Welcome to iPhone 101, a single point of success for new iPhone users, and for veterans who know new users and need a quick and helpful place to point them. This time Tekzilla Daily went and did the heavy lifting for iPhone beginners, with a quick how-to video showing Apple’s multi-touch gesture for “swipe to delete”.
In any app that supports it, such as email, SMS, or iPod, you can simply touch the item you want to delete, briskly swipe your finger horizontally across the item, and a red “delete” button will appear allowing you to banish the item from your iPhone forever.
It can be a little tricky at first. Too slow and you might open or launch the item instead. Too quick and it may ignore you. But after a few tries, you should be happily ditching anything you no longer feel the need to keep with you.
You can’t use an iTunes gift certificate to buy applications on the Canadian App Store. I’ve experienced this myself, but never really looked into it before now. But it’s true. There’s even a thread about it on Apple’s Discussion Board.
Highlights include the difference in iTunes App Store Terms of Service between the US:
“10. PAYMENT METHODS. The Service accepts credit cards, payment through your PayPal account, and iTunes Cards, iTunes Store Gift Certificates, and Allowance Account balances as forms of payment.”
And Canada:
“10. PAYMENT METHODS. The Service accepts credit cards as the form of payment.”
Further down, we get what’s purported to be a response from Apple on the issue, which includes:
Due to tax laws and commerce restrictions for software in Canada, customers residing in Canada may only purchase games and applications using a credit card.
So, not only do we get hosed on data rates, don’t have access to US TV networks on iTunes (nor Hulu, etc.), not only do we have to pay more to “upgrade” music to iTunes Plus, but if by some miracle some kindly soul gives us an iTunes Gift Certificate, we can’t even use it on apps? Second class North Americans much?
(Yeah, okay, fine: #firstworldproblem)
Anyone have any deeper insight into these tax and commerce laws/restrictions of which they spake?
(Thanks to @deabush for pointing the ToS out to us as well!)
It’s with the utmost respect and joy that we get to wish our sibling site, and public frenemies number one over at CrackBerry.com, a wonderful, wacky, cracky second birthday. From 7000 word reviews, to net-breaking first looks at the latest/greatest devices, to forums so big they now scare small nations, CrackBerry Kevin and his team have put together something special — a real community.
Congrats everyone. For today and today only, in honor of your turning two, we’ll say it loud — we’re Cracky and Proud!
And since Kevin and CrackBerry.com don’t know from understated, you gotta know they have more birthday contests running than you could shake a Storm at. Go forth and check them out, win some prizes, and party hardy.
Happy birthday!
Apple decides which apps get approved for the iPhone/iPod touch App Store, provides little to no transparency on the process, prevents certain things like turn-by-turn GPS outright in the SDK agreement, and — though they’ve yet to use them — maintains black lists for GPS and malware that could remove any LocationServices or entire applications from iPhones everywhere. For this, and more, Apple has earned quite a bit of criticism — and rightly so in many cases.
What if Apple went further, however. They sell officially unlocked iPhones in several regions, like Hong Kong. They also have a program that grants developers tethering abilities for testing. What if, one day, people with unlocked or developer iPhones woke up to find the Paid section of the App Store gone. What would the community reaction be? What should it be?
Google, whose “don’t be evil” motto has been downgraded by management in recent years, is lauded for the openness of their Android Market (even though they’re known to have a kill switch of their ownl — to do otherwise would be irresponsible), yet our friends over at Android Central woke to find themselves in just such a situation this week. Paid apps. Gone.
We’re told it’s because of piracy concerns, that Google thinks developer units of the G1 make it easier for people to steal paid apps. Jeffdc5 on Twitter let us know developer G1 handsets could store apps on the SD memory card in addition to the on-device memory of the regular units, which could make them more pirate-able. However, we’ve seen that the iPhone — with no external memory — can have apps pirated as well, so is that readon enough? It smacks of the same “treat your customers as thieves” thinking that created DRM music, Microsoft Genuine Advantage, Sony rootkits, and Adobe invading our boot sectors…
Apple has already removed DRM from iTunes music, and has now removed product keys from boxed versions of iLife 09 and iWork 09 as well. It seems to be working out none too badly for them.
Openness is definitely A Good Thing. Maybe trust in your user base should be as well?
Stealing credit card information is big business so perhaps it should come as no surprise that we’re seeing so many phishing attacks targeted at even niche services like MobileMe. We’ve reported on a bunch of them already, and this latest one is just more of the same.
If you get an email warning you about the status of your account, asking you to verify billing info, or basically asking you anything at all, NEVER click on the link. Always launch your web browser and type in the main URL by hand (i.e. don’t click on the email’s “Login” button, go to Firefox or Safari and type in “http://www.me.com/”). (And yes, DNS can be cache poisoned and localhosts can be over-written, but depending how valuable a target you are and how much time you want to invest in proofing yourself, manually entering URLs is a good compromise between convenience and security.
Apple Insider has all the details for those who want them. Surf safe!
Apple has teamed up with EMI, which was the first record label to join the DRM-free iTunes Plus program when it was announced, to provide the new “iTunes Pass” system. Says EMI (via MacRumors):
The first iTunes Pass debuts today in conjunction with Depeche Mode’s forthcoming 12th studio album, Sounds of the Universe, to be released on April 21 in the US. Fans who sign up starting today get the alternative/dance pioneers’ new single, Wrong, as well as the Black Light Odyssey Dub Remix of the new track Oh Well. They will also receive the new album on its street date plus great music and video exclusives before and after the album’s release over the next fifteen weeks. The Depeche Mode iTunes Pass can be purchased starting today for $18.99.
Still all iTunes Plus format, and they promise you’ll get your fair market value out of the service, though you have to get all you fun in before the 90-day deadline expires.
Personally, I like iTunes’ ability to let me pick and choose singles, and almost never buy complete albums (the recording industry nightmare, of course), so this holds very little appeal to me. Am I missing out on something? Anyone here going to give it a try?
We’ve mentioned this in passing before, but the parallels, if any, are worth making more prominent.
Using webOS, which is a localized, almost widget-ized development environment (using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and enhanced local access), the Palm Pre can run many WebApps at the same time. The way it’s visualized is with the “card” metaphor, where a touch of the Home-like button shrinks the current screen down to a thumbnail that’s kept live and updated in real time. The interface also lets users shuffle the apps like cards in a fanned-out deck. You re-arrange the cards and can even terminate an app by “throwing it away”.
While the iPhone doesn’t keep them live or let you re-arrange them, and has an X to close rather than the throw-away gesture, going as far back as two years ago when Steve Jobs introduced it at Macworld 2007, it let you zoom out of the Mobile Safari web browser with an eerily similar thumbnail representation. (Though there doesn’t seem to be any patent contention over that just yet…)
Actually, given Apple’s recent obsession with Cover Flow in iTunes, OS X 10.5 Leopard’s Finder and now Safari 4 Beta, we’re surprised they didn’t just default to that for Mobile Safari tabs from the get go as well…
Tired of hitting the 123 key to toggle on the numeric keyboard? Well, obviously some ingenious iPhone hacker was and whipped up this interesting little Jailbreak app to change the standard 4-row virtual keyboard into a five row with numbers surfaced right on top (or symbols, if you tap the shift key).
Want to grab it? Gizmodo (via iPhone Hacks) says you can find it under “5-Row QWERTY Keyboard” in Cydia”
Should Apple consider changing their own virtual keyboard to be more like this 5-row? Or are the keys on the 4-row already small enough?
UPDATED: Engadget has the details:
“Due to an equipment issue, some AT&T mobility customers in Texas may be experiencing authentication issues with their wireless devices. AT&T technicians are working to resolve the issue at this time, and we expect service to be restored later today. We will provide more information as it becomes available. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
Bringing this back to the top as the comments were lighting up again with Texas iPhone users not getting service. Some seem to be out, some are coming back, and others are having various degrees of luck turning on/off the 3G radios.
Let us know where you are, if you’re having trouble, and what fixes are/aren’t working for you.
And we thought $99 rumors at Walmart sounded cheap! According to Apple Insider, if you live in Japan and don’t mind signing a 2-year deal with official carrier SoftBank, you can take home an 8GB iPhone 3G for FREE!
No matter the exchange rate, zero is zero, so if you’ve been holding out for an iPhone of your very own, is this finally enough the sway you? And most importantly, what Emoji will you use to express your free iPhone feelings?
(For our non-Japanese readers think AT&T, Rogers, or any other carrier will match this deal any time soon..?
