Turns out manufacturing relatively a large phone chassis at scale would be far too intensive to make this a viable proposition for the foreseeable future.

Alchemist and metaphysician Brian Roemmele posts a detailed account of how and why Apple may be in the midst of a pivot from aluminium to zirconian ceramic for its hardware devices.

Really looking forward to iPhone 7, however these anecdotes about the fundamental design of iPhone 6 being compromised by a lack of sapphire screen and triggering a heightened focus on ceramics makes me genuinely excited to see what Apple has coming for iPhone 8.

Moar!

+8

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I generally roll without a filter, only sometimes resorting to a cir-pol if the light is particularly harsh. On the other hand I generally can’t tell if a UV makes any difference at all and have always thought putting something in front of a precision lens has to be a bad thing. Kind of like putting a crappy case around your beautifully engineered iPhone to ‘protect’ it or leaving the plastic on the seats of your new car. This article adds to fuel to the fire. (via)

The Future's So Bright

The 24-105 seemed to struggle a little trying to properly expose the sky on a recent trip, so I’ve splashed out on some filters to see if I can fix it. Not usually a fan of putting something else between the subject and sensor however something needs to be done.

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AppleTV + WPA2 redux

A very late follow up to my earlier post about some issues I was having running WPA2 wifi security and streaming movies to my AppleTV.

Since updating to Apple Airport Utility 5.5.1 and changing my wireless settings to “802.11n only (5GHz) - 802.11b/g/n” I’m now able to run WPA2 Personal security with none of the buffering issues faced earlier.

The 802.11n only setting I’m using is not one of the default options, to access this mode you’ll need to press and hold the Option key as you click on the “Radio Mode” drop down as shown below.

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A very detailed review of Apple’s new “magical” creation.

Apple event wishlist

As one typically does before a big event like the one going down tomorrow morning, it’s time to chime in with some predictions and hopes of ones own.

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Nike+ missing voice prompts

Sometimes I find that my Nike+ kit (which I’m using with a 4th gen iPod Nano) will fail to provide spoken feedback on a run.

This either happens from the outset: it fails to play the usual “walk around” prompt to find/pair with the shoe sensor, yet will still find it if you do indeed walk around; or will fail during a run after playing some initial prompts “walk around”, “1km completed” etc only to then fall over and stop playing any future prompts. This more than likely means that you’ll be running hard thinking that the second km is taking much longer than the first and generally leading to intense frustration. While run data is still recorded as normal, you’re missing one the most compelling features of using the Nike+ kit.

How to prevent this

Before running, I will always perform a reset. After following these instructions, iPod will restart and - in my experience - Nike+ will work as expected with no missing voice prompts.

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My AppleTV doesn't like WPA2

Update Oct 2010: Seems the latest Airport software resolves these issues, see related post - AppleTV + WPA2 redux

So I scored a 500GB Time Capsule for Christmas to replace the old 802.11b/g Airport Express we’ve been running for the past couple of years. Primary reason for upgrading was to remove the need to have a drive plugged into the MBP to run Time Machine with the added bonus of removing some cable clutter from the desk in the process. The changeover was not without issues, issues which took a fair bit of time & frustration to eventually resolve.

The trouble was that once installed and after upgrading the home WiFi network to use the faster 802.11n protocol, our AppleTV started playing up. iTunes on the MBP could see the AppleTV and was syncing to it without any problems (in fact sync speed was positively screaming compared to the previous “G” network), the issue was that when we tried to watch any video on the TV, the picture would stutter, perpetually attempt to buffer video and generally just sucked. Music worked fine, trailers worked fine, the problem seemingly only existed for movies streaming from iTunes.

So I did what any (in)sane person would do: changed the wireless channel; performed a factory reset on the AppleTV; unlinked and relinked it to iTunes; switched off Time Machine; changed back and forth between a 2.4Ghz 802.11a/b/g/n and 5Ghz 802.11n network; upgraded my router’s firmware; performed a factory reset on the router; switched off NAT and DHCP on the Time Capsule and made it into a bridge; all to no avail. It seemed like a WiFi bandwidth issue, I just couldn’t get the root cause.

After searching the outer limits of the Internets and beyond, then delving into some murky “support” forums and generally tearing my hair out, I ended up reading the ‘Troubleshooting’ section of the AppleTV user manual, like any good user should. There on Page 29 was the smallest ray of hope:

“If security is enabled on the network, temporarily disable it on the base station and try connecting again.”

As soon as I did this, streaming worked perfectly. I switched security back on and the streaming issues returned.

Now at this point I was running the full-hog 5Ghz 802.11n which on the Time Capsule happens to only support WPA2 security, albeit in a choice of either “WPA2 Personal” or “WPA2 Enterprise” flavours. Seeing as I’m not an “Enterprise”, Personal was the only way to go and unfortunately one that seemed to be interferring with streaming. So I downgraded to 2.4Ghz 802.11b/g/n mode, switched out to “WPA/WPA2 Personal” and bingo - everything just worked™.

Shame that I can’t take full advantage of 270Mb/s 802.11n WiFi, though 130Mb/s is still plenty fast enough whilst also still allowing my iPhone to access our home network.

Anyone else having these issues with WPA2 security & AppleTV streaming on their “N” Airport Extreme or Time Capsule?

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