Apple
Wednesday, October 1st, 2008
by lepton
Now that the problem with synchronizing app updates between the iPhone App Store application and the Mac’s iTunes application is cured with OS 2.1, it doesn’t matter which you use to update your iPhone applications. But I’ve found using the iPhone’s App Store application is more fun.
On iTunes, you can click the Applications item in the left column to see the iPhone applications you’ve downloaded. Near the bottom of the screen, you can click a link that checks to see is any of the apps have updates, and then you can download the updates. You can also click on one of the app icons that have updates to go to the app’s page in the App store. The description there will include a section that explains what changes are in the update.
In the App Store application on the iPhone itself, this whole thing seems more fun, is handier, and perhaps shows more informative. Touching the Updates tab at the bottom of the screen takes you to an update section that automatically checks the store for updates. Available updates are listed on the screen, and if you touch one, it goes to a special screen that shows you what is new in the update, without showing you the entire main screen for the app with its old information. And of course another touch and perhaps a password entry gets the update.
This seems more streamlined, and it all happens on the phone, wherever I am, without having to sync. I have a lot of apps on my phone, and it’s actually exciting to check a couple of times a day to see if anything new is coming in! Who’d have thunk it!
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Sunday, September 14th, 2008
by lepton
Apple iTunes version 8 added a new Album Cover Grid View that shows many album covers, but doesn’t list the songs. Want the iTunes 7 style Album view back? It’s still there, but hidden. Here’s how to get it.
The View control near the upper right corner of the iTunes window controls the main view type for your music.
iTunes View Control
The middle of the control used to show an Album view that had the album cover on the left side, and a list of songs to the right of the cover. This was replaced by the new Album Grid view in iTunes 8. The grid view simply shows all the album covers so you can scan through them quickly. The old Album view is still available.
To see the old Album view, switch to the List view, which appears when you click on the left part of the iTunes View Control. Now, in the very leftmost column header, where the tunes are numbered, there is a tiny triangle. Click it, and it toggles between the List view and the old Album view!
iTunes old Album View
In this picture, you can see the triangle to the left of the word “Artwork”. It toggles between List and Album views.
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Thursday, August 28th, 2008
by lepton
Lots of people want Apple to add clipboard capability to the iPhone and iPod Touch, so you can select, copy, cut, and paste text. In a previous post, I said it it is mostly unnecessary, but Apple says they will add it, and I’m glad. Clearly it is needed at times. Here is how Apple should implement it.
First, we need a way to select some text. We already have a way to set the insertion point. Simply touch and hold on some editable text, and a loupe appears that magnifies nearby text. Slide your finger around, and you can move the insertion point wherever you like.
I propose a double tap and hold on the text to make a selection. Touch the text, then quickly raise your finger and touch again and hold. This brings up a loupe as before, but this time we are choosing the end point of the selected text, the previous;y set insertion point serving as an anchor specifying the other end of the selected text. So it is touch hold and drag to set the start point of the selection, then double touch and drag to set the end point.
Now we have some text selected. The selection is highlighted as expected.
I propose a touch and hold on the selected text should pop up a menu containing Cut, Copy, Paste and Delete options as appropriate. Paste would only appear if there were some text on the clipboard. The Delete option performs the same function as typing the DEL key on the keyboard.
That allows for cut and copy, but it only allows for pasting if there is a selection. What if you only have an insertion point?
I propose adding Paste to the virtual keyboard. If you touch and hold the DEL key on the virtual keyboard, a menu should pop up (as it already does on a number of other keys - try holding on the letter “E” for an example). The popup on the DEL key should include Cut, Copy, Paste, and DEL as appropriate. Cut and Copy would appear if there was a selection. Paste would appear if there were text on the keyboard.
This implements all the clipboard functions, without adding awkward multi-finger gestures as seen in some other proposals, and without changing any existing behavior. Let’s do it, Apple!
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Friday, August 22nd, 2008
by lepton
Everybody seems to be begging for Apple to put select, copy, cut, and paste into the iPhone and iPod Touch. But when you think about it… there isn’t much you really NEED it for.
Sure, sure, you want to copy and paste text in your word processor, to move a paragraph here and there. And, you want to copy some stuff out of an EMail to paste into a note. And, I might want to copy and paste stuff around in this WordPress blog post as I edit on my iPhone. But frankly these are not very common things to be doing on an iPhone. The things that you DO commonly need to do can be handled by other means.
Would you like to copy a picture out of a web page and save it? You can do that already. Touch and hold the picture, and a menu pops up offering to “Save Image” to your Photos application. Want to EMail a photo? Display it in Photos, touch an icon, and a menu pops up offering to EMail the photo, or to send it to a MobileMe gallery. No copying, no pasting, no problems.
It’s the same with many things you might be using copy/paste for on a lesser computer. Save the sender of an EMail message into a contact? There’s a menu command for that. Call a phone number you spot in an EMail or web page? Touch it and the iPhone offers to call the number in one step.
Enter the Data Detector
The last example, calling a phone number that is in an EMail or Web page by touching it, illustrates a feature in Mac OSX known as the Data Detector. The iPhone simply recognizes the text is a phone number, and turns it into a live link that, when touched, will offer to make the call. And this is much better than selecting the phone number, copying it to a clipboard, switching to the phone application, pasting it in to the phone keypad, and making a call.
We don’t need copy and paste so much as we need commands and data detectors to do the same tasks in a single step. We need Apple to expand the data detectors and to add some more commands.
Look, don’t worry. Apple is going to add select, cut, copy and paste into the iPhone. In some cases, we flat out need it. But why did Apple say adding this was a low priority? Because it is not going to be elegant. We need it for a fallback, but it might not be pretty.
How will the mechanics of selecting text work? What guesture will perform a “Copy” or “Paste”. It might take a bit of finger dexterity. It might take more than a sentence in a pamphlet to explain it. It might not be very intuitive. Apple hates this kind of stuff, as they should.
So the priority might be to put in a few more commands, a few more data detectors. This would handle many cases where you would be copying and pasting, intuitively and elegantly.
For example, if a phone number appears on a web page or EMail, data detectors recognize it and you can call it with a touch. But type a phone number into the Notes application (or any other) and it isn’t recognized. You can’t touch and call it. So my suggestion is allow this detection in all text fields.
Did you know that there are several data detectors in your Mac’s Mail application? In Leopard Mail, look at one of the EMail messages you’ve received, for a date and time anywhere in the message. Hover the cursor over it, and you will see a gray box appear around the date and time, with a little drop down triangle in it. Click that triangle and a menu appears - “Create New iCal Event…” and ”Show This Date in iCal” appear as commands. A date data detector recognized it and lets you do common tasks with it, no copy/switch/paste necessary. Try hovering over a name that’s in your address book. “Show in Address Book” is available. Over a phone number, you get “Create New Contact” and “Add to Existing Contact”, Hover over an address and you get those plus “Show on Map”.
This is the sort of thing I believe Apple is wanting to put in our devices. Elegant, intuitive, easier. No weird gestures, no multiple steps, no learning techniques. We will get copy and paste, but most people need data detectors and commands much more.
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Wednesday, August 13th, 2008
by lepton
Have you experienced the dreaded white apple of death on your iPhone or iPod Touch? It’s caused by a crash in the software that keeps the device from restarting properly. All you see on the device is a black screen with a white Apple logo in the middle, and the device never gets to the Home screen.
The first time this happened to me, my iPhone 3G was running OS 2.0 and doing just fine that morning, but at one point I felt the phone being unusually warm in my pocket. I took it out, and there was the white apple of death!
Another time, running 2.0.1 I was syncing the phone with iTunes. It was proceeding normally, status messages were saying it was updating this app, and that app, (updates were available for some of the applications I had gotten from the App Store) and right in the middle of this, the white screen of death appeared!
The black screen with the white Apple logo appears as part of the normal starting up sequence for the device. If you turn your device completely off by holding the sleep/wake button long enough for “Slide to power off” to appear, and you do that, and then press sleep/wake again to restart it, you will see the white apple, followed in a moment or two by the regular Home screen.
If there is a severe crash of some software in your device that the system can’t recover from, the device will try to restart itself. If during the white apple part of starting up, where the low level stuff is beginning to run, a problem appears, it can stay stuck on this screen forever, presumably trying and failing again and again to recover.
Is your device ruined? Probably not. Some software most likely wrote in some parts of memory it wasn’t supposed to, overwriting some important part of software or data that the system needs. This could happen from a nasty bug in some software, the operating system, or goodness knows what. But the important thing, is that this is very, very likely a software problem, and that means it can be fixed by restoring the software. Luckily, this is something we can do right at home.
If you get the so-called “white apple of death”, first just sit and wait for five minutes. Perhaps something happened, the device restarted itself, and it will start up normally in a moment. But if it is sitting there for more than five minutes, and getting warm, you might be experiencing the problem.
First, I would try to restart the device. If that fails, you will have to try a “Forced Recovery”. This procedure is very likely to fix everything, but the downside is, it takes a long time since it causes a full restore of all your software and data, and it restores things to the state they were in the last time you completed a successful backup in iTunes. More than likely, you did a backup last night, since iTunes does them automatically when you sync your device. So don’t fret, eventually you should get back to full operating, and nothing lost other than today’s stuff, and maybe even some of that is fine. For example, if you use MobileMe and you entered some calendar or address book stuff, it probably synced to the MobileMe “cloud” at me.com and will be safely restored.
I won’t go through the procedure here. Instead, I’ll refer you to my previous Lepton’s Blog post” “Fixing a frozen, zonked, or dead iPhone or iPod Touch“. Just follow the link and that post explains all the ways to restart or restore your device. You’ll probably end up doing the “Forced Recovery” but check out all the procedures in order, maybe some lesser one will save you.
Good luck, and lets hope future updates to the operating system and applications will banish the white apple of death forever!
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