iPhone Life - Best Apps, Top Tips, Great Gear

It used to take forever for new iPad cases to arrive. Now it takes days, at most weeks. Many of the new iPad Air cases got the size and shape right, but a few missed the magnets on folios that enable sleep/wake. This first batch of iPad Air cases doesn’t offer any new twists or innovations, instead continuing mostly with cases that are one-offs of earlier iPad cases. The variety does, however, suggest that iPad Air owners will have plenty of options to choose from.

Look for CES announcements to greatly expand the number of options available.

A reliable protective case not only comes in handy to ward off scratches and scrapes, and a good, heavy-duty protective case can make the difference between a catastrophic, life-ending event for your iDevice and a mere bump in the road. Whether you are a bathtub iBook reader or an outdoor adventurer who always has their iPad in tow, a ruggedly protective case that offers a high measure of insulation from outside elements can be a very worthwhile investment.

With that in mind, check out these ultra-protective iPad cases, each with its own unique features and advantages, yet all designed to absorb and redirect the shock and potential damage to your iPad.

With over 2.19 trillion text messages sent annually, there’s a little known condition that is plaguing smartphone users known as "text neck." The injury involves stiffness in your neck and shoulders and typically is caused by excessive smartphone usage.

A 2011 study published in the International Journal of Occupational Safety and Ergonomics found that 53 percent of mobile phone users suffer numbness or neck aches. Another study led by Erik Peper of San Francisco State University showed that 84 percent of subjects reported some hand and neck pain during texting. Moreover subjects also displayed other signs of tension, like holding their breath and increased heart rates.

Do you have an idea for an app but lack the programming knowledge to begin building it? In this weekly blog series, I will take you, the non-programmer, step by step through the process of creating apps for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Join me each week on this adventure and you will experience how much fun turning your ideas into reality can be! This is part 32 of the series. If  you are just getting started, check out the beginning of the series here.

in this week's post, I'm going to break down the process of installing and running an app on a real iOS device (rather than the Simulator). Even if you think you know everything there is to know about this process, things have changed a bit under Xcode 5, so I recommend you read on!

These days there is a seemingly endless array of excellent quality Bluetooth speakers. However, out of the multitudes of Bluetooth speakers on the market, only a limited and select few can lay claim to being rugged and heavy duty. What follows are the cream of the crop of ultra-durable, shock-proof, and waterproof speakers. Read on to find the best rugged Bluetooth speakers for those who are adventurous or accident prone, or those who are looking for the perfect speaker for someone who can be really hard on their gear.

I just came across a solution to a problem I never would have figured out if not for the great and powerful "Internets."

I was trying to send a full-resolution photo from my iPad via email. Normally on my iPhone, when I click send, I am presented with a pop up asking what resolution I want. Not so on iPad. Once I chose a photo and clicked to send via email, it automatically loaded the photo in a size that is not full resolution. I went directly to settings and hunted around for anything that seemed like it would control default resolutions. NOTHING!

Do you have an idea for an app but lack the programming knowledge to begin building it? In this weekly blog series, I will take you, the non-programmer, step by step through the process of creating apps for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Join me each week on this adventure and you will experience how much fun turning your ideas into reality can be! This is part 31 of the series. If you are just getting started, check out the beginning of the series here.

One of the new features that Apple added to Xcode 5 to improve the management and runtime performance of images is asset catalogs. In this post, I'll give you an overview of how asset catalogs work, and we'll add an asset catalog to the iAppsReview project so you can get hands-on experience with this new technology.

The Bravo ($99.99, special offer) is an aluminum, waterproof and rugged, heavy-duty iPhone 5/5s case. It enters an increasingly crowded field of extreme-protection iPhone cases. Not only does this case manage to hold its own and shine amongst a crowd of excellent waterproof cases, with its ability to be submerged to about 7 feet and its drop-test rating of over 6 feet, the Bravo actually exceeds the highest standards of some of the industry leading alternatives for waterproof iPhone case protection.

4 Apps for a Smart Garage Door

By Angelo Digangi

With a swipe of your finger you can open and close the door to your garage, turn lights on and off, and even receive text alerts when your garage door is opened while you're away. Unprecedented control over such a frequently used area of your home can be attained with a bit of simple installation and a nifty app on your iPhone.

Is the ability to control your garage with your phone necessary? Well, not necessary in the way oxygen or food and shelter are. But streamlining life's mundane tasks (like controlling your garage door) with your phone frees up time and brain space for you to focus on more important things like your family, your work, and your life.

These systems and apps make garages more manageable and accessible from nearly anywhere.

Singing in the shower just got a whole lot more fun!

I received the Homewerks Ventilating Bath Fan with Bluetooth Speaker ($139 at Home Depot) for review a few weeks ago, and while I couldn’t wait to test it out, I was feeling a little lazy about the installation process. We finally got sick of stepping over the box, so I bit the bullet and designated a Saturday morning to the task. I regret to inform you that my procrastination was unwarranted and I could have been enjoying music in the shower a lot sooner! Curses!

Do you have an idea for an app but lack the programming knowledge to begin building it? In this weekly blog series, I will take you, the non-programmer, step by step through the process of creating apps for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Join me each week on this adventure and you will experience how much fun turning your ideas into reality can be! This is part 30 of the series. If you are just getting started, check out the beginning of the series here. 

For the vast majority of apps that you build, it makes tremendous sense to make sure your app can be sold to as many iOS users in as many countries and languages as possible. The App Store is available in over 150 countries in 40 languages and automatically handles international payments and current conversion for you. All you need to do is make sure your app can support a variety of languages. I'll show you the basic steps in this post as we make the iAppsReview project multi-lingual. 

Do you have an idea for an app but lack the programming knowledge to begin building it? In this weekly blog series, I will take you, the non-programmer, step by step through the process of creating apps for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Join me each week on this adventure and you will experience how much fun turning your ideas into reality can be! This is part 29 of the series. If you are just getting started, check out the beginning of the series here.

As we continue to move the iAppsReview app forward, we now come to a point where we have to climb the learning curve on one of the more advanced Objective-C concepts—blocks. This discussion comes at an unlikely place. This week I'm going to show you how to take the image of a review that you have created in the Write Review scene and display it in the My Reviews scene. This seems like it should be pretty straightforward, but as you will see, it involves using the iOS Assets Library and using Objective-C blocks.

Earlier this year I was invited to meet with members of Apple's iBooks Store (formerly called the iBookstore) at the Book Expo America conference in New York City. At that meeting I talked about my major complaint with iBooks—you couldn't read them on a Mac. You could only read them on the iPad. This gave the appearance that Apple was more interested in selling iPads than in supporting the iBooks ecosystem. So I was delighted when Tim Cook announced at the special event in September 2013 that Apple was making a version of iBooks for Mavericks, the new operating system for the Mac! This is a huge win for readers. Now you can read your books on the larger Mac screens (there is even a full screen mode) and iCloud keeps your current page, highlights, notes, bookmarks, and collections up to date on all devices. 

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