Calling all geeks of SE23

Do we have any computer / electronics / photography fans in the house?

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When replying here, why not describe your geeky hobbies / interests to help us get to know you?

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Outgeek me if you can!

Can’t provide photos as the hardware is spread around the house. Between us we have:
Four iPhones
Three iPads, including an iPad Pro
One iMac, which I’ve partitioned to run Windows as well and which son runs two screens off
One MacBook Pro
One MacBook Air
One Alienware desktop
One Alienware laptop
One Asus laptop

That’s one heck of a list there. What does Henry use?

One of these:

Its too difficult to photograph, but I have:
Windows Desktop
2x Windows laptops
Windows tablet
Mac mini
Android tablet
Sailfish tablet (which Im using to write this post)
iPad
Windows phone
Sony Android phone
Sailfish phone

…and stuff

No wonder the power dips in the evening when you geeks get home

Just had a quick count. 2 x Windows laptops, 1 iPhad, 2 x Fire 7 tablets, 1 x Google Nexus 7 and two desk tops and a Smart TV with a CoWatch on order. Can I be in the geek squad?

Can’t help thinking that there are folks out there grateful for the shopping lists!

I can’t compete with any of those set ups. I do have a question though…

I’m leaving my current job in a couple of weeks (where I’ve been since I started work) and have always used my work laptop and phone for personal use. I’m therefore going to have to buy a personal laptop and phone for the first time in almost ten years(!). I’m going to stick with the iphone as I have so many photos shared with friends/family on photostream, but am after some advice as to what laptop people would recommend. I’m thinking about Microsoft Surface, Google Chrome or an Apple of some sort, but am open to other suggestions. I would only need it for browsing the internet, the occasional film (perhaps once a month) and looking at photos. I get music through the Amazon Music app so don’t use iTunes and I don’t do any online gaming. I would need to be able to run Excel though.

Any thoughts would be incredibly gratefully received.

I would always recommend Apple laptops based on the build quality, components, support, operating system, lack of malware, quality of third party software and compatibility with iDevices.

There’s a good summary in here as to why, given the choice, most professional developers choose Macs:

https://www.quora.com/Why-do-most-professional-programmers-prefer-Macs?srid=i7H&share=6fe9657d

If you were to buy a MacBook Pro I would hold out until June when it’s expected to be radically refreshed:

Having said all that, Apple tend to make high-end machines and I don’t know if the cost is really justified for your use cases. I haven’t bought a PC laptop in 13 years but some of the cheaper ultra books look like great value for money.

Thanks Chris, that’s really helpful. My only reservation about Apple laptops (other than the price!) is that I’ve never found a touchpad that I find easy to use, I’ve always preferred a mouse. I guess Apple’s touchpad is probably a lot better than most others though

I’ve never found a PC touchpad that I liked. The glass pads on Macs are a joy, and the realistic haptic response (there’s no mechanical movement) on the new 2015 MacBook is very clever. Feels just like a real click. For me, it’s the little things like precise and immediate two-finger scrolling that make Mac touchpads a good user experience

@anon5422159 without wanting to speak for all professional developers - I think that is a bit of a sweeping generalisation. I have been a developer for 20 years and I’ve never worked in a place with more than only a few Macs - even then the development people did on them was done using the windows emulator. In my considerable experience apple produce nice looking expensive things which tend to go out of date faster than most and break just as often as anything else. Also that link isn’t really proof, just some opinions.

I do tend to get a bit evangelical when talking about Macs - just the way I am. You’re right in that a lot of pro developers use PCs in their day-to-day work. Here in Morgan Stanley, we all use PCs. But only because that’s what we’re given. If I had the choice it would be a Mac. When developers bring in their own laptops they are almost exclusively Mac.

I assume whatever laptop you get with have a touchpad, whether Apple or PC. I use a mouse with my MacBook Pro when I have it on the desk, but the track pad is pretty easy.

If you swap from a PC to Mac you may find it takes a while to get used to the reverse scrolling! It mimics the scrolling direction of touch screen devices but isn’t as intuitive at first.

I know there are lots of pros and cons both ways, but for me the Mac wins because of the reliability and customer support. If you’ve not had to deal with any of that stuff for yourself in a long time, that might make a difference. Macs do go wrong, of course, but when they do, popping it into your local Applec store is MUCH easier than dealing with almost any other manufacturer. My daughter’s ASUS laptop had to be sent back to their factory for warranty repair. It was gone for six weeks. Apple do almost all their repairs in store and I’ve usually had mine back the same day.

Thanks Rachel, the customer support point hadn’t occurred to me. Together with less of a virus/malware risk I guess Apple’s tend to be a bit lower maintenance to own

@SteveG85 We have both Macs and PCs in this house and I’m tech support to everyone. The Macs are considerably easier to own!

Ive had the opposite in my house. In fact Ive had to replace the dvd and the hard drive of the mac mini after the hdd crashed and the dvd failed (separate events). Looking around the insides demonstrated to me that there are no expensive components in there - what you read is all marketing hype, its the same cheap stuff as in most PCs. Of course with apple kit, you do pay twice as much for it.

Many PC laptops these days have the backwards scroll for the touchpad too, I struggle with it - but Ive got a mouse I can use in small spaces so not too much hassle

I have laptop called iPad I use for all my home computer use. I can’t remember what I need the computer in the study for.
Last year my mum’s computer packed up and I got her a tablet. She is perfectly happy with it too.

This outgeeks everyone (or at least it did in the late 70s). Courtesy of the Glasgow Riverside Museum.

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Oh wow. I do remember I actually wrote some programmes on that. I won’t even try and out geek anyone as it would just get embarrassing.

Re Apple: I have some Apple kit but don’t use it for development. Way too expensive to own and all proprietary. I also miss the right click (and/or keyboard).

You can programme but you don’t know you can right click on Macs? Not the default setting but it’s there.

AFAIK not with a right click as it is only a one button mouse. But you may have a more up to date Mac than I have last looked at.

Not so much these days. Apple are moving to USB-C for power and data (2015 MacBook). The OS is built on FreeBSD and is full of open-source software (Apple is a massive contributor to open-source - in particular with projects like WebKit). USB, Bluetooth, Wifi, Thunderbolt/DisplayPort - all standards that Apple has followed. Standard Intel chips and busses. Their new Swift language is open sourced and has a compiler for Linux.

Apple are really moving forward in this respect.

That was true of the old mouse and might still be of whatever ships with a Mac. The Magic Mouse, however is fully programmable for left and right clicks. I don’t use an Apple mouse but a Logitech one. All compatible and right click menus all accessible. I’d say it’s been that way for at least five years.

You can use any keyboard you like too.

The Magic Mouse is quite lovely - let alone left and right click capability, the top surface is a capacitative touch panel which you can use for scrolling precisely in any direction.

On a Mac touchpad, you right click by putting two fingers on the pad and clicking.

More touchpad gestures here:

Once you get used to them, it’s hard to imagine how you lived without them.

Quite the opposite for me, @chris. I used mine for about a year before giving up on it. I appreciate all the exquisite design, but I’m not a gestures kinda gal, and the sensitivity of the capacitive top panel was too much for me. I ended up turning off lots of features because I was losing work with careless swipes. Also, Bluetooth is one of Apple’s weak points and I often had to clear out plist files and other nonsense to get it working properly.

When my MM went kaput I borrowed my son’s cheap n cheerful Logitech mouse with a plug in dongle for connecting and found I much preferred it.

My geekiness has reached a new level now, and I have decided my FitBit Blaze is just not cutting it for my activity tracker needs.
So succumbed to a Garmin Forerunner 230.

My inner nerd knows no bounds lol !
Anyone else track their activities?
Less interested in daily steps these days as after a long period of monitoring, I know what i average.

What will you do with the Blaze?

Sell it on I guess. I have a bad habit of hoarding stuff like that, but its a good piece of kit, just not what I need now

I’ve just got a Fitbit Charge HR. A lot more sophisticated the Jawbone Up I bought a few years ago. The reporting in the app is quite impressive. I’m interested to see how having the dog has increased my activity. Despite being a regular at the gym, I rarely made 10k steps a day previously. Today I hit that by lunchtime.

The sleep monitoring is also very useful and I am going to map sleep (or lack thereof) with mood. I expect to find a correlation and motivation to get to bed earlier!

I found the data from my UP and UP2 quite interesting, and realised from that how much I was doing some days. 42,000 was my highest I think, around 22 miles.

The Blaze with the 24/7 HR tracking has been fantastic as I have returned to fitness. Seeing my resting HR drop and drop. Now at a good level and steady, it’s time for me to move on.
I can honestly say the devices have really motivated me over time, and as you say @RachaelDunlop , can really confirm they have shaped my lifestyle somewhat.

Very excited as my CoWatch is due in about a month. Wearable tech rocks

I have to admit I want some more wearable, but still not convinced the Smart watch market is quite ready for me. Tried a few over time, and have yet to find love.

@anon64893700, have a look at The CoWatch. It was crowd funding sourced and looks like a winner to me which is why I invested in it.

Sounds interesting @Londondrz, I shall do that. Still waiting for the last crowd funded thing I bought into. Aren’t we @Micksta!

I use a Polar M400 for running (HRM/GPS) and activity (and telling the time and getting updates from my phone) and a Polar M450 for cycling. They have regular firmware updates as well as updates to the web portal. Some really interesting data, and there is a new feature on the watch that gives a training plan for upcoming events (eg half marathon) which I’m considering taking advantage of (read: entering a race).

As fellow Apple fanatics probably know, Monday is the opening day of Apple’s annual developer conference, WWDC. The keynote address has been used to launch some of Apple’s biggest innovations over the years. It’s Christmas Day for fanboys like me.

This year I think we’re finally going to see a next-generation MacBook Pro and I’m really excited about the rumoured feature set.

Unlike PC manufacturers, Apple focuses its energy on designing just one or two flagship models, and the company therefore stakes its whole reputation on a product like the MacBook Pro - meaning it has to be good.

Fingerprint Reader

TouchID works brilliantly on iDevices and it makes sense to have it on the Mac. Obviously this isn’t revolutionary - some PC laptops have had fingerprint readers for years. But Apple’s highly accurate and secure implementation (hardware segregation at the CPU level) has led to banks trusting the technology, so we’ve seen strong third party support from apps in the App Store. That’s the clincher.

With Apple, it’s not about hardware innovation for the sake of it - it’s about getting the software / content ecosystem onboard at the same time, to make the innovation genuinely useful for customers.

OLED keyboard strip

The other nice rumoured feature of the new MacBook Pro is an OLED touch panel on the keyboard that’s context sensitive:

image.jpeg800×601 111 KB

[mockup]

As a developer I find this really cool!

Knew I would post on here at one time or another asking for help or advice!

I only use apple devices & am not clued up on this kind of stuff.

So what do I do when I get messages from Apple telling me to upgrade?

I’m quite scared to accept these incase it is spam

Go to Settings > General > Software Update, and check there. You should see the update there if there’s a real one available.

Thanks Chris, will do this tomorrow.x

Always got ants in my pants, so just updated my software now @anon5422159 cheers for the advice, very much appreciated. All done now

Ask Siri what will be at WWDC… for a small chortle

Come on then Appleholics who have drooled over WWDC
iOS10… What is the feeling?

I saw a few posts about it coming up soon, then … literally NOTHING.

Must have been rather disappointing (not that I care, but sometimes these things are so popular you can’t avoid them. Not this time)

Apparently you can delete the “Stocks” app. Wowsers!

From a lot of iOS fans I know, they seem somewhat disappointed by the release of iOS10, not much innovation, just a lot of reworkings of Android stuff.
Interested to hear what people like @anon5422159 the super fan think lol

“some” ! Don’t get carried away @Londondrz haha

With sadness, I think the keynote was a massive disappointment. If a company could make its success on diversity and good intentions alone, Apple would have “knocked it out the ballpark.” (as they might say).

Yes, it’s great that they fixed the glaring omission of “Minnie Mouse” as an Apple Watch face. I’m sure feminists were furious about Mickey being the only choice. And guess what, ladies, she comes with three fetching dress options! But on a serious note, this is just pure identity politics and Apple are surely patronising women with stuff like this?

I wanted to see some new technology. Particularly some new hardware, as the MacBook Pro Retina has been neglected over the past three years and whilst it’s still a powerhouse, it hasn’t had any meaningful updates for a while.

iOS 10 is a welcome move for developers, getting SDK integrations with Siri, Maps, Messages etc. And the glitzy new iMessage features are quite cool, in a childish kinda way (be warned, I will use these to their fullest extent!). But where is the iPhone 7?

@anon64893700 Chris is most likely in the pub drowning his sorrows after all the hype turned out to be just that, hype!

There does seem to be a lot of smiles and padding in there for sure. The big leap being talked about, as you have, being the messaging leaps forward. Facebook style emojis, and backgrounds to messages. Happy to just read them really. But hey!

As for the watch updates lol, I am sure there is more to it than just Minnie, does Watch OS3 bring more? I am just starting to read on that now.

As for the iPhone 7, it will either be a HUGE leap, or an even bigger disappointment. I wonder what functions from other devices they will reinvent this time.
I hope it is a huge leap myself, as I am required by default to buy one if indeed it launches as “iPhone 7”. Anything else in the name and I escape, but I have resigned myself to my fate.

@anon64893700 I wonder if they will change the charger again. To make it better of course

lol !
I have to be fair here and say all other devices have been through this, and possibly more than Apple users soon. With the arrival and roll out of USB C
Time for Android and other users to suffer the pain of the Applati

To be fair to Apple - watchOS 3 promises to completely fix the performance issues of app loading etc. And that’s the big one for me. Also some welcome revamping of the main UI with a “dock” of live-updating app buttons that you scroll horizontally. A one-touch (dangerous) SOS mode that calls emergency services and sends your location to designated contacts. The ability to unlock your Mac by wearing your watch near it. A few new stock apps including “Find Friends” and a HomeKit (unified home automation) controller. A pretty decent watchOS update by all accounts.

Sounds good in practise at least Chris. Lets see how the real world operation of it works out.
Always nice to see progress.

I suspect this year’s new iPhone will be a 6S Mk2. Next year it will be the 10 year anniversary of the iPhone, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they are holding the great new redesign for then. Apple has definitely had its heyday and we are in decline mode now (they can last 20 years in decline mode, obviously, with many billions of dollars in the bank). iPhone sales were 16% lower YoY for Q1 this year, that’s a massive reversal, and will be interesting to see where it all heads.

When companies get huge and successful, it’s tough for them to have a second run. Which is why I enjoy Microsoft so much right now, because I thought they were doomed, but seem to be adjusting course effectively. Lots of fun.

Microsoft are going in the right direction and the new(ish) CEO clearly has far more sense and vision than Ballmer did. I think their inclusion of a Bash shell on Win 10 was inspired and bodes well.

@jrothlis Indeed it is when they reach the top, they struggle to keep on impressing. The fight for the top seems to be where the innovation comes from.

Seeing some of the new names in the tech world really blowing up now shows that the middlemen are starting to do their own thing and profit properly from making other peoples devices, and hardware. That too is really exciting to see.

I think you are right that Apple will probably save the big fanfare for the anniversary, unless there is something super groundbreaking which has been kept from leaking out. Which is a shame as I get the impression that YoY they will lose a bit more of the market as people get fed up with incremental changes, and want something new.

The iOS 10’s camera wasn’t detailed at the keynote, but as it turns out Apple will be enabling saving the RAW image in DNG format from the camera’s hardware.

I am really looking forward to iOS 10, it looks like it will have a tonne of really nice improvements. The new lock screen looks fantastic, and a welcome improvement with raise to activate and much more interactive with more options.

Certainly looks like Apple are loosening the control of customisablility for sure (is that even a word!)

I really like those features as well - and having HomeKit in Control Centre (and Siri) makes me want to go out and buy a whole load of home automation gear!

The Siri deep learning stuff in the keyboard is clever too. Also the computer vision stuff behind Photos. Maps competes better with Google Maps now, but not sure I’ll be switching from Google yet.

Voicemail transcription is good. Hopefully they’ll make a better job of it than Google’s:

http://gvtranscripts.tumblr.com

My geek credentials :

I made this music app: http://get.noiz.ee

from a geek in the making.

Holy moly. Someone just successfully sued Microsoft for $10,000 due to the automated upgrade to Windows 10. I wonder what would happen if this turned into a class action lawsuit?

There are 110M Windows 10 users and I believe MS has about $5.5bn on their balance sheet. By my maths, if half a million people were to sue, it would wipe out every penny they’ve got.

Someone had a lot of time on their hands.

Which you may need to do the upgrade! Have done a few of these - two went smoothly and a third was an absolute pig which took days. Have to say that the result is nice, in most ways better than W7.

Did both home and work and being an IT Luddite even I was able to do it. I like windows 10, apart from Cortana. Cortana must die!

A few years ago I had a laptop triple booting in Linux, OSX and Windows 7. Do I make the team geek?

Started moving away from powerful PCs to dedicated devices for each task (console and tablet) but still keep a decent laptop at hand for music production.

You’re going to need more people than that. Throw in Microsoft’s holdings of US bonds and other similar investments and its cash & cash equivalents holdings are worth $113 billion.

Late to the party. I used exclusively Apple products from 2004 - 2016, and earlier this year was due to upgrade my 5 year old 15" Macbook Pro. After considering what I actually do with a personal laptop these days (-basically nothing), I decided to pick up an ASUS Flip Chromebook as an experiment to see if I could live with it.

Turns out I absolutely love it and haven’t looked back. The battery lasts forever, it’s tiny but with a perfectly usable keyboard, and boots up from cold in 5 seconds.

I think they’re about £200, would really recommend it to someone looking for a new toy!

I also have a work laptop and iPhone which does all of the heavy lifting.

The annoying part was that it took ages to move everything away from the Apple ecosystem (Apple TV, email, calendar, itunes etc) to Google.

Looks like a lot of bang for your buck. Totally understand the move, given Apple haven’t had a meaningful MBP update in a while. I’m holding out for now, because my three year old rMBP still handles IntelliJ and the Adobe suite brilliantly, and I think the coming refresh might be a humdinger. But I’m getting restless, waiting for it

Yeah - I was really tempted by the new 12"(?) Macbook, as the form factor is perfect for me. I’m a bit wary of 1st gen releases though, and it seemed a bit pricey for the spec I wanted.

I bought my MBP in April 2013. It was brand new and revamped then (flash storage version) and I don’t think they’ve done a major update since. It is still going strong, much better than my Air, which was also an early edition (I need a t-shirt that says Early Adopter) and ground to a halt after about three years. My current MBP hasn’t slowed down significantly or got any of the horrible wifi and other glitches the Air was prone to and is pretty much still running as new.

The only issue I have with the MBP is that in the age of the Surface and other tablet/keyboard hybrids, it doesn’t feel very portable. The writing software I use has only been available for my laptop until very recently (Scrivener, if anyone’s interested) so I’ve been lugging the MBP around for cafe writing days. However, they’ve just brought out a superb iOS version. So now I’m thinking an iPad pro and a keyboard will be my next upgrade.

I’ve got an iPad Pro and the Apple Smart Keyboard. Surprisingly pleasant to type on, and the Apple Pencil is also quite cool if your creative talents extend in visual dimensions?

The iPad Pro is a little too big IMHO, every time I sit down at one I feel like I’m in a scene from the borrowers, where everything is ridiculously oversized.

The Pro now comes in ‘normal’ iPad size, which is what I’ll be getting. OH has the large one which he likes but I find cumbersome.

I am not a fan of the word geek as it seems now to be applicable to anyone who uses a smartphone and has become a bit meaningless. However I guess I am one as I work and have worked it IT for over 20 years.

I have several andriod phones - S6 being the latest, three PCs in the house (mine, wife and media PC running Kodi), Nexus tablet, PS4, 4 smart TVs, Cheap Windows tablet, asus terminator, lots of old consoles and my wife has a couple of tablets too. Bringing an old server home for media storage soon but don’t tell my wife.

My work life involves supporting about 1000 PCs and and macs, file, email, web, database, backup and video servers - ipads, network switches, fibre optic and copper cabling, AV kit, firewalls, wireless…

Like many old hands in the IT systems world I cannot stand Apple stuff - I have worked with macs and we run hundreds of ipads and I would never own one. I guess they may be fine for home use but trying to slip them seamlessly into a network is the stuff of nightmares. They give us more issues than the average PC and the way that Apple makes hardware and software redundant annoys the hell out of me… as for price!!!

Hi @RachaelDunlop, this may interest you:

Very interesting, thanks. The feel of a keyboard is so important - I hate soft keys with no feedback.

Thought you might all appreciate this little Microsoft ad

Is anyone brave enough to invest in the MS mobile hardware/software ecosystem after what happened with Windows Phone? The company just don’t seem to be able to get it right, without massive marketing - and even then they failed (with smartphones).

Seems nothing new on offer with their schizophrenic tablet/laptops, and nothing particularly compelling IMO. Ports, for example, are an anachronism not a USP. I remember when Apple copped a load of flak for ditching the floppy disk drive. Turns out they just understood the future a little better than the beige box PC factories.

Surface seem to have done pretty well from what I have seen. Lots of friends have switched to them. I agree totally that there have been issues with other areas of the business. Unlikely to take the mobile market by storm as it is dominated by the big two.

As for the schizophrenic tablet / laptop. Will you not be buying a keyboard for your iPad? Oh, what’s that, you already have one? lol

I was talking about the software actually. Laptops have near-desktop levels of power, with matching benefits and drawbacks. Tablets (at least in Apple’s vision) have a unique software ecosystem optimised for touch-based interaction.

When choosing between laptops and tablets, you choose the right tool for the job. Not a tool that tries to be good for all jobs but comes up short overall

And maybe, just maybe that is what these people are doing. Just like Android users and their second place in society to Apple worshipers lol (joking)

Each to their own indeed, and best to buy what fits their needs, Surface seems to manage to serve a fair chunk of the market. I am sure the iPad still comes up short for some

I have a nice little asus terminator thing that is a laptop and a tablet as the keyboard comes off and Windows 10 turns into tablet mode. Works for all my basic stuff - plays a few games, web, email, media consumption. And of course I can access all my network devices at home with it and print/share stuff. Nice and small and the battery lasts well - doeds all the jobs I want it to do prefectly well.

I wouldn’t buy a Windows phone as I do prefer Android and some of the latest devices are stunning but then I wouldn’t buy an Iphone or pad either.

I do know a school that is rolling out Surface to all staff which is sort of natural if you run a windows server based system. We have rolled out ipads and most of the staff are distinctly unimpressed - some have just given them to their kids!

It’s not a cult in the irrational sense of the word. I’m a fan of mobile performance, and Apple smartphones still have the edge - because they run native-compiled apps (as opposed to within a JVM like Android’s), and the OS and apps can be tightly optimised to a single hardware platform. Apple’s edge comes from the hardware/software architecture.

This is a guy whose opinion I respect (he co-wrote the forum software we are currently using, and also co-wrote StackOverflow.com):

Also some great design decisions from Apple:

• Offering several levels of sophistication for developers to run apps in the background (avoiding the situation where lazy developers run the whole app as a background process, consuming more CPU time and battery than it needs)

• Maintaining a single persistent IP connection to Apple’s servers for push notifications to all apps. Avoids multiple connections from multiple apps all chatting to their individual servers in the background.

• Designing and open-sourcing Swift, a modern functional language with a REPL for writing apps on all platforms. Compiles natively to iPhone. One language for writing apps for Linux servers, phones, tablets, laptops/desktops, watches, cars etc. Good decision, Apple

Its not only that, but Apples development tools are much better as well. I look after 3 separate dev teams at work - one each focusing on iOS, Android and HTML apps and the Android team have by far the hardest job delivering.

The emulators are a case in point, spinning up an iOS emulator on a Mac is fast and 99.9% accurate to running on the device (only once in 3 years has that not been the case), where as the emulators on Android are much slower to compile to and we constantly find inconstancies in behaviour between running in an emulator vs. hardware - admittedly these tend to be on the cheap landfill 'droids that have polluted the market over the years, but the newer Sammys and Nexus devices are not 100% immune.

I regularly use over 30 different test devices covering the breadth of what Apple and Android has to offer and the only one i’d use at home is Apple.

@anon5422159 got my new iPhone wireless earphones!

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Stealing this.!

They suit you, John!

And they keep my ears minty fresh

iPhone, the phone that keep giving eh @anon5422159 http://appleplugs.com/

@anon64893700 Looks like we are a bit behind the times

I’m torn between hysterical laughter and wondering what you’re going to brush your teeth with because THAT’S BEEN IN YOUR EAR DUDE.

I bet John used his wifes lol

anon64893700 nailed it!!!

13 posts were split to a new topic: Proposed new opt-In Category: “Geeks”

Hi I’d love to join calling all geeks. No toothbrush joke from me though.

But to prove how serious I am I could translate your decimal age into hexadecimal system. It cheers many people as it is proper counting with no repeating years but making your age number smaller. (To qualify the above statement it works after the age of 9)

You were already in, @MajaHilton, as you’d responded earlier to this thread.

That’s quite impressive on the hex conversion. I was probably taught that during my computer science degree but have completely forgotten how to do it!

There are 10 types of people in the world, those that can read hex, and those that cannot.

Hi @andy
You are confusing it with the binary system.

And here I was wondering about the other (14)₁₀ types of people

9 posts were merged into an existing topic: Amazon Echo

This appears to have been split into a topic to which I don’t have access (by someone not using their _mod creds, I note). Perhaps it would be worth having a note on why topics get split / merged?

Apologies for this @Dave - I have granted you access to the opt-in “Geeks” category so you should be able to see this post now.

More details on this opt-in category

So am I not geeky enough to join your secret club?

I’ll admit that my most recent programming was in FORTRAN (i.e. back in the 1990s) but it was on a Cray Supercomputer - the largest in Europe. However, I have never been interested in having the most up to date hardware because the hardware that matters is never going to be in my house.

That’s why I wrote some of my first web pages in Notepad on Windows 3.11, took them on floppy disks to Kings College computer suite in my lunch hours when doing a holiday job, and FTPed the files to servers in Edinburgh, then remote logged in (on Unix) to change the file permissions and make the pages available.

As yet I have never owned any product made by Apple, although I did use one once, when I had to write an article for the student newspaper. The screen was tiny and none of my floppy disks worked. Somebody told me they have improved since then, but I’m not going to risk it.

no secrets clubs here - I’ve opted you into the “Geeks” category @Michael.

We had a long chat in the forum about this new opt-in category a few days ago, but I appreciate not everyone may have seen it.

If anyone else has an interest in technology, simply reply to this topic and one of us will opt you in to the “Geeks” category so you’ll see more techie discussions on your homepage.

I did. Just didn’t know what to say.

Cautionary tales dept: Certain older software packages which continue to work fine after you upgrade to Windows 10 cannot be reinstalled under W10 if (as I recently experienced) you have to replace a hard drive. In my case this enforced migrating to the monthly sub model for Adobe InDesign after using the 2008 bought & paid for CS4 edition perfectly happily for 8 years. Annoyingly, I don’t need any of the features added to the product since that year. I know this is progress and ultimately inevitable, and I s’pose I’d had my £800-worth, but still an unwanted surprise!

I would have thought that most programmes could be made to work using either compatibility mode settings or, as a last resort, running in a virtual machine. A bit of a schlep though if you have to resort to latter as you would need a licensed copy of the guest OS for this to work.

I’d like to opt in - I can resist cycling happily, but as a privacy lawyer I’m easily distracted by shiny techy things…

Please opt me in Chris, ta

You’re in, @Emma22 and @DickWynne.

Help, my keyboard on my iPad screen has done this

IMG_5561.PNG1536×2048 146 KB

The keyboard has split and covering everything I type, I am not IT literate at all.

Can someone tell me how to put it back to normal please., if I can manage to find the reply button!

ETA The keyboard seems to be on top of anything I’m typing & probably my son hit a button, but I don’t know how to make it normal again

Press and hold the keyboard button on the bottom right. That will give you the option to move away from the “split keyboard”.

Ignore this now, I managed to fine something called “dock and merge” which fixed this now!

Really wish I was so much more up on IT, as this really frustrated me then.

Perceverience is a virtue, and got there in the end - even though I wanted to shout at my iPad “what are you playing at, just give me back my normal keyboard sucker”

Thanks Dave got there in the end