Category Archives: Apple iOS

Posts about the iPhone and (most times) also about the iPod Touch (the “iTouch”) and the iPad (which I don’t have YET!).

Galileo is a great FREE mapping app to have on your iPhone or iPad.

I love this program and it just did a major update so thought it was due for an update on the review I did before, but when I looked I realized I never reviewed this amazing app before, so here we go…

galileo-app.pngFirst of all this program should be thought of as a digital map, the GPS in your iPhone/iPad will find your location and keep the map centered but it doesn’t have directions (just like a paper map doesn’t have directions). What’s really nice about this program you can download maps and they stay on the device so if you’re somewhere with without data (say somewhere on a hike in Costa Rica) you still have your maps with you. Or if you’re traveling internationally and don’t have a data plan you’ve got the maps already, the same goes if you have a plan with a small amount of data, you don’t need to use up all the data.

galileo-maps-IMG_9096.PNGGalileo also has several ways to get maps onto your iPad or iPhone, but the newest way is the fastest and easiest. You just go in to the program, click download maps and pick your states, countries or providences and it downloads them and they are on your device. These downloads are relatively small, Michigan is about 30MB while Costa Rica was about 9MB, but have remarkable zoom levels and are very fast. I wasn’t sure how often they were going to be updating these maps, but when I went to get the screen shot, I see they’ve already updated several of the maps I’ve downloaded (that’s why the screen is downloading that map, it’s an update).

This program is free and the vector downloadable maps are free but the program has many other in app purchases (which I’ll talk about).

I use this a lot when I’m out hiking and biking and traveling. I know where I’m traveling, a question I used to ask all the time is “Where am I?” and people wanted to know where I was going but I’m just walking around taking in the sights and I want to know where I am (I quite often got confusing looks). I want to know where I am and zoom around quickly and not worry about how fast my data is or if I’m roaming somewhere. I get a pretty good signal in Michigan but if I’m in some state/national parks there isn’t always coverage.

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Maps show how fast you’re going, the scale of the map and (optionally) your longitude and latitude.

I like to sightsee / wander around and see what I can find, when I travel I try not to be in a hurry. I went up north to visit my Uncle Jim and Aunt Karen once and when I arrived around 5PM they said “What time did you leave?” and I said “Noon”, which got the reply “You made pretty good time” and then I had to clarify with “Noon, yesterday“! I like to stop and do things, I’d been to different places and going biking and rollerblading and taking pictures and been all over before I got there. It was fun and I saw things that I’d not have seen if I’d had a specific plan.

In Costa Rica, most roads don’t have names and it’s confusing to get around, looking at the map and seeing the icon where you are is incredibly helpful (you need an iPhone or an iPad with the GPS for this to show you where you are).

So my suggestion is download Galileo and grab a few maps of places you frequent so that you’ve always got a nice map in your pocket.

The rest of these features starts to get a little confusing, if the above doesn’t interest you and you don’t care about maps, you should stop reading. If you’d like to be able to download other types of maps and know more, then read on!

This is one of those apps with many 5-star reviews and many 1-star reviews. Although, if you read the 1-star reviews most of them complain about things that if they had read the description they’d know that’s not what the program is supposed to do.

The other thing you can do is choose other map sources: biking, hiking, tourist and it’ll download them, but it remembers the maps until you delete them, so if you want some specific maps you just need to download them and zoom in at different levels and they’ll save and be there for you later (you can set the time limit). Other maps cache this data but purges it when it feels it doesn’t need it any more, you don’t have control over how long the data stays around. That said, I still like pre-downloading them myself (see last item of this review) and installing on the device is my favorite way to go. This next map is a sample of a map that isn’t so much like the “normal” Apple or Google maps.

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Example of a different type of map with altitude/terrain markings.
Good to know if you follow that path you’re going up/down paths over 200 feet in height.

Other (paid features):
Bookmarks – You can leave bookmarks/pins at locations for easy finding later, incredibly useful for marking places that have no other frame of reference. If hiking, you can mark and interesting spot. If someone lives in the middle of nowhere and you want to find it again, leave a pin at that spot.

Breadcrumbs – It will record a trail of where you’ve been. You can look at this later or export the data for other uses later.

Generate off-line maps – Downloading other off-line maps (this is great and it why I got the app in the first place) you can get maps from different sources and build them (on your desktop computer with Mobile Atlas Creator) and put them on the device for later. I downloaded great maps with heights of the hills/mountains for where I hike in Costa Rica, I don’t need to use international data roaming for this since I built them once and they stay on the device.

FYI, the screenshots and map captures are clickable to much larger versions.

AT&T iPad cellular data plan cost is now HALF the price!

If you’ve got an iPad and you occasionally use the $15 a month cellular data plan option, there is a way you can save a lot of money (and get more data!). The $15 data plan gives you 250MB of data per month, if you go over it either runs out or you have to start the next month early. logoatt.jpgAT&T has a new $25 plan that last three months and gives you 1GB (1000MB) of data. That works out to 333MB a month for about $8.33 a month, about a third more data for close to half the price. The other benefit of it is that since it’s spread over three months you could use 600MB one month, 100MB another month and 300MB the other month. It gives you a better chance to utilize more of the data since it doesn’t expire three times after 30 days, it’s once after 90. It also doesn’t auto renew, so after 90 days you need to add that service again; the benefit to you is that after it expires if you don’t use it for a few weeks, those days don’t count against your next 90 day block. This is in the United States, I’m not sure if they’ve adjust prices in any international markets yet.

I think AT&T is doing this to get people to use it more, some people would turn it on for a month and then turn if off for a month, this way they spend $25 instead of $15 and if they don’t use it AT&T makes more and if they do use it more, they might get hooked.

At this point it makes almost no sense to turn the monthly $15 plan on and off a half dozen months throughout the year (that’s $90), for $10 more you could have it on every month of the year and have even more data to use. If you kept the new plan for the whole year it would be $100 for 4GB of data, the old plan would have been $180 for 3GB of dat a (with monthly expiration).

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This is now cheaper than the cheaper data plans on the iPhone. Right now you pay $20 a month for 300MB of data (some people still have the $15 for 200MB data plan), that’s $60 for 900MB of data. That’s quite a bit of difference!

FYI, if you almost never use the cellular data, but once in a while wish you had it, they also offer a new plan for $5 for one day that gets you 250MB. This is not meant for daily use, but if you’re traveling for the day on train or waiting at airports, it might be worth it. Or even if you activated the data plan once in a while while you were traveling for the weekend, doing the $5 plan could be cheaper for two days ($10 instead of $15) or actually get you more data during that time.

What I love about my Kindle and eBooks

I love my Kindle, ever since I got it, I’ve thought it was great. Do I miss reading real books? Certainly! Does it outweigh the convenience of the way I read eBooks? Not a chance! I’ve always got a few books with me and it still weighs the same.

Can you can think of any great features I left out? Please leave a comment and let everyone know…

kindleimage_.jpgCONVIENENCE: With paper books, I always had one in the car and one in the house. I tried to make them two different kinds of books so that I don’t get confused over similar plots (I’d avoid two mysteries at the same time). With my Kindle, I always keep it in the car (I can charge it with cell phone charger) so when I put the same book on the Kindle (in my car) and on my Kindle app on my iPad (in the house), I’m always on the same page since it keeps them synced. This is great, I’m reading the same book in both places.

I can even put the same book on my Kindle app on my iPhone and it’s on the same page too. I hate reading on my iPhone since the pages are so small, but if I don’t have my Kindle or my iPad, it gives me something to read if I’m stuck somewhere. If it starts raining while I’m out running and I take shelter somewhere, I can still read (or I’m meeting friends and they are late).

BETTER THAN A TABLET FOR OUTSIDE READING: The Kindle is great for outdoors and my iPad is great for indoors. If I want to read outside on the porch I’ll get the Kindle to read outside or grab one of the few paper magazine subscriptions that I still get. The glare that you get outside on the iPad is the same glare you’ll get on the other color tablets (Kindle Fire and Nook HD). Only the black and white eReaders look readily good outside.

YOU CAN TEST DRIVE A BOOK: Most Amazon Kindle books are available with a preview of the first few chapters for free.

I CAN BORROW BOOKS: Some libraries are able to lend you Kindle eBooks (large selection for most Michigan libraries via the state). You can borrow Amazon eBooks from friends who have a Kindle. You can join a free on-line book lending club like lendle.me (please use my referral code TTXLDIO1 if you do and I get a few extra borrows).

SUPER BONUS! I can get books that do not exist in print! Some authors big and small only release some books in eBook format. Usually for the really big authors it’s some super short book (“singles”) and they’re only a few dollars.

MONEY: Prices are another great bonus, some authors (more independent authors sell their eBooks for $4.99 while the paperback might be $9.99. Some authors have been releasing books as eBooks first since they can get to press faster. One of my favorite authors is updating one of my favorite kids/YA series of books so that they are a little more modern, she starting writing these books 30 years ago and things have changed since the time of the Apple II (we now have internet, smartphones, WiFi and text messaging) while at the same time clarifying some plot points and even adding a few scenes and plot enhancements, these are only available as ebooks at this point.

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO SHOP AT AMAZON.COM FOR YOUR BOOKS: You can buy your books other places and put them on your Kindle yourself. It’s not as convenient, but sometimes it’s a bit (or a lot) cheaper.

marsburning.pngSUPER SALES: Cidney Swanson just released the 4th book in her excellent Saving Mars series (titled Mars Burning) currently only available as an eBook. As a bonus she put the book on sale for 99 cents for the first few days to help get the word out. Where are you going to get a new book for that cheap anywhere? While writing this, I just noticed the first 3 eBooks are also on sale for 99 cents!!! These are not small books, all the printed copies are 350+ pages long. This looks like this ends Aug. 8th, 2013 and will (probably) be $4.99 each after (but you can get the whole set for $3.96 now!). These are on-sale at the same price at the Nook and Kobo stores too! Book 1 is free at the Kobo store. All these bonuses at once are more the exception and not the rule, but it’s a pretty nice thing that happens occasionally.

APPS FOR MY iPAD and iPHONE (and other devices): You do NOT need a Kindle to benefit from the features that I talk about. You can just put the app on your iPad and you can get the cheap books and use books from other vendors and everything. But it’s going to have the glare on the screen if you go outside (the same glare that the Kindle Fire will have outside too).

I KEEP MY ELECTRONICS MANUALS ON HAND: As an added bonus, my Kindle will read PDF documents. So I’ve put the manuals for all my portable devices (cameras, GPS, bluetooth speakers, car stereo, bike rack, etc.) on my Kindle so that I’ve always got them with me (just in case). I rarely use them, but the few times I’ve needed them while on vacation, I already had them with me. The PDF viewing is not as nice as the Kindle eBooks, but it is usable. It generally works very well for portable device manuals that are normally pretty small anyways; a large full page manual would be hard to navigate around on the small screen (but it’s doable if you just need to look something up).

Most of the features I listed above are Kindle specific, other brands may have similar features (or many not.

Feedly for my RSS Feed Reading – Review

So Google retired Google Reader on July 1st, I still can’t believe this. They announced it until March but it took me until the last minute to switch, because I really didn’t want to. I did export my data from Google Takeout which you can still do until July 15th, so go get your data! But I’m really glad that I tried Feedly in advance because they didn’t even need my exported data, they just sucked it out of Google Reader and I was ready to go.

feedlylogo.jpgFeedly works an awful lot like Google Reader, it stores my items in categories/folders and they make it really easy to navigate from folder to folder. What is REALLY nice about the folders/categories is you can configure the look and it remembers it for just that folder/category. So if that folder has photo blogs or cartoons, I can configure it to show me the whole thing. If it’s just a news folder, I can show all the headlines. Regardless of how you configure it, it remember it the night time you’re in that category.

Here’s the three reading modes:

Feedly Title Text View
Feedly Title Text View.
You would see more text if you window was wider, but I wanted to show the date.

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Feedly Magazine View.
You’d see much more text if your window is wider.

Feedly Cards View
Feedly Cards View.
You’d get three columns of these in full screen and it appears a little larger, I had to shrink it 20% to make it fit my column width.

They actually have a full feed mode (which I wasn’t going to put above), which is how I used it in Google Reader, but I like these other modes much better!

Plus, it’s super fast. I think it’s great. I don’t like that it always starts in the “All” folder, I’d rather it start in my first folder with unread items. The only other suggestion is that if I’m in a folder with a hundred items and I’ve only read halfway down, I’d like a way to mark everything from there and up as read.

It integrates with multiple apps (and they have their own Feedly Reader). Reeder is my favorite iPhone RSS reader (which is temporarily free, so go get Reeder). They haven’t updated the iPad Reeder yet, but the iPhone app is just as good and works great in 2x more.

So I give it two thumbs up. Regardless of what you want to use, you only have five days to get your data out of Google Reader so go do it!

Doctor Who Encyclopedia for the iPad – Review

When I first saw the Doctor Who EncyclopediaI was super excited, it was by Gary Russell and published by Random House and the BBC but it was a little pricey at $6.99 and it only included the eleventh Doctor Who (Matt Smith). The ninth and tenth doctors were an additional $6.99 each(!) for a total of $20.97 for the whole thing. They experimented with pricing up and down with the modules at different prices, I think $8.97 is the cheapest I ever saw the whole thing for.

doctor-who-encyclopedia.pngThat’s all changed now! It’s back up to $6.99 but it has been updated to include the first half of season seven (through September 2012) and now includes the tenth and eleventh doctors (Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant) as part of the price.

Actually, if you purchased it before (at any of it’s price points) you now have the whole package with today’s update. So now it has all of the episodes from 2005 on, from The Doctor meeting Rose to the season halfway point with the departure of the Ponds / Williams.

So here’s the thing, it’s pretty neat, but it’s not awesome. I think it needs to be a little more intuitive, but it’s got a lot in it. When I say a lot, I pretty much mean everything! If you tried it a year ago, I think they’ve improved the interface a bit. It’s got a references to almost every character and object and place that has appeared. If you’re a fan and you’ve got an iPad it’s (probably) a must get.

If $6.99 seems a little high, then go over to appshopper.com and set up an alert to mail you if the price goes down. Now that they have all the new episodes integrated into it, I don’t really see that happening for a while, and probably only a dollar or two; remember right now is still $2 cheaper than the cheapest it every was before (and it was as high as $21).

They say they’ve updated for iOS 6 and the iPad mini too, so if you’ve had any problems this update might fix them.

Early Edition 2 news app for the iPad – Review

The Early Edition 2 works OFF-LINE for news reading!!! You don’t need WiFi to use it, just to sync it! So if you have the data plan (or even if you don’t have a data plan), you can sync beforehand and not pay for any data! This pre-caching makes it really fast to use, it’s slow at the beginning when it’s pulling stories and images down, but once it’s down , you don’t have to wait for a thing. Even if it didn’t have this feature, it’s great for news reading of any topics you might be interested in.

And it syncs with Google Reader, I haven’t tried that yet. (I should, I use Google Reader all the time). I think the choices are GoogleReader or stand alone, no integration.

early-edition-2.jpgI love this app, I can’t decide if it’s #1 or #2 of my favorite news readers. But this is the one I use sometimes when I’m in the house, but all the times when I’m out the of the house. As I put my iPad in the sleeve, I run Early Edition 2, so it syncs with my WiFi as I’m heading out, then when I get somewhere, even if they don’t have WiFi, I have pages and pages of things I’m interested to read on my retina iPad. If you want to do this, be sure to set the settings for “Preload Images” to “ON”, or else you won’t have any images there and under “General” I set “Autofetch Options” to run “Every Launch”. (I set my “image frequency” to “Most”). There are separate settings for 3G (I assume that include LTE, 4G and HSPA+) so that it doesn’t automatically fetch and cache images.

It’s got settings for “Unread” news, “Today” or “All” news. I use “Unread” and in the settings I have it set to ‘if I see the headline, it counts as read’. So if I see something interesting, I have to read it then (or star it for later).

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It’s got great sharing options: Twitter, Instapaper, Readability, Facebook, Pinboard, Delicious, RedItLater and Evernote. I’m not on-line, I just mail a link to myself (I always forget if I star something off-line if it remembers it for later).

My biggest complaint: When reading an article I click it to go full screen (you have to or you don’t see enough) and I can swipe for the next article (if I want it). BUT to close an article I have to move my finger to the very tippy-top of the screen and click “done”, it needs something different (double-tap on the white space or anywhere that isn’t clickable) to close an article.

Downside on the setup: It’s a little awkward to manage your sections. Once you learn it, it’s okay, but it takes a little bit. It’s worth it though!

$4.99 is a little pricey though. I think it’s worth it. It goes on sale occasionally (but not often and not for long)

Electronic Arts games HUGE Thanksgiving sale! Scrabble, Monopoly, Boggle and more for the iPhone and iPad for only 99 cents

Many Electronic Arts games are way on sale today. Their annual Thanksgiving sale seems to be the best year round, it may last throughout the weekend; no promises for how long it will last, so get them before it runs out. scrabble-badge-notification.png
I listed some of the most popular ones that are $0.99, these games go on sale occasionally but never cheaper than this. Scrabble for iPad is often between $4.99 and $9.99, so 99 cents is a great deal.

Personally, my favorite is Scrabble, which will connect to Facebook play against the computer or you can play multi-player and use other iPads, iPhones or iPod touches as tile racks, local network play and it supports GameCenter (but I’m not sure how that part works). I occasionally pull out Boggle too, which is way easier to play than in real life since it knows if the odd words are actually words. The classic game SimCity (the Sim before all others!) is pretty great too!

I see Scrabble for Kindle is 99 cents, they might be on sale for your Android devices too, so check out your on-line store.

I own many of them but the only ones that have gotten a real bit of play is: Scrabble, Boggle, Lemonade Tycoon and SimCity.

What Electronic Arts games do you play?

Comparing iPhone and iPad hadware costs and what does that mean for the iPad mini

What’s the cost difference between purchasing an iPhone and an iPad? Not just the cost but what are you missing between one product and another. We’re going to talk about price first, but you need to remember an iPhone is not $199, it’s $649 for an unlocked world phone. A subsidized iPhone with a contract is $649. We’re talking prices of the latest models with 16GB (the lowest). On one hand, why would you buy an iPhone without a plan? But on the other hand, why would you buy an iPad with cellular and not activate it? But if you need a smartphone with a data plan anyways, you’re really only going to pay $199, but it’s not fair for me to compare those numbers.

Why am I focusing on this aspect of the pricing? Because if people see an iPhone (with contract) for $199 and last years iPad for $399, it just seems obvious that they could make a $299 tablet in-between the size. But when you compare a $199 8GB iPod Touch and a $199 16GB iPhone (with lots more features) it doesn’t’ seem so clear.

iPhone 4S For Dummies Edward C. Baig, Bob LeVitusSo right there, the prices are remarkably similar: an iPad with cellular is $629 and the iPhone is $649, pretty much the same price. That’s interesting when you consider the screen size of the iPad is more than four times the size of the iPhone and the battery is pretty huge too.

What other differences do we have between the two models: the camera flash (not on iPad), the vibrator for alerts / calls (not on iPad), the phone (not on iPad), battery life (I think the iPad has much longer life), camera on iPhone better than iPad (not sure if iPad lenses are as nice as iPhone), digital compass (not certain, but not listed in tech specs for iPad) and maybe a few others I missed. All these differences have been there for the last several years, not just the latest models. While the specific number of mega-pixels changes, the iPhone camera has always been better. I’m specifically not talking about LTE as a difference as it’s expected the Fall 2012 iPhone (6) will have this feature and the phones (and iPads) have stayed at the same prices for several years.

iPad For Dummies Edward C. Baig, Bob LeVitusFrom an electronics cost standpoint that screen and battery have got to cost a lot more for the iPad. The iPhone has all those features, but none of them seem super expensive; don’t forget the IPhone does require the additional electronics for making a phone call, but you can get that (and vibrate) in a $19 pay as you go phone. But still, it seems like the pricing is quite similar. So is the iPhone overpriced or is the iPad underpriced?

If you drop the cellular for the iPad it goes down to $499, but you lose the cellular and the GPS. You can still get the 16GB iPad 2 for $399, but it’s got the non-retina display and the cameras aren’t as nice.

Switching gears a little: Let’s factor in the iPod Touch, it’s more of a poor iPad Jr., but it’s only $199 for 8GB ($299 for 32GB). iPod touch For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech)) Tony BoveIt’s got the same size/resolution screen as an iPhone (but it’s not as nice quality, contrast, or brightness, and no oleophobic coating), it’s got significantly lower quality cameras, no GPS, no vibrate, and no compass, but somehow they make it for $199 (it didn’t get a refresh of any significance last year, but these specs are still below the previous year iPhone). Still a lot of power for $199 (I think it used to be $229 or $219).

So what does that mean if the rumors are true and they make an iPad mini? For $299 can they decrease the size of the iPad 2 screen / memory or (depending on how you look at it) increase the size of the iPod Touch? I think so. I don’t know what that says for what they’ll do about camera quality, but I really think they can make a smaller 7-8 inch tablet for $299. They can’t go much higher without getting too close to the $399 iPad 2 pricing and they want to stay closer to the other tablet pricing (the Kindle Fire is $199). If they could go $249, they’d have the market (IMHO), I don’t see them going to $199 unless they have some way to subsidize an iPad Mini (data, video, etc).

Back to comparing the iPhone and the iPod touch: It’s really really hard for me to see the price jump up to an iPhone for $649 (to compare fairly, the 32GB iPod Touch is $299 and the 32GB iPhone is $749), that’s $450 more for cellular, GPS, vibrate, nicer screen, nicer camera, compass and a bigger battery. I could probably buy a Kindle Fire, GPS and camera for $450 (that’s 3 more screens and 3 more batteries) and integrating them would certainly be cheaper especially since Apple is already doing it with the iPhone, so production costs are already reduced.
I’m assuming R&D, manufacturing and shipping costs to be proportionately similar between these devices. But with such similarities between these products, I assume there is lots of savings too.

And back to the iPod Touch: I do think this means an update for the iPod touch, price drop (or both) or removal from the product line (or rename it the iPad Jr.). I don’t see the removal as being likely, it’s a good way to recruit younger kids into the iOS family. For a while it looked like they might make it into a gaming machine but that marketing disappeared after a while. Last year got a while iPod touch, but the breakdowns revealed very little compared to last years models.

Did I leave any differences out? Anything else I should mention in regards to hardware?