Latest MySky (HDi) update

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 17:51:37 +1200

The latest (and heavily publicised) MySKY (HDi only?) update was released today. Oddly, our update was applied around 2 p.m. - the currently showing program was replaced by a very ugly notice that the system was being updated. I can’t understand why the update wasn’t deployed during the night (e.g. 4 a.m.), when the number of viewers must be significantly lower. What if I had really cared about the program that was showing? My initial reaction was very negative. After it was pointed out (via Twitter) that many of SkyTV’s mistakes are correctable via new options in the settings back, I’m slightly less negative, but it’s still not an improvement. This is especially frustrating considering that the UI is so terrible, and has been ever since MySKY was introduced about five years ago (I’ve had MySKY since just after the launch). Being told that they know about the many problems and fixing them isn’t possible until the hardware is revved doesn’t inspire any confidence at all, since the problems existed with the original MySKY and certainly were not fixed when the hardware was revved (with HDi). Someone at SkyTV is responsible for selecting the hardware - if the platform doesn’t support creating a decent UI, then they should choose something else. (Has anyone on the MySKY team used an Apple product? Or even Windows 7 or a Zune product? Would they recognise good UI when they saw it? Do they have anyone that has any UI talent or experience? If so, perhaps they could give that person a bit of power to fix things?) The “what’s new” page has a feedback form where you can comment on the recent changes. I encourage you to do so. My comments were:

My 2GB, 4 day 0.0.1 iPhone update

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 11:24:26 +1200

A few days ago, Apple released version 3.0.1 of the iPhone OS, which addressed a pretty major SMS vulnerability. When Olyvia tried updating her 3GS to 3.0.1, something went wrong. The iPhone entered “Recovery Mode”, which means that it displays an image indicating that you need to connect it to iTunes, and you can’t do anything else (no phone calls, no iPod, no applications - absolutely nothing). Connecting the phone to iTunes prompted a message indicating that the phone needed to be recovered - doing so downloaded the 3.0.1 update, and then got stuck on the “Verifying Restore with Apple” step for a long time, until it would finally fail with error “3104”. This process could then be repeated, with the same results. What this meant in practice was that the phone was bricked as of last Friday. An update should never be able to brick a (legitimate, not jailbroken) phone! Even more, failing to verify a restore with Apple should never leave the phone in a broken state. I tried many thing to resolve this:

Update on Tony Andrew Meyer

Latest MySky (HDi) update

My 2GB, 4 day 0.0.1 iPhone update