Save on mobile bandwidth by disabling remote images in iOS Mail
I've just moved from a country where I had unlimited (really) data on my iPhone contract to one where data plans are metered and expensive. So this recent article by David Chartier, on the Finer Things in Tech web site, comes at the right time. It points out the simple setting in iOS to turn off automatic loading of images in Mail. As with Mail on OS X, you can load images later, but you won't need to load them for every message, saving download time and bandwidth. To change this setting, go to Settings > Mail, Contacts & Calendars, and toggle Load Remote Images to OFF. If you get an email with images, and want to see them, just tap on Load All Images in the message. This setting would make more sense if it only affected image downloads when using cellular data. But it's an all-or-nothing choice, so even when you connect via Wi-Fi, you'll need to d ...
published on Friday, the 3. May 2013, macosxhints
Ailing UK School Makes Dramatic Turnaround
A new video profiles Essa Academy, a once struggling school in one of the most disadvantaged areas of England. New principal Showkat Badat has reinvented the school as a hub of technology-assisted learning, and helped incorporate an ecosystem of Apple products, including iPad, Mac, and iTunes U, into the classrooms. The students? excitement about the technology and direct access to information is reflected in dramatically improved test scores. Since adopting the technology, Essa went from a 28 percent pass rate to 100 percent. ?I don?t see technology as an add-on, a nice option to have,? says Badat. ?It?s what enables learning and creates an environment that sparks creativity.?
published on Thursday, the 2. May 2013, apple-hot-news
Quickly type domains for different countries in iOS
You may be familiar with the fact that, when typing on iOS, you can press and hold the . (period) key, or the .com key, to get a popup with a handful of top-level domains, such as .com, .org, .edu, etc. If your iOS device is set up with a country other than the US, you'll have these, plus others, such as .co.uk if you're in the UK, or .de if you're in Germany. OS X Daily recently pointed out that you can also quickly type other top-level domains by simply adding international keyboards to your iOS device. To do this, go to Settings > General > International > Keyboards, then tap on Add New Keyboard. Tap the keyboard for the country you want to use. When you next go to type text, you can press and hold the . (period) key in, say, Mail, or the .com key in Safari, and access additional top-level domains. Interestingly, when I did this, I found a surprising change. I added a UK keyboard to b ...
published on Tuesday, the 23. April 2013, macosxhints
Manage site-specific Java settings in Safari
Apple has released Safari 6.0.4, and 5.1.9, which, together with a recent update to Java, provides site-specific settings for activating Java. As Java has become a widely-exploited vector for malware attacks, it's a good idea to keep it turned off if you don't need it. The problem is, however, that many people do need it, and the safest way to protect from drive-by attacks on malicious websites is to provide a site-specific activation method. Safari 6.0.4 offers this. If you visit a website that tries to load a Java applet, a dialog will ask if you want to block or allow the applet. You can later go to Safari > Preferences > Security, and click on Manage Website Settings (just after the Allow Java option) to view a list of websites which have attempted to load Java applets. You can then change the behavior for each of those sites. Get more info about Java and Safari in Apple's technical note.
published on Wednesday, the 17. April 2013, macosxhints
Amnesty Goes Open Source and Free
Amnesty, the reverse engineered version of Apple's Dashboard that allows widgets to run on the desktop with Konfabulator-like abilities, has been made open-source and is now freeware. Originally released in 2005, days after Apple introduced Dashboard with its release of OS X Tiger, Amnesty was built around an engine allowing it run widgets independently of Dashboard, and thus could give additional capabilities to widgets including adjustable desktop level and opacity. The engine also allowed users of OS X Panther to run Dashboard widgets. Amnesty was released to many positive reviews, including a sidebar mention in David Pogue's Missing Manual for Tiger, but as the interest in widgets waned in the past few years, its popularity and sales began to decline. Developer Danny Espinoza, who had recently stopped releasing updates for his products sold under the name Mesa Dynamics, felt it was best to release all his software products, including Amnesty (and Amne ...
published on Wednesday, the 10. April 2013, macosxhints
Prepare iOS device to give or sell
I'm giving one of my iPads to someone soon, and a recent TechHive article pointed out the easiest way to prepare an iOS device to give or sell to someone. Go to General > Reset, then tap on Erase All Content and Settings. If you have a passcode set, you'll need to enter the passcode to continue. An Erase iPad dialog will inform you that this will erase all media and data, and reset all settings; tap on Erase. Another dialog will ask if you're really sure you want to do this. Again, tap on Erase. The screen will go black with an Apple logo and a progress bar, then you'll see the iOS device's name (iPad, iPhone, iPod touch) and a slider. Slide the slider to begin setting up the iOS device as a new device. The TechHive article also noted that you can use this process to wipe and restore an iOS device; at one point in the setup process, you'll see a choice to set ...
published on Friday, the 29. March 2013, macosxhints
Unlocking the Power of iPad for the Blind
Bloomberg West profiles Ed Summers, who, as head of accessibility at international software company SAS, ?has made it his mission to help other visually impaired people unlock the power of the iPad.? Summers is traveling around the United States to teach educators how to maximize the device?s built-in accessibility features in their classrooms. Bloomberg notes that tablets are growing in popularity among educators, and Summers says iPad is ?opening up a whole world? for visually impaired students. ?We?re working to make sure that students and professionals of all abilities can succeed in the classroom and the 21st-century knowledge economy,? Summers says.
published on Monday, the 25. March 2013, apple-hot-news
iOS text to speech from iBooks
Our sister publication, Macworld UK, published a neat hint on recently, showing how to have an iOS device read texts from iBooks. iOS has accessibility features that can perform text to speech, but you need to know the trick to get this to work in iBooks. First, turn on text to speech: go to Settings > General > Accessibility, and set Speak Selection to On. Next, in a book, switch to scroll mode (tap the aA icon, then tap Themes to get to this theme), you can select a word and drag the selection far ahead in the book. Then, in the menu that displays, tap on Speak. You can use this technique to have text spoken in any document, and there is a limitation in iBooks, where you can't select all the text and have it spoken. Since selecting is annoying - having to drag the handle a very long way - you may find this troublesome, but if you really want to have a text spoken, this lets you ...
published on Thursday, the 21. March 2013, macosxhints
Use line breaks in Twitter
A recent article in TechHive points out that you can now use line breaks in tweets. However, this is nothing new; I've been doing this for a long time, with my Twitter clients. Just press Option-Return to make a line break that does not act as press Return (or sending a tweet). It's worth noting that Option-Return works in just about any text field, including those where Return sends text (such as in Messages). This isn't a new hint; this feature has been around for ages, but it's good to know. It's worth noting that my Twitter client of choice, Twitterrific, already handles Returns as line breaks; you have to press Command-Return to send a tweet.
published on Friday, the 15. March 2013, macosxhints
Change the Notification Center sound
I have to agree with Erica Sadun, at TUAW, who writes that Basso, the sound used by Notification Center, is horrid. It makes me cringe, and, because of this, I don't use sounds with Notification Center. But Sadun found that you can change the Notification Center sound with a bit of a hack. If you go to ~/Library/Sounds and place a sound in AIFF format there, and name it Basso.aiff, Notification Center will use that sound. You'll need to run the following Terminal command to relaunch Notification Center (or restart your Mac): killall NotificationCenter You'll have a much better sound for notifications. I really think Notification Center should not only allow users to change the default sound, but also choose specific sounds for different applications, the same way you can choose a specific ringtone for different callers on iOS.
published on Thursday, the 7. March 2013, macosxhints