Tag: ios

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Some brief thoughts on iOS 10 and Watch OS 3

by bijansabet

Apple released two major operating system updates yesterday, iOS 10 for iPhone and Watch OS 3 for Apple Watch. 

Initial thoughts, in no particular order.

1. It’s a little thing but absolutely love the rise to wake iPhone feature. 

2. I never used widgets before, now I do. My favorite ones are Carrot Weather and Swarm.

3. The “clear all notifications” with 3D touch is so nice.

4. Apple Mail got an updated design. I think I like the previous design better.

5. Apple ditched the slide to unlock feature and you can’t do a single TouchID to get to home screen. But there is an easy way to get back to the earlier way of doing this. Whew. 

6. iMessage got a huge set of new features. Stickers, integrated animated GIFs and third party application support and extensibility. Fun, great and useful, in that order. 

7. I love my Apple Watch (now) thanks to Watch OS 3. Just put your favorite apps in the new dock and everything feels so fast. This was the experience I was waiting for. 

8. Control center got a meaty update in form and function. Long overdue and well done. I particularly love the improved audio control on the second screen.  

9. Apple Maps has been improved and looks so good — really puts Google Maps to shame from a design standpoint. But is the data trust worthy yet?

10. One of the most promising things about iOS 10 is Siri integration with third party developers. So far it’s limited to a handful of developers. But the list is growing and I’m super excited about that. 

What are your favorite things about iOS 10. Send me a tweet @bijan

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About to buy the Samsung Galaxy S4 but…

by bijansabet

There is so much I find appealing and seductive about Android.

Paul Stamatiou’s post, Android is better, left a mark on me because it basically pointed out all of the frustrating things about iOS and Android keeps getting better and better. 

I’ve been putting my money where my heart is and buying various Android devices over the years too. I was an early Android user with the G1 and have owned the HTC Incredible and the more recent Nexus 4.

So back to Paul’s post. I’m ready to hit the buy button and pick up a stock Android (w/o Samsung bloatware) on a Galaxy S4 but….

I can’t. At least not just yet.

Some of my favorite apps still don’t exist on Android but I know they will soon (ie Lift, Jelly, AvgCam Pro and a few others). Although there is a sweet private beta of Foursquare that I can’t use yet because it’s running on Android right now. 

But I’m guessing the app parity between the platforms is closing and will continue to close. At least that is what I’m seeing with our portfolio.

Yet I still pause…

This vacation I’m currently on is a pretty good example of why.

Our family is way in deep with iOS. All of our chargers on this trip, in our cars and in various rooms in our house have Apple connectors. It’s too easy to plug in and charge without having to get another cable system. (Not to mention, back home all of the iOS devices can beam to the big screens with AirPlay/AppleTV)  

I also picked up this waterproof housing for our iPhones. It’s so awesome and we are having a ball with this thing. As far as I know, you can’t get something like this for the Galaxy S4?

So here I am. My heart says one thing and my head says another….

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Problem with gmail and iphone

by bijansabet

I’m setting up my daughter’s new iphone with gmail using google sync.

Her address book and calender work perfectly.

But her unread messages show up in her inbox on the iphone. Read messages aren’t displayed on the iphone – only on the web.

Any suggestions?

If so, please email me at bsabet at gmail dot com

or you can @bijan me on twitter

or use tumblr reply

Thanks! I’ll make sure to update this post with the fix. 

(btw, I do have imap enabled) 

7/24/11: Update: Thanks to Javier, problem solved !

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iCloud vs Dropbox

by bijansabet

I’ve been using iOS 5 beta on my iPhone for the last week.

And aside from a few glitches, I’m gonna keep it. The tradeoffs are worth it.

The thing I’m most curious about right now is iCloud and where it’s going. 

The implementation in this beta is pretty smooth. Basically it just works in the background. Download an app, and it’s automatically in iCloud.

Buy a new song and it’s stored in iCloud and sent to all of your devices.

Take a photo on your iPhone, well, you get the idea. It’s seamless.

In iOS 5 beta, iCloud/Photostream doesn’t handle videos you capture on iPhone. That may come in the future but this shortcoming has brought to light the differences between iCloud and Dropbox. 

Dropbox handles video captured on the iphone. But here’s how I send that video to my dropbox. I open the Dropbox app. I tap Upload, then i goto albums and then I upload the video. A few moments later it’s on Dropbox.

Sounds complicated? Its not but it’s a lot more steps than sending stuff to iCloud.

Yet, I’d rather use Dropbox vs iCloud at this time. With Dropbox it gives you total control and the ability to use anywhere and everywhere. When Photostream, via iCloud, sends the pics I took on my iPhone to my iPad, it’s a broadcast stream. I can’t delete or change them for example.

And iCloud feels like a seprate universe from everything else in my life. As far as I can tell, I can’t point my Boxee to iCloud. I can’t send songs from iCloud to things like turntable.fm. I don’t think i can share my iCloud data with my friends or family.  

I hope Apple provides an easy API so that 3rd parties like Dropbox can automatically send data from native iPhone apps to Dropbox as easily as they send stuff to iCloud. I’m not sure if that will be solved with iCloud APIs or not.

But that would be a killer iOS 5 feature.