Newsflash: People still use Microsoft's relatively-unimpressive Hotmail email service. And if you're a Hotmail user and sport an iPhone, you may have run into difficulties checking your Hotmail account on the phone via Mail. But if you're thoroughly entrenched and have hundreds of contacts, switching to a new, iPhone-friendly email address may not be an option.
Fortunately for you, our cohorts at Mac OS X Hints have your back, detailing steps that will allow you to use Gmail to access and send Hotmail emails on the iPhone. (You'll also be able to use these steps to similarly set-up Hotmail-sending-and-receiving in Apple Mail.)
You'll need a Gmail address with IMAP enabled, and you'll have to set up your Hotmail account to forward emails to that Gmail address. Tweak a few preferences in Gmail, and set up the account on your iPhone using the recommended settings on Mac OS X Hints.
If you follow the instructions carefully, you'll be able to use Gmail to view and send Hotmail emails on your iPhone, without ever having to log into Hotmail again (hooray!).
Using the iPhone is, for the most part, pretty simple. But even the simplest of gadgets can have a learning curve: raise your hand if your VCR is still blinking 12:00. If you're looking for some help navigating the ins-and-outs of the iPhone—if, for example, you got a brand new one for Christmas—look no further than this handy How To over at the Mothership. Veteran Mac troubleshooter and Macworld contributor Ted Landau walks you through the subtleties of the iPhone's touch interface, covering everything from taps, to double taps, to swipes, and more.
And, if you find the article a useful resource, you'll be happy to know there's much more where that came from: Ted's penned an entire electronic book on the iPhone, Take Control of Your iPhone, available from TidBits Publishing. It covers everything from the basics of using the phone to troubleshooting crashes and freezes. You can snag the whole book for $15 (or $10 if you pick it up today). And, since it's an electronic book, you'll have it immediately (if not sooner). What's not to like?
We'd be remiss if we didn't say something about all those screenshots and videos of iPhone software 1.1.3 floating around the web. The features shown therein seem pretty plausible for the most part: we know Google's already rolled out its "My Location" service to other cell phone platforms, and given the tight bonds between Apple and the Goog, it's little surprise that it would make its way to the iPhone, and the hybrid map view has long been part of Google Maps, so that should be shocking to no one.
The other major feature showed off in the pictures and videos is the management of icons on the iPhone's home screen. There've been a number of third-party applications that replace the Springboard.app, and given that we know the SDK is due in February, it's only a matter of time before iPhone users will start to run out of space on the home screen. So, according to the video, you'll be able to hold down on an icon on the home screen and then drag it around to reorder; if you drag it to the edge, it'll even create a new "page" of the home screen. There's also the ability to send SMS to multiple users and a way to add Safari bookmarks to the iPhone's home screen.
Of course, it goes without saying that you should take all of this with a grain of salt. I don't think the videos or screenshots are fake, but as this is certainly a development build, there's always the possibility that Apple will release something that looks substantially different from what we're seeing here. Still, it seems likely that we'll see the 1.1.3 update in one form or another sometime around Macworld.
He's probably too modest to mention it himself -- or else he doesn't know that I've published it -- but Dan Moren, who produces most of the content 'round these here parts, has written a year-in-review article about the iPhone over at the Mothership. (Dan also looks at the year's developments on the iPod front in the article as well, but seriously -- who owns one of those? I mean, how many of those things has Apple sold? 100 million-plus, you say? I'll be quiet then.)
Dan's article recaps all the 2007 highlights for the iPhone (you know -- like, its launch). Looking back over his list, it's striking how many of the things that caused such a furor at the time -- bricked iPhones! that $200 price cut! -- have, with the passage of time, acquired the musty whiff of nostalgia.
It also makes me wonder what iPhone-themed development from 2008 will strike us as the most important thing ever, only to acquire a "wait, that happened this year?" feel by this time next year.
In a mere two months, developers are supposed to get access to the famed iPhone SDK, which should let them develop a myriad of useful -- slash-freakin-sweet -- apps for our beloved iPhones/iPod touches. In the meantime, though, a team of brave guerrilla devs are fighting The Good Fight without support from above (and getting so much resistance from behind), creating unsupported-but-still-cool mini-programs that you can install through some clever hacks.
The latest chapter in the underground development tale is not so much useful or handy as it is just plain fun: the intrepid devs have put together an actual working PlayStation emulator for the iPhone and iPod touch. Via MacNN:
The software is installed directly to jailbroken devices, and utilizes images of PS1 discs converted to ISO, IMG, BIN, Z or ZNX formats. Users can also increase the performance of the emulator by installing a specific PlayStation BIOS file, and excuting hidden commands to increase the clock cycle and/or speed of their handhelds.
If devs are capable of feats like this without official support, imagine how cool some of the apps will be once the programming moguls get their hands on the SDK. Can anyone say touch-screen Halo 3?
I know, I know. Not feasible. Pft.
[via Infinite Loop]
You've had your iPhone for about six months now, but what have you really done with it? Checking your mail, surfing the web, listening to your music, and watching videos is all well and good, but what about using it for something productive—like a marriage proposal?
iPhone user Claude M. spent a few hours producing a version of an iPhone ad with his own special touch—at the end, he asks his girlfriend, Doris, to marry him. Aww, so sweet. And it probably didn't even require jailbreaking the phone. Of course, now that it's been done, someone will inevitably figure out a way to top it, right? Check the full video below. We hope she said yes, especially after all that effort (points for not trying to hide it in a bread basket or something—disaster always follows that).
While we are on the subject of Expo-related iPhone speculation, let's close out the pre-Christmas posting calendar with an item on whether we can expect any iPhone product announcements from next month's keynote. Some analysts suggest that we can, according to this Seattle Times article, which offers a grab bag of Expo predictions, including this iPhone-specific one:
Goldman Sachs analyst David Bailey anticipates a version of the iPhone with 16 gigabytes of storage, double the capacity of the current $399 device.
I dunno. With Apple pushing holiday sales of the iPhone so aggressively, it seems unlikely that the company would risk the irritation of those recent iPhone shoppers by releasing a higher-capacity phone exactly three weeks after Christmas. Then again, I wouldn't have predicted that Apple would slash iPhone prices by $200 a little more than two months after releasing the phone, so what do I know?
Anyhow, your guess is as good as mine -- feel free to use the comments thread below to weigh in on the probability of iPhone news at Expo while we take some off to enjoy the Christmas holiday.
We know Apple was hoping to sell a lot of iPhones this holiday season. What we don't know -- and probably won't until next month's Macworld Expo keynote at the earliest -- is just how many Apple did sell.
The folks at 9to5Mac think the answer to that last question is "A lot." With "a lot" specifically totaling about 5 million. 9to5Mac expects that figure to be bandied about during Steve Jobs' January 15 Expo keynote. As the blog notes, that would put Apple halfway toward its stated goal of 10 million iPhones sold by the end of 2008.
9to5Mac bases that 5 million figure on the word of unnamed insiders, so take the report with however many grains of NaCl you care to use. You'll remember the doom-and-gloom that surfaced after analysts got ahead of themselves projecting voluminous iPhone sales for the device's opening weekend and Apple wound up reporting sales of "just" 270,000 phones. So it's not as if there isn't the potential for lofty projections to create unrealistic projections if the still-impressive numbers don't live up to the forecasts.
Around the time of the iPhone's release, we noticed that MobileSafari did not support viewing certain character sets: specifically Hebrew and Arabic. While one third-party group has been working on bringing Hebrew to the iPhone, we weren't aware until more recently that people have also been working at compatibility from the Arabic angle.
Reader Khaled brought to our attention two separate groups, both working at bringing elements of Arabic language functionality to the iPhone. The first, at iPhone Islam, is aiming to bring Arabic character support to the iPhone via a downloadable application (you'll apparently need Installer.app to do so). Unfortunately, my Arabic's a little rusty from a couple years of disuse, so you'll have to visit the site yourself if you want to figure out exactly what procedure you need to follow.
The second, more ambitious project, at iFone4Arab.com has as its goal producing a native Arabic interface for the entire iPhone. While they don't yet have a working version available, you can check out screenshots at their website, or a YouTube video of the interface in action.
Pretty cool. We're sure there will be official Apple Arabic at some point (presumably by the time the phone hits the Middle East), but in the interim, it might be worth checking out one or both of these if you're in need of Arabic support on your iphone.
