iPhone Life - Best Apps, Top Tips, Great Gear

 

 

After months of anticipation and rumored development, Lifeproof, (arguably one of the best protective case manufacturers for iDevices) has produced, and now released, their version of the award-winning Lifeproof case, for the iPad 2 and 3rd generation models.

 

Called the “nüüd”, this new, completely submersible iPad case is a revolution of design and functionality. This cleverly designed case provides a high level of defense for our precious iPads, unlike anything else on the market.

The irony. When Rush Limbaugh and co tried to get Apple to advertise on his popular radio talk show, Apple wouldn't even talk to him. Limbaugh acknowledges that, politically, Apple doesn't have anything in common with him. And he acknowledges that Apple's technology is highly restrictive. But despite all that, he loves Apple products. And on his show yesterday he talked at length why he loves Apple products in response to a caller's questions, making assertions such as: "It's just the stuff works.

UPDATE (08/08/2012): the just-released version (1.51) of AVPlayerHD no longer defaults to the hardware playback of MKV files, as is also mentioned in the update notes:


(click the image for a full-sized one! BTW, as you can see, a lot of other players have also received some serious updates in the last 2-3 days. So did the Photon Flash browser, which I'll also dedicate a separate article in the near future. PlayerXtreme, half-visible at the top of the screen, has only received some bugfixes.)

If you use your iDevice for watching videos using the built-in, stock Videos app, you may have noticed that the only way of fast forwarding or rewinding is the positioning slider at the top. You “grab” the slider with a finger and drag it to the left/right to rewind / fast forward, respectively.

Additionally, you can also drag your finger downwards to make the slider dragging speed slower. It won't help much when you run or do some other exercise and, in order to keep your pulse high, wouldn't want to stop it.

While in the gym, I tend to make / receive a lot of Skype calls to my wife or relatives. As I exclusively use stereo (A2DP) Bluetooth headphones in the gym to give me absolute, cable-less iPad 3-video-watching freedom while exercising, I've also run into problems related to the Bluetooth bugs of Skype: most of the time, I couldn't just use the headphones I already worn to conduct the call. Instead, I needed to use the speaker / microphone on the iPad itself, making my environment hear what both I and the other party say. Therefore, I decided to investigate the problem and come up with solutions to it.

UPDATE (08/09/2012): in the comments section below, I elaborated on deinterlacing. Note that I'll devote a complete article / tutorial to these subjects (using X.264 / HandBrake / Episode to deinterlace etc.) some time. Before that, it's mostly HandBrake's (default) decombing that will be your best friend.

UPDATE (08/04/2012): THIS thread has a lot of discussion of the subject. Remember to prefer my statements to ones that state the opposite! (The thread is full of factual errors.)

Original article:

UPDATE (07/07/2012): I've run some VERY serious CPU usage tests (see THIS for the methology; I used "top" on my iPad 3) and found out the following:

The InfiniDock and Springtomize 2 combo (can be used together to give the highest configurability; see below for related remarks) does not add any CPU usage when
- the device shows SpringBoard
- 10 icons are put in the dock, even with card roll and scrolling (via InfiniDock) enabled
- the maximum number of icons are displayed in each row

UPDATE (02/21/2013): I've re-tested the current versions of XBMC and compared it to the current AVPlayer(HD) versions on both the iPad 3, 4 and the iPhone 5.  AVPlayer and AVPlayerHD have proved out to be considerably better, which means XBMC is still not recommended for WMV playback.

Of XBMC, I've tested the following versions:

- official 12 Eden (currently available from their official repo as the default version)

- the iPad Retina-friendly version (more info)

- the latest (21/Feb) nightly build (13 alpha)

More info & discussion HERE.

UPDATE (24/05/2012): the new (2.3) version has just been approved by Apple. It has, among other things, improved UPnP support:

 

 

In my tests, directory listing indeed worked with Majestic. However, streaming didn't (all I saw was a black screen) and downloading have turned out to be VERY slow - more than an order of magnitude(!!!) slower than with GoodPlayer, under exactly the same circumstances. That is, UPnP-wise, this app still has a lot to be improved...

 

In the last few days, I've participated in several discussion threads in the Phone Cameras / Tablets & Apps forum of DPReview. (See for example THIS, THIS and THIS). In order not to have to repeat the same facts again and again in future discussions, I've decided to dedicate a complete article to the question of using the iPad as a photo frame.

While, in the last week, several multimedia players have been updated (including my favourite, GoodPlayer, which, among other things, has clearly improved its DVD playback support in the current, 5.0 version), one of them I've already (quickly) reviewed (see THIS and also the comparison videos HERE), RushPlayer has received the most updates and new functionality. This is why I'm dedicating a separate (quick) article to it (but, currently, no other players).

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