Liquipel Could Make Your iPhone Waterproof
This is awesome.
I’ve been looking for a way of storing my iPhone in the toilet overnight. Keeping it on the nightstand has become a total hassle!
Bug Or Feature?
The tab bar is still showing through in the background behind the modal view controller.
Hint: I can not reproduce this.
iPhone Naming Sequence
The first iPhone was called iPhone. The next one was iPhone 3G, which meant never calling anything iPhone 2. The iPhone 3G was then followed, not by iPhone 4 or 4G, but by iPhone 3GS.
When Apple decided to release the next iPhone after the 3GS, the logical name was iPhone 4. Not only did it sound good as a follow up to the 3GS, but it was also the 4th model of iPhone.
Now Apple is releasing an iPhone 4S, but it is actually the 5th iPhone model that has hit the market. So, when the next iteration is ready to be announced in a year or so, calling it iPhone 5 sounds like it makes the most sense, except it is really the 6th iPhone. But, calling it iPhone 6 just wouldn’t sound right as the next model to follow up an iPhone 4S. I assume they will still just call it iPhone 5, and follow it with an iPhone 5S, and then maybe just start referring to them as iPhone again. Nerds can announce that their’s is an iPhone mid-2013, but maybe at that point we can just settle on calling the product iPhone.
Improving Alarms In The iPhone Clock App
One thing that really irks me is that the volume of an alarm you set will adhere to your “Ringer and Alerts” volume setting.
What if I want my phone to ring loudly when someone calls, but don’t want my morning alarm to wakeup the neighbors?
I use the Clock app as my alarm every morning, and always need to check the phone volume before I go to sleep.
My iPhone is my only phone, so I also keep the ringer on while I sleep, just in case of a family emergency related midnight phone call. So I don’t mind having the ringer and alarm volume at a decent level.
The only option to silence the ringer is to flip the ringer switch to vibrate. That will allow the alarm to sound and the phone to merely vibrate if a call comes in. But then you risk having the phone vibrate right off the bedside table while you sleep. That’s when this happens.
OS X Lion Is Not Joking Around With This Resume Business
(Quick brief on my current setup: MacBook Pro plugged into a Cinema Display)
The other day, my system was beach balling to the point that I literally had to open the laptop and manually shut down the computer with the hardware button. I never had to do this before, until installing Lion, so I was a little worried about what the outcome was going to be. But, to my surprise, when the computer started back up, all previously open windows resumed. Things I hadn’t saved were still present, processes that I had commanded, and were about to be performed when the crash occurred were still at the same point in their flow, and restarted themselves as soon as they were able to.
I thought this was amazing. How long have we wanted this functionality in our computers for?
Other things that go hand in hand with resume, are auto save and automatic termination. Here’s a quote from the pitch, on Ars Technica:
These changes in Lion are meant to reduce the number of things the user has to care about. And while you may think you really do need to care about when your documents are saved to disk or when the memory occupied by an application is returned to the system, you may be surprised by how little you think about these things once you become accustomed to the computer managing them for you. If you’re an iOS user, think about how often you’ve wanted a “Save” button in an app on your iPhone or iPad, for example.
At first, I felt very weird about not saving my own work. I came from the PC world, and my muscle memory knew nothing more than pressing Ctrl-S once every 27 and a half seconds. Any more and my system wouldn’t have been able to handle the overload. Any less, and I’d risk losing 27 seconds of hard work. But, why continue to perform these tasks, when developers can bake them into their apps and perform them for us? Why continue to stretch before starting work, just so you don’t risk injuring yourself on pinky to middle finger tag team saves every half minute? I welcome every bit of work that a computer can begin to take over for me.
On automatic termination… AWESOME. Nothing better than being able to keep 23 apps open at a time, no matter what your system resources, and know that OS X will handle terminating apps that are no longer relevant to your current work flow. If your work is being auto-saved and your apps can resume back to their last known state, then does it even matter if anything is being terminated? No way.
During one of my many broken iPod Nano related trips to the Apple Store Genius Bar, I sat next to a man who was complaining that his iPhone battery was draining much quicker than it used to. The Genius proceeded to tell him that he was not properly managing his currently running applications. And that he needed to review, on a regular basis, which apps were showing up in the “currently running list”. This, he said, could be found by double clicking the home button… Oh, and see. You have mail still running. Let’s close that one. And, see here… Safari is showing up in the list. We’ll have to close that one too. Just keep this up sir, and your battery life will be greatly improved.
Do you think that guy is glad he bought Apple Care for that iPhone, so he could go to the Apple Store and learn that his simple, fun to use iPhone just got a lot more complicated?
I can’t believe that the Apple Store Geniuses would be telling people these things. An iOS device would never be made to be that difficult to operate. And if it was, can you imagine how many people would forget to manage their apps and have battery life issues like this?
Do they tell people these things for a placebo effect? Just to get them out of the store? Why make someone think that an iPhone would require you to manage currently running applications? Why not tell them about how great automatic termination is, and that OS X implements it now too? That would be a great selling point for a new MacBook Air!
It sounds obvious to say, but Resume, Auto Save and Automatic Termination are my favorite new things about OS X Lion.
Another note: I have since upgraded my storage from a 320 GB 7200 RPM HDD, to a 240 GB SSD. If I were ever going to offer anyone any sort of computer advice, I would only have one thing to say to them. “Put an SSD into your computer.”
The Best Camera I Own
The other day, my son was doing the cutest thing! It was great. Just the best. While he was doing it, I said to myself: “I must take a picture of this.”
So I took out the best camera I own. It’s the camera you always have with you. The iPhone.
I slid to unlock, launched the Camera app, and stared at this while he continued to do the cute thing, and then proceeded to finish doing the cute thing by the time I was done looking at it.
iPhone Backup Battery
I really put it to the test this past weekend when I used it while shooting a ton of video and taking photos. It performed great. I just left the pack on and let it keep my iPhone charged while going about the tasks at hand. It was not until late in the evening when the battery finally ran out and the iPhone’s fully charged battery kicked in.
For a backup battery, this one really seems to add a lot of bulk onto a phone that has a prime feature of being so powerful, yet so slim.
I assume that 80% of the days I use my iPhone, I would not be reaching for a backup battery. So, then why should the the bacup battery have to stay on the phone until it runs out of juice? It’s as if the main battery becomes the backup battery. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? 80% of the days, when I don’t run out of battery, shouldn’t I get to carry around my slim phone and attach this mammoth only when I realized that today is a 20% day, and wow… yes, I used a lot of battery today, but it is now worth it to me to attach this beast so that I can continue use?
To have this external attachment on my phone each day right off the bat, just because I might run out of battery, would for me, ruin the part of experience of the iPhone.
Source: minimalmac
How am I supposed to buy that this Tiny Wing character is able to carry around all those coins that he picks up along his way?
At least Mario only ever had to carry around 99 of the things, because if he picked up one more after that, he traded those things in for a 1UP. He wasn’t about to be lugging them around all day like an asshole. Link could only carry as many as his change purse allowed. He started off with room for only like 250. But soon he purchased a new wallet and could then tote around like a G worth of the things. Sonic could hold a lot too, but he traded them in at the end of each act. Also, when he fell down or ran into a wall… the things fell out of his pockets and he had to chase them down like an idiot before they dissolved into thin air.
All that said, and still this Tiny Wing character just picks these things up willy nilly. They don’t weigh him down, or fall out of his pockets or become too great in quantity for his change purse… Mario, Link and Sonic would be jealous.
Also, I love that clang sound you always hear when you collect a coin in a game. I wish I could hear some sort of ding every time I picked a quarter up off the ground.
FOLLOW UP: Should You Switch Your iPhone to Verizon?
Matt:
I didn’t know that. That’s a pretty good reason (although I imagine AT&T service is better in CT… NYC is awful.)
If I was on WiFi, would that work?
I believe you could use WiFi and the phone at the same time. The issue is the type of network that Verizon uses, CDMA, which does not allow for simultaneous usage of phone and data. But I’m going to assume that since WiFi does not use Verizon’s network, it would not count as using the network for phone and data at the same time, that it would work just fine.
Here is the article I got that info from, and didn’t cite… http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/01/11/the-verizon-iphone-should-you-switch/
Also, I like the new “Waltz” iPhone TV spot that shows two iPhones, one operating on AT&T, the other on Verizon… and one of the main things it zooms in on, is a Verizon user setting their Facebook status to “In NY”. As if to say, now you can actually use this device in New York.
Should You Switch Your iPhone to Verizon?
No.
Verizon does not allow for data and voice operating at the same time. Good enough reason for me to stay with AT&T.
