There is a new addition at Fruit Bytes HQ today. Meet Rafa.

This is, of course, my replacement iPod touch after the wi-fi and battery issues my 11 month old iPod experienced last week. It was hard to come up with a new name for a new iPod touch, given that Oscar was my favourite name. However, I decided to go for Rafa, named after the absolutely scrumptiously hot, sexy, good looking talented tennis player Rafael Nadal who gets Rafa for short. I don’t make a habit of naming my computers or gadgets, infact my iPod touch was my first inanimate object to be named.

UPS took the old unit away last Friday and on Monday I received an e-mail from Apple letting me know they’d received it in their repair centre and were about to diagnose the problem. Within an hour of receiving that e-mail I checked the repair status page and it had moved from ‘Diagnosing’ to ‘Issue identified’. About half an hour after that it moved to Step 3 which was ‘Replacement Product Pending’.

On Tuesday the iPod was shipped and should have arrived yesterday, but due to UPS going to the wrong address I had to wait until late this afternoon for the delivery. It arrived in a spongy box and a letter accompanying the iPod explained that I will get 90 days warranty with this new unit. It also said that it could be brand new or a refurb unit. It looks brand new and had the distinctive Apple whiff, although that’s thanks to the plastic it was wrapped in I guess. Either way it works fine with a strong wi-fi signal – just hoping the battery life on this one will exceed that of Oscar.

Much to my surprise I did not miss the iPod touch at all over the past week. I’ve had it back a few hours and all I’ve done so far is sync a few songs across, some applications and my MobileMe details – now he sits in his dock with me feeling very “meh” about it. Maybe we’ll start to bond after a few days, but it’s taught me that I’m all about my iMac and PowerBook more than I am a handheld ‘computer’. Maybe that realisation will have a big impact on my future decision regarding the iPhone.

About 18 months ago I was approached by an Executive Producer in the US (who has worked on some very funny sitcoms over the years) about doing some work on his new web project and just to have a chat about the web site I was running dedicated to one of the shows he produced. He asked me if I had Skype so we could chat (for free) over that. I only had a Mac Mini at the time so I had no microphone or a compatible handset. Instead he had to call my landline which meant a considerably shorter chat than we would have enjoyed since the $’s were clocking up!

Since then a few Skyping opportunities have passed my way, mostly to give/receive some minor tech help, so I thought it was about time to invest in a decent handset that I could plug into my USB port for when those moments arise. I have a built-in mic in my iMac, but being able to chat through a handset feels more personable, to me at least.

After a bit of a search I discovered the Cyberphone W Mac. Nice Apple-white stylish design and best of all the handset features work so you don’t even have to touch the Mac to make a call if you don’t wish to. I shopped around, seeing prices ranging from £30 to £40. Then I hopped on eBay and saw it for £15 with £5 postage from VOIP Voice.

Included in the box was a voucher for 30 free SkypeOut minutes. I tried to activate it but the site said it was invalid – a quick look at the back of the card revealed the voucher expired June 2008. I figured that was one of the reasons for the low price and wasn’t too bothered as I’m mostly going to be Skyping across computers anyway. SkypeOut credit, should I need it at any point, is very reasonably priced anyway.

The installation is really simple, as you expect from products designed for Macs. Pop in the disc and drag the VOIPVoice app to the Application folder, that’s it. Then just simply plug your Cyberphone W Mac into the USB port as and when you want it. I have mine plugged in all the time and placed on my desk. When you open the VOIPVoice application, a telephone icon appears in the menubar. If you have the handset plugged in with the Skype app open, the icon will be green. If you have it plugged in without Skype open the icon will change to orange. There is a preference pane within the app so you can tell it to start VOIPVoice when you log in and Start Skype when VOIPVoice is opened. It has a voice menu so you can tell it to speak Caller Name and Online Status and you can also store up to 9 numbers for Speed Dial.

I created an extra Skype account on my PowerBook so I could make some calls to that from the Cyberphone. I tried that with the help of my Mum who was sitting infront of my PowerBook awaiting my call and she informed that the sound quality was excellent. So, we did a swap and I got my Mum to call my account on the PowerBook so I could listen to the quality while she was speaking through the handset. Very clear quality, most impressed. It was like she was in the next room. Oh, wait, she was!

There is a blue neon button on the handset which flashes when a call is incoming and illuminates when you are on a call. I shot a quick 10 second video of this so you can see and hear it in action.

It will also flash when there is new Voicemail so you can simply press that and listen to your messages. The handset has a lengthy 2.1m USB cable and is compatible with USB 1.1 or 2.0, requires Mac OS X 10.4 or higher and you’ll need 150MB free hard disk space.

I haven’t used it extensively yet, but if you have any questions then fire away as I have a nice bumper pdf file User Guide which I’m sure will answer any queries you may have.

On Tuesday I bought and activated AppleCare for my iMac as the 1 year hardware warranty expires on October 26th. I didn’t take AppleCare out at the time of purchase as £800 in one go for a computer was hard enough on my pocket and since I hadn’t taken out any additional insurance with my Mac Mini I hadn’t given it too much thought.

After having my iMac for 3 months, Apple phoned me to say that my 90-day complimentary support was coming to an end in 24 hours and asked me if I wanted to pay £139.99 for AppleCare there and then. Since I’d only just spent £300 on a PowerBook I was not in a position to hand out that kind of cash again (after Christmas and feeling the pinch!). I asked if I could leave it for a few weeks and then buy it but she said that was not possible and I couldn’t just buy the AppleCare at anytime. It wasn’t until recently that I discovered I’d been sold a line by her and realised that I can purchase AppleCare as long as it’s within the 1 year warranty. Infact, I believe she was actually little rude when I asked that question because said something like “When you buy a car you can’t drive it around for months before buying insurance”.

I had my Mac Mini for two and a half years without any problems. I never really considered that anything could go wrong as I’d heard how reliable Macs were. But, looking back I do think that was perhaps a little foolish as anything can go wrong and most frustratingly these things tend to happen once you’re outside of your one year warranty. I’ve been hearing some of my Twitter contacts talking about issues they are having with their Mac recently and how they are thankful they bought AppleCare as the hardware failure occurred outside of their 1 year warranty. That has made me think a lot about taking out extra cover.

Another thing that prompted me into getting the extra cover was discovering a problem when starting up OnyX a few nights ago after it verified my startup volume. Usually the process takes a minute or two then a message pops up to say everything appears ok. However, on Sunday night the box popped up to say there was a disk permissions problem and that I should repair the volume. I was a little concerned as I haven’t had any problems before, but running the repair in Disk Utility sorted that out. Suddenly my Mac wasn’t invincible and could just as easily fall victim to a hardware failure.

So, Monday I decided to shop around online for AppleCare for iMac. Apple wanted £139.99, Dabs.com wanted £104. Then I’d heard many people talk about how they got a great deal on eBay. Some UK eBayers were selling AppleCare for around £40 cheaper than Apple, but then I saw the US eBay listings which was even better. Naturally I entered into this cautiously and checked out the sellers feedback to ensure that there was a long list of happy customers before me when buying this product – and there was. I got an excellent deal and the code was e-mailed to me in just a few hours – and all activated in less than 10 minutes on Apple’s side, taking my cover to October 26th 2010.

I feel a lot happier knowing that if anything does go wrong then Apple will sort it out. And as mentioned in this entry, my iPod touch is not well and on it’s way back to Apple shortly. Thankfully this has fallen within the 1 year warranty which expires at the end of September, otherwise I’d have a £200 brick on my hands.

If you are a Mac user, do you have your computer covered by AppleCare?

Back in June I made the switch from Camino to Safari in preparation of MobileMe and the ability to sync my bookmarks across my iMac, PowerBook and iPod touch. I now cannot imagine using any other browser other than Safari. There have been a lot of improvements made since I had stopped using it a couple of years ago. One of the things I was looking forward to using again within Safari was Inquisitor.

Inquisitor is a bit like Spotlight for the web. It will autocomplete the words you type into the search box within Safari and you can add more search engines with customized keyboard shortcuts. I love the way it will bring up website suggestions which are more often correct than not, so that I can just click straight onto it and get where I’m going without having to go near the Google results page first. Inquisitor 3.2 was released today (thanks to Chris for the heads-up) with even more eye-candy and useful history indicators as you can see in the picture above.

I had purchased NewsFire RSS reader several years ago and as a paying customer one of the things I got for free was Inquisitor. Because I was having Safari niggles I didn’t get to spend a lot of time with Inquisitor before switching to Camino. I was a big fan of NewsFire up until NetsNewsWire went free. Because I now had two Macs and an iPod touch the NNW sync feature was too much to ignore, but I still think NewsFire is way better and beautifully designed than NNW.

I’m so pleased I moved back to Safari. I love the ability to [instantly and automatically] sync my bookmarks across my Macs and iPod touch which is something I’d be so missing out on if I’d stayed with Camino. 

My beloved iPod touch, Oscar, is going to the Apple Hospital for some emergency surgery. Last night he lost his battle with wi-fi.

I was enjoying a late night browse on Oscar in bed last night when all of a sudden I lost my wi-fi signal. Short drop-outs can happen from time to time so I just waited a few minutes, switched the iPod off and then back on. The wi-fi icon wasn’t in the top left so I went into settings to find the network and join it…but it wasn’t picking up anything, not even my neighbours network which it always puts into my list.

I immediately thought it was a modem issue so I restarted my box. I didn’t think to check my wi-fi on my PowerBook (it was late, I was tired) but it doesn’t hurt to reset the modem occasionally. Once that came back up I still wasn’t able to pick up a thing with Oscar, but no problems at all with wi-fi on my PowerBook, J’s laptop and both our mobile phones. I reset the iPod to see if that would help, but nothing happened. If I stood right close to my modem then one bar would show up next to my network in the list, but it absolutely would not join it, keep throwing the error “unable to join the network” at me. Once I moved away from the modem then it could find no network at all.

I decided to do a factory restore to see if that would sort the issue out, but to no avail. I called Apple Support and within 5 minutes they were sorting out a dispatch note for me and arranging for a courier to come and pick Oscar up within 3 working days to take him away for repair. That was quick and painless, I’m glad to say.

So, I’ll be iPod-less for a little while. This just means that my PowerBook will get more attention when I’m browsing the net in bed as he’s been feeling very left out since the 2.0 software update and apps arrived!

UPDATE: I am not alone, it seems.

Today I bought GTS World Racing from the iTunes App Store for £4.99 after seeing a demo on YouTube a few days ago from the developers of the game, which you can watch below (my thoughts after the jump)…

My favourite type of games are definitely the racing ones. I have Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart which is my absolute favourite. I also bought Cro-Mag Rally but I find that very boring and definitely not worth the £5.99, in my opinion, although I have noticed it’s been reduced to £3.49 now. So, when I saw the demo for GTS World Racing I was itching to buy it.

I have completed quite a few laps on GTS World Racing and I’ve got to say first of all that the graphics are excellent and it really looks like a quality game. Soundtrack is okay as are the sound effects. The controls are also very good – no problems at all with steering. To accelerate you simply tilt the iPhone/iPod slightly forward but not too much otherwise the screen will go red and you’ll be told “Too flat!”. To brake you tilt the device towards you. It’s very quick and easy to get the hang of, unlike Super Monkey Ball

Now onto the tracks. This is where it falls down for me. All the tracks in every country available look pretty much the same. I picked ‘Japan’ hoping to see bright neon lights and a cityscape. All I got were mountains. It didn’t look any different to Peru, Finland or Scotland, so you pretty much feel like you’re in the same place, seeing the same things. If the surroundings were more unique for every track then it would feel much more thrilling. I hope we see some changes in future updates for that otherwise I will be quite disappointed.

Overall the game play is good. I have won every game so far, lapping my competitors on the track, although that is on the Easy setting so I may have to pump that up to Normal or Hard to ensure I don’t get bored with winning so easily all the time.

If you’re stuck between buying Cro-Mag Rally or GTS World Racing then I’d say go for GTS. However, if it’s between Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart or GTS World Racing then I’d say go for Crash. The tracks all look different, it feels more challenging and after 3-4 weeks of playing Crash I’m still nowhere near bored – definitely worthy of the £5.99 price tag.

Being a girl and being into gadgets sometimes throws up images, for some people, of being into gadgets that look girly like pink cameras and pink mobile phones with fluffy charms hanging off them. That couldn’t be further from the truth, for me at least.

I remember a couple of years ago I was looking around for a new mobile phone. While I was on the o2 website I saw a pink Samsung phone which was totally designed for women. It had all kinds of calculators which would let you know when you were at your most fertile, what colour shoes would go with your new bag, when you had PMS*, whether you are pregnant and even tell you you’re overweight*! I couldn’t help but laugh at this silly device which wanted just too much information on my bodily functions but worse than that has the gall to tell me I’m fat. I think it also made phone calls but that was neglected to be mentioned in the long list of everything else it wanted to do for you.

I love gadgets, but I also like gadgets to look professional – black or silver is my choice always. I have a silver mobile phone (soon to be a black iPhone when o2 online get them back in stock) and black digital camera which looks very professional. No overly pink and girly gadgets in my home. My body clock is also my own business, not my phones! I also don’t want an app for my iPod which tells me…

…how long your periods really last, how much exercise are you getting, etc. No matter what your stage in life, Lady Biz is something every woman can use. Lady Biz keeps track of the following items: Breast tenderness, Cramps, Exercise, Intercourse, Notes, OB/GYN checkup, Period, Pregnancy test, Sick, Sleep, Stress, Waking temperature, Vitamins, Weight.

Would anyone really pay £8.99, for that? I think I’ll stick to the tried and tested method of a (free) calendar, although I really don’t think it’s necessary to become obsessed with everything including Waking temperature??

Any other female geeks out there into the professional look rather than the often cheap and tacky look of everything PINK and FLUFFY as soon as a girls gadget is mentioned?

* My husband will do that for free!