Notifications

Okay, I know the geek squad has been complaining about the way IOS does app notifications but I think Apple went too far in the wrong direction. They went from simple to too complex in my opinion. I had to go in and change the notification settings for over 30 apps this morning. Some to turn off (Who would want THAT app to blast you every time something happened?) and some to turn back on ( Why was OmniFocus suddenly silent?)

And I never want any app – except the actual phone and music app ( and games when I’m playing them; and maybe TomTom when I’m driving) to have sound alerts turned on!

App Syncing

I’m not using iCloud yet. I still use MobileMe for calendar and contacts ( mixed in with the Exchange server at work) and will until you can merge a nonMobileMe Apple ID with it. I want only one. But I want everything in both as they currently exist.. What I really want is automatic syncing between my iWork apps in iOS and OS X and that isn’t there yet. There’s still a disconnect.

App Failure

( Updated as I run into things… )

• Stanza, my favorite ePub reader broke in iOS 5 and since Amazon bought the company that made it I don’t ever expect an update from ePub “hating” Amazon. And iBooks isn’t really an adequate substitute for how I used Stanza (grabbing ePubs of web pages off the Internet for offline reading using dotEpub.). So I went looking for a replacement. MegaReader, which isn’t free, seems to be a reasonable substitute though I don’t quite have it set up to my satisfaction yet.
• Safari -
  • Tabs: okay, I’m not a huge fan of tabs in web browsers. But that’s just me being curmudgeonly ( and stay off of my lawn, Damn it!). I much preferred mobile Safari’s multi window method ( which the iPhone still uses.) but I can live with it. What I don’t like is losing the ability to scroll back to the top in Safari by touching the window border just below the search and location entry boxes. That’s now tab space. And that top of page gesture? Now it’s working only ABOVE the search box and 99% of the time I miss it and hit search. Whose idea was that? ( Oddly enough, it’s easier to do this on the iPhone.). It works best if you “aim” slightly into the window margin.
  • Bookmarks bar – the first entry is directly above the close icon for the first tab. It’s too easy to accidentally hit that instead of the link above it, grumble!
• Reminders – ( new ) ugh. Needs some integration with OmniFocus
• NewsStand – ( new ) Why can’t I put his in a folder to hide it away? I don’t want it!
• Cards – ( new ) Why is this only an iPhone app? Shouldn’t it be iPad’ed?
• iBooks – For some reason, a large number of my books in iBooks lost their illustrated covers during the transition. Ugh! Had to remove the books in question from my iPad, sync, and add them back (and the less said about the crappy iTunes interface for selecting individual books to add/remove from an iDevice the better!)

And sometime yesterday Apple released updates to iOS and OS X 10.7 (aka Lion)

Thanks to the other bazillion Apple fanatics, it took me all evening to down load the 2GB+ of updates for my iPad, iPhone, Lion and a few other things. Then came the actual update process, which I won’t detail here but it took more than an hour for the iDevices and 30 minutes for my MacBook. I did my iPad last. Plugged it in and went to bed ( yes, it was that late!). Finished tinkering with its settings when I got up 6 hours later.

Apparently, iTunes stores location information (in the form of time/date/coordinates for cell phone towers) from your iPhone or 3G iPad in an unencrypted format when it does a backup.

Go here for details and an OS X 10.6 app that you can use to throw this data onto a map.

I played with it. Slightly amusing. It’s only accurate to whatever the nearest cell phone tower is when the data is recorded. So, within 40 miles or so? ANd it can only read the most recent backup if you backup multiple cell capable devices (iPhone, iPad 3G, iPad 2/3G) to the same Mac. They provide the source so I’m sure someone will add the ability to select a specific backup.

I haven’t enable 3G on my iPad 2 yet, but due to a quirk in how I enabled it it shows up with location data from my original iPad. Of course, since I only enable 3G while traveling, and this only works with iOS 4 or later, that isn’t a whole lot of data.

On my iPhone, on the other hand, it has at least 6 months worth of data to map so you can see where I’ve been.

Advice of the day — concerned that someone might steal your iTunes pc/hub you backup your iDevices to and get a vague idea of your travels (remember – is not pinpoint accurate.)? Make sure you check that ‘encrypt backups’ in iTunes.

Of course, that will only briefly slow down any government agents who might want to know that data. All they have to do is get it from the phone companies since they keep that info for assorted reasons ( billing, government regulations, etc.) in even greater detail.

Of course, if you lose physical control of your iDevice, encrypting the backup won’t help.

iPad 2

And if you order the red leather cover, Apple donates money to (Product) Red to fight AIDS in Africa.

Yikes. I’m glad I ordered it so early in the morning ( 5:21AM ). When I did it was “Ships 3-5 days”. Now, 16 hours later – “Ships 2-3 weeks” !! Which seems to have driven a lot of people to actual stores. And long lines. And limited supplies. But not me. I can wait a week or so.

Now the search for a protective case. No matter what Apple thinks, the back IS going to scratch if uncovered.

Ordered a BookBack from DodoCase. We’ll see how it looks. ANd how long it takes to get here. Hopefully before the iPad shows up.