As of right now, there have been nearly 1,000,000 iOS devices sold worldwide! As a result, there is a huge market for buying and selling used devices. People are willing to shell out hundreds of US dollars on an old iPhone, for example, just to ensure they aren't stuck in a 2-year contract with AT&T, Verizon or other cell carriers. While it's a great time to sell your old device... buyer beware!
I have sold plenty iOS devices in my time, and while I consider myself to be an honest seller who does whatever he can to ensure the buyer is happy, not all sellers are like me. Some, in fact, are so devious that they will try anything to scam you out of your hard-earned money. One way they do this is by selling you an iPhone that is still locked to their iCloud account. If their iCloud account is still active on the device, there isn't much you can do with it. It's pretty much a useless brick of plastic and metal.
Reader Question: "I really, really like the fact that you can much more easily send little snippets of audio and video in the Messages app in iOS 8. What I don't like is that they seem to disappear after a few minutes. Can you tell me why it does that and how to avoid that?"
I agree... I am loving this new feature in iOS 8! I don't use it all the time, but I use it pretty frequently. By default, audio and video snippets that are sent this way are stored locally for a period of 2 minutes (the timer starts once the clip has played all the way through). After 2 minutes, the snippet is automatically removed from the message thread. In most situations, 2 minutes is plenty of time, but in some cases, it would be nice to keep them longer.
iOS 8 brings to your iOS device many brand-new features. It also offers hundreds of improvements over iOS 7. One of the improvements comes in the form of a new and improved Spotlight. If you gave up on it in previous versions of iOS, it's time to take a second look!
I consider Spotlight to be Google for your personal device. Enter a string of text, and it searches your device for anything that matches that... contacts, calendar items, emails, etc. Spotlight in iOS 8 is drastically improved, adding built-in searching capabilities reaching far beyond your device.
Today's Tech Talk post is in response to a recent reader question: "I love how easy it is to import photos from my iPhone into iPhoto and then delete them from my iPhone, but I constantly find myself regretting doing that because it's nice to be able to look at photos 2 weeks ago or 2 months ago on my iPhone. How can I have the best of both worlds?"
That's an excellent question, and I have a great answer for you! The short version: import into iPhoto then export to your iPhone. Confused? Read on.
It's official... iOS has been released and iPhone 6 goes on sale September 19, 2014. There are a LOT of people excited to use both of these new products (in fact, it's been estimated that nearly 5 million customers pre-ordered the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in the first 24 hours).
There are a LOT of new features in iOS 8 as well as on the iPhone 6. Apple does a great job of making their products intuitive. Even with that in mind, sometimes, features aren't as intuitive as they can be, or in some cases, they can get lost or overlooked. To ensure that you are getting the most out of your new tools, Apple has released a free iBooks book called "iPhone User Guide".
With the availability of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus right around the corner, now is the time for those who will be upgrading to prepare. In theory, you can simply turn on the new device, work your way through the short setup wizard and restore from a previous backup (whether via iCloud or iTunes), however in my experience, there are a few things you can do to make the transition easier and quicker.
For those who missed the big announcement live (or didn't have time to watch the 2-hour event), I have done most of the work for you. Here's a quick recap of today's big news.
I recently wrote about the importance of viewing and updating your Apple ID at least once a year. It's like cleaning out your garage... you don't want to do it all the time, but when you do, it's a great opportunity to make it feel fresh and clean (and by the end, you're glad you did it). The same philosophy applies to your iTunes account.
Ensuring that your iTunes account is accurate every so often is a great habit to get into. There are more features available here than you might think.
One of the things that I appreciate about the tech community (and especially the Apple community) is the wealth of knowledge available, and the willingness of others to share that knowledge. I remember the first Macworld Expo and Conference that I attended in 2005... I met so many incredible people and learned so much from each one. I still keep in contact with some of those friends today.
While we can't all go to conferences all the time, it's still great to knowledge share, and there are plenty of ways to do that from anywhere. This Tech Talk site is one of the many ways that I share my knowledge with others, and there are many sites just like this on the Internet. There are even some formal sites dedicated to sharing knowledge. Here's one that I recommend visiting.
I love music. I'm a firm believer that the right kind of music can inspire you to do great things. As a result, I like to have music playing throughout my home and office. Because our home isn't pre-wired for an expensive audio system, having a good audio experience is a little more difficult... or is it?
We live in a day when nearly everything is wireless (even some refrigerators can email you when you're out of milk and eggs), so the notion of needing to have your home or office pre-wired can be a thing of the past. In fact, I would even say that most of us already have a great wireless audio system in our home or office, and we may not even know it.
Apple introduced the ability to use the native Camera app in iOS for taking panoramic photos back in iOS 6. It's an incredibly powerful feature that allows you to create a panoramic simply by sweeping your iPhone from left to right (or right to left). Prior to this feature, there were third-party apps that allowed you to take your multiple photos and stitch them together. This worked pretty good, but they usually had some problems (specifically in the join area between photo 1 and photo 2).
For those who haven't used the panoramic feature yet, you're missing out on some potentially awesome shots! Here are a few useful tips on taking the perfect panoramic.
A lot of my posts are the direct result of questions I am asked or things that I see people doing. In the case of today's post, it's something that not enough people are doing. Quite frankly, even if 99% of my readers were doing this one thing, it's still worth posting this to capture the remaining 1%. Unfortunately, I'm learning that most people don't do this. I'm talking about backups. Specifically, I'm talking about iOS (iPhone and iPad) backups.
Last week alone, I had a phone call, email or text from four people with the same problem... for various reasons, they lost valuable data on their iPhone or iPad and didn't have a backup. In many cases, these devices contain photos and videos that don't exist anywhere else. THIS IS DANGEROUS! With one easy setting, you can literally save all those photos and videos from being lost, and it could cost you NOTHING.
When your composing text on an iPhone or iPad, it can sometimes be frustrating when you can't find the special character you need. This is especially true when typing foreign words (i.e.: mañana), but can be equally frustrating when doing something as simple as using the symbol to denote the temperature (i.e.: "88°"). On the surface, it looks like the keyboard doesn't allow for this. But alas, it does. This is how it works.
When it comes to simple yet useful features, iOS is packed. The Accessibility section of Settings is full of gold nuggets. Here's one that more and more people are finding useful.
When an email, message or phone call is received, it usually triggers some sort of audio alert as well as the vibration motor. In most cases, this works really well, but not always. There are times when noises just aren't acceptable or loud environments make it may be difficult to hear these alerts and alarms. This tip will allow you to use our LED flash as an alert trigger.
