iPhone

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Apple's Challenges

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        "With an anticipated huge demand for the iPhone 5 (probably to be announced on Sept 12), it's possible Apple may run into component supply problems. Here's an article with more comments on this potential issue. Another interesting aspect of this is Samsung is a major supplier to Apple, while at the same time they're in a bitter dispute and lawsuit on patent infringement by Samsung on the iPhone. Is this perhaps akin to the old saying: 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'? And here Jim Hamm closes with . . . (of course) . . .(grin).

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Print to your iPhone, iPad, or Kindle . . .

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        A notice from BlueSquirrel announces a nifty program:  Anything you can print, you can take with you on your iPad, iPhone, or Kindle.  Print directly to your iPad and have it with you, even when you don't have an Internet connection.  Read about it here. Let us know. I use BlueSquirrel's ClickBook a lot for making booklets, but this is a new feature for someone with iPad, iPhone, or Kindle to try out.

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Hacking Incident Warns Us About Passwords

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        The latest on this situation is updated 8-5.  Read the whole thing.         Jim Hamm sent this link about a horrible hacking of a man's iCloud account.  This evening John Carter sent a further warning of the need to establish strong passwords to avoid such a terrible thing.         Here's the first from Jim:  "Here is a scary tale of woe: Mr Honan's iCloud account was hacked. What's even scarier, the hacker was then able to remotely wipe Mr Honan's iPhone, iPad and MacBook Air! Yes, all dead. If you happen to use a Gmail account, a two-step verification process is available to prevent hacking. As far as I know, this feature isn't available for iCloud. So, one should have a very strong password for your iCloud account. Yes, I know, it's probably remote that your iCloud account will be hacked. Mr Honan thought so, too."           But Jim, can that really be true?  He wrote back with two other sites on the issue.  Here and here.          John Carter went into more detail on what we should do about our own passwords.  ". . . if your passwords are short and simple, be prepared to be hijacked and potentially lose all the money in your bank or all the files on your computer.          "A strong password contains a mix of letters and numbers with at least one uppercase letter, and the password should be at least 8 characters long. A very secure password will be 10 or more characters long. The password should never contain a word that can be found in the dictionary or letters or numbers in a sequence or that repeat.          "Some of my clients do not even have a password to login to their computer, and this is a grave mistake because it makes all your other passwords in the Keychain Access application accessible to anyone that manages to hack into your computer.

        "Do yourself a favor and use passwords that are complete garbage. Write them down where you know you can access them quickly. Protecting yourself will save me a trip to help recover your files — if that's even possible. Smile when you have to type in that long gibberish because you know you're being protected. After a few times of typing it in, it will become second nature. 
        "One approach is to alternating case, intermix numbers with letters, and where allowed, toss in a symbol. For your different passwords, you only need to make one letter or number different or add one letter or number."  
        So, consider yourself warned, thanks to Jim and John.          Now, Jim Hamm brings us the update of 8-5. "Here's update three from the guy who was hacked via iCloud and had his iPhone, MacBook Air and iPad wiped clean:         "Update Three: I know how it was done now. Confirmed with both the hacker and Apple. It wasn’t password related. They got in via Apple tech support and some clever social engineering that let them bypass  security questions. Apple has my Macbook and is trying to recover the data. I’m back in all my accounts that I know I was locked out of. Still trying to figure out where else they were."           And here's Jim's final comment -- at least for now!  "The hacker sure must have been one smooth talker to convince Apple's tech support to let him into Honan's iCloud account, which wasn't his. So much for strong passwords. It seems they can be circumvented.  According to another report, the hacker then used  Apple's 'Find My Phone' service to remotely wipe the three devices."
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The Next iPhone? And Apple Ads

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        Jim Hamm starts us off with this, "Could these be pictures of the next iPhone? Only conjecture at this point. At first glance it looks very similar to my existing iPhone 4. A closer looks reveals differences: eg, the bottom has a smaller dock connector (as has been oft rumored) and speaker openings. Will be interesting to what Apple has done to the 'innards' as well."
        A look there leads to this link with other Apple info, including a 1 minute video, and an article about the Apple TV ads shown during the Olympics opening ceremony. 

Latest iPhone Rumors

        Here's something interesting from Jim Hamm, "There's lots of rumors about what the next iPhone might look like and contain. Here's one speculation from InfoWorld that makes some logical sense. 
        "The biggest change, if it should occur, that would negatively affect our household is the reduction in size of the 30-pin dock connector. We have too many radios and other 'stuff' that fits the exiting 30-pin opening. A slightly larger screen would be nice, but I don't want the iPhone to grow any larger than it presently is —well, maybe a tad would be okay. It's comfortable to hold now, but if it got too big then it could become unwieldy."
       So, stay tuned for the next chapter . . . 

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Cell Phone Costs

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     Save money — sounds almost as good as FREE.  Jim Hamm to the rescue.  He's found a very important article with warnings we need to read and heed.  See here.  He explains, "If you use a cell phone, you may want to read this article about third-party vendors somehow adding subscriptions to your service. Subscriptions that you don't want and didn't subscribe to, and which increase your monthly cost. I don't understand how this can happen, but according to the article, it can. I notice that AT&T (and maybe other carriers) permit a subscriber to place a block on their service so this can't happen. We've not had a problem yet, that I'm aware of, but I plan to call AT&T and place a block on our service.
        "The other thing to do is review your monthly bill carefully." 

Rumor of Changes to iPhone

         The headline "Fury at Apple's 'rip-off' plan to make ALL iPhone accessories obsolete by changing design of socket" grabbed our attention. See the article for yourself.  Jim Hamm commented that he'd seen other blogs with the same rumor, "If true, it will affect us as well. We own several radios with docking stations that fit our present iPhone 4 but won't work at all with the new iPhone if the connector is changed. Do I like this? No. Do I understand that electronic devices change and, hopefully, improve? Yes. Think about all the people that had devices that played 8-track tapes. Ditto for cassette tapes. Then CDs came out. Think about all the equipment that became obsolete with the release of each new device.
        "I don't think Apple is changing devices to be mean or increase sales of new accessories. They probably have a valid technological reasons for making the change. Will be interesting to see what Apple comes out with." 
        Here Jim gives some advice, "When people complain about Apple's closed-loop system, high prices, technological advances, and marching to their own drum, I tell them if they don't like what Apple does, that's okay. Don't complain. Buy something else." 

      But, Jim, do you suppose someone will come up with an adaptor or connection device that will allow the two to work OK?  Succinctly Jim answers, "Possibly."  So, we'll watch and see. 
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Shared Data Plans

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        "Think back to just a few years ago. All we wanted was a cell phone to use when travelling. Then along came smart phones, then iPads, then more tablets, then shared data plans. It's all getting somewhat complex, it seems," Jim Hamm grins.  He goes on to inform us, "Verizon's new shared data plan goes into effect June 28. So far, AT&T hasn't announced when they'll make their shared data plan effective — at least as far as I know. Here's an article that gives more details and a pricing comparison. Looking at the numbers, it might be a bit tricky to pick the right plan for your family."

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Mac Buyer's Guide

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        Do you know when to buy a Mac, iPod, or iPhone?  Here's help from Prez Art Gorski.  He leads off with, "Don't you just hate it when you buy an Apple product and then they release a new, better version right after?  The MacBuyer's Guide keeps track of Apple hardware updates and is a great guide to when you should buy a new Apple product."
         So we look here and find info with recommendations such as "Don't buy: updates soon"  — "Buy only if you need it: approaching the end of a cycle" — or "Buy now!  Product just updated."  You also notice the links to their categories of blogs and forums.  Take a look, you may want to bookmark this.

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Your iPad and iPhone Can Scan

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        "Want to scan something and you're not anywhere near a scanner?"  John Carter questions, and then exclaims, "Yes, you are!  Your iPhone or new iPad can be your instant scanner anytime, anywhere with Scanner Pro 4. Scan a anything (even a bulletin board, including multiple pages) like you're taking a photo of it, and you now have a PDF file you can email, print, or update to Dropbox, Evernote, or Google Docs. The only thing this app doesn't do is optical character recognition (OCR). Price: $6.99 in the App Store."
        Want to learn more?  Don't miss the monthly PMUG meeting.

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Free Up Storage Space on iOS Device

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        Six tips on how to free up storage space on your iPad, iPhone, iPod are described at this site,  sent to us by Jim Hamm.  He includes this suggestion, "Another tip is to frequently close open apps, as they all consume memory as they run in the background. If, say, your iPad seems slower, I bet that available memory is about gone and this slows down the iPad. Many of us -- me included -- often forget to close apps after we open them, on an iPad or iPhone.
        "Double tap the Home Button to view all the running apps along the bottom of the screen. Yes, they're all running and consuming memory. Close them and your device should run quicker."

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iPad, iPhone Questions

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        Jim Hamm walks us through some questions for AT&T customers:  "If you're an AT&T customer, suddenly in the new iPad a 4G icon appears, as it did in the iPhone 4 upgrade to the iPhone 4S. Are you really getting 4G performance? What is 4G anyway? Do you even care?
        "Well, note that no matter what the icon shows, if you're really getting 4G your rate plan will be different. Ah, yes. AT&T likes to do a bit of a fast-foot-shuffle in marketing their so-called 4G service. The following article gives a good explanation of what's going on. If interested, read on. If something like this bores you to tears, tap the delete button and move on...(grin)"....Jim

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Travel the World from Your Desktop

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        Struggling photographer or an expert?  Either one, you'll enjoy these gorgeous 3-D aerial panoramic views.  Thanks to Jim Hamm we can click to see amazing sights from AirPano, a group of photographers who have 90 famous places in the world linked to their site.  Some views are available in iPhone and iPad formats; you can also choose high resolution or low resolution.

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Considering iPhone and IPad Speeds

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        Jim Hamm reports:  "I'm quite pleased with the speed of 3G on my iPhone. Zee and I just tried an experiment with our iPads. She has the new iPad with 4G here in Scottsdale. I've got the iPad 2 with 3 G. We entered websites in Safari and clicked send at the same time. Couldn't tell the difference. As the article explains only in certain conditions will one appreciate 4G speeds. For everyday surfing the net and emails, 4G probably won't make an appreciable difference."