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iPhone Tips: iTunes

Cory Bohon — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 03:22:17 -0500

Make your music library and iPhone sing together.

Sync a Large Library to a Smaller iPhone with Smart Playlists

Even casual music fans can outgrow the 8GB or 16GB of storage on the iPhone. When your total music library is bigger than the phone, take advantage of smart playlists to sync selected songs.

In iTunes, go to File > New Smart Playlist. Un-check the “Match the following rule” checkbox and check the “Limit to” check box. Type in the storage capacity to devote to music in Gigabytes (GB), and select GB from the next drop-down menu. Keep this value small enough to fit alongside your email and apps, too. By default iTunes will select music randomly. However, you can change the way iTunes selects the music by clicking on the last drop-down box and choosing a “selected by” method.

We like to sort by recently added songs, so we don’t miss out on guilty, pop pleasures. Lastly, check the “Live updating” box to make sure your smart playlist is always up-to-date. With the iPhone connected, click its name, and pick the Music tab to manage synced playlists. You can even make a few smaller smart playlists for a favorite band, music genre, or other situation.

Manually Manage iTunes Media

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If dragging and dropping those one-hit pop wonders to your iPod is your thing, then why not manually manage your media on your iPhone? Manually manage your music and videos to simply drag what you want onto your iPhone, and delete what you don’t want. iTunes will no longer automatically sync media to your iPhone, leaving you in complete control.

To turn on manual management, click on your iPhone in the Devices list in iTunes and select the Summary tab. Once there, select “Manually manage music and videos,” and click the Apply button the bottom right corner of iTunes. To add media to your iPhone, drag music, videos, and podcasts from the Library (or playlist) onto the iPhone in the Devices list, then click the Sync button.

Re-Download Applications from the App Store

If you accidentally delete a paid download from your Applications folder in iTunes, you don’t need to re-purchase the software from the App Store. All you need to do is revisit the application download page and click Buy App (or Get App if it’s free). iTunes will let you know that you have already purchased the application and that you can re-download it for free. Choose OK, and your application will be downloaded to your Applications folder inside of iTunes.

Replace iPhone Data with a Good iTunes Copy

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If information stored on your iPhone—mail account settings, contacts, calendars— gets corrupted, you can easily delete and replace the information through iTunes. To do this, plug in your iPhone, and wait until iTunes recognizes it. Click on your phone from the Devices list in iTunes, and then click on the Info tab. Scroll to the bottom, and click Advanced. Browse the options to “Replace information on this iPhone.” (If an item isn’t available, then you haven’t set your iPhone to sync that item.) Select what you’d like to replace, and re-sync your phone.

Stop iTunes from launching when you connect your iPhone

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Are you annoyed by iTunes launching when you only plugged in your iPhone to charge it? Disable this auto-start in iTunes. In that application, select your device, and click the Summary tab. In the options section, un-check the box labeled “Automatically sync when this iPhone is connected,” and click Apply in the bottom right corner of iTunes.

Check out our other iPhone University subjects:
Fine Photos - Shoot—or at least end up with—snappier pictures with the built in camera
Email Expertise - Manage, send, and receive messages easier than ever
Instant Interface - Learn input secrets for any situation.
Troubleshooting - If your iPhone acts up, here's how to take action.
Safari - Explore the Web broswer like an expert.

iPhone Tips: Safari

Chris McVeigh — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 20:36:14 -0500

Explore the Web broswer like an expert.

Jump to the Top

Chances are that you've found yourself at the bottom of a very long web page, thinking that the only way to get back the address bar is to scroll, scroll, scroll your way to the top. Not so! Quickly jump to the top of any page simply by tapping the time.

Clear the History

Safari for the iPhone—like its desktop counterpart—will keep track of the most recent sites you've visited. However, if you're concerned about privacy, you may want to clear out the history regularly. Tap the bookmarks icon at the bottom of the page and, if necessary, return to the topmost level. At the very top you'll see the History. Tap it once to enter the folder, and then, in the bottom left, tap Clear.

Google or Yahoo?

Safari's standard search engine is Google, but if you prefer, you can change it to Yahoo. Close Safari, and tap Settings. Select Safari, and then tap Search Engine. To make the switch, simply tap Yahoo. The next time you use Safari, tapping the magnifying glass will let you start a Yahoo search.

Managing Bookmarks

It's essential to sort your bookmarks into folders; otherwise, you'll find yourself endlessly scrolling through a long list of links each time you look for a bookmark. Within Safari, tap the bookmarks icon at the bottom of the page. Now hit Edit, and then tap New Folder. Give the folder an appropriate name, such as “News Websites,” and then tap Bookmarks to choose a location for the folder. You can create as many folders as you want, and don't be afraid to nest folders in other folders.

Once you've added all your folders, you can begin sorting your bookmarks. Tap Edit (if necessary) and then tap a bookmark. A detail page with two distinct sections will slide into view. The first section lets you rename the bookmark, allowing you to edit long page names on certain websites. The second section lets you file the bookmark into one of the folders you've created—simply tap Bookmarks, and choose an appropriate folder.

Foil Auto-Rotate for Horizontal Reading

We’ll admit to curling up with an iPhone to read Safari in bed, but the screen rotation doesn’t match our view when lying sideways. (Try it now if you don’t believe us.) To keep the auto-rotating screen from twisting too much, orient the Home button up. The screen will stop twisting, leaving the widescreen view readable.

Check out our other iPhone University subjects:
Fine Photos - Shoot—or at least end up with—snappier pictures with the built in camera
Email Expertise - Manage, send, and receive messages easier than ever
Instant Interface - Learn input secrets for any situation.
Troubleshooting - If your iPhone acts up, here's how to take action.
iTunes - Make your music library and iPhone sing together.

iPhone Tips: Troubleshooting

Kevin Kelly — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 03:06:00 -0500

If your iPhone acts up, here's how to take action.

Force Quit Frozen Apps

The iPhone is a very impressive piece of technology, but it can run into speedbumps from time to time. If you’re in an application that has become unresponsive or freezes, try to Force Quit, just like you would on a computer. Hold down the Home button in the iPhone face for six seconds, and it should quit the program and take you back to the Home screen.

Reset a Crashed iPhone

If a frozen iPhone won’t respond to a Force Quit, don’t panic; reset it to put it back in shape. Hold down the Home button on the face and the Sleep/Wake button on the top-right of the iPhone for ten seconds, and release them. The screen will go black, and then the Apple logo will appear as the phone boots back up again. If the phone turns off without restarting, hold only the Sleep/Wake button to force it on again.

Install New Copies of Troublesome Apps

With all of the new Applications in the App Store on iTunes appearing every day, buggy software can sometimes slip through. If you find that one particular piece of software continues to cause problems, try downloading it again through iTunes. This does a clean install on your iPhone and will often fix problems. The good news is, you won’t have to pay a second time for anything you’ve already downloaded. Just download as before, and when the screen comes up asking if you want to download the item again for free, hit OK. Sync the iPhone after completing the download.

Restore When All Else Fails

If the iPhone has a catastrophic failure and won’t respond to other troubleshooting attempts, restore it through iTunes. Connect your iPhone to your computer, and when your iPhone appears in the sidebar, right-click (PCs) or Control-click (Macs) on the device, and select “Restore from backup.”

iTunes normally backs up the phone when you sync, so you should have a recent version of everything. (You can manually back up using the same Control- or right-click menu.) Additionally, iTunes might give you the option to back it up now before continuing. Click Back Up. Depending on the amount of data on the phone, the process might take about a half-hour. Afterwards, iTunes will restore the phone with Apple’s latest firmware. Including the automatic firmware download, if needed, the restore can take an hour or more.

When complete, iTunes will give you the option to restore your data from a backup. Pick the most recent option, or if you’ve already tried a restore and the phone still had problems, reach back to an earlier state. It can take another half-hour or more to transfer all of your data back to the phone, but when complete, your old friend will be back to normal.

Enter DFU Mode for a Complete Restore

If other recovery techniques still don’t work to fix a glitchy phone—especially if you can’t even get far enough to activate a regular restore—use Device Firmware Upgrade mode to completely start over. Attach the phone to your computer, and hold down the Home button and the Sleep/Wake key like you do in a reset. However, when the iPhone’s screen goes black, hold them an extra two seconds, and then release the Sleep/Wake key, but keep holding down the Home button for ten seconds. The phone will appear in iTunes as a blank slate without applications, music, contacts, or any data. Restore the phone as you would otherwise.

Check out our other iPhone University subjects:
Fine Photos - Shoot—or at least end up with—snappier pictures with the built in camera
Email Expertise - Manage, send, and receive messages easier than ever
Instant Interface - Learn input secrets for any situation.
iTunes - Make your music library and iPhone sing together.

iPhone Tips: Instant Interface

Kevin Kelly — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 18:19:37 -0500

Learn input secrets for any situation.

Keep a Bookmark on the Home Screen

If you frequently visit a website, add its bookmark directly from the Home screen. Go to the page in Safari, and tap the + symbol at the bottom of the screen. Select Add to Home Screen. Rename it if you want, but keep the title short to fit next to the other icons.

Save a Picture to Your Library

If you find a cool Image in Safari or the Mail application, just hold your finger on it for a moment to save it to the Photo Library. A menu will pop up. Select Save Image, and it’ll join the other pictures you took. You can even turn it into the wallpaper. Open Photos > Camera Roll, select the image, and tap the button in the lower-left corner.

Home Button Shortcut

The circular Home button on the face of the iPhone has a hidden secret; double-click to activate a command other than a trip to the Home screen. Go to Settings > General > Home Button. Set it to open your favorite phone contacts or the iPod app. If you leave iPod Controls active, the double-click even opens basic play and adjustment tools when the phone is locked. There’s no place like Home.

Set the iPhone to Turn Off After You Fall Asleep

While the iPhone has replaced plenty of watches—just whip it out and hit the Home button to see the time—it can do a lot more. Within the Clock application, you’ll find World Clock, Alarm, Stopwatch, and Timer features. And the Timer can set the iPod to sleep, instead of sounding a chime. Tap When Timer Ends, then scroll to the top for the sleep option. It’s perfect for listening to music when you hit the hay.

Swap Between Letters and Punctuation

Tap the spacebar twice to automatically enter a period, end a sentence, and capitalize the following word, but reach for the punctuation keypad in the lower-left for other marks. You have two ways to quickly return to the letters. Tap Space to go back to the alphabet. Or initially hold your finger on the punctuation button, slide to the character you want, and let go.

Automate the Apostrophe

Some contractions look like words to the iPhone dictionary, so while it’ll automatically add an apostrophe if you type “wont,” it won’t for “were,” “well,” or “hell.” Make the typing corrector add that punctuation back in by including an extra letter, such as “welll,” “helll,” and “weree.”

Activate Hidden Secondary Keys

The .com button speeds up entering Safari URLs, but you can instantly add other top-level domains by just holding the button for a moment. In Mail, hold the period key for the same result. And hold certain, other keys to activate accent commands that are useful, especially in non-English languages: “?,” “!,” “A,” “E,” “I,” “O,” “U,” “C,” “L,” “N,” “S,” and “Z.”

Snap Screenshots

If your iPhone is up-to-date, you can capture an image of anything on-screen. Just hold the Sleep/Wake button for a moment while you press and release the Home button. Your screen will flash white, and the photo will be saved in your Camera Roll in the Photos application.

Shuffle Up Your Icons

Move icons around to create a new order. Simply hold your finger down on one for about two seconds, until they all start to wiggle. You can drag them around to whatever location you’d like, replace the icons that are in the dock, or tap the X to uninstall an app. To stop the wiggling and lock things in place, just press the Home button.

Extra Home Screens To The Rescue

Once you start adding application and bookmarking your favorite sites onto the home screen, you’re going to run out of room on your main Home screen. So what’s the solution? Just add more!

Hold down your finger on an icon to put the icons into the shuffle/wiggle dance, and then drag one off to the right side of the screen. The phone will create a new empty screen, and you can fill it up with whatever you want. If you look at the bottom of the screen as well, you’ll see a few dots, depending on how many Home pages you’ve created, up to nine total. Whichever one is bright white represents the screen you’re currently on. Drag all the stock applications you never use off to your last screen, that way they won’t get in the way.

We Have Contacts

The Contacts application hides lots of secret fields to store much more information than names, addresses, and phone numbers. When entering information, tap the name of the field to pull up many new choices. For example, tap mobile to choose from many other phone lines. But if that’ snot enough, scroll further down, and press Add Custom Label. When creating a contact, you can even tap Add Field at the bottom to create an entry for birthdays, job titles, and more.

Double-Tap to Zoom

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The iPhone screen doesn’t just respond to single taps. It likes double taps as well, and it can come in handy as a time-saver. If you’re using Safari, you can double-tap to zoom in on a block of text or a photo, and then double tap again to back out to the full page-view. Viewing a photo? Double tap will zoom you in to the center of the photo, and you can double top again to zoom back out. Plus, in the Maps application, double-tapping will zoom and center the view towards wherever you’re tapping, however if you tap with two fingers, it will zoom you back out. It’s much easier than pinching.

Check out our other iPhone University subjects:
Fine Photos - Shoot—or at least end up with—snappier pictures with the built in camera
Email Expertise - Manage, send, and receive messages easier than ever
iTunes - Make your music library and iPhone sing together.
Troubleshooting - If your iPhone acts up, here's how to take action.

iPhone Tips: Email Expertise

Cory Bohon — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 21:09:25 -0500

Manage, send, and receive messages easier than ever.

Send email from any account

Normally when you create an email on your iPhone, you have to be in the account inbox you want the message to be sent from. This can be frustrating and difficult to send emails if you manage multiple email accounts using your iPhone, such as Gmail and MobileMe. However, if you tap on the “CC/Bcc, From:” line in a new message and additionally tap on the “From” field, you will be able to select the account from which the email will be sent.

Move and Delete Multiple Messages

Are you tired of swiping from left to right to delete items from your email folders? Well, there’s an easier way and it involves tapping on the Edit button in the top right corner of the Mail window. Once in edit view, you will be able to tap to the left of each message you want to either move or delete. When you are done selecting the messages, tap either the move or delete button at the bottom of the Mail window. If you tap delete, your message will be moved to the trash. If you tap move, you will be prompted to select another folder location to move the items.

Change Your Default Mail Account

Normally, email accounts are specified as default when you first add them. The default address automatically sends mail when you tap an email link in a webpage or another application. However, you can change this default even after the initial setup. Open Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Default Account. From this preference, select the Mail account you wish to be the default.

Disable—Don’t Delete—an Email Account

Sometimes you might not want to receive emails from a specific email account (perhaps you get spam at that account), but you want the account settings to remain on the iPhone in case you ever want to receive an important email. Well, all you have to do is navigate to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars. Select the email account you want to disable from the Accounts group at the top. Once you’re in a specific account’s settings, move the Account on/off switch to the “off” position. This will remove the account from Mail, but keep the settings intact. That way, if you need to temporarily check for mail, just turn it back on.

Conserve Battery by Changing Retrieval Frequency

Depending on your email host compatibility, “push” sends new messages to your phone instantly. But this constant connection can burn through the iPhone battery. Fetch mail on a timed interval, or manually look for messages to conserve power.

From the Settings main menu, tap Fetch New Data. From this menu, you can use the switch at the top of the window to toggle push support. You can also change the universal settings to Fetch data using the intervals buttons: every 15-, 30-, 60-minutes, or manually. The Advanced button lets you tune multiple accounts differently. Your batteries will last the longest if you choose manual retrival, but you’ll have to open Mail in order to check for new messages, instead of listening for the Pavlovian bell.

Check out our other iPhone University subjects:
Instant Interface - Learn input secrets for any situation.
Fine Photos - Shoot—or at least end up with—snappier pictures with the built in camera.
iTunes - Make your music library and iPhone sing together.

iPhone Tips: Fine Photos

Jason Whong — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 19:25:51 -0500

Shoot—or at least end up with—snappier pictures with the built in camera.

Fill the Frame

Devote a reasonable percentage of the frame to your subject. The iPhone’s camera captures images at 1,600x1,200 pixels. That’s big enough for photos intended for the screen, but just at the threshold for a good 4x6 print. If you decide to crop out part of the photo later, you’ll lose resolution when printing at the same size. Fill the frame to make the most of the pixels you intend to keep.

Zoom with Your Feet

If you can’t get your subject to come closer to you, move closer to your subject. Since the iPhone is so thin, there’s no place to store a zoom lens like on a stand-alone cameras. Zoom with your feet, if necessary. Carl Zeiss has nothing on Chuck Taylor.

Shoot in Well-Lit Areas

Make sure your subject has enough light. With no on-iPhone flash, the camera’s sensor has to work a lot harder to take photos, resulting in noise—multicolored dot patters—filling the image. That doesn’t mean you can’t create good low-light, artistic photos with the iPhone. It just means that if you’re indoors and try to shoot a photo of your friend, you should either look for ways to light your friend’s face, or go outdoors during the day.

If it’s sunny out, try standing with the sun to your back, so more light hits your subject. You may have to tap Settings > Brightness and crank it all the way up to see the viewfinder in the sunlight.

Properly Expose Photos

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The iPhone compensates for low light by making the image sensor work harder, leaving the virtual shutter open longer. This extra time lets in more light, but can also cause moving subjects to blur. When taking a photo indoors, hold the camera as still as possible, and tell your subject to make like a statue.

When a light source is in the photo, the iPhone sets its exposure for a brighter scene. This can cause problems indoors when your subject is backlit by a window on a sunny day; the iPhone will expose for the window, making your subject a mere silhouette. Get closer to the subject to compensate.

Keep the Lens Clean

That cleaning cloth that you use on the glass face of the iPhone also works on the lens. Use it once in a while to prevent photos from appearing unnecessarily cloudy.

Check out our other iPhone University subjects:
Instant Interface - Learn input secrets for any situation.
Email Expertise - Manage, send, and receive messages easier than ever
iTunes - Make your music library and iPhone sing together.
Troubleshooting - If your iPhone acts up, here's how to take action.