For anyone who wasn't paying attention, Apple finally announced its fabled tablet device today - the somewhat unfortunately named "iPad". If you don't believe me, do a quick Twitter search for #iPad, and prepare yourself for the onslaught of bad jokes and puns.

I have to say that, while I'm at least marginally interested in everything Apple does, I wasn't that excited about the tablet. All rumours indicated a big iPhone with an equally big price tag. The interest I did have was somewhat tempered by my equal-or-greater fear of another "revolutionary" gadget requiring me to sell my soul to a carrier for three years.

All in all, there weren't a whole lot of surprises from Apple today.
The Apple rumour machine proved itself fairly accurate: Steve & Co. essentially brought us a 10-inch iPod Touch, with a few notable tweaks, including the new iBook store, and some seriously prettified menus. The biggest surprise of the day was the price point- Long expected to start in the $1000 range, the base model of the iPad (16GB, WiFi only) was announced at just USD$499, putting it pretty close to the land of netbooks and e-Readers (As I write this, I'm still feeling rather relieved that I didn't splurge on that Kindle DX). Folks, this is the couch potato's Mac.

Disappointments? Apparently a fair number of people were anticipating a camera on that shiny new iPad. Personally, I don't think it's essential. That said, MY main complaint is the lack of non-iPad announcements today! I was expecting iPhone 4.0! And maybe some shiny new Macbook Pros! And where's my multitasking?! Still, none of this makes me any less inclined to run, not walk to my nearest Apple Store and give my $499 to the nearest hipster in a coloured shirt. I'm not sure I would use the word "magical" (with any degree of seriousness) to describe a piece of hardware, but Steve Jobs wants to know whether we think there's a space between our iPhones and our laptops for yet another kind of computer. I think there is - But I guess we'll have to wait until April to know for sure.

Earlier this summer, Adobe started letting users in to test their new BrowserLab web application. I was pretty excited to see what Adobe could come up with (I've really enjoyed some of their other web-based applications, like Kuler...), and particularly interested to see what kind of integration they could offer with their existing products, in particular, Dreamweaver, which happens to be my editor of choice.

After a little poking around, it seems like BrowserLab is pretty darned easy to use:

1. 1. Address Bar: Type in the address of the website you want to test.
2. 2. Browser Sets: BrowserLab lets you create and edit "sets" of browsers, and switch between them easily, and the list of available browsers is pretty vast. Choose between Firefox 2 and 3 on XP or OSX, IE6, 7 and 8 on XP, and Safari 3 and 4 on OSX. It would be nice to see Opera and Chrome in here for the sake of completeness, but really, the available list has you covered for most of your basic cross-browser testing needs.
3. 3. Views: This is probably my favourite feature. BrowserLab gives you the option to choose from 1-Up, 2-Up, and Onion Skin views. While 1-Up and 2-Up are pretty much exactly what they sound like, I thought that the "Onion Skin" option, which overlays all of your screenshots transparently on top of one another, was pretty innovative, as well as useful for tackling those smaller issues that wouldn't necessarily be obvious in a side by side view.
4. 4. Delay: Basically this option lets you specify how long BrowserLab should wait before taking the screenshot of the web page you requested. Adobe's website FAQ says that you might find the feature useful if you only want to take a screenshot after an animation completes, or something similar. So far, I haven't had an occasion to use it, so I guess it's up to you to determine how useful it is.

Finally, for those of you looking for tight integration with your CS4 applications, there are a couple of Dreamweaver extensions available (Get them here). Unfortunately, anyone using a Mac, and who has also upgraded recently to Snow Leopard, will be out of luck for now. I was unable to install the extensions, and a quick pass through the BrowserLab FAQ informed me that Adobe currently does not recommend installing the Dreamweaver extensions if you're running 10.6. I'm fairly disappointed about this since Dreamweaver integration was one of the main selling points for me.

My verdict:

I still think BrowserLab is a really useful product at an especially attractive price (free, so far). It seems pretty similar to Litmus, and would probably be an excellent option for Litmus users who need more flexibility than the free membership offers (50 tests/month and only two browser options), but don't want to shell out for the premium memberships (which range from USD$24 for a day pass to USD$199 for a monthly "team" membership).

That said, BrowserLab is really only useful for checking out how things look across browsers. Anyone who who needs to check how things work will still need to check sites on another computer, or using some kind of virtual machine. I will definitely use BrowserLab to check for HTML and CSS consistency on the fly (and especially if Adobe can get those Dreamweaver extensions working in 10.6), but for the heavy lifing, I'll still have to trust Parallels!

Some links -

Check out BrowserLab, or signup for an account:
http://browserlab.adobe.com/

Instructions for updating the Adobe Extension Manager, and installing Dreamweaver extensions:
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/BrowserLab/

Yesterday during my morning commute, my iPhone froze.  While that simple fact wasn’t really alarming (electronics do wierd things all the time, right?), what positively terrified me was that none of the troubleshooting tricks in my arsenal were working.

To recap:
1. I tried to force-quit the app.  It didn’t work.
2. I tried to power down the phone.  It didn’t work.
3. I tried to perform a reset.  It sort of worked, I got the white apple logo.   Then the phone started looping endlessly through the startup sequence.
4. I arrived at the office, figuring I could restore from my desktop machine.  This didn’t work either, since iTunes couldn’t even see my phone.
5. I looked up a troubleshooting guide on the internet, and followed the instructions to get into recovery mode.  This also didn’t work (although as I found out later, these instructions were wrong).

Finally, at a complete loss as to what I should do, I got online, and made an appointment at my local Genius Bar.

I arrived at the Apple Store a few minutes before my appointment, and waited on a bench for the next available Genius.  I didn’t have to wait long.  I explained to him what had happened, and he informed me that, before proceeding any further, he needed to check the unit to see whether it had been exposed to any liquid.

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I have something to confess:  four months ago, I dropped my iPhone in a toilet.  (It was an accident, and I’m sorry, I swear!)  At the time, I thought it was dead forever, but I wrapped it in a towel, put it on my baseboard heater, and spent a harrowing couple of days trying to decide whether or not I should shell out the 6 or 7 hundred dollars to replace it.  Miraculously, when I tried  to turn on the phone, it worked.  I haven’t had a single problem since.  

I’ve heard from various sources that it can take some time for the effects of water damage to become apparent, but four months?   It seemed to me that the problem could be related to some apps I had downloaded immediately before falling asleep the previous night.  Worth investigating at least.

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I mentioned this to my Genius, but, having confirmed that the unit had gotten wet at some point, he told me there was absolutely nothing he could do, that my phone would never work again, and that I would have to replace it, at full cost, through Rogers. The whole process took less than ten minutes. He didn’t event try to turn it on.

Let me be clear: I knew my warranty was void. I knew there was a water sensor, and I knew that it would be checked.  I didn’t think I was going to “get away”  with anything, and I didn’t expect a magical free iPhone.   

What I did expect was some decent customer service, and at least a cursory run-through of some basic troubleshooting techniques, just in case I had missed something.  This is, after all, a device that retails for hundreds of dollars.  Instead, I got a nonchalant  “sorry, go buy a new one”.

Not to be deterred, I returned to the office. After a bit of Googling, I found some slightly different instructions for forcing recovery mode, and decided to try them, just in case I had been doing it incorrectly before.  This time, I was able to get iTunes to recognize my phone, and restore it to factory settings.  I used a backup from my desktop to restore most of my data, and my phone is working fine now.  This took all of 30 minutes, and probably would have taken a “Genius” even less, since - in theory, at least - he already knew how.

What bothers me the most is that, while I have a general knowledge of how to troubleshoot my own devices, many iPhone users don’t, and would have gone out and bought an unnecessary replacement phone on the store employee’s say-so.  I’ve been a loyal mac user for almost ten years (and all of my adult life), and while I have always received above-average service from Apple in the past, this was a completely unacceptable experience.

My advice?  If you have even some basic computer skills, cover all the bases yourself before turning to a so-called Genius.  It’s clear that you cannot count on the Apple Store or its employees to help you in your time of need.  I’ve posted some resources below.



Have a jammed-up iPhone of your own?  Here’s a link to Apple’s DIY troubleshooting guide:
http://www.apple.com/ca/support/iphone/troubleshooting/phone/

...and if all else fails, here’s how to get your iPhone into recovery mode (you’d better have a backup of your data, because this will erase everything):
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19512_7-10115074-233.html