Category: Apple

  • iOS: Using reader mode in Safari

    One of the features in Safari that I use a fair amount is called reader mode. Simply put, it strips an article of extraneous content (such as ads), and allows me to focus on the article itself. Here’s how you use it:

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  • iPhone: Using Apple Pay with facial recognition

    I enabled Apple Pay on my iPhone shortly after it became available in Norway. Some time after that, however, I was pickpocketed, and got a new phone. While my previous one was one of the models with a fingerprint scanner, I replaced it with one with facial recognition. It took me a little while to figure out how to use Apple Pay with it. In case someone else are in that same situation.

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  • iOS 6’s best new feature: Do Not Disturb

    One feature that I have been missing on my iPhone, even though I didn’t realise it, is a way to have the iPhone be quiet when I want it to, but intelligently so. What I mean, is that I want it to be able to let calls from important people (such as my wife and parents) come through the shield, while others are kept quiet. In iOS 6, Apple have introduced the very functionality I wanted.
     
    Called “Do Not Disturb”, the feature is located two places in the Settings-menu. The first place, is a simple on/off switch, in the main area of Settings. If you want to configure your settings, though, you need to go into “Notifications”, then “Do Not Disturb”. You can turn on and off Do Not Disturb on a daily schedule (though I’d like to be able to schedule it differently for weekday and weekend), set who to allow calls from, and whether to allow repeated calls to come through.
     
    One important thing to note, is that even if you have Do Not Disturbed on, if you are interacting with the screen (i.e. if you have the phone unlocked), notifications will come through.

  • A new iPad

    So, the latest iteration of iPad was announced last week. The new iPad, as it is named, is supposed to “have redefined yet again the category that Apple created just two years ago with the original iPad.”
     
    Me, I’m not convinced. Let’s have a look at the facts, the improvements announced are as follows: (more…)

  • What’s in a name

    After Apple CEO Tim Cook announced their newest offering of iPhone, it was immediately clear that fans and commentators alike were disappointed that he did not announce the iPhone 5. My question is simply, “Why?”
     
    First of all, Apple do not conform to usual naming conventions, which is exemplified by the fact that their most recent operating system, Mac OS X Lion, is numbered 10.7, and not 11 (or rather 17, as it’s the seventh Mac OS X to be released), so it strikes me as odd to expect them to do so now.
     
    Secondly, while it might not conform strictly to how they have been naming the previous iterations (iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4), it does make a kind of sense. I also suspect that they were trying to tell their customers that it wasn’t the revolutionary iPhone that would, again, change everything, but rather an upgrade of the existing platform.
     
    My last point is that it’s just a name. If they had not used numbering, but rather an apparently random string of names (I’m looking at you, HTC), I seriously doubt that there would be the same fuss. And the fuss, after all, is what Apple is best at.

  • The Jobs is dead, long live the Jobs

    I’m at a loss for words right now, other than to say that a visionary in our industry is no more.

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