iPhone Life - Best Apps, Top Tips, Great Gear

iOS 17 top image

At the June 5 2023 WWDC Keynote, Apple announced iOS 17 alongside other software updates, new Mac devices, and Apple Vision Pro. While iOS 17 is a more practical update with few new features, there are many great updates to the apps we use most: Phone, Messages, FaceTime, Photos, Health, and more. Keep reading to see the many ways these updates will change the way you use your iPhone this fall.

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.

It's nice to see an app by fellow blogger Todd Bernhard, president of No Tie software, win an award at CES. Getting recognition was AutoVerbal Pro Talking Soundboard, a $9.99 app that allows people to communicate who are unable to speak due to conditions such as stroke, surgery, cerebral palsy, and autism. The app has hundreds of photo buttons representing common words or phrases. Users can also program a variety of buttons to speak custom messages. In addition, users can type anything and it will be spoken using text-to-speech.

Every once in a while I find FaceTime, Apple’s most excellent video call feature, to be very helpful. There are occasions when I just can’t get in the same room with a client, and FaceTime is a great alternative to just a phone call.

As a form of videoconferencing, it saves lots of time and money by eliminating travel and all the expenses associated with that. Normally I use my iPad because the screen is bigger and it’s easy to keep stationary, but sometimes I have to use my iPhone. FaceTime is a bit challenging in general, but particularly so on the iPhone—not because of the technology, but because of the potential for mishaps.

HyperPhysics App Review

By Nate Adcock

Sometimes you want to just kick back with a cool beverage of choice, and you know...? Do something crazy with your iPad!! Maybe something radical like: observe the conservation of angular momentum applied to a smooth body in motion as it turns ever more rapidly around it's center of mass. Huh, you say?!.. Ever see a skater speed up in a spin just by pulling in her arms? That's an application of exactly what I'm talking about, and you can learn a lot more about these interesting physics principles using the HyperPhysics app!

I've always liked ­playing on my mobile devices, even back in the Pocket PC / Windows Mobile / Palm OS days. They revitalize me quite a lot, particularly after a hard, exhausting day.

Playing without physical controls (buttons), only using the touchscreen, is pretty hard. This includes a lot of game types, particularly ones where quick direction changes are needed and / or you can't make the smallest mistake and must be absolutely sure even the smallest movements on the directional pads (D-pad for short) is registered. In games like these, physical D-pad / button feedback is of extreme importance.

As has been mentioned some weeks ago, it's pretty easy to record GPS information and, later, incorporate it into photos taken on a non-GPS-enabled camera.

Unfortunately, the current camera lineup doesn't really please people that would like to geotag their shots. Neither the, because of the high price-value ratio or high image quality (IQ), most popular point-and-shoot (P&S) or DSLR (including mirrorless [aka EVIL] or some lower-end [Sony] SLT) cameras have built-in GPS modules.

Some examples of the current, most popular cameras lacking any GPS support:

P&S-style "luxury" fixed-lens camera

Flash support has always (according to some people, painfully) been missing from the iOS platform. In the article below, I explain how you can watch any kind of Flash videos (via SkyFire) and how you can use full(!) Flash (and even Silverlight!) applications on your iPad (via AlwaysOnPC). All this without having to jailbreak!

Pure Flash videos

Summertime is vacation time. And if you use campgrounds when you're vacationing, you'll want to check out Woodall’s RV & Camping Copilot (free). It lists more than 12,000 private and public campgrounds and RV parks in the United States and Canada, plus Mexico. It offers campground information, including amenities, services, types of campsites, on-site recreation, as well as identifying many camping discounts offered at parks. Private campgrounds also include Woodall's 5W/5W Rating System.

In my ongoing series on novel uses of the iPhone and iPad camera, here's yet another: an app that lets you take a picture of a leaf and then gives you information about what type of tree it as. Leafsnap (free) returns the likely species name, as well high-resolution photographs of and information about the tree's leaves, flowers, fruit, seeds, and bark. The app was funded by a $2.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation and was developed by the Smithsonian Institution, University of Maryland, and Columbia University.

Otarine.  Latrine.  Ratline.  Taurine.  Reliant.  What do all of these words have in common (besides being seven letters long)?  Well, if you are a fan of the latest craze of crossword puzzle games, then these are all words you are going to want to commit to memory.  Most of you are probably familiar with the classic board game, Scrabble.   Up to four players can participate in a game, which starts with an assortment of lettered tiles being distributed to each player.   The tiles are each assigned a number value, which denotes the number of points you will receive for using it to form a word.  Earn point

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.

Pages