Apple stuff - Mac, iPad, iphone

[Paris Dakar]

jayteeto,

Mrs PD bought an Ipod from the Apple store at the Millenia Mall, FL in Feb this year and the tax was 6%.

PD

[jayteeto]

Ta, any apple store worldwide will deal with faults so its a go still at 6%

[mixture]

Can't you claim the tax back at the airport ?

[Shunter]

Agree re VPN reliability on 3G. Proper pain to have to constantly reconnect.

On jailbroken devices you can install stunnel, which allows you to connect like this:

iPad Client App -> localhost:12345 -> SSL tunnel -> server:54321 -> localhost:3389

Completely transparent, on-the-fly encryption with PKI access control (ie. only certs cut from the CA referenced by the server will be allowed to initiate an SSL connection).

The guff referenced above re Java/ActiveX is in regard to "clientless" VPNs (Citrix Access Gateway is a good example) which use a browser plugin instead of a standalone client.

[mixture]

AIUI, if you have a standard NAT router, then the only way in from the outside will be .... 1/2/3

Indeed, you are quite correct.

Re:1 ... My favourite tool of the moment for that sort of thing is TeamViewer....
Re:2 ... Agreed.
Re:3 ... I believe you're thinking about UPNP or similar

result in the app trying to do plaintext logins (pop3, ftp, htaccess, etc)

True, although most have the option to mandate encrypted comms.

If the RDP client on the Ipad can be forced to use only a VPN, that is OK, but what if not?

Two factor authentication. Then even if your "password" leaks in plaintext, it's single-use only and only valid for 60 seconds or so anyway.

VPNs are notoriously unreliable, especially on a GPRS/3G connection

Agree with you on the latter,but not the former.

Would be tempted to point out that even on the latter, it's not the VPN that's at fault but the network technology.

VPNs are great. Although you'll generally get best stability from hardware implementations rahter than software on your local machine. Boxes such as Juniper's firewalls can ping and automatically reconnect to an alternate VPN endpoint if the primary goes down with minimal downtime.

It also depends what your VPN is connected on and to. If it's a flaky, rate limited, packet shaped ADSL connection then of course you'll have issues.

Personally I'd take IPSec VPNs over SSL VPNs any day !

[mutt]

If you are looking at a 3G sim card one, they are locked to the provider, AT&T or Verizon, so another reason not to buy it.

You are correct about Verizon as they don't actually have a sim card, it's built in. AT&T Ipad's are not locked to that sim card. I have purchased 3 of them from the USA, no problems with any.

Jayteeto..... you have to ask yourself if its worth buying without a 3G connection. When you get back home you can get a PAYG sim card.

Mutt

[spannersatcx]

I stand corrected about AT & T, and no you can not claim the tax back, there are only a couple of states in the US where you can, but not Florida.

[mutt]

IOS 5

Released today (afaik). In the process of downloading it, extremely interested in seeing how iMessage works, could this be a Blackberry Message replacement?

Mutt

[MacBoero]

It was actually released as an update on the 12th, the iPhone 4S was released today (14th).

I downloaded an installed on the 12th, and thankfully didn't suffer any of the problems some people experienced with the extremely busy servers timing out. It take 3 hours to do my iPhone 4, but the iPad and the wife's iPhone 4 were a lot quicker.

Quite a nice update:
(a) I like being able to get to the camera from the lock screen, and being able to use the volume + button for the shutter. Incidentally it is possible to use the volume + button on the headset too. So some enterprising people could surely wire things up for long distance remote shutter release.
(b) Notification centre is a huge improvement. When you have a lot of apps using notifications in iOS4, having to clear down dozens of notifications before being able to use the phone for anything was a tad annoying. You couldn't go back and see what notices there were, as once they were dismissed they were gone forever.
(c) Remote syncing and backup over Wifi is great too. When I go to bed, I plug the phone in to recharge, and it looks for my Mac and starts to backup automatically. I don't have to remember to periodically connect the thing to iTunes and back it up.

There's quite a few changes in there, but I'll let people discover some for themselves.

In the meantime iOS5 will tide me over until my contract finishes and I can decide whether to go for an iPhone 4S or hold out longer for an iPhone 5.

[Paris Dakar]

jayteeto,

Though I suspect they are price-fixed by Apple - you could see if Walmart have any offers on the I-Pad when you're there? We got PD Jnr a super saving on an Acer laptop from Walmart (the one behind Medieval Times on the 192) a few years ago and when I asked about any warranty issues they said not a problem - just take it to your local Asda or contact Acer UK!

[Gomrath]

AT&T Ipad's are not locked to that sim card. I have purchased 3 of them from the USA, no problems with any.

Jayteeto..... you have to ask yourself if its worth buying without a 3G connection. When you get back home you can get a PAYG sim card.

One thing to be aware of AT&T's 3G frequency channel is not the same as the 3G channel used in the UK etc.
I have this problem when I use my BB in the UK with a local PAYG Sim - it has to step down to a lower common denominator (less speed).

Also - don't you have to declare the goods on entry to the UK as it is more than 300 pounds in value?

[mixture]

the extremely busy servers timing out

Things were quite busy yes.

The graph below is not from the download site, but from downstream somwhere in europe. See the lonely spike on the graph on the Wednesday ? That's the IOS5 downloaders doing their stuff... imagine multiplying this by X locations and you can only guess how busy Apple (or more likely Akamai) was !







(For people visiting this thread in a month's / year's etc. time, the above graph will be irrelevant as it is a weekly graph and so will have been refreshed .... so if you visit this thread after Week 41 of 2011, you won't understand what I'm on about !).

[Lord Spandex Masher]

iPad 2 + iTunes any need for a PC?

"Am I missing something?" he asked naively.

If I have iTunes downloaded onto my iPad why do I still need to use my PC to sync and update/download things - wifi or not?

[mutt]

You can download APPs directly, or magazines books music etc..... However following the release of IOS5 you can now backup your Ipad to a cloud which gets away from having to use a computer at all. A new Ipad2 will start and work without ever syncing with a PC.

Nice touch.

Mutt

[Lord Spandex Masher]

Thanks Mutt, I get that. What I don't understand is why the iTunes wifi sync needs my pc to be available. Surely if I download iTunes onto the iPad I can sync it directly? Or would that be too simple?!

[mixture]

Lord Spandex Masher,

Sounds like you're getting your spandex in a twist for no reason.

WiFi sync and iCloud are two separate things. It sounds like you're getting them confused.

My understanding (from reading stuff, have not yet had a chance to experiment) is that WiFi Sync is there simply to give you the possibility to replace the need for a USB cable. Hence it's obvious that you need iTunes on a PC to use it !

iCloud is the whole backup/download thing based in the Apple cloud, and that, by the sound of things, is what you should be looking at.

My understanding is that it is Apple's goal is to move away from the PC/Mac iTunes requirement towards a cloud model, where everything is pushed to/from a cloud. So even if what you want in terms of functionality is not available right now (considering they've only just publicly launched the cloud), it will be available reasonably soon.

[jayteeto]

Thanks for all the replies, you have been very helpful. I plan to give the 3G a miss because I can get a MiFi hub from 3mobile that will work with my laptop as well. The customs and excise website quotes a figure of £390 of other goods including perfume. The saving will only be about 40 quid, but that's better in my pocket. Apple warranties and backup are worldwide, I've already been there!!

[IO540]

The 3G version has the real GPS. That is very useful, for many people. I would not buy the non-3G Ipad.

[Bushfiva]

Location-based services on the wi-fi only model may be a bit ropey in the UK, since it has no GPS: it relies on the quality of the wifi location database for positioning. I'd probably go for the 3G version: even without putting a SIM card in to enable 3G, you still have access to the GPS features of the 3G chipset (apart from the "a" in "a-GPS").

[MacBoero]

I think the key to helping Lord Spandex Masher is to explain that iTunes on the Mac or PC is NOT the same as iTunes on the iPad. The Mac/PC iTunes can do pretty much everything the iPad iTunes can, but not vice versa.