Category: I-phone

Apple updated its “How to Buy” iPhone 4S page earlier today with instructions detailing how US and Canadian customers can go about getting an iPhone 4S. The company is now insisting that prospective buyers first reserve the new phone online before heading into an Apple Store to buy it. From the page:

iPhone 4S is available in store by reservation only. Reserve yours after 9:00 p.m. tonight for pickup tomorrow. When you come in, you’ll choose a carrier and plan, and we’ll get your iPhone up and running before you leave the store.

This shouldn’t be too much of a shock after Apple announced an astounding 4 million iPhone 4S sales in the first weekend. Apple obviously wants to control the flood of people heading for retail stores; reservations are a way to avoid sending people away disappointed should they show up expecting to get an iPhone 4S only to be told the store is sold out.

However, MacRumors notes that it seems unlikely that Apple would refuse to sell unreserved phones to walk-in customers and theorizes that Apple will take reservations online, but will then sell any extra daily stock to customers on a walk-in basis.

North American iPhone 4S sales now reservation-only at Apple stores originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It seems as though Apple is designing a lot of new Mac and iOS features from the perspective of people whose internet access is the equivalent of an all-you-can-eat buffet. Photo Stream is a perfect example. The feature, built into Apple’s new iCloud service, automatically uploads photos taken on any of your devices to iCloud, which gives you near-instant access to them on all of your devices.

It’s a great feature, and it’s already streamlined the process of getting photos from my iPhone onto my iPad and Mac. But it was only this morning that I realized with grim horror what might happen if I imported 8 GB of RAW files from my DSLR into Aperture. With Photo Stream’s default settings, those multiple gigabytes of data would be uploaded to iCloud automatically — and since I live in an area with strictly metered data and very expensive internet access, a single import session in Aperture could cost me dearly.

Fortunately, both Aperture and iPhoto allow you to disable automatic uploading very easily. Go into the preferences for whichever application you’re using and select the Photo Stream pane. Once there, uncheck the box next to “Automatic Upload.” As easily as that, your photo manager of choice will no longer send hundreds of photos into the cloud the next time you connect your digital camera.

The followup question you must be asking now is, “That’s great, but what if I want some of my imported photos to go to Photo Stream?” Fortunately, Apple made it easy to manually upload photos to Photo Stream. Just select the photos you want, then drag them to the Photo Stream item in the sidebar. You should see a green plus sign when you hover over Photo Stream. Release the photos, and they’ll be uploaded into the cloud.

Whether you’re trying to avoid massive data charges or simply don’t want hundreds of photos clogging up your Photo Stream all at once, it’s quite fortunate that Apple has made it so simple to disable automatic uploading and manage your Photo Stream uploads manually instead.

Mac 101: Disable automatic uploads to Photo Stream originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iOS owners have another way to view PDFs files on their devices now that Adobe has released its popular Reader app for iOS. Adobe Reader for iOS lets you open a PDF from any app that supports “Open in,” including mobile Safari and iOS email. It’ll let you open password-protected files and view additonal PDF content like annotations and drawing markups. It also supports bookmarks and thumbnails, both of which can be used for navigation.

The app is desinged to be a reader only and has a minimalistic interface. When you are within the program, you can search the document, copy text to the clipboard and print. The Adobe Reader app is available for free from the iOS App Store.

Adobe releases Adobe Reader for iOS originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 18 Oct 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Wired does a little speculating over on the Cloudline blog about whether or not Apple’s redesigned Siri service actually counts as an AI. Technically, no, Siri’s not a real artificial intelligence. When you ask “her” something and she comes back with a witty answer, your iPhone doesn’t actually “understand” what you said in any meaningful way — it’s just identifying a set of words that you put together, and then outputting some data based on those words. Sometimes that’s movie times or nearby store locations, and sometimes that’s just a witty phrase that Apple engineers have programmed into the system.

But of course, while programmers have been creating these “chatbots” for years, Siri has an advantage in that it runs on the cloud; Apple is constantly updating Siri’s phrases and responses, which means that “her” answers will only get more appropriate over time. And while the system works as is, you have to imagine that Apple is collecting lots of information from it, including both what people are asking of Siri, and how they’re asking for it. The more Apple learns about how to deal with that information, the better Siri will get at providing the right answer at the right time.

That will make Siri “smarter” than ever. Until Apple hooks it up to an as-yet-uninvented thinking engine, it still won’t “understand” your queries in the same way that a real human would — or even in the way that a hyper-parallel quiz show competitor does. But for a lot of people, that doesn’t much matter. As long as Siri responds correctly and helpfully, that’s as good as many people need in terms of the payoff from artificial intelligence.

Siri and the possibility of artificial intelligence originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A 65-page document recently filed in Australia by Apple in the Samsung patent case says that not only does Apple own “a thicket of patents” (which I’ll guess just means “a whole lot”), but that Apple is willing to license some of its patents, while still keeping others for itself.

According to FOSS Patents’ Florian Müller, Apple does have an extensive set of patents for its mobile devices. But rather than companies like Microsoft, who will often nail down patents only to make as much money as possible licensing them out to other hardware companies, Apple prefers to hold patents in order to differentiate its devices. It would rather benefit from having original features on its devices rather than just charging something like a per-unit fee.

This of course matters in the Samsung case, because Apple is alleging that Samsung knew that patents on certain features were held by Apple, and Samsung went ahead and released phones with those features anyway. If Apple really did plan to license the patents out, then Samsung could just pay the damages, and the agreement would go down as if it were a simple licensing deal. But if Apple really didn’t want to ever share the patented technology, then the damages to the company would be more extensive.

Indeed, the document does state that Apple was willing to license some “lower-level” patents. But all in all, it’s fairly clear that Apple was planning on keeping most of the patented technology for itself. And that means that the outlook for Samsung in this case is getting worse and worse as time goes on.

[via AppleInsider]

Apple lawyer says it owns a “thicket of patents” originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 17:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple updated its “How to Buy” iPhone 4S page earlier today with instructions detailing how US and Canadian customers can go about getting an iPhone 4S. The company is now insisting that prospective buyers first reserve the new phone online before heading into an Apple Store to buy it. From the page:

iPhone 4S is available in store by reservation only. Reserve yours after 9:00 p.m. tonight for pickup tomorrow. When you come in, you’ll choose a carrier and plan, and we’ll get your iPhone up and running before you leave the store.

This shouldn’t be too much of a shock after Apple announced an astounding 4 million iPhone 4S sales in the first weekend. Apple obviously wants to control the flood of people heading for retail stores; reservations are a way to avoid sending people away disappointed should they show up expecting to get an iPhone 4S only to be told the store is sold out.

However, MacRumors notes that it seems unlikely that Apple would refuse to sell unreserved phones to walk-in customers and theorizes that Apple will take reservations online, but will then sell any extra daily stock to customers on a walk-in basis.

North American iPhone 4S sales now reservation-only at Apple stores originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re looking at apps that aren’t games this week, and today’s selection is Any To Do. It’s a little pricey, but might be worth it for the right user. I use the excellent 2Do on my iPad, but Any To Do is nice as well.

While it lacks a little bit of the syntactic sugar that 2Do has, it does use a very interesting quadrant view. Basically, your tasks are charted as Urgent, Important or not Urgent or Important. You can see a view of all of your tasks laid out according to those criteria. Most to-do apps chart tasks by date due or time entered, but I do like how Any To Do lays them out, so at a glance, you can see tasks that need to get done right away, or that take precedence on your list.

Another big bonus is that Any To Do will sync with Evernote. Of course you can set up notifications and reminders for your tasks, set up repeated tasks, or send things out to Twitter, Facebook, or another calendar.

Any To Do places less emphasis on organization than other similar apps. It’s built more for creating priorities and lists of what you need to do. And of course, that’s a great function for someone looking for a very tasked-based to-do system.

Any To Do is available in the App Store for US$5.99 on the iPhone or $8.99 on the iPad. That’s relatively price, but again, it’s a pretty targeted app, and that quadrant view is something I haven’t seen before. There are lite versions to look at, too, if you’re not sure how it might work. If it sounds like the kind of task-based app you need to keep yourself moving on various projects and work, definitely give it a look.

Daily iPhone App: Any To Do originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 18 Oct 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A while ago I wrote about four websites that need iPad apps: Facebook, Mint, LinkedIn, and Google Docs. Facebook stepped up to the plate, and now an official Mint.com rep has confirmed publicly what two Mint employees had told me in private a while ago: the Mint.com iPad app is coming soon.

In a tweet posted October 11th, Mint mobile designer Jaanus Kase said “the @mint iPad app is nearly done and will be out very shortly.” He followed that up three days later with a posting on Mint’s satisfaction forums which states that the next Mint app will be universal (both for iPhone and iPad) and that it will require iOS 5, which is one of the reasons the company could not release it before now.

Also, for those of you with iPhone 3G units, the new Mint app will not work since the maximum iOS on that device is 4.2.1. However, Kase states that Mint will continue to support its current iOS app for those running iOS 4.

LinkedIn and Google Docs? The spotlight’s on you now.

Hat tip to reader Tim B.

Mint.com iPad app “will be out very shortly” originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A 65-page document recently filed in Australia by Apple in the Samsung patent case says that not only does Apple own “a thicket of patents” (which I’ll guess just means “a whole lot”), but that Apple is willing to license some of its patents, while still keeping others for itself.

According to FOSS Patents’ Florian Müller, Apple does have an extensive set of patents for its mobile devices. But rather than companies like Microsoft, who will often nail down patents only to make as much money as possible licensing them out to other hardware companies, Apple prefers to hold patents in order to differentiate its devices. It would rather benefit from having original features on its devices rather than just charging something like a per-unit fee.

This of course matters in the Samsung case, because Apple is alleging that Samsung knew that patents on certain features were held by Apple, and Samsung went ahead and released phones with those features anyway. If Apple really did plan to license the patents out, then Samsung could just pay the damages, and the agreement would go down as if it were a simple licensing deal. But if Apple really didn’t want to ever share the patented technology, then the damages to the company would be more extensive.

Indeed, the document does state that Apple was willing to license some “lower-level” patents. But all in all, it’s fairly clear that Apple was planning on keeping most of the patented technology for itself. And that means that the outlook for Samsung in this case is getting worse and worse as time goes on.

[via AppleInsider]

Apple lawyer says it owns a “thicket of patents” originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 17:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AllThingsD’s Ina Fried was in Taipei over the weekend, and she took along both an iPhone 4S and an Android device with Google Translate onboard. What she found is that both of the devices and their accompanying software were very good travel companions.

Google Translate (free) is also available for iOS devices, and it’s an amazing piece of software. As Fried notes, she was able to ask an electronics dealer what the difference was between two models of Fuji cameras by speaking to the HTC Salsa running Google Translate. The response from the salesperson was a bit confusing — “Outside” — but Fried quickly noticed that he was referring to the fact that the cameras were identical except for the external case.

Fried ran into one of the unfortunate issues of Siri right now, however, which is the inability to do local searches outside of the U.S. She was able to use the iPhone 4S as her primary camera on the trip and ask Siri to set an alarm for the next morning. After Siri set the alarm, Fried thanked Siri, “feeling like it was the right thing to do.”

Siri’s response? “I live to serve.”

Siri, Google Translate act as travel companions for AllThingsD blogger originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you like Infinity Blade on your iPhone or iPad, then you’ll probably love Infinity Blade FX. That’s the arcade version, which is apparently being introduced to arcades across the country very soon. You can see video of the game in action, and it looks — well, like Infinity Blade. Though it’s obviously on a bigger screen, the gameplay is essentially the same, even extending into multiplayer across two different machines. The whole concept of bringing an iOS game (designed for a platform that’s very private and portable), and turning it into an installed arcade game (a platform that’s very public and not portable at all) is a weird one, but in this case it might work.

That touchscreen is 46 inches, by the way, so it’s not a cheap endeavor, even if we haven’t yet heard how many tokens it’ll take to play this thing. If you want to give it a shot, apparently it’ll start appearing at Dave and Buster’s round about the end of this month. That, or you could just go buy it on iOS right now.

Infinity Blade coming to an arcade near you originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You’ll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what’s happening in the Apple world.

You can listen to today’s Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here.

No Flash? Click here to listen.

Daily Update for October 17, 2011 originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 18:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AllThingsD’s Ina Fried was in Taipei over the weekend, and she took along both an iPhone 4S and an Android device with Google Translate onboard. What she found is that both of the devices and their accompanying software were very good travel companions.

Google Translate (free) is also available for iOS devices, and it’s an amazing piece of software. As Fried notes, she was able to ask an electronics dealer what the difference was between two models of Fuji cameras by speaking to the HTC Salsa running Google Translate. The response from the salesperson was a bit confusing — “Outside” — but Fried quickly noticed that he was referring to the fact that the cameras were identical except for the external case.

Fried ran into one of the unfortunate issues of Siri right now, however, which is the inability to do local searches outside of the U.S. She was able to use the iPhone 4S as her primary camera on the trip and ask Siri to set an alarm for the next morning. After Siri set the alarm, Fried thanked Siri, “feeling like it was the right thing to do.”

Siri’s response? “I live to serve.”

Siri, Google Translate act as travel companions for AllThingsD blogger originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’re having trouble getting Lion to let you enable Find My Mac, you’re not the only one. It seems at least a few people are running into a problem where they see the above message in the iCloud preference pane, but clicking the update button (or running System Update manually) yields no updates to install. If this describes your situation, the good news is that there is a solution — the bad news is that it might require a little bit of patience.

Before getting too worked up over the problem, though, it’s a good idea to try the simplest methods first. Go to System Preferences, go to the Security and Privacy preference pane, and click on the Privacy tab. Check to make sure that Location Services are enabled:

If that didn’t do the trick, head on over to Apple’s support site and download the Lion Recovery Update package manually, and install it. It’s approximately 832 MB, so it may take a while to download if you’re on a slower Internet connection. Once installed, reboot your Mac and go back in to the iCloud preferences (under the Internet category in System Preferences) to see if you can enable Find My Mac now. If you can check the box, you’re all set!

If Find My Mac is still greyed out, however, then the problem is likely that your Mac is in need of a couple of housekeeping tasks to get things in order. This next step works best if you close any apps you have open. Open your Applications folder, then open the Utilities folder and select Disk Utility. You should be presented with a screen similar to the following:

From here, select the volume that Lion is installed on from the list on the left side of the menu as shown above. Then click the Verify Disk button on the bottom right of the window, and Disk Utility will scan the volume for any problems. The process usually takes about five minutes, but might take longer depending on the size of your hard drive.

If you’re still with me at this point, I’m betting that you will probably receive a message similar to the following:

What this means is that somewhere along the line, the part of the system that keeps track of where files are stored on the hard drive recorded some information incorrectly. My guess is that this probably happened during the upgrade to Lion, and affects a specific part of the disk that is used by the recovery system. Luckily, it’s not necessarily anything bad, and it’s relatively easy to fix, though the process might be a bit complicated if you’re unfamiliar with it, so I’ve outlined it below.

1. Power off your Mac completely. Use the Shut Down command from the Apple menu.
2. Power on your Mac, and immediately press and hold the Option key on your keyboard.
3. Once you see the boot menu appear, you can release the key.
4. In the boot menu, select the Recovery HD item with your mouse, or the arrow keys on your keyboard. You may need to press the Enter key to confirm the option if clicking with your mouse does not seem to work.

After a few moments, you will be presented with a screen labeled Mac OS X Utilities. This menu allows you to perform tasks like restoring a Time Machine backup or reinstalling Lion on your Mac. The option we want, however, should be the last item in the list — Disk Utility. This will open the same screen we saw before, but this time you might notice that the Repair Disk button (in the bottom right, under the Verify Disk button we clicked last time) is now enabled. Go ahead and click the repair button, and Disk Utility will automatically find and fix any problems that are found.

Once the repair has finished, close Disk Utility, then restart your Mac by selecting Quit from the OS X Utilities menu. When your Mac is finished restarting, you’ll need to head back over to the Apple support site to download the 10.7.2 Update (or download 10.7.2 Server Update if you’re running Lion Server). When the download finishes, go ahead and install the update, which will require a restart when the installation has finished. Finally, you’ll want to go to your Downloads folder and install the Lion Recovery HD update that we downloaded earlier.

If all went well, you should be able to go into your iCloud preferences now and enable the Find My Mac option:

Find My Mac not working for you? You’re not alone originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you think the new iPhone 4S is just the same old iPhone a report in DigiTimes may have you thinking again.

The publication quotes an IHS analysis which looks at some key under-the-hood changes in the new iPhone beyond the obvious faster processor, antenna redesign and addition of the Siri software.

Wayne Lam, a senior IHS analyst says the iPhone camera is a 5 lens system, a first for any smartphone. The new camera is getting raves from users, and comparisons show it’s a very high quality implementation for both still photos and high definition video.

The report also praises the fact that the iPhone 4S can operate on multiple carriers using different cellular systems and frequencies. Here in the US, the same phone can work on AT&T, Verizon and Sprint. “No other handset OEM produces a single device for multiple operators and for multiple geographies on this scale.”

IHS also highlights other changes to processors and architecture in the iPhone 4S. It adds up to a significantly different user experience that is not obvious when just looking at the new iPhone but pays some big dividends for iPhone 4S owners.

Report highlights iPhone 4S design changes originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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