"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.