You Can’t Appreciate How Completely Apple Has Humiliated The Cellphone Industry Until You See These Charts
this is pure unadulterated crazy!
(via df)
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Small but useful features in iOS 4
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.
AT&T makes sweeping changes to data plans, iPhone tethering coming at OS 4 launch
Believe it or not, I’m actually for this change.
The existing $30 fair-use “unlimited” smartphone data plan is being replaced by two new options: $15 per month for 200MB and $25 for 2GB (called “DataPlus” and “DataPro,” respectively).
I’m a pretty hc iPhone user and I don’t often exceed 2GB/month, and that’s including occasional tethering. On the new plan I’d save $60/year and if I were to exceed the 2GB of data the penalty would be just $10. For light iPhone users it drops the data plan $180/year! Combined with a $99 iPhone I think it will drive a lot of folks who haven’t tried a smartphone to get one this year. I think this is great for Apple and good for AT&T and I’d be surprised if other US carriers don’t offer $15/month premium smartphone data plans down the road.
Of course, with a WiFi only iPad it doesn’t mean I’m going to stop using MyWi!
How to Sync Multiple Calendars to your iPad with Google Sync
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.
Android vs. iPhone
General feelings in response to this post and other similar musings this week.
1. I love how all this Android hoopla surrounding Google I/O is going down in May, when for the last two years Apple has announced new iPhone hardware in June. So, enjoy your 3 weeks of cheer?
2. Have the iPhone leaks and OS4 developer preview made people forget Apple’s taste for showmanship? You don’t think they have anything up their sleeves?
3. Heard of a small cloud music streaming startup Apple recently aquired?
4. The Dan Lyons article Beust refers to is a turd with a variety of inaccuracies. Apple’s lack of support for Flash on iPhone is not out of spite. Apple has offered tethering for 11 months on iPhone, AT&T just hasn’t enabled it in the US. iPhone users have been able to buy music over the air since day one. An announced feature or product is nowhere near the same thing as a delivered one.
5. But the worst this week has to have been Google’s VP of Engineering, Vic Gundotra:
“If we did not act, we faced a draconian future. Where one man, one
company, one carrier was the future.”
Google acquired Android in August of 2005. iPhone was announced in January of 2007. More comment on Google’s revisionist history here.
Matte Nano & Matte UI
Swore I wouldn’t go back to Winterboard but Matte Nano and Matte UI are f’ing beautiful.
Air Video, the Best iPhone Video Streamer $3 Can Buy
If you’ve seen me in the past week, this is what I have been raving about. Access your entire media library anywhere.
Searching in iPhone Mail app
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.
Replacing SMS tones on iPhone
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.
MyWi
Ever since my fiance got a first gen iPod touch I’ve been looking for the best way to share internet with her in places where wifi was unavailable. In my search I found MyWi, but long ago when I did the 7-day demo I found the app buggy and slow so I didn’t buy it. After trying it again recently I changed my mind. It’s a fantastic app that turns your jailbroken iPhone into a wifi hotspot. There are other ways of wifi tethering but this is the only way that doesn’t require a PC to start the wifi network. With MyWi your iPhone creates the wifi network. If you’re phone is already jailbroken it’s available in Cydia for $10.
