iPhone issues

Some issues I've experienced with my iPhone;



1) Unresponsive touch screen. I've had this intermittantly since purchased. Quick fix: power button to sleep, the power button on again and slide - should now be responsive.
Genius bar solution: the iPhone is a computer and needs to be restarted occasionally. Hold the power button, wait for scroll to power off screen, hold until it goes black and apple logo appears

2) Can't answer call. Caused by first issue. Fix: pressing the power button off then on might work - though sometimes drops the call.

3) Random shutdowns / Phone crashing and turning off. This happens occasionally. A restart stops it for a while. Its caused by the iPhone running out of memory; at this point it shuts down.

4) Phone unresponsive after call. Sometimes the screen goes black and turns off and won't turn back on, then after a little while will turn back on

5) Shut down during call. This is outrageous and has happened to me twice. I hope there is a planned fix for this.

6) No wireless. Occasionally it won't recognise a wifi signal. But after a few minutes it suddenly recognises it.



7) Dodgy copy and paste. Quite regularly it won't allow text to be selected, or will only allow a large block of text to be selected, rather than an individual item. Rarer is when you select and the context menu doesn't appear. Or when you're trying to paste and no paste option appears.

Do you have any similar experiences?

Location:UK

Seven reasons why I'm not buying an iPad yet

Don't get me wrong I really want an Apple iPad, but here are a list of seven reasons why I won't be buying one yet.






1. Price - its £429 for the basic wifi model and £529 for the basic 3g+wifi model. I don't have that sort of spare cash, plus it means I'm going to be more worried about carrying it around, and have to pay for expensive insurance.

2. No printing - there is an app that does it in a convoluted way, but no built in printing facility is poor, come on Apple! Either wirelessely or via USB would be nice. For example if I purchase tickets online I have to go to my laptop to print them out, come on!

3. No USB or SD Card reader - so I can't plug in my camera. Even the most basic netbooks let me do this, if I'm paying that price, I want to be able to use it to download my pictures to it!

4. No front facing camera - I'm fine with no rear camera - it's too big to be a camera, I get it. But this is the ideal device for video chats, even basic netbooks do this!

5. No iPhone OS 4 yet - we've got to wait until later in the year, longer than for the iPhone. So I'd personally rather wait so I can have multitasking and a better experience overall.

6. Weak wifi - it drives me nuts when my iPhone refuses to join a network that is clearly there. If the iPad wifi issues are true and therefore worse than that, then I don't think I could cope. At least wait until Apple has put out a software fix for this.

7. Price likely to go down? - with such a high price point I'm willing to bet this is going to be reduced some months after release.

Conclusion

Mark II will be better - I kept away from the iPhone until they did it right (with the 3GS) I think I may wait here - at least until the price is reduced to a level where I can accept its limitations.

However, no flash, is not putting me off. The usability, performance and power consumption arguments are compelling. Sites should degrade gracefully to non-flash, so I can live without it.

iPhone development

I'm very excited, I've registered as an iPhone developer. Sign up as a developer here; http://developer.apple.com/iphone/index.action and then download xcode (the development IDE) and the SDK.



Reading good article about how to get started here http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2009/feb/10/gameculture-apple One guy wrote iShoot, a game that went viral, and he was making $22,000 per day at its peak! Enough money to quit his job and do iPhone development fulltime. Sounds awesome.

I guess you need a good idea, that's the key, I'm currently busy brainstorming.



I've also just bought my first book on iPhone development from Amazon here http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d.html/ref=mp_s_a_1?qid=1273992552&a=1430224592&sr=8-1 So next steps are to learn Objective C, and sign up to the development programme so I can start testing apps on my iPhone.

Watch this space.

iPod Nano first generation fixing

This is a guide on how I got my first generation iPod Nano working again.



I thought my first generation iPod Nano was dead. All it would do is flash contact apple support, despite trying to sync it.

I'd left it a while, and I decided to try and fix it. I plugged it into my Mac, it kept flashing contact support and wasn't recognised in iTunes. After 5 minutes it stopped flashing and stopped saying contact apple suport.

Then it appeared as a device in iTunes, and asked if I wanted to do a software upgrade, so I did.

Then after it finished installing and charging up, it said okay to disconnect in iTunes. However it said do not disconnect on the iPod Nano. I thought there was a problem, so I left it 20 minutes or so.

I soon realised all I needed to do was eject it from iTunes. I did this, and it now works, wa-hoo!

Location:UK

Facebook photo upload via iPhone

Upload not currently working, see details here; http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=6628568379&topic=15740#topic_top

Here is a workaround; Go to here http://www.facebook.com/mobile/ and get a unique email address for uploading photos. Then use email address that Facebook recognises as you to send the photo (copy and paste it in a blank email). Takes a few moments, plus you can't write a caption. Good workaround though.

Location:UK

iPhone iPod tip

Great new tip. If the iPod is running on your iPhone, double pressing the home button brings up the iPod controller. Which lets you fast forward and rewind, and jump to your iPod. Great!

IPhone OS 4.0 - I love it

The iPhone OS looks great. The reveal shown on Engadget
http://i.engadget.com/2010/04/08/live-from-apples-iphone-os-4-event
Here are my thoughts;



1. Multitasking looks excellent. Now I can put the radio or Spotify/Lastfm in the background. How do you close apps though. Apple said you don't, but if all apps remain open, you'll have a lot to scroll through.



2. Folders. An excellent way of organising the home screen. This is great... Because past my 3rd screen it is a mess, and it will be great to organise, and not be limited by the 180+ limit of apps on the home screen.

3 Desktop picture; finally!

4 Digital zoom 5x. Excellent! I wonder if newest iPhone will get a flash?



5 ibooks. I've already used ebooks on my iPhone, and they work well. But it will be great to have a facility hooked up to the iTunes payment system.

What I'm not so excited about;



1 Integrated inbox - I personally like having them sepatated... How are you going to specify which account the mail should come from.

2 iAds great more ads, great :-(