Redmond Pie » iPhone

How To Copy All iOS 5 Photo Stream Images Automatically To A Folder On OS X Instead Of iPhoto

Paul Morris — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:33:59 +0000

The public release of iOS 5 in October 2011 brought a number of new and exciting features for the average consumer as well as iOS developers. A number of these new features are well documented and are heavily featured whenever iOS 5 or the iPhone 4S are mentioned and include things like the Siri, iCloud integration and the new Notification Center. iCloud is more often that not, referred to as a feature in its own right, which is generally not a problem, but it is worth noting that iCloud is effectively a wrapper for a number of new additions to the iOS platform.

You can think of iCloud as a technology which stores your music, documents and images and then has the ability to ‘push’ all of that stored content to any of your compatible devices. The process is automatic, seamless and effortless just as any cloud service should be. Contained within the iCloud service is ‘Photo Stream’ which basically offers cloud storage for all photographs taken on the device. When activated, Photo Stream automatically uploads all photographs taken on the device camera and automatically pushes it to other iCloud-enabled devices without the need for manual synchronization or any leg work on the users part.

The Photo Stream service is undoubtedly a great way for all users to keep photographs in sync between multiple mobile devices and computers, but to use on an iMac or MacBook; it requires you to have the newest and updated version of the iPhoto software installed. Some Mac users, including myself, are not the biggest fans of using iPhoto, so the ability to update without the need for this software would be the perfect solution.

A member of the Macworld forum, known as DJF3 has come up with a clever way of using the Apple Script language to automate the process which negates the need for iPhoto to be used at all. The process involves creating a tiny little script using Apple Script which is a handy scripting language created by Apple and made popular due to the fact that it generally follows normal speech conventions. To set the script up, you will need to open the Apple Script editor by going to ‘Applications >> Utilities‘ and paste, or type in the following code:

Make sure that before you save and exit the script, you change the target path folder ‘Macintosh HD:Users:user:Pictures:MyStream‘ to the folder on your hard drive where you want the images to be stored. Once you have changed the code to your specific requirements, click run in Automator and the script will work its magic by copying all of your Photo Stream images to the targeted folder on your Mac. The Script is a very handy little way to bypass the official method of storing your Photo Stream images to a folder should you not like using iPhoto.

(via lifehacker)

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Use The Power Of Siri To Quickly View Your Twitter Timeline With TweetLine Tweak For iPhone

Paul Morris — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:47:45 +0000

When iOS 5 was first introduced to the world for public consumption in October 2011, it was immediately evident that it contained a number of highly useful features which would quickly become the focus of the jailbreaking development community. The introduction of Notification Center was seen as a huge, much needed feature addition to iOS, but also provided an entirely new entity for developers to hook into and enhance on a jailbroken device.

Upon launch, Notification Center did receive a lot of development attention, purely because when it was invoked by the user it offered a lot of screen real estate for widgets to be embedded into, and also because it was a software addition and not hardware specific making it readily available across the both iPads, three iPhone models and a number of iPod touches – basically any device capable of running iOS 5. One of the other hugely popular enhancements which came with iOS 5 and the iPhone 4S was Siri, the intelligent voice assistant, into which developers were chomping to get their teeth into.

The problem with Siri is; it is exclusive, by official measures, to the iPhone 4S hardware and due to the initial lack of a jailbreak for A5-powered devices running iOS 5, it was very difficult for developers to create and test any Siri-based tweaks. That quickly changed when the ‘Dream Team’ released the Absinthe tool to provide an untethered jailbreak for all A5 devices, which in turn opened the flood gates for the Siri enhancements.

One of the latest tweaks, which aims to provide additional functionality to Siri is called ‘TweetLine’ and is an AssistantExtensions plugin, providing Twitter integration through the registered Twitter account in the Settings application. By activating Siri through the normal method and giving the spoken command ‘timeline’, the TweetLine tweak forces Siri to display the latest five tweets from your Twitter timeline. TweetLine is built upon the AssistantExtensions tweak which allows developers to quickly and efficiently develop enhancements for Siri and is also featured as part of the recently launched iOSOpenDev project which aims to make open developer easier on iOS devices.

In all honesty, TweetLine is functional and potentially quite useful if it was extended and built upon to feature additional commands. At the moment, when the ‘timeline’ command is given, the last five tweets from the timeline are shown in plain text with usernames and any links being redundant. The functionality ends with being able to quickly read the tweets and scroll up and down on the tweet sheet that is provided within the Siri interface. TweetLine could prove useful if you wanted to quickly check your timeline when in a busy situation, but other than that, its limited functionality puts it under the ‘download and use it a few times because its free’ category.

If you are interested in trying out TweetLine, it is available through the ModMyi repository and requires a Siri enabled device with a registered Twitter account.

You will obviously need to jailbreak your device to install this tweak. For jailbreaking iPhone 4S and iPad 2, you can simply follow our step by step guide posted here to jailbreak iOS 5.0.1 using Absinthe on Windows or Mac. For those of you with iPhone 4, 3GS, iPad 1, and iPod touches can use Redsn0w or Sn0wbreeze to untether jailbreak on iOS 5.0.1.

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Lovestagram Is Instagram For Lovers, Developed By Instagram Co-Founder’s Girlfriend For Valentine’s Day

Paul Morris — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 01:45:30 +0000

Even the most hardcore of geeks need a little bit of tenderness in their lives every now and then, which is why coders all over the world will be winding down this Tuesday for an evening of romantic loveliness with their significant other. But just what kind of gift do you get for your loved one? You could try treating them to a romantic meal at a posh restaurant, send them a bouquet of flowers to their workplace or maybe just a simple expression of love through a Valentine’s Day card?

Well, if you are Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger’s girlfriend, none of the above was good enough for her man which is why she took St. Valentine’s Day to the next level and launched her own interactive Valentine’s Day card maker which she has called Lovestagram. Kaitlyn Trigger has been dating Krieger since before his popular photo sharing application was launched and decided that as an expression of her love she would go above and beyond the traditional gifts by learning how to code and developed her very own e-card creating application which is built upon the Instagram API.

The lovingly named Lovestagram application works by creating a slideshow of photographs that have been shared between two users on the Instagram network by using usernames, photos shot in the same location with an hour of each other or the exchange of comments. The application is extremely simple in its usage and requires the user to log in using your own Instagram username and then simply enter the username of your significant other.

Lovestagram doesn’t have a requirement that you are in love with the person you create the card for, and it will work with any username you enter. Although you may look a bit silly sending an interactive card to a work colleague considering at the present time all of the frames contained within the app are love themed. The developer is currently considering whether or not to expand the application to include alternative frames which may cover holidays, birthdays or even anniversary cards in the near future.

Trigger describes Lovestagram as “basically letting you look through your relationship in photos“, which I have to admit is something that would appeal to me if only my other half was an Instagram user. The creation of such an application for her loved one is a romantic enough gesture, but the fact that Kaitlyn actually had to teach herself Python, Django, HMTL, CSS, jQuery and Photoshop to accomplish the task, makes the gesture even more thoughtful and special.

Rumor has it that Instagram co-creator Krieger knows that Trigger has a project in the works, but supposedly has no clue about what the site is. I think that in the next couple of days the coverage on tech sites might just let the cat out of the bag.

Head over to this link to get started on Lovestagram.

(via mashable)

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Apple Releases Two New iPhone 4S Commercials, Focusing Entirely On Siri [VIDEOS]

Paul Morris — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:48:32 +0000

There is no denying that products like the iPhone, iPod touch and the iPad are revolutionary devices which have not only changed the way we think about consumer technology, but in a lot of aspects have also dramatically enhanced the way in which some people live their lives.

The iPhone and iPod touch bring technologies such as FaceTime; which allows people to connect to their loved ones around the world via video entirely free of charge as long as they are connected to a Wi-Fi network. The iPad also features the same FaceTime capabilities, but is also about to play a pivotal role in reinventing educational standards across the United States and is used quite extensively in the medical and aviation professions to enhance professional standards.

But as amazing as Apple’s products are, their success can only be defined by the company’s ability to market them. Plenty of corporations in the past have come to the market with innovative, beautiful and functional products only to find that they have total inability to market them effectively, therefore dropping off the radar. Apple makes beautiful products, but they also market them perfectly. Whether it be through perfect product placement strategies, through effective visual campaigns in their retail empire or through the simple and immediate recognizable television commercials the company manages to engage their audience and promote consumer buy-in.

With that said, the release of two new thirty second long Apple commercials is the company’s next step in promoting the headline feature of the iPhone 4S – Siri. The first commercial centers around a ‘Road Trip’ and features the integration of Siri with the Maps application, location services, Yelp and also demonstrating the intelligent voice assistant’s ability to give on the fly directions to a specifically requested location.

The second new commercial, shown below, focuses on a young music lover and pays particular attention to how Siri can display musical notes to help the young musician learn new abilities, as well as composing a text message from spoken words to the other band members. The commercial shows Siri’s use of the Wolfram-Alpha service to pull up search results, and even demonstrate the sense of humor that can programmed into Siri through the ability to specify a nickname for yourself.

Both of the commercials follow the familiar pattern of being simplistic whilst focusing entirely on the product they are attempting to promote. The adverts also manage to invoke an emotional reaction as they feature real-world situations and demonstrate how the iPhone 4S, and Siri in particular, can be easily integrated into everyday life.

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The Battle Of The Mobile Browsers: Chrome For Android And Mobile Safari Go Head To Head [VIDEO]

Paul Morris — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:13:31 +0000

The Android-using world had reason to rejoice in the last few days thanks to the release of the Google Chrome browser for Android devices which many users feel has taken far too long to reach the public. Now that the dust had settled, and users have had time to get Chrome for Android installed and browse their favorite sites using it, the inevitable comparisons and tests between this Chrome browser for Android and Apple’s Mobile Safari for iOS are starting to filter through.

The guys over at Android Central decided to put the two browsers against each other in a head to head battle to see which would reign victorious. The battle of the browsers is juicy enough, but to make things a little more interesting; the browsers were running on an Apple iPhone 4S and a Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Considering the current bad blood between the Apple and Samsung, the test is about more than just which browser performs the best, its about the underlying hardware which drives that performance.

Both the Mobile Safari browser and the mobile version of Google Chrome are based on WebKit, which is an open source browser engine, allowing web browsers to render webpages. Both of the tested browsers score a perfect 100 out of 100 on the ‘Acid3′ test, which is basically an interpretation of how well a specific browser complies with various web standards and pays particular attention to the document object model as well as JavaScript. An additional test which was run, was the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark test which tests the core JavaScript capabilities in a real world and balanced environment. With Safari featuring Apple’s Nitro JavaScript Engine and Chrome making use of Google’s V8, the results finished in slight favor of the Chrome browser.

As we head into the final round of the bout, it may look as if Google Chrome for Android is the better browser, considering they are equally matched when it comes to handling web standards but with Chrome reigning victorious in the way that it handles JavaScript tasks. As the old saying goes, "all is not as it seems", and this is certainly the case with these two browsers. Mobile Safari offers a notably better and smoother scrolling, panning and multi-touch zooming experience than Chrome does which certainly gives the browser the edge. It is also worth noting that Google Chrome for Android is currently in a beta stage, so whilst it is ready for public consumption, it is by no means the finished product and will only be approved based upon the user’s feedback.

What is interesting however, is that the new Google Chrome mobile browser for Android offers no support whatsoever for the Adobe Flash player, or any other internet plugin for that matter. It is obvious from the test that both browsers have their pros and cons and will ultimately come down to user preference, but it will be intriguing to see what improvements are made to Chrome, as well as any upgrades to Mobile Safari in future iOS releases.

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Swipe Navigation For Music Tweak In Cydia Brings Track Changing Via Swipe Gestures

Paul Morris — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 22:04:49 +0000

I don’t know if it is something that has been out into the global water supply recently, but swiping seems to be the new tapping. Why take the time to lift your finger up and decompress a button when you can feel manly and powerful enough by quickly swiping your finger across the screen to achieve the same result? I certainly know which one I prefer.

One of the beautiful, and most important things about jailbreaking an iDevice is having the power and the freedom to modify and change the default behavior of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS. Don’t get me wrong, a totally stock iOS is infinitely better than any of the competition in my personal opinion, but a user enhanced iOS with the right modifications totally blows its rivals away. Some users of jailbroken devices like to modify the operating system beyond recognition by changing icons, wallpapers and even fonts as well as behaviors, while others simply prefer subtle behavioral modifications to make things a little more efficient from a user experience point of view.

There is no denying in certain areas that having the ability to perform a task with a swipe is a much more elegant solution than having to bash your way through various buttons or taps. The elegance of a swipe is one of the reasons tweaks such as Activator, Zephyr and SBSettings have been so popular. As Leonardo Da Vinci famously said, "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication", and when you can bypass a long winded action with a simple user swipe, it isn’t hard to see why these gestures reign supreme.

Developer Chris Kant has recognized this and with the release of his ‘Swipe Navigation For Music’, he has attempted to integrate the powerful user swipe gesture into the stock iOS Music application to flip through tracks from the Now Playing screen. The theory behind the tweak is that a simple swipe forward will move into the next available track in the playlist, with a backwards swipe playing the previous song. As standard, the Music application already has a ‘back’ swipe gesture built into it which takes the user back to the library of songs but the intention of Swipe Navigation For Music is to disable that default behavior and replace it with the tweak’s own rules.

In theory, the Swipe Navigation tweak is a good one and whilst it doesn’t really provide any time-saving benefits, it is a handy little modification to have. After an initial hiccup with the submission of the tweak’s package which caused the first 1.0 version to fail, a new 1.0-2 version is now available which works perfectly. After installation, the Music application behavior is altered; allowing easy swipe navigation onto the next available song as well as replaying the previous tune. It may sound quite odd, but it is actually an extremely satisfying feeling to swipe the album artwork and watch the new artwork of the next song slide in elegantly from the side of the media player. While Swipe Navigation For Music isn’t going to be classed as an essential, must-have tweak; it certainly is an accomplished and very handy little mod to have.

If you are interested, they are alternative options available if you want this functionality in your Music application? Activator is always a good second choice and can easily be configured to offer similar track changing controls. By going into the Activator options, I was able to replicate the behavior by selecting the ‘In Application‘ setting and then selecting the ‘Slide in Gesture’ options. By setting ‘From Screen Left‘ to next track, and ‘From Screen Right‘ to previous track, the behavior of Swipe Navigation For Music is effectively replicated.

One thing that I do love about certain developers within the community is the swift response they provide to email support requests, and in the case of Christ Kant; this was certainly the case as he replied extremely quickly to inform me that version 1.0-2 had been pushed to resolve any issues I was having. As mentioned above, this is certainly not an essential tweak, but considering it is free of charge and extremely lightweight, it is definitely one worth trying out from the BigBoss repository.

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Check Out Every Apple And NeXT Product Ever Made In This 30 Second Clip [VIDEO]

Ben Reid — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 21:53:26 +0000

Apple has evolved a lot since its inception by Jobs and Wozniak, two college buddies with a strong work ethic surpassed only by ambition.

Whilst Macs – in their various forms – now run at lightning-speed whilst encased in sleek compilations of various materials, this wasn’t always the case.

Rob Beschizza of Boing Boing! has put together a rather nostalgic ‘evolution of Apple’ video, scanning through virtually every Cupertino product from the past 35-odd years in a mere 30 seconds.

If you’re more than just a post-iPod Apple fan, I’m pretty sure you caught a few old-school classics in there, despite it falling under the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it category.

I like how the iPhone is paid special attention – afforded a little more airtime than every other product created by the fruit company. In spite of the usual dose of Jobs keynote enthusiasm, nobody could have predicted the device – launched back in 2007 – would have such an impact on the market. In four and a half short years, the device is now the most popular amongst consumers, having sold 37 million units in the last quarter of 2011 alone.

Despite Apple being in constant battle with Google, Samsung et al over who supposedly copied who, and whilst we’ll certainly not call anybody out for outright plagiarism, the influence of Apple’s smartphone device is plain to see.

Meanwhile the Mac and OS X continues to gain a legion of adopters, although competing with Windows on any level is certainly a mountain, one which Apple has yet to truly begin scaling. With consumers displaying the kind of hysteria usually reserved for Apple products regarding Windows 8, it’s fair to say Microsoft – founded by Jobs’ rival Bill Gates – will be enjoying the Lion’s share of the market in the foreseeable future.

As an early Friday Funny, Beschizza also compiled a video of the products created under NeXT – Steve Jobs’ temporary project – in a comparatively short video:

Packing a 25 MHz CPU and 256MB of storage space, this baby retailed for a staggering $6500 – and we though Apple products were expensive. Having said that, one has to wonder just how much one of these would fetch today in mint condition.

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FBI Files On Steve Jobs Released, You Can Read Them Online Right Now

Oliver Haslam — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:20:25 +0000

In what can only be described as an interesting turn of events, the FBI has released a document put together when Steve Jobs was being considered for a role under President Bush in 1991.

The 191-page document was compiled as a background check on Jobs, who was being looked at for a possible role on the President’s Export Council during the presidency of the first George Bush. The documents also outline details of a bomb plot against the Apple co-founder during 1985.

The full document is now available on the FBI website and can be freely downloaded for perusal by anyone should they so wish, and at 191 pages we’re sure we will be hearing of little tidbits for days to come, as people work their way through the document.

The overall feel from the few pages we have read is that there are a considerable number of people that Jobs apparently upset during the years leading up to this FBI investigation. You need not look too far through the document before quotes start to pop up in which some of the trademark Steve Jobs behavior is mentioned, including drug use during his youth with "several individuals [commenting] concerning past drug use on the part of Mr. Jobs" cropping up.

The famous reality distortion field, mentioned prominently in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs, is also mentioned in the FBI’s report.

Several individuals questioned Mr. Jobs’ honesty stating that Mr. Jobs will twist the truth and distort reality in order to achieve his goals. They also commented that, in the past, Mr. Jobs was not supportive of [redacted] (the mother of his child born out of wedlock) and their daughter; however, recently has become supportive.

As is usually the case with such FBI investigations, Jobs will probably have been asked who should be interviewed, which makes us wonder just who was on the list. Given the number of derogatory comments throughout the report, it’s clear that Jobs’ friends at the time were perhaps not quite so friendly as he thought.

Jobs previous Top Secret security clearance is also mentioned during the report, which relates to his time at Pixar and the work the company did for the NSA during the late 1980s. The clearance was later revoked in 1990.

If you’ve got the time and the inclination, we’re sure there are a few interesting little anecdotes to be found in the 191-page document. Do let us know if you find anything!

You can read the whole document by heading over to the source link below.

(via Gawker)

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Security Bug In iOS 5.0.1 Allows Anyone To Access Address Book Even If Protected By A Passcode

Paul Morris — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:49:55 +0000

It seems that the iPhone owning and application using world has been going a little bit loopy over the last few days thanks to the revelations that popular journal application Path has been liberating entire address books of data and uploading it to their servers in the form of a plist file without asking for the user’s permission. The company CEO David Morin quickly responded to the outrage by claiming that the name, telephone numbers and email addresses of the user’s address book are captured to help users find friends and family who are using the Path application, but the bottom line is; that the contacts data doesn’t actually belong to the user and therefore they don’t even have permission to upload it should it ever be requested.

In response to this, Path 2.0.6 has been released to the App Store which actually provides an opt-in policy for users, but even the new alert doesn’t exactly make it clear just what the user is opting in to, or out of. While I am pretty sure that story will continue to be in the headlines for a few days before it dies out, infrastructure research and security blog, Peekay, has released some timely information about how users can bypass security measures on an iPhone 4S, 4 and 3GS, making it leak certain information about a user’s address book.

The blog already has security posts about incorrect time settings causing the leak of album images under their belt, but this time their mission was to see if they could peruse the address book and make live video calls from a locked and passcode protected iPhone 4 – and guess what, they could. Using a standard iPhone 4 running a stock version of iOS 5.0.1 (or the iPhone 4S or 3GS), the writers of the blog were able to set up a security passcode requirement through Settings, also ensuring that ‘Voice Dial’ was toggled off meaning the iPhone could not be ordered to place a phone call using the Voice Control function of the iPhone 4.

When pressing and holding the Home button, the Voice Control function is activated – remember, this is an iPhone 4 and therefore does not have Siri capabilities. The blog owners then gave the spoken order to ‘Call Alice‘ with the expected response of ‘Voice dialing is disabled‘ coming back. When sliding to unlock the phone, the standard passcode screen is presented prompting the user to put in their pin code for full device access. By selecting ‘Emergency Calls’ and then activating voice control with a long Home button press, they gave the command once again of ‘Call Alice’ to which the device replied with ‘No Match Found‘.

The response of no match found immediately reveals a small amount of information about the address book, confirming that the user does not have a contact stored by that name. Taking the experiment further, when prompted to call a user who does exist in the address book, the locked and passcode protected device obligingly places the phone call to ‘Wayland Chan‘ and by doing so circumvents all security restrictions on the device.

The situation is then expanded when Voice Control is told to call a contact which it exposes has more than one saved number for. By even giving the command of ‘Facetime Lisa Klein‘ the blog owners were able to initiate and complete a fully functioning, live video call from the device which was locked, passcode protected and explicitly had voice dialing disabled.

This certainly seems an opportune time to release such information, especially with the recent Path related fury and definitely gives Apple some issues to address in iOS 5.1.

(via CNet)

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Evolution Of The Smartphone, Design Changes Before And After The iPhone [IMAGE]

Paul Morris — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:15:36 +0000

Regardless of whether you are a fan of the Apple iPhone or not, it is very difficult to argue with the freight train momentum and success that the mobile smartphone has achieved in the last five years. Judging by the statistics that surround the sales of the phone, and the record breaking financial results posted by Apple for the end of 2011, it seems that the popularity of the iPhone is set to rise and rise with every release.

We all know that Apple didn’t invent the smartphone, after all, they have only been producing a mobile phone product since 2007. So, in that respect, the company is still in its infancy when it comes to mobile devices. But we also all know that when Apple gets involved in a particular sector, they like to reinvent the game and produce products which are far superior and advanced than their competitors. Judging by the image which was Tweeted out by aspiring American movie director Josh Helfferich (@Digerati), it seems that the Cupertino company not only reinvented the phone but also had a profound effect on new devices produced by various manufacturers.

The image really speaks for itself in a number of ways and shows a large number of pre-2007 mobile phone which come in a variety of colors, shapes and sizes but all pretty much offer the same limited functionality. On the right hand side of the image are the post-2007 devices which have all come on the back of the original iPhone launch. There is something quite eerie about seeing all these devices from different manufacturers side by side, and although some of them are distinctly different, the Apple legal term of "slavishly" copying the company design springs to mind.

They often say that imitation is the biggest form of flattery, which in some cases may be true but in the smartphone industry imitation seems to get you slapped with an infringement lawsuit as Samsung have found over the last six months. But with the iPhone currently setting the standard in the mobile phone industry, just where will Apple go with it next? The iPhone 5 is widely expected to feature a complete redesign when details are announced, so it would be extremely intriguing to sit down for three to four years and looking at a similar image showcasing the smartphone design.

(via CultOfMac)

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