Category: I-phone

Of the many new features in iOS 5, some of the most subtle changes came with the Mail app. iCloud now brings a free email account to anyone who wants to snag one, and that email account is accessible from any device — Apple or not.

First, text can now be formatted using bold, italic, or underlined. To apply formatting to a word or paragraph, select it using a double-tap, and use the handles to extend or shorten the selection if needed. The standard cut/copy/paste/suggest… menu will be floating over the word, with an arrow pointing to the right. Tap on that arrow, and it reveals a second menu displaying BIU for bold, italic, and underlined. A tap on BIU brings up the individual buttons for Bold, Italics, and Underline.

Next, you can now create indents in your message — actually what you’re doing is changing the quote level. To do this, tap any place in a line to display the select/select all/paste menu. Once again, there will be an arrow pointing to the right. Tap the arrow to reveal a button that says Quote Level. Tap once again to show two buttons, Decrease and Increase, which allow you to increase or decrease the quote level of a specific paragraph.

Addressing messages just became a bit easier as well. You can now drag names around in the address fields. Let’s say that I address an email to Doc Rock and Uri Kelman, but decide that I want Doc’s name to be in the carbon copy (cc) address field. I can just place my finger on the “bubble” containing his name, then drag it to the cc field.

If you have ever wanted to flag a message so that you know it’s important to respond to it, you’re in luck. iOS 5 Mail now lets you add flags to those important messages. When looking at an email in the Inbox, you’ll see the word Mark in the subject line. With a tap, two buttons appear — Flag and Mark as Unread. Tap Flag, and a small orange flag appears next to Mark in the subject line.

You can now use Mail on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad to create or remove mailbox folders. This could be useful in a situation where you’re on the road for work and need to create a new folder for a specific project. This is done through the list of Accounts on the Mailboxes screen.

Search has also been improved in Mail in iOS 5. For the first time, you can search in the body of email messages for a specific word, name, or phrase.

While all these features have been around in Mac OS X and Windows for quite a while, it’s nice to see that they’re now available for iOS users as well. It’s one more bit of polish on an already nice mobile operating system.

iOS 5 features: Mail originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 13 Oct 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Find my iPhone and Find My iPad have been around for awhile via MobileMe, and we’ve heard dozens of success stories where people used the service to recover lost or stolen iOS devices. Macs have been reliant on third-party solutions or clever hacking to enable the same functionality — until now.

With iCloud comes Find My Mac, a feature that’s essentially identical to what’s been offered for iOS devices. If you have a free iCloud account and your Mac is running OS X Lion 10.7.2 or greater, has Wi-Fi access, has a recovery partition installed (more on that later) and has been set up beforehand in the iCloud preferences, you can use Find My Mac to locate your computer anywhere in the world using either iCloud.com or the Find My iPhone app on an iOS device.

Find My Mac is not enabled by default (possibly out of privacy concerns), so once you’ve met all the relevant prerequisites, go into System Preferences on your Mac, navigate to the iCloud preference pane, and tick the checkbox next to Find My Mac to enable it.

If you’ve used Find My iPhone before, you’ll be familiar with how Find My Mac works. You can locate your device on a map with a fairly reasonable degree of precision, assuming it’s connected to Wi-Fi. You can also “ping” it so that a message of your choosing will pop up on screen (along with a very loud sonar sound alert), or you can remote lock or remote wipe the device. Remote wiping the Mac should be a last resort, though, because after you pull that trigger you won’t be able to use Find My Mac to locate it. If Find My Mac can’t find your device right away, you can even tell the service to send you an email when it does finally locate your Mac. It’s all quite slick, and it should bring peace of mind to MacBook Air and Pro owners in particular.

Find My Mac requires your Mac to have a recovery partition installed on it in order for the service to work. If you downloaded OS X Lion from the Mac App Store and did a normal installation, you already have a recovery partition on your Mac, so you don’t need to worry about that requirement. But if you’re like me and you used a third-party app to clone your Lion installation from an old disk to a new one, you likely missed out on that recovery partition and won’t be able to take advantage of Find My Mac until you install one. There are various hacky solutions to this problem, none of them particularly user-friendly, but I found it easiest to simply re-install Lion completely and start fresh.

Since Macs don’t have built-in 3G or persistent Wi-Fi when they’re asleep (in most cases), iCloud is going to have a harder time locating stolen Macs than iPhones or iPads. It’s still a very handy feature, and it significantly increases your chances of recovering a Mac that’s mysteriously sprouted legs and gone walkabout.

iCloud now features Find My Mac service originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 13 Oct 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For the first time ever, US customers will have three choices for a carrier when they go out on Friday to buy an iPhone 4S. With the exception of simultaneous voice and data which is likely limited on Sprint and Verizon, the iPhone hardware and retail price is the same across carriers. The biggest differentiator is the price of the calling and data plans.

CNN Money did most of the legwork and compiled the calling plans and data options for the iPhone 4S on Sprint, Verizon and AT&T. According to their analysis, Sprint is the best choice for high data users, Verizon for the average user and AT&T for the light user. Sprint is notable because it is the only carrier which still offers an unlimited data plan. You can check out the price breakdown in the CNN Money chart above.

iPhone 4S: comparing Verizon, AT&T and Sprint data plans originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 13 Oct 2011 10:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple’s prolonged legal tussle with Samsung continues Down Under, but Apple’s just landed a dead-on uppercut in the fight. Samsung has been legally barred from selling the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia. The Sydney Morning Herald reports the injunction against sales of Samsung’s tablet will be enforced until results of a full hearing in 2012.

Samsung has said it will scrap plans for a Galaxy Tab launch in Australia altogether if it faces injunction, because the loss of holiday sales will kill any potential market for the device. However, the judge in the case agreed with Apple’s claims that Samsung had violated several of Apple’s patents in the Galaxy Tab’s design.

Samsung had previously offered to settle with Apple, but Apple rejected that offer and has aggressively pursued global legal action against Samsung for its “slavish” copying of iOS devices. Although it looks like the Australian launch of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is never going to take place now, Aussie Samsung fans can take heart in the fact that Sydney-area sellers are pushing the Galaxy S2 smartphone for just two bucks right outside local Apple Stores.

Apple granted injunction against Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 13 Oct 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I remember hearing way, way back that Scribblenauts might be headed to iOS, but when the dust finally settled on the iOS 5 transition yesterday, among the (many — we’ll see more in the next few days) great new releases on the App Store, this one definitely stood out. Warner Brothers and original developers 5th Cell have brought the legendary DS game over to iOS, and the port is just plain excellent.

Scribblenauts is a magical game. The idea is that you control Maxwell through a series of challenge levels, and in each one he’s got to do whatever’s necessary to earn a Starite. You accomplish the goals you’re given by using one of the most fascinating mechanics in gaming lately: You simply type in whatever you want to show up in the game, and then it does.

If that sounds impossible, then believe the impossible, because that’s what Scribblenauts is all about. Just playing around on the title screen can give you hours of enjoyment — make a “dinosaur,” throw a “tiger” into the mix, order up a “hunter” and see how they interact. Maybe you want to create God and the Devil and see what happens, or order up a real working “time machine,” or create whatever else you want. As long as it’s a noun and not a proper name, Scribblenauts has it. You can even create things with adjectives, so “giant polka-dot emu” works, as does “purple pregnant washing machine.” It’s incredible.

The “Remix” part of this one includes 10 brand new levels, but the best part about it is that Maxwell adventures have been carefully and thoughtfully ported over — the touch controls work great, the game even offers iOS 5 Cloud integration, and Game Center is fully supported as well. We couldn’t have asked for a better version of Scribblenauts on this platform, and if you’ve never seen this game in action before, you’ll be amazed at just what 5th Cell has created here. Scribblenauts Remix is available for $4.99 as a universal version.

Daily iPhone App: Scribblenauts Remix originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 13 Oct 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has released Find My Friends app for iOS that lets you locate your family and friends right from you iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Find My Friends was unveiled at Apple’s “Let’s Talk iPhone”…

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Apple has released the AirPort utility for iOS to manage and configure your WiFi network and Airport base stations including AirPort Express, AirPort Extreme, and Time Capsule – remotely from…

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The iFixit team has done it again. They have posted a complete iPhone 4S teardown for us all to see. This iPhone 4S teardown reveals the iPhone 4S’s internal guts such as A5 chip, new 8MP…

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Why are your apps still UGLY?

“I don’t have cash to spend on hiring a designer.”

“If I had some cool templates or themes to work from I’d be all set.”

“I don’t want to hire a designer. I’d rather learn to do it myself!”

Well good news. It is for these reasons the Mobile App Design Starter Kit was created. You get everything you need to quickly design apps for iPhone / iPhone4 / iPhone4s, iPad and Android, without the expense of hiring a designer.

The kit includes editable Photoshop and Pixelmator files, and over 300 custom and standard design elements for each platform. All assets are pixel perfect, vector shape layer elements created by mobile app design expert, Jen Gordon.

This kit saves you thousands on hiring a professional mobile designer and is regularly sold for $199, but in this deal, you get it for just $77 (regular $199).

See what you get:

Here’s what’s in the kit:

Grand Central Dispatch is a topic that I’ve mentioned a few times in the past and referencing an excellent GCD basics tutorial and this example on creating asynchronous UITableViewCell’s.

Earlier I came across an excellent video presentation that should be of great help for anyone that is still trying to understand GCD, and what they can do with it.  This is especially relevant with the iPhone 4S coming out tomorrow as it is the first iPhone with a dual-core cpu.

The presentation is from Deusty Deusty designs and covers:

– Why did Apple create Grand Central Dispatch?
– The effect of multi-core CPUs on software developers.
– Why did the Desktop industry transition to multi-core CPUs?
– Will the mobile industry follow suite?
– The effect of over-flowing the pipeline. (threads vs available cores)
– The OS imposed difficulty in properly filling the pipeline.
– Real-world benchmarks of GCD vs traditional thread pools.
– How is GCD different from traditional multi-threading solutions?
– What GCD does NOT help you with.
– Threads vs GCD queues.
– What is a block exactly?
– How does memory-management work with blocks? (primitives & objects)
– Using the basic GCD APIs.
– Using GCD to help create thread-safe classes.
– Other advanced GCD topics

You can find the presentation on the Deusty blog here. The presentation is extremely well done, straight to the point yet thorough (about 45 minutes total – great treadmill material).  If you’re new to using GCD I highly recommend it.

Via

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On another note thanks to those who have submitted tutorials they found around the net for the iOS 5 SDK tutorial and guide page.  I will check them out, and add them in the next update.  Please keep submitting.  Thanks!

 

©2011 iPhone, iOS 5, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

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AdWeek has written up a nice long retrospective on Steve Jobs and his work, and understandably, they’re in awe of the man and what he’s done with his company. Jobs wasn’t just a genius in terms of building computers and crafting quality, he was also brilliant at making sure that he always set the conversation when it came to advertising and selling those computers. Whether you’re talking about the Think Different ads, the famous 1984 Mac ad, or the more recent Mac/PC ads, Apple’s work under Steve was really amazing, and his vision really drove the company and its products to the place where it is today. Even looking back at the iPod and how Apple positioned it as a revolutionary device (even while it was surrounded by a sea of lesser media players), the marketing there was second to none.

We have joked in the past about Steve’s “reality distortion field,” and even with him gone, people will always laugh about Apple “fanboys” and the Cult of Mac. But despite all of the witty and iconic advertising, don’t forget that what drove all of it was the quality that Steve Jobs pushed for in Apple’s products, and that culture at the company that always reached for making better, more beautiful things.

Adweek calls Jobs the ‘greatest marketer of the age’ originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 13 Oct 2011 00:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AdWeek has written up a nice long retrospective on Steve Jobs and his work, and understandably, they’re in awe of the man and what he’s done with his company. Jobs wasn’t just a genius in terms of building computers and crafting quality, he was also brilliant at making sure that he always set the conversation when it came to advertising and selling those computers. Whether you’re talking about the Think Different ads, the famous 1984 Mac ad, or the more recent Mac/PC ads, Apple’s work under Steve was really amazing, and his vision really drove the company and its products to the place where it is today. Even looking back at the iPod and how Apple positioned it as a revolutionary device (even while it was surrounded by a sea of lesser media players), the marketing there was second to none.

We have joked in the past about Steve’s “reality distortion field,” and even with him gone, people will always laugh about Apple “fanboys” and the Cult of Mac. But despite all of the witty and iconic advertising, don’t forget that what drove all of it was the quality that Steve Jobs pushed for in Apple’s products, and that culture at the company that always reached for making better, more beautiful things.

Adweek calls Jobs the ‘greatest marketer of the age’ originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 13 Oct 2011 00:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Wall Street Journal suggests that Apple and major film studios are currently negotiating for the right to offer streaming movies from the iTunes Store. According to “people familiar with the matter,” the deal would allow users to stream movies they’ve bought from iTunes to portable devices like iPhones and iPads without having to use a Mac or PC to transfer them over first.

This is broadly similar to the deals already in place for music via iTunes Match, which allows multiple downloads of purchased music to any device associated with a user’s iTunes account. While Apple says iTunes Match isn’t technically music streaming, this new rumored movie service would be, and it may build off of tech and knowledge Apple gained when it acquired Lala.

Anyone who buys movies on Blu-ray or DVD is already familiar with how much of a pain it is to get those purchased films onto an iOS device. While you can always rip the DVD and encode it in a compatible format using third-party tools like Handbrake, customers and iOS device users need a better solution than that. The studios have already achieved limited success with their own UltraViolet program, which allows access to films online for customers who purchased a DVD or Blu-ray. The WSJ correctly notes that movies purchased from the iTunes Store aren’t compatible with UltraViolet, however, so it’s not a universal solution.

WSJ: Apple negotiating for streaming movies on iTunes Store originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 12 Oct 2011 23:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Wall Street Journal suggests that Apple and major film studios are currently negotiating for the right to offer streaming movies from the iTunes Store. According to “people familiar with the matter,” the deal would allow users to stream movies they’ve bought from iTunes to portable devices like iPhones and iPads without having to use a Mac or PC to transfer them over first.

This is broadly similar to the deals already in place for music via iTunes Match, which allows multiple downloads of purchased music to any device associated with a user’s iTunes account. While Apple says iTunes Match isn’t technically music streaming, this new rumored movie service would be, and it may build off of tech and knowledge Apple gained when it acquired Lala.

Anyone who buys movies on Blu-ray or DVD is already familiar with how much of a pain it is to get those purchased films onto an iOS device. While you can always rip the DVD and encode it in a compatible format using third-party tools like Handbrake, customers and iOS device users need a better solution than that. The studios have already achieved limited success with their own UltraViolet program, which allows access to films online for customers who purchased a DVD or Blu-ray. The WSJ correctly notes that movies purchased from the iTunes Store aren’t compatible with UltraViolet, however, so it’s not a universal solution.

WSJ: Apple negotiating for streaming movies on iTunes Store originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 12 Oct 2011 23:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Another major company has made the switch to the Mac. This time it’s British broadcaster ITV, which is currently in the middle of a five-year technology transition. The company will switch out its employees’ PCs with Macs and include Google Apps in the deal, installing Google’s software on hardware for 7,000 different employees in the system. Not all of the company’s employees will get Macs, as apparently different roles may still need PCs for certain types of software (Boot Camp, anyone?). Still, given the choice, I think plenty of the employees will probably elect to go Mac if they can.

There’s no mention of using iPads or iPhones in the workplace, but that seems a given; we’ve already seen in the past just how much using these devices at work can help everything from productivity to innovation. Welcome aboard, ITV. We’re glad to see another big company making the switch over to the Mac platform at work.

British broadcaster ITV makes the move to Mac originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 12 Oct 2011 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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