iPhone4idiots

Took a trip to Ponte Vedra beach for Spring Break and the highlight of trip for the 7 year old was finding a shark tooth? Even more surprising to me is a report that more Americans read ebooks on computers than eReaders, tablets or phones? If true, that just shows how tablets are still in their infancy. They surely are the way people will read most everything within a decade. While I was gone there were more rumors about the 7 inch iPad. Not happening in 2012 and likely never will. While I’m dispelling rumors, don’t believe the iPhone 5 is coming in June. Supposedly, a FoxConn employee leaked this information. I’d trust my tarot card reading more than that source. Since no one is asking my thoughts on Google’s Project Glass. Seems like the future, but way too ambitious at this point. It has huge fail written all over it. I think I prefer The Masters app to the March Madness one. Just seems to run smoother. Enjoy the weekend.

My five year old teaches me things all the time. Yesterday it was the VoiceOver feature of the iPhone, iPad or iPod. VoiceOver is a feature mainly for those with visual impairments as it allows the device to speak the names of onscreen menus and other items to the user. While this is a vital feature for some, it can drive you nuts the first time you encounter it. I’m not sure how but he turned it on. To do so goto Settings>General>Accessibility and toggle VoiceOver on. When you do this you are given the warning, “VoiceOver changes the gestures used to control iPhone. Are you sure you want to continue?” Apparently, my five year old tapped yes and a few minutes later came to me wondering why his iPod didn’t “work” anymore. I knew what he had done but it took me 15 minutes and a Google search to figure out how to turn it off. Continue Reading…

It appears AT&T finally has a coherent policy on data throttling. Their stated policy of throttling unlimted data plan users at 3GB has finally been implemented. Well, at least for me. In past posts I showed how I was going as high as 10GB and still not getting any message from AT&T. Yesterday, I got the text displayed here and as you can see in speedtest results below I have certainly been throttled. This happened exactly when I went over 3GB. For once AT&T is on it. So now the question is whether or not to stick with AT&T? Continue Reading…

It’s hard not to laugh at all the articles that pop up after a new iOS product launches claiming a fatal flaw. Antennagate with the iPhone 4 is to blame I guess. Anyway, there have been a few complaints making the rounds on blogs regarding the new iPad. First is TooHotGate. The new iPad has a bigger battery (about 70% bigger than the iPad 2) so if it runs for awhile it gets hotter than the iPad 2 which has a smaller battery. This is common sense. Those claiming it is too hot to hold and can burn someone are crazy. Not to say Apple won’t get hit with a product liability lawsuit. I’m pretty sure they will. I can see it now. Some guy fell asleep watching TV with the iPad in his lap and when he woke up his pants were on fire. It’s only like 5 degrees more and certainly is less hot than my old Macbook Pro. Thank God for aluminum backing. BTW, in winter I find a warm iPad in my lap better than a blanket. It’s not a problem. As pathetic as TooHotGate sounds there are other big ones even more ludacris. Continue Reading…

iPhoto is an awesome $4.99 app for your iPad. It only comes for iOS 5.1, but you can see how to install it on 5.0.1 here. Editing your camera roll on the new iPad is a delight. Pictures look great. Rotation and cropping are likely the two features you’ll use most, but making journals is great for a lot of the mom’s out there. Here’s my full review.

Good news on those wanting an untethered jailbreak for the new iPad 3. It won’t take nearly as long as the iPad 2. @i0n1c @chpwn @phoenixdev all showed pictures and/or video of a jailbroken new iPad 3 (5.1 firmware). It still might be over a month before there is a public release, but with progress made by so many and even using different methods I’m betting it isn’t much more than a month. Heck, Geohot could get back into the game as well. You never know.

OK, first off I still say you look ridiculous using your iPad to take photos or film video. There are cases where it makes sense, but for the most part the iPad camera is silly (I’ll use my iPhone). The new iPad 3 has the same VGA front camera as the iPad 2. This is mainly used for FaceTime. They bumped the rear camera upto 5 megapixels and gave it the name iSight camera. Now the video quality compared to the iPad 2 is shockingly better. Why this has me excited is the iPhone 5 will surely have not only LTE support but the iSight camera with I’ll say ten megapixels. I’m never buying another digital camera again. One tip when filming hold your iPad in landscape viewing position. The clip will import into iMovie in better dimensions for editing.

Today Apple said it will initiate a regular quarterly dividend of $2.65 a share in July and will buy back up to $10 billion of its stock starting in fiscal 2013. This will use about $45 billion of their approximate $100 billion in cash. This is a horrible idea. First, as @tapbot_paul smartly stated, “when I hear dividend I think of my taxes going up due to the extra income and the stock I own going down.” More importantly, Steve Jobs would never have let this happen. He was too smart and could tell everybody else no. Tim is just doing what the board wants. The stock just opened at $595. Any day traders should short here with a stop loss at $603.

Yes, I’m calling it the iPad 3 for now as that makes the most sense. I’d love to do an LTE speedtest, but as you know I continue to say wifi only iPad is the way to go. Second, I’m not sure Verizon or AT&T has their LTE network up and running in Nashville yet. So i picked up a new 16GB iPad at Walmart last night. When asked for color I said, “surprise me” and ended up with black. As expected, the biggest difference without question is the retina display. It’s a big difference. Like put a iPhone 3S next to an iPhone 4. I also like Siri dictation and the video camera quality is better than the iPad 2 for sure even though I still feel like a moron using it that way. Watch this 30 second video comparing the video quality of the rear camera of the iPad 3 vs. iPad 2. It is almost shockingly noticeable. Then click continue reading to see the main differences and why you should buy the iPad 3. Continue Reading…

iPhoto is a really cool app that I’ll review in a post shortly. While you can only download it if you are on 5.1 firmware, there is a simple work around to install it on a 5.0.1. It’s working great on my iPhone 4 and iPad 2. Here are the steps which I show in the video.
To install iPhoto on your jailbroken 5.0.1 iPhone 4 or iPad 2
1) Open iFile and goto System-Library-CoreServices and tap on SystemVersion.plist. Tap Property List Viewer and then change ProductVersion from 5.1 to 5.0.1. Respring.
2) Download iPhoto from Installous. You can get it from the App Store ($4.99) but I recommend against it. There are many reports of people having problems doing this. Use Installous.
3) Go back into iFile and change back to iOS 5.0.1 and respring again. Don’t skip this step. If you do iTunes and Cydia will remove any apps not compatible with 5.1 which it thinks you are on.
4) Open Cydia and install iPhoto501Fix package from BigBoss. That’s it. Works for iPhone 4 and iPad 2 on 5.0.1 jailbroken with Absinthe for sure.