What is a widget? Widgets are a quick way to look at information and news from apps without having to open them. Let's take a look at how to add widgets to your Today View so that they're organized and easy to access.
Jim Karpen
Jim Karpen holds a Ph.D. in literature and writing, and has a love of gizmos. His doctoral dissertation focused on the revolutionary consequences of digital technologies and anticipated some of the developments taking place in the industry today. Jim has been writing about the Internet and technology since 1994 and has been using Apple's visionary products for decades.
As my fellow blogger Todd Bernhard noted in this earlier post, Apple has now released WatchKit to developers, enabling them to develop apps for the forthcoming Apple Watch. This is of interest even if you're not a developer because it has revealed details about the watch that Apple hadn't yet announced. According to AppleInsider, the larger 42 mm watch will be 312 x 390 pixels and the smaller model 272 x 340 pixels. However, AppleInsider notes that the dimensions refer to the case rather than the display size, so the pixel density is unknown.
What To Do If Your Device Gets Stuck in Recovery Mode
By Jim Karpen
In a recent post I noted that iOS 8.1.1 is now available for download. This morning I added a sentence to that post reminding people to BACK UP FIRST. That's because it's not uncommon for something to go wrong when one updates. For example, when I updated to iOS 8, I encountered an error, and the only way to get my iPad out of it was to restore to factory settings. Doing so means that everything is lost. Fortunately, I had backed up first, so it wasn't a problem.
Walmart Black Friday Deals Include iPhone 6 for $104
By Jim Karpen
Black Friday deals are coming soon, and websites are beginning to post the details. AppleInsider has all the info on Walmart's deals, which include an iPhone 6 for $179 plus a $75 gift card, meaning that your final price is effectively $104. They also have iPad deals, such as the first-generation 16 GB iPad Air for $397 with a $100 gift card.
There are many new features available to you in iOS 8 in the Photos and Camera apps. When you're viewing an individual photo, one nice new feature is the ability to designate it as a favorite. Then those photos that you've identified as favorites are automatically collected into an album titled Favorites.
Tip of the Day: Have Your iPhone or iPad Read to You
By Jim Karpen
If you find it more convenient to listen to some text on your iPhone or iPad rather than read it, you can easily enable that capability. You might, for example, want your device to read a web page or ebook or other document to you as you drive. While this feature has been available for some time, note that iOS 8 gives a convenient new option for invoking speech.
Tip of the Day: Quickly Add a Website to Favorites
By Jim Karpen
I like the features of Safari in iOS 8. In a previous tip I showed how to request the desktop version of a site by tapping in the address bar and then dragging down on the Favorites window that pops up. I also just learned of a quick way to add the current page to Favorites, to your reading list, or to shared links.
I like Apple's Maps app, but a number of times it's taken me to a location that simply didn't exist: an Indian restaurant, a zoo, a hotel in a small town, a Chinese restaurant. I diligently follow Siri's directions and when she says I've arrived, the establishment in question is nowhere to be seen. And in several of these cases probably never existed. If you've had similar problems and prefer maps from third parties such as Google, you can now conveniently access these maps from within Apple's Maps app.
Tip of the Day: How to Search Within a Web Page
By Jim Karpen
Often when you're searching the web for some particular bit of information, your search pulls up a long page of text. But you then have no idea where on that page to find the information you're looking for. The next step is to search within the page. The way to do that on iOS devices is simple, but not obvious.
Tip of the Day: See the Time Messages Were Sent
By Jim Karpen
One of the useful features of email is being able to see exactly when an email was sent. However, unlike Mail, the default view in Messages doesn't show the time when messages in a thread were sent. Messages are time-stamped just as emails are—you simply need to know how to view the time stamp.
