iPhone Life - Best Apps, Top Tips, Great Gear
What Is Emergency SOS: How to Set It Up
By Rachel Needell
Apple's Emergency SOS feature allows you to contact emergency services without having to unlock your phone. It will also send your location to your emergency contacts. So if you need help fast, the Emergency SOS feature can contact emergency services and send your location to your Emergency Contacts. Sound interesting? Here's how to set it up!
How to Enable Screen Sharing on Zoom
By Rachel Needell
The first few times you use the Zoom app on any given device or after an update, you may not have allowed Zoom to share your screen on the Mac. Additionally, sometimes when you click the button to go to Settings to fix the issue, it doesn't open to the proper settings menu to enable screen sharing on your Mac. Here's a step by step guide for how to share screen on Mac during a Zoom call.
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Fast-forward ad-skipping: the best video players
By Werner Ruotsalainen
If you use your iDevice for watching videos using the built-in, stock Videos app, you may have noticed that the only way of fast forwarding or rewinding is the positioning slider at the top. You “grab” the slider with a finger and drag it to the left/right to rewind / fast forward, respectively.
Additionally, you can also drag your finger downwards to make the slider dragging speed slower. It won't help much when you run or do some other exercise and, in order to keep your pulse high, wouldn't want to stop it.
Using Skype with a Bluetooth headset and via AirPlay (with Audacity tips and tricks)
By Werner Ruotsalainen
While in the gym, I tend to make / receive a lot of Skype calls to my wife or relatives. As I exclusively use stereo (A2DP) Bluetooth headphones in the gym to give me absolute, cable-less iPad 3-video-watching freedom while exercising, I've also run into problems related to the Bluetooth bugs of Skype: most of the time, I couldn't just use the headphones I already worn to conduct the call. Instead, I needed to use the speaker / microphone on the iPad itself, making my environment hear what both I and the other party say. Therefore, I decided to investigate the problem and come up with solutions to it.
When the good folks at iGearUnlimited contacted me asking if I’d be interested in reviewing their customized cases I first checked out their website and saw what seemed to be a quality product. Then I watched their promotional video (see below), and was even more impressed. And then I went ahead and ordered a folio style case, and not only continued to be impressed, but now I feel like I can now unreservedly recommend their products to all of our readers here at iPhone Life.
First of all, how great it is to be able to get a quality case for an iPad with an image of your choosing decorating it! The iPad is already so personal to so many of us; it’s a great plus to be able to customize its protection as much as we can customize its innards.
Selecting the best DVD player app & an It's Playing bugfix
By Werner Ruotsalainen
UPDATE (08/09/2012): in the comments section below, I elaborated on deinterlacing. Note that I'll devote a complete article / tutorial to these subjects (using X.264 / HandBrake / Episode to deinterlace etc.) some time. Before that, it's mostly HandBrake's (default) decombing that will be your best friend.
UPDATE (08/04/2012): THIS thread has a lot of discussion of the subject. Remember to prefer my statements to ones that state the opposite! (The thread is full of factual errors.)
Original article:
Combined article update: iOS 5.1.1 iPad 3/2 Cydia compatibility list
By Werner Ruotsalainen
UPDATE (07/07/2012): I've run some VERY serious CPU usage tests (see THIS for the methology; I used "top" on my iPad 3) and found out the following:
The InfiniDock and Springtomize 2 combo (can be used together to give the highest configurability; see below for related remarks) does not add any CPU usage when
- the device shows SpringBoard
- 10 icons are put in the dock, even with card roll and scrolling (via InfiniDock) enabled
- the maximum number of icons are displayed in each row
Playing Back WMV Videos – the Complete(!) Roundup
By Werner Ruotsalainen
UPDATE (02/21/2013): I've re-tested the current versions of XBMC and compared it to the current AVPlayer(HD) versions on both the iPad 3, 4 and the iPhone 5. AVPlayer and AVPlayerHD have proved out to be considerably better, which means XBMC is still not recommended for WMV playback.
Of XBMC, I've tested the following versions:
- official 12 Eden (currently available from their official repo as the default version)
- the iPad Retina-friendly version (more info)
- the latest (21/Feb) nightly build (13 alpha)
More info & discussion HERE.
5 Of The Top, Rugged iPhone Cases In Review: Welcome to a review of heavy-duty cases by someone who really puts his iPhone's case through some vigorous testing! My iPhone accompanies me on many an outdoor adventure, and like me, has had its fair share of spills and thrills. So I have a good idea of what makes a "good rugged case", a good rugged case.
Review: Multimedia Player PlayerXtreme
By Werner Ruotsalainen
UPDATE (24/05/2012): the new (2.3) version has just been approved by Apple. It has, among other things, improved UPnP support:
In my tests, directory listing indeed worked with Majestic. However, streaming didn't (all I saw was a black screen) and downloading have turned out to be VERY slow - more than an order of magnitude(!!!) slower than with GoodPlayer, under exactly the same circumstances. That is, UPnP-wise, this app still has a lot to be improved...
Review: brand new, free(!) video player: QQPlayerHD
By Werner Ruotsalainen
Several MacRumors forum members (see for example THIS thread – BTW, my first post there also contains an 1:2.35 movie playback screenshot) have asked me for my opinion on the recently released , free(!) QQPlayerHD (iTunes link).
(main file list dialog; the screenshot also shows the one and only menu available in the app. Click the image for the original-sized one.)
Watching videos taken to the max: Roundup of MKV to MP4/M4V video converters
By Werner Ruotsalainen
UPDATE (08/20/2012): as far as the latest OS X version (10.8 Mountain Lion; ML for short) is concerned, I have some bad news.
The All-in-one Photo Viewer Roundup (+70% price drop on the best image viewer!)
By Werner Ruotsalainen
In the last few days, I've participated in several discussion threads in the Phone Cameras / Tablets & Apps forum of DPReview. (See for example THIS, THIS and THIS). In order not to have to repeat the same facts again and again in future discussions, I've decided to dedicate a complete article to the question of using the iPad as a photo frame.
Multimedia player RushPlayer updated: quick change review - UPDATE: RushPlayer+ review & comparison
By Werner Ruotsalainen
While, in the last week, several multimedia players have been updated (including my favourite, GoodPlayer, which, among other things, has clearly improved its DVD playback support in the current, 5.0 version), one of them I've already (quickly) reviewed (see THIS and also the comparison videos HERE), RushPlayer has received the most updates and new functionality. This is why I'm dedicating a separate (quick) article to it (but, currently, no other players).
The new iPad (3) for 2K(+) video playback? Definitely!
By Werner Ruotsalainen
You might have heard of 2K video. It delivers (horizontally – but not vertically, at least not in the widescreen mode!) a little bit more resolution (2048) than Full HD (1920).
This is how you can convert your DVB recordings' subtitles to iDevice-friendly MP4 subtitles
By Werner Ruotsalainen
UPDATE (12/Sept/2012): in the meantime, Subler, one of the best remuxer and MP4 editor tools has also received OCR capabilities. It has some advantages over the character recognition of SubRip, introduced in the article below. Please read THIS for a full tutorial.
Playing back 1080p60/i60 (M(2))TS videos right from your camera? - UPDATE: desktop converters tested
By Werner Ruotsalainen
Over at DPReview, answering a question (thread HERE), I've elaborated on playing back both 1080i60 and 60p videos created by the new, highly recommended and popular Panasonic FZ150 camera so that this info can also be included in my forthcoming iOS Multimedia bible. As the info can be of interest to people before the Multimedia bible is finally published (which takes at least one additional week or two), I dedicate a separate article to the question. (Note that this article applies to all other cameras producing MTS, M2TS or TS – and not MOV / MP4! - files.)
Making the stock Videos application play every MP4 file possible
By Werner Ruotsalainen
I've dedicated several articles (latest one HERE) to converting videos into MP4 (M4V / MOV) files so that they can be played back by the H.264 decoder of even older-generation iDevices. In the current one, I elaborate on how how you can play the output files with the built-in, stock Videos application. This article also belong to my Multimedia article series, in which I plan to publish a “Streaming multimedia over your local Wi-Fi” in the next few days and, then, finally, the real Multimedia bible.