IPhone news, updates and Iphone information

I am an avid Google Mail user, and recently purchased an iPhone (how couldn't I, after seeing the SDK demo). I configured the iPhone Mail app to use my Google Map IMAP account. Works like a charm, but, a lot of times I want to send reminders home from the iPhone. Obviously I'd see those mail on the iPhone as well. Too much information. So here is what I did:

1. Set up a new Google Mail account -- username.iphone@gmail.com.
2. In my main Google Mail account (username@gmail.com), I set up a filter like so ... in the 'Doesn't have:' field, I listed subject: -iphone, OR, from: -username@gmail.com. On the next page, enable Forward it to: username.iphone@gmail.com.
3. On the iPhone, I created a new Mail account, but used the username.iphone@gmail.com as my main account. (I can still access the other gmail accounts through Google Mobile, just in case.)
4. On the iPhone, I changed the outgoing SMTP server to username@google.com. Th...

written by macosxhints iPhone Tips

I was really sick of POP GMail and the iPhone not just working. I found several types of hints online, and none would really work for my situation. I use POP on GMail so that I can get mail on my Mac and leave a copy on GMail's server for archive and search purposes, which I do endlessly. The subtle implication here is that I have about 2,500 messsages in there.

So I set up the iPhone and was all excited when it just took my accounts from iTunes and set them up. But I noticed one thing: even if I had Recent on, for some reason, my Mac and my iPhone would race to download a message and if one got it, sometimes the other did, and sometimes it didn't. I confirmed this to happen to other people via many furious and frazzled searches waaaay past my bedtime.

Another thing I found was that I'm not a super great typer on the iPhone yet, and there were some messages I'd want to read on the iPhone but respond to on my Mac. In short, for a lot of reasons, it wouldn't...

written by macosxhints iPhone Tips

You probably know already that you can hold down a key on the iPhone keyboard to select international versions of a character (eg. Accented characters) I have just found that this also works for the .com button on the Safari version of the keyboard.

Hold down the .com button, and you will be able to quickly select the regional domain suffix for whatever international language keyboard you are using. Eg .co.uk for the UK keyboard, .de for German, etc.

written by macosxhints iPhone Tips

You can simulate the 'pinch to zoom' gesture of the iPhone in Apple's Aspen Simulator by holding down the Option key while clicking the mouse in the area you wish to pinch. This brings up a pair of dots that represent your fingertips.

written by macosxhints iPhone Tips

When you are zoomed in to read, for example, a column of text in Safari on the iPhone and iPod Touch, it can sometimes be hard to scroll in a straight line without accidently scrolling left and right. I found this quite frustrating until I changed the way I was scrolling.

The important thing is the direction you start dragging in when you scroll. If you move only vertically then the scroll becomes vertically locked and will not scroll on the horizontal axis until you next lift your finger. Conversely, starting a horizontal drag locks scrolling horizontally. The problem is that it's too easy to start off on a diagonal and drag the column you're reading sideways.

If you scroll by running your thumb along the very edges of the screen then you can always be sure you're moving in a straight line and you won't suffer this anymore. This has the added benefit of keeping your view of the screen uninhibited since your thumb can be practically off the display entirely. ...

written by macosxhints iPhone Tips

I have been continually annoyed with the way that iPhoto would start whenever I plugged my iPhone into my computer. The only pictures I take with my iPhone are to help me find my space in a parking lot, or so I can reassemble something I am taking apart. I do not want to archive these pictures. However, I do still want to use iPhoto to take the pictures off my digital camera. My previous solution was to set Image Capture to disable launching iPhoto in every case of camera attachment, and then manually launching iPhoto when necessary.

Luckily, Sam Stephenson at 37signals provided me with a solution that will launch iPhoto when a camera is attached, but not when my iPhone is attached. Sam realized that within the preference pane of Image Capture, an arbitrary application can be set to launch whenever a camera is connected. This solution utilizes the shell command ...

written by macosxhints iPhone Tips

I have never tried using the passwd command on my jailbroken 1.1.3 iPhone, since everyone warns of its use. However, I don't like having the default root password that everyone in the world knows, so I wanted to figure out a way to change it. It's pretty easy actually. On a Mac or Unix/Linux, the openssl command will do what you need like this:

openssl passwd -crypt -salt /s myNewPasswd

The password can only be eight characters long; anything longer will be truncated. I don't know if the salt has to stay the same or not, but to be safe, I just used the same salt as the original password. I doubt this makes any difference, though.

I ssh'd to the iPhone, and ran cat /etc/master.passwd, then copied that output to BBEdit (or other text editor). Then I replaced the passwd section (in between the first two colons) with my new hash for both root and mobile users. Finally, I copied the whole thing, swit...

written by macosxhints iPhone Tips

If you want to see something in slow motion -- either on YouTube or your videos in the iPod section of the iPhone -- here is something for you. Make sure your video is paused, then just tap and hold rewind or fast forward, and your video will begin to play in slow motion.

[robg adds: I could make this work for the forward direction on my 1.1.3 iPhone, but not backwards. This slow motion feature isn't noted in the iPhone User Guide anywhere that I could find. By the way, Apple updates the iPhone User Guide somewhat regularly; the third revision was released at the end of January. As an interesting aside, it seems Apple optimized this latest version; it's about 4MB, versus 10MB for the first version -- and it's actually longer and has at least as many images as the first one.]

written by macosxhints iPhone Tips

I found that attachments fail to download once the iPhone's scratch disk is full. So when you fail to receive a critical voicemail or document, just reboot -- rebooting the iPhone clears the cache (I think it's 500MB in size?).

written by macosxhints iPhone Tips

I thought something was wrong with my brand new iPhone. I went into the Podcasts section and played a video podcast I had subscribed to. I was dismayed to see a still image from the video while the audio played along merrily.

It turns out that you get audio only if you access a video podcast through the Podcast section. If you access it through the Video section, though, you get both audio and video. The Apple rep I spoke to said this is to conserve battery life if you don't actually need to watch the video while you're exercising. I'm glad to know my iPhone isn't broken. Now I just have to figure out what this "exercise" thing he mentioned is all about.

written by macosxhints iPhone Tips