All Articles Tagged how-to

You’re listening to the latest, greatest TiPb Phone Different Podcast. Mike and Dieter are on fire. And then… out of nowhere… they cross the line. They say something so outrageous you just have to respond, to retort, to — quite frankly — set them straight. You grab your iPhone, hit the Favorite for Phone Different Feedback and…

You get the soothing tones of the answer-bot, asking just what extension you’re trying to reach… What extension?! D’oh! Rantus Interuptus!

Next time you want to give our humble hosts (or anyone else) a quick call, save yourself some frustration and add the extension right into your iPhone contact info!

We’ll show you how, after the jump!

Okay, here’s how you can add extensions — or any form of extra digits — to a telephone number on your iPhone.

First, access your Contacts (either via the Phone App, or the dedicated Contact App in 2.x). Pick the Contact you want, and tap Edit in the top right corner. Next, pick the phone number you want to add the extension to, and then tap the +*# button on the bottom left of the Dial Pad.

As the button label implied, you can add the plus, star, or pound symbols. Tap Pause to add a comma (,) — or short, silent wait period. Add the numbers for the extension, then tap Save to apply the changes.

And we’re done! Have more Contacts you’d like to extend? Simply rinse and repeat as often as needed. Then get ready for the next Podcast, and let Dieter and Mike know how you really feel — fast!

While this might be iPhone 101 to some, Apple pretty much snuck this feature into their 2.0 firmware, and while we’re now at 2.1, not everyone may yet know that they can capture their iPhone screen contents with just the touch of a button — well, two buttons actually.

To take a screenshot with your iPhone or iPod Touch, just press the Home and Sleep buttons at the same time. On 2.0, the screen will flash white, while with 2.1, you’ll also get the camera shutter sound, and your screen will be captured.

To access your screenshots go to Photos and on the iPhone, look in Camera Roll, while on the iPod Touch, check out Saved Photos. (see, poetically, screenshots after the jump!)

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Disclaimer – Neither TiPb nor I take any responsibility for any problems/issues/bricking/etc. that may occur while using this software to modify your iPhone. Please be aware of what you are doing.

A few days back we brought you a simple guide to jailbreak your iPhone with firmware 2.2.1 on your Mac. Well today we are showing some love for our Windows faithful.

This guide will show you how to jailbreak the iPhone 3g only, not the first generation iPhone. Some important notes before we begin: You must have iTunes 8 installed and you must be on firmware 2.2.1, if you are not, be sure to update via iTunes. Also make sure to go into the task manager and disable ANYTHING Apple or iTunes related.

Let’s get started, after the jump! Read the rest of this entry »

Disclaimer – Neither TiPb nor I take any responsibility for any problems/issues/bricking/etc. that may occur while using this software to modify your iPhone. Please be aware of what you are doing.

IMPORTANT: If you have a iPhone 3G that you want to unlock you must use the preserving baseband method – only available on Macs.

There has been a lot of buzz going on in the forums regarding jailbreaking the iPhone 2.2.1 firmware lately, and a lot of questions to go along with i t!. Today we’re going to take a deeper look at the exact steps you have to take to get your iPhone jailbroken on your Mac.

Let’s get started, after the jump!

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One of the new features in the iPhone and iPod Touch 2.1 firmware is the ability to create Genius Playlists on the fly, and right on the device. iTunes 8 introduced the concept of Genius Playlists, which like Pandora and Last.fm, use algorithms based on audio profiling, metadata matching, and (anonymously acquired) end user tastes, crunched in the Apple cloud. Basically, they take a song you like, what you typically like with it (what playlists you include it on), what others who like it also like (what playlists they include it on), and what music mathematically (tempo, tone, etc.) fits in with it. Then they try to predict other songs you might also like — in this case already on your iPhone — and whip you up a near-instant playlist on-demand.

How good is it? That depends entirely on how much music you have on your iPhone (the pool from which it can draw), how closely the metadata matches what’s in iTunes (or it won’t recognize your music — try tweaking the fields if you have trouble), and how many other users have contributed their data to the cloud (because the engine will supposedly get better and better the more information it’s fed).

Okay, so enough about what Genius Playlists are, how do we get them working on our iPhone? Full instructions after the jump!

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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!)

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?

UPDATE: Force Quit has changed in iPhone 3.0. Check out our new how-to!

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)

Thanks to CoreLocation in the iPhone SDK, Apps can make use of WiFi, Cell, and A-GPS (for the iPhone 3G) information to keep track of where you are. Your Twitter feed can be tagged with your current location, or can show you just those contacts in a certain vicinity. A movie app can automatically fetch show times for all the theaters in a certain radius. A to-do app can pop up location-based (rather than just time-based) alerts, reminding you to help your mom change a lightbulb next time you’re there, or ping you when you pass the electronics store so you remember to pick up that cable you need.

Convenient? You bet. Powerful? A game changer. Invasive? Er… Could certainly be.

What if you don’t always want whereabouts broadcast, if you don’t want everyone to know (or potentially be able to find out) where you are, when you’re out shopping, where that picture of your child was taken?

Read on to find out how apps ask for permission to use your location, how you can change your mind and make them ask you again, or how you can turn off location services completely.

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The iPhone 3G is a data monster. With speeds of 400, 600 or more than 1400kps reported in some areas, it sucks down information faster than El Jobso does veggie smoothies. Unfortunately, not every carrier in every country provides unlimited data plans to go with Apple’s next generation revolutionary internet device, or even reasonable data. And even those that do typically have a “soft cap” (e.g. 5GB) after which they either throttle down your speed, or put a black mark in your record as a problem customer and eventually give you the boot.

If you’re in one of the Scandinavian countries, in Mexico, Belgium, or any other Pacific or European, Latin or African country with very expensive data, or if you just want to keep track of how much you’re using and when, Apple has provided you and easy way to do it. Read on to find out how!

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