As of July 10, the RSS feed originally associated with the iPhone Central blog will go dark. You may have already noticed that the old feed has been static for about six weeks now. That's because iPhone Central moved into the main Macworld.com website and go a new feed URL as a result.
So if you have this feed URL bookmarked:
http://iphone.macworld.com/atom.xml
... please update to:
http://rss.macworld.com/macworld/weblogs/iphonecentral
... and you won't miss a beat.
Reader David Oglesby has inadvertently discovered a way to make your iPhone defy time itself. Here's a copy of the letter he sent to Apple that explains the whys and wherefores:
I entered a repeating event for every Friday at 9:30 a.m. from September to May of next year. I then deleted the 11/23, 12/21, and 12/28 events. I don't recall if I created this event on my computer or directly on my iPhone.When I switch my iPhone to Honolulu time (in Settings -> General -> Date & Time), these deleted events show up on my calendar. In addition, there is a time zone/daylight savings problem. Honolulu is 4 hours off of CST. These ghost events (and the events that I didn't delete) show a 4:30 start time -- 5 hours difference. When I created the event, Daylight Savings was in effect, so the start time is correct for the first 2 months (Honolulu does not observe Daylight Savings), but now that Daylight Savings is over, I go to rehearsal at 5:30 Honolulu time.
The same thing happens (deleted events appear, events have incorrect start/end times) when I set the time zone to Phoenix, which also does not observe Daylight Savings. This does not happen with Miami (deleted events stay deleted, they have the correct times) where Daylight Savings is observed.
I make this personal vow to you, readers. If Macworld agrees to pick up the expense, I vow to personally travel to the Aloha State so that I can get to the bottom of this problem. And I vow not to leave Hawaii until I figure out a solution -- and quite possibly long after a solution is uncovered. You never know when these things might flare up again.
At any rate, if other readers have noticed the same thing -- or even better, a fix -- I'm sure that would almost be as helpful as my offer to fly to Hawaii on someone else's dime. Almost.
The next time Apple wants to bring the hammer down on someone for leaking details about an upcoming product or feature, maybe they should start with Jimmy Smits.
That's what faithful reader Markito is wondering, anyhow, after watching an episode of the CBS drama Cane, which stars former U.S. President Matthew Santos. We'll let Markito pick up the narrative from this point:
I was excited to see one of the characters (a daughter) texting her boyfriend on her iPhone about being grounded. Suddenly I was shocked to see the boyfriend's photo next to his text message, as if it were iChat.My question is, is the chat-side photo a new feature that I just never found out about, or is Hollywood photoshopping again (like the upside-down iPhone on Journeyman)?
It wasn't a static shot of the phone, as she was actually typing a text message on it. But it all looked very black and white, so probably fake.
Markito thoughtfully included a screen capture so you could see this iChat-like interface on the iPhone with your own two eyes.
So getting back to the question at hand: Is this some actual new feature or just another example of Hollywood fakery like CGI and green screens and Dane Cook's career?
Hollywood fakery, I say. I'll explain my rationale after the jump.
Continue reading "Tonight on Cane: New iPhone features"
We are, of course, big fans of the iPhone's Map application, and now reader Derek Mendenhall weighs in with a tip that makes a great feature even more useful for that next extended road trip:
Something I just found today while I was e-mailing my wife directions, I was on my computer at work, went to maps.google.com and searched out some directions. Then I clicked the send link, which gave me the option of e-mailing it to myself as well, so I did.
I opened that e-mail on my iPhone, which is essentially just a long link back to that specific page. The iPhone opens the link using Maps, not Safari, and laid in the directions for me. I thought if you're going on a trip and need multiple sets of driving directions for different places and things that you may want to see along the way, you could look up the different routes, e-mail them to yourself, and now the directions are just a click away in Mail! Very handy while driving.
Indeed. My modus operandi for travel has been to print out the Google driving directions in advance of the trip, and having whoever's riding shotgun handle the task of navigating via print-out. Derek's tip certainly saves the hassle of hauling along a stack of driving directions the next time I travel.
You know, we can talk until we're blue in the face about the great Map application on the iPhone or our iPhone travel experiences, but when it comes to evaluating the iPhone's value as a travel companion, where the rubber really meets the road is... well, where the rubber actually meets the road. In other words, the best way to discover just how useful the iPhone's multiple capabilities are is to get behind the wheel of your car and, with the iPhone riding shotgun, head off to your final destination with only a vague idea of where you're going and how to get there.
Reader Ray A. Monigold -- a.k.a That Ray Guy -- has discovered the joys of traveling the iPhone way. And he wrote in to share with us the tale of his 5,000-mile road trip with just a full tank of gas, a brother-in-law, and an Apple mobile device.
Ray's words follow after the jump.
Continue reading "Travels with iPhones"
