iPhone Life - Best Apps, Top Tips, Great Gear

Apple's Groundbreaking New Headset & Everything Else Announced at WWDC 2023

Apple used its 2023 WWDC keynote to usher in a groundbreaking new era of computing with its new Vision Pro, a spatial computer headset, its first new product in eight years. It also announced the expected software updates to its existing devices, including iOS 17, iPadOS 17, watchOS 10, and more. Many of these updates are small but practical, hopefully leading to an elevated experience across devices. Let's dive into the details.

I'm always amazed by all the novel uses of the camera on iOS devices — from taking your pulse to helping those who are colorblind determine colors — and wrote an article about that in a recent issue of the magazine. And I just received a press release for another. CaMeasure lets you use your camera to measure size or distance. It does this in one of two ways. For smaller objects such as furniture, the app asks you to put an object of known size, such as a sheet of paper or a credit card, by the object.

Haunted Manor HD Review

By Mike Riley

Big Fish Games is rapidly becoming the Infocom of the object hunting puzzle adventure iOS gaming arena. Their latest interactive story, Haunted Manor HD, places gamers in a typical Victorian-style haunted house scenario, learning clues about the ghosts occupying the house as the various hunt and peck puzzles are solved. How does Haunted Manor compare to other Big Fish titles? Read on to find out.

Haunted Manor HD follows the simple story of Stan Riddle who is inexplicably trapped in an elegant, spooky mansion filled with a cornucopia of objects. Consisting of over 90 tasks spanning 18 different locations throughout the mansion, players eventually re-assemble pieces of a broken mirror to reach the story's resolution.

I rarely used the Shuffle feature in iTunes or on my iOS devices because I didn't think there was a way to exclude the songs I didn't want to hear. Then I discovered the "Skip When Shuffling" tag. Here's how you exclude songs from Shuffle:

  1. Select the tracks you want to exclude in the list view.
  2. Open the Items Information dialog box (Command-I on the Mac; Control-I on the PC).
  3. Click on the "Skip when Shuffling" checkbox and hit "OK." (No more "Clair De Lune" sandwiched between "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and "Sunday, Bloody Sunday.")

Review it and change the genre associated with a specific album or song by following these steps. In this example, I'm changing the genre of the Bob Dylan album, "Christmas In the Heart" from "Holiday" to "Folk" (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4: Use the "Genre" drop-down to change genres for multiple albums.

You can change the status of an existing Contact to FaceTime or Voice Call from within the Phone app. Open Phone, go to the Favorites tab, tap on the + (plus) button, and select a name from the Contacts list. A pop-up appears that will allow you to make the listing a FaceTime or Voice Call item.Note that you can do this with any contact listing, even those that do not have a phone number or a phone with FaceTime capabilities. Be sure to check about this before you try to add them. Also, if you're trying to FaceTime with an iPod touch user, you can only do this if they have a Wi-Fi connection to the Internet.

Global Navigation Systems, (a.k.a. GNS) has created and sells a plug and play Bluetooth GPS receiver for IOS devices. It’s called the GNS 5870 MFI. (MFI stands for Made for iPhone). I’m not a stranger to testing out and using GPS systems but this is the first one I have used for my Apple product, so I am excited to work with it. Even though I have some knowledge of GPS, I am by no means an expert in this area. There are two things I look for though. One, a quick satellite lock, and two, it just needs to work.

There is no jail breaking required. I’m testing this out on my Wi-Fi only iPad. The Nav App I am using is Co-pilot.

iPhone Scanner Mount

By Tracy Sebastian






I found this innovative & clever product for the iPhone. It's a mount to use your iPhone's camera as a scanner. Why didn't I think of this?

$15 plus shipping.

From website: http://www.ponoko.com/design-your-own/products/scandock-for-iphone-2703

Dexim is known for their chargers and cases for the iPhone, but their upcoming iPad case is something special. A number of case makers have integrated Bluetooth keyboards into their design but the result is a case that is too bulky for everyday use or too constraining when typing for a long stretch. The Dexim case, which will be shipping soon, does indeed combine a case with a Bluetooth keyboard but the keyboard is held in place by strong magnets. You can simply remove it to have a more streamlined case or use the keyboard in a more comfortable position. The Dexim iPad case looks to be the best of both worlds.

Trimming tracks in iTunes

By Bryan Schmiedeler

Sometimes a music file contains material at the beginning or the end that you don't want to hear, like crowd noises, an extended drum solo, or my pet peeve—10 minutes of silence. Fortunately, you can tell iTunes when to start and stop playing a song. Follow these steps:

The "Options" tab in "Get Info" lets you trim songs.

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