Object Identification on iOS

August 5, 2024 | Comment

I belong to a walking group called “Walking with Cameras” which is pretty good in not being too sniffy about what camera you bring. This means there are quite a few iPhones, a smattering of Android devices along with some compacts and DSLRs.

We reached an open area where several varieties of wildflowers were growing and the discussion turned first to what they were and then to how there were dedicated apps that would identify them (which nobody had installed!).

I whipped out my iPhone snapped a few pictures of the flowers and then opened the Photos app. If you … Read the rest

Why I Dropped Edit for Notes on iOS

August 29, 2018 | Comment

So, this is me…

I wrote recently about dropping Drafts for the Edit app on iOS. In this post I said, and I quote:

Edit is a universal app (do we still use that phrase?) and the only feature I would like is sharing of text between the iPhone and the iPad otherwise I am set.

Of course there is already an app that does just that and what’s more it also syncs to the Mac as well. So what is this app? It’s Apple’s own Notes app of course!

I’m not sure why I missed this but, in … Read the rest

Why I Dropped Drafts for Edit on iOS

July 9, 2018 | 1 comment

I have been a happy Drafts user on both my iPhone and iPad for many years. When version 5 of Drafts was launch it moved from being a one-off payment to a subscription model which made me stop and think about whether I wanted to signing up to yet another app subscription. I knew I didn’t.

For me there wasn’t a real reason to upgrade as Greg, the developer behind the app, had said that he would continue to support the old version, but it did make me stop and think whether I was getting the most out of Drafts. … Read the rest

iOS (finally) supports QR codes!

September 20, 2017 | Comment

QR codes are a more modern equivalent of the ubiquitous bar code but hold both more data and more intelligent information – if you can read them. Until this week, if you had an iPhone and wanted to “read” a QR code you needed a third party app but with the introduction of iOS11 the camera now, finally, supports them natively.

The animated gif below shows this in action and how easy it is to use:

Of course you might wonder why this is important given that you don’t see QR codes that often. Well I would counter that you … Read the rest

Google’s Motion Stills

July 26, 2016 | Comment

Google have a good track record of bringing to iOS unique apps that aren’t available on Android. They recently released a simple little app called Motion Stills which takes Apple live photos and turns them into forever looping gifs. And it works really well.

On opening the app you are shown your photostream with a looping preview of each image. Tapping on the image allows you to make some very small changes such as turning on/off the sound and, crucially, the image stabilisation. It is the latter option that is most impressive. Live Photos actually last longer than you might … Read the rest

Siri Idiot

July 5, 2016 | Comment

I was persuaded by a mate to take a look again at Apple’s Siri, the personal assistant on iOS. I have to say that I have some deep seated psychological dislike of shouting into my phone in order to get it to do stuff but I promised to take a look at it again as he felt I was missing out.

The first thing I struggled with once turning Siri back on again was just what would I say to here. I could ask the weather forecast but I have apps for that and I find looking out of the … Read the rest

You might want to think twice before removing the mail app in iOS 10

June 21, 2016 | Comment

I wrote last week about the forthcoming iOS 10 release that finally will allow you to remove some of the stock apps including Mail. I speculated at the time as to what this would mean for third party mail apps and clicking mailto links:

What is most interesting about this is that Mail is included in the list. There are many third-party mail apps on the app store at present but one issue has always been that when you click an email address in, say, a web browser the email opens up in the stock mail app. This change implies

… Read the rest

Remove (Some) Stock Apps in iOS 10

June 14, 2016 | Comment

By and large the Apple announcement last night was pretty dull. That so much time was devoted to emojis showed (to me at any rate) that there wasn’t anything ground breaking to offer. What was interesting was one thing that wasn’t discussed and that was the ability to remove (some) of the stock apps in iOS10.

iOS comes with an ever increasing number of preinstalled apps such as stocks, mail, weather, compass, calendar etc. and many, myself included, have long wanted to remove these from the device but that hasn’t been possible – until now. It now appears that on … Read the rest

Microsoft Universal Folding Keyboard

January 16, 2016 | Comment

Now that screens are getting bigger on mobiles it is becoming increasingly more practical to do work on them, especially now that Microsoft Office is available on most mobile devices.

The biggest issue I have though is typing on the screen. While it is fine for short emails and text messages it isn’t really practical for longer pieces such as this blog post. One issue is that the on-screen keyboard covers too much of the screen real estate. To overcome this I’ve had portable keyboards before but they have either been clumsy or heavy to carry.

Now enter Microsoft to … Read the rest

The developer’s iOS 9 public beta conundrum

September 4, 2015 | Comment

[UPDATE – I’m being trolled by my bank! See the update at the end of the article]

The above is a conversation that I had with my bank about their iOS app and highlight, I think, an increasing issue that developers are going to have with more and more public involvement with beta testing.

I have been running iOS9 for a while now and on the whole it is pretty good but having beta software out in the wild does cause issues for developers of apps. It may not be possible to get fixes that are caused by the beta … Read the rest