Category Archives: Tech

The day I ran home from the bus stop…

Steve Jobs

The day, 11 years ago, when I ran home from the bus stop because my parent’s had bought a new iMac.

To many people that may sound ridiculous. Not as ridiculous as queuing up overnight for a new video game or trying to be first in line to pick up the new iPhone 5 maybe…. (I bought mine in a civilised fashion, from the store a month later)…

It’s something I wanted to talk about as it’s something clearly etched on my memory. Something that, on the anniversary of Steve Jobs’ death, is something worth talking about.

That occasion filled me with so much excitement and joy as an 11 year old boy and was something that continued to enthuse me and interest me so much every day and continues to do so.

That of course wasn’t the first time I’d come in contact with Mac – my Dad used them before that at his work and we had an LC 475 if I remember. We used to play Spectre on that – great little game.

As I type this up on my 2006 MacBook which is still going strong (just about) I’d like to thank Steve for what he did with Apple, and ultimately for getting me excited about computers in the first place and I guess if this hadn’t all happened I wouldn’t be where I am now… working for a successful IT company.

Long may it last.

RIP Steve. Thank you.

Review: Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

For anyone who’s a fan of business, technology and in particular Apple this book is a must-read! Great stuff!

One paragraph caught my eye – “I hate it when people call themselves “entrepreneurs” when what they’re really trying to do is launch a startup and then sell or go public, so they can cash in and move on.

Time to live and learn!

View all my reviews

RIM recommended I don’t downgrade my BB OS, but I did anyway!

DM from BlackBerryHelp on Twitter

DM from BlackBerryHelp on Twitter

Yes, that’s right. I was left with a near useless BlackBerry Bold 9700 (originally shipping with OS 5) after having upgrading to 6. Normally an upgrade is a good thing, but it turned my previously very good phone into nothing more than an expensive paper weight.

As you can imagine I was not too impressed. I couldn’t find an obvious way to downgrade to a previous OS and as you can see from the screen shot I’ve taken, RIM weren’t too forthcoming with help…

There was no obvious way of downgrading to a previous OS from BlackBerry Desktop for Mac and I only found out how to go back when trying to upgrade! Yes, I’m fairly certain the only way you can attempt to downgrade is when clicking on the option to install/update software. (Don’t quote me). I eventually managed to downgrade to OS5 again from 6 and my phone is useable again. Surely other people experienced this issue? The 9700 is near useless running 6 but RIM didn’t seem to acknowledge this!

Either way, I’ve not been too impressed with RIM’s customer service, and their well publicized recent outage hasn’t filled me with too much confidence.