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Apple iPad

It’s been a while since Apple came out with anything new and exciting for people to talk about - certainly the last thing that got me talking was their iPhone OS 3.0 update released last summer. I’m sure their iPhone OS 4.0 will start picking up a lot of talk in the coming months especially after they held an event on the 8th talking about it!

The hype in recent months though has been the iPad - Apple’s answer to a mobile computing device to rival the netbook market. Is it all just a fad though? All of the videos/blogs I’ve seen make me feel like it’s just an oversized iPhone. Don’t get me wrong - the iPhone in my opinion is a magnificent device which allows me to be more productive away from the computer - the Nokia smartphones I used to own before just weren’t up to the job. But why does Apple think I need something that does the same job as my phone when I need to be out and about, when I have a netbook that does more?

I get there’s apps that you can download. I need office software on my mobile device - there’s an app for that. I need email - there’s an app for that. I need the ability to connect to FTP servers and MySQL servers - there are apps for those too. But having already bought licences to use my normal office, FTP and MySQL software products of choice on my Windows machines I don’t quite get why I would want to pay more money for the good, reliable apps that would do the same things on my oversized iPhone?

Personal opinion: iFad. I’d buy one, run with the novelty, let it run dry then sit it in a corner gathering dust. Your iPhone’s great Apple, but sorry guys - this one isn’t for me I’m afraid!

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Anyone who uses the Internet for anything, whether it’s simply checking their emails or conducting their food shopping online, will most likely have encountered a bug or few. Generally bugs pop up when you least want them to - you’re right at the end of placing an order, you click the final button and…. poof! Some sort of error sends you into a frenzy of anger at the website developers.

I produce thousands of lines of code a week for various websites and know how easy it is for a bug to creep in - usually developers don’t notice them. Because of the large number of sites I get involved in, the other day I conducted some research into bug reporting tools. Why? Because it’s impossible for a developer to test every scenario their code might possibly be subjected to - hence bugs appear!

Perhaps the biggest problem with bug “control” is the reporting process; when it comes down to software programs, company Intranets and major websites for example, people just don’t seem to grasp the concept of “unless we know what went wrong we can’t fix it”.

The most important thing in bug reporting is to provide as much information as possible - error messages, approximate time it happened, what you did before the problem occurred. I found a very good and informative article by Simon Tatham which outlines in his opinion how to report bugs effectively - perhaps next time you encounter a bug in a website or program, let the developers know and they can try to fix the problem for next time!

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