iOS 7: Get the iOS 7.0.3 Update

Get the iOS 7.0.3 Update

If you're still using iOS 6 that's fine-- stay there if you want. But if you're on any version of 7 lower than 7.0.3, get your device updated to 7.0.3 pronto. There are lots of improvements in iOS 7.0.3, but here are the most important ones:

1. iOS 7.0.3 introduces the iCloud Keychain feature that remembers your log-ins for websites and your passwords for WiFi networks. Enter the info once and it's remembered, so you don't have to enter it ever again-- and it syncs across all of your iOS devices (as long as they are on 7.0.3 or higher). Imagine how nice it will be to enter log-in info, or WiFi passwords, on your iPhone-- and have it show up on your iPad! For the person who has an iPad and an iPhone the iCloud Keychain feature is a dream come true. Even with a single iOS device it's a very useful and handy feature.

2. iOS 7.0.3 brings back the "search the web" option for Home screen searches, same as in iOS 6. (Rick, I think they did this one for you.)

3. iOS 7.0.3 fixes a bug that made activating iMessages impossible.

Apple is a little bit quiet about the bugs that they've fixed with 7.0.3 but I would guess that some of the bugs were revealed

You can read Apple's iOS 7.0.3 release notes and find out more.

Get the update by connecting your device to a charger and then going to the Settings app, then General, then Software Updates. Never roll the dice by installing a software update on battery power. Never ever.

Rick S. wins the Coffee Cup for inspiring this blog post. Congratulations, Rick.

Free AT&T WiFi for iPhones

Maybe they got tired of hearing us complain about how slow the AT&T Edge network is and how 3G isn’t so much better. Regardless, AT&T is now providing free WiFi connections (many times faster than the Edge and 3G networks) in “thousands of hotspots nationwide” including airports, McDonald’s, and Starbucks. Click here for a map of AT&T’s hotspots. Click here for AT&T’s instructions on how to make the connection.

UPDATE (NOVEMBER 5TH, 2013): Apple's legal department has asked that the Apple-Tracker website be shut down as it violates terms of use of the Apple.com website. So now it's gone. Too bad-- it was rather handy. Thanks, Apple-Tracker.

How to Find an iPhone 5s

Looking for an iPhone 5s?

Of course you are.

And are you discovering that the iPhone 5s is in short supply?

Of course you are.

And are you wishing there was a way to check the inventory of every Apple Store near you, with a minimum of effort?

Of course you are. So am I. Fortunately, there's a website called Apple-Tracker.com which makes searching for an iPhone 5s a quick and easy operation. Go to the site, tell them which model you want, enter your zip code, and let them search every Apple Store near you. With one click you'll get something like this:



You can check back every so often, or you can sign up to be emailed when the iPhone 5s you want is available.

Apple-Tracker.com does its magic by consolidating searches that you could do one at a time (but why would you-- Apple-Tracker.com is so much easier). The information is public and it's up to the minute and it's presented quickly and simply. Hard to figure out how it could be better.

UPDATE: they made it better. Apple-Tracker.com can help you look for the iPad Air and the iPad mini Retina display too. You can't buy either device until Friday November 1st, 2013, but with apple-tracker.com you'll be ready. See below.


You can also find the iPhone 5s at Radio Shack, and at Best Buy, and at AT&T, and at Verizon, and at Sprint, and at T-Mobile, among other places, but by far the easiest way to find one is with Apple-Tracker.com. Check it out.

Joyce K. wins the Coffee Cup for inspiring this blog post. Congratulations, Joyce.

iPhone Stocks App Tips

There's this thing called "The Stock Market" where people with extra money place bets on companies, and if things go right they cash out with more than they went in with. It's sort of like betting on the NFL, except it's legal in every state, and harder to handicap, and if you lose you can always wait around and hope that someday things will turn around and you'll end up winning. Anyway, Apple provides an app for Stocks on every iPhone, and this very day I "discovered" a couple of features I didn't know about.

Let's start with the basics: start up the app and you get this screen.


That's pretty simple: you can see, for example, that AAPL (Apple) went up $3.95 today, and GOOG (Google) went up $10.75 today-- a good day for both. But who had the better day, Apple or Google? Well, if you're My Mom the Math Major (MMMM), you can work the percentages out in your head, and you probably already have. For the rest of us, a simple tap on a green button (of course, they might be red-- that's when it's NOT a good day), and you see the day's gain as a percentage, like so:


It was a better day for Apple than for Google, but not by much. They basically rose with the rest of the market.

Tap a green (or red) button again, and you get this strange looking bit of info-- which turns out to be the "Market Capitalization" (or just "market cap"), the product of the share price times the number of outstanding shares. Wow, look at Apple go.


But that's not the half of it.

See that little chart across the bottom? I'm sure you've figured out that you can touch "1d" to show the day's ups and downs, "1w" to show the week's, etc. But did you know you could swipe left (or right) to get to other screens, with more info? Yup, you can. Try it and see. Here's what you get:


Swipe again, and you get a list of news article concerning the company. (In a nice touch, the three screens-- chart, info, and news-- go "all the way around" so you can keep swiping in one direction and come back around again to the beginning. Too bad this feature is missing on the iPhone's Home screens.)


Touch one of the stories and you're taken to the full story, in Safari. Here's an example:


This would have been enough for me to write about, but then I tried rotating the iPhone while in the Stocks app, producing this:


And THAT would have been enough for me, until for some reason I touched the chart, and then I touched it in two places, giving me THIS.


Amazing! Now it's easy to see the stock's performance: how much it went up, what that is as a percentage, and from when to when.

Try dragging your finger along the chart. It's fun, especially if you own Apple stock! Note: if you swipe left or right on this screen you will bring up the chart for your next stock.

Much of this is new since iPhone 3.0, but that's no excuse for only discovering it today! I guess I'll have to spend more time turning the iPhone sideways and touching and tapping everywhere as I search for hidden features I should have known by now.

(Did you learn something here? Click the Share button and tell a friend! Did you know all of this already? Send me an email and tell me.)

Book Review: Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson

I'll keep it short: Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs (titled, simply, "Steve Jobs") is disappointingly shallow. It reads like a high school history book, touching many topics, but going into depth on none. The book serves as a good introduction to Steve Jobs, but given the countless articles that have been in circulation for years, didn't we already know this stuff? The story of Jobs recruiting John Sculley, hiring him, changing his opinion of him, and eventually losing a power struggle with him, isn't anything new. Same with Apple buying NeXT, same with Jobs being "mercurial" and "difficult" and adopted, and a vegetarian. Oh, and he had pancreatic cancer. And he liked Bob Dylan a lot.

The main trouble with this book is that it doesn't dive deep. Isaacson relates story after story (told to Isaacson by those who knew and worked with Steve Jobs), but the stories are just who-what-when-where. No "why." It may turn out that Steve Jobs, despite his amazing contributions, may not have been all that deep, and that may explain why Isaacson doesn't try to explain "why," but I have a feeling there probably is quite a bit of depth to Jobs, and it would be interesting to read a biography of Steve Jobs written by someone who really knew him-- perhaps his wife Laurene Powell Jobs, or Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, or Apple's lead designer Jony Ive. (Interestingly, while I came away wanting to know more about Steve Jobs, I also came away wanting to know more about his wife, and Wozniak, and Ive, among many others. They are given cardboard-cutout treatment in Isaacson's book but appear to be among many fascinating people who are mentioned.)

The book shows signs of being rushed, which it probably was. The same people are introduced in multiple chapters, the same topics are covered in multiple chapters, and each time it's as if it's the first time. Taken on a chapter by chapter basis, there isn't a problem, but when you read the book straight through, the lack of careful editing is apparent.

Finally, there's a necessary technological slant to much of Steve Jobs' story, but Isaacson's impressive background doesn't include much tech. Thus, he tends to parrot technical prose verbatim, not realizing that sometimes it needs explaining. For example, when describing what NeXT's system could do, Isaacson writes: "It offered protected memory, advanced networking, and preemptive multitasking"-- and then moves on, as if the reader has any idea of what any of that means.

In the end, "Steve Jobs" is an easy read, partly due to Isaacson's skill, and partly because he tells the reader things he already knows, challenging the reader not at all. That's too bad. I'd hoped for more. Of course, this will not be the last book written about Steve Jobs, and with luck we'll soon get one written by someone who's able to reveal something new.

Those looking for additional info on Steve Jobs today would do well to visit www.allaboutstevejobs.com, a site I've just discovered but am enjoying immensely.

Another Time-Saving Safari Tip

Part 2 of a continuing series, apparently.

Ever come across a word you don't know on a web page? Unless you're my Dad, I'm sure this has happened to you. Assuming that you're not my Dad, when you do find a word you don't know, do you stop what you're doing and reach for the dictionary? I'll bet not. Luckily for the rest of us (the ones who aren't my Dad), Safari offers a shortcut to look up the word using the Mac's dictionary. All you do is hold the Control key and click on the word. You don't even have to select the word first.

Here's what it looks like when you do:

Slide down to "Look Up in Dictionary" and presto, it's done. (The dictionary came with your Mac, by the way. It's been sitting around, probably unused until now, in your Applications folder.)

Those other options are fun too: Search in Spotlight finds the clicked word in documents on your Mac, Search with Google looks up the word (or, if you've selected more than one word, it searches for that phrase), Copy copies, and Speech says the word out loud (you have to slide over a bit more to make that happen). Here's how it looks when you slide down to Speech:


If you've programmed your mouse to have a "Secondary Click" you can use that instead of Control-clicking. Many mice are set up to use a right click, like on a PC, to display the contextual menu, so you might try it yourself. You can change the way the right click works by going to System Preferences and then Mouse. Otherwise, it's Control-click for you, a two-handed move but still a lot faster than reaching for the dictionary.

Hidden Printing Features

Everyone knows how to print... it's just File/Print, or Command-P for the keyboard people. What else is there to know? Plenty. Here are some tips that will have you printing faster/better/more efficiently than ever before.

Tip Number One: Expand the Print dialog box.
When you bring up the Print dialog box, it might be kind of small, like this:



If you like 'em small, this box will work just fine... but if you want access to bunch of handy features, click that downward-pointing triangle in the blue square, up at the top of the box. When you do that, you get an expanded box. Just look at all of those options (see below).


Ah, that's better. You get a nice preview (now we know it's going to take 24 pages to print), and you get to specify how many copies, and which pages, and a whole lot more. Use the little arrows under the preview thumbnail to see what's one each page-- maybe you don't need to print everything after all.

Tip Number Two: Explore the Layout options.
In the expanded dialog box above, I'm printing from Safari. (One of the clues is the pop-up menu that says "Safari" on it.) If you click on the pop-up menu that says "Safari" you will see some other choices (see below). Choose Layout and you'll see things change up a bit.


After choosing Layout, here I've chosen to print two "pages" on each sheet of paper. All of a sudden my 24-page print job is going to take only 12 sheets. All I did is choose 2 from the "Pages per Sheet" menu (could have been 4, 6, 9, or 16 if I wanted it to be) and then choose an option from the Border menu. See below.

Pretty neat. One of these days this is going to help you.

Tip Number Three: Print your pictures using Preview
I hope that you're using Preview to open JPEGs and PDFs and other graphic formats. I could write a nice blog entry showing why Preview is so much better than Acrobat Reader, or I could just tell you it's better and hope you'll take my word for it. When it comes to printing, nothing has a better combination of features and ease of use than Preview-- certainly not Acrobat.

Here's a picture, opened in Preview, and we're ready to print.

This looks a lot like the Safari Print dialog but there are plenty of differences. Most important is the "Scale to Fit" button. You can see, in the box next to "Scale", that Preview had to scale the image to 70% to fit it onto the paper. Nicely, conveniently, this is what Preview does, by default. Very nice of them.

The Auto Rotate checkbox is almost always a good thing to have checked, so leave it checked.

Now, let's look at the bottom of the box, where it says "Images per page." Let's say that you want to make multiple copies of the picture-- smaller ones that you can give away. Choose a number other than 1 in the Images per page pop-up menu, and check the box next to "Print n copies per page." ("n" will be the number you chose in the Images per page pop-up menu.) You'll see what you're going to get in the thumbnail preview. Notice that "Auto Rotate" did its thing here, rotating the image so it fits better on the page.

You can't do it any easier than that.

Pretty neat, eh?

iPhone 4S: Siri

My iPhone 4S arrived and of course I had to start experimenting with Siri.

Here are some tips:

1. You have to turn Siri on! Siri is initially switched off. Settings/General/Siri.
2. Hold the Home button down until the iPhone beeps twice-- then start talking to Siri. You can also pick the iPhone up, hold it to your ear as if you were on a call, and listen for the two beeps. I like pressing the Home button better. (If, when you try to trigger Siri, you see "Voice Control" instead of the Siri microphone, Siri has not been turned on yet.)
3. Teach Siri who your mother and father and sister and brother are. Simply say "Edward Boyce is my dad" or "Darlene Boyce is my mom" and from then on, you can say "Send an email to my dad" or "Call my mom at home" etc. Very handy.

On the left: Siri is off. On the right: Siri is on.

Here are some of the things that I asked Siri to do for me (and they worked):

1. Check my email.
2. Do I have any emails from Zach?
3. Call Joe Smith at work.
4. When is my next appointment?
5. Show me my calendar.
6. Make an appointment for Saturday, 4 PM: UCLA football game (puts it into the calendar)
7. What time does Mom arrive? (I had a calendar item that said "Mom arrives" in my calendar)
8. Show me directions to Union Station in Los Angeles (shows it on the map, with directions from current location)
9. Remind me to buy tickets to the UCLA game (puts it into "Reminders" app)
10. Wake me up at 6:30 (creates an alarm for 6:30 PM, which is not what I wanted)
11. Cancel that (it cancels the alarm)
12. Wake me up at 6:30 tomorrow
13. Make a repeating alarm for 6:30 AM (perfect)
14. Set a timer for 10 minutes

Turns out that there is a lot that Siri can't do-- not yet. It can't read your emails out loud to you, it can't launch applications for you, it can't go to a website directly (but it can search for it, and it will be the first item in the search results). I have a feeling that you'll eventually be able to do all of these things in time, but not now. For now, Siri's a little bit limited, but it's definitely good enough to use.

If you find a cool Siri feature, send me an email and let me know.

Stuff You Ought to Know

Newer Macs come with little pictures on the function keys (top row of keys, with names like “F1”) and they are supposed to tell you what the keys do. The pictures aren’t all that clear, and on older keyboards the pictures aren’t there at all. Here are some explanations.

Newer keyboards:
F1: make the screen dimmer
F2: make the screen brighter
F3: show all windows (Exposé)
F4: show Dashboard widgets
F5: nothing
F6: nothing
F7: go back (in iTunes)
F8: play/pause (in iTunes)
F9: skip forward (in iTunes)
F10: mute/unmute all sounds
F11: make the sounds softer
F12: make the sounds louder
F13: nothing
F14: nothing
F15: nothing
F16: nothing

Older keyboards:
F1: nothing
F2: nothing
F3: nothing
F4: nothing
F5: nothing
F6: nothing
F7: nothing
F8: nothing
F9: show all windows (Exposé)
F10: show all windows for current application (Exposé)
F11: show the Desktop
F12: show Dashboard widgets
F13: nothing
F14: make the screen dimmer
F15: make the screen brighter

If the keys don’t do these things for you it’s probably because someone’s made some changes in your Keyboard preferences. Go to the Apple menu, then to System Preferences, then to Keyboard & Mouse, then to Keyboard Shortcuts. You’ll figure it out from there. Of course, if you don’t, you can always click here to send me an email.

Time-Saving Tips for Safari 4

You probably spend a lot of time with Safari. Use these tips and you'll have more time for other things.

Tip #1: Send a web page link via email
You would not believe how many people ask me how to do this. My own mother asked how to do this tonight (sorry, Mom-- I should have shown you this a long time ago!). Here's how simple it is:

1. Go to the web page in question
2. Choose File/Mail Link to This Page

That's it! Your Mac will create an email with the web page's address already in it. All you do is address it and click the Send button. Since you will probably already be on the desired web page this tip boils down to a single step. Can't get simpler-- or faster-- than that.

Tip #2: Open another window
Believe it or not: you can have multiple windows open in Safari. You can have as many as you'd like, and they can all be showing different sites. This can be very efficient, saving you the time you might spend clicking the "Previous" and "Next" buttons and waiting for pages to load.

One way to make a new Safari window: choose "New Window" from the File menu (shortcut: Command-N). Another way to do it: hold the Command key down while you click a link in a web page (super handy when you're clicking links from a Google search). If you don't get a new window, it's because you got a new tab, same idea with less clutter. You can adjust this in Safari's Preferences, under "Tabs." Try checking and unchecking that top checkbox-- its effect will be listed in the dialog box.

Tip #3: Reduce the time you spend typing web addresses
The odds are that you spend too much time typing each web address into Safari. Here are a couple of ways to reduce the amount of typing that you do, saving you GOBS of time.

1. Set your home page to something you like. There's no point in having landing on Apple's website every time you launch Safari if all you're going to do is go somewhere else right away. Pick a site you go to a lot and set it as your home page (Safari/Preferences.../General/Set to Current Page).
2. Don't click at the end of the current URL and then carefully delete all the way back to "http://www." That takes too long. Instead, click on the "favicon" (the little picture just before the "http"), selecting the entire URL-- and then type right over it (no need to hit Delete).
   
   And, when you type, don't bother typing "http://www" and don't bother typing ".com". Safari will put those in for you. In many cases, you can simply type something like "amazon" or "dealnews" or "ioperating", then hit Return on the keyboard, and you'll go straight to that site. (If that doesn't work, as it won't for most Verizon internet subscribers, add the ".com" (or the ".org" or whatever) before hitting Return.

(These tips are for Safari 4-- if you don't have it, go get it, for free, using this link.)

Stuff I Use (2012 Mac Software Edition): Part 1

Here are some software goodies that I use on a daily basis. They don't cost much, but man do they make a difference.

Keyboard Maestro
Keyboard Maestro lets me assign shortcut keys to just about everything. I can press F9 and bring up the calendar, F10 for the address book, F12 for the calculator, and so on. Extensive testing here at Boyce Labs has proven that pressing a key to launch a program is approximately 100 times faster than using a mouse, saving you at least a couple of seconds many, many times a day. But launching programs with one touch is just part of what it does. Keyboard Maestro can execute macros (sequences of events) at the touch of a key as well. For example, suppose you want your Mac to read a web page to you out loud. You may know the steps: turn on the "Reader" feature in Safari, select the text, then go to Edit/Speech/Start Speaking, but who wants to do all that? It's easy to tell Keyboard Maestro to do all of that for you, at the touch of a button. For another example, suppose you want to automatically quit the Microsoft Office Reminders program that pops up every time you restart your Mac. Keyboard Maestro can keep an eye out for Office Reminders, automatically sending it a "Quit" command as soon as it launches.

The examples above are actually things I use Keyboard Maestro for here. Yes, it takes a little work to set things up, but it's worth it. Teach Keyboard Maestro to do some of the menial tasks that slow you down each day and you'll free up your mind for bigger things.

Keyboard Maestro: $36. Free trial available. Click here for three videos demonstrating Keyboard Maestro's features.

Typinator
Typinator is a text expander: it watches what you type, and when you type certain sequences, it changes them into something else. For example, if I type "cbem" (4 characters) Typinator changes it to "macman@ioperating.com" (25 characters) in the blink of an eye. I can get "Christian Boyce and Associates" (30 characters, complete with proper capitalization) by typing "cba" (3 characters). I can even assign the same expansion to two shortcuts-- for example, I've set it up so that "cb&a" also expands to "Christian Boyce and Associates" because I know I won't be able to remember whether I used the ampersand in the shortcut or not.

If that's all it did, I'd think it was great. But it does a lot more. I use it as a system-wide auto-correction feature, watching what I type and ensuring that things like iCal, iPhone, AT&T, AppleScript, MacBook Pro, and iMac are properly capitalized. I can be lazy about it (for example, I only have to type "mbp" to get "MacBook Pro" and "att" to get "AT&T"), and that saves keystrokes and reduces the chances of errors. It also makes my writing more consistent, because with Typinator watching me I'll always capitalize things the right way. No more accidentally writing "iPhone" one time and "iphone" another. (Ever make a typo in your own name? I've done it… but not since Typinator. Now, I type "cbname" and Typinator expands it to "Christian Boyce." How lazy can you get.

Typinator works in every program (at least, it works in every program I've tried it in: Mail, Pages, BBEdit, Text Wrangler, iCal/Calendar, Address Book/Contacts, RapidWeaver, FileMaker Pro, and many, many more). That means you can set up a shortcut once and have it work everywhere. (Don't want it to work everywhere? You can control that too. For example, maybe you don't want Typinator to be active in Safari. No problem: Typinator lets you turn expansion off on a program by program basis.)

Typinator is incredibly fast-- you'll never have to wait for it. Just type away and let Typinator clean up after you, saving you lots of keystrokes and fixing spelling and capitalization. It's also incredibly powerful-- I can type "ds" and get a date stamp (like this: Sunday, October 21st, 2012), and I can type "cbface" and Typinator replaces it with… you guessed it.. my face.

Incredible.

Typinator's great. I don't know what took me so long to discover it. Bonus: you can use Dropbox to keep your Typinator shortcuts in sync across multiple Macs. Imagine having all of the Macs in your office running the same set of Typinator shortcuts (company name, return address, standard boilerplate paragraphs, directions to the office, tech support answers, rates and policies, etc.) but only having to do the setting up once!
Typinator: 24.99 € (click here for conversion to US Dollars-- about $33 at press time). Free trial available. Click here for a short video demonstration of Typinator's powers.

Desktop Curtain
Desktop Curtain does a very simple thing-- it makes my Mac's desktop look neat and clean-- and it does it very well. A touch of a button is all it takes to go from messy to neat. I don't know about you, but for me a messy Mac is distracting. I like to focus on the thing I'm working on. Desktop Curtain takes care of that for me. Check out these before-and-after pictures.





Which Mac would you like working on? I know I like "After." Yes, you can come close to this with "Hide Others" in most apps but that always leaves the Desktop's cluttered-with-icons mess in the background. Desktop Curtain hides the Desktop's mess too, and that's what makes it so great. (Of course you can also simply quit every app you're not currently using but that isn't any fun. Better to simply toss a table-cloth over everything but the app you're currently focused on.)

I only wish I could "Desktop Curtain" my real desk (and my dining room table, and my bedroom floor). Now that would be a trick.
Desktop Curtain: $5. Free trial available here. Watch the video here.

Moom
Here's a big waste: a giant monitor and a single window filling it up (see below). The actual content of the web page shown below would fit just fine in a window half the size. In that case, it would be possible to have two windows open, side by side, in the space that used to display just one.







That last picture shows two websites, each taking EXACTLY half the screen. It's perfect. The only problem is, it's a pain to move windows around and resize them precisely, so hardly anyone does it. Instead, we just click the green "zoom" button and make each application's windows take up the entire screen-- even if half of the window is empty space.

Enter "Moom." Moom means "Move and Zoom" and it makes arranging windows really easy. Moom gives each window's green-dot zoom button super-powers, allowing you to move and resize a window with a single click of the mouse. No more clicking the green-dot zoom button and being surprised (and disappointed) when the window does not resize as expected. No more "first we move the window, then we resize it" stuff. Now, with Moom, it's one touch.

The bigger your Mac's display the more Moom can help you, because the bigger your Mac's display the more potentially wasted space. Moom helps you get more out of your display and it works in every program that has a standard green-dot zoom button. For $10 it's a no-brainer.
Moom: $10. Free trial available here. Demonstration video here.

Signature Profiler
Signature Profiler adds advanced features to the Signature part of Apple's Mail program. It lets you use "placeholders" in your signature(s), filling them in the moment you create a new email. The placeholders can include quotes taken at random from a list you create, or the name, artist, or album you're currently listening to in iTunes, or information related to the email account that you're writing from. I use Signature Profiler to keep my email signature up-to-date with a link to my latest blog post, and it's all automatic. Setting it up took a little thinking but after that it's been easy.

Power users can extend Signature Profiler using AppleScripts (and other kinds of scripts). This feature allows you to automatically insert dynamic information into your email signature, such as:

• iChat status
• Weather information
• Stock prices
• Number of days until your birthday
• etc.

if you send a lot of email, and you'd like your signatures to be snappier (and a lot more dynamic), Signature Profiler is exactly what you need.
Signature Profiler: $12. Free trial available here. Tutorials available here.

There you have it. Five great bits of software that make my Mac life a whole lot better. They've helped me to do better work, more easily, and more pleasurably, day after day after day. Check 'em out for yourself and see if you don't agree. I think you will.

"He Cared the Most"

Apple's posted a video of the company's recent celebration of Steve Jobs' life. It's beautiful, and moving, and I recommend watching it all the way through. In it, Jony Ive (lead designer on Apple products including the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad) absolutely nails what made Steve Jobs so great.

Here are the essential four words: "He cared the most."

Here's the link.

iOS 7: Reset Your iPhone (or iPad) and Fix Mysterious Problems

Reset Your iPhone (or iPad) and Fix Mysterious Problems

I'm getting a lot of calls about things that don't work right after the iOS 7 upgrade. Two of the oddest: the camera wouldn't take pictures, and email could not be sent even though the settings appeared to be correct. When faced with this kind of issue you have two great chances to make things right again.

Your first chance is to simply turn the iPhone (or iPad) off-- completely off-- and then back on again. You'd be surprised at how many problems go away with the old off-on routine.

(In case you've forgotten how to turn your iPhone or iPad off, here's what to do: press the Power button-- Apple calls it the "Sleep/Wake" button but that's not a very good name-- at the top right edge of your device, and keep it pressed until you see a message about swiping to turn off. Do that, and wait a bit, and your device will turn completely off. This is what you're supposed to do during takeoff and landing on commercial flights. Putting the phone to sleep, or into "airplane mode," or turning it face-down so the flight attendant can't see the screen is not the same as turning it off, and yes I am talking to you over there in Seat 24C.)

Your second chance to fix things is to do a reset. Try this when turning your iPhone/iPad off and back on again doesn't solve the problem, or when the iPhone/iPad simply won't turn off for some reason. A reset is a two-handed job: press and hold the Power button, and at the same time press and hold the Home button (the one in the middle of the bottom of the iPhone/iPad bezel). Keep those two buttons pressed until you see an Apple logo. Let go, and let your device start up. It might take a little longer than normal so be patient. With a little luck everything will be back to normal, and no you will not lose any data. Your pictures will still be there, your settings will still be there, your contacts will still be there, etc. In fact, everything will be just as it was before you did the reset-- except that everything will work properly. At least most everything, and at least most of the time.
Next time your iPhone or iPad isn't behaving properly just turn it off and then back on and see how it goes. If that doesn't work, try the Power-Home reset. Odds are your problems will disappear.
Note: there is another kind of reset, performed in the General section of the Settings app. That's not what we're interested in here. Use the reset-from-the-Settings-app method when you're looking to completely wipe your old device out so you can give it to your friend/kid/dog.

Veronika K. wins the Coffee Cup for inspiring this blog post. Congratulations, Veronika.

Best Free iPhone Dictionary

You really ought to have a dictionary on your iPhone. You can get this one-- Dictionary.com-- for free, and it's terrific, so what are you waiting for? Click this link and start the download. It's big (35 megabytes, not that it will make much of a dent in your 8 or 16 or 32 gigabyte iPhone), so do it from your computer and sync it into the iPhone. May as well start the download while you read the rest of this review.

(With a name like "Dictionary.com" you might guess that you'd need an internet connection to use this program. Good guess, but wrong. Only the Word of the Day and the audio pronunciations require an internet connection. FYI.)

You know how people are always saying that you can't get something for nothing? Next time they tell you that show them Dictionary.com on your iPhone. Look at what you get for nothing:

• 275,000 word dictionary
• 80,000 word thesaurus
• Audio pronunciation
• Word of the day
• Handy list of recently looked-up words

Seems like a lot to me.

Let's look at some pictures. Here's how the program looks when you start it up: very simple and clean. The buttons across the bottom are easy to figure out, and obviously the big box at the top is where you type the word you're looking for.


To look up a word, touch either the Dictionary or Thesaurus button, and then enter your word. A list of matching words appears as you type. Here's what it looked like as I typed the first bit of "recession":


This "live search" is a real time-saver as it means you don't have to completely type out a word. Type just enough for Dictionary.com to display it in the list (which scrolls) and then touch it. It's faster to touch a word in a list than to type it all the way out, especially for the kinds of words you're likely to be looking up in a dictionary.

Here's how it looks after I touched "recession" in the list. The speaker icon does what you think it does: it says the word out loud. Very handy, and a nice use of the technology.


Here's something nice: when you touch the Thesaurus button, it remembers the word you were looking up in the dictionary. So you don't have to type it again. A small thing, but it could have been overlooked. Way to go, Dictionary.com!


Gee, look at all of those ways to say "recession" without actually saying it. Good to know that there are so many other ways to describe our current economic situation. I like "big trouble" the most.

Touch the Recent button and you see a list of the words you've looked up recently, and how. The blue circles with white chevrons were looked up in the dictionary. The yellow circles with the white chevrons were looked up in the thesaurus. The blue circle with the white "w" means "Word of the Day" (see below). Touch any of the words and of course you will look them up again. Touch the symbols in the circles to "do that" again. Easy and obvious.


Finally, here's what happens when you touch the Word of the Day button. Actually, it's only what happens on October 21st, 2009. Your word is going to be different because you're going to be touching the button on a different day. I'm sure you get the idea.


And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the Dictionary.com iPhone app. Simple, easy to use, handy, and free-- without ads, other than the entire app being an ad for the very useful www.dictionary.com website. Your download should be finished by now, so plug in that iPhone and sync.