As I’m sure you all know – IOS 5 came out recently and amongst the many improvement and new features was wi-fi syncing with iTunes.

The idea is simple – instead of having to plug in your IOS devices to your iTunes computer to sync – you can set it up so that all syncing is done wirelessly. Whenever your IOS device is plugged into power (say into a dock or music speaker system) – it will initiate an iTunes sync over the wireless network.

You can also force a sync via Settings -> general -> iTunes Wi-Fi sync

The Problem

As great as -Wi-Fi sync is – I’ve been experiencing an issue getting my iPhone 4S to sync wirelessly.

 I’ve checked all the right buttons:

and I know they are correct because my iPad is synching correctly.

The problem is that when if I connect my iPhone via cable it shows up in tunes and syncs properly but as soon as I unplug it, it disappears from iTunes immediately and will not show up even when I force a sync.

I tried, unsuccessfully, to resolve this issue by restarting the phone, disabling wi-fi sync and re-enabling it blah, blah but nothing seemed to work.

The Solution

I finally got things to work properly by following this procedure:

1) Turned off ethernet connection on my iMac

2) Ensured iPhone and iMac were connected to SAME wifi network (I have a couple of different wi-fi connections available)

3) Restarted my Airport router

4) Restarted iPhone

5) Restarted Imac

Now both my iPad and iPhone appear in iTunes wirelessly and can sync as intended.

p.s.

I have also re-enabled my Ethernet connection on iMac and it that has not broken anything.

Conclusion

I never thought I’d have to say ‘Have you tried rebooting it’ for a mac device!

At least she can now respond, accurately, to :

“How many emails do I have?”

and

“How many unready emails do I have?”

How did I fix that? I turned the phone off and on again!

Video is here :

http://vimeo.com/30552905

“Siri take me home (or lose me forever)”

Doh !

Oh well if I’m stuck here in the middle on nowhere I may as well eat!

“Find me fish and chips”

ahhh – so I’m lost and likely to starve!

I’d better start scouring the jobs section for a new personal assistant!

I thought I’d change it to English UK for a more Sarcastic sound!

But That Causes a slight Problem

Doh !

I’ve finally figured out how to get 3 monitors running my Sapphire HD5770 graphics card. More importantly it’s just 3 monitors working at once, but working in EyeFinity mode, which means 3 monitor wide resolution in Games!

Now my field of vision will give me the edge!

Of course getting to work was a nightmare – but if anyone is interested let me know and I’ll tell you how I did it.

Of the potential suitors in the industry, Samsung, who were consider the most likely candidates for a purchase have already publicly admitted they are not interested – Twice in Fact!

HP is trying to make assurances to customers that it is safe to buy a HP PC at the moment, they are quoted as saying, ” … whatever structure we ultimately take, we plan to continue delivering innovative products and stand by you.”

I’m sure they were singing a similar tune several weeks ago when they Launched the HP Touchpad? And now they have not only cancelled the Touchpad but have announced that they are discontinuing operations of all their WebOS devices!

So the question remains – Would you be willing to buy a HP PC at the moment? I would if they started selling them for $99 , otherwise I’d be looking elsewhere!

image courtesy of HP.com

The HP Palm Blog has released more coupon codes for Six, previously paid for, Apps:

Big Boss, Camera for Touchpad, Angry Birds Rio HD, Quell HD, Pennant and FlightPredictor HD.

The apps were previously priced between $.99 and $4.99 so the chance to get them for free should not to be missed.

Unfortunately the discount is only valid in the US store and the number of vouchers is sure to sell out soon.

http://blog.palm.com/palm/2011/08/6-pack-sells-out-but-wait-theres-more.html

I think it’s fair to say it’s changed quite significantly!

Windows 1.0

Released November 1985

Requirements
CGA/HGA/EGA Mono or color Monitor, MS DOS 2.0, 256K Memory, 2 x Double-Sided Disk Drives

Windows 2.0

Released November 1987

Requirements
Graphics Card, 512k Memory, MS DOS 3.0, 2 x Double-Sided Disk Drives

Windows 3.1

Requirements
EGA, VGA, SVGA, XGA or Hercules Video Card, MS DOS 3.1, 80286 CPU (or greater), 640k Conventional Memory + 1024k extended memory, 5.25″ (HD) or 3.5″ Floppy drive and Fixed drive with 6MB Free, Mouse Recommended !

Windows 95

Requirements

Windows 2000

Requirements

Windows ME

Requirements

Windows XP

Requirements

Windows Vista

Requirements

• 1 gigahertz (GHz) 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
• 1 gigabyte (GB) of system memory (512 megabytes (MB) for Home Basic)
• 40 GB hard drive with at least 15 GB of available space (20 GB for Home Basic)
• Support for DirectX 9 graphics with WDDM and 128 MB of graphics memory (32 MB for Home Basic)
• DVD-ROM drive
• Audio Output
• Internet access (fees may apply)

Windows 7

Requirements

• 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
• 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
• 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
• DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

I remember it well – I was a bright-eyed university student working in PC World to earn my weekend beer money. We had had a couple of  ’secret’ training sessions on Windows 95 prior to launch by impressive and highly-excited MS people.
They gave all us sales people cheap “I was there at the start” Windows 95 T-Shirts to wear and you know what I LOVED it, I was SO proud to be there, so proud to be part of that massive event.

We opened in the early hours of the morning and I remember the doors opening and the hoards of people rushing in to buy their copy of Microsoft’s newest, revolutionary Operating System. The Rolling Stones were blasting through the speakers all day! What a moment in time!

I don’t think there has been anything on that scale from Microsoft since – which is a shame. Microsoft still makes great products, but none have been quite so revolutionary, or quite so ‘exciting’.

I suspect that after Windows 95, Microsoft patted itself on the back and over the next couple of years watched the competition shrivel up and disappear; IE killed Netscape, Apple was in freefall, IBM’s OS2 Warp never really caught on, Novell was bashed with Windows NT 4 (which came out in 1996) and by about 2000 Microsoft had succeeded and decided to put it’s feet up, arms behind the head in a ‘Job Well Done’ kind of manner.

Unfortunately over the 16 years since WIn 95, the tech industry has undergone some significant changes, The internet took off, New Companies sprung up like Google and Facebook to become Tech giants, Apple has re-emerged like a Phoenix from the fire, PC manufacturers like IBM have already dropped out of the PC / Laptop and Server market and giants like HP are preparing to get out. Smartphones are almost a necessity and Tablets are the latest ‘must have’ gadget and PC Killer.

Microsoft is no longer the innovator that it once was and in fact is now way behind the competition. Their Bing search is nowhere near as popular as Google, Their Web Browser is losing share daily, they have yet to enter the Tablet market, their Smart Phone is lagging behind the competition both in features and market share and their share in the PC market, whilst still very strong, is decreasing. Not only that but even Office is under increasing attack from Online services like Google Docs and Gmail.

Windows 8 is now on the horizon and both Users and PC Manufacturers alike are holding their breath and crossing their fingers that Microsoft can, once again, produce an exciting, innovative product. In a couple of months we’ll find out!

I was proud to “Be there at the start”, I just hope I’m not about to witness “The End”.

WTF?

I’m going to guess you have already heard the news that HP has thrown in the towel on WebOS and is also looking for ‘solutions’ to get out of the PC market?

If you haven’t heard, then I’m guessing you were on away on a bachelor week holiday or you’ve won the lottery and don’t care about anything anymore.

For the rest of us, this is BIG news! The world biggest PC manufacturer is getting out of the PC business!

A figure released recently claimed that HP had to sell 7 PCs to make the same profit that Apple makes on a single iMac sale.! WOW! Margins are now so low in the consumer PC business that even HP with it’s economies of scale is finding it not cost-effective.

Two months and they give Up Against iPad!
HP have also decided to cancel their, recently announced,  iPad competitor the HP Tablet, which was only released in June. Best Buy are reportedly asking HP to take back approximately 250,000 units that they cannot sell (even after dropping the price by $100). So HPs venture into the ‘Post-PC’ era of mobile devices has also failed.

That means they are admitting that their purchase of Palm last year and their plans to utilize the WebOS on Phones, Tablets and even onto their PCs was a bad idea.

What Next?
So what are they planning to do? Well it would appear that they planning to buy UK company Autonomy, which will help them move into the enterprise software and services market, just like IBM did in the 90s. But is there enough room in that Global market for another big player? IBM only made $2 billion dollars last quarter, compare that to the $28 billion that Apple made in the same quarter and it would seem that perhaps HPs new direction is not exactly clear cut.

Personally I think the problem is that the PC industry has not evolved, they are all black boxes with forgettable names and forgettable experiences. I mean what is a HP Pavillion vs a Presario or a HP Pro 6000 vs a 4000? It’s just too confusing for Consumers especially against the rest of chaff from Acer and Dell. The problem is nothing stands out! There is no designer brand between the PC manufacturers. Add to that the junkware they insist on piling on the PCs and it all adds up to a less than ideal ‘user experience’.

I guess time will tell, but for now, the Tech industry is in a dramatic state of change.

As for the other PC manufacturers in the world like Lenovo, Dell, Acer and Asus – I guess they are are going to be clenching their butt cheeks and hoping that Microsoft can pull a spectacular surprise from the hat with Windows 8!  Otherwise there are going to be a lot of new ‘Enterprise Services’ companies springing up in the next few years.