Coming from a background of Palm and Windows Mobile PDAs and phones, it’s taken a bit of getting used to that, while syncing my iPhone, I have enough time to eat dinner, watch a football game, play a game of Risk, and still return to my Mac in plenty of time to watch my sync complete. Heaven forbid I get a phone call mid-sync. Ok, I exaggerate (a little). You may have noticed lengthy sync times (backing up is a killer) for your iPhone. If not, count yourself lucky. Join me after the break for a tip that may make things a little easier for your iPhone syncing!
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Were you an early adopter of the iPhone 2G? How about an early adopter of the iPhone monolithic-slice-of-tech-heaven 3G? Are you still contemplating a migration from your 2G to a shiny 3G? Is the 3G in your hand and the 2G in your nightstand drawer, collecting dust? Questions, questions. What should you do with that 2G? Read on for this week’s Tip!
Dieter just told us about Crackberry Kevin’s uber-frustrating experiences trying to pit the iPhone 3G and Blackberry Bold head to head in the browser war to end all browser wars. But — silver lining — for iPhone users, not only did we snag bragging rights, but a handy tip as well!
Unlike the Blackberry Bold, the iPhone defaults to having Javascript enabled. As anyone who’s waited — and waited — for an overstuffed Facebook profile to load already knows, Javascript can be heavy lifting for a browser. For WebApps, it’s a necessary sacrifice, but if all you want is casual browsing, you can turn Javascript off and send MobileSafari into turbo mode.
Here’s how:
From the iPhone home screen, tap Settings. Scroll down and tap the Safari button. Under Security, slide Javascript to Off.
There you go, you’ve just switched to light, clean HTML and CSS mode (still technically “just the internet” — unless you’re in the UK…). In Crackberry.com’s tests, it made a big difference on some sites. Let us know how it works for you!
(Thanks to Crackberry Kevin!)
You are traveling and have a long flight ahead of you. You aren’t feeling very social and the last thing you want is to get into a conversation with the person next to you who just happens to have a great multi-level marketing opportunity for you.
It’s late at night and you can’t sleep. Your significant other has already called it a night and you’re bored out of your mind.
In both scenarios above, you desperately want to catch up on your DVD backlog, but who has the time? Well, read on for this week’s Tip on how to turn your iPhone into your very own silver screen!
Apple’s brand new MobileMe News (formerly MobileMe Updates) is back with their second post this week (and luckily for links, finally sporting unique URLs to boot!). The subject of their latest post? How previous .Mac users can keep using their @mac.com addresses on the iPhone post-MobileMe transition:
If you want to use your mac.com address instead of me.com for the MobileMe address on your iPhone or iPod touch, you can simply remove the me.com account (if you’ve already created one) and then add a new MobileMe account entering username@mac.com for the email address. Any contacts, calendars, and bookmarks you are syncing will re-appear on your phone. It can take several seconds to minutes to update your phone depending on how much data you have and your network connection speed. If possible, it is best to do this when you are on a wi-fi connection for the fastest response.
Easy enough? Well, there is one small little restriction: the above only works if you originally had an @mac.com address prior to July 9, 2008. After the MobileMe transition, no new @mac.com addresses were generated, leaving those new to the… er… new service with @me.com as the only option.
Personally, I’m not sure what to do with my account yet. Me.com seems a little too precious for everyday use, while @mac.com hits too many fanboy cords for comfort. Can we get custom domains for email as well as websites? What’s your preference?
Those of us who rock Mac OS X know all about the “Force Quit”. For Windows users, think killing an application via Task Manager. They’re both ways to shut down non-responsive or otherwise rogue applications from freezing us out or just slowing us down. For iPhone users, well, we don’t have to worry about that, do we? (Remember Apple mocking Windows Mobile for multitask management?)
Well, since MobileSafari, MobileMail, and other Apple apps do multitask and run in the background, it turns out we iPhone owners do still need to worry about it. And with the App Store providing all sorts of new and potentially greedy applications to strain the more limited resources of Mobile OS X, it’s certainly important functionality to have.
So what can we do? Luckily, Apple built in an solution.
Hold down the “Home” button for about 6 seconds. Your resources will then be freed up, and you’ll be dropped back to the Home Screen ready for a fresh, clean start.
Faster and easier than a full reset, it can get you out of an App jam or improve the “snappiness” of your iPhone in general.
Note: if you have tabs open in MobileSafari, the cached pages will be cleared, but fret not, MobileSafari will re-load the pages off the net for you as soon as you relaunch it.
(Thanks to Antony for the screen shots)
Ahhh, yes. Visual Voicemail — that feature alone was enough to sell me on the iPhone. Voicemail is downloaded directly to your iPhone where you can visually (and with a swipe of your finger) scroll through your messages with leisure. Without your callers knowing, YOU decide which calls are important and need listening to RIGHT NOW. Eh, the others can wait. Now, with great power comes great responsibility, Spidey. If you travel abroad, this wonderful feature can turn on it’s master and vacuum the money right out of your wallet! How? Read on for this week’s Tip!
You’ve probably heard the joke - “Hey, I’m in shape. ROUND is a shape.” Although we revel in our technology and invent machines to do more so we can do less, there are still opportunities to use technology to help us stay active and fit. Thanks to a heads-up from Kelly Sonora, keep reading for this week’s Tip on how your iPhone can help you get or stay in shape!
Ahhhh, the good ‘ol Felt Marker font of the iPhone Notes app. If it wasn’t bad enough that you can’t beam a Note or easily transfer Notes from one iPhone to another (to my 3G upgrade horror), to add insult to injury, we’re stuck with the Felt Marker font. Or are we?
Brett Terpstra of TUAW fame has posted a tip here that offers a step-by-step procedure for… sitting down? … a way to CHANGE the felt marker into something a bit more professional and readable. Read on for the step-by-step and check out Brett’s article as well!
Confession: I had to restore my iPhone 3G yesterday. No, I didn’t want to jump on the trend-wagon just to get a build number ending in 7. No, the buggy, sluggy transitions didn’t finally get to me. What happened? A huge chunk — fully 1/4 — of my 16GB storage was eaten up by what iTunes helpfully classified as “Other” files.
I didn’t restore immediately, of course. Since “Other” data doesn’t include music, video, or photos (which are each classified separately in iTunes), and most “other” data, like contacts, OS, settings, etc. is far too small to explain 4.3GB, I considered 3rd party apps (which Apple should really break out in their own color in iTunes as well). Maybe they weren’t being properly uninstalled and removed from the device?
First I removed all 3rd party apps via iTunes 7.7. That got me down to 4.3GB. Then I tried removing them via the home screen’s wiggly jiggly delete, just in case. Same result. Round about that time Apple released iTunes 7.7.1, and just in case this was a known — and hopefully patched — bug, I installed, rinsed, and repeated. And got not a step further.
That’s when I decided the only way to catch this data-hostage taker was to nuke the city. That’s right: full, clean re-install.
I was on the original, out-of-the-box firmware build (5A345) and iTunes restored to an incrementally later version (5A347), but it worked. Storage reclaimed. (And, as some other reports have indicated, this build in general when combined with a clean (not from backup) setup has made the more annoying sluggishness issues disappear).
Anyone else experience any mysterious “other” files taking up all their precious space? Any other/different solutions to my scorched earth approach? (Hey, I was a Windows user in a previous life, and re-install is etched into the final line of my trouble-shooting check list!)
Please let me know!
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