iPhone Life - Best Apps, Top Tips, Great Gear

In this age of multi-device households, sharing accounts with family members can be a little stressful. Add a tween or teenage into the mix, and it might be enough to push you over the edge. If you’ve ever had your phone ring with a FaceTime call from your 12 year-old’s best friend or received the “iCloud is full” error message after adding a new device to your household, this article is for you.

First, it’s important to know a little bit about your Apple ID and iCloud. Your Apple ID is what gives you access to iCloud, FaceTime, iMessage, iTunes, the App Store, and Game Center, among other services. Since these are the most-used services in my house, they are the ones I’m going to talk about here. Some families choose to share an Apple ID for some services and use separate Apple IDs for others. There is no “one size fits all” cure for family device management—it all depends on your family's preferences. If you forgot your Apple ID, here's how to reset your password.

This article will be useful for anyone planning to display the output of Keynote on an external screen. I've clearly marked sections meant for advanced users or ones with jailbroken devices; they can be safely skipped by other users. This article contains a lot of information on video/TV output in general and the multitasking/backgrounding JB tweaks, which may also be of interest to readers who aren't Keynote users.

Apple's Keynote app ($9.99) is by far the most widely used iOS application to play back presentations. In this writeup, I present you with a complete discussion of everything related to displaying its contents on an external screen or projector (from now on, for brevity, I'll call TV).

If you don't know the name Gary Rayner, chances are still good you know the company he built from the ground up. Rayner is the visionary genius behind the phenomenally successful and multiple-award winning Lifeproof protective cases. Over the years, I've had several opportunities to write about Mr. Rayner, his demanding standards of quality, and the Lifeproof line of cases, arguably some of the best iDevice cases on the market.

Last week at the CTIA Wireless Association convention in Las Vegas, not only did Lifeproof win three trophies at the iPhone Life Best of CTIA Awards, it also played a significant role in a major announcement from Brian Thomas, CEO of Otterbox. Live on the iPhone Life iZone stage, Thomas made the announcement that Otterbox had acquired Lifeproof in a move that according to iPhone Life CEO David Averbach “adds substantially to the Otterbox legacy and solidifies the company’s hold on the case market.”

Disney has recently released a set of interactive storybook apps for children based on several of its best-selling movies: Tangled, Cinderella, Wreck-It-Ralph, Monsters Inc, Monsters University, and Brave. Packed with puzzles, games, read alouds, and coloring sheets, these apps are sure to delight your little ones. 

1. Tangled: Storybook Deluxe ($6.99)

Read along to the story of Rapunzel and Flynn, or tap the icons for activities such as coloring pages, games, and puzzles. When in storybook mode, character voices can read to your child, or she can explore the text on her own or record her voice reading. 

After seeing A Knight's Tale the movie, I seriously wanted to get in a time machine and go back to the Middle Ages (though I'd likely end up a lowly field peasant instead of a knight)! It would be awesome to see knights with swords clashing, gleaming armor, damsels in distress and well... jousting! Jousting has to be the coolest sport ever, am I right? Think two medieval maniacs thundering toward each other set on knocking the other into oblivion! Want some of that action today in modern times? Get the most excellent Knight Storm (Free) now!

The following article is for people using any kind of external display with their iDevices, and for programmers who would like to provide as good of external display output in their apps as possible.

People have a lot of misconceptions regarding Tv output from iDevices; most importantly regarding the black borders on the left and right sides of the external image and also on the top and bottom. As an engineer well versed in video technology, engineering, and iOS programming, I found it necessary to get the facts right in a manner digestable for advanced iOS users (and all programmers).

This article explains how you can output still images to your external display (TV, projector etc.) from your iDevice and what you should do to maximize quality. While some of the material requires advanced knowledge (including having read my previous multimedia-specific articles), the “All in All” section at the bottom is digestable for beginners (at least I hope it is).

Apple's stock image slideshow implementation output is, unfortunately, half-hearted. (iDevices utilize the native TV output while playing slideshows. Apart from Retina iPads, it is the only way of making full use of the more advanced output types, namely, HDMI and VGA.)

A few weeks ago I reviewed an amazingly cool 3D golf swing analysis app for iOS called SwingTIP. Afterward, I managed to get out on the links with a friend for the first time in a long time. Not surprisingly, my scoring was pretty abysmal, so I figured I needed some help. I found two apps you may want to check out, especially if you also have been away from the game for awhile. Tiger Woods: My Swing ($4.99) will show you the spectacularly perfect swing of the master himself along with Tiger's priceless golf insights and other exclusive content. 

I recently had the opportunity to speak via Skype with Iliya Yordanov, one of the founders of SilverWiz. The company is the maker of the well-regarded personal finance app, MoneyWiz, which competes with Quicken, Microsoft Money, and iBank to name a few. Yordanov is a four-time entrepreneur, and is currently focused on scaling SilverWiz.

MoneyWiz is the company's sole app, and it’s available for iPhone, iPad, and Mac OS. While pricey as far as iOS apps go, it's $4.99 price tag is nominal compared to Quicken and Microsoft. The app has hundreds of great reviews, all four and five stars. I asked Yordanov what his secret was!

As a formerly certified weather geek, I like to check out new weather apps. I'm usually drawn to ones with more advanced features, but occasionally I find a simple and elegant weather program I have to mention. YoWindow ($0.99) is one such app. It is not a fancy weather app, which can become cluttered with maps and trend graphs. Instead, it gives you a view of upcoming weather in a serene 2D scene you can animate (e.g. forecast conditions) as you swipe. The app also serves to relax you with realistic outside sights and sounds that match the conditions, and even indicate the season.

This post is intended for readers with advanced technical knowledge.

This article explains how you can mirror and show Web-based Flash videos on external displays connected to your iDevice. In order to answer the questions of several people at MacRumors (original thread), I've decided to thoroughly test the external monitor/Apple TV mirroring/playback capabilities of the currently available Flash browsers.

This post is intended for readers with advanced technical knowledge.

In this article, I will explain how to transfer videos to Apple’s built-in Videos app with a brand new version of the excellent, free, all-in-one iDevice transfer tool, iFunBox.

In the past, uploading videos to the Videos app has only been possible via the Movies tab in iTunes.

iTunes, which is Apple's only desktop tool for transferring videos/movies to the Videos app, has restrictions, which make it impossible to transfer the following types of videos to iDevices:

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