Full category list for displayed posts: How tos, Software, Top stories, iPhone, iPhone 3G S
11:55 pm, June 26th, 2009, Leander Kahney
After using the iPhone 3GS for a week, here’s five of my favorite, non-obvious tricks I’ve picked up.
Posted by Leander Kahney in How tos, Software, Top stories, iPhone, iPhone 3G S | 14 Comments »
11:59 pm, June 14th, 2009, Jonathan Zschau
Before you rush out and buy that brand new iPhone 3G S, consider the suggestions here. For some iPhone 3G owners, the 3G S may be unnecessary. For those who simply cannot wait read on, because there are ways to minimize the overall cost of the upgrade. In fact, you may even turn a profit.
The iPhone 3G S will be subsidized by AT&T for qualified customers ($199 for the 16 GB model and $299 for the 32 GB model). Unfortunately, if you currently own an iPhone 3G you are not a qualified customer because you entered into a two-year contract with AT&T last year. Unsubsidized, the iPhone 3G S is priced at an exorbitant $599 and $699 (plus the $18 setup fee).
AT&T is probably not going to alter its stance on the matter because, like it or not, offering subsidized phones only to new customers is standard industry practice. If you are an existing iPhone 3G owner, and do not have money to burn, consider all your options after the jump.
Posted by Jonathan Zschau in Apple, How tos, News, Retail Stores, Top stories, iPhone, iPhone 3G | 18 Comments »
7:31 pm, June 10th, 2009, Leander Kahney
The “sealed” battery in Apple’s new 13-inch MacBook Pro is easily replaced with standard screwdrivers, a teardown by iFixit shows.
The MacBook battery is not supposed to be changed by the user. Sealed inside the case, Apple encourages customers to pay Apple $130 to change the battery and dispose of the old one.
However, the battery is easily accessed with a standard Phillips screwdriver, and the battery removed with a tri-wing screwdriver, iFixit found when dissassmbling the device on Tuesday.
In addition, iFixit notes that the single audio jack (see post below) is innapropriate for a “Pro” machine. The jack supports analog and digital audio-out, and analog audio-in, but not digital audio-in.
“If you need digital audio-in, this is not the machine for you.” said iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens in an email.
Wiens also said the MBP’s new SD card slot is “rather unimaginative.”
“Half the card hangs outside the computer,” said Wiens. “Apparently, Apple couldn’t free up enough space for a slot that would make the card completely captive.”
Wiens notes the battery is beefier (360 grams, about 60 grams heavier than the old one), but is rated 60 Watt-hours, compared to the older battery’s 45 W-h. Apple claims the battery will last for 7 hours. The previous MacBook’s battery was rated 5 hours (yeah, right!)
More details and pictures from iFixit after the jump.
Posted by Leander Kahney in Apple, Hardware, Hardware Hacks, How tos, Macintosh, News, Top stories | 12 Comments »
11:31 am, June 2nd, 2009, Leander Kahney
Hacker Nathan Seidle has rigged his car so that his Nike+iPod pedometer unlocks the doors wirelessly as he walks up to it.
“I hate keys,” he writes. “I am on a mission to dispose of them all.”
Seidle already uses keypads and wireless RFID cards to get into his home and office — the last key in his pocket is for his car.
So Seidle took a Nike+iPod sensor — the pedometer/transmitter that normally goes into your running shoe — and rigged up a simple proximity sensor inside the car to detect when it approaches. The Nike+iPod sensor is constantly transmitting a unique ID, which the car uses to identify Seidle and unlock the doors. He keeps the Nike+iPod in his pocket.
Seidle made the proximity detector inside the car from the Nike+iPod receiver (the part that normally plugs into the iPod) and an Arduino Pro Mini microcontroller board, made by his company, SparkFun Electronics, plus a few other bits and pieces.
The system, which Seidle calls the iFob, is an intermediate hacking project. He’s posted a detailed tutorial on the SparkFun website.
Unfortunately, the iFob doesn’t start the car; it just unlocks the doors.
“The system now works great!” Seidle writes. “When you’ve got a handful of stuff, it’s great to know the doors will automatically unlock as you approach. However, I still have use a key to start the car. The next step is get a big red button wired up for button start so that I don’t have to carry my key. Someday.”
Posted by Leander Kahney in Hardware, Hardware Hacks, How tos, News, Top stories, iPod, iPod Accessories | 1 Comment »
2:16 pm, May 26th, 2009, Leander Kahney
San Francisco’s No Starch Press has posted a big chunk of it’s popular My New iPhone book on Scribd for free, plus is selling it cheap as a PDF.
No Starch has a new version of Wang’s iPhone book coming out with the release of iPhone OS 3.0 this summer. In the meantime, the publisher is making about 50% of the current version of the book available for free.
“We have this content ready to go, but with the OS 3.0 release looming, it didn’t make sense to print and ship a book just to have it go out of date in a month,” said Leigh Poehler, No Starch’s sales manager. “It also didn’t make sense to hoard this information. So we’re making the content available to people via Scribd.”
No Starch is no stranger to experimenting with digital formats. In 2008, the publisher made available copies of my Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod books on the Bittorrent file-sharing network (which saw tens of thousands of downloads).
More recently, No Starch has posted several samples of its books on Scribd, including an excerpt from its “Manga Guide to Databases,” which has been read over 9,600 times). But this is the first time it has given away such a large chunk of a book and let Scribd sell the full PDF (for $9.95).
Hit the jump to read a chunk of the book.
Posted by Leander Kahney in How tos, iPhone, iPhone 3G | No Comments »
7:11 am, May 14th, 2009, Leander Kahney
Remember the fantastic portrait of Steve Jobs using Apple’s classic typefaces from last week? Here’s a step-by-step guide showing exactly how designer Dylan Roscover created it in Illustrator and Photoshop (24 hours straight hours of work, no sleep).
Dylan, a self-described ‘design nerd’ who lives in Aloma, Florida, explains:
“I used Adobe Illustrator and the Pen tool to trace his facial contours the way I figured they would make sense, one by one using the Type on a Path tool for each path.
The larger lines of type were hand-kerned character-by-character to fit accordingly. Near completion I used the Magic Wand tool to select areas of text and apply gradual shading.
Everything was composited in Adobe Photoshop as a smart object to give it that deep blue effect and the background + texture.
In total it look about 24 hours to complete during three days with no sleep (class assignment).”
Click the pictures for Dylan’s detailed step-by-step instructions.
Posted by Leander Kahney in How tos, News, Steve Jobs | 5 Comments »
5:35 am, March 5th, 2009, Giles Turnbull
This video from the Blogger team at Google isn’t new, but it did teach me a few things I didn’t know before. Sending stuff to a Blogger account from your iPhone is very simple, even if you don’t already have a Blogger account.
First, that Blogger allows anyone to create a blog instantly via email (or SMS message) by simply sending a first post to email hidden; JavaScript is required (or to 256447 for US SMS messages). Just like the widely-admired Posterous service, there’s no need to sign up for anything in advance.
Second, and this is the clever bit, is that you can upload content to Blogger.com this way and then when you claim the post from your desktop computer, you can associate that content with any *existing* blog you have.
I know Blogger isn’t fashionable as a blogging platform these days, but I’m rather fond of its simplicity and ease of use. Evan Williams was right about those templates, though. Come on, guys: new templates? Much to ask?
Posted by Giles Turnbull in How tos, Opinions | 2 Comments »
2:18 am, February 25th, 2009, Giles Turnbull
OK, so you’ve installed the Safari 4 Beta and found, perhaps to your mild surprise, that you no longer have Safari 3 around and that your default browser is now beta software. (For what it’s worth, I think this beta period will be pretty short, and that a proper release is not far away. Anyway.)
But there are some things you don’t like. Perhaps you’d like the tabs to appear where they used to. Perhaps you liked the old loading progress bar - the blue one that filled the address bar, instead of the new spinning wheel which only displays *activity*, not progress. Or perhaps you hate the new Top Sites feature and want to disable it completely (not much need for this, as it’s easy to switch off, but still).
Posted by Giles Turnbull in How tos, News, Software | 4 Comments »
6:43 am, February 9th, 2009, Nicole Martinelli
Have been looking for an easy way to adjust the iPod with gloves after nearly getting myself killed on the way to work driving my bike with one hand, glove in mouth, as I tried to lower the volume. This is an easy solution that doesn’t take too much skill…
You’ll need:
- A pair of gloves
- Needle (medium or heavy weight, depending on thickness, fabric of gloves )
- Conductive thread (the only drawback is that a quick search for spools seems to turn out a cost of about $20 each, though you can also make a bunch for your friends…)
- Fabric pen or marker
How-to
1. Put on gloves, mark the location of where your fingers touch your screen with the fabric pen or marker for your center mark.
2. Take off the gloves and thread your needle with conductive thread (tie a knot at the end)
3. Using the dot as your center mark, sew about a 1/4″ square with horizontal stitches. The size depends on the size of your finger. Pull the thread all the way through to the inside of the gloves — to work, the thread has to touch your fingers on the inside of your gloves when you have them on.
4. Sew another square of vertical stitches on top of that one, tie it off and cut the excess thread.
This handy idea comes from a book called “Switch Craft: Battery Powered Crafts to Make and Sew.”
Via iheartswitch
Posted by Nicole Martinelli in How tos, iPod, iPod Accessories, iPod Touch | 9 Comments »
6:27 am, February 9th, 2009, Giles Turnbull
Beatrice Murch is not a woman who lets a minor problem like a broken power lead get in her way.
Posted by Giles Turnbull in Hardware, Hardware Hacks, How tos | 3 Comments »
1:28 am, February 9th, 2009, Giles Turnbull
Using bookmarklets and shortcuts in Camino from Giles Turnbull on Vimeo.
Here’s something new for you: a little video demonstration of one of the tricks I’ve been using on my computer for many years. Assigning short, mnemonic text shortcuts to browser bookmarks and bookmarklets, so that I can drive them from the keyboard.
Many of you, I’m sure, will know about this trick, but some of you won’t, so I hope it’s helpful to you.
This is also my first demo video made using Screenflow, which I purchased a day or so ago and am very, very pleased with. It makes screencasts like this super simple.
Posted by Giles Turnbull in How tos, News, Software | 1 Comment »
9:39 am, January 27th, 2009, Nicole Martinelli
Turn a humble juice box into an iPod case. These cheap and cheerful cases are the handiwork of Ross, who wanted to create a decoy case to disguise expensive electronics as well as protect them.
You’ll need spray glue, some sand paper, a little knack with a sewing machine and about an hour.
Since the boxes are typically made from six layers of paper plus polyethylene and aluminum foil, Ross reckons they should be sturdy as well as practical, especially with an added velvet lining to protect from scratches.
Check out the full how-to on Flickr.
Via Make
Posted by Nicole Martinelli in How tos, iPod | 6 Comments »
Despite touting its green credentials in new TV ads, Apple is ranked fairly low in Greenpeace’s latest survey of green electronics.
Greenpeace’s quarterly green scorecard was released on Wednesday, and while Apple got high marks for reducing toxic chemicals, it got low marks for not supporting global recycling initiatives or using more recycled plastics.
Overall, Apple scored [...]
Counterfeit iPhones have come a long way. They’re now almost identical to original iPhones, fooling bargain hunters on sites like eBay.
Look at the video below from Dana Stibolt, founder of MacMedics, who was given a fake iPhone bought on the auction site.
At first glance, it’s almost identical to current models, from the touchscreen to the [...]
In a move that’s a bit like thumbing his brush at the lawyers who sent a nastygram when we mistakenly reported David Hockney’s gallery artworks were created on his iPhone, the artist is offering free downloads of three wallpapers made on his device.
The unsigned trio of flower paintings from the 72-year-old pop artist maestro — [...]
Remember when Lonnie told you about an easy, fool-proof way to turn on iPhone tethering in the US? Well, there’s a way, way easier method, and it’s much, much more foolproof.
Simply point Mobile Safari to http://help.benm.at, select your country, download the profile for your carrier, and install. The settings menu will add an Internet Tethering [...]
