Apple Mac - Freezes when another monitor is positioned close to it

At home I usually use an Apple Mac, recently I've needed to do work on a separate PC in the same location. I've noticed some strange behaviour with the Mac when I position the monitor of the PC near my Mac, the result is I can move the mouse pointer, but the mouse click does not work and also the keyboard does not respond. The cursor for the keyboard actually disappears and the Mac appears to be frozen apart from the ability to move the mouse. First time this happened I thought there was a problem with it so restarted it, but all I needed to do was move the PC's monitor a bit further away. 

The monitor that is causing the issue is a standard Dell one and the distance the monitor needs to be is very close, approx 150mm from the Mac. 

iPhone - How to decline a call when locked

I recently changed my Android phone and decided to move to Apple, there are multiple reasons for doing this, which I might put in another post. One thing that took me sometime to find out was how to decline an incoming call when the phone is locked. Basically it is very simple, just double press the lock button, that is the one on the top of the phone. This is not as intuitive as other functions and I believe Apple could improve on this and make the option available on-screen, but for now this is the only way I know of.

Apple AirPods - Nice looking hairdryer

When I saw the launch of the Apple AirPods my first thought was they looked like they could easily fall out and would be lost fairly quickly, my second thought was how the design looked like a hairdryer.

I do think they look well designed, as most of Apple's product are. I imagine there will be products that you can buy that will link them together to make them harder to lose. Also, because they are expensive they look inviting to someone who would want to steal them.

I know one thing, at the current price in the UK I will not be buying them.

Safari iOS 8 - Search for text on a web page

I am getting a bit concerned with Apple, it seems they are making stupid decisions on software features. One of these is to remove the option to search for text on a web page in Safari on the iPad. There are some sites they tell you different ways to search for text, but they are all old and there currently is no way to do this. Come on Apple sort it out, have you started employing x Microsoft developers who have no idea on software?

Parallels Desktop - How to start in safe mode

I have recently updated my Parallels Desktop on my iMac to version 10 (which I am regretting), I have a severe issue with running my XP virtual machine, however than will be another blog entry at some point.

I wanted to start my VM in safe mode, but could not find any options in the configuration. The solution in the end is not elegant, but works. Here are the steps

1) Boot up your VM as normal.

2) While it is booting up try to close the VM screen using the red close button in the top left hand side of the screen. The following dialog should be displayed.

3) Select 'Shut Down', this will force the VM to shut down.
4) Boot up your VM again, because it did not shut down property you should get this screen.

5) Select 'Safe Mode' from the menu using the cursor keys (up and down keys).

Apple iWatch, who is wearing one?

Recently Apple launched the iWatch, I like Apple products and most of them if I had the money I would go out an purchase one. However, the iWatch is a product I cannot see me ever buying or wearing. Here are a few reasons why.

1. It looks too big on the whist. Some watches are meant to look big, but they must also be comfortable, but the iWatch looks too big.
2. I have a Smart phone, iPad and computer, do I really need something else going off with alerts? NO.
3. I see a watch as well as being functional it is also a piece of Jewellery, the iWatch does not come across as this.
4. I do not want something else to put on charge.
5. It's not cool.

With regards to the last one, I have not seen any popular celebs wearing one, or images of celebs wearing one from searching on Google. I would imagine if the iWatch was seen as cool, a lot of celebs would be showing them off by now.

I will start a list here of celebs, popstars and actors who seem to think the iWatch looks cools:

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Apple Yosemite Spotlight

Currently I have Mavericks installed on my iMac and last weekend considered updating to Yosemite, but thought I might leave it a couple of weeks. While out shopping I was in a shop that sold Apple products so I thought I would have a quick look at Yosemite. My first impression was not good, firstly the close button in the windows did not look central, when clicking on a program sometimes it opened the right click menu and I was not convinced with the flatter look. 

I did not spend much time looking at it, but the main change I did not like was spotlight, I could not move the dialog can could not get rid of the explanation of it. I looked at the possible settings, but could not find anything. 

I have decided to wait until Apple sort these issues out, I did think what would Steve Jobs think about it, especially the off centre icon seeing how much of a perfectionist he was.

Apples Keynote Speech - Some Issues

I started watching Apples Keynotes speech and there seemed to be an issue with the sound and a women talking in the background in another language, I thought I would come back to it later when someone at Apple had sorted it out. When I later tried to access the Keynote speech from my iPad it closed Safari!!! I kept trying but could not get it to work, I imagine it was due to the amount of people trying to view the web site.

So I have not watched much of it and have only heard about what was said from blogs and tweets. The Apple watch looks better than I had expected, but still a bit chunky. The iPhone 6 is a bit disappointing with the camera sticking out, which I can imagine will scratch coffee tables. Will have to see it in the flesh before giving proper judgement.

Broadband speed tests between Apple and Windows

The IPS I use at the moment is BT Infinity, which sells itself as a high speed broadband supplier. I thought recently I would try to check what speed I was getting

Below are some results of speed checking web sites. I concentrated on just the download speeds and on both iOS and Windows I used Google Chrome as the browser.

Speedtest.net
Apple - 37 mbps
Windows XP - 3.19 mbps
Android App - 14 mbps

BroadbandSpeedChecker.co.uk
Apple - 34 mbps
Windows XP - 3.38 mbps

I was surprised to see such a difference in the results. The results are the best I could archive and are not the average, but you can see a clear difference between Apple and Windows. I tried the speed tests on 2 different Windows XP machines and got similar results, so concluded at the time that it was not the hardware.

The following day, I looked at just using my Mac with a Windows virtual machine installed, here are the results:


Speedtest.net
Apple - 19.8 mbps
Windows - 17.8 mbps

BroadbandSpeedChecker.co.uk
Apple - 13.5 mbps
Windows - 5.9 mbps


You can see that the following day the speed was generally less, this could be the time of day and other factors, but these results are using the same hardware, just different operating systems to run the browser. Speedtest.net web site does seem to get very similar results, which would hint that different hardware (same router) could make a difference, but with BroadbandSpeedChecker it seems that different operating systems also make a difference.

In conclusion I think these speed testing web sites are a useful tool, however I am still not confident on how accurate they are and do not understand why Apple iOS gets such better results.

01792211844 Annoying calls to new phone

I recently bought a new phone (Nexus 4) and have not given out the details to anybody, except Apple. Today I received an annoying automated call informing me of money I could possibly be owed (PPI insurance most likely). This was obviously some sort of scam, but how did they get my number? There are 2 companies which I have allowed to know my number intentionally, which are Apple and of course my phone supplier Vodafone.

After looking into who might have my number, which now seems to be anyone, my conclusion if that my phone number has been retrieved from one of the apps I have downloaded recently. These apps can access my phone information and send it back to the company or individual, then they will sell it on. So these free apps from android can take information from your phone and sell it on.

Here is a list of possible suspects

• Lazors
• Flow free
• Real Racing 3
• Logo Quiz

It could be none of these, but somehow someone has got my new phone number and sold it on.

Screen Capture MAC

I use both Windows and Apple computers and I needed to find the best way to capture an area of the screen on my iMac. I thought I needed something like Cropper which I use in Windows, but have discovered iOS has it built in. Here are the following capture options I have discovered:

1. To capture an area of the desktop, press cmd+shift+4, this will give you a cross hair where you can select and area of the screen, this will save the image as a png file on the desktop.
2. To capture a application screen, press cmd+shift+4, to display the cross hair again, now hit the space bar and the icon will change to a camera and will select areas of the desktop.
3. To capture the whole desktop, press cmd+shift+3.

I thought this was great that Apple has included these features in iOS, I bet I will find some more useful features the more I use iOS.

How to Access Android files on Mac

I recently purchased a Nexus 4 phone, over the past couple of months I have been taking photos and video and wanted to transfer them to my iMac. I thought I would simply need to plug in the phone into the USB port and it would see the files, this is how it is done on Windows PC. At first I was a bit worried that because it was not Apple, and I had an awful feeling it would not work. But after doing some research all you need to do is download the Android File Transfer application, install it and you can see the files on your Nexus 4 phone.

HTML5 Links

Below are some great HTML5 links I have found

Apples HTML5 page with links to some decent demos
http://www.apple.com/html5/

Mozilla developer network links to loads of HTML5 demos
https://demos.mozilla.org/en-US/

Googles HTML5 demo web site
http://www.chromeexperiments.com/

Loads of information and resources on HTML5
http://www.html5rocks.com/en/

Microsofts Internet Explorer demo page with some demos of HTML5
http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/

Examples of HTML5 features including some great resources
http://beta.theexpressiveweb.com/