take a couple of hours if it’s in a bad way.
4. START UP SOFTWARE- When you install software a lot of people skip through each page to try and get it installed as quick as possible but there is normally a tick box in there somewhere that says ‘start on start up’. This means that when you computer starts up it automatically runs the software in the background even if you don’t need to use it and this can drastically affect start up time and the general running of your PC. BE CAREFUL WHILST DOING THIS THO, ONLY DE-SELECT SOFTWARE YOU KNOW OF, AS THIS MENU DOES HAVE IMPORTANT WINDOWS FILES THAT IF DISABLED WILL STOP YOUR PC FROM FUNCTIONING. To edit this Windows 8/10 has made it nice and simple start up task manage (Ctrl+alt+del)- go to start up- untick that unwanted software in Windows 7 go to search bar- type ‘msconfig.exe and press enter- go to start up tab- untick unwanted software. 
5. UPGRADE RAM- Unfortunately not a free fix but it’s a cheap and effective one. It’s costs as little as £12 (price does depend on what ram is required, you can find out what ram is compatible by using this website http://uk.crucial.com/gbr/en and using the system scanner), and upgrading ram will help when it comes to multi tasking and generally loading up software.
6. CHANGE YOUR HARDRIVE TO AN SSD- This is a more expensive upgrade than the rest but is as little as £32 for 120gb ssd + installation if you don’t feel confident in doing it yourself but for this cost you will experience a massive upgrade in speed and response from your system (There will be a blog soon explaining the differences in more detail) but in short the read and write speeds are upto 500% quicker in some instances which no one needs to be a tech geek to know that is a massive improvement.

I hope this helps you guys reading this and if you need any more guidance please feel free to comment or send me a message via Facebook

The Dreaded iPhone & iPad Software Updates

 

It may seem like a stupid guide and a stupid place to start blogging as updating an iPhone and iPad is pretty straight forward surely?

Well some might be surprised as it’s the number 1 question I always get asked ‘how do I update my device without losing everything’, ‘my device won’t let me update because it says I have no storage’ and the most common of all ‘it keeps telling me to update but should I’. So I’m hoping I can answer all your questions here.

First things first I should explain the different updates. Apple tend to only do one major update every year and this is when they jump from one whole number to another, for example iOS 8.4 to iOS 9. Within this update it can change the look of the menus,where things are on your phone and can bring a lot more new features and built in apps to help the user. The other kind of update is when they go up in 0.1 or 0.0.1 stages (so 9.1,9.2 or sometimes 9.2.1 etc) are normally to fix bugs within the software or to add a small extra feature to make it more user friendly but nothing to major.

Obviously the yearly updates are the ones that tend to be a bit more prone to error or you tend to get issue when updating because people tend to try and update straight away once released and sometimes apples servers can’t handle it all at once. I have known it and had first hand experience of either losing all your data or missing names from contacts or completely locking the iPhone, just to name a few of things that can go wrong.

So the 1st step and most important step is to BACK UP your device to iTunes or iCloud before you start. I have personally always backed up to my computer/laptop as I’ve got more than the 5Gb limit with my iCloud and I’m not paying for extra storage on iCloud when my computer does the exact same thing for no extra cost.

To back up to a computer:

1. Download the latest iTunes or update to it.

2. Load up iTunes

3. Plug in your device

4. If it doesn’t automatically show up click the phone or iPad symbol shown in your menu bar.

5. Tick two boxes. The first one being to back up to computer and the second one to encrypt your data (both are located just underneath your devices serial, IMEI) as this does a full back up and if you have any passwords saved to your device it will also back this up.

6. Click the Back Up button which is located to the right of the tick boxes.

Once you have clicked the back up button just leave it to one side and let it do its thing as the apple USB cables are prone to being a bit temperamental and I find it best to not touch it whilst it’s doing a process. (If it’s a first back up it can take up to an hour so don’t panic if it seems to be taking a long time).

Now you have backed up its down to doing the update. Now you have two different ways of doing this either directly on the device without a computer or connecting to iTunes and doing it via the computer. Based on previous experiences I have had better success doing it via a computer as the last time I did a major update through the phone it reset the device to factory settings.

If you want to do it via the device this is located in Settings – General – Software Update and then click download or in some instances it will just say install. If you do it this way make sure your phone is connected to its charger as the last thing you want it to do it run out of battery half way through. This brings me onto the ‘you don’t have enough storage to do this update’ error message. The reason for this message is because it downloads the update file to your device and then it opens the file once complete to install the update and once the update is installed it deletes the file but you need to have the space to download that file in the first place, you follow me?? If not hopefully this example will help me explaining this:

iPhone is 16gb

Data on iPhone is 14gb used – update is 3gb – you need to delete 1gb of data to do the update – Data on iPhone is now 13gb -download and do the update – update is complete and your left with 13gb.

So that extra 1gb you deleted to allow the update is only used temporarily for the update.

This is why I use the computer method as it doesn’t involve deleting any data even if your device is full as it downloads the update to your computer rather than your phone. To update via your computer:

1. Check iTunes is up to date

2. Plug in your device

3. Click on the phone or iPad symbol in the top left.

4. Located on the top right of your iTunes is a check for update button.

5. click download and update when the update is found.

Once you have done that leave the device to one side and let it do what it needs to do and resist the urge to touch your device in this process. Generally a major update takes about an hour in total but this depends on factors like internet speed so don’t panic if it takes longer. Also your device will turn off and on a few times but this is normal and once complete it will show up either on iTunes that it’s complete or on the phone.

Congratulations you have now done a successful update of your device. If for any reason it has not been successful don’t panic as you can restore the device from your back up and try again.

Lastly the question of ‘should I update’. This is down to personal opinion as I have known updates to slow down the older devices or completely confuse people as its changed the phone completely. My advice would be not to jump into the major yearly update straight away, it’s always wise to review it on the web a few weeks after release and see how others are getting on with it and if there are any known issues. In relation to the smaller updates it’s always a good idea to keep on top of them as this can fix bugs and security flaws.

The Reason Behind The Blog

So the main question I’ve been asked when deciding to do this blog is… why?

Well hopefully this will clear it up. Hopefully you have read my page on ‘About Me & My Tech Guide’ as it will tell you what my background is, so I’m going to extend it on from there.

As I’m sure in every part of the world, in every family and every friend group there is always that one person that someone knows who is there “Tech Guy”. They go to that person for absolutely everything in regards to there technology needs from broken computers to deciding on what the best phone is for them etc (before I started learning about it, I also had this “Tech Guy”). Well I am that guy for a fair few people from family,friends, friends of friends, friends of family of friends… yeah you get my drift. So I am setting up this blog for a few  reasons:

1. Its somewhere I can direct those people to show them guides or for them to print off guides to have for themselves at a later date when they come across the same problem again at a later date or if they want to pass on what I have taught them on to someone else. As most of the time people learn best when they do it themselves but prefer to have visual or text guides to just have that little extra help when trying it on there own.

2.It will be a blog for you guys to come to see my views and reviews on pieces of tech that I come across in my day to day or more than likely have bought for myself, so it helps the readers of this decide if this is for them or if its all just a gimmick and won’t actually work for you.

3. I am hoping it will be useful to other readers out there which maybe in the same as myself and you are that “Tech Guy” and looking for new tips and tricks because no one knows absolutely everything there is to know about technology but there maybe  is something that I know that someone else doesn’t but also by commenting there might be something that I don’t know that someone else does or has a better work around then the one I demo in the blog.

So these are the main reasons for setting up this blog. Please feel free to comment either on here or on my facebook page https://www.facebook.com/LiamsTechGuide/ for things you would like to see on here.