You now need Facebook Messenger app to message!

As of this week, you will no longer be able to use the messaging feature in the Mobile Facebook App. Instead, as Facebook announced yesterday, it’s more than 200 million wordlwide users will need to use the separate Facebook messenger App on their mobile devices.

If you already have the messenger app installed, nothing will change. If you try to use the messaging function in the main Facebook app once the full change comes into effect, it will link you to the messenger app instead of the inbox.

Those of you who do not have the standalone Messenger App installed, either go ahead and install it (it’s free, so that’s a come up, right?) or say goodbye to all those lovely, animated Facebook conversations! And to those silly hooligans Pusheen, Meep, Biscuit and Beast. Now that’s a sad day! (If you don’t know who they are, well, you’re already missing out. Maybe.)

Apple’s annual ‘back to school’ promotion begins tomorrow!

Apple will begin it’s annual ‘Back To School’ Promotion tomorrow,  Tuesday, July 1st, with a likely offer of an iTunes Store/App Store gift card to students that purchase a Mac, iPad, or iPhone.

If similar to last’s year’s promotion, the offer will be a $100 App Store gift card for the purchase of a new Mac or a $50 App Store gift card with the purchase of an iPad or iPhone.

So if you’ve been waiting for a good time to make that Apple purchase, now might just be the right time! Tomorrow in fact! The same exact right time that the US is going to beat Belgium in the World cup!

What a good day, tomorrow. We like you.

iPhone Tip Of The Day

This one’s for the walkers out there, you good honest souls you! When using maps in iOS 7, you have the option to choose walking directions as a dafault in settings, and to have Siri read you the directions turn- by- turn. Snazzy.

To set walking directions as your default, go to Settings>Maps. Scroll down to the Preferred Directions section and choose between walking and driving.

To ask Siri to give you prompted map directions whilst walking, tap the Directions button in the top left hand corner, select the walking icon at the top of the screen, enter your destination and then tap Route.

Interesting, (and some might say challenging), fact for you – Given that the world is about 25,000 miles in circumference and that the average walking rate is 3 miles per hour, it would take a person walking nonstop approximately 347 days to walk around the world.

Go to it!

iPhone Tip Of The Day! Camera Edition

If you’re like us, you use your iPhone camera a lot. Which is super handy and awesome, right, but sometimes there’s that little issue of lighting that can overexpose, underexpose, or just crappily expose your photos.

Here’s a handy tip for getting better lighting by using the Exposure and Focus Lock feature:

*Point the Camera at the lighting you want to use.

*Tap and hold to lock the exposure to those light conditions.

*Turn the phone to the object of your photographic attraction, taking the locked exposure with you.

*Shoot your photo as normal.

*Magic.

This feature is also be used to lock focus, so you can overcome weird depth issues as well by doing  exactly the same as above. And now, you, like us, can become just that little bit closer to shooting photos like a pro!

Sweet Bro!

How to take an extra 10% off any single purchase at Best Buy

Just in case you guys didn’t see it- yesterday we outlined how to get the best deal on a brand new MacBook Air that we’ve ever seen. 

One important part of getting that deal is something that we want to make sure everyone is aware of, because it can help you in so many more purchases in the future!

It’s the Best Buy 10% off any single item purchase coupon from the Movers Guide Coupon Book. This book is free, convenient, and anyone can get one. Just go to your local Post Office, if it’s not lying around, you can ask any one of the lovely USPS employees for one and they’ll get one for you, no problems.

Again, 10% off any single item purchase at Best Buy! We’ll bring you all the great deals on tech stuff that Best buy have in the future so you can combine and stack those discounts too!

Sweet!

Just sent a text you didn’t mean to? We got you!

Ever have that moment of sheer panic when you realize that you just sent a text to the person you were talking about, not the person you were talking to?

Yuck.

Here’s something you can try the next time you realize you sent a message and you realllly don’t want it to be actually sent.

Put your phone into airplane mode IMMEDIATELY. Like, faster than your little fingers have ever moved before kind of immediately. If you’re successful, the message will fail to send, allowing you to delete the message into the ether, never to be seen by any human’s eyes again.

Just a word of warning- there’s a great chance it might not work. Your phone/network might be too fast, and then you’re on your own, guys. Plead temporary insanity, drunkiness, or a badly played off joke. Or you could be, like, honest we guess, people say that’s a good thing don’t they?

OR OR OR, OR – someone kidnapped you, took your phone, and is using it to torture you by screwing your life up in very minute ways…

Remember: Text responsibly!

ioS 8!

Welcome to the new iOS 8! As well as a bright new user interface update, iOS 8 will bring to our phones a new level of sharing – between family members, between app developers and between iDevices and Macs.

We’re pretty excited about the new software functionality this operating system is promising, and below you will find a comprehensive outline of everything ( that we know of so far) that iOS 8 will bring to your lives with it’s release in the Fall.

New Spotlight

The search function in iOS is called Spotlight, and with iOS 8 it brings a much broader ability to search, both on your iDevice and on the internet. For example -type in a term and you can see a part of a Wikipedia article, including a picture and a short summary. Tap it, and Spotlight takes you to the full article.

Spotlight will also show you search results like trending topics, popular websites, nearby restaurants with phone number and hours of business that can connect you to maps,  search results within the iTunes Store or the App store, and search results for movie times.

It seems like there is a slight crossover with Siri’s functionality in the new Spotlight, but making things easier all round can only be good!

Messaging

Messaging gets a lovely new overhaul with iOS 8!  Starting off impressively is the new ability to add video and audio messages. Simply touch and hold the new microphone button to record your message, and swipe to send. on the other end, to hear a message, you can now hold your iPhone to your ear and listen or just tap the play button next to the message.

All messages, text, video and audio, will now have the option to be deleted automatically, or within a time period ranging from a year to forever.

With iOS 8 you will be able to create larger and better controlled group conversation threads where people can be added and can leave at their leisure. Group conversations can be named for an event or experience, the attachments can be seen all in one place rather than opening them one at a time, and you can put the conversation on ‘Do Not Disturb’ so you can read the thread when you want without being, well, disturbed.

A new option with messaging which I’m sure teenagers are just going to love is the new location services within the messaging app. It is of course just that – an option – to show others that your are messaging where you are ( and if you really are studying in the library with Rachel, why do you have your location option switched off? HUH? uh oh).

Other than that, we can see this addition promising to be very useful. You can show your location with individuals or everyone for an hour, until the end of the day, or indefinitely.

Finally, a small but lovely touch is the new ability to send multiple photos and videos at once through messaging. YAY Let’s bombard EVERYONE WITH SO MANY CAT PHOTOS AND PHOTOS OF THOSE SWEET MOUNTAINS WE SAW ON OUR VACATION!

Health

The new Health app gives you an easy-to-read dashboard of all of your health and fitness data (Think heart rate, calories burned, blood sugar, cholesterol etc) . This data can be collected ( if you choose) from 3rd party sources and apps such as Nike, Fitbit, FitnessPal, medical devices etc and shown here consolidated for you and others ( again, if you choose) to access. This can mean that your Doctor or fitness specialist can be notified when something is wrong, or if you’ve hit a certain metric or met a goal.

Apple has been working  with the Mayo Clinic working towards what they say will  ‘bridge the gap between patients, doctors, and health-tracking devices…with ‘the potential to revolutionize how the health industry works.’

With health in iOS 8 you can create an emergency card  with all of your vital medical information ( think blood type, allergies, medications) that’s accessible from your Lock screen.

Despite all of the focus on Apple’s health related initiative before WWDC, the company spent very little time going over the Health app. It is likely we’ll see an additional focus on Health in the coming months as it is likely to also integrate with Apple’s much-rumored wearable device, the iWatch.

SIRI

Siri gets several updates with the ability to be invoked hands-free with the phrase “Hey, Siri” along with Shazam song recognition, 22 new dictation languages, as well as streaming voice recognition to show you guys search results as you speak. In order to preserve battery life, Apple requires that the device be plugged into power for “Hey Siri” to work.

Notification Interaction

When a notification comes up on your phone, from Facebook, Skype, Messages,  Calendar – whatever- you will now be able to respond those notifications without leaving the app you’re already in. Hoo- RAH! Such a small thing, that will make it so incredibly less frustrating than before!

Email 

Now from your inbox, you can swipe to mark an email as read or flag it for follow-up. Jump between a draft email and an email in your inbox super easily, and when you get a reservation, flight confirmation or phone number in an email, a notification appears. Just tap to add an event to your calendar or a phone number to your contacts.

Safari in iPad

Just like above, you can now see all your tabs on your iPad, just like on your iPhone. You can see all your open web pages with tabs from the same site grouped together. There’s also a new Sidebar that slides out to reveal your bookmarks, Reading List, and Shared Links.

Home Button

From any screen, press the Home button twice to see the multitasking interface which now comes complete with a few friendly faces. These are the people you’ve recently talked to and if you swipe to the right — your favorite contacts as well. Just tap one to call, text, or start a FaceTime call.

New keyboards

QuickType is the new predictive text and something we’re sure will change the way we communicate. We can also see it being comedian’s late night fodder for sure, but until then – it’s a clever and useful feature of iOS 8.  As you use the new keyboard over time, it will learn the way you communicate, get to know your favorite phrases, and suggest options for the logical next word that adapts to the current context with the caveat that those words change, depending on who you are talking to. The iOS 8 predictive text engine is optimized for 14 countries.

Apple is also going to allow users to install third-party keyboards for the first time, which means keyboards like Swype can be used natively on the operating system.

Family Sharing

Family sharing is pretty cool. Up to six people in your family can share all kinds of things across their devices. This includes: calendar information and purchases from iTunes, iBooks, and the App Store, (with the ability to pay for family purchases with the same credit card and approve kids’ spending right from a parent’s device.) You will be able to automatically set up a family photo stream where you can share photos, videos, and comments. And everything stays up to date on everyone’s devices.

Family Sharing can automatically share your location with your family members and show you where they are. You can hide your location too… because that’s not suspicious or anything.

iCloud Drive 

You can safely store all your presentations, spreadsheets, PDFs, images, and any other kind of document in iCloud, access them and work on them live from your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, or PC.

Using iCloud Drive means you’ll always have access to the latest version of all your documents from any device.

What’s really cool is that now your apps will be able to share files, which means you can access and work on the same file across multiple apps. The example Apple gave is this: you can create a drawing in a sketching app, then open it in a paint app to color it in. Or create a chart in one app and place it in a slideshow using a presentation app. No more making copies or importing documents from one app to another. It’s a whole new level of collaboration between apps.

Cross platform interaction

Um, what? You can do what now? Yass. Now you can make and receive phone calls on all of your devices and your Mac as long as your iPhone running iOS 8 is on the same Wi-Fi network. Incoming calls show the caller’s name, number, and profile picture. Just click or swipe the notification to answer, ignore, or respond with a quick message. It all works with your existing iPhone number, so there’s nothing to set up.

AND

PERSONAL HOTSPOT WHAT. If you’re out of Wi-Fi range but your iPhone is close by, your iPad or Mac will now be able to connect to your phone’s new personal hotspot to surf the interwebs and all that cool internet type stuff.

 Swift

This is a new programming language that Apple has introduced, which for developers, is pretty dope. For the general population, it’s also pretty dope, but on a different level. What it comes down to for you guys – apps for iOS 8 will be better. Which we like.

Extras We’ve learnt about since the WWDC keynote !

iPads will gain the ability to take Panoramic photos like the iPhone, while the Camera will gain an instant burst mode, a timer mode, and separate controls for focus and exposure. iBooks will support an auto night mode and the ability to organize books by series, while notifications will include travel time.

A mysterious Tips app, which was first depicted in an early screenshot of iOS 8, is also mentioned, though it is unclear what this app will do. It is possible Tips will provide iOS users with information on lesser known iOS features, serving as a tutorial app for those who want to learn the ins and outs of their devices.

So there you go, guys, iOS 8. Overall we’re really quite impressed, and very much looking forward to it’s release in the Fall. Apple developers have access to iOS 8 and will be working on creating awesome apps for the update so we can use the operating system precisely how Apple planned. It will, of course, be free.

The only downfall of iOS 8 – Those of you who have an iPhone 4, it doesn’t appear as if iOS 8 will be compatible. . Soooo… you guys…. have you heard about the new iPhone 6 that’s coming?

Stay tuned for our comprehensive outline of OS X Yosemite – and let us know if you have any questions about iOS 8 and we’ll try and answer them as best we can!!

iPhone Tip Of The Day

Need to have access another language on your iDevice? We got you!

Go to Settings > General > Keyboard > Keyboards > Add New Keyboard. Choose your language of choice from the list.

When you see the keyboard again in an app, you will see one of your chosen keyboard layouts, plus a globe icon next to the space bar which enables you to switch between keyboards and languages.

Tap the Globe icon once to switch to the last used keyboard, continue tapping to access other keyboards, or tap and hold the icon to show all enabled keyboards. Nice!

iPhone Tip Of The Day!

Forgotten how to use the search function on your iPhone? Trying to find that weird app you kind of remember downloading but can’t quite lift the fog on where it is among your vast collection of ( all necessary btw) apps?

It happens to the best of us!

For owners of an iDevice that has iOS 7 and above, you can access  the Spotlight search function by dragging your finger downwards anywhere on any home screen page.

Spotlight search will now appear and you can search for apps, texts, or any other content that is ( or that you think is) on your device.

For owners of a device that hasn’t yet been updated to iOS 7, swipe left from the first home screen to access Spotlight.

For owners of a device that has iOS 8, please call us, cos we would love to know how that whole thing is going…

Image courtesy of iMore.com

iPhone Tip Of The Day!

Here at iPhone Antidote, our techies are often asked the question: What the hell is landscape mode good for apart from playing rad games?

In the Calendar app, the landscape mode gives you a much more detailed view of your schedule of events for the week. When you enter the app in portrait mode and see the monthly view, tilt your phone into landscape mode ( making sure the portrait orientation lock is off in the control center) and you will see a detailed display of your weekly schedule.

In the calculator app,  turning your phone onto landscape mode will allow you to use the scientific mode, you genius you. 

If you have an iPhone 4S or above, you can use the panorama feature in the Camera app in landscape mode to do a vertical panoramic photo- good for a beautiful starry night, views of/from tall places and dipping your toe into some abstract photography!

So there’s a few good reasons to start not totally ignoring the existence of landscape mode other than when you play games! And remember, if you guys have any questions about functionality on the iPhone, let us know and we’ll be SUPER EXCITED to help.

Images courtesy of Appleinsider.com