“Apple is looking for iPhone 5 testers! The first 1000 users that go to http://(spamers website).com and enter code 0214 will get to test & keep a new iPhone 5″
I really doubt that apple will be looking for “outside” testers for any of their products. Nice try spammer!
I’m starting my mini-reviews of iOS/Mac applications with my most used iOS application; Grocery IQ. All links to the apps I review, will go to AppShopper.com instead of iTunes. I think that AppShopper.com is a way better way to see iOS/Mac apps in the iOS and Mac App Store’s.
I use Grocery IQ every week to create my shopping list then turn around and go to the store and buy all the items on that list. I’ve configured the app to make my visit to the grocery store as short as possible, and to be totally honest, it shaved about 15 minutes off my shopping experience! Truthfully!
Good Morning, iPhone from Matthew Rex Downham on Vimeo.
Is it possible to love your iPhone too much? The answer is yes. Featured in The New York Times.
This video was posted 3 years ago!
For the longest time, I never considered the possibility of jailbreaking my iPhones. I have owned the original iPhone 1G 4GB’s, the 3G 8GB’s and currently the 4 with 16GB’s.
At first, I was concerned about the entire process. I had concerns that if something went wrong, I wouldn’t be able to get my phone back to it’s factory defaults. Later I was concerned about the process of jailbreaking. Mind you, I’m a programmer so hacking a phone shouldn’t have bothered me as much as some of the processes of jailbreaking that were out there.
Nothing out in the jailbreaking software community really interested me enough to draw me in. Until now. I have a WiFi iPad and when I go out into the world with my iPad, I have to find a free WiFi hotspot in order to use it. This is not easy when my destination is a family member.
I recently read about an app called MyWi. This application will allow you to tether a computer or phone via USB, Bluetooth, and most importantly WiFi. I haven’t purchased the app just yet because I’m still seeing if I’m going to stick with my iPhone 4 being
jailbroken.
I currently have Cydia, Rock, Infinidock, Infinifolders, LockInfo, Notified Pro, PkgBackup, SBOrganizer, SBSettings, ToneFXs, WinterBoard, and Auto Silent installed. (Sorry about the sites that those links go to, some were designed for iPhone and some apps just don’t have web pages.)
The above screen shots from left to right:
Apple needs to take a serious look at some of the apps that the Jailbreak community have come up with. LockInfo is pretty much a “must have” for anyone using a smart phone. Mind you, Android has the ability to display configurable widgets on there lock screen as well as their version of SpringBoard. So they have had the ability to display useful info from day one. I’m not sure why Apple is so resistant to giving users the ability to display more info on the iPhone’s lock screen other than the time and date.
Another very important feature available to Jailbreakers is the ability to log Notifications. Notified Pro and LockInfo both allow you to see all the notifications that have been displayed. iOS 4 has improved in this area, but there are still times that notifications come in and get overwritten by other notifications and are lost forever.
One thing that really surprised me with the iPhone was the lack of ability to configure the phone’s sounds and wallpaper. iOS 4 finally allowed users to put a wallpaper behind the home screens. However we still can’t configure notification sounds. I want to be able to set my incoming SMS sound to something other than the 6 sounds they give us. Apple doesn’t even give us the ability to change the sounds for new mail, calendar reminders, new voicemail, etc… Does Apple think it’s users are so stupid that they can’t figure out how to change sounds on their phone?
Something that is on just about every cell phone other than the iPhone is Sound Profiles. The ability to have a Meeting, Outside, Nighttime, and Normal profile is very important. Every night, I have to turn off Calendar Alerts, New Mail, New Text Messages, and turn all Notifications Off, then in the morning, I have to restore those settings. Auto Silent allows you to configure Sound Profiles for specific times of a week to what ever profile you want. This app currently doesn’t work with the iPhone 4 and iOS 4. Hopefully the developers will get this app working with the new phone and OS real soon.
The last thing that really confuses me about the iPhone iOS is the lack of icon space in SpringBoard. iOS 4 finally gives us folders which gives us the ability to put more than 148 icons or 180 with 3.x. I just can’t understand why Apple put the page limit at 11. Really? 11?! There is plenty of room for 15 pages (dots between main icons and dock icons). In fact, there is enough room for 17 dots and the Spotlight icon down there. Infinidock and Inifinifolders gives Jailbreakers the ability to really configure our home screens the way we want.
I can see why Apple doesn’t want the home screen icons to scroll, other than horizontally. Keeping the SpringBoard as simple as possible makes sense. However, give us the ability to configure the SpringBoard to do what we want it to.
I can see that Apple will never change the OS to do all the things I have changed on my phone, but to be competitive with Android, giving us widgets or the ability to display more info on the lock screen is going to be a must. I would also like to see Apple give us the ability to modify the sound scape of our phones would also be really useful. Finally, sound profiles are a must.
Overall, I am really liking the new apps I have installed thanks to the Jailbreaking community. I have had a few issues with the operation of my phone since Jailbreaking. I’ve only had one crash of the OS because of an app that I had to uninstall. Every once and a while icons reappear that I have configured to be invisible, but a “Respring” restores everything back to normal. Respring-ing is kind of like restarting the Finder in OS X. It’s not a full reboot, but it restarts SpringBoard.
So I’m going to say that my Jailbreaking experience has been a very positive one. Jailbreaking is definitely not for everyone, but if you want the ability to do some of the things I have done, it’s definitely worth considering.
Yep, that’s right. Furry Scurry and Furry Scurry Lite both have icons with the image of an iPhone in them. Is this a sign of a new Apple and AppStore approval policy? Or is it just another example of Apple’s reviewers messing up.
It was just under 2 months ago that Apple rejected an update to RSS Player Podcast Client due to the image of an iPhone in the splash screen that RSS Player used. The image was of the logo of a podcast in a montage of many podcast logos.
RSS Player was forced to change the splash screen to remove the “offending” podcast logo and resubmit the application. One month later, the application finally made it back into the AppStore.
Now all of a sudden, Apple is approving an application that clearly has the image of an iPhone in the apps icon. This is the kind of mixed signals that has been messing with developers minds for the past year and a half.
There have been other examples of Apple rejecting apps due to images of Apple products other than RSS Player. A recent update to Airfoil Speaker Touch by Rogue Amoeba was also rejected for displaying images of Macintosh hardware to indicate where Airfoil Speaker Touch was getting it’s sound from. Later, after Rogue Amoeba decided to stop development of iPhone/iPod touch software did Apple change it’s mind and allow the images to be displayed.
I have no idea why Furry Scurry was allowed to have the image of that iPhone in it’s icon. I suspect that the reviewer just missed it during the review. However, this is exactly what the problem is with Apple’s review policies. There are so many “rules” that have to be followed that not every reviewer and/or developer can know every rule.
Yet, so long as there are all the rules that there are, there are going to be mistakes made. CodeSource Solutions is going to find out later, when they try to update their application, that the application is going to be rejected and they will have to change their icon in order to get the app approved again. Until that time, or until someone else at Apple notices the icon, Furry Scurry will be the only application in the AppStore that is allowed to have an image of an iPhone in it.
So a friend and I have started a new podcast called My Apple and Me. It’s basically just Steve and I shooting the breeze about Apple news and applications. We have actually been recording for a couple of months now, but we think we finally have a couple of good shows and decided it was time to publicize it.
My Apple and Me is a weekly show (mostly, there might be a break in that schedule on occasion) with Steve Hargrove and myself. We try to keep in around 30 minutes long and typically talk about Apple news and applications that we like both Desktop and iPhone/iPod touch apps.
It’s no “This Week In Tech”, but it’s not bad. The main idea is that we have fun recording it and hope that others have fun listening to it.
If you like it too, please post comments on the site. We would love to hear from our listeners and any suggestions will more than likely be taken.
I’m sure this letter will never see the light of day at Apple HQ, but I feel it really needs to be written. If not for me, for all the other iPhone/iPod touch owners out there that collect AppStore Applications like philatelist collect stamps. You see, we have this unique problem with our beloved device. Organizing our applications in the devices SpringBoard.
I’m sure there are not many of us. Otherwise, Apple would be selling 20,000,000,000 (Billion) applications by now instead of just over 1 billion. That said, there is an average of 25 purchased applications per iPhone/iPod touch.
Now, 35 (10 Applications by Apple that can’t be deleted and come with an iPhone or iPod touch taking into account various OS versions and device versions) applications can easily be managed by existing means. In fact that’s barely 2 full pages on the SpringBoard.
However, there are a few of us crazy people that have way more than 25 purchased apps. I’m currently just 5 shy of 500 in iTunes.
(Link to full image of all apps in my iTunes Applications list)
Clearly, not all of those apps are in my iPhone. Here is what my SpringBoard looks like currently:
You’ll notice that several of the SpringBoard pages have only 15 of 16 icons on them. This is because, even with the 3.0 OS, moving icons in the SpringBoard app causes all kinds of problems with other pages as you scroll from one page to another to another.
In the 3.0 OS update, Apple allowed users to take an icon, drag it over to the right or left edge of the screen which causes SpringBoard to move to the next or previous page. If you don’t move your finger while on the edge, SpringBoard will continue to move to the next/previouos page until you move your finger back into the screen. This should allow a user to move an icon from page one to page 9 without messing up icons on pages 2 through 8. However, this is not the case. I don’t understand why, unless they just have a bug, but it causes all kinds of problems with the intermediate page icons.
Say you have all your pages full from page 1 to 11 except for one space on page 10. Also, you want to move an icon on page 1 to that open space on page 10. You hold your finger on the icon you want to move. SpringBoard starts jiggling all the icons. You drag your finger and the icon to the edge of the screen and SpringBoard starts sliding pages from left to right. For some reason, when sliding past page 3, SpringBoard gets confused and thinks you moved your finger back into the screen. This causes the last icon on page 3 to move to page 4, the last icon on page 4 to move to page 5, etc all the way to page 9 which moves its last icon to page 10. It stops on page 10 since there was an open spot.
Now you have a problem. You still want to get that icon to page 10, but doing so will knock the last icon on page 11 off the SpringBoard completely, assuming you are able to get the icon to page 10 without further incident.
Leaving an empty space on most pages allows for this weird error to happen and not mess up your organization.
A very bright person setup a Keynote presentation showing his/her ideas of how to use iTunes to help organize applications in the SpringBoard app:
Now, this video only shows two SpringBoard pages, but it would still save much time using iTunes to layout your apps and then sync to make the adjustments in your iphone/iPod touch.
Apple, you have made some great strides in the iPhone OS to make our beloved device the best that there is. However, there is always room for improvement. The SpringBoard app is one place that definitely needs improvements. Please, do something to make organizing applications on the iPhone/iPod touch as easy as the rest of the functions of the devices are to use.
When did Apple change the way they send pictures taken by the iPhone? When I first got the iPhone, if I would take a picture which was stored in the phone as 1600×1200 it would send the images in email as 800×600 or quarter size.
I was testing a form I was creating for taking information in case of an automobile accident and was testing taking pictures and sending them as well. I copied the pictures out of my Camera Roll and pasted them into the email message I was testing and sent. When I looked at the email, I was very surprised to see the images at 1600×1200!
This works whether you use the Share button in the Camera Roll to send the email or simply copy them to the clipboard. I don’t remember over reading any of the blog posts about iPhone OS updates where they said that the pictures would be sent at full resolution now.
Searching Google, I am finding people asking questions about the 800×600 size as recently as 2 months ago. So I have to assume that this was an update in the 3.0 Firmware. Maybe its because of the MMS feature added but not usable in the US yet (thanks a bunch AT&T!). I’m pretty sure that the “Share” button in the Photo app is new to allow photo and movie MMS message to be sent. They must have decided to send those items full-size and in doing so, allowed pictures (and possibly movies, I don’t have the 3GS to verify that) in emails.
Either way, I’m very pleased that we can send full-sized photos in email now.
Here are some screen shots of the Photo Application showing what I am talking about in the 3.0 iPhone Firmware:
This is the Photo App with the Share button circled
Here I have highlighted 3 pictures to either be emailed (or MMS’s when AT&T gets around to it) or copied to the clipboard.
In the Camera Roll, you can delete pictures taken as well as Share/Copy them.
If you tap the “Share” button, you get this screen giving you the ability to Email the selection. I suspect when AT&T finally decided to let us poor Americans send MMS’s, that there will be another button labeled “MMS”.
Dave M.