Everyone knows that it’s hard to get your hands on an iPhone 3G these days. But that’s to be understood. After all, with a worldwide release, the iPhone is in serious demand, pulling Apple stock a bit thin. Even so, the 16GB model is running out much quicker than all other models.

My basic assumption is that people are merely going after the largest capacity possible because they know the iPhone 3G cannot be updated. Even though it costs more, gadget hungry consumers are definitely favoring the 16GB model, as per the iPhone availability tool. 

If you haven’t gotten an iPhone 3G of your very own yet, sit tight. Keep your eye on the availability tool and you’ll get one, especially with Apple’s new ticket system. 

Posted on July 31st, 2008 by admin
Filed under: iPhone Fun, iPhone Tips | No Comments »

I’ve FINALLY figured out a decent solution to the Google Calendar sync problem with iPhones. This is the best solution I could come up with until Google gets around to offering us free push calendars. Let me know if you can make an improvements or find something better.

Required hardware: Mac with OSX Leopard, iPhone/iPod touch.

1. Create a calendar in iCal as a temporary holding place for your iPhone events.

2. Setup Google Calendar to sync with iCal by following the instructions HERE.

3. Set the iTunes preferences for your iPhone to sync to both calendars from the previous 2 steps.

4. Download and install the Yellow Camp iCal Actions from HERE.

5. Create and save the following workflow in Automator:

*Get Specified iCal Items (add the [calendar from step 1])
*Move iCal Events (move to: [calendar from step 2])
*Find Events in iCal (find:[events], whose:[calendar] is: [calendar from step 1])
*Delete iCal Events

6. Add an entry to your crontab file to run your new workflow every hour as outlined HERE.

Don’t forget to use absolute paths or it wont work!
You can tweak the recurrence settings to your liking, just check out the man pages for “cron” and “crontab.”

That’s it!
Now every time you sync your iPhone to your computer all the new events you added to your iPhone calendar will be copied to your iCal. Once the cron job runs all those will be moved to the google calendar, which will then be synced with your iPhone.

via http://www.jedutainment.com/jedu/2008/07/30/free-google-calendar-sync-for-iphone-and-itouch/

Posted on July 30th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: iPhone Tips | No Comments »

A while ago, we wrote about a way to shorten the time that your iPhone running the 2.0 software takes to sync. In this method, you cancelled the part of the sync in which your iPhone was backed up. While this most certainly does improve sync times, you won’t be happy with yourself when you’re forced to restore your iPhone and you don’t have that backup.

However, iPhoneFreak has discovered another way to improve your times. By default, diagnostic data from your iPhone is sent to Apple every time you sync. (This data does not contain any personal information, only crash logs and the like.) Apparently, this takes a good bit of time as well. Follow the steps after the break to disable this.

1) When your iPhone is connected to your computer, open iTunes and select your iPhone in the sidebar. Uncheck the “Automatically sync when this iPhone is connected” option.

2) Unplug your iPhone, and then plug it back in.

3) Select your iPhone in the sidebar again, and right click it. Then select “Reset Warnings.”

4) Sync your iPhone.

5) You will receive a pop-up message. Uncheck the box in the message, and then click “Don’t Send.”

Note that you can now have your iPhone launch iTunes and be automatically synced again.

Posted on July 30th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: iPhone Tips | No Comments »

Since iPhone 1.0, tapping the “Status Bar” in Safari would scroll you instantly to the top of a web page. With the iPhone 2.0 update (available for the original iPhone and pre-installed on the iPhone 3G), Apple’s added the same functionality system-wide. Tapping the status bar (the topmost bar where the clock resides) in nearly every application will now scroll you immediately to the top of a list or page. This is especially handy for scrolling through contacts, songs, or anything else with a particularly long list of information.

Posted on July 29th, 2008 by admin
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Can’t find an iPhone 3G? Well, TopMuffin has created a site that checks Apple’s store inventory every 15 minutes. According to the site, Apple updates the inventory throughout the day. TopMuffin’s site parses the feed (feed link) and shows iPhone 3G availability by Apple Store.

TopMuffin doesn’t just post availability info, they also do some statistics to find the percent available. When we checked the page, Apple had 45% availability for 8GB black iPhones, 53% availability for 16GB black iPhones, and 41% availability for 16GB white iPhones.

This site does not list availability for AT&T stores, and only lists stores located in the U.S. A disclaimer is posted on the page lets viewers know that the best way to check iPhone availability is to call your local store. You can view the site by clicking the read link.

via http://www.tuaw.com/2008/07/26/get-iphone-availability-updates-every-15-minutes/

Posted on July 28th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: iPhone Tips | No Comments »

The fact that my wife and I both have iPhones is a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because well… we both have iPhones. But it’s also a curse. It has become another gadget to upgrade, to pimp up and gulp- to depreciate quickly . We were both going to get the 2nd generation iPhones but after weighting in the fact that the original ones are upgradable via software, it became hard to justify the cost of a whole new phone. Sorry, 2 new phones. So we opted for the software update, which gave us in a lot of ways a new phone. The upgrade was free, but the mostly inexpensive apps add up. This got me thinking about Fairplay, Apple’s DRM technology used throughout the iTunes store for music and now applications as well. Fairplay allows you to register up to 5 computers and unlimited iPods/iPhones synced to those computers. So… it should be easy for my wife and I to share iPhone apps with each other as long as both our iTunes are authorized to use them. All we need to do is authorize both accounts in both computers and re-download the apps. This could work in Windows, but why would I right?

Here’s a step by step tutorial on how to do it.

Scenario

I have 2 Macs, 2 iPhones, 2 iTunes accounts.

I used one account to buy a game, and another account to buy another one. The goal is to have both games playable on both phones legally with no hacks.

Solution

Have each computer be authorized for both accounts. Re-download apps on 2nd computer with 1st computer iTunes account.

Step 1: Authorize Computers

I step into my wife’s mac, launch iTunes, log out of her iTunes Store account and log in with mine. 

Step 1: Log Out and In

Still inside iTunes,  I go to the app store and click the Buy App button on the application I had bought in my computer.

     

Step 2: re-download

iTunes knows I already paid for this and just let’s be re-download it without charging me again.

Step 2: Confirm

The app then begins to download.

    

Step 2: downloading

Once the download is complete, it now shows in the Applications section of iTunes. 

    

Step 2: downloaded

I can now log out of my iTunes Store account and log her’s back in.

Step 1: Log out and in

Step 3: Sync & Play

I can plug her phone in now and sync.

Step 3: sync

The app should transfer without any fuss.

Step 3: syncing

Once synced, it shows on her phone ready for playing.

Step 3: play

And now both our kids can take over our phones and drain those batteries out. 

Step 3: playing

Enjoy.

via http://allforces.com/2008/07/22/share-apps-between-iphones/

Posted on July 25th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: iPhone Fun, iPhone Game, iPhone Tips | No Comments »

One of the nifty features of the 2.0 software is taking screenshots by pressing the Home and Lock buttons at the same time. There are lots of ways to make use of the feature: screenshots for an app review, capturing your home screen to show to your friends, or grabbing a page in Safari to look at later.

However, there’s one quite useful feature of it discovered by James1292 on the Apple Discussions board. It’s a way to crop photos on your iPhone, a feature that has been frequently asked for. It’s simple to do; just zoom in on the portion of the image you want to crop, and take a screenshot. There will then be a new image of the area you selected. Of course, this won’t result in the highest quality image, (quality will decrease as you zoom further) but it’s a start.

via http://justanotheriphoneblog.com/wordpress/2008/07/23/quick-tip-crop-your-photos/

Posted on July 25th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: iPhone Tips | No Comments »

IntoMobile has a few good tips on how to extend your iPhone’s battery life, and most of them involve the most obvious thing you can do to keep your iPhone running: cut down on any and all extra functions. They actually recommend to turn off 3G, but you don’t have to go that far — just by holding down the Home button, you can close any background applications sucking up juice. And by resetting your phone, you can do the same thing — clear out anything running that you’re not using.

Actually, while I was in Los Angeles last week, I heard the great Leo Laporte mention a great tip on his radio show: turn off the “Ask to join networks” feature in the WiFi settings. If you’re like me, you almost always know when there’s a WiFi network around that you can use on your iPhone, and so it’s pointless (and a waste of battery life) for the iPhone to be constantly searching for one. You can always flip it back on if you do want to do a little poking around, but leaving it off will significantly help battery life.

In fact, when in extreme trouble, you can go even farther and just switch the whole thing into Airplane Mode. It’ll make your phone useless, but when you really need it — out on a trip, or waiting to make an important call — the extra battery time might make all the difference.

Posted on July 24th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: iPhone Battery, iPhone Tips | No Comments »

iPhone OS 2.0 has a few undocumented, useful features, including:

Screen Snapshots - Zoom and Snapshot

We previously noted a method for taking screenshots under iPhone OS 20. James1292, a user on Apple’s discussion boards, subsequently found that the screenshot function can be manipulated using the zoom feature. Simply zoom to the desired depth then trigger a screenshot by pressing the Home and Sleep/Wake buttons simultaneously.

Mobile Safari Speaks Your Lingo

Mobile Safari can speak in many languages. Launch Settings then go to: General, Keyboard > International Keyboards and toggle the desire keyboards. Using the small “globe” icon on the left side of the spacebar, you can rotate through configured languages.

Once you have the keyboard of your choice displayed you can take advantage of a hidden feature in iPhone OS 2.0: simply press and hold the “.com” key. The iPhone will display the most common top level domains for your country. In the US/English: .net, .edu, .org, .com. In Germany: .edu, .org, .de, .com. In Spanish: .edu, .org, .es, .com.

In the mobile Mail.app, the same is true. If you press the “globe” for language selection, you can then press and hold the “.” (period) key to select the top level domain associated with you language settings at that time .

This feature is not consistent across all countries and in some cases some countries are not represented at all.

via http://www.iphoneatlas.com/2008/07/21/undocumented-iphone-os-20-features-and-tips/

Posted on July 23rd, 2008 by admin
Filed under: iPhone Tips | No Comments »

A number of users report crashes from various iPhone applications, both Apple-supplied and third-party. The most common iPhone crash is one where the application you are working in suddenly ceases operation, the screen momentarily turns black, then the iPhone home screen appears. In a slightly more serious manifestation, the crash will result in a complete freeze where the iPhone is unresponsive.

Sometimes, when an application crashes, it will refuse to properly launch thenceforth, crashing immediately after its icon is tapped.

Generally, one of the three following procedures will resolve this issue. Try them in order.

Full reboot Perform a hard reboot of your iPhone as follows: Turn the iPhone off completely, by pressing and holding the Sleep/Wake button (on top of the device) for a few seconds then slide the red slider. Turn it back on by holding the Sleep/Wake button until the Apple logo appears. This can clear potentially problematic data, preventing some crash-types.

Restore the iPhone Try performing a restore of your iPhone. Connect it to your Mac or PC and, in iTunes, click the Restore button under the Summary tab. Restoring the phone will erase contacts, calendars, photos and other data on the phone, but will restore automatically backed-up information including text messages, notes, call history, contact favorites, sound settings, widget settings, etc.

Reinstall the application

• Touch and hold any application icon the icons begin to shake.
• Tap the “x” in the corner of the application you want to delete.
• Tap Delete.
• Press the Home button.
• Download the application again, either from your iPhone or your desktop computer (there will be no additional charge for the redownload)

If an application freezes or becomes unresponsive, force-quit it by holding down the home button for several seconds. This can eliminate problematic or hung processes that might be draining the battery.

To prevent future crashes, keep adequate free space on the iPhone’s internal memory. Like its desktop relative Mac OS X, the iPhone’s OS X operating system needs some head-room on the internal flash memory in order to operate properly. Try keeping at least 10% of the total space free to potentially prevent some crashes in applications, freezes and other problems.

As a last resort, go to the Settings application, tap General then select the Erase All Content and Settings. This will delete all media and data on the iPhone, as well as recent calls, etc., and all other settings. If you perform this operation and stop experiencing crashes, you might have problematic data being synchronized to the iPhone that is automatically put back when the phone is restored. In this case, you might want to go to iTunes, select Preferences from the File menu, then iPhone and delete your backed up iPhone settings — this includes text messages, notes, call history, contact favorites, sound settings, widget settings. Again, one or more of these data might be problematic.

Finding out what caused crashes Just like Mac OS X, the iPhone generates crash reports when things go wrong. These files are sent back to your computer whenever the iPhone is connected and synchronized with iTunes. In Mac OS X, they’re located in /Library/Logs/Crashreporter/MobileDevice/.

You might find a variety of files here with different prefixes that end in .crash. For instance, files that start with:

• “Maps” indicate a crash in the Google Maps application
• “MobileSafari” indicate a crash in Safari for iPhone

Finding out what caused crashes Just like Mac OS X, the iPhone generates crash reports when things go wrong. These files are sent back to your computer whenever the iPhone is connected and synchronized with iTunes. In Mac OS X, they’re located in /Library/Logs/Crashreporter/MobileDevice/ under the name of your iPhone.

You might find a variety of files here with different prefixes that end in .crash. For instance, files that start with:

• “Maps” indicate a crash in the Google Maps application
• “MobileSafari” indicate a crash in Safari for iPhone

You can open these files with any text editor to view their contents. Let’s look at a crash report generated by AOL’s instant messenger client for the iPhone.

• Incident Identifier: 9AFE6F0D-8F0F-4C3F-97C0-C53728C06C24
• CrashReporter Key: 7fc1bd07059a19504f4e83afe1ba44d1146fd901
• Process: AIM [1193]
• Path: /var/mobile/Applications/10915669-D64C-4ABE-993C-A07C1E586808/AIM.app/AIM
• Identifier: AIM
• Version: ??? (???)
• Code Type: ARM (Native)
• Parent Process: launchd [1]
• OS Version: iPhone OS 2.0 (5A345)
• Report Version: 103

Process tells you the name of the application that crashed, and its process number (in brackets). Path tells you where in the iPhone filesystem the application that crashed resides. Parent Process This is usually SpringBoard, the iPhone’s application launcher.

As you can see, you’ll also be presented with information about the version of OS X currently being used by the iPhone, the date and time that the iPhone crash occurred.

Next you’ll see:

• Exception Type: 00000020
• Exception Codes: 0xdeadfa11
• Highlighted Thread: 0

This tells the user exactly what type of processor exception caused the crash.

Next you’ll see the backtrace, which shows, in reverse chronological order, the series of events that happened right before the crash in each thread, e.g.:

• Thread 0:
• 0 libobjc.A.dylib 0×300c8884 0×300bb000 + 55428
• 1 UIKit 0×30a9edd0 0×30a54000 + 306640
• 2 UIKit 0×30ab1990 0×30a54000 + 383376
• 3 UIKit 0×30aa6a0c 0×30a54000 + 338444
• 4 UIKit 0×30a80eb8 0×30a54000 + 183992
• 5 QuartzCore 0×31e875c0 0×31e7f000 + 34240
• 6 QuartzCore 0×31e874d0 0×31e7f000 + 34000
• 7 QuartzCore 0×31e9e92c 0×31e7f000 + 129324
• 8 UIKit 0×30a7e9b0 0×30a54000 + 174512
• 9 UIKit 0×30ab07cc 0×30a54000 + 378828
• 10 UIKit 0×30aa8da8 0×30a54000 + 347560
• 11 UIKit 0×30aa45ac 0×30a54000 + 329132
• 12 AIM 0×00003b0a 0×1000 + 11018

Now you know (in the above example) that the crash occurred while libobjc.A.dylib was being accessed, but before that came the UIKit process, and before that the QuartzCore process. You’ll see files with the dylib suffix often in crash reports. These are OS X dynamic libraries integral to core-level iPhone functions.

RIght now, the best use of iPhone crash logs is seeking of patterns. Look for the most commonly implicated applications and processes, then direct your troubleshooting techniques appropriately. Lots of SpringBoard crashes? Try a reset. Repeated Safari crashes? Clear the cache, cookies and history as aforementioned.

A secondary use is to look for data that might be implicated in the crash, then delete it as mentioned above in the Preventing Crashes section.

Also, remember that you can send these crash reports to Apple when your iPhone is connected, providing the IPhone software team with valuable data that might be rolled into a future update.

via http://www.iphoneatlas.com/2008/07/16/iphone-application-crashes-preventing-and-fixing/#more-814

Posted on July 18th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: iPhone Tips | No Comments »