How to add an on-screen home button to your iPhone

How to add an on-screen home button to your iPhone X

IPhone: Save Money ... stay 1-2 years behind!

Is $1,100 too much for an iPhone? Get an older one for less

Excerpt:

The $1,100 price tag on Apple's latest iPhone turned heads when the company announced it last week. But for less than half as much, you can still get a good camera, a decent-sized screen and other popular features.

Just buy a two-year-old iPhone 7. That phone was Apple's first to come with water resistance and its first to lose the standard headphone jack. Its 4.7-inch screen is adequate and on par with other smartphones, even though its resolution falls short of high definition. And the phone still has a fingerprint sensor and a home button, both of which have vanished in the latest iPhones.

Or, if you want to pay more for wireless charging, there's the iPhone 8. An edge-to-edge screen? You'll need the upcoming budget iPhone XR or one of its more expensive siblings. And if you want a supersized display, that's where the $1,100 iPhone XS Max comes in. That model and a smaller version start selling in the U.S. and several other countries on Friday. If you're shopping for a new phone, it pays to think hard about what you really want and what you're willing to pay for it. Improvements over the previous generation tend to be incremental, but can add up over time — and so do the sums you'll pay for them.

Comment: We are on a 3-4 year cycle for technology. Kathee's MacBook is almost 4 years old and mine is 2 years old. Our phones are IPhone SE's ... 1 year old but work great. In two years we will be buying old technology but new IPhones and saving bucks! Above is a screen snap from Apple's website today!

My IPhone SE upgrade

I upgraded my 45 month old 16 Gig 5S to a 32 Gig SE today. I bought the IPhone SE at Best Buy. I bought the pre-paid phone and then added it to my plan at the AT&T store. Then I sold the old 5S on Ebay for $ 85.00. I had the UPS store package and mail it for me. I replaced my 45 month old Otterbox case as well.

Update on 9/7:

Carplay, IPhone, ITunes & iExplorer

As many know we bought a new car:

The feature I am most impressed with is CarPlay.  Plug you IPhone into the USB connection and voilà one's phone is connected to the car entertainment system!

On my previous MacBook I had ripped many CD's into ITunes. Then I packed as many as I could into my 16 gig IPhone 5s.

When my Macbook died recently I lost that library (on the MacBook). What to do? 

Today I used IExplorer 4  to download all of that library from the IPhone 5s back into ITunes.

The next project is:

• Backup the MacBook ITunes library onto a USB 3.0 Flash drive (128 Gig)
• And begin to use an Apple Superdrive to contine to rip CDs into ITunes
• Next: I need about a 128 gig Iphone. Fun Fun

Samsung's woes

Samsung to Permanently Discontinue Galaxy Note 7 Smartphone - Move halts production and sale of defective premium phone; investors digest possibility smartphone giant could abandon Galaxy Note series

Images above: screen shots of stock quotes. Screen shot from CNET article

Updated: Screen shots from Daily Mail articles:

The Link to the Burger King article

Update w more:  Samsung Galaxy Note 7 flames out: Experts react

To fight this image, Samsung has announced a permanent stop to the production of the Note 7, following a temporary stop earlier. This gives it room to redesign a brand new product.

But this will only add to Samsung's woes. It will be viewed as panic in the boardroom.

A full recall of existing Notes as well as those yet unsold will be an environmental nightmare besides being economically challenging to the entire supply chain - despite the fact that the vast majority of these phones would have remained in full working order for their working lives.

No, like Volkswagen and its diesel emissions scandal, Samsung should have stuck it out with the Note 7 until the Note 8 became available.

It still has to identify and publicise what caused the phones to overheat if it is to recover its reputation.

And it could have offered free stress tests and compensation vouchers to Note 7 owners, and have convinced the airlines the vetted handsets were safe.

The engineers could have handled the technology problem - panicking was not the solution.

Fireproof boxes for returns

Man hands an IPhone to a woman in a hall

Apple CEO Tim Cook saw an iPhone in a nearly 350-year-old painting

Excerpt:

Apparently the iPhone was invented nearly 350 years ago, according to Apple boss Tim Cook's interpretation of a painting. During a chat at the Start-up Fest event in Amsterdam on Tuesday, Cook spoke to former European Commissioner Neelie Kroes about topics ranging from health to the future of TV. But the pair shared an anecdote from the night before when Kroes took Cook to Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum. "Do you happen to know Tim, where and when the iPhone was invented?" Kroes asked Cook on stage. The Apple chief executive explained that in one painting at the museum he thought he saw the subject holding an iPhone. "You know, I thought I knew until last night. Last night Neelie took me over to look at some Rembrandt and in one of the paintings I was so shocked. There was an iPhone in one of the paintings," Cook jokingly explained.

Comment: Image source = Wiki

How Major Tech Firms Failed to Appreciate the iPhone's Potential

Apple competitors still smarting from iPhone blow

Excerpt:

Back in January 2007, when Jobs first showed the new device, he pitched it as a combination phone, music player and Internet communicator. But competitors including Microsoft's (MSFT) then-CEO Steve Ballmer and Motorola's former CEO Ed Zander could barely contain their disdain. "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share," Ballmer said of the lineup that has since sold more than 500 million devices.

Comment: Image source .... one of many in Apple IPhone's history in pictures. I was an early crtic of the IPad ... now I've had one for 3 years. I was critical of the costs of smart phone connectivity. Today I have an IPhone with me at all times (and pay nearly $ 100 a month for that connectivity). I hardly use it as a phone ... mostly as: a computer, and a navigation device. Not so much as a camera either. My next one will probably be an IPhone 7 (skipping the 6)

IPhone 5s: The amazing power in one's pocket

An iPhone 5s would have cost more than $3.5 million in 1991

Excerpt:

The iPhone 5s is so advanced, compared to what was available in 1991, that it would actually cost more than $3.5-million to buy something resembling it 23 years ago. This was calculated by an analyst over at Tech Police Daily, where the cost was put down to the following factors. Flash storage in 1991 cost $45,000 per gigabyte. When you consider a 32GB iPhone 5s, the total cost is $1.44 million. Processors cost about $30 per MIPS (millions of instructions per second) in 1991. The A7 chip can execute 20,500 million instructions per second, so the total cost for a similar processor in 1991 would be $620,000.

Comment: Having sold mainframe and midrange computers (1973-78), I found this incredible. See DEC 10 article

Easy way to do screen shot with IPhone w IOS 7

• Go to settings
• Tap general
• Scroll down to accessibility
• Scroll down to assistive touch
• Turn it on
• You will now have a semi transparent button on your screen
• When you tap this you will get options of voice control, favorites, device, home you need to tap device,then more, then screenshot.

Comment: Found here

IPhone Deposit

Depositing Checks, Right From Your Phone

Excerpt:

A little while ago, I upgraded my iPhone app from Chase. Like most banking apps, it had allowed me to check balances and pay bills from my phone. But the upgrade included a new feature that kind of floored me: It could take a picture of a check made out to me and make a deposit based on that image — no trip to the branch required.

Now, Chase is not the first bank to have this feature. USAA has had it for a year now. Bank of America has been playing around with it for some time, but has yet to release it to its customers. (Our Your Money columnist, Ron Lieber, wrote about this back in March.)

The process is terrifically simple: Once you are in the app, you tap on “deposits,” which activates your iPhone’s camera and brings up a viewscreen with some guides and commands. Line up the check with the guidelines on your screen, hold the iPhone steady and push an onscreen button. You then do the same for the back of the check. (The endearing Chase TV ads with newlyweds in bed also show how.)

The image is then sent to Chase’s computers, which use optical-character recognition software to “read” the information on the check. The software is impressive, able to read both handwritten (to a point — the software cannot read extremely messy, doctor handwriting) and printed checks. Once Chase’s computers have determined the check’s value, routing number and account number, the app displays a screen recapping the information, which you can then confirm with a click. About a minute later, you get an e-mail from Chase confirming the deposit.

Links:

• Chase Quick Deposit
  
• Article on USAA
  
• USAA IPhone App
  

Comments: I still do not have an IPhone, but I think this would be handy!

About those "bars"

Apple Acknowledges Flaw in iPhone Signal Meter

Excerpts:

Apple Inc. said Friday that it was ''stunned'' to find that its iPhones have for years been using a ''totally wrong'' formula to determine how many bars of signal strength they are getting.

Apple said that's the reason behind widespread complaints from users that the latest model, iPhone 4, can show a sudden plunge in signal strength when they hold it in a way that covers a small black strip on one edge of the phone. Users online have jokingly called this the ''death grip'' for the phone.

That drop seems exaggerated because the phone can wrongly display four or five bars of signal strength when it shouldn't, Apple said.

''Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place,'' the company said in a letter to users.

.... It maintains that iPhone 4's wireless performance is better than previous models. And it said the incorrect signal-strength formula existed in the original iPhone, launched in 2007.

....

''We are also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see,'' Apple said.

Comment: Hard to believe .... "incorrect signal-strength formula ... [since] ... 2007"

Speaking of Microsoft, what happened to those guys?

It’s Apple vs. Google in the battle over the future of computing

Excerpt:

... the most advanced smart phone on the market is arguably not the new iPhone 4 but rather an Android device called the EVO 4G, made by HTC, a Taiwanese company. That phone has front and rear cameras, and shoots hi-def video, just like the new iPhone 4. But the EVO has a bigger display, its camera shoots in higher resolution, and it can turn itself into a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot, something the iPhone 4 can’t do.

Geeks can, and do, argue over the merits of these phones. But the fact that the two are close enough to be compared side by side is what should have Apple worried. And these are early days. My sense is that over the next 12 to 18 months, Android will surge past Apple the way Microsoft Windows surged past Apple in the 1990s.

Comment: I'm not fan of the way Apple locks the customer in to buying apps from them.

Steve Jobs on Flash

Jobs Attacks Flash As Unfit for iPhone

Excerpts:

"Flash was created during the PC era—for PCs and mice," said Mr. Jobs in the note published Thursday. "The mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open Web standards—all areas where Flash falls short."

...

Some market watchers took issue with the points raised in Mr. Jobs' essay Thursday. "I think he's a real good spin doctor," said Jeffrey Hammond, an analyst at Forrester Research. Yes, Flash is targeted by hackers, but that's because the technology is so common, he said.

Other points raised by Mr. Jobs are just wrong, Mr. Hammond said. HTML5 is a promising technology, but "not ready for prime time yet," and Flash is as close to open as a proprietary technology can be. It's Apple, Mr. Hammond argued, that has the closed system, including the right to block any app from its store.

Dave Wolf, vice president of strategy at Cynergy Systems Inc., a Washington, D.C., design firm, calls Apple's no-Flash policy "a pain." Mr. Wolf had planned to build mobile apps for clients using the new Adobe software; the apps cost upwards of $40,000 a piece, meaning that without such a tool most customers can only afford to build apps for one device. They almost always choose the iPhone, said Mr. Wolf.

Full Essay: Thoughts on Flash

Comments: I am not a big fan of Flash or Acrobat Reader. They are constantly under hacker attack. I've never had my Mac crash with Flash. One wonders if Jobs has an agenda here! Thoughts?

IPhone Nexus One matchup

Too many "apps for that"?

Comment: Humorous but somewhat adult (one minor section)

The Droid-iPhone faceoff

A Place to Put Your Apps

Excerpt:

.... the Droid wins on phone network, customizability, GPS navigation, speaker, physical keyboard, removable battery and openness (free operating system, mostly uncensored app store). The iPhone wins on simplicity, refinement, thinness, design, Web browsing, music/video synching with your computer, accessory ecosystem and quality/quantity of the app store.

Comment: Sounds like the Droid wins on what's really important - the phone! For me, the phone is the important part. GPS and navigation? I've managed to get most anywhere I need to go without a GPS system (but we do travel with a Garmin!)

That pesky Google (vs AT&T and Apple)

Is Google Voice a Threat to AT&T?

Excerpt:

In short, what Apple and AT&T have accomplished with their heavy-handed, Soviet information-control style is not to bury these useful apps. Instead, Apple/AT&T have elevated them to martyr status—and, in effect, thrown down a worldwide challenge to programmers everywhere.

"Get around THIS," they're saying.

But guess what? It won't take long. They've put a rock in the river, but the water will just find a way around it.

Already, Google says it is readying a replacement for the Google Voice app that will offer exactly the same features as the rejected app—except that it will take the form of a specialized, iPhone-shaped Web page. For all intents and purposes, it will behave exactly the same as the app would have; you can even install it as an icon on your Home screen.

What's Apple going to do now? Start blocking access to individual Web sites?

Comment: Liked this "They've put a rock in the river, but the water will just find a way around it."

TCO on those fancy phones

Total Cost of Ownership: iPhone 3G S versus Palm Pre versus Android G1

Excerpt:

[link above] is a comprehensive cost/benefit analysis of the latest mobile technologies, analyzing the comparative features of each, along with the actual price you will pay for the phone and service over the course of a two year contract.

Comment: I still want an IPhone! Not gonna do it .... not gonna do it!