Headworx

My ups and downs with the iPad Pro continue. The experience is far from smooth mainly because I'm having trouble getting adjusted to Apple's philosophy and the restrictions of iOS and iOS Apps. One of the reasons why I selected the Pro has been the screen. I knew it would be the best tablet screen money could buy and I wanted the best screen for portable photo viewing. Photos are also the reason I opted for the 128GB version - to have them loaded on the device and accessible all the time, especially on the road when Internet connections are neither fast nor stable. I was entirely surprised when I learned it was not possible to load photos on the iPad. Of course there are dozen or so apps dedicated to photos on an iPad. But none works offline with full resolution. They either require a cloud service available online when viewing or cache photos, but at reduced resolution. Suffice to say Apple's default way of transferring photos has not changed since the first photo capa...

Z-Wave has just announced an optional improvement patching the most severe security hole: the initial key exchange and initial device authentication. This move clearly shows Z-Wave wants to fight for survival and the chances are it will survive in residential implementations for some time. Mainly due to variety of products and backward compatibility. Which by the way makes the new security improvement weaker than it sounds. Yes my new, Z-Wave S2-enabled door lock may now be securely included in the network, but the moment I bring an older Z-Wave device, it may leak the network key during the inclusion process. This is the problem with security: making one door more secure does not increase the security of a house, as long as there are other doors and windows. And securing all of them is not possible, because, in Z-Wave's case, the products are not in-field upgradable. In-field software upgrade is the most wanted, the most praised and the least practiced IoT feature. Because ...

I'm writing this on a delayed UA99 flight from Melbourne to Los Angeles. The reason for the delay is the faulty A/C unit. The situation was nicely explained by the captain: "The Dreamliner is a fantastic plane but is fully computerized and sometimes computers report some errors and the usual way we deal with them is reboot. Sometimes it takes a couple of reboots and for some subsystems we are not allowed to reboot them once airborne. The unit is working fine now but we may have to turn off the entertainment system on the way, if the cabin temperature raises.". Yeah. Reboot. The new normal. The old joke of a developer fixing a broken car by getting out and getting in again is no longer a joke. Out / in has become the normal way to deal with things. From phones to planes. And chances are this system will soon cover door locks, lamps, kitchen white goods and other everyday equipment - thanks to the IoT. Only yesterday there was a discussion between on of our developmen...

I haven't bought an Apple product for years. The last one was the iPad 1, so you have it... it was a long time ago. The 64GB iPad 1 , 6 years back. I've been always thinking about larger display sizes... So here comes the iPad Pro A.D. 2015. It is a very mixed bag of feelings. Overall it is a great piece of hardware. The display is top-notch (although it would be even better if it was AMOLED not LCD, but hey...). It has a lot of horsepower too. Very snappy. It weighs the same as my 1st gen iPad. Which is reasonable. Many ask "what would I use the Pro for?". So here are my hints. It works very well as a secondary USB display when connected to my Windows-10 Lenovo Yoga. I love big screens and lots of screen real estate. The iPad pro helps here while traveling. It is my second monitor (thanks to the TwoMon App ). It is also the greatest reader for PDF and Microsoft Word documents, I've ever had. Successfully replacing my old Kindle DX that I will be retiring now....