Well – this is what I’ve expected. The today’s version released by Apple is NOT the same build as the iOS4 GM I was looking on the last view days.
Now waiting to get more infos and what’s all about the issues I’ve described previously…
This keyboard is really nice. You just connect your iPhone via Bluetooth with the iTech Virtual Keyboard and here we go:
Virtual Laser Keyboard
There is now a solution available to use this keyboard in reality. You have to use a jailbroken iPhone – but that’s not a real problem 😉
At ENGADGET you’ll find a video of this setup – iPhone, Virtual Keyboard AND the new Magic Mouse…
So this would be a solution for that ones writing really much on their iPhones and / or those of us which are not that happy with that little virtual keyboard Apple is providing.
The price is hot: $ 169.99 with the english keyboard layout. You need different keyboard layout? Well, there’s no german one – but you can purchase a russian one…
My iPhone 3G bothered me over the last weeks. Why?
Well – my job brings a lot of travelling to me – almost every day I have to drive by car from Austria to Germany. So every day I’m leaving Austria the iPhone has to connect to a german partner provider (T-Mobile A –> T-Mobile D). Every phone I owned previously was doing this by itself – but not the iPhone. It just lost the connection and did nothing to connect to the partner provider.
Yes – I know… there is a preference I have to set to automatically switch. And guess what? Yeah – the preference was set to ‘automatic’… but it simply didn’t connect.
I always had to do this switch manually by opening the preferences menu and selecting the partner provider after the iPhone was showing up the list of providers it found.
That procedure took me sometimes up to 2 or 3 minutes… unacceptable.
Yesterday i missed several calls due to the fact that I simply forgot to switch to the german provider – bad luck, yeah. Really bad luck. But – this was the initial kick for me to get this ‘bug’ fixed.
But what should I do? I resetted the phone several times before without any change… So this was not the point. Soft-Resetting is just one way to reset your iPhone. You also have the possiblility to completely reset the phone to it’s basics by using the reset-option in the preferences menu (preferences/general/reset); therefor I yesterday used the option ‘Erase All Content and Settings’…
After resetting the iPhone the phone was setup as it was when I got it out of the box. Switching on showed me to connect the phone via USB cable to the computer / iTunes.
As soon as iTunes started up the phone was recognized and I was asked to reinstall the last backup – or to tread the phone as a completely new one. So I wanted to start over from the beginning and selected therefor the option to treat the phone as a new one.
Seconds later the phone was re-activated (yes it was deactived by erasing all the content) – and then a first synchronization was performed. I had to re-organize all the apps – and yes, for sure – all the infos stored on the phone have really been deleted (including all the login infos – e.g. Skype, Nimbuzz, 1Password…) – be aware if you do it the same way: you don’t get these kind of data back synched; you have to take care about this data by yourself BEFORE you start over resetting the phone. Finally Contacts & mail accounts where transferred so that the phone was perfectly setup.
The question was – would it work? Would the provider switch be done automatically? I was really looking forward to the next day 🙂
And yeah – it really worked like a charm! The provider switched within seconds now.
Sideeffects? Some…
So for now – I’m happy again with my iPhone 🙂
These days I searched for new apps at the appstore – but it seems that the ‘developers’ don’t have many time to develop real apps… so they only create link pages to their own (or others) website(s).
I really hope that this doesn’t get the standard for iPhone apps…
Yes – I know… advertising – but that’s no excuse for such bad apps…
Two days ago an Sept. 9th Apple released its new version of iTunes – iTunes9 and a new update for the iPhone OS which is mainly related to the integration of iTunes9.
After two days of playing around there are some points I’ve figured out:
But what does this mean in detail for users wanting to play around with the new Genius Mixes?
Let’s have a deeper look on the mentioned points:
ad 1. – Genius Mix does not show up immediatly…
after upgrading to the new version iTunes9 users have to update Genius again if the Genius Mix entry is not showing up automatically. To update Genius simply click on the related menu entry ‘Store / Update Genius’. When updating is finished the new Genius Mix entry should be visible on the left navigation sidebar, directly under the ‘Genius’ entry. If the entry is not available turn Genius off (‘Store / Turn off Genius’) and on again.
ad 3. and 4. – the iPhone does not show the Genius Mixes…
The Mixes do not show up on you iPhone till you select the Mixes at the sync page of your iPhone. Once the Mixes have been generated there is a new selectable area within the Music-Sync page of the iPhone in your iTunes9. The Mixes are NOT selected automatically – so you will have to select the wanted mixes manually on this page. But be aware – the mixes are large and your iPhone maybe has too less memory free. iTunes then asks you to select automatically music for you. I’ve experienced that then the Mixes are not uploaded to iPhone – instead the iPhone is filled up with music iTunes selects for you! So to ensure Mixes are showing up you will have to manage your memory on the iPhone and select wisely the Mixes via iTunes. If you made it your iPhone finally shows up the brand new iTunes9 Genius Mixes on it – but only in the iPod Music Bar ‘More’ – there is showing up now the ‘Genius-Mixes’ entry where you can select the different Mixes – each Mix on a extra page (use your finger flipping trough).
ad 5. – there are still troubles with the Mixes on the iPhone…
I experienced some issues on using the Mixes on the iPhone – they are performance realted I think. So maybe owners of the new generation of iPhone / iPod touch will not recognize these issues (i’m using a 3G):
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ad 2. – finally – the Genius Icon showing up on images at Apple…
maybe you saw these screenys on a Apple page which are showing this nice Genius Icon on the iPhone / iPod touch navigation bar – but not on yours?
Well you are right – it isn’t there – but it’s there if you use the Apple Remote app which is available in the appstore to get access to your iTunes9 on your computer:
I hope this little article helps you a little bit of getting around the troubles you maybe experienced on using iTunes9 / iPhone OS 3.1.
Update: The icon should also be there without using the Apple Remote App on your iPhone /iPod touch – it appeared after a complete reset of my iPhone… so it seems there was an OS update probleme… 🙂
Skype for iPhone is my favourite tool to keep in contact with my family while I’m not in town – I am using SkypeToSkype calls, chat and also SkypeToPhone calls.
These days i received the info that there’s a new version of Skype available: V 1.2 with some feature updates (minor)…
So – well. Minor updates… nothing should go wrong on minor updates I thought and updated Skype on my iPhone. And BANG – that was it finally.
Nothing worked as it should:
Skype even crashed on typing numbers using the dial-pad…
And as far as I could find out – I’m not alone with such a experience.
I really wonder what the testing guys at apple are doing during the app-check for the app store – such a bad tool should not make it to the ‘approved’ stage at all!!!
Repeat after me: NEVER EVER update a running system!
Update:
New version 1.2.1 for Skype is now available for download in the appstore – and this version works for me now.
Interesting how fast it could happen that an Apple approval is made – not everyone made this experience in the past.
Update 2:
Attention on the new version – tried to start the iPod function during a skype chat – the iPod did not start playing music… I exited skype and tried to start the iPod manually – but all my music & videos have gone! deleted! tried now to restart the iPhone – music & videos still not available. the info page shows that there are no music & video files remaining…. grrrrr…! It’s not clear for me in the moment what happened – was it the new iPhone OS 3.1 or skype 1.21… I realised the issue during skyping – so….
Had you ever the problem that you couldn’t find the TV-magazine? Well I have it – but I never lost my iPhone (till now 😉 )…
Found today a little app (free to download) called TV Select.
On the preferences page of the app you select all the TV channels you like (up to 15) and afterwards you get them on the info page with all the infos you need:
Channel overview
which TV show / movie is currently shown on all the selected channels – and even more…
The most liked feature here is the little progress bar which shows you how long the show is already on air. So now you get the info you really need.
You also have the possibility to get more details on the currently shown program on TV per channel.
So this app is a ‘must have’ for me!
Trails 2.0 - Infopage
And as one of my App-Tests I now gave Trails another try – it’s now version 2.0.
The test-trail was about 6km and the duration was about 3h 45min – don’t wonder why it took me so long… the kids have joined me!
Trails has stored 495 waypoints during this test and have been set almost 100% on the ways showed in the map – so this was a positive result of the testing.
During the test I recognized several crashes of the application – trails terminated sometimes when I tried using the camera feature to take a photo related to the current position. All in all that was no problem because it was always possible to restart the session at the last waypoint without loosing data – and the taken photo also was stored.
What about the battery? Well – it works now much better because the display is faded out after not touching the screen and therefor the energy consumption shrinks dramatically. For this session it took about 50% of the overall battery capacity. I think that’s ok for the most trails. If you need more power you should look for an external battery tank like 3GJUICE.
The export of the trail to the Mac OS X application ‘TrailRunner’ worked like a charm and the map showed up the trail in a usable way.
Schneerosenweg - Kufstein
...the so called 'iPhone' killer...
You remember the last weeks? Yeah! Palm Pre – the so called iPhone killer – was presented in US.
But what makes it to the iPhone killer?
The absence of a SIM card slot?
So – ok it’s working in US with SPRINT as provider without a SIM card… but what about the ROW?
Calls over skype via a public hotspot 😉
Ah! I’ve to call my customer regarding this big deal we are going to make – where the hell is the next McDonalds with a public hotspot??
So – for sure – to be a phone you have to get it working with SIM cards… specially for the ROW…
Syncing music & photos via iTunes?
And what about their press infos about syncing with iTunes?
Well – as far as I know – iTunes is property of Apple (funny, yeah?)… and the Palm Pre isn’t.
So – ok it may work now to sync it via iTunes… but they can’t really be so naive to believe Apple would tolerate this situation in the future – are they?
So I guess with one of the next updates Apple pushes out the Palm Pre would be also pushed out…
Memory – 8GB…
Well 8GB are really not too less – but to be a iPhone killer you also should have a version with more memory available, should’nt you? There is also a version of the new iPhone 3Gs available with 32GB for those of us who also like to come along with their ‘little’ iTunes libraray…
And last but not least – iPhone 3Gs was announced these a days – and since this point it seems to be clear what we can think of a gadget which is called a ‘iPhone killer’.
New Network connection
Well – some guys have to wait till 17th of June to get tethering on their iPhone 3G working. I know one of them – customer at ORANGE…
Mhhhm – T-Mobile.AT seems not to be as bad as thought – they offer tethering without any notice… it’s just WORKING
After upgrading to 3.0 and connecting the iPhone to my MBP I changed the tethering status in the prefs of the iPhone…
After that i connected it to my MBP and got the next message there to setup the new network
And then – yeah we put down that cocktail… Tethering was working over WiFi and 3G:
So well – Chris… WHO has now the wrong provider-contract?
😉
Network setup on the MBP
Tethering Settings, running tethering