Hi_Rob
Here's art work I made today on the Framies iPhone App.
Regards,
Doug in DC
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Transcript for Episodes 256
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As you just heard Apple has released iOS 6.1.
How to upgrade your iPhone to iOS 6.1 from 5.x - First off sync over all your photos and videos - and then delete from the iOS device - this is easy on the mac side you use iPhoto - on the PC side use what you normally use. But the key point make sure all the photos and videos from your camera roll have been sync'd to your computer.
Then go in and unlock your SIM card - well actually I mean remove the lock on your SIM card. You can add it back when it is all done.
Next force quit all open apps - then go to settings - general - reset - reset network settings.
When your device reboots - go to settings and wifi and log back into your wifi connection.
Then connect your iOS device to your computer and sync it - then once it is sync'd - do a back up - and then sync again.
Over Kill is my middle name.
Once your do all that then you can do the update. Well actually if you are coming from iOS 5.x you are probably jailbroken - which really means you need to do a restore first to wipe out the jailbreak and then do the upgrade. If you try to just upgrade with out restoring - then you will get an error message saying it can't upgrade and then you click ok and it says it sees a phone in recovery mode would you like to restore and update - then you click on that. Then it will upgrade to iOS 6.1.
If you think I am talking like someone with experience with that situation you would be correct - I decided to upgrade my iPhone 4S which was jailbroken to 6.1 from 5.1.1 and I wanted to see what happened if I tried just the upgrade - and well iTunes did not like that. Not surprising.
The downside for a full restore and then upgrade is getting all your apps back on there.
But hey that is what all the back ups and sync's that I over did to start with were about - after it finally upgraded - to 6.1 - I restored from the previous back up - and a while later - over 2 hours later - all my hundred's and hundred's of apps finally made it over.
Don't forget to re-lock your SIM card. Feedback for this upgrade has been mostly positive - I only had one person write in and say they had any sort of issue. Yes - there are people on the forums complaining - but it is a very very small % overall. It is just a very very small % of a very very large number is still a decent size number of people with issues. Well guess what no upgrade has ever been 100% with out issues. I am still a firm believer that many of the issues of user error or not doing proper prep work as described a minute ago.
Still as I have said for the past 5 years - don't be the first one to upgrade when the upgrade comes out if you don't like when things don't work perfectly - especially considering how slow the downloads are on the first couple of days of the upgrade. If you ever complained about if toilet paper should be hung from the top or the bottom - or you don't like how your significant other folds towels - guess what you are not a good candidate for early upgrades. Ok - so that all said - if you were waiting for the go ahead - There is it - go ahead and upgrade to iOS 6.1 - if you are jailbroken - we will talk about this later in the show.
Here is some feedback from those that did upgrade.
Me - Went great. No issue other than that whole having to restore thing. Working great since upgrade.
George P - writes So far so good.
Here is another
Hi Rob - quick note - updated to 6.1. Took about 20 minutes. No issues that I can see. Using a 32 gb iPhone 4S.
Regards,
Randy
Pittsburgh, PA
Hi Rob, To call someone I just clicked on a link in their email signature which had a phone number followed by "Ext. 131". It asked me if I wanted to dial and of course I said yes. Once the phone call was placed I noticed a red "End" button on the left side of the bottom of the screen, and to the right there was a black button with shaded out text that read "Dial 131". Much to my amazement, iOS interpreted the words Ext. after the phone number as an extension and peeled off the numbers that followed it to enable me to enter it with one button press.
So, in other words, when the phone is answered you have a choice; if it is a person you can just talk to them, but if it is a automated attendant, you can push the "Dial 131" button and it will dial the extension.
What the system actually did is translate the Ext. into a semi-colon following the number. This means you can enter any number into your address book in this manner and produce the same Dial Ext No. functionality.
Perhaps everyone knows about this, but it is news to me and I think it is very cool.
Woody N
Hi Woody - this was actually in iOS 6.0 when it was released - but I can't remember talking about it much if at all - and since a new jailbreak is coming - more on that later - we will have quite a few listeners new to iOS 6 in the next week or two. So good to talk about this now - as it is a cool tip.
To the emails
Hi Rob,
Per the iOS 6.1 update it contains improvements and bug fixes, including:
- Purchase movie tickets through Fandango with Siri (USA only)
- iTunes Match subscribers can now download individual songs from iCloud
- New button to reset the Advertising Identifier
- and LTE support for more carriers (complete list of supported carriers at apple.com/iphone/LTE/)
Regards Thomas.
Thanks Thomas. And per that last point on LTE Tim cook had stated last week that they were going from 24 carriers world wide to 60 carriers world wide that the iPhone 5 works with their LTE -
and this upgrade is a big part in getting those new 36 carriers support to LTE on the iPhone 5. Now you do need to check the page mentioned - apple.com/iphone/LTE to see if your Carrier is supported and if you have the right iPhone 5 for your carrier.
Per the Reset Advertising Identifier - or as Apple internally calls it the Tin foil hat feature - it helps those paranoid that Advertisers can figure out who they are by the apps and ads they have seen and clicked on. This allows you to change the identifier to your iOS device to a new random ID and then change it again and again and so on and so forth. All the time realizing that guys behind the secrets to getting out of traffic tickets or getting a lower loan rate or providing an on line degree - well they will no longer be able to go through their billions of ad impressions and zero in on your so as to offer you up a special ad you will not be able to refuse either that or put you on some special government watch list. That said - Apple has now made it possible to click on ads and still stay one step ahead of the man. Just Sayin.
One very interesting stat in the Apple press release is that iOS users - almost 300 million of them to be precise have upgraded to iOS 6.x prior to Monday's upgrade. That is simply an amazing number in 5 months time 300 million iOS users upgraded to the most recent level of the OS. Considering there have been 532 Million iOS devices sold all time as of the end of December - that is 56% of all iOS device ever. Now many are not working any more - so really it is probably a little over 60% of active iOS devices are on the latest major revision of the OS. How does that compare to Android. Well glad you asked. As of the end of December - which is 7 months after the release of 4.1 Jelly bean - at whopping 10.2% of Android users are on the latest version. Worse yet over 59% are on a version that is at least three major revisions old or older. That would be versions 2.3 or older. Ouch it really sucks to be a developer for Android. And actually it sucks to be those providing services that might be accessed by Android devices - Just today I had someone email me about an HTML5 player and it not working with android devices - when I asked him what version he was running - it was Android 2.3.6 - and he wanted to know why the HTML 5 player was not working - umm because you are using an ancient version of Android - that is why - it took all my self control to not say - Dude you have an android phone deal with it and get used to disappointment. It is like asking for support for Windows 95. just sayin
You have to love wall street and by love I mean scratch ones head. Apple releases the greatest quarterly report ever for any tech company. Numbers that every other company in the world would kill for and Apples stock drops. Then Apple goes out Tuesday morning and announces a 128 gb version of the iPad maxi - we are talking a minor minor addition to its product line and the stock goes up - yup you gotta love wall street and by love I of course mean shake ones head.
Oh I guess I should mention in greater detail Apple put out a press release about a new version of the iPad - a 128 GB version. The pricing will be $100 more than the 64GB version for both Wifi and Cellular models. This new version will be available on Feb 5th just in time for Valentines day. This version had been rumored for about 2 days when someone noticed in the iOS 6.1 code that there was a provision for the 128 GB version.
For those that the iPad is your computer - doubling of the storage space I can see as big plus - especially if you can't always rely on the cloud to get to your documents.
Kudos go out to the twitter user @ineal - who seems to be the first one to notice the code calling out the higher storage option iPad.
9 top 5 mac gets the kudos for getting the pricing right before the official announcement. Hey if I am going to slam blogs for bogus reports - I also need to give out kudos for when some get it right.
Some may wonder exactly what Apples reasoning is for releasing the iPad maxi mondo - or what ever you want to call the new 128 GB iPad. Some would say it is for College students - others for Government use - others say it is for enterprise use - and others it is geared towards the video producers. Regardless of what niche this is for - one thing is certain - the timing of the release was geared towards Microsoft who next week will also be releasing the Surface Pro Tablet on Feb 9th 4 days after the iPad maxi mondo. Microsoft I guess is releasing it on Saturday so that people have a chance to wait over night. Anyway the $899 Surface Pro will have 64 GB of storage or should I say 64 GB of storage chips. Actual storage that the user can you know use - that is well just 23 GB - that's right - just 36% of the storage is available to the user. At $799 - the iPad maxi Mondo on the other hand has over 120 GB of storage available for the end user or about 100 GB of extra storage. Of course for another $100 the Surface Pro users could upgrade to 128 GB of storage chips which would give them around 87 GB of storage. You know sometimes Microsoft makes it really really easy for me to trash them on the show.
It does seem MS has found one way to help the Surface Pro vs the iPad - and that is by not releasing MS Office for it. When Balmer was asked about the iPad and Office he gave a terse or ballmerish reply of quote I have nothing to say on the topic unquote. Still there are rumors out there that Office for iOS was coming in March of 2013 - we shall see - In the mean time Pages, Keynote and Numbers will allow you to open Word, Powerpoint and Excel documents respectively. I use those three on my mac and get along just fine. But still it seems with no Office for the regular Surface and the poor sales of the Surface and likely poor sales of the Surface pro - plus MS not wanting to give Apple 30% of the sales revenue of Office via the App store - it likely will be a while before we see Office officially for iOS.
Ok - lets talk rumors for a second - because they are getting crazy again. First with the release of the iPad maxi mondo - it likely now means the iPad 5 will not launch until the Fall along side the next iPad mini. That also likely means an earlier release for the next iPhone - the iPhone 2013 or iPhone 5S or iPhone 7 or 6 or whatever - since I do think Apple will try to space the releases this time around. That would mean we should start seeing images of components in 3, 2, 1. And yup here is the first one a french site No where else dot fr has photos of what they claim to be the new speaker enclosure for the next gen iPhone. Which is kind of like when you hear about a archeologist finding a single bone in a cave and saying the person it belonged to in a new species and they looked like this. Huh - You got that from a single bone from a finger how? Heck how did you even know it was from a human.
And in this case how do they know it is from the next gen iPhone - oh well - these had to start. The next round of rumors comes from iLounge and give some recent hits on the rumor side - I figured I would mention it - and they say they have a photo of the Low cost BRIC nation iPhone. This is the plastic iPhone. Esentially it is an iPhone 5 - screen size wise - but with a cheaper case and probably other corners are cut - well not corners of the device - but lower cost components -
like a lower cost camera module or maybe a lower cost speaker module. Essentially iLounge is saying it will be a plastic cross between the iPhone 5, iPod touch with a shape like the iPod Classic. Again this will be geared probably to start in China - can you say China Mobile. Then probably out to the other BRIC countries and other developing nations or places where there is no phone subsidies. I really hate mentioning this as I really did not believe in the low cost iPhone - but given iLounges recent history with rumors and a pic and well Wallstreets begging for Apple to expand iOS's market share at all costs - well it looks like it might actually happen and sometime in the first half of this year.
Of course it is tough to know which rumors to believe in like I said it has been crazy lately - luckily the folks at Cnet actually put together a list of recent next gen iPhone rumors. Here are the ones just from the past 10 days.
1. Low cost iPhone - the plastic iPhone I just mentioned.
2. images of next gen iPhone parts - the ones I mentioned before that.
3. upgraded iPhone rear camera - to 13 Mega pixels.
4. renderings of what a 4.8 inch iPhone would look like
5. Bigger iPhone coming this year.
6. 4.8 inch iPhone coming in June.
And that was the last 10 days. Earlier this month there were another dozen rumors everything from new display tech to an iPhone mini to well you get the picture - it is crazy times on the rumor front. As always only time and some leaked photos from an Apple supplier will tell.
Hi Rob,
For the guy who didn't want his filtered photos to save on twitter or instagram.
On Instagram, go to your profile, then up in the top right corner is the settings button, and in here is "save to library", and a switch that can be turned on or off. If turned off, the filtered photos won't save to the library.
- Jessi
Hi Rob,
I have a few answers for the person trying to edit with VoiceOver on
the iPhone. It takes some getting used to, but is indeed possible. If
the person is comfortable with editting text on the Mac (an iMac was
indicated, so I'm assuming) the cursor moves in the same way. Use the
rotor gesture (take two fingers on the screen, hold your phone steady,
and rotate your hand as if turning a dial) until you hear the desired
element you want to move by--words, characters, or lines. Then flick
up or down to move forward or backward by that element. To quickly
jump to the top or bottom of a text field, double tap and VO will
announce where the insertion point is moved to.
Can't help with touch typing and Zoom, but can shed some light on why
the iPhone and Mac voices are different. Copyright aside, it comes
down to specs. Alex (the default Mac voice) takes up quite a bit of
memory and processor power, and that is why he's not on the iPhone
yet. Here's hoping.
What I cannot seem to figure out is a good and reliable way to pinch
on the iPhone for selecting stuff to cut and paste. People say
rotoring is one of the more complex gestures; I beg to differ.
Thanks again Rob.
Sincerely,
Chelsea
Hi Rob:
In episode 255, you responded to a request for recommendations on learning iOS programming.
I have recently started down this path and can recommend lynda.com. It is a "paid" solution....
but I have found the video tutorials to be of an exceedingly high quality. If folks looking into this
have a programming background (specifically with C++, C#, or Java) I can recommend that the "regular" subscription would suffice.
the higher level subscription allows you to download the code samples provided by the instructor, but
I have found that these are not needed for me.
My 11 year old daughter was very disappointed to hear your news that Lego MindStorms will now be supporting iOS...
when I told her that daddy was going to make her play with these so that he can "help" ;)
warmest regards,
Mike P
While most of the press was beating Apple up the past year about its supply chain - they barely if ever gave Apple credit for being out in front in holding their supply chain accountable for workers violations. Well in apples supplier report they indicated they found one of their suppliers to be using under age workers and they fired them and cut ties and then turned them into the authorities. Sure reports like this don't sell papers or drive blog traffic - but kudos to CNET for covering the story. A quote from Apple Quote Underage labor is a subject no company wants to be associated with, so as a result I don't believe it gets the attention it deserves, and as a result it doesn't get fixed like it should, unquote - Jeff Williams Apples senior VP of Operations. Kudos to Apple for having the where with all to not only do something about labor issues but also report on those issues when they discover them.
When I was at CES it seemed everywhere I looked there were iOS accessories - which makes sense as I really was just at the iLounge area. However it does seem that was also a theme through out CES as a whole. Aspotter collected data on 3200+ exhibitors at CES this year and discovered that roughly 18% or 1/5th or 2 out of 10 were in the biz of making accessories for iOS devices. They found 937 accessories from 590 manufactures at CES. 25% were speakers. 25% were cases. I know I saw a couple of electronic stimulation devices for women if you know what I mean that were controlled by the iPhone. I will talk about more of what I found at CES in future episodes - but it is interesting to see that CES is so influenced by iOS accessories - should make it easy for me to get a press pass again next year.
Hey do you have an iPad mini - well Cnet just put out a post titled 25 essential iPad mini tips - and I am going to go over each one in great detail right now - or you know what why don't you just look for the link titled 25 essential iPad mini tips in the show notes for episode 256 over at today in iOS dot com - and that way I don't get angry emails about reading off 25 tips on the show. Plus most of them have been talked about before on the show. But if you are new to the iPad mini and iOS it is a good read.
Hi Rob,
Per ep 255 and speed tests in China - I used the app SPEEDTEST, which I used to test 3G speed in China,
It resulted in a download speed of 1.80Mb/s, and upload speed 0.26Mb/s, this was inside an office building downtown.
Best Regards,
Bertie
Hi Rob,
I'll like to ask you or your listeners if can give me some advice on getting the Iphone 5.
Me and my wife, both are using the Iphone 4, grandfather unlimited data, unlimited Text, 1400 shared minutes with a family plan with AT&T, bill around $200/month for the two phones.
Are we going to feel a great difference btw iphone 4 and 5?
Which deal will you/or listeners suggest? (Change carrier, AT&T Office, Radio Shack upgrade, AT&T web Upgrade, buy new ones with new contract with AT&T and then sell iphone 4's on ebay?, etc). BDW existing iphone 4's on excellent condition.
Best Regards,
Luis A from Anaheim, California.
Per Kickstarter projects - this week there is one called Vendetta Online - Initially on this one they had less than $1,000 pledged on 1/18 - by 1/30 they were up to $28,000 and they have a goal of $100,000. this one actually has another 24 days to go expiring on Feb 24th at 7:00 PM ET.
What is Vendetta ONLINE - It is an existing independent cross platform space MMORPG that they would like to drastically expand and bring to the iPad. MMORPG of course stands for Massively multiplayer online role playing game. And well if you knew what that acronym meant when I said it then you should check out the Kickstarter project by searching for Vendetta online two words in kickstarter. If you needed me to explain it - then this one is not likely for you.
Nice posts going around about Apogee equipment for recording music on an iPad and also about ik Multimedia for all their equipment for the iPad. Both of these companies are turning the iPad into your digital hub for creating quality music. What I would love to see is some of your setups out there - have you added equipment for making music with on your iPad from either of these companies or others. Send in your pics and descriptions of your set up - and links to your sites and I will put up some posts on Today in iOS about your set ups. Also include some music you created or let me know of past shows when I featured your music - and I will link to those episodes or add it to new ones. I am a firm believer that the iPad is more than a consumption device it is a creation device and would really like to show case how some of you have used it as such.
Hi Rob,
I have heard you talk about strait talk and wanted to know if I can take my I pad over to them. Do I need to get it unlocked.
I have two
Regards,
Lawrence
Lawrence - I am not sure - if anyone has been able to get their AT&T iPad to work on Straight talk - please let us know and let us know what you needed to do - and how much it is costing you to be on straight talk and what that plan gets you.
206-666-6364 - that's 206-moon-dog.
Hello Rob,
Two app reviews/comments I wanted to throw out there. The first is a
game called iAssociate 2.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/iassociate-2/id370423110?mt=8
This is a word association game where you have to not think too hard
but figure out what words are associated to what other words e.g 5
letters, associated with computer and fruit = Apple. It takes me
awhile to complete a level, so I am fine with the free ones they give,
though I did buy the Apple-themed level and had a lot of fun. Always
happy to support a dev willing to make a game VoiceOver accessible,
and these guys certainly have. There are two VO modes for those new
and experienced in the game, and a sound is played every time a
correct word/letter is inputted. Awesome for a college student like me
who doesn't have a lot of time; check it out.
Some comments on the LookTel money reader app: Really works
brilliantly. Unlike some other apps claiming to do the same thing,
this one uses object recognition (video vs. stills) to find the money,
so you don't have to worry about alignment and trying to get a good
photo. Saved me many times when I lived in an apartment over the
summer--I could give the pizza guy the right tip!
Regards,
Chelsea
For those of you with the Tii app you received a push last weekend telling you of a free app to get while the getting was good. That was the app Gridlee.
What is special about this app - well let me read one of the reviews.
Quote
Full of secrets
by Boberttiswas
At first glance, this game might seem quite underwhelming, but stick with it and you'll find a number of features under the bland exterior that make this game so fun, it's almost as if you're playing a whole load of completely different games.
Unquote
See with this app you can play a whole load of different games - by side loading the games boot roms - as in a bunch of classic Arcade ROMs.
First off major kudos to Brent for the heads up.
Per the status of the app well for some strange reason it is still up on the iTunes app store - which just must mean someone from Apple that makes the calls to yank apps like this - they are on vacation this week. That is about the only reason I can see it still being up. Anyway it is free and likely up for a limited time and if you own an iCade or just like old time arcade games - search for G r i d l e e in the iTunes app store - it is a free app. Get it while the getting it good.
For those with the App - there is a link in the show notes titled - How to load ROMS into the grid lee MAME emulator App - check that out for more info on how to do that - I also hope to get a tutorial up on the site as well.
Again no jailbreak needed for this.
Thanks to Robin for sending in that link to the video and for also mentioning she was able to get Pitfall 2 which isn't the pitfall 2 but a cheap knock off from www.rom-world.com
If you have gotten an ROM's that are working with Gridlee - please email me the info on which rom's you were able to get to work and where you got them from - I will then pull them together in the tutorial I put out.
Send that info to today in iOS at gmail dot com.
One more tip from Robin - when searching for ROMS google - 0.139u1 space ROMS
Ok - lets talk jailbreaking - because most likely sometime between when this episode ep 256 went live and when the next episode ep 257 goes live - the long long awaited jailbreak for iOS 6 will finally be released. There is already an official site for it at e v a s i zero n dot com. The jailbreak is not yet live buy again it will be shortly. So what will the jailbreak work on and what do you need to do to jailbreak - well they have given some info. You will need quote
- 5 minutes of your time!
- A computer, running Windows (XP minimum), Mac OS X (10.5 minimum) or Linux (x86 / x86_64)
- An iPhone, iPad or iPod running iOS 6.0 through 6.1 (you may check in Settings / General / About => Version)
- A USB cable to connect the device to the computer
unquote.
So yes any iOS device running iOS 6.x - if you are jailbroken now - you will need to restore your device and then upgrade to iOS 6.1 before you do the jailbreak - again you must remove the jailbreak to upgrade. Note if you are unlocked and did the unlock via a jailbreak - stay away for now.
Actually I will say this - don't be one of those to do the jailbreak right away. I know many of you are itching to do it. But the first few days of a new jailbreak - are times when things don't go well traditionally. usually there are a few updates right away. I say wait at least a week - better to wait two weeks. I will be putting out a tutorial as I always do once this is live and it is looking like it is working ok - My tutorial will not be the first one out there - but typically my tutorials are very easy to follow for anyone of any tech level.
Here is the big issue of jailbreaking right away - too many people do it - and that causes issues with Cydia having its servers overloaded and that causes all kinds of issues during the jailbreak.
If you are someone that needs your iOS device for work - wait until after my next episode or better yet wait 2 weeks from when it is released - let all the crazies get theirs done first.
And please don't email me for help prior to my next episode if you brick your iPhone because you did not listen. I will likely be waiting a few days before I do my jailbreak.
Finally if you are not going to head my warning - make sure you back up and get all your photos off your iOS device before you do the jailbreak. remove the unlock on your sim card. And well good luck and report back to me if you do jailbreak on how it went for you.
I will NOT repeat NOT be sending out a push when the jailbreak is available - I did that in the past - and people mistook the push to be me saying it was ok to jailbreak - they had issues and then nasty emails did they come. Which is also why I did not send out a push for iOS 6.1 - again I wanted to make sure it was going well before I talked about it. Which it is. Next episode I hope to be telling you the jailbreak is working well - but until then please be patient and wait - let me and others be your Guinea pigs.
Hi Rob,
We recently returned from an 11 day vacation through Washington, Oregon, and California, with the highlight of the trip being 4 days at Disneyland.
Two days into the trip, the cable charger/connector for our older Garmin died. The nice, but clueless young man at Best Buy told us said cable was no longer available (untrue, it's in the mail).
Since we had two iPhone 5's and one 4S between the adults, we decided to try Apple Maps, Google Maps, and Motion X GPS equally on the trip. All three apps had equal success and failure, which surprised us. All three had features we liked and disliked. There were no horrible disasters, just continuous frustrations with all three apps.
Our favorite navigation tool is still the Garmin and it will be ready for the next trip this spring!
PS--I loaded the retired 3GS and 2nd gen. iPod Touch with preschool activities & games. They were a HUGE hit with the grandkids (2 & 5 yrs)!
Regards,
Brenda