WWDC lowdown!

Alright guys, so yesterday was THE BIG DAY!

The four day annual world wide developers conference for Apple began yesterday morning, kicking off at the Mascone Centre in San Francisco at 10am.

As per usual, WWDC began with a perfectly orchestrated keynote speech given by Tim Cook, featuring a few other key Apple guys AND more importantly, featuring some new Apple software and hardware announcements and previews.

DOUBLE RAINBOW EXCITING!

For the first time, the keynote was broadcast live from the Apple website and on Apple TV.

The two hour address was, as expected, super stylishly presented, with multiple media presentations, some jokes, and a few fantastic and even surprising new Apple products and updates.

The top things you should know about that were announced today are:

– The new Mac Pro. Stellar, revolutionary and round.

– iOS 7, the biggest change to iOS since the iPhone came out.

– OS  X Mavericks – the new operating system named after a California beach break.

– New Macbook airs with super extended battery life.

– iTunes Radio – the much talked about radio product that actually sounds better than we expected!

Super double rainbow exciting, right!?

We’ll have even more from WWDC coming up this week!!

iOS 7

Yesterday we were given a preview of iOS 7, and apart from the fact that we only saw a teensy snippet of one of our personal favs and the man mainly responsible for iOS 7, Jony Ive, the new iOS announcement exceeded even our expectations. And we had high hopes!

Now, this system update will not change your life drastically, it will not do your job for you or make you a more beautiful person, but what it does is promise to enhance your life, with it’s combination of a pared down and simplified beauty and increased functionality.

This seventh system update is the biggest change to iOS since the iPhone came out with the user interface changing pretty drastically as well as the addition of a number of new features.

As was predicted ( or leaked in a timely manner by Apple), the new iOS has none of the skeumorphic, life like graphics or icons as seen in the previous versions.There is a whole new color palette, completely new icons and the overall impression is a much cleaner, flatter, brighter and simpler user interface.

There is a translucent feel to the screen, which gives depth to the phone, even down to the wallpaper, which you can now see behind app icons, and that moves intuitively in relation to the motion in your hands.The typography, also, has been redesigned to be bigger, spacier and cleaner.

Apple has said that this is the future of iOS, that as well as being the biggest change to iOS since the original iPhone, it is a new beginning.And, well, we haven’t tested it out yet, but we like the way it looks. We like the new features, and we like the direction Apple is going with it.

Here are some new features that make iOS 7 super, double rainbow exciting.

Control center
Swiping up from the bottom of the device, you can find the all-new control center. This innovation provides quick access to preferences and settings. You will find switches for wifi, Airplay, a flashlight, do not disturb, brightness, airplane mode, and quick music buttons.

Weather, Messages, Calendar

Messages and the Calendar app have both been cleaned up and simplified. The updated weather app has animation representing live weather, (the lightening looked particularly cool) with the ability to see more details such as humidity, and scrunch all your favorite places together to see not only the weather in each, but the time in world clock format.

Multitasking

Pressing the power button twice will now give previews of apps that are open, rather than the small app icons that we see right now on iOS 6.

The phone will intuitively learn which apps you use most often and at what time. Background processing will then provide updated content, ready and waiting for the time that you use them.

This also applies with apps that send push notifications- when that happens, the phone will start processing updates because it knows that you will more than likely be opening that app soon.

The phone will recognize and take advantage of power efficient times, such as when it is connected to Wi-Fi, to update apps.

Airdrop
This is a new function, sadly only available on the most recent devices ( iPhone 5, iPad etc).

Airdrop makes it super easy to share photos, videos, contacts and other stuff between friends with iPhones. Connecting via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, you can simply click the share button and choose the recipient from those around you.

You can send whatever you want ( from apps that support Airdrop) and the person receiving can choose to save the item- it will then be located in the appropriate app. Photos in iPhoto, etc.

Safari

Safari is updated with a new full screen look and smart search tab, one tap access to favorites and better parental controls.

You also have the ability to see and browse your tabs from other devices.

Also… and this is kind of a biggie… no more eight tab limit! Oh my god apple, why did that take so long, but thank you, thank you.

Tabs are also now organized differently- vertically in 3D instead of horizontally, with the ability to reorder the tabs. To get rid of one tab you just swipe it to the left.

Photos and camera

The camera app now includes 4 camera options- Normal, square cropped, video and panoramic. You also have the option of a number of live filters to apply to photos.

The photos app has a brilliant way of organizing your photos using time and location to bundle your photos into ‘moments’, which are photos from the same time and/or place. These ‘moments’ can then be organized into ‘collections’, which are groupings of moments using that same organizational information.

You can also view your whole collection via year, see what locations you were in for each year, and scrub to find a specific photo.

Siri

Siri now has not one but two new voices, a more human like female and male voice!

A new interface, with sound waves to represent Siri when he/she’s processing, French and German capabilities and a whole whack load of higher intelligence makes Siri exciting again.

The results can now include photos within the app and has the ability to answer more questions more intelligently, with Twitter, Wikipedia and web search results from Bing integrated into the app. Interesting choice with Bing, but we’ll ride with it for a while…

Siri itself has also become more integrated into your device, and can perform functions such as turning the brightness down, turning Bluetooth on etc.

New app store
For starters, the new app store looks way better. Secondly, all of your apps will now update automatically, (down with those little red numbers!) and thirdly, we now have some new search options.

You will be able to search for apps based on your location, or or an event or festival you’re at. You can also now search for and find apps using age range, which is designed with kids in mind.

Itunes Radio
We have a whole other section on iTunes Radio, go here to read it ☺

Ios in the car
iOS will soon be integrated into your car by having your device display through the in-car monitors. A bunch of cars will begin to be integrated with Siri, Maps, messages and more in 2014.

The introduction to this was pretty broad, however there will be more details to come. The car manufactuors who will be including iOS in at least one of their models include Honda, Mercedes- Benz, Nissan, Volvo, Kia, Acura, Ferrari, Hyundai, Infiniti, Jaguar, Opel, and Chevrolet.

OK, so those are the big features. There are also a ton of different, smaller features in iOS 7, like the updated notification centre that can now be accessed from the lock screen, and synced across all of your devices, and the activation lock to try to prevent theft ( no-one can use your iphone unless they know your iCloud username & password.)

We think that iOS 7 is really pretty cool, especially considering that we’ll be getting at least a few more cool features in the hardware component around the same time (Fall this year). What do you guys think?

iOS 7 will be available to the public in the Fall. Demos for iOS 7 are available on Apple’s site- here.

First image courtesy of techradar.com, all others courtesy of Apple.com

Cool iPhone Web Browser Features

Are you looking to save an image that you have hit across the web suddenly? Well, here’s something that may come handy for you. When you are going through the picture on your Safari browser, simply hold on to the image and you will be prompted with an option to ‘save image.’ Just save it and you can use it as wallpaper or screensaver.

Well, the Safari browser also offers some short-cut options—like if you are looking to type a website address, you can easily omit the .com extension in the URL box and land directly into the website page. Also, you can choose the other extensions like .edu or .gov by pressing down the .com button for longer time period.

We’ve mentioned it before, but thought it might be handy to mention it in the context of the web browser.  Here is how to take a screenshot! It’s pretty easy—just press down the Home button while taping the Lock button—click! And you have your screenshot.

Hope it helps!

Taking Pictures Fast on the iPhone

You’ve maybe been hearing a lot of tips and tricks related to iPhone. We won’t bore you with those same ‘tricks’ which you are already aware of; we’ll keep this post short and simple.

Last night I was thinking, well, are we making the full use of our smartphone?  I bet not—there are so many cool features which most of us don’t have any ideas about.

All of us are fond of taking snapshots on our iPhone—it’s pretty simple and robust. Just thought you should know you can take some quick pics even when it remains locked.

Many a times it happens—you miss to capture a ‘magic moment’ on your phone, only because of 1-2 seconds delay in unlocking the Phone. But, now with the iPhone you can even take quick snaps prior to unlocking the phone. Let’s explain how.

When it’s locked, just double tap the Home button—this would open up the camera icon on your screen.  Also, now you can just use the volume up button on your headphones to take the picture.  Awesome, right?

You thought a passcode on your iPhone 4S was enough?

So as it turns out, the incredible Siri may have some drawbacks you may not have known about.  Currently, there is a bug on the iPhone 4S, which actually allows for people to still use some parts of your iPhone even with a passcode on it!

Essentially how this works is that even though your iPhone is locked with a passcode, you can still access Siri, and thus are still able to use some aspects of the iPhone.  For most people it is probably not that big of a deal, but if you were to lose your iPhone or have it stolen, that might not be the case.

It is simple enough to change your settings to prevent Siri from being accessed while your iPhone is locked, we’ll go through these settings below.

1) Get Your iPhone

2) Go into the Settings App

3) Choose General

4) Choose Passcode

5) Turn Siri to Off.

That’s it!  Your iPhone should be nice and secure now!

How to go about Selling an iPhone

Many people nowadays are looking to upgrade iPhones.  If you are looking to upgrade to the iPhone 4S, or maybe even upgrade to the iPhone 5 once it is released, you are probably going to want to start thinking about selling an iPhone.

Once you upgrade your iPhone you can worry about how to sell your iPhone 4.  Selling an iPhone can prove to be very valuable, because often times they are worth quite a bit more than you would expect.  Often times, when you sell an old iPhone, you can get nearly the same amount of money as your new iPhone would cost.  Thus resulting in a free iPhone upgrade, or an iPhone trade-in where you sell your old iPhone in return for upgrading your iPhone for free!

There are many different ways you can sell your iPhone.  If you are thinking about selling an iPhone in person, it may be best to check to see if any of your friends are interested in purchasing it.  It could help them (by letting them get an off-contract iPhone) and help you (by getting money, of course!).

If you are looking to sell your iPhone online, it could be a little trickier.  There are websites like Craigslist and eBay, both of which are great websites, but they both have negative aspects as well.  One of the major negative aspects of selling an iPhone on Craigslist is that you have to meet up with a person and exchange a high value item.  This could be dangerous since some people may not be as honest, and even if not, it could just be a somewhat stressful experience.  You could also sell your iPhone on eBay, which is a really great resource, but it too can have some negative aspects.  iPhone sales on eBay tend to have a general amount of fraud associated with them, and unless you have a prominent eBay account, it could be hard to sell the iPhone online.

Now, however, there is another choice if you would like to upgrade your iPhone by selling your iPhone.  The iPhone Antidote is a trustworthy website which will buy your iPhone.  We buy iPhone’s no matter what the condition.  You can sell your iPhone 4 regardless of the condition.  Even if its in the condition “iPhone 4 water damage“, the iPhone Antidote will buy it!

If you want to start by selling an iPhone today go ahead and check out how much you can get paid today!  The iPhone Antidote even has payouts up to $400, check it out here

How to Restore Your iPhone From a Backup

There are  a few cases in which being able to restore your iPhone can be a valuable thing to know. Take for example, if your iPhone was stolen, or you accidentally deleted a funny video off of your iPhone, or maybe you even accidentally erased the whole iPhone!  Either way,  it is pretty easy to restore your iPhone to its previous state provided that you made a backup (to learn how to create a backup see here).

The First thing you’ll need to do is to plug your iPhone into the computer with your backup on it and turn on iTunes.

Secondly, in iTunes, under devices, find your iPhone.

Right click on this iPhone and click “Restore from Backup”.

Select the proper backup from the selection of previous backups and click ok.

iTunes will go through and restore your iPhone so that it is the exact state of your old iPhone.

Enjoy!

Erase Your iPhone and Restore to Factory Settings

There are a few different reasons why you may want to restore your iPhone to its factory settings.  One of the main reasons would be if you were selling the iPhone.  If you are selling your iPhone it is a good idea to erase all of your data to ensure data security.  When you sell your iPhone to the iPhone Antidote (see here), we securely erase all of the data, but some other companies or other methods of selling your iPhone may not be as secure.

Follow the directions below to erase all of the data on your iPhone and restore it back to it’s factory settings.

First, turn your iPhone on and go to settings.

Next, go to General.

At the bottom of the General screen you should see an option for reset, click this.

Now click “Erase All Content and Settings”

This will erase everything on your iPhone and restore it back to it’s factory settings.

Thanks for reading!

How to Take a Screenshot on Your iPhone/iPod/iPad

Something most people tend to miss out on with their iDevices is the ability to take a screenshot. This can be really helpful in a variety of different situations. You can take pictures of your text messages, your call log, different websites you are on for later viewing and pretty much anything else you can think of.  It can also be a really helpful way to zoom in and crop pictures that may already be on your iDevice.

The gesture is quite simple to do, all you need to do is:

Press the Home (round button) and the Lock (top button) button at the same time.

Hope this helps someone!

What to Do if You Drop Your iPhone in Water

The worst has happened.  Your iPhone has gotten wet, and as with all electronics and water, you fear the worst; your iPhone is broken.

This horror story has happened too many times, but if your quick and on the ball, you can possibly prevent your iPhone from damage.  Follow the instructions below to help fix your water damaged iPhone before it is too late.

• First, take your iPhone out of the water!

• Turn your iPhone off immediately!  Water and electricity do not mix well, and if there is anything you can do to help preserve your iPhone it is to make sure it is off immediately.

• If your iPhone fell in any type of salt water, beer, soft drinks or anything else, put your iPhone in fresh water to clean off any of the previous liquid.  A quick rinse should be fine, do not go overboardwith useless water damage.

• Get a ziploc bag and put uncooked rice or silica gel in it (the packets that come in shoeboxes and beef jerky packets to keep them free of moisture) and place the iPhone and the rice/silica gel inside the plastic bag.

• Keep your iPhone in this bag for 48 hours, or AT LEAST 24 hours.

• Take your iPhone out and turn it back on.  Hopefully if you were fast enough your iPhone will work perfectly again!