iPhone Life - Best Apps, Top Tips, Great Gear

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Kids these days: They may not know how to tie their shoes, but they sure know how to operate an iPhone. That doesn't have to be a bad thing! Here, we've put together a list of recommendations for kids' gear that will educate and entertain at the same time.

iPhone Life is supported by readers like you. When you buy products through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. All products are independently tested, rated, and reviewed by our team of editors. Learn more.

There are so many iPhone accessories out there: iPhone gear for traveling, for charging, for protecting, and for streaming. Deciding what you need can be a chore, but we've tried them a lot out, so we can recommend you the best of the bunch. Below, we'll go over our favorite iPhone essentials.

Check Out the Newest Body Composition Scale by Withings

(Sponsored Post) By Olena Kagui on Wed, 09/28/2022

Are you still using an analog scale or a digital scale that only tells you how much you weigh? It's time for an upgrade! Withings is known for its award-winning smart scales, and they are launching a brand new one on October 4th. This new Body Comp scale gives you precise information about your muscle, fat, water, and bone mass, as well as your visceral fat. Plus, each purchase of Body Comp comes with a 12-month subscription to the premium Health+ app to help you assess your overall health.

Do you have an idea for an app but lack the programming knowledge to begin building it? In this weekly blog series, I will take you, the non-programmer, step by step through the process of creating apps for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Join me each week on this adventure and you will experience how much fun turning your ideas into reality can be! This is part 37 of the series. If you are just getting started, check out the beginning of the series here.

My last few posts took a bit of sidetrack as I covered appsworld 2014. In this post, I get back on track and talk about another option for outsourcing your iOS app's web processing, messaging, and data storage—Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Let me start by saying, not all freemium games are bad. There are some notable titles that don't intentionally extort dollars from gamers. Freemium games rely on what has been referred to as the "friction point," the point in which a game has limited your progress and you either have to wait for your energy to recharge, pay more money to continue, or proceed to grind away at a lower, less challenging level while scraping credits together to gain a more competitive edge. The challenge for many freemium game developers is walking that line between frustrating the gamer enough that they are willing to throw down real-world money to advance and not frustrating the gamer so much that they put the game down and don't come back. Distimo released an interesting report in March 2013 showing just how profitable it is for developers to walk this line.

The torrent of evidence for new products with a focus on health and fitness is astonishing, including a wide range of top experts Apple has hired. According to AppleInsider, a report last week in China's Electrical Engineering Times said that Apple is considering using optoelectronics in their rumored iWatch to monitor pulse and blood oxygen levels. This technology measures the changes in light reflected by the body. Light from small LEDs is projected onto one's finger, for example, and then the sensors measure the amount and color of the light reflected. From this it can determine how fast your heart is beating and how much oxygen saturation there is in your blood. Adding to the credibility of this report is the fact that Apple has hired experts in this area in recent weeks. Whether this technology is slated for an iWatch or other wearable device is unclear, but it appears likely that Apple is developing a product that will use it.

In a previous post, I reported on the story from Bloomberg that Apple was closing in on a deal with Time Warner and was hoping to introduce a new Apple TV device by April. That's starting to look unlikely. An article in the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that one source familiar with Apple's plans said Apple hopes to release a new device by June, and another said it may not be ready until several months after that. The WSJ article also helps to clarify the earlier reports of Apple's possible deal with Time Warner. The question was whether Apple was still trying to make a deal that would allow it to offer its own cable channels or if it's simply hoping to offer the cable companies a better set-top box. Apple had earlier wanted to offer full seasons of TV shows along with live programming. However, the article says Apple has given up on that idea, given the resistance of the cable providers. Most recently Apple is asking just for the five most recent episodes of TV shows. It's also possible, the article says, that Apple would simply sell the new Apple TV devices to the cable companies, who would then rent them as set-top boxes to subscribers, rather than Apple selling the device directly to consumers.

 
Last week I had more fun than one person should be allowed to have. At appsworld in San Francisco, I had the privilege of meeting Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple.
 
When you think of Apple, it's natural to think first of Steve Jobs and the tremendous task he performed taking Apple, a company near the brink, and completely turning it around to become one of the world's largest companies and most coveted brands. However, if there were no Steve Wozniak, there would have been no Apple. Wozniak is the wizard who designed and built the first highly successful mass-produced personal computer.

If and when Apple ever decides to incorporate a wireless charging solution in future iDevices, it will be a killer feature for sure. But until then, it's up to third-party accessory manufacturers to step up to the plate. One system that I've had the pleasure to use is the iPort Charge Case and Stand for iPad mini with Retina display ($99.95).

With the growing popularity of mobile devices like iPhones and iPads, there has been a flood of high quality wireless Bluetooth audio gear addressing the limitations of iOS hardware built-in speakers. Not to be left out of this expanding market, Creative Labs has improved on their initial wireless speaker design with the release of their Sound BlasterAxx Axx200 sound system. How does it stack up against similarly priced competitors? Read on to find out.

In a recent report on mobile payments, the Wall Street Journal said,  “Apple Inc. is laying the groundwork for an expanded mobile-payments service, leveraging its growing base of iPhone and iPad users and the hundreds of millions of credit cards on file through its iTunes stores.” This report does not raise eyebrows, but simply states the inevitable fact. Apple's entry into this market will undoubtedly raise the bar, with major players already fiercely competing to gain market traction over how people pay through mobile devices.

 

Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs with the Apple II

Some guys have all the luck.

This week I am making preparations to head to San Francisco where I'm speaking at appsworld. I was asked to chair the first day of the Developer World conference sessions. As conference chair, I give a 10 minute introduction at the start of the day to greet attendees and then introduce each speaker.

So, I went out to the appsworld web site and saw the name of the first speaker on the list.

Steve Wozniak.

Do you have an idea for an app but lack the programming knowledge to begin building it? In this weekly blog series, I will take you, the non-programmer, step by step through the process of creating apps for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Join me each week on this adventure and you will experience how much fun turning your ideas into reality can be! This is part 36 of the series. If you are just getting started, check out the beginning of the series here.

In my previous post, I provided an overview of using Google App Engine to scale your iOS apps, and demonstrated how to get Google's iOS sample app running on an iOS device so that you can check it out.

If you like to take photos with your iDevice, your Camera Roll is full of pictures. If you want to find one picture in particular, maybe that cute photo of your dog playing in the snow, or maybe a photo that captured your grandma's charm at Christmas, it may take you awhile to scroll through all the photos to find it.

There is an easy solution to this problem. You can organize all the photos in your Camera Roll by creating Albums.

It's easy to find high tech wonders at CES, but I have a particular affinity for items that are low tech or no tech... In other words, items that have no battery, no wires, and no chips but still manage to make our high tech lives better.

People always ask me what to get the person who has everything. My response? Something to hold it in! If you have tons of gadgets, as I do, you're always looking for the right bag, case, or container. Fortunately, CES was full of such gear.

Your iPhone is an elegant, beautifully designed piece of equipment. It deserves a case of equal elegance, and I finally found one. Actually, they have two models and they are available after their launch on Kickstarter, from Blacksmith Labs. Additionally, to celebrate their launch, for the rest of January, they are taking $20 off each holster during checkout with the coupon code:

Two or three times a week, sometimes more often, my iPad would inform me, that despite an apparently strong signal, it couldn’t connect to my Wi-Fi. The distance from my office to the master bedroom is 300 feet or so, as the Wi-Fi crow flies. Downstairs, the family room where my recliner resides, is almost as far. So I figured I should get a Wi-Fi extender. I started with the extender in a central place in the house. I configured it for both 2.4 and 5 GHz. bandwidth networks using WPS—which means I didn’t have to configure it, it configured itself. This particular Wi-fi extender created new networks with the name of the original network, followed by EXT. This set-up was designed to max out at 802.11N.

Recently, AT&T created headlines, raised suspicion, and set tongues wagging with its announcement that they are starting a new Sponsored Data program. This new plan will allow eligible 4G customers to access mobile content and apps without impacting their monthly wireless data plan. In simpler terms this would be like a toll-free service for wireless data where websites that sign up as sponsors will be free for AT&T wireless customers. As a result, no data will be deducted from a surfer’s monthly allotment of data. Data charges will be borne by the sponsoring company.

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