andy's nerd blog » tips

Small but useful features in iOS 4

Andy Assareh — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 20:27:23 +0000

I’ve noticed a few nifty new features in iOS 4 that are worth noting.

The biggest one is that you can now save PDF’s locally from mobile Safari. If you have an app installed that supports it, like iBooks or Stanza, you will see this bar when you load a PDF. Soon this functionality should be extended to a wider range of file types.

In Mail I noticed that the system turns package tracking numbers into hyperlinks that take you directly to the status on the carrier website.

Also the system looks for scheduling-related keywords and turns them into links as well, making it quick and easy to add iCal events from emails.

Drag file directly to open/save dialog If you are in a file open or save dialog box in...

How to Sync Multiple Calendars to your iPad with Google Sync

Andy Assareh — Wed, 26 May 2010 18:28:57 +0000

Works with iPhone as well. If you’re already syncing a calendar you can skip the desktop Safari part and try http://m.google.com/sync directly from your device.

Google browser sync Firefox plugin to sync your bookmarks etc to your google account. This...

Add to Boxee Bookmarklet

Andy Assareh — Wed, 26 May 2010 18:20:45 +0000

I’ve been using this for months and now find it somewhat indispensable. Oftentimes I come across videos while at work and with this bookmarklet I can send them to Boxee for later viewing with one click.

Boxee Widget Just found out about this via the Boxee blog… It’s perfect for...

Two useful tips from Finer Things in Mac

Andy Assareh — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:48:25 +0000

Spotlight can also find answers to math equations

Restore your last browsing session in Safari

Searching in iPhone Mail app

Andy Assareh — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 00:12:12 +0000

Another embarrasingly late and accidental discovery… I had no idea you could search all of your archived email from the iPhone Mail app! I use Gmail over IMAP so all of my email is stored in the cloud. Up until now when I needed to search for something I went to gmail.com in the browser and used the search function there. The other day I was scrolling through my mail in the Mail app and discovered that if you are at the top of a list of messages and scroll up, a search box will appear. And when you type in a search query it will give you an option to search on the server! I have a feeling I may be late to the party on this one but wow, very nifty.

Using email aliases in Mail.app Impressive that after over 6 years of using Mac OS I’m still...
Fixing “Copy Address” in Snow Leopard Mail.app For some strange reason Apple changed the way Mail.app copies email addresses...
Gmail goes IMAP! w00t!! gmail client mail.app iphone mail === wawaweewa Visit this Link ➚...

Replacing SMS tones on iPhone

Andy Assareh — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 23:14:35 +0000

This is the basic method I’ve been using to manually replace the SMS tones on my iPhone. Must be jailbroken obviously, and comfortable with SSH. You could also use DiskAid or the other similar file copy applications. If the tone isn’t available right away try restarting SpringBoard or rebooting to force Settings to refresh it.

Visit this Link ➚

Fix for iTunes error 1600 when restoring 3.1.3 to 3GS

Andy Assareh — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:23:03 +0000

Sometimes when trying to restore a custom firmware to an iPhone using iTunes you get hit with an error 1600. There are a variety of causes but in my particular case, I screwed up the phone trying to change fonts and it wouldn’t boot. I turned to google and found about a million threads with various suggestions on how to make it go away. But none of them worked for me.

(There is a handy tool called iReb that will fix this issue for iPhone 2G and 3G, but it doesn’t work for the 3GS.)

And of course Apple stopped signing all previous firmware versions and restoring to official 3.1.3 would update the baseband, making it *currently* un-jailbreakable and unlockable. So, what’s one to do..I tried everything! Well, almost everything…

I was desperate and thought of one last thing to try. I put the phone in DFU mode and started an official 3.1.3 restore. It extracted the software and went to “preparing iPhone for restore.” At this point I saw an Apple logo on the phone. More waiting, and then I saw an empty progress bar appear on the phone. I continued waiting through the “preparing iPhone for restore” stage and the progress bar remained empty. Finally, after what seemed like several minutes the status changed to “waiting for iPhone.” I immediately unplugged the USB cable. The phone then rebooted into Recovery mode (or I rebooted it, don’t recall) but either way I knew that this was a step forward because I couldn’t even get it into Recovery mode before. At this point I force quit iTunes, restarted iTunes, and was able to restore my custom firmware!

The restore completed successfully and my baseband was not updated. Great success! Now I’m not sure if this has been attempted before but I haven’t seen any mention of this anywhere on the interwebz. Try at your own risk of course, but if you need this you’re probably desperate anyway. In that case, hope this helps. At the time of this writing I’ve used this method twice, both with iTunes 9.0.3, once on a Mac and once on Windows. Yes, I’ve been screwing with my phone quite a bit.

iPhone headphones can control iTunes! Probably doesn’t work with all Mac’s as the tip suggests but it...
Fixing iTunes keeps asking about incoming network connections For users of iTunes and the Leopard or Snow Leopard built-in firewall.....

2 Dock related tips I take for granted

Andy Assareh — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 19:42:55 +0000

Part of the reason I like to post tips and tricks to my blog is so I can refer to them later if I’m doing a fresh install or setting up someone else’s machine. But there are at least two tips I just thought of that I’ve never posted because they are automatic for me.

1. 2D Dock. I’ve just never been a fan of the 3D Dock introduced in Leopard. Here’s how to get it.

2. Recent Things Stack. There is a recent items option in the Apple menu but that requires two clicks. With this tip you can get there with one click. I typically keep it set to recent applications. Here’s how to get it.

iPhone Home Screen Experiment

Andy Assareh — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 19:09:27 +0000

Minimal Mac had a nice idea two weeks ago for discovering which apps should be on his home screen. I decided to duplicate the experiment. On Tuesday I cleared all of the apps on my home screen, except for the Phone, Messages, Mail and Safari icons in the Dock. (I agree that those four should not be moved in principle, but find they are by far my most commonly used apps anyway.) Over the course of the week, any time I use an app I move it to the home screen. After seven days, I’ll see what I have!

For reference, here’s what my home screen looked like before:

And here’s where I am after two days:

There are already three apps that I didn’t have on my home screen before!

My New iPhone Home Screen The results are in! Seven days later, here’s my new home screen:...

Smart Folders in OS X

Andy Assareh — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 20:47:17 +0000

Nice walk-through on how to use Smart Folders in Mac OS.

Visit this Link ➚