Tag: Ios 5 »

From Reddit, another interesting “How To” topic: how can we keep stupid autocorrect problems from constantly happening?

Well, the first solution when iOS picks up on some bad autocorrection habits is to just erase the keyboard dictionary entirely. Do this by going to Settings, General, Reset and Reset Keyboard Dictionary. Note that this will erase everything in the keyboard dictionary, including any good things like emails and usernames that iOS has picked up on. It’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Now, there is a way to get rid of the bathwater while keeping the baby around – it’s cute, even if diapers ain’t cheap. Starting with iOS 5, Apple implemented a feature in iOS to let certain keyboard shortcuts be automatically inserted when typing.

This is designed primarily to make typing long strings of text much easier by setting up shorter strings to automatically expand to longer strings. For example, I use it to easily send emails to a long address easily. But it also serves as a great deterrent for frequent typos by replacing a misspelling with the proper spelling every time.

Go to Settings, General, Keyboard, and scroll down to Shortcuts. Tap Add New Shortcut… to do exactly what it says on the tin. Note that the top line is the text that should be replaced, and the bottom line is for what gets inputted.

Note that these shortcuts work even with hardware keyboards, so common typos can also be corrected even with real keyboards. This is also particularly useful to correct typos like thr being replaced with Thr when trying to type the. Unless you know someone named Thr, which is just awesome. The downside is that pretty much any frequent typo needs to be replaced manually using this method, but at least it exists as a reliable solution.

To delete a text shortcut, just swipe horizontally and tap “Delete” – this is recommended for the default “omw” shortcut. We’ve all sent a message where we just wanted to say OMW and wound up sounding far more excited than we really were. Yes, we’re on our way, but we’re not all sunshine and rainbows about it.

So, while perhaps it’s not a perfect replacement for a flawed autocorrect system, at least it’s a clever solution. Have something you need to know how to do on iOS? Let us know in the comments!

Head in the clouds...

On This Episode:

Carter and co-host Blake Grundman dig into iOS 5's features, discussing the ways that it improves the iOS experience, and how features like iCloud improve gaming on iOS.

Who We Are:

Host: Carter Dotson

Guest: Blake Grundman, 148Apps and Games Are Evil

Music:

"Beatnes7 (Theme to The Portable Podcast)" by The Eternal - Download on iTunes here:

"Nanocarp" by The Eternal

How to Listen:

Click Here to Subscribe in iTunes:

Click Here to Subscribe via RSS.

Listen Here: [powerpress]

Apps Mentioned on This Episode:

Sky Gamblers: Rise of Glory, originally developed by Revo Solutions for Windows Phone 7, has made its way to iOS by way of publisher Namco. This aerial combat game, set during World War I, has players dogfighting with their opponents across 12 single-player campaign levels and 100 individual Dogfight Missions. The game, which is a universal app, supports up to 8 players in online multiplayer modes with free-for-all, team deathmatch, defend the base, and capture the flag game modes. These modes can also be played offline against computer-controlled opponents.

The game also takes advantage of recently released hardware and iOS 5 features. A5 devices owners will get HDR rendering, light bloom effects, and light refraction through raindrops. As far as iOS 5 features go, the game supports AirPlay mirroring with controls and HUD displayed on the device screen with the game action displayed on the wireless display. As well, the game supports iCloud for game save synchronization, and Twitter integration.

This week at 148Apps, we celebrated the release of iOS 5 in style, providing guidance on setting up the now-iCloud-friendly device in a home with multiple computers, multiple iPhones and multiple iTunes accounts. 148Apps founder Jeff Scott writes, "If you have multiple iTunes accounts, you can sign in and out of the different accounts without issue from the Store settings. That is unless you turn on automatic downloads. New to iOS 5 are automatic downloads for the iTunes Store for Apps, Books, and Music. If this device only uses the one account, it’s safe to turn on any of these that you wish. But, turning this on will lock this device to this iTunes account for 90 days. So if multiple accounts are used, do not turn on automatic downloads."

Read all of this need-to-know info on 148Apps.com.

Meanwhile, on sister site GiggleApps, Amy Solomon reviewed an app sure to help your child become more adept with the alphabet, while also cultivating them into kiddie foodies. Solomon says that ABC Food is, "the latest and possibly greatest app from Peapod Labs’s series of ABC apps focused on both letter recognition as well as teaching about a specific topic, be it animals, music, modes of transportation or sports and includes the use of beautifully detailed photographs, videos from Youtube and sometimes fun facts as well. ABC Food includes a new feature to this series as this app contains fun interactions for each food highlighted within this application."

Read the full review with a quick click over to GiggleApps.

Data was the name of the game on 148Apps.biz. Rob LeFebvre writes that, "App search company Xylogic has released 220 app download reports from 29 different countries in order to provide partners with a huge amount of data to be used in decision making process across app publishers, developers and the like. The data is sortable across countries and mobile app platforms, including iOS, Android, and Windows Phone."

Read what all of this data could mean for you on 148Apps.biz.

That's the long and short of it for this week. Keep watching our Twitter and Facebook feeds for lots of news, updates and contests. See you next week, crimefighters!

iOS 5 Feature Roundup

As Apple announced last week just before the new iPhone 4S launch comes the release of iOS5 today. We're pretty amazed by all the new stuff in the next mobile OS from Apple. Seriously, there's a ton of new things in this release, making even our "old" iPhone 4 seem like an entirely new phone. Released today, and available right now, here's what iOS has in store for us all!

Hit the jump to see all of the great new features of iOS 5.

Round and round and round and roundtable!

On This Episode:

Carter and several iOS developers get together to discuss iOS5 and what the new features mean for the future of development on iOS.

Who We Are:

Host: Carter Dotson

Guest: Colin Walsh, Celsius Game Studios

Guest: Gavin Bowman, Retro Dreamer

Guest: Peter Babiy, Strapped to a Meteor Studios

Contact The Show: Email | Twitter

Music:

"Beatnes7 (Theme to The Portable Podcast)" by The Eternal - Download on iTunes here:

"Nanocarp" by The Eternal

How to Listen:

Click Here to Subscribe in iTunes:

Click Here to Subscribe via RSS.

Listen on WRGT Radio every Friday at 4pm Central

Listen Here: [powerpress]

Apps Mentioned in this Episode:

With the iOS 5 announcement, many have been speculating on the “death” of certain apps that provide some of the same features that iOS 5 will be coming out with. This week I’ll talk about four categories and specifically four of my favorite apps that might be killed off by iOS 5.

Dropbox - Cloud Storage
iCloud was a huge announcement. While it contains more functionality than just cloud-based documents, iCloud offers 3GB more free storage than Dropbox does. With my documents, calendars, pictures and more being automatically synced between all of my devices (Mac/iPad/iPhones), I doubt I’ll continue using Dropbox once iOS 5 is released.

Camera+ - Photo editing
Camera+ was the must-have, quick photo-editor for the iPhone. If anyone is even remotely interested in doing quick touches to his or her pictures, Camera+ was the app to buy. The Photos app in iOS 5 will now add quick touch-up features like cropping, red-eye removal, and an auto-enhance feature. Unless an editor is incredibly powerful or has specific features that I would want, I’m likely to just use the Photos app after the iOS 5 release.

Wunderlist - To-do
There are so many varying types of to-do apps on the App Store that I doubt Reminders (iOS 5’s to-do app) will kill off to-do apps. But there’s a specific to-do app that I just started using, Wunderlist, that does exactly what Reminders will do - cloud-based to-do. With a free, to-do list app synced with all iOS devices, I find it hard to believe that to-do list apps will be as popular as they once were.

Instapaper - Offline Reading
Instapaper isn’t the only service that provides an offline reading list (another popular one is Read It Later), but both services cost money. Built into the new and improved Safari on iOS 5 will be a reading list feature. The offline reading list in combination with the new “Reader” view (which presents text in an easy to read format) presents an experience similar to Instapaper. I’m a huge fan of Instapaper, but I tend to prefer native Apple apps over third-party apps if they’re available. I’ll definitely be checking out the reading list feature in the new Safari and I have a feeling that it may win me over.

With our heads in the clouds...

On This Episode:

Carter and guest co-host Brett Nolan discuss Apple's WWDC conference, particularly the iOS 5 and iCloud announcements. They discuss how the features connect in particular to games, especially game progress and cloud-based saving possibilities in iOS 5 with iCloud.

Who We Are:

Host: Carter Dotson

Guest: Brett Nolan, AppAddict.net

Contact The Show: Email | Twitter

Music:

"Beatnes7 (Theme to The Portable Podcast)" by The Eternal - Download on iTunes here:

"Nanocarp" by The Eternal

How to Listen:

Click Here to Subscribe in iTunes:

Click Here to Subscribe via RSS.

Listen on WRGT Radio every Friday at 4pm Central

Listen Here: [powerpress]

Apple announced a ton of info today at the WWDC keynote. Like that there are now 200 million iOS devices out in the wild. And that there are 425,000 applications available for iOS. Oh yeah, and iOS 5, Lion, and iCloud are coming very soon.

Rather than just go down the feature list, we're going to post some thoughts on the new features and point you to places you can see full details on the new stuff.

First, we just posted about what is one of the largest features mentioned, that got very little attention. Apple is now firmly in the game console business by allowing iOS 5 games to be displayed, wirelessly from your device to your TV via the Apple TV. It will be huge.

iOS 5 New Features Look Familar...

The biggest new features shown of iOS 5 all looked more than a little familiar. There were many features in the new Camera app that looked like they could have been borrowed from Camera+. There's a new todo application called Reminders that could be any number of todo apps in the store. The updates to the Message app, now called iMessage, match the features of the Blackberry Messenger app (BBM), that we're shocked. Even the method for pulling down the notifications list comes straight from Android.

Now to be fair, these other platforms have "borrowed" from iOS as well. So all's fair I guess. And I'm still looking forward to the new features, they look fantastic. And will be nice to have some of the baked into the OS.

200 New Features in iOS 5
Some of the new features that stick out in my head most include photo editing features, Twitter integration (single sign on built into the OS), greatly improved notifications / widgets available anywhere, great new mail features, PC-free setup, and apparently 200 more.

For a full list of new features, check out the official list at Apple. It's got a good roundup and includes a lot of screens and details not mentioned in the keynote.

iOS 5 should be available for all devices in beta, for developers today. It will ship to consumers in the fall.

Video!
Apple has posted a slickly produced video highlighting some of the new features of iOS 5. Or, you can watch the recorded version of the keynote right on the Apple site.

iCloud, Too!

Oh yeah, and there's iCloud. This turned out to be a much greater solution than we were originally expecting to see. Full wireless syncing of your app data, calendar, contacts, email, todos. Even music, photos, and we assume videos (which weren't mentioned) as well. And even bigger, apps! Download a new app on your iPad and, if you turn the feature on, it will also be downloaded to your iPhone.

Besides data syncing for built-in iOS apps, what this means is that, once fully developed and supported by developers, you'll be able to sync data between devices for apps as well. Finish a level on Angry Birds on your iPhone at lunch, that level status will be synced to Angry Birds on your iPad when you get home.

There's a lot more to this than we can cover in this wrap up. Apple has posted a few more details on iCloud on their site.

iCloud will be free for up to 5 GB of data. We assume there will be a way to pay for more storage, but this wasn't announced.

iTunes in the Cloud

The iCloud music features, labeled iTunes in the Cloud, let you sync you iTunes purchases on up to 10 devices. Apple also made available a paid service, iTunes Match, for $24.99 per year. This service will match songs you have ripped from other sources like CDs, Amazon.com, etc. and enjoy them in iTunes and it's 18 million downloadable tracks. All upgraded to 256k AAC. Very nice, and a great deal for $24.99 per year.

Summary

There was a ton announced today. An amazing number of new features for iOS, Lion, and iCloud. So many that they are still digesting. I can't wait to get my hands on these features.