Sonos lock screen controls broken on ios 11 with the 9.0 sonos update

Sonos Lock Screen Controls Broken on ios after version 9.0 update

As many readers will know, I opted to go down the Sonos route of home audio as opposed to the Apple Homepod route. While my devices are generally all within the Apple ecosystem, I don’t yet rate Siri & I do like the option to use third-party music streaming services such as Tidal if I see fit. I also like the Sonos app & the fact that I can control it from the app without having to use voice controls at all.

One of the biggest features of Sonos that I use are the lock screen controls. My device usage has changed dramatically over recent months as I’ve been researching smart phone addiction & the problems caused by too much exposure to social media. One thing to come out of this research is that I tend to leave my iPhone docked in a bamboo dock in my kitchen at all times. This means I don’t pick up the phone at random & my compulsion to check it has diminished. Read More....

Soundpeats Q30 bluetooth earphones box

Soundpeats Q30 Bluetooth Wireless earphones Review

I’ve been looking for a pair of Bluetooth earphones for a while now. I wanted a pair with a short wire attaching the two buds as I often take them out to stop and chat with people when walking around the city. With my wired apple earbuds, I normally run them up under my T-shirt and out at the collar so I can take them out and let them hang from my neck.

This single requirement has put me off Bluetooth and wireless headphones for a while until I came across the Soundpeats Q30 wireless earphones. Read More....

Apple iPhone 7 Plus missing the 3.5mm headphone jack

iPhone 7 & 7 Plus ditching the 3.5mm audio headphone jack – I’m not convinced

This week Apple unveiled its latest & greatest flagship device, the iPhone 7 & 7 Plus. This is the first Apple conference which I haven’t attended or streamed live from home. For me, the magic of Apple is starting to fade. Don’t get me wrong, their hardware is exquisite, but their decision-making & rush of new hardware & software to market is getting a little tedious. Especially on the software side, nothing is quite as polished & flawless. Everything feels buggy & clunky. Read More....

Anker Power Core 20100 charging ports

Anker PowerCore 20100 4.8 amp Mobile Power Bank

Modern smart phones aren’t great when it comes to battery life. This can be blamed on the user as much as the device itself. We tend to use smart phones for everything nowadays. From MP3 playback to calls, texts, social media & maps. The usage is endless. Unfortunately the power life is not.

I often find myself in cities & on trips without access to an outlet & I can be down to 50% before 10AM. I use my iPhone to conduct my business, manage my life, listen to music & take photos. I use it to pay for coffee, to organise meeting friends & reply to business emails on the go. I use it a lot. I don’t tend to kill time with the iPhone, I’m not a Facebook user and tend to limit my social media usage, but I still struggle to maintain battery life. Read More....

Turn Off iCloud Music Library

iPhone storage full when using iCloud music *fix*

I’ve been having major issues with my iPhone 6 running out of storage capacity. I have a modest amount of apps installed on the iPhone & I have the 16GB version of the iPhone 6. I was constantly receiving the storage almost full banner on my iPhone and even when looking at the storage & iCloud usage in settings I couldn’t figure out what was taking up all the space. This tutorial will also apply to iPad as it’s an iOS issue and not an iPhone specific issue. Works well if you keep receiving the message “iphone storage full” and you use iTunes match or iCloud Music Library Read More....

Apple Devices I own

Apple Error 53 & tech repairability

I’ve been considering this for a long time but over recent weeks the ability to repair my own technology has become far more important to me. Only a few weeks back, I was unfortunate enough to splash a few drops of coffee onto the keyboard of our Macbook Pro. We cleaned it off & thought nothing more of it until later in the day, when the machine failed to switch on. This was such a stressful thing to happen. The Macbook is 4 years old but is still in great condition & used constantly. It doesn’t warrant an upgrade. Read More....

Apple Music Connect

ios 8.4 apple music and beats 1 radio is a go

I was lucky enough to get everything done early today & by 4PM I was already updating my iPhone 6 to IOS 8.4. – 15 minutes later I was signed up to the 3 month trial of Apple Music & trialing this exciting service. Initially Beats 1 Radio was just a loop of ambient music called Ambient 1 – Music for airports by Brian Eno. We kept getting brief voice over of Zane Lowe chatting to other locations & engineers in the run up to a 5PM GMT launch. And then at 5PM Zane launched with a local Manchester Band named Spring King and the song City. Manchester went worldwide & opened Beats 1 Radio. Good work. Read More....

OSX El Capitan

WWDC2015 – Thoughts on WWDC, IOS 9, Watch OS and OSX El Capitan

Like all tech folk I ate dinner early yesterday & sat down to watch the live stream of the WWDC 2015. This is a big day in the tech calendar & we often learn of new & exciting things coming out of the super secret Apple engineering labs. It wasn’t quite as good as 2013 when I was in San Francisco for the WWDC but I can’t complain.

The three big announcements this year where iOS 9, OSX El Capitan and Watch OS – With a little extra bit at the end for Apple Music & Beats 1 radio. All exciting things & a lot to get your head around. Read More....

Apple Watch Main Watch

Apple Watch Hands On Review

Yesterday in Manchester I managed to get my hands on the brand new Apple Watch. I was as skeptical as most people when Tim Cook introduced these at the Apple Keynote in March 2015 but I must say I was very impressed. It was a bit of a scrum to get hands on with these watches in Manchester. A lot of people showing interest & Apple Employees where doing “fittings” which essentially means opening beautiful wooden drawers below the Apple Watch display & allowing you to try on the various editions. Read More....

Apple Earpods

Apple EarPods with Remote and Mic

This week a good friend of mine gave me a pair of Apple EarPods with Remote and Mic. He was sent a replacement iPhone 5S to replace a faulty unit and they sent it retail boxed with another set of EarPods so I was given the new pair. The ones I currently use are the ones that shipped with my iPhone 4. They are now pushing 4 years old & still in perfect working order. In fact since my first iPod in 2006 I’ve never had a set of Apple Headphones go faulty. They are great quality & pretty much indestructible (I still have that original pair from my iPod I bought in San Francisco back in 2006). Read More....

iOS 8.1.1 update for iPad 2

Just a quick post regarding memory issues and poor performance on iOS 8 when used on an older A5 chipset iPad 2. I upgraded to iOS 8.1.1 tonight and everything seems much improved. It’s nowhere near as quick as iOS 7.1.2 was, but it is snappier and less buggy. Also seems to have fixed the copy and paste issue I hacked a workaround for last week.

Safari loads faster and multi tasking is improved noticeably. Still having issues with gsm not working so I’m limited to wifi only but I’m glad to have a usable iPad 2 again. Read More....

Trusty iPhone 4

Tech obsolescence in 2014

Trusty iPhone 4
Trusty iPhone 4

I’m a big gadget lover but I need to balance my love of tech with my environmental conscience. I’ve got a massive issue with replacing items which are still perfectly usable items. It seems so wasteful to replace a phone or a tablet simply because a newer version has been released. The new models may have a slightly better spec but often they carry a huge price tag. To me, the gain is minimal but the outlay is maximum.

This standpoint is reflected in my current lineup of tech. My one & only phone is an iPhone 4. Not a 4S, a humble 4. It’s jailbroken & locked down to ios 7 as apple no longer allow it to be upgraded. With the jailbreak tweaks its perfectly fine speed wise, I actually prefer the smaller form factor and the battery life hasn’t really degraded from the day I bought it. Read More....

iOS 8.1 copy and paste not working *fixed*

Like many people I’ve been struggling with the copy and paste bug in iOS 8.1. It’s so frustrating not being able to consistently copy and paste between apps. Often when pasting it would paste old content and would require many attempts to copy and paste successfully. Without a jailbreak available there was very little that could be done to rectify the issue.

I tried a factory reset and setting up as a completely new iPad. No joy. When you are an iOS family like ours, with many devices failing to work its a most frustrating issue to have. Then thankfully the pangu jailbreak for iOS 8 was released. I instantly jail broke and reinstated all my tweaks, making iOS generally more useable on my iPad 2. Then came the master stroke. I remember using a cydia tweak known as single use keyboard by Yanik Magnan. This tweak essentially wipes the clipboard once you have pasted your text. This is essentially meant for privacy, but I don’t tend to paste more than once. Because it wipes the clipboard once you have pasted, the next time you come to copy and paste the clipboard is empty and cannot replicate old data. This works very well for me and I hope it helps you. Read More....

iPad 2 Celluar Data Problems – O2 PAYG

I’ve had my iPad 2 since it was first released in the UK, thats a couple of years now and since the beginning I’ve been with O2 for my cellular data. this worked really well up until a couple of months ago. Firstly there was a bug with IOS/O2 carrier settings and it was constantly bugging me to update my carrier settings. This finally went away when upgrading to IOS 6.0.1 but since then my O2 data coverage has been shocking.

The ipad would constantly say it was searching for signal, even though my wife’s iPhone on the same network sat next to me had full signal. When I could get signal I was pretty much limited to GPRS. it seems that I’m not the only one with these issues, the O2 forums are awash with those complaining about this exact same issue. I tried downgrading to IOS 5 but still the same problem, which leads me to believe that it’s either a baseband issue (unlikely) or an issue again with O2 carrier settings. Due to the problems I had earlier in the year I would go with it being an O2 issue. Read More....