iPhone Tip Of The Day!

Ever see a rockin’ photo on your iDevice whilst browsing that wonderful world wide web? Something like this?

Or this?

In Safari or Chrome, simply place your magic finger on the image, hold down for a moment, and you’ll be given an option to save the image to your iPhoto library. BAM! Now it’s yours to do anything with (that’s not commercial or against copyright or, you know, mean. Don’t be mean, guys.)

Now you can use it as your wallpaper, email it, print it out and hang it on your wall, or just look back at it fondly and wistfilly every now and then.

Like we do with this one:

Images courtesy of Planetsforkids.org &  Imgur.com 

iPhone Tip Of The Day

You know that little suggested spelling box that comes up sometimes when you’re typing on your iPhone or iPad? And about 60% of the time you’re like, ‘oh hey little box, that’s cool, you’re totally right on how to spell that word, my bad, thanks for your assistance!’

But the other 40% of the time you’re like ‘agggh i know what i want to say little box and you’re totally wrong this time and my finger is too fat to touch that little stupid x of yours to make you go away!’

Well, actually, that 40% of the time? You can tap anywhere on the screen- except for the box- and it’ll go away.

Freeeeedom!

Image courtesy of Huffington Post & Sodahead.

iPhone Tip Of The Day!

A nice easy tip for you guys on this lovely Saturday afternoon!  Taking a screenshot of anything on your iPhone or iPad screen can come in handy in a strangely large amount of situations – and can be used for good and evil! ( Our favorite type of tool!)

Simply press the home button at the same time as the sleep/wake button and you can take a picture of whatever is on your screen. The picture will then be saved in the photos app and can be uploaded to social media or sent over email or text!

Just promise you won’t use this information for tooo much evil!

Image courtesy of Wikihow.com

Apple vs Samsung ( & Google?)!

So if you guys didn’t know, Apple & Samsung have been at it again, Round Two in the Battle of The Patents. After winning Round 1 in The Battle, Apple were awarded $1 billion in damages, eventually reduced to $929 million.

This time,  Apple was seeking $2.2 Billion in damages from Samsung over 5 patents, and for the judge to stop Samsung selling their devices in the US.

As unlikely as this was to happen, the lawsuit was still a pain in Samsung’s butt and wallets. What made it a little easier? Google offered to help Samsung cover their costs.

According to reports from Windows IT Pro Blog, Apple’s lawyers showed a video during testimony in which a Google attorney confirmed that there were email messages between Google and Samsung where Google offered to help cover Samsung’s legal expenses and maybe even damages fees.

This kind of financial assistance, known as indemnification, is covered by Google’s “contractual obligations” to Samsung, because they are the hardware partner that sells the most Android phones.

Basically, because Samsung are the biggest hardware partner that uses Google’s apps and operating system, they want to help there guy out, right?  And so they do it with offers of money and offers to defend some patent claims Samsung says is covered by Google’s Android Operating System.

Samsung was also claiming a smaller $7 million for Apple infringing two of its patents.

Today, the unanimous jury verdict was reached after three days of deliberation, finding that Samsung willfully infringed on two of the 5 patents involved in the suit. Samsung has been ordered to pay $119.6 million, which whilst still a win, is not exactly what Apple had hoped for, especially knowing that Google might be helping Samsung out by throwing some cash their way!

Apple in turn were ordered to pay Samsung $158,400. Mere pennies! What we’re all wanting to know though is,

Images courtesy of Digitaltrends & Sodahead

New MacBook Airs released!

Apple just launched updated MacBook Airs! The good news? The main gist is that they’re faster and cheaper. Sweet deal, right?

All new standard MacBook Airs will feature faster 1.4 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processors and will come at a price $100 less than previously. The battery is also said to last up to 1 hour longer on the 11 -inch and 2 hours on the 13-inch.

Philip Schiller, Apple’s Senior Vice president of WorldWide marketing has said this about the updated Airs:

“With MacBook Air starting at $899, there’s no reason to settle for anything less than a Mac. Macs have never been more popular, and today we’ve boosted the performance and lowered the price of MacBook Air so even more people can experience the perfect everyday notebook.”

Here are the new specs:

You can get your hot little hands on an updated MacBook Air RIGHT NOW through Apple’s retail or online stores.

A hot tip courtesy of the good guys over at Macrumors.com – Refurbished MacBook Air computers have dropped to incredibly low prices, with an 11-inch 2012 model available starting at $599 and 2013 models available starting at $719.

And from the guys at Slickdeals –  People are picking up some great deals. Like this one: “Just picked up the mid-2013 macbook for $705 Open box. It’s $750 New w/ student discount ( if you have a .edu email address). ”

Super awesome deals to be had!

Images courtesy of Apple & 9to5mac

Tech tip of the day – Facebook edition

Sick of videos on Facebook automatically playing in your feed? Maybe because your cell phone bill is being eaten up or it’s making  you re-think why you’re even friends with some people on Facebook? Or maybe it’s cool but it’s just annoying to be played something without your specific consent?

We got you! You can prevent most of the above from happening! Here’s how:

On your computer, click on the down arrow on the top right of the FaceBook menu bar. Scroll down to Settings. Once in the Settings page, click on ‘Video’s on the bottom of the left hand column. There you can toggle the auto playing feature off.

On your iPad or iPhone, Facebook won’t let you turn off video Auto-play completely, but you do have the option to make it so that videos only automatically play in your Facebook feed when you are connected to WiFi, so it won’t affect your cell phone bill.

Go to the Settings app on the home screen of your iPhone or iPad. Scroll down on the left hand side until you find Facebook. Click on it and once in the Facebook section on the right hand side, click on Settings. Look for the third option down, under Video, where you can toggle on the option to auto-play on WiFi only.

You’re welcome.

Skype group video calling now free! (For some).

The long beloved video calling company Skype has now made itself even more lovable by making it’s group video calling feature FREE for users on Windows desktop, Mac and the Xbox one- with the promise of support for additional devices coming soon.

Straight from the sauce:

“Skype is proud that, since our beginning, we’ve created opportunities for people to communicate freely and easily, no matter where they are; from keeping in touch with remote family members or calling home when traveling to chatting daily with your close circles of friends. While Skype is known for one to one video calling, we know it’s also essential to connect with the groups of people who matter most, whether friends, family or colleagues. For the last few years, we’ve offered group video calling to Premium users on Windows desktop and Mac and more recently Xbox One. Today, we’re excited to announce that we’re making group video calling free – for all users on these platforms. And, in the future, we’ll be enabling group video calling for all our users across more platforms – at no cost.”

How sweet is that!

We love free things! Especially free things that makes it so we can see all of our lovely friends/colleagues in one place even though they may be in, like, 5 places! The world’s a changin!

If you don’t haveSkype yet, all you needs to do is hop on over to their website and download it! It’s free! ( You’ll also need a webcam, a microphone & OS X Snow Leopard or above for Macs. )

Images courtesy of Skype & memegenerator

Broken wake/sleep button or home button? Here’s what to do!

Do you have an iPhone that has a broken wake/sleep or home button and it’s not covered under warranty?

We got you!

You have 2 options.

1. If you’re not ready to sell your beloved iPhone, or get it repaired for a silly amount of money, there’s a software solution for your broken buttons!

Go to Settings>Accessibility>Assisted Touch>Switch to On.

Now you’ll see a floating button on your iPhone screen that can act as both the wake/sleep button, volume buttons, and the home button. It can peform functions such as waking the device up, making it go to sleep, taking photos, screenshots, etc. It looks like this:

The other option?

2. Go to www.iphoneantidote.com to sell your stupid broken iPhone with it’s stupid broken buttons to us for CASHMONEY in the easiest and fastest way ( in the known galaxy at least) and use that CASHMONEY to get a shiny new phone!

We like that option.

mages courtesy of Hampshirecatteries.com & Quickmeme.com

Apple replacing sleep/wake buttons on some iPhone 5 models!

Has the sleep/wake button on your iPhone 5 stopped working? Thought it was a lost cause? There might be some hope yet!

Apple has released a statement to The Loop regarding a recall of some iPhone 5 models because of broken sleep/wake buttons, which means if you are one of the device owners affected- you could get it replaced for free.

Here’s the lowdown-

You’ll need to enter your iPhone’s serial number here to see if your device is one of those affected by the recall.

If your phone is affected and you want to get it fixed for free ( duh) you can bring it to any Apple Retail Store or Apple Authorized Service provider. Your device will have to be sent away to an Apple repair centre to be fixed, however it is believed that for the interim some Apple stores are lending customers iPhone 5 16Gb models. You can also mail your device directly to the repair centre if you’d like.

According to Apple your device will take 4-6 days from the time it is received until it is returned to you, and all customers should back up all their data and erase all content and setting before sending it in to get fixed. All devices that receive a new sleep/wake button will be updated to iOS 7.

If you’ve got an iPhone 5 that is affected by this recall and you’ve already paid for an out-of-warranty replacement, you should contact an Apple customer service rep to ask for a refund.

This recall and placement program will be effective for 2 years after the initial retail purchase of your device.

According to some reports there are stores that are offering customers affected by the recall  a $350 upgrade credit for a new device, but you must specifically ask for it, your phone must be in perfect condition other than the sleep/wake button, and it’s of course not guaranteed.

By the way, why doesn’t Apple have a cooler name for that button? Writing sleep/wake button over and over has cemented the fact that it’s a pretty stupid name. It should be called, like, the enforcer button or something. Just saying, Apple.

Good luck Guys! Let us know how you go if this recall applies to you!

Image courtesy of Techcrunch

Facetime Facepalm

Since April 16th people who have devices running iOS 6 have been experiencing difficulty using FaceTime. Apple changed their troubleshooting page to advise updating devices to the latest operating system, but it was thought that the issue would be fixed after a short period of time.

Unfortunately kids, it appears we are just not that lucky. Apple today released a new support document advising that the problems people are experiencing with FaceTime are due directly to a bug which has resulted from an expired device certificate.

No good.

If you are on of those people experiencing the problem, then the only way you can use FaceTime is to update your operating system to the latest version that your device is capable of running.

If your device is capable of running iOS 7 it must be upgraded to iOS 7.0.4 or later, however if your device is incapable of running iOS 7 ( like the iPhone 3GS), you must upgrade to iOS 6.1.6.

Here it is direct from the sauce:

“If you started to have issues making or receiving FaceTime calls after April 16, 2014, your device or your friend’s device may have encountered a bug resulting from a device certificate that expired on that date. Updating both devices to the latest software will resolve this issue.

If you’re using iOS 7.0.4 or later or iOS 6.1.6, this issue doesn’t affect you.

If you’re using these versions of OS X or FaceTime for Mac, this issue doesn’t affect you:

– OS X Mavericks v10.9.2 or later
– OS X Mountain Lion v10.8 with the latest security updates
– OS X Lion v10.7 with the latest security updates
– FaceTime for Mac version 1.0.5 or later for Mac OS X v10.6

While FaceTime does work with iOS 6.1.6, that particular update is not available to recent devices that are able to run iOS 7, which means iOS 6 users with newer devices who wish to access FaceTime must upgrade to iOS 7.”

So… Happy upgrading? We guess? For reals though, it actually is a pretty nice iOS, even though the changes might look a bit scary. Check out our iOS 7 article here. You knew you had to do it eventually, right?  Right? … FaceTime Shots Anyone?