I explained the issue to the Genius, who verified that it was a fault. I then assumed that it would be a simple case of exchanging my faulty iPad for a new one (assuming that they had one in stock). How wrong I was! The Apple Online Store and the Apple bricks and mortar stores are different companies and because I had purchased my iPad online I would have to send it back for either a refund or exchange.

I wasn’t happy with this and told the Genius that I could understand if I’d bought it from PC World or Currys as these are obviously different companies but surely Apple is Apple is Apple. I had pre-ordered the most expensive WiFi-only iPad over 2 weeks before it was available because I was told that there was no guarantee they would have them in stock in the store on the first day of sale and although Apple didn’t put the transaction onto my credit card before the items had shipped, they had my credit card details and therefore could have done so. I had re-arranged my work schedule to fit in with their (changing) delivery schedule and now I would have to be without an iPad for, well however long it took for the exchange to be completed.

I was assured that a courier would pick up my iPad free-of-charge and provide me with a new one at the same time – but what if the replacement had the same problem – or worse. The reason that I wanted to do an in-store exchange was so that I could check the iPad and if I wasn’t happy with it I could “exchange the exchange”.

He understood what I was saying and said that he’d love to be able to help but the online store and the real stores have different barcoding systems so my transaction would not be recognised on their system and therefore he couldn’t initiate an exchange.

I packed my iPad away, walked out of the store and immediately walked back in. I had the bit between my teeth and asked to see a Manager. Claire, one of the Managers, came out to see me and I repeated everything that I’d told the Genius, but this time I also added that we have a business account at The Arndale Store, hoping this might sway her. Unfortunately she couldn’t (and I say couldn’t rather than wouldn’t) authorise an exchange – but “if there’s anything I can do to help…”

So back to the car to discuss the situation with Elaine. We found the Apple Customer Support telephone number (thank goodness for the MiFi) – maybe they could authorise an exchange – but it’s an 0845 number, which is free from landlines but not the iPhone. OK…here’s what we do…go back to the store, speak to Claire again, ask to use their phone to call Customer Support and if they still won’t exchange it then I’ll buy another iPad and return faulty one at my leisure.

Back at the store, Claire was on her lunch break so we spoke to Dean, the other Manager on duty. He couldn’t have been more helpful. He listened, understood, apologised and even called Customer Support for us. This had the advantage that when he handed the phone to me, the Customer Support Representative had already been briefed by an Apple employee, which speeded up the process. Whilst I was talking to Customer Support, Dean had reserved me a 64GB WiFi iPad.

Ten minutes later it was all sorted and we walked out of the store with a new iPad (plus 2 iPad stands and a wireless keyboard). I have a returns number, the courier will contact me within a couple of days to organise picking up the faulty iPad and the money will be refunded to my credit card.

We celebrated with a cup of tea – well Elaine did. I made myself dizzy by looking at every single pixel on my new iPad.

Uh Oh – what’s this? There was a mark. It was under the screen. Not a dead pixel but definitely a faulty screen. Back to the Apple Store to exchange the exchange! Again Dean was extremely helpful. He verified that there was a problem with the screen and yet again went into the back of the store and came out with another 64GB WiFi iPad. He also told me that I was the first person to bring back an iPad purchased at the Arndale Apple Store.

Another iPad, another cup of tea! Another 10 minutes staring at the iPad screen. This one’s perfect! So we finish our drinks go home to install some apps.

Three days later UPS came to pick up the faulty iPad and Apple refunded the money back to my credit card just before the bill was made up, saving me laying out extra money.

I spent most of the morning refreshing the tracking page on the UPS website (Elaine’s had been delivered by TNT) – all I knew was that it was on a van that had left Tamwworth (about 60 miles away) at 6:30 that morning. I was running a training course in the afternoon which gave the F5 (Refresh in IE) key a break. Our training room is in a building that seems to have lead lined walls – at least that’s how it feels – I can’t get a data or phone signal on my iPhone. I had a break on my course at 2:30 and on checking my mail (my work email via Outlook) I had a mail from Elaine simply saying “it’s here”. Finally!

I already had a prior engagement on Thursday night and although I was working from home on Friday, I managed to refrain from playing with my new toy until Friday night. All was going well until I watched a video on YouTube. At the end of the video, the screen faded to black I noticed a red dot on my iPad screen. “Noooooo!! I’ve got a dead or stuck pixel.”

“It’s going back” I said. Now I know that when you buy a device with an LCD display there is an acceptable number of dead pixels – a local computer supplier has a sign in the shop that explains this, but having paid almost £600 I wanted a perfect iPad. So I logged on to the Apple website and made an appointment at the Manchester Arndale Genius Bar for the next day.

Read The Magical and Revolutionary iPad – Part 3

Fast forward three-and-a-half months to May 10th. This was the date that Apple announced the prices (though there’d been confirmed rumours for a day or so on the rumour websites and Twitter feeds) and began to take pre-orders outside the USA (the iPad went on sale in the USA on April 3rd so our friends across the pond had already had several weeks to play with theirs and make us jealous).

Apple being Apple there was no indication as to what time the prices would be announced so when I got up at 6:00 to take the dog for a walk, I had a quick check of the website – and there it was…the prices and the link to pre-order – but, unlike in the USA, there appeared to be no option to reserve and pick up from an Apple Store. A phone call to an Apple Store later that morning confirmed that to be the case, so I left it in Elaine’s capable hands to order me a 64GB WiFi model (at least I didn’t have to choose between black and white as well this time).

Why did I go for the WiFi and not the 3G? Well, I guessed that I’d be using the iPad primarily in the house, in the garden and at work. As my Twitter followers and MacBites listeners know, despite it being one of the most affluent areas in Cheshire, the area that I work in is sadly bereft of 3G (I don’t actually work in the middle of a field but from a technology point of view, it sometimes feels like it).

When I take Meyer for a walk I take my iPhone and usually listen to podcasts or music and keep up with Twitter and Facebook, read and reply to emails and surf the web. Sometimes I use dog-walking time as “thinking time” and if something comes into my head I’ll open Evernote or one of the other note-taking apps and make a note of it, and if there’s a football match on Sky, I sometimes watch that (rain permitting). I can hardly see myself holding my iPad in one hand, building a Keynote presentation or putting together a Pages document whilst being dragged around by a large Samoyed! If I do go out somewhere and need Internet access, I’ll take the MiFi with me.

On the 22nd May I received an email from Apple advising that my iPad had shipped (along with the £30 “official Apple iPad case” and the iPad Dock). However, Elaine’s status was still showing as Not Shipped, so I had to keep my excitement to myself. I’d already decided (and it’s documented in my Twitter feed) that should hers not arrive on time, I’d leave mine unopened until we both had them.

On 26th May my order showed “Shipped – delivery due 27th May”. Now this should have been greeted with cries of ecstasy, however Elaine’s was still showing as Not Shipped. I checked the credit card statement online and both transactions had gone through, so I persuaded her to check the status again – and this time it showed as “Shipped – delivery due 27th May”.

Read The Magical and Revolutionary iPad – Part 2

My first job this morning was to reconfigure my desk for my new acquisition and then take a photo of said desk…

So what is on my desk? From left to right…

• iPhone in a Dock
• iPad in a Griffin A-Frame stand. Elaine has written a review of iPad stands on her blog
• 17 inch monitor connected to Vista laptop
• Vista laptop
• 17 inch monitor connected to MacBook Pro
• A cheap USB mouse connected to the Vista laptop
• MacBook Pro
• Apple Bluetooth keyboard
• Logitech MX Revolution mouse

The plant in the background is on my colleague’s desk – with all that tech, do I look like I have room for a plant?

After the photo-shoot it was time to put the iPad to work (well you don’t think I just bought it as a toy do you?). Today I was running 4 x 1 hour training sessions “how to get the most from your Vista laptop” (OK you can all stop laughing now).

I had the names of the attendees in a spreadsheet which I copied onto the iPad. As delegates arrived, rather than ticking their names off on a piece of paper I simply marked them off in the spreadsheet, which I had opened in Numbers. I also had the training course running order and some notes on the iPad as PDF’s – of course I just “had” to refer to these notes during the sessions!

All in all, a good first day at work for the iPad. No wonder the battery was down to 20% when we got home. It’s now fully charged and ready for tomorrow!

Before starting the installation, there was some groundwork to be done. I have several virtual machines set up, each one with a different name:

“Base” contains just the Operating System
“Office 2003″ contains an installation of Office 2003
“Office 2007″ contains an installation of Office 2007

All these machines (or Images as I call them) have Windows XP installed as the Operating System. Rather than starting from scratch with a new VM, I made a copy of “Base” – my logic being that to add some realism to my presentation, most people will be upgrading – either from XP or Vista (gone are the days of the DOS prompt – unless you’re an uber-geek of course!)

For anyone who has never used Fusion, each virtual machine is represented in the OSX Finder as a single file so making a copy of a VM is as simple as copying the file. Once I had a copy of the “Base” VM, I renamed it to “Windows 7″ and opened it (in Fusion)

The Windows 7 Ultimate DVD was already in the DVD drive of my MacBook Pro and Fusion was configured to “take control” of the DVD drive. Once Windows had loaded, I opened My Computer and double clicked the DVD to begin the installation process. I worked my way through the first few screens until I was stopped dead in my tracks…

At the point that I had to select which drive and partition to install Windows 7 on, the following message appeared:

“Windows cannot be installed to this disk. Windows needs the driver for device VMware SCSI Controller. Click ‘Load Drivers’ and load the required device driver.”

I didn’t think that I had any SCSI devices on my MacBook Pro and even if there was, I had no drivers anyway. Frantic Googling of the message resulted in a link to a file on vwmare.com – http://download3.vmware.com/software/vmscsi-1.2.0.4.flp.

Tip: When I tried to download it using Safari, it opened what appeared to be a text file directly in the browser. Using Firefox resulted in a successful download.

The file vmscsi-1.2.0.4.flp is a “virtual floppy drive” file and contains the required driver.

Back to the task in hand…abort the installation and shut down Windows. The virtual machine should be powered off i.e. – not put into Suspended Mode. (Depending on your settings in the Fusion preferences, a virtual machine is either powered off or put into Suspended Mode when it is closed).

Click the Settings button on the Fusion toolbar (ensure that Fusion is not running full screen so that the toolbar is visible)

Click the Other Devices icon

Click the + sign at the bottom left and select Add Floppy…

Select the file vmscsi-1.2.0.4.flp and click Open

IMPORTANT: Ensure that the Connected checkbox is NOT checked. If it is checked, when the virtual machine boots up, it acts the same way as Windows acts when there is a real floppy disk in a real floppy drive – in other words, it tries to boot from the floppy disk. In this case the “disk” is not bootable, which results in the following screen:

I think I pressed “any key” a few times after which I then restarted the virtual machine (actually this was the second time that I restarted the virtual machine – the first time resulted in the NTLDR is missing message – which is how I realised that the Connected checkbox should not be checked at this point.

Once the VM has been restarted and Windows XP has loaded, the floppy disk needed to be connected. As before, click the Settings button on the Fusion toolbar, click the Other Devices icon, highlight Floppy in the list of devices and tick the Connected checkbox.

Even though there is a message indicating that the settings cannot be changed until the virtual machine is switched off, the floppy drive is connected without the need to power off so the Settings dialog box can be closed.

At this point the VM was ready for Windows 7 to be installed. The Windows 7 Ultimate DVD was still in the DVD drive of my MacBook Pro so I opened My Computer and double clicked the DVD to begin the installation process. Again I worked my way through the first few screens. When I got to the point where I had to select the location of SCSI Controller driver, I clicked Browse and selected the A:\ drive. Windows duly found the Controller and the installation continued.

40 minutes later I had successfully installed Windows 7 on my MacBook Pro.

The next problem came when I tried to activate Windows as I found that I had no Internet connection. Fusion was configured correctly (to use NAT):

However, the Windows 7 Device Manager indicated a problem with the Ethernet Controller:

I found the solution here. In a nutshell…

With the VM shut down, open Finder and find the actual virtual machine file (the .vmwarem file). Right click on it and select Show Package Contents. Inside the Package, find the file with a .vmx extension and open it in a text editor. Add this line

“ethernet0.virtualDEV = “e1000″ (without the quotes)

I added it at the end of the file

I restarted Windows and hey presto, I had a working network adapter and an Internet connection.

I solved this problem by creating a very simple script and then using iCal to schedule it. To do this I created a new calendar called “Scripts” and created a recurring event to run at 11:00 every night. I set the Alarm to “Run Script” and selected the name of the script to run. This worked like a dream.

However, I have recently been beta-testing (and will be using once it is released) a new app called BusyCal from BusyMac. In a nutshell, BusyCal is like iCal (in fact it uses the same data) but it allows you to share calendars over a LAN plus it has loads of other cool features.

One thing that BusyCal doesn’t have is the ability to have a script run as an alarm (though there is a workaround – save the script as an app and use the “Open File” option when setting an alarm). Not a show-stopper by any means but it meant that I either had to use the workaround (as supplied by the guys at BusyMac) or find an alternative…

Script Timer X lets you schedule the execution of AppleScript, perl, and shell scripts, as well as Automator workflows and applications. Scheduling options include specific times of the day, week, month, or year, regular intervals ranging from one second to any number of weeks, when the computer enters or leaves an idle state, just before the computer goes to sleep or just after it wakes up, when you log into or out of your account, and when a specified application launches or quits. The application ships with several sample scripts – including one for scheduling the downloading of subscribed podcasts into iTunes.
You can download a fully functional 30-day trial of Script Timer X from http://www.appsandmore.com. If you want to keep using the app after 30 days, it’ll cost you just $12

This comes in very handy when copying/moving a large amount of files between folders or drives, or if you simply want to compare the contents of 2 folders side by side. Yes, I know that you can open multiple Finder windows using the CMD key, but you end up with multiple windows scattered around the screen, whilst with Forklift, everything is inside the application’s interface.

Sidebar

In addition to the dual-pane view (note: you can switch to single pane view by using a command on the View menu), as you can see from the screenshot above, the Sidebar is also configurable. The Favorites section provides quick access to files, folders, servers and even FTP connections (in addition to it’s powerful file management features, Forklift will also connect to any remote FTP, SFTP, Amazon S3 or WebDav server). To add a file or folder to the Favorites, you just drag and drop it to the Favorites section of the Sidebar. To add a connection, you tick the Add to Favorites box when creating the connection.

In the Favorites section you can create Groups for better organisation. I have created two groups – “Regular Stuff” which holds shortcuts to my Home Finance spreadsheets and Backup Definitions and “Television”. I am currently converting a mass of EyeTV programmes to iPhone format (using my Elgato H264) so I have created shortcuts to the various folders used in the conversion workflow process.

Copy and Move Files

To copy or move files/folders from one folder to another, ensure that the files/folders to be copied are displayed in one pane and the destination folder is in the other pane. With the source files/folders selected, either drag and drop to the other pane or click the “Copy to” or “Move to” button on the toolbar (if you are using drag and drop between folders on the same drive, the files are moved – unless you hold the Option key down – in which case, the items are copied).

Deleting Applications

Forklift can be used to remove an application from your Mac – not just the .app file but also any other associated files (such as plist files). Navigate to the Applications folder, click on the appropriate application and click the Delete App button. Forklift will display a list of all the files that belong to the selected application. Select the file(s) to be deleted and click “Move to Trash”. I have used this feature in several situations:

• To delete an application (I do have AppZapper) but if Forklift is running, it saves me running another application.
• To delete an application’s plist file (where an application has stopped working and the suggested fix is to delete the plist file).
• To find the location of a plist file (in this instance, I wanted to copy the Forklift Toolbar and Sidebar customisations from my iMac to my MacBook. The information is stored in the plist file so I had to locate the file to copy it to the MacBook).

Batch Rename

The Batch Rename tool allows you to rename a large number of files at once. You can replace a string of characters in filenames, add text to a specified position in filenames, add metadata (file creation date, owner, etc) to a specified position in filenames, generate a numbered sequence at a specified position in filenames and change upper/lower case of characters in filenames.

Folder Synchronization

Folder synchronization will compare (and then synchronize) the contents of two folders. However, synchronization in ForkLift works in one direction, meaning that you have a source folder, from where you copy items, and a target folder, where you want to copy your new files.

Set up your panes so that the source folder appears in one pane and the target folder is displayed in the other pane. Ensure that the Source pane is active (click anywhere in the pane) and then click the “Sync to” button. You can set a number of options before carrying out the sync operation. Forklift can sync any two folders, should they be located on your local machine, your local network shares, an FTP/SFTP or WebDAV storage, or Amazon S3 account.

Remote Connections

With Forklift you can connect to any remote FTP, SFTP, Amazon S3 or WebDav server. Once you have configured a connection, you can add it to the Favorites in the Sidebar so that connecting is only a double-click away. The FXP Copy command (found on the Tools menu) allows you to copy a file from a folder on a remote server directly to another folder on another rremote server (i.e. – you don’t have to download the file to your Mac first and then upload it to the other server).

Split and Combine

Suppose that you have a 2GB file that you need to burn onto CD’s. Using Forklift you can split the file into smaller fragments. The Split command allows you to define the size of the files – you can either set a custom size or select from one of the pre-sets (which includes CD and DVD). The Combine command will recombine the fragmented file back into a single file so that it can be used.

Learn More

There are other features that I’ve not been able to cover in this review – the ability to flip panes, clone panes, display invisible items (that’s something that Finder cannot do). The best way to learn about the power of Forklift is to try it for yourself. Download a trial from the Binarynights website. If you want to buy it, it costs just $19.95.

Email ‘n Walk, a recently-released app for the iPhone, caught my attention the other day. It works by overlaying an email composition screen on top of the view from the iPhone’s camera. By pointing the iPhone towards the ground, I can type out an email and make sure that I don’t trip over any errant objects or step into any doggie-poop (not my doggie’s poop BTW). When you’ve finished composing the email, click send to open up a proper email window in Mail, select the recipient and send it.

What I need now is Twitter ‘n Walk – maybe that will stop me being attacked by overhanging branches!

The app was free when I got it but it now costs 59p from the iTunes App Store.

My most commonly used apps are on the first screen and these are featured below…

3 Twitter clients – Twitterific, Twinkle and Tweetie. I’ve listed them in that order because that’s the order of installation. Tweetie is the one I currently use – why? No idea – I suppose because it’s the most recently installed one. Each time I install a client, that becomes my “No 1 choice”. However the others remain as alternatives. I had a problem with Tweetie and Twitpic recently (any photo I uploaded to Twitpic from Tweetie would not display – instead it displayed a [?]) so I used Twinkle for uploading posts with photos (however, I’ve now reconfigured Tweetie to use yFrog and it seems OK). I’ve just been having a play with the latest version of Twitterific and I must say that I’m impressed.

MobileLinked – a multi-services instant messenger, which supports MSN (Windows Live Messenger), Yahoo IM, AIM, Google Talk and Jabber.

AudioBoo – a tool for audio blogging. You can record up to 5 minutes of audio and publish the recording to a timeline on the AudioBoo website, complete with your GPS co-ordinates and a photo. There’s even the option to have AudioBoo auto-tweet – so when you publish a recording it also adds it to your Twitter timeline.

Facebook – an app for accessing Facebook.

Evernote – an iPhone client for Evernote.

SplashShopper – a shopping list manager. More information available on the Splashdata website

iTalk – an audio recording app. This is different to AudioBoo in that you don’t upload your recordings – but you can use iTalk Sync (which is free) – a program that runs on your computer (PC or Mac) to enable you to transfer your recordings from your iPhone via Wi-Fi. Your recordings are saved as AIFF files. There are 2 versions of iTalk – a free, ad-supported one and a Premium (ad-free) version for $4.99.

So what other apps do I have? Well I’ll save that for another blog post.

Once the download had completed, I fired it up in iTunes to see the following message:

“What’s this all about?” I thought, having already enterd my password before downloading. So I clicked the Open iTunes button and this message appeared:

After waiting patiently for 5 minutes the message disappeared and I thought that I was home and dry. However, when I click Play all I see is a grey box where the video should be playing. Oh well, maybe I’ll have better luck with free download number 2 tomorrow.

Update: I left it 15 minutes and tried again. This time the following message appeared:

I’m using iTunes 8!