This post will detail how Apple replaced my scratched iPad 2 screen free of charge.
I recently took delivery of a new iPad 2 and have been having lots of fun with it. So much fun, that somehow, I managed to scratch the screen. Nightmare! A google search for “how to fix a scratched iPad screen” or “scratched iPad screen” revealed some home made fixes, none of which I was prepared to try on such a new device. The google searches also revealed that scratches aren’t covered under warranty, so how did I fix my scratched iPad?
After much thought I decided that I had to speak to Apple to see if they had any suggestions. This involved a trip to the Apple Genius Bar (If you have never been to the Genius Bar before, it really is a treat). Apple does not call these guys geniuses for nothing, they are well trained in customer service and are very knowledgeable on Apple products.
I was met by a Genius who quickly identified the scratch and sympathised with me. I explained that I didn’t know what happened (I honestly don’t, I can only suspect that it occurred while I cleaned the screen) and that I always try to take care of my gadgets. After some consideration the genius offered to repair the iPad under warranty for free. This was a fantastic piece of customer service. There I was, a disgruntled Apple customer who honestly thought he had bought a lemon, but now, Apple have demonstrated quality customer service and have restored my faith in Apple products.
[As a side note, Apple would have charged me £199 (including VAT) to repair the screen.]
So there you have it, if you have a problem with any Apple product, make sure you speak to Apple or visit the Genius Bar as they will offer you advice and may even repair it for free!
Screen Protector
After taking delivery of my replacement iPad 2 I decided that I needed the security of a screen protector. Call me paranoid, but after my first iPad 2 got scratched so easily, I just had to have an extra layer of protection, so I ordered one from Ebay. It was easily fitted and does not make the screen any less bright or usable, but it does make the iPad slightly less attractive to look at!
I ordered an iPad when Apple had their Black Friday sale and to be honest I was not sure I really needed it or would actually like it. Remember that I ditched the iPhone for Android!
First impressions of the iPad were not good. It’s heavy and the aluminium back make it cold to touch and without a case it can on occasion dig into your hands and give the impression of being sharp. However, these initial thoughts on the iPad’s form factor was quickly squashed after using the device.
I have a 10″ netbook which I have enjoyed using for two years. While it is a pain with some tasks, overall it has been £250 well spent and continues to serve a purpose today. How then can a £390 10″ iPad compete with that?
To put it simply, it not only competes with, but out muscles the netbook on many levels. I have never been so taken with a device, even my first iPhone was not as compelling as this iPad.
After un-boxing, which is always a joy with Apple products, I fully charged the iPad and after a couple of hours synced it with iTunes and got all my apps (that I had previously used on my iPhone) on to the device.
Now I faced a dilema: I would now have two portable devices running similar (if not the same) apps, therefore did I really need the iPad?
Quick answer: YES! Immediately the device becomes second nature.
If I want to read the news headlines at breakfast, I reach for the iPad;
If I want to check twitter, I reach for the iPad;
If I want to check email, I reach for the iPad;
When I want to draft a blog post, I reach for the iPad;
I’ve got meetings at work, I load up the iPad with the relevant documents;
If I want to make edits or touch up photos, yes you guessed it, I reach for the iPad.
So what makes the iPad so compelling?
The battery life is just awesome . It seems to last for days.
Instant on. Just like your iPod, this thing is just in standby and as soon as you unlock the screen you’re good to go.
Screen. While not the retina display seen on the iPhone 4, the current iPad screen is still really good. NB not good in bright sunshine, but that’s not an issue for me in Belfast!
The speakers are surprisingly good e.g. handy for the bathroom or listening to in the holiday apartment.
Built-in microphone. Seriously, skype has never been so easy. You can even do one way video.
Apps – the app ecosystem on iOS is really good and there are plenty of good apps that utilise the iPad’s full potential e.g. flipboard, filterstorm2.
I could really go on and on, but this is a mini review and after the above the iPad comes into its own when you discuss individual apps, which I plan to do at a later date.
Would I recommend one? Absolutely, but I’d wait until the next generation which should be announced in the next couple of months. Also keep in mind that Android 3.0 has been announced which looks to be a really cool tablet operating system and will give the iPad a run for its money.
I recently added an Airport Express Base Station to my wireless network at home, with the primary aim of streaming music to the Hi-Fi in the kitchen, but I experienced mixed results.
My set-up comprises the following: Mac Mini and a Linksys WRT54GC
The initial set-up was complicated by the inclusion of an install cd and instruction booklet which as it turned out was only required by windows users. Instead of reading the instructions (as I did), all I needed to do was plug it in and activate multiple speakers in iTunes! Once this step was completed the Mac took over and automatically set-up AirTunes. I was able to hear immediate results and I was impressed by the sound quality.
However, music playback would stutter repeatedly to the point that I was beginning to think I had made a mistake in purchasing the router. I resorted to google. A quick search posed more questions and quickly pointed me to advanced settings in the airport utility where I was able to manually configure the router.
While the problem eased it wasn’t resolved, further investigation returned many users complaining about something called IPV6. This post: solved all of my problems using the following steps.
1. Open System Preferences
2. Open Network pane
3. Select Airport in the left list
4. Click the Advanced button
5. Go to the TCP/IP tab
6. Set the “Configure IPv6″ field to Off.
7. Click “OK”
8. Click “Apply”
9. Let iTunes connect to you’re Airtunes speakers
During the process of trial and error I came across a wifi utility called inSSider. This programme (windows only) scans your locality for other wifi users and provides detailed information like which channel they are using and if it’s likely they are causing interference on your network. I found another network using the same channel as me (6) so I therefore switched channels (11).
AirTunes is now working flawlessly and I am able to listen to my iTunes library throughout my house.
Before I start, I’d like to point out that this review reflects my own experience after 2 months use and is probably likely to start some serious debate!
First impressions:
Well you can’t argue with Apple for their design. It really is a thing of beauty. I was sceptical about its size, but I’ll get by. I was really pleased with the device after the first hour of playing with it, it was very easy to use.
9/10
Phone:
Strange to have a category titled phone, but you need that for ‘smart’ phones. It can be a bit fiddly to call people, but generally easy to use and call clarity seems to be good. I’ve not had any complaints. The speaker phone is so good that I’ve yet to pair my bluetooth headset to the iPhone. One thing to be careful about is placing your hand over the mic! As you’d expect from a mobile these days, phone calls sound clear and the iPhone is no different.
8/10
Texting:
This is where the iPhone starts to show signs of weakness. Read other reviews and they’ll highlight the sms threading. Big deal, other phones have had that in the past, including my Nokia’s (once you downloaded the app from Nokia) but the iPhone is a very limited text machine. I would not recommend one for those of you who send hundreds of texts per month.
For starters, there is no horizontal view on the sms app, therefore typing is made more difficult given that the qwerty keyboard looks squashed in comparison to typing in safari. If you want to save a text for later, lets say a booking reference or directions, you’re stuffed. Well, ok you don’t have to delete it, but finding it will be difficult. For example, if you text your best mate loads (over 100) these texts will be displayed in order, first being at the top, most recent at the bottom. Let’s say your mate said “meet me at 101 Nokia Street” at message 32, you will have to scroll all the way through your conversation to find that address. There is no way to delete parts of a conversation and no way to archive certain messages either. You cannot move texts to another folder.
OH AND YOU CAN’T FORWARD A TEXT EITHER, WTF???
Sorry, but this whole “email is better” mentality sucks. Texting is useful and most of us send more texts per month than emails. I personally send about 10 times as many, and I’m not a big texter. The iPhone’s SMS app needs an overhaul. It is just too basic. Yes it looks nice, but function would be better in this case. The option to have drafts, save messages, have templates etc are all missing. Oh, and don’t get me started on the lack of cut and paste.
3/10
Email
As poor at communicating via SMS as the iPhone is, the mail.app more than makes up for. I for one will certainly be emailing my friends more often, I have set up gmail to forward to mobile me, therefore I am getting push email. This works well. One gripe about the mail.app is that I can’t seem to save files anywhere. For example, I send myself an email containing a text file, sure I can read it, but where do I save it to? Oh that’s right, I can move it to a folder in mail. On the N95 I had a folder called ‘docs’ where `I simply placed files into for viewing at a later date.
Creating new emails are a breeze, but yet again there is no horizontal keyboard, making typing that little bit harder.
If you get pictures emailed to you, you can with save these to your ‘camera roll’. In other words, open up the photo app and your pics will be saved there. Why is there not a similar process for documents and pdf’s?
The mail.app still scores highly and is only really let down by Apples insistence on restricting access to the file structure.
8/10
Ipod
The dogs dangly bits!
Quite simply the best ipod I have. Sound quality is decent, certainly better than my first gen nano and on a par with my 4th gen ipod. Coverflow scrolling access to albums, itunes music store in your pocket and widescreen video make this an appealing purchase in itself. I would like to be able to delete podcasts on the move and download new podcasts on the handset, but I will get by. It just means that when I’m away from the house I have to stream the .mp3.
The genius playlist generator also promises a lot. Basically, say goodbye to the shuffle mode as genius will listen to a song of your choice and then generate a playlist from the songs in your library. Simple.
Pretty much flawless.
10/10
Safari
Or the internet to the rest of us! For me, this make this device and that says a lot, as safari is as stable as the tenure of most premier league managers i.e. not stable at all.
It is simply, the best mobile phone internet browsing experience around. More or less like using your desktop.
Some of the gripes I have are firstly the stability. A quick google search reveals I’m not alone here. It is suggested that it’s memory leakage, so should be addressed by a firmware update. (or not!) Secondly, the bookmarks. Can you move a bookmark into a folder? I can’t figure this out, so please tell me! The only way I’ve been able to do it, is by doing it on the desktop first and then using mobile me to sync the changes. Why is this so hard?
No flash. OK, I suppose I’m hoping here, but on sites like the bbc news and sport site you miss out on a lot. Plus these sites scroll quite slowly, and I bet it’s because they have flash and the safari browser doesn’t perform well on those sorts of sites.
How do you save files? e.g. download and save an mp3 file or a text file or a pdf? The only way is to jailbreak your iPhone.
Despite the niggles, this is still the best mobile browser on any handset.
9/10
Camera
I debated whether or not to include this in the review as it’s not really a camera, but rather what a digital camera was 10 years ago. Having said that, a camera is of no real benefit to me and I will probably never use it.
Why?
It’s pants, can’t send MMS, so attaching a pic and emailing it to my mate who doesn’t have email access is pointless. There’s no spontaneity.
There is no video recording.
Now I know I don’t really use camera phones, but they do come in useful once a month, but alas, poor iPhone will be staying in the pocket next time my mate is so drunk that he starts singing!
I’m going to give them 1/10, purely because they did bother to put one in, but as it’s so bad they should get a negative. This is a prime example of how new Apple are to the cell phone business. When rivals are pushing 5, 6, 7 and now 8 megapixles, Apple have 2, no flash, no video recording, no optical zoom, can you edit photos on the iPhone? I’m going to assume no as I’ve been afraid to look.
In case you forgot:
1/10
The app store:
Imagine a place where you could go and buy applications that have been written specifically for your device. Oh wait, this has already been done.
Yes, much has been written about the app store, yes it’s good, but come on, I’ve been buying apps for Nokia’s for years now, and god knows how long people have been buying apps for windows mobile devices.
That said, the app store is a welcome addition, especially to those early adopters who bought the original iphone.
The app store itself, works reasonably well. You can buy through itunes on your computer or over wifi on the handset. It is well priced, with a lot of useful apps available free. There are plenty of games available and Sega have said the iPhone is as powerful as their dreamcast, so expect loads of quality games over the next 12 months.
7/10 – because it’s a software shop and that is surely hard to get excited about?
Games
As Steve said at the ‘Let’s Rock’ e
vent, the iphone and ipod touch are great gaming devices, and he’s not wrong! Plenty of free games in the app store such as Labyrinth, Aurora Feint, Brain Tuner, but also some great paid for games such as Crash Bandicoot and Spore.
Some of these games make use of the iPhones accelerometer and this truly is a unique experience.
7/10
OS stability
Well, to be honest I’m getting crashes, not to the same extent the N95 crashed, but still not as stable as I’d like. Safari crashed regularly and some of the apps I’ve downloaded from the famous app store crash, although the 2.1. update seems to have resolved some of these. Over all, I think it’ll be a few firmware releases down the road until we really see the best of 2.X
Other:
It’s not really a smartphone or PDA or whatever you want to call it. It’s an iPhone which to me means that’s it’s a communications and entertainment device. I’m not sure the business market will take to it like they have to the blackberry. Can you edit MS office docs?
O2:
Is it really fair to have such a device tethered to such a poor network? Let me think about this. I’ve turned 3g off as it was not working! 2g edge is ok and I do get coverage everywhere, not edge or 3g but at least I can make and receive calls, but coming from three, this just isn’t good enough.
I don’t really want to talk about O2 in this review, but as it’s the only network you can get an iPhone on, I suppose it’s worth a mention.
So that’s about all I can muster on this early sunday morning, If there is something you disagree with, please post, I’ll not get offended. If there is something factually wrong, I’ll be delighted to learn what it is, I am after all a novice to the iPhone.
This Friday (11th of July 2008) sees the arrival of Apple’s latest attempt to dominate the cell phone market. Will I be getting one? Yes I will, and here’s why. First up, my N95 is feeling very tired and to be honest as good and all as it is, there are too many bugs in it for me. Perhaps that’s because I demand it to do so many things, but hey, that’s what I want.
Secondly, iphone 2.0 software looks to be great and with the dawn of the App store, the iphone will have many cool apps and will probably rock as a gaming device too. So what’s in store come Friday? Well, apart from GPS and 3g, not a lot on the hardware side. The O2 tariffs look reasonable as well, certainly compared to my 12 month old three tariff. As an example, for £35 per month you 600 minutes and 500 sms coupled with unlimited data and free wifi use at The Cloud and BT Openzone hotposts.
Accessory wise, we are still awaiting new product releases, but expect to see cases, docks and screen protectors galore. I’m not sure I will be in a rush to get any of these though, Apple products are usually pretty robust.
I’ll post a review after I’ve had time to play, that’s assuming I manage to pick one up!
This post will detail how Apple replaced my scratched iPad 2 screen free of charge.