iPhone-more-fun » keyboard

iPhone First Look: 5 Observations

Leia — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 01:22:00 +0000

Here are five quick, random observations based on about 10 minutes of fiddling with the iPhone after activating it.

1. Typing in passwords, especially long ones, is a pain. Just as in Safari on your Mac (or, ahem, PC), when typing in passwords, all you see are dots for the characters. When you’re getting used to the iPhone’s soft keyboard, typing in passwords can be an exercise in frustration, especially when you type the wrong character, have to clear it, then forget where you are in the password, usually leading to the need to start from scratch. At least, with Wi-Fi access, it works the same as connecting on a computer: You only have to type the password in once, even if you leave Safari to do other things on the phone.

2. Browsing takes a little getting used to and feels a bit awkward at first. But text is surprisingly easy to read, especially since you can resize it at will. When we clicked on a link on CNN’s website that required Windows Media Player, we encountered a “plugin warning” and couldn’t figure out any way to go back to the page we’d come from, except to go all the way back to the original bookmarks folder for News.

3. The keyboard really is pretty damn smart.

4. Viewing files attached to emails (like Word, etc.) is faster and easier than it is on a Mac. Really.

5. Sometimes the accelerometer doesn’t work with email messages and Web pages – at least not right away. (And, of course, it only works in one direction, counter-clockwise to switch from vertical to horizontal and clockwise to switch back.)

So, what is your observations when you first take your iPhone. Share it with us.

Special Apple Events Series – What is iPod Touch? (2)

Leia — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 02:26:00 +0000

A great iPod. A great pocket computer. A great portable game player.

iPod touch lets you enjoy everything you love about an iPod, and then some. Watch your movies and TV shows on a brilliant 3.5-inch display. Use the revolutionary Multi-Touch interface to flick through your music in Cover Flow. And anytime you’re itching for more entertainment, just tap iTunes to browse and buy on the fly.

A great pocket computer.

Built-in Wi-Fi means you can surf the web, send email, update your Facebook status, chat using AIM, and so much more — all on a device that fits in your pocket.

Most of what you do online with a computer can easily be done on iPod touch. Built-in Wi-Fi means you can check your favorite blogs, write an email with a photo attached, or find out how to get to that new restaurant. When you think about it, iPod touch is a computer in your pocket. How handy is that?

Improved Performance

The new iPod touch — available in 32GB and 64GB models — is up to 50 percent faster than the previous-generation iPod touch. So apps launch faster and web pages load in a fraction of the time.

Wireless

If you’re somewhere with a wireless network, iPod touch instantly recognizes it. If it’s free Wi-Fi, you’re good to go. Launch any one of your Wi-Fi-dependent apps, such as Safari or iTunes, and you’re on. Some wireless networks may require a password, but iPod touch has that covered, too. Just enter the password once, and iPod touch remembers it. So the next time you’re within range of that network, you’re connected automatically.

Safari

Safari — an advanced web browser designed for Mac and PC computers — also comes on iPod touch. Safari on iPod touch lets you can carry the full-size power of the Internet in your pocket. Just connect to a Wi-Fi network, and you can use Safari for nearly everything you do using a web browser on a computer. In fact, web pages look exactly the same on iPod touch as they do on your computer.

Mail

Email on iPod touch looks and acts just like email on your computer. View your messages in rich HTML, including attachments. Mail recognizes file types such as .doc, .jpg, .mp3, and many others. And setting up Mail is easy because iPod touch automatically enters settings for popular accounts including Gmail, MobileMe, Yahoo!, AOL, and Microsoft Exchange.

Keyboard

Typing on iPod touch is easy. That’s because it has an intelligent keyboard that predicts and corrects words as you type. Writing something lengthy? When you turn iPod touch on its side, the keyboard switches from portrait to landscape with larger keys and more room to type.

Maps

Know where you are and where you’re going with Maps on iPod touch. If you’re connected to a wireless network, you can find your location and get a list of turn-by-turn directions. Maps also finds points of interest from a keyword search. Say you and your friends have a craving for pizza. Tap Search, type in “pizza,” and Maps shows you restaurants nearby.

Social Networking

iPod touch is the only iPod that helps you stay connected. So anytime you find yourself saying “I need to make that my Facebook status” or “This deserves a tweet,” pull out your iPod touch. Social networking apps such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and AIM are available for free from the App Store.

10 Things the 3G iPhone is Still Missing (1)

Leia — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 02:18:00 +0000

The new App Store has unleashed a slew of great new apps for the iPhone, but there are still a few standard features we wish Apple’s multimedia phone had. Here’s the short list.

It’s great that the new iPhone has faster data service and GPS. And you could get lost for days in the new iPhone App Store looking at all the cool new toys and productivity tools. But quite a few Achilles’ heels–in the form of missing features–still remain in Apple’s 3G iPhone. What’s most surprising is that these features come standard in some of even the most basic models of rival phones. With these features added, the 3G iPhone could come pretty close to perfect. (This isn’t the first time we’ve complained about what’s missing from the iPhone, and many of the gripes on this list are repeat offenders.)

Here’s what we would still like to see in the iPhone:

1. Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS)

Despite being fairly standard on most multimedia phones, MMS capabilities aren’t part of the 3G iPhone’s bag of tricks. That said, you can e-mail photos taken with the iPhone’s 2-megapixel camera (or photos stored on the device). You can also share YouTube links directly from the iPhone’s YouTube application. So why is MMS missing? It could be tied directly to the 3G iPhone’s lack of a video camera; you can’t share video files if you can’t shoot or store it natively on the device. As for music, iTunes’ strict limitations on sharing music are probably the reason behind that, but it would at least be nice to have audio-sharing capabilities for non-DRM-protected tracks.

2. Stereo Bluetooth / A2DP support

You’ve got to love the fact that the new iPhone no longer requires an adapter or headphones designed for its recessed headphone jack. But what about cutting the cable altogether? Unlike the latest BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Symbian mobile platforms, the latest iPhone still doesn’t offer the convenience of using a stereo Bluetooth headset to listen to its on-board iPod, at least not without using a bulky adapter. For such a common feature, and for a company so aesthetically inclined, that’s more than a little surprising.

3. Selecting, copying, and pasting text

Apple fixed a few of the first-gen iPhone’s shortcomings with the early-2008 firmware update (sending text messages to more than one recipient, for example), but they didn’t add an option to edit text by selecting passages and copying and pasting them elsewhere in an e-mail message or note. And with the new iPhone firmware, they still haven’t. This missing feature is more than a little annoying for those who write more than talk, want to copy and paste long strings from URLs, or fix links that get truncated in e-mail messages.

4. Horizontal keyboard for e-mail and notes

Another annoyance for writers–and a confusing omission, given the capability of the iPhone’s on-screen keyboard to flip horizontally for some applications but not for others–is the fact that the touch-screen keyboard doesn’t rotate to a landscape orientation when using the Notes, e-mail, or Maps applications. Those also happen to be the three most writing-intensive apps on the iPhone, which makes the necessary one-finger hunting and pecking required by the portrait-mode keyboard all the more annoying if you use those features a lot. Over time, using your thumbs to type versus holding the phone in one hand and poking at the keys with one finger is a lot more significant than you might think.

5. Improved predictive text (or the ability to turn it off)

The iPhone’s predictive text feature (where the phone “guesses” what you’re going to write after you enter a few characters–to eliminate typos) does a decent job of streamlining typing. However, it has only an “opt-out” feature, which requires hitting a very small “x” to deselect the word it suggests. This is where that feature fails. The time it saves in correcting miscues sometimes pales in comparison to the frustration it causes in forcing you to repeatedly deselect words. And there’s no way to turn it off or create a keyboard-based shortcut to deselect the predicted word.

Five Top Tips for New iPhone Users

Leia — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 01:42:00 +0000

As iPhone new users, you must be very excited when you get it. Though you may be surfing the web, checking your e-mail, even looking up directions on Maps, there are a few features that you might have missed in your initial excitement. Let us help you fill in the gaps with these top tips.

Pick a letter, any letter.

The iPhone’s onscreen keyboard takes some getting used to, but it’s also incredibly versatile, supporting more than 20 different languages. Sometimes you don’t need a whole different alphabet, though—maybe you just need to be able to spell François or Mötley Crue. No worries, the iPhone’s got you covered: to insert one of those special characters, just hold down the base letter for a couple seconds (for example, to get ö, hold down the ‘o’ key) and you’ll see a menu of special characters pop up. Slide your finger to the right one, let go, and presto, you’re all set. Bonus tip: this technique also works with the “.com” key that you see when typing in a web address in Safari—hold it down and you’ll get options for .org, .net, and .edu too.

There’s no place like home.

The Home button is one of the iPhone’s few physical buttons; it’s also your best friend, because it’s always there for you. Clicking it will quickly jump you back to the home screen, whether you’re in an app or paging through your sixth screen of iPhone applications. If you visit Settings -> General -> Home Button, you can choose to have a double-click of the button bring up the Favorites screen of your Contacts, or pop up a dialog box with iPod controls. And if you’re trapped in a frozen or hung application, you can often escape by holding down the Home button for around six seconds.

Take a picture, it’ll last longer. Maybe there’s some information on your iPhone you want to be able to retrieve later, like flight information, or perhaps you want to share that data with somebody else. Some programs, like Safari, let you email information to others, but many don’t. There is a workaround, though: take a screenshot. If you push the iPhone’s Home button and Sleep/Wake button simultaneously, the screen will flash to white and a screenshot of whatever you’re looking at will appear in your iPhone’s Photos app. From there you can attach the image to an e-mail message or just save it for future reference.

Shake it up, baby.

You’re going to spend a lot of time on the iPhone’s home screen, so just like your actual home, you’ll probably want to arrange it to your liking. By tapping and holding any application icon on the home screen, all the icons will jiggle like they’ve caught a bad case of dance fever. In this mode, you can drag-and-drop icons wherever you like; if you drag them to the edge of the screen, you’ll shift to the adjacent page. You can even drag icons in and out of the iPhone’s dock, if you want to have quick access to an application no matter what home screen you’re on. While the icons are shaking, you can also remove any third-party apps (those that don’t come with the iPhone) by tapping the little ‘x’ that appears in the top left corner. When you’ve got everything set up just the way you want it, tap the Home button to lock it in.

The tip that keeps on tipping.

That third-party application you downloaded would be great if only it just let you change that one little setting that’s driving you nuts, but you can’t find a preferences option anywhere in the program. That’s because Apple’s developer documentation asks programmers, rather unintuitively, to put their applications’ settings in the iPhone’s Settings app. Not all developers do Apple’s bidding, but it’s a good idea to check the Settings app before complaining to the program’s creator that something’s totally impossible.

As a reminder, we have posted an article about iPhone tips and tricks. You can download it from here: Tips to Make the Most of Your iPhone

iPhone 3GS Keyboard Tricks

Leia — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 06:12:00 +0000

Here is a helpful video for you to recognize and utilize you iPhone keyboard.

iPhone-more-fun » keyboard

iPhone First Look: 5 Observations

Special Apple Events Series – What is iPod Touch? (2)

A great pocket computer.

Improved Performance

Wireless

Safari

Mail

Keyboard

Maps

Social Networking

10 Things the 3G iPhone is Still Missing (1)

Five Top Tips for New iPhone Users

Top iPhone Stories This Week

1. GPush Brings Push GMail to iPhone(from iPhonemofo.net)

3. Best New iPhone Apps by BusinessWeek(2)(from iPhonemofo.net)

4. New Apple iPhone Patent Applications Surface: Object and Facial Recognition, Messaging, Voice Modulation(from MacRumors)

5. iPhone 3GS Upstream Transfers Limited to 384 Kbps(from MacRumors)

6. 16 GB White iPhone 3GS Stocks Run Low in Apple Retail Stores(from MacRumors)

7. U.S. Department of Justice Reviewing Wireless Carrier Exclusivity Agreements(from MacRumors)

8. Apple filings detail ID app, other potential iPhone enhancements(from AppleInsider)

9. Apple launches HTTP Live Streaming standard in iPhone 3.0(from AppleInsider)

10. Nearly half of prospective smartphone buyers to choose iPhone(from AppleInsider)

11. App Review: IM+ with Push for iPhone(from The iPhone Blog)

iPhone 3GS Keyboard Tricks