iPhone Life - Best Apps, Top Tips, Great Gear

The WWDC 2021 keynot on June 7 is less than a month away, and we are hoping to get some exciting news on iOS 15, iPadOS 15, macOS 12, watchOS 8, tvOS 15, and more. Apple's annual developers conference is all-online and free for the second year in a row. This event is a chance for Apple to showcase new software for its devices so that developers and system engineers can learn about changes for the year ahead. The event's highlight is the keynote announcement, which will stream live at 10 a.m. PDT on the 7th. Unlike the usual Apple announcements, the event focuses on software rather than new devices. This year, we expect to see UI upgrades on all the devices, new Apple Fitness Plus features, improved parental controls for Apple TV, and hopefully some new digital designs in the form of Apple Watch faces and screensavers.

I wish I were at this week's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas seeing these technologies in person. Some of them look pretty exciting, and may portend things to come from Apple. Samsung got a lot of attention for its demo of flexible OLED (oganic light-emitting diode) displays that can be bent, twisted, or folded. Instead of using glass, the layer of chemicals is laid on a thin plastic film.

Walmart and Straight Talk announced yesterday that beginning January 11 they'll be offering the iPhone as a no-contract phone with unlimited nationwide calling, data, and texting for $45 per month. Straight Talk is the nation's largest no-contract phone provider. That's a great rate, and certainly saves you money over the $70 per month plan from other carriers. But you have to pay the entire cost of the iPhone: $649 for a 16GB iPhone 5, and $449 for an 8GB iPhone 4.

 

The House of Marley: Not just a brand, not just high quality gear, but a revolutionary lifestyle choice.

 

 

If you follow my articles, then you already know I am a big fan of House of Marley. Aside from the fact that House of Marley is spearheaded by Rohan Marley, son of one of the most influential artist of all time, Bob Marley, House of Marley is also a brand and company that is so enthusiastically focused on the quality and integrity of their product that it was an entirely refreshing experience for me to be able to visit with them at CES 2013 today here in Las Vegas.

 

My visit to the House of Marley station today at CES was an absolute joy. The House of Marley staff was both completely welcoming and extremely knowledgeable about their products and also, so enthusiastic about the latest additions to an already amazing line of gear. Theirs has been one of the most enjoyable booths I’ve had the pleasure of visiting at this year’s CES.

 

One of the big tech showcase press events during the CES week of madness is Digital Experience, held at the MGM Grand Convention Center. A veritable cornucopia of vendors all crammed together--a mini version of CES, but with catering. Figured least I could do would be to post up a sample on some of the great stuff in this space. The theme this year was that of a "tailgate party", as in a party out in the parking lot of a college football game, but with vendors being swarmed by press, and the noise level cranking up to a steady drone, there was not much football interest being exhibited. Uh, anyway, let's go straight to the gear...

iOS-based platforms have one major flaw: slim storage. Even with 64GB of memory, you can’t fit your entire movie collection on an iPad or iPhone, even including all the music you want is a challenge. Streaming attempts to overcome this limitation, but in some cases that means rebuying films or video you already own on other media just so you can watch it when you are near a hotspot—who yes, you have to be at a hotspot for streaming to work. What would it be like if you own the hotspot? That is exactly what Seagate offers, a 500GB GoFlex Satellite Wi-Fi Drive that becomes its own content hotspot.

Back in 2011, I reviewed the iW1 when it first came out; an awesomely portable/rechargeable wireless speaker from iHome--portable, as in literally no wires--with an internal 2600 mAh Li-ion battery. The Wi-Fi setup was a bit sketchy, but I finally figured out a compromise by setting up a second Wi-Fi access point. Been looking forward to trying out one of the new iW3 models and got my hands on a review unit. The iW3 is like the iW1, but taller, lighter and easier to haul around the house. The sound quality is pretty close to what I remember from the iW1, and though it won't blow out a window, it will let you easily push quality music to any room in your home.

Infinite runners are to action games like Match 3 games are to the puzzle genre: there are a lot of options on the App Store, and so many of them start to feel the same after a while.  Thankfully I like the infinite runner style of game play enough that I’m pretty much willing to try any one I can get my hands on, and occasionally I’m still surprised to find one that doesn’t feel just like the rest.  Now I’m not suggesting that Ronin does anything revolutionary for the genre, or quite frankly even really evolutionary, but there’s something about it that keeps drawing me back.

In the update section of my previous article on advanced location and camera direction tagging of videos, I've already mentioned the built-in video recorder of Ubipix, currently, the only iOS application to record truly dynamic, almost (metadata is sampled every second) frame-level location and direction info, doesn't really have a decent video recorder.

Roach smasher is a simple yet fun game where, as the name implies, you have to smash roaches.  As the roaches run across your screen, you simply tap them to kill them.  The more you can kill the more points you can get.  To make the game more challenging, if you miss a roach you will tap the ice which they are crawling on.  After 20 misses, the ice cracks all the way through and your game is over.  Every time you play you can try to get a higher score than the last time.

We're likely headed into another long season of rumors about the new iPhone, with developers saying that there's evidence appearing in their app usage logs that Apple is testing a new iPhone 5S running iOS 7. As reported by The Next Web, developers are able to track which iPhone models and iOS versions are using their third-party apps, and the iPhone 5 uses the identifiers 5,1 and 5,2. However, they've been surprised to see an identifier of 6,1 in their logs. And the device is running iOS 7.

I never considered frogs to be a very popular subject for video games, but there really are quite a few games staring the lily pad bound amphibians and their desire to eat bugs.  Thankfully Mister Frog is a different beast altogether.  Yeah you’re still trying to collect bugs with the protagonist’s tongue, but there isn’t a lily pad anywhere to be seen in this game.  Plus, the actual game play mechanic is different than any I’ve come across in this sort of game to date.  This is another fine example of simple, fun and addictive blending seamlessly together to create a game that probably won’t get the recognition it deserves.

I've seen a number of lists of apps recommended for those lucky individuals who got a new iPhone or iPad from Santa, but CNET's listing strikes me as being the most useful. They include a number of free apps that are my favorites and that I use every day. Let's take a look at some of their recommended apps. 

Flipboard — This is likely the most popular aggregator of news and content ever developed for iOS devices. Its interface is gorgeous and intuitive, and very easy to customize to your interests. Many people find it to be their favorite window onto Facebook or news or entertainment or sports, or whatever your interest is. 

 

Google Maps — When Apple dumped Google Maps in favor of its own maps solution, many were disappointed that Apple's effort was missing some of their favorite features, such as transit directions and Google Street View. Fortunately, Google eventually came out with a full-featured version of their app for iOS devices that has almost all the functionality of their highly popular maps app for Android devices. 

Christmas has come and gone, and the first hints are coming in that the iPad was the dominant tablet this holiday season. According to Barron's, a market analyst who called Best Buy and Staples stores found that the iPad was the most popular device among tablet buyers. Amazon's Kindle Fire and the Samsung Galaxy tab also had some sales, but apparently there wasn't much demand for Microsoft's Surface tablet. Even more interesting is a clever search of Twitter posts for the 24-hour period over Christmas.

Google has posted a very helpful article on 10 ways to make your Google Maps for iPhone experience even better. Google Maps (free) has been hugely popular and was downloaded over 10 million times the first two days it was available. The tips include:

1. Press and hold to place a pin on the map.

2. To see Street View images in panorama, "press and hold any location on the map, tap the info sheet, and then tap the image."

3. Shake your phone to send Google feedback.

4. Swipe the info sheet to the left or right to browse more results.

5. Tap the three buttons at bottom right to access the satellite, traffic and public transit views.

Many iOS users are also Mac users, like myself, so if you have a Mac, and an Apple wireless keyboard, and an Apple Magic Trackpad, pay attention! I have all of the above, but I found that I didn't use the trackpad that much. Rather than slide my hand off to the right, past my Magic Mouse, to the trackpad, and lose time, and risking Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, I prefer the design of Apple's laptops, with the trackpad just below the spacebar.

Over at MacRumors (thread), I've been asked to compile a list of players that can vertically stretch a video so that it entirely fills the iPad's screen. During this, it does sacrifice the right aspect ratio and does distort the image. However, at least it doesn't cut off the sides.

Here's a 16:9 movie (my well-known resolution chart video available for download HERE) not filling in the (much taller) screen vertically in the built-in stock Videos app:

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