Did you ever want to see a page you are reading on your Mac on your iPhone?
Normally, that meant that you would have to manually type in the url into Mobile Safari. With AirLink, sharing between your desktop browser and mobile is just one click away
Definitely fills a niche in my books!
i probably am one of a handful over on this side of the globe specifically up and waiting for ios 5 to drop, but I’m pleased to announce that it’s finally here. you need to update itunes to 10.5 first though, and then it’ll start to pick up the huge ios 5 update which clocks in at around 700 mb.
i’ll try to write down some of my thoughts tomorrow after using the new ios.
ios5 drops on october 12, US time…which would make it, wednesday, sg time at the earliest. i have to say that i am REALLY excited about it. it’s taken the update a really long time and there are some key features/ improvements that have been a long time coming, to say the least.
to sum up, the key features i’m really looking forward to are -
this should clear up some of my major bugbears with the current ios.
notifications
i really hate it when a new notification comes in and it completely disrupts whatever i am working on at the moment. the new notifications does a clean job of keeping everything where you want them, without being disruptive.
reminders
secondly, FINALLY apple! a REMINDERS app native to the ios ecosystem. third party apps do a great job, but i just want something that integrates tightly with ical on the mac.
imessage
imessage won’t be that amazing for me since I have whatsapp and I like to keep my non-iphone friends in the loop, but i like that there is compatibility for itouch and mac users so i can imessage any apple device and it transmits across all of the devices.
a good overview of the new features ios 5 brings is in the video.
unfortunately the word on the ground is that this major update is only compatible with the iphone 4, so iphone 3g users will be out of this one, just like how siri will only run with the newer iphone 4s, which i am not too fussed about in any case since i don’t really see how siri will fit into my current lifestyle, especially since I don’t drive often enough to capitalize on the voice recognition features that siri offers.
In a fit of impulsiveness and frustration at my inability to instill some self-discipline in myself, I went ahead and deleted ALL the games in my iPhone. Including all the paid ones like street fighter, cut the rope, flight control… My favourites like cut the rope, zombie highway (new addition), veggie samurai etc. I don’t usually play the games but if I get really hooked on one I usually end up sacrificing sleep and productive hours playing it.
Apparently cold turkey works best for me. And in any case, it’s not hard to find something to occupy me on the iPhone.
I find myself doing alot more reading on it now - especially long form articles (rather than books-still prefer the holding the physical copy). For those interested, the apps I use to save articles (and also syncs with the web service) are instapaper and readitlater. I shelled out money for readitlater pro but actually there really is no need to. The free app does the job just as well with unlimited articles and offline saving (incredibly important for places with zero wifi or 3G connectivity). But I suppose paying for the full app is just my way of saying thank you to the makers for a great product!
Other things that I do in replacement of playing games -
Watching videos- I managed to grab vlc before it went off the AppStore so I transfer videos to watch before converting. But I recently discovered player x which provides subtitle support so I might switch over from vlc pretty soon. I also blog alot more now because I find that usually by the time I get home I’ve pretty much forgotten all that i wanted to say.
Rss reading- I do alot more RSS reading on the iphone now. I don’t like having to visit each site individually so I hook up the RSS feeds with my google reader. If you haven’t tried using an RSS service, I highly recommend this as a tool to save you lots of time scrambling all about the interwebz. MobileRSS still provides one of the most complete RSS experiences for me because of the number of web services tie-ups - email, evernote, readitlater and instapaper. MobileRSS hooks up with my google reader account which has 400+ feeds so I have enough of a field day wading through all of them.
So that’s it really! I don’t really miss the games that I’ve deleted (yet)! I’ve given up doing any sort of work on the phone because the screen size just makes it impractical to open, view and edit documents. I prefer to highlight PDFs anyway which I can’t do on the phone so I have to end up reading the file on the computer anyway.
NERD ALERT!
Yes, the poor, sad, geek in me has decided to post an entry on travelling with all your tech barang. in fact, after this post, I will probably only have about 5 friends left (some imaginary).
Travel-tech:
- iphone + incase snap clear case (which I abuse to hold papers like…
(Source: vintagephunk.com)
here is a carefully curated collection of some of the most quirky wallpapers i’ve seen for the iphone yet (although admittedly, i did just get my iphone, about 1 year behind everybody else). i daresay i have more than half of their wallpapers on my phone. go have a look - if you’re the type who is on the prowl for quirky wallpapers, you won’t be disappointed.
here’s a sample of the type of art you can expect to find on poolga:
there’s tons more where that came from.
if you like what you see, they also just came up with a fab collection of great illustrations in the form of an iphone app. it’s lovely, really. it clocks in at about 20mb, but damn, worth every byte.
