Test Driving iOS 9

August 6, 2015 | 1 comment

Update: Almost the moment I pushed the post button Apple released beta 3 of iOS9 so I have added some things to reflect that.

So a few weeks ago I took the plunge and installed iOS9 on my iPhone, despite the dire warnings that accompanied the beta and I wanted to put down my thoughts.

Firstly iOS9 isn’t a radical departure from iOS8, in fact it feels more like a point update rather than a full update. That’s not to say that there aren’t some nice features that are included, which I will briefly cover below.

The first thing that … Read the rest

Adding New Fonts to iOS for use in Word, Drafts and other Apps

January 6, 2015 | Comment

I have long loved the font that is used in iA’s Writer app but while I love the app I really wanted to be able to use the font elsewhere and particularly in Drafts.

After a bit of searching it was clear that the font used in Writer wasn’t available but there was a free alternative as part of Google Fonts called Cousine. The rest of this post will show you how you can get this font onto your iOS device. Firstly download the font package from the Google site.

You will need a copy of a font … Read the rest

iOS 8 Keyboard Issues

October 7, 2014 | Comment

iOS8’s introduction of custom keyboards is one of my favourite features but like so much in this release it is very buggy. I’m not sure if the issues are with iOS or the keyboards or a combination of both but they are frequent.

Some of the issues I have encountered are:

1. keyboards not appearing
2. no words appearing when I type
3. no button to change the keyboard appearing (and not just in passowrd fields)
4. keyboards appearing all over the place (see below)

I’m sure that all this is fixable but right now I would describe the custom … Read the rest

Creating Good Looking Product Shots on Devices

July 4, 2014 | Comment

A while back I wrote about what I described as “One of the most amazing websites” I had seen and it was great. Placeit allows you to create screen mockups by uploading a screenshot that is then rendered into a chosen device. Unfortunately when I went back recently the prices had sky rocketed. To download even the most basic image now costs $8 a pop and a “casual” plan is $29 a month. For someone that uses the service about once a year that was prohibitively expensive.

I should state at this point that I have absolutely no issue with … Read the rest

A Reason for Inbox Zero

March 24, 2014 | Comment

I was amused to see the following description on the list of updates for iOS 7.1. If you get to “greater than 10,000” unread emails you really need to consider Inbox Zero!

… Read the rest

Textever Pro – a Quick and Beautiful Editor for Evernote on iOS

December 10, 2013 | Comment

Evernote is great but on iOS it is just too slow to start up when you want to add a quick text note which is a real disincentive to using it on the go. To get round this I have been using Squarespace Note on my iPhone as this is quick to start and has Evernote integration. This has worked well but I have lost notes a few time when I have been offline, which was frustrating.

Enter Textever Pro a well designed iOS app that was built specifically for this use case: getting text notes quickly into Evernote. One … Read the rest

But what if I don’t want to upgrade?

September 19, 2012 | Comment

So at 6pm this evening iOS 6 went live and no doubt plenty of people raced to upgrade. Not me though as I had already decided that there wasn’t anything in it for me. Flyover view in the new Maps app would be fine if I have a helicopter but I am at ground level and find street view useful so Google Maps is a must. Also I have Siri switched off so there is no need to upgrade for that. So all in all there’s not much there for me.

I went to update my apps this evening and … Read the rest

Google Chrome on iOS

June 29, 2012 | 3 comments

So my favourite browser has finally made it on to my favourite mobile operating system as last night Google Chrome for iOS was released.

I have downloaded it onto both my iPad and iPhone and I’ve been immediately impressed with just how much it looks like its desktop siblings, which shouldn’t be a great surprise, especially on the iPad.

There are a number of great things that have been brought over from the dekstop versions including the omnibar that allows you to enter either a web address or a search term and Chrome is intelligent enough to work out what … Read the rest

The One Thing I Want From iOS 6

June 9, 2012 | 2 comments

So Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference begins on Monday and as ever the blogsphere is all aglow with just exactly what will be announced. So far this seems to include a refresh of every MacBook and iMac model, iOS 6 and, of course, the long awaited TV which just has to be called iTV. Most of that leaves me cold for now but given I have both an iPhone and an iPad any improvements that are made to the operating system are going to have a pretty direct impact on me.

Lots of other blogs have been drawing up long … Read the rest