I’ve struggled with this in the past, usually getting the quantity of water/stock/time/heat just right. Last night I tried this recipe from Delia Smith and it worked flawlessly. Here’s exactly what I did:

1. soak 275ml of Basmati rice for 1/2 hr in a few changes of water (Delia says this is not necessary)
2. grind 2 cardamon pods, 3/4 tsp cumin seeds, 1/2tsp coriander seeds
3. using a large frying pan with a lid, toast the spices for 1 min over a high heat
4. reduce heat, add 1tbsp groundnut oil and one small finely chopped onion, fry for 3 min
5. add rice to pan and toss to cover the rice in the oil
6. add one pint of boiling water with one chicken stock cube dissolved in it (supposed to make 3/4 of a pint, so it’s weak stock)
7. add one bay leaf and a 1 inch piece of cinnamon stick
8. stir the rice just once, gently
9. put the lid on (I wrapped it in a teatowel for a tight fit) and put on your smallest hob on the lowest heat
10. after 15 min, all the liquid was absorbed (40min for brown rice says Delia)
11. it’ll keep with the lid on like that for a while
12. before serving, fluff the grains with a fork

Delia says this serves “four to six”. I say it serves three, maybe four, because I am fat. It could probably use some saffron or yellow food colouring for cosmetic purposes, but it tasted very nice. Compared to what I did in the past, using a broad frying pan and not stirring it were probably the reasons this came out better.

Food, Games

Steve has sent me word of another horrible/ingenious bacon related recipe: bacon caramel.

Essentially: make caramel, fry bacon until crisp, mix into liquid caramel with some roasted almonds, and leave to set. The question of “why would you do this” I leave to a higher power.

Bacon, Food

As I half suspected might happen, some clever people have torn the developer’s beta of the v3.0 iPhone OS to bits looking for clues as to upcoming Apple Stuff. And assuming Apple aren’t just putting this in there to yank our chains, they’ve found something pretty cool.

One of the files inside the ROM image itself is a file which holds USB configuration information for all the different models that firmware supports. For a long time, this file had four entries:

iPhone1,1  – 0×1290 (the first gen iPhone)
iPod1,1 – 0×1291 (the first gen iPod Touch)
iPhone1,2 – 0×1292 (the iPhone 3G)
iPod2,1 – 0×1293 (the second gen iPod Touch)

Note the strictly sequential ID attached to each model. V2.2 of the iPhone software brought a new one:

iPhone2,1 – 0×1294

and as I mentioned in my previous article, this ties into some evidence from an analytics firm dating back to Oct 2008 that it may be a prototype of a third iPhone model.

In the new v3.0 firmware  Boy Genius Report found several new versions:

iProd0,1 – 0×1295
iPod2,2 – 0×1296
iPhone3,1 – 0×1297
iFPGA – 0×1298
iPod3,1 – 0×1299

Analysis of these from Ars.Technica:

The iPhone3,1 and iPod3,1 are clearly references to next-gen hardware version of those products (perhaps Apple is skipping iPhone2,1?). Smith suggests that the iFPGA could be a prototype device that uses field-programmable gate arrays, a type of programmable microchip. It doesn’t conform to the standard numbering scheme that Apple uses for its hardware products, so it isn’t likely something intended to be released. The “iProd,” on the other hand, uses a 0,1 number, suggesting it is a prototype of an as-yet unreleased device that is neither an iPhone nor an iPod touch.

The use of FPGA in this context is puzzling, because it’s hard to see what they would be using FPGA chips for, even in an iPhone prototype. It also doesn’t have even a beta-grade “0,1″ model number. This one is a bit of a puzzler. We shouldn’t rule out Apple doing this on purpose to wind the bloggers up, either.

Meanwhile, some rumour sites are claiming the “iProd” could be a personal trainer type device, something Apple claimed a patent on last year: a device which tracks your workouts and actively moans (or “prods”) at you if you miss a session. The Nike+ shows that there is rich ground in the iPod/exercise cross-over market, but just because Apple have a patent doesn’t mean they will make an entire product for this. It seems more likely to me that it would be a physical add-on to an existing iPod Touch and an application to go with it. There’s also no way I could see Apple using such a lame, punnish name; it’s more likely to just stand for “Product” and be something that doesn’t have a proper name yet.

There’s more “new iPhone stuff” from elsewhere too. Here in the UK O2 have cut the cost of getting an iPhone, albeit only on the 24-month contract option. It’s difficult to see this as anything other than a modest stock clearing measure ahead of a new model, and it bears emphasising that committing to a two year contract when there is a new model around the corner is probably not a good move.

Finally, to finish off this roundup, AppleInsider claims to have a source saying the iPhone will have video recording capability, which may be supported by this screenshot at Engadget which shows an option called “publish video” in the v3.0 OS. And BusinessInsider claims the new iPhone may support faster internet speeds, probably through a newer 3G chipset with support for some faster variants of the technology. These two rumours, I would suggest, fall into the “likely to be true” category.

My standing advice to anyone thinking of buying an Phone 3G remains the same: wait a few months and see what happens.

Tech, iPhone

Apple watching is fun. It’s fun because, unlike most other computer manufacturers, Apple prizes the consumer over the enterprise. The way to please the enterprise is to give as much warning as possible of every little change, so the companies out there with 100,000 workstations world wide can work out months in advance how to fit the bits together; the way to please the consumer is with surprise launches with fancy new features and a minimum of forewarning. So, Apple don’t generally do things like public betas or product pre-announcements; this makes puzzling out their future direction from half-rumours and educated guesses a much more entertaining puzzle than for most computing companies.

(Aside: one exception to the “no long pre-announcement” rule was the iPhone itself, which was announced on 9th January 2007 — six months before it became available. This is because of the way the mobile phone market functions, with people committing to 18 or 24 months of contractual lock-in with a vendor in return for subsidy on the handset price. Apple gambled they could pre-announce the iPhone and that at least some people would choose to delay their upgrade until the phone was available. Anecdotal evidence suggests this tactic worked handsomely. In addition, Apple had no current phones to suffer from the Osborne Effect.)

I think there is a new iPhone coming. That, in itself, is not a massive insight but I think it’s coming soon: specifically, in June or July this year. Why do I think so? My reasons, let me show you them.

Firstly, historical precedent. Apple released the first iPhone on 29th June, 2007 and the 3G iPhone on 11th July, 2008. Much like the tradition of iPod refreshes in the autumn, I think they are consciously sticking to an annual upgrade cycle with the iPhone.

Secondly, commercial pressure. For the first time since the iPhone was announced, there are phones appearing that can potentially outshine it; amongst others, the Nokia N97, the Palm Pre, and the Android phones (T-Mobile G1 and HTC Magic) are all pretty explicitly designed as responses to the iPhone. Few buttons, large touch screens, finger-friendly interfaces that don’t require a stylus. This is not the time for Apple to slow down the pace of their development.

Thirdly, the latest firmware for the iPhone, as with all of Apple’s firmware upgrades, has an XML datafile which contains the product version numbers that it can run on. So far, for the iPhone, there have been two versions in this file; “v1,1″ (the original iPhone) and “v1,2″ (the iPhone 3G). When Apple use these numbers for laptop and desktop computers, incrementing the second digit implies a minor change to the product; incrementing the first digit is for major revisions, like when the “iLamp” style iMac was replaced by the all-in-the-panel model.

As was widely reported by various sources, a “v2,1″ string appeared in the latest iPhone firmware. Furthermore, stat tracking firm PinchMedia have been seeing this in their Analytics product since October 2008, with all their hits in the San Francisco Bay Area around Apple’s HQ. Is it surprising that Apple are working on a new iPhone? No, of course not, but the timing of these two facts — a prototype device that has been in active use by testers since October and a current, shipping firmware that can run on this device — supports the idea of launch soonish.

Fourthly, the ship date for the just-announced version 3.0 iPhone software is simply “summer 2009″. It seems very likely to me that, once developers have had a few months to build apps to take advantage of new features, it would ship as both an upgrade to old devices and on a new version of the hardware simultaneously. This is exactly what Apple did with the lauch of iPhone OS v2.0 and the iPhone 3G.

What might the new iPhone bring?

My crystal ball is broken. There are the obvious iPhone++ type things:

• more memory (as in the iPod bit, likely 16Gb/32Gb)
• more memory (as in RAM, where programs run, likely 192/256Mb)
• faster processor
• better camera (I’d like 3Mp with a better lens, a macro slide switch, and a flash of some sort, please)

…but these are not hugely exciting.

Two things I don’t think we’ll see is a dedicated gaming device or an iPhone Mini, despite continuing analyst speculation that this will happen.Why? Because the iPhone’s real killer app is the App Store itself, and Apple know this. A well polished source of high quality software, accessible on the device, with uncluttered micropayment support and (in less than a year) a huge range of applications to choose from and developer success stories left and right.

Want proof? Look at how much work Apple have done to make the iPod Touch more like the iPhone: this is so developers can more effectively write a single app that works on both devices, giving them a market of 30 million wealthy consumers to sell to. And look at how Apple put the App Store front and centre in a lot of advertising (the main iPhone slogan in the UK right now is “solving life’s little problems, one app at a time”).

So, Apple won’t do anything to split the platform. This means no iPhone Nano. If they ship some sort of iPod Nano, it’d have to have a smaller screen. If the screen gets smaller, your fingers will be the same size, so everything on it has to get bigger or it’ll be unusable. That means developers have to support a second screen resolution and it means every single one of those bazillion apps on the App Store won’t work on the new device. Which iPhone do you want, the one with the bazillion apps, or the slightly cheaper one with no apps but maybe some apps later but probably never the full bazillion? Exactly, that’s why we won’t get an iPhone Nano, and congrats, you’re smarter than several analysts and journalists now.

As for the idea of a dedicated gaming device with a d-pad and some extra buttons, I very much doubt it. Once again, if they release that, games developers have to choose: do you sell your game to the 30 million people with an iPod Touch or iPhone, or to the pool of zero people who own the new device? And if games devs don’t write games for it, who will buy it? What I think we might see is some sort of snap-on case with the extra buttons in it, sold by someone like Belkin, which might get some games support if it’s cheap enough. This is possible with the new “remote device” support in iPhone OS v3.0, but I am digressing from the point.

Lots of people think we’re going to get one of these:

image credit: fotoboer.nl

Basically, an iPhone but four times or so the size, designed to address the netbook market. I don’t deny that the idea is palatable, although whether there is a big enough pool of potential buyers to make the numbers add up, I wouldn’t like to say. In any event, I don’t think this would be part of an iPhone announcement — it would be a new product.

So, apart from the “one louder” upgrades, I have no real idea where Apple will take the iPhone next, I am afraid. It may well turn out Apple are smarter than me though so don’t abandon hope for some innovation. However I am pretty sure we’ll find out in June or July. If you are considering buying an iPhone in the next few months, read my arguments, read my citations, and decide if you’d be better off waiting to see what happens next. I think you probably should.

Since this article was written, more evidence has emerged of the possible new iPhone — see my followup article.

Tech, iPhone

If you are bored of me not making content here (I do have drafts in progress, honest), you could check out my Tumble blog to pass the time. It’s full of links to all manner of random cool stuff from the web.

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