Who would win in a fight, Batman or Superman?

There has been this long-running feud between Mac and PC users as to which one is superior. It's much like the Everton vs. Liverpool argument in football or Holden vs. Ford in Australian Touring cars but with slightly more intellect and less bloodshed.

Now, let's face facts here; Microsoft is rubbish. Everyone hates them and their unreliable software that requires 500 million patches to be downloaded every day to fix some glaringly obvious bug that a spotty 13 year old hacker has exploited. The same patches that crash your computer once installed.

Macs are much more reliable and have fewer problems. But then there are considerably less people who use them.

I won't sit here and pretend to be a computer snob. The truth is I couldn't give a toss what computer I use as long as it does the job I ask of it. I use a PC and always have done simply because it's what I’m familiar with. Having said that, I also use an iPhone, which as you very well know, is an Apple product.

I like my iPhone. I've become one of those annoying idiots who gets it out and plays with it every 5 minutes for no reason whatsoever. I also do that with my iPhone.

What I like about it is its simplicity. It's very intuitive and easy to use. I'm told this is what Apple is good at.

So last night my girlfriend came back from work with a new smart phone that she was given by her company. It's one of those HTC things made by the Chinese. They used to develop software in conjunction with Microsoft but have more recently collaborated with Google Android. She told me to have a play around on it, claiming that it would make me very jealous and want to ditch my iPhone in a heartbeat. Well it didn't.

Firstly I found it very unintuitive. It was hard to navigate around the menus and not very well laid out. Although it had a better camera on it, the first time I tried taking a picture I ended up zooming in on her chest by accident, which was nice but not what I intended.

Another thing I like about the iPhone are the apps. I've got some useful things on mine including business tools, social networking sites, games, a spirit level and a lightsaber. Now, this HTC thing has also got apps but unless you are extremely rich it isn't really worth your time downloading them.

So what about the phone itself? That is, after all, what its main use will be for. Well my girlfriend tried adding a contact to her address book and ended up inadvertently phoning her boss in the middle of the night. This made her feel extremely guilty.

So my verdict is this: Everton are just as rubbish as Liverpool. They are both equally as rubbish as all other football teams on the planet. Holden is also rubbish because they are basically Vauxhall. Ford is no better. Australian Touring Car fans have about as much intellect as football fans. The combined IQ of a football fan or Touring Car fan is less than that of a soggy banana. And I'm sticking with the iPhone.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No it's broadband

OK so there was an interesting story in today's paper about a bunch of egg heads who held a race between rural broadband and a carrier pigeon.

Forgetting this challenge was quite obviously stolen from Top Gear, I would still rather download something on a slow internet connection than entrust my data to a flea-ridden flying cat burger.

Firstly, there is the issue of security. A pigeon is likely to get eaten or shot. It's even more likely to fly into my patio window like all the other pigeons seem to do. This would leave the data it was carrying extremely vulnerable. Even if it managed to reach its destination, there is a very good chance that the USB stick would arrive covered in pigeon poo.

Now, this stunt was organised by Tref Davies, who is the co-founder and technology director of business ISP Timico who, ironically, supply our broadband service and host our servers. The result of this test leaves me slightly worried about what effect it's going to have on our service. Will they start sending invoices via carrier pigeons? Are they planning to power their server farm with hamster wheels?

Read the story in today’s Telegraph Online

I don't want to be wired for sound

A bloke from Sky knocked on my door the other day asking me if I'd like to part with eleventy billion pounds a month for the privilege of watching more rubbish on television.

Needless to say I turned him down. There are a couple of reasons for this: Firstly I had Sky a few years ago and it was rubbish. Out of the 66 million channels available only 3 or 4 are ever worth watching and you usually have to pay extra for those anyway. I already have 33 million useless channels courtesy of freeview and, as far as I can tell, Sky is just like Freeview. Without the free bit.

The other reason I don’t want Sky is because I don’t particularly want to add any more to the spaghetti junction behind my TV. The last time I ventured into that jungle was 2 years ago at Christmas when I hooked up the Wii. I went missing for a month.

So far I have wires for the TV itself, wires for the aerial, wires for the DVD player, wires for a separate NTSC Region 1 DVD player, wires that connect the DVD players to the TV, wires for the Wii and wires for the Wii remote chargers. There are about a thousand of the damn things that connect the surround sound system to various holes in the TV and 5 different speakers around the room. Then there are the dozens of leads lying around the plug socket for my iPhone charger and my girlfriend’s phone charger and the lead to the digital camera so that we can view our holiday snaps on the television.

It is the same problem with computers as well. There is the wire for the unit, the wire that connects the unit to the monitor, one for the printer, one for the scanner, one for the mouse, one for the keyboard… you get the picture.

Of course there is wireless technology but even a wireless mouse needs a wire connecting the remote to the PC. It’s not really wireless is it? And have you tried using a wireless mouse and keyboard? They are great until the batteries die. They don’t give you any warning either. The cursor will suddenly freeze on the page somewhere, meaning that you can’t do anything apart from leg it down the shops and buy some spare batteries.

I use a laptop at home now. Not just because they take up less space and are generally more convenient but because there are fewer wires involved. With things like iPhones, iPADs, Kindles and all manner of wireless gadgets being released now my hope is that wires will become a thing of the past sooner rather than later. The technology is already there to do away with wires altogether but for some reason it’s not catching on fast enough.

Of course now we have these eco mentalists telling everybody that all this wireless technology is giving us brain cancer and killing all the bees. I think this is going to be an even bigger problem than solving the dilemma of batteries running out in wireless keyboards. Speaking of which, I better finish writing now before my keyboard runs out of ba