Being able to accept credit cards is good for business. It's convenient for customers, and it's fast for the vendor. Unfortunately, for the small businessman, accepting credit cards has been an expensive hassle. Not anymore-- thanks to Square.

Square provides, for free, a credit card reader that fits into your iPhone's headphone jack. Use the Square iPhone app to enter the amount of the bill, swipe a card through the Square reader's slot, and you're on your way to getting paid. Start by going to Square and signing up for an account. All you need to provide is a US-based mailing address, a US-based bank account, and a Social Security Number. You can sign up as a business or as an individual, and even without the card reader, you can accept credit cards by manually entering the credit card's number. The card reader will arrive in a few days and at that point you'll be all set. There's nothing else to do.

The Fees
Square's fees are simple: no set-up fee, no monthly fee, no monthly minimum, no variable rates. Just 2.75% on every scanned credit card, and 3.5% + 15 cents for every manually-entered credit card. (For those new to this credit card stuff, a scanned card number is less of a fraud risk to Square than a manually-entered card number is, so they charge less for that.)

Why Square?
Square's fees are competitive with those from other "merchant services" companies, so price isn't really the reason to use them. Where Square really shines is in ease of set-up, ease of use (iPhone app), clear reports, and excellent customer service. It could not be easier to set up, the iPhone app is super-convenient, the reports tell you everything you need to know, and when you need help from Square it's easy to get, and fast.

Here are a few screenshots taken from my iPhone. This one shows some work that I'm going to charge for.


If I'm on-site, the customer gives me a credit card and I scan it. The customer then signs her name with her finger, right on the iPhone. It's wild. One more touch and the card number is sent to Square (so yes, you need to have internet access, either WiFi or through your iPhone's cellular data network). Approval is immediate (assuming it's a good card) and a receipt is emailed to the customer. The whole affair is fast and fun, even for the person paying.

Here's how it looks when you don't have a card to scan. Just type it in and Authorize.


Here's a stock photo from Square themselves showing the signature screen. Yes, they compute tips for you, if that's what you'd like.


Here's a screenshot showing how nice and clean the Square iPhone app is. If I tap the Sales History button I can see how I've used Square, right on the phone.


It's not blurry when you look at it on the iPhone.


The money gets to your bank account in about three business days. First it goes to Square's system, then it's sent to your bank, and then it's in your account. There are a couple of holds and delays along the way but it ends up in your bank account in about three days.

I Know What You're Thinking
"That's nice, but I have no need for that." Oh no? Wouldn't it be cool to be able to accept credit cards at a garage sale? Or at a bake sale? Or at some other kind of fund raiser? Of course it would. Wouldn't it be nice if your pool man or plumber or the neighborhood kids who cut your grass and wash your car accepted credit cards? Tell them about Square and they can. Yes, they'll need an iPhone (or an iPad, or-- ugh-- certain Android devices), but that's hardly a bad thing. They can read The Boyce Blog (or play Angry Birds) on their iPhones when they're not scanning credit cards.

As long-time readers of The Boyce Blog know, we only recommend things that we use ourselves. We switched to Square six months ago and we've been thrilled with it ever since. I highly recommend Square.

This, by the way, is my 300th blog post. How about that.

Written by +Christian Boyce

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(This one is for AOL users. If you are one, read on. If you aren't one, read on anyway. I'll bet you have at least one AOL-using friend that can put this information to use.)

Actually, I could have called this "Eliminate Your AOL Bill." Keep reading.

Once upon a time, AOL (America Online) was the Number One way for people to get online. AOL provided software, an email address, and a phone number with a modem at the other end that would answer your dial-up call and put you on the internet. That was a long time ago.

AOL charged for that. It makes sense that they did; if nothing else, all of those phone lines and modems cost AOL real money. So you paid, maybe $19.95 per month, maybe $14.95 per month, and if you have an AOL account that is more than a couple of years old, you probably are still paying. But you don't have to.

Turns out that AOL will give anyone a free email address. And, if you already have an AOL address, you should check to see whether you're paying for it or not. If all you want from AOL is an email address, follow this tutorial and quit paying them. It's really easy.

Step One: use Safari (or Firefox, or whatever) and go to www.aol.com. (You can do this on your computer or your iPhone or iPad. Even the PC people can do this, so tell a friend. Your friend will thank you.) If you're already checking your email on AOL, look for a tiny "AOL" link at top left. That'll do it.

Step Two: click where it says "SERVICES" The red arrow shows you where. You're not going to click and hold and slide down the menu that drops down. You're just going to click on "SERVICES" and let go.



Step Three: in this screen, click where it says "Account Updates." It's nice and bold, at the top left. Red arrow, man.



Step Four: you'll have to sign in (if you haven't already), and you'll have to supply the secret answer to your secret question. I can't help you with those things-- that's why they call them "secret." Once you've done that, you'll see this screen. Click where it says "Change My AOL Plan."


They'll ask you whether you need a dial-up connection or not. Hopefully, you know the answer to that. (If you're not sure, contact me and I will help you find out. Hint: if you're one of my customers, you do NOT need a dial-up connection. You have a high-speed connection already.)

Step Five: Now for the fun part. They'll tell you at the top what your current plan is. If it says anything other than "Current Plan: $0.00/month" you're about to save some money.

Here's what you might see:


Scroll down the page and you'll find the Free AOL plan. That's the one for you. Click the big orange "Get This Plan" button and that is that. You'll see something like this when you're done:

So... what are you missing by going with the free plan? Just a couple of things, which you probably don't need:

• No "live" technical support
• No dial-up access (but so what-- you have your own high-speed connection, yes?)
• No McAfee security (also, so what-- the version AOL is "giving" you isn't compatible with Macs!)

In other words, you're not missing anything. So get rolling here and save yourself some money. You'll keep your email address, and your email will keep right on working, without interruption. You just won't be paying for it anymore. Even a few bucks a month add up.

If a few bucks a month don't matter to you feel free to click here, or use the PayPal button below. Heh.

Written by +Christian Boyce
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I thought I'd put a few of my favorite Steve Jobs links here, all in one place. Enjoy.

Playboy Interview, February 1985. Long, meaty interview with Steve Jobs, at the time head of Apple. Fantastic reading. Three months after this interview was published, Jobs was out of Apple, fired from the company he started.

MacWorld Expo 1997 Keynote Speech. Jobs is back with Apple, thanks to Apple's acquisition of NeXT. Gil Amelio (the Apple CEO who oversaw the acquisition) is out, and Apple is operating without an official CEO. In his first big public speech since his return, Jobs outlines his plans for bringing a reeling Apple back to health. He is particularly gracious in giving thanks to the outgoing Board members for working hard under difficult circumstances. Watch and listen as Jobs alludes to "the crazy ones" that Apple makes computers for (soon to be the theme of some very memorable ads). Great stuff throughout.

Stanford Commencement Address, 2005. Twenty-two minute video (counting the introduction by Stanford's President John Hennessy). Jobs' pancreatic cancer had been diagnosed the previous year, and the perspective it gave him is evident throughout the speech. Highly recommended.

Original iPhone introduction, MacWorld Expo 2007. "This is a day I've been looking forward to for two and a half years." Steve Jobs at his very best. Part 1 here. Part 2 here.

Written by +Christian Boyce
Support The Boyce Blog by starting your Amazon shopping here.
Shortcut to Amazon's Mac page-- desktops, laptops, software, accessories.

Here is an iCal calendar showing the times and teams for every prime-time NFL game for the 2011 season. The calendar is provided by Scott Crevier of South End Zone and if you're a football fan I strongly urge you to visit his site.

In years past, I've modified Scott's full NFL schedule using AppleScript, producing a calendar of just the prime-time games, but Scott agreed to build the prime-time calendar himself this year. Scott's calendar has the advantage of being kept up to date as the season moves along.

If you click the link here, iCal will launch and ask you whether you want to subscribe to the calendar.


The answer is "Yes" so click Subscribe (don't change the Calendar URL-- that has to stay as shown). In the next box, you may wish to rename the calendar, change its color, and turn off the Alerts and Attachments and Reminders. You may also want to change the update frequency to every day rather than every week. See below.


The NFL season is right around the corner. Subscribe to this calendar and you'll know who's playing on Monday Night Football (and Sunday Night Football, and Thursday Night Football), and when.

(Those who are interested can read how I created the prime-time calendar myself in years past, starting with South End Zone's full NFL schedule and using AppleScript to systematically remove every game that started before 4 PM Pacific time. Writing the AppleScript was a fun exercise but this year's calendar from South End Zone is better due to the updating.)

Written by +Christian Boyce
Support The Boyce Blog by starting your Amazon shopping here.
Shortcut to Amazon's Mac page-- desktops, laptops, software, accessories.

Ten tips in ten days. It's the iMom Project, Day Ten.

Tonight: the iPhone's Settings app.


That's what it looks like: three gears, in what has become the international symbol for settings, or preferences, or tools (or gears). I don't know why three gears means "Settings" on the iPhone but it does. And, in a big departure from what we've gotten used to on the Mac, just about all of the settings for the iPhone-- including those for most of the apps, are packed into this one Settings app. (On the Mac, the settings for each program-- Mail, Safari, iPhoto-- are accessed by going to the program first, then to the settings that are specific to that program. Not so on the iPhone. On the iPhone, you go to the Settings first.)

There are hundreds of things to play with in the Settings. I'll show you the ones I think are the most important and interesting.

By the way, if there was one right way to do everything there wouldn't be a Settings app at all. You don't have to do everything my way.


The picture above is what you see when you launch the Settings app. Apple's done a great job of putting the most important stuff near the top. Airplane Mode should be OFF unless you are on an Airplane because when it's on, you can't make a phone call or use the 3G wireless service. Wi-Fi shows the network you're connected to, unless Wi-Fi's switched off. More on Wi-Fi in a minute. Notifications: you probably want that on, because that's the thing that lets apps pop up little messages like baseball scores and weather alerts and the word of the day, even when you're not using those apps. If you turn it off, none of that fun stuff happens.

You can touch the little gray arrow at the end of Notifications and make adjustments on an app-by-app basis. For example, I let the eBay app send me alerts and play sounds (even when it is not the frontmost app), but I don't let the ESPN app do that. Totally up to you. Play around and experiment.

Location Services is a good thing. In general, you want it on; as with Notifications, you control which apps get to know where you are. I let the Google app know my location (that way, when I search using the Google app, it offers to "use my location" to help me find stuff near me), and I let the AAA Discount app know my location because it can help me find discounts near me if it knows where I am. I couldn't come up with a good reason for Dictionary to know where I am, so I turned Location Services off for that app.

There are lots of options for you in Sounds, Brightness, and Wallpaper but you will figure those out on your own. So I'm skipping them. Let's touch "General" and see what we can find in there.

The big deal here is Bluetooth. Turn it off. All it does for you is drain the battery. What it does for other people, in some cases, is connect a wireless headset to their iPhones... wirelessly (for the rest of the people, it's draining the battery, or causing head cancer, or otherwise not doing any good). Bluetooth is sort of like Wi-Fi but you don't use if for the same things. Wi-Fi is a networking thing-- it gets your iPhone onto the internet. Bluetooth is like a USB cable-- it connects "things" together. Macs use Bluetooth too, notably for wireless mice and keyboards, but whether on a Mac or an iPhone, it uses up batteries pretty quickly so in the case of your iPhone, turn it off.

Auto-Lock controls how soon the iPhone's screen goes to black. Mine is set to 1 Minute because the sooner it goes black, the less it's using the battery. (You can dim the screen in the Brightness section of the Settings to save the battery even more.) If you don't want others to be able to use your iPhone you can turn on the Passcode Lock, but you will soon get tired of typing in your four-digit code every time you wake the iPhone from sleep. Plus it's one more thing to remember. However, for some people the inconvenience and the extra password is worth it.


I want to hop back to the Wi-Fi section for a minute (use the Settings "back arrow" at top left to go back). You will notice that "Ask to Join Networks" is OFF. That's probably the right setting for everyone. If you turn it ON, you'll get all kinds of messages saying things like "Would you like to join the Joe Smith network" as you move about the town. Maybe you do, maybe you don't-- but the odds are pretty good that you're not going to know the password to the Joe Smith network anyway, so you may as well not even try. And in that case, you don't need the message to pop up in the first place. So turn Ask to Join Networks OFF.


Back to the General Settings again, and then to Mail Contacts and Calendars. Scroll down to the Mail part. Here you can change the font size for your emails (that is, you can make the text bigger or smaller), and you can specify how many lines of each email will show when you're looking at them as a list. I would turn off Organize By Thread-- it is right for some people but I don't think it's right for you. What it does is group all messages that are related (that is, you write me, I reply, you reply-- and Mail shows this as ONE "conversation" rather than three messages). I think you like seeing each email, in arrival order. If that's the case, leave Organize By Thread off. You can turn it on to see whether you like it or not, and then come back to the Settings and change it back.

Back to the first page of Settings-- then touch Phone. Lots of good stuff here. See below.

Your settings won't be exactly like this, but you will find the Call Forwarding, Call Waiting, and Show My Caller ID options. They're worth exploring. I like Caller ID ON so that others know that I'm the one ringing their phones. I think they're more likely to answer the phone if they know that it's me. If I ever get the notion that they're LESS likely to answer the phone if they know it's me I'll turn Caller ID off..

Here are the settings for Safari. I think yours should look just like mine.


Finally, here are settings for "Messages", which to you means "Text Messages." Except, as we know from yesterday, a text message can also include a picture, and that's what "MMS" is about. Your MMS Messaging should be ON.

You will probably figure out what these options do, and you won't break anything by playing around so by all means go in there and make some changes. But, I think you should make your settings for Messages look like mine do.

There are zillions more settings, mostly for non-Apple apps. You have to scroll down a little in the Settings app to find them. You won't hurt anything by looking, so go in there and get a little more familiar with some of the available options. It's easy to be overwhelmed by it all, but do a little at a time. And press the Home button when you've had enough. And of course you can call me for help.

That's it: your tenth iPhone tip in ten (non-consecutive) days. It's a lot to know but even if you learned half of it you're way ahead. Using an iPhone is fun and handy, and it's more fun and more handy when you know how to use it better. I am guessing that you know how to use it better now.

And that's ten.

Ten tips in ten days. It's the iMom Project, Day Nine.

You already know how to take a picture and email it: take the photo, get to the Camera Roll in the Photos app, and then touch the little curvy arrow flying out of a rectangle. I circled in red the little curvy arrow flying out of the rectangle in the picture below.



Turns out that little curvy arrow flying out of a rectangle has a name-- the Sharing button-- and it turns out that it's not exclusive to the Photos app. It shows up other places too. I will show you one more place, and you will keep your eye out for more. First, let's talk about the various options hiding behind the Sharing button in the Photos app.



You've been using the Email Photo option, but the others may be new to you (they also might not all be there for you-- some of these options showed up in iOS 4, and I haven't had time to upgrade your iPhone from iOS 3. Something to look forward to.)

Email Photo: does what it sounds like. Address the email and give it a subject, write a little if you want, and send it. Note: the iPhone may ask you whether you want to send a small, medium, or large version of the picture-- if it does, you have to make a choice. Until you do the email does not get sent.

MMS: this sends the picture as a "text message." We just learned to "text" and you know how cool that can be-- now, you can "text" a picture to someone. If they have an iPhone it will show up on their iPhone without them going to "check email" or anything (just like a text message always does). The pictures you send this way are smaller than the ones you email, unless you choose "small" as the email option.

Send to MobileMe: you don't have a MobileMe account so this one is not going to do much for you. Even if you did have a MobileMe account you wouldn't have one for long, as the "iCloud" service will unfortunately not include this feature when it comes into being and MobileMe goes away. But, in the interest of completeness, I will tell you that the idea with Send to MobileMe is you can "publish" photos to the internet, storing them on Apple's special MobileMe servers, where other people can come to see them without you having to email the pictures (for an example, click here). It is really neat, and it's a drag that Apple has decided to pull the plug on it. The iCloud will have something similar, but not the same, and of course the button will have to get a new name too-- I am betting on "Send to iCloud" or something like that. We can talk about this again in a few months when iCloud is up and running.

Assign to Contact: this a great one. You will use it all the time. When you tap "Assign to Contact" you're shown all of the people in your Contacts list. Scroll around and find the person you want to assign the picture to. You might think that's it, but it's not! You then get to resize and move the picture, so if it's a picture of three people you can use it three times (once for each person) by scaling and moving the picture to show each person in turn. The picture will pop up on your iPhone's screen when the person calls. It will also show up in a tiny version on each email you get from that person. It's very cool.

Use as Wallpaper: sort of nice. "Wallpaper" means different things depending on which version of the iOS software you're using. On iOS 3 (which is what your iPhone uses) "wallpaper" means the picture that you see when you wake up the iPhone (also known as "the lock screen" because it is showing when you "unlock" the iPhone with that little swipe from left to right). One iOS 4, "wallpaper" still refers to the "unlock screen", but it also refers to the background behind the app icons. In iOS 4, you get to make the choice, and you can assign the picture to the lock screen, to the picture behind the icons, or both. Personally, I like the background to be black, so I would never change that, even though I know how. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. But change that "lock screen" image as often as you like.

Print: I will give you ONE guess as to what this button would do. Obviously, it's supposed to print the picture, but it doesn't work on YOUR iPhone because your iPhone is on iOS 3 and the Print feature didn't exist until iOS 4. Don't feel bad about missing out on printing though. The feature works with only a few printers (a very select few from HP, and no others), and you can always just email the picture to yourself and print it from your iMac. (Note: if you were on iOS 4, and you didn't have an HP printer, and you still wanted to print from your iPhone to your printer, I would set you up with Printopia. For $20 it makes this so-called "AirPrint" feature work with practically any printer.)

Whew. There's more behind the "Share" button in the Photos app than I remembered.

I told you a LONG time ago (in this blog entry) that I'd tell you about one more place where the Sharing button works. The "one more place" is the Safari app. Anytime you're looking at a web page on your iPhone you'll see a row of buttons across the bottom. See below. I've circled the button in red. Note: on iOS 3, the Sharing button is simply a "+". They fixed that in iOS 4. Whether a + or a Sharing button, it works the same. This time, being on iOS 3 is just as good as being on iOS 4.



You get some options when you tap the Sharing button in the Safari app, and here they are:


Add Bookmark: it does what you think it does, for whatever web page you're on. And, since your iPhone is synching with your iMac, a bookmark you make on the iPhone will show up on your iMac as soon as the two devices sync. This is very handy.

Add to Home Screen: puts an icon on your Home Screen. The icon is essentially a bookmark (to the web page you're one), with a nice icon. Touching the icon takes you straight to the web page. It's super-handy. Try this one right away-- I am sure that you will use it all the time.

Mail Link to this Page: by far the easiest way to tell someone about the web page you're on. It's just like emailing a photo, except here you're sending a link to a web page.

Print: not for you, not yet. Same problems as above-- only works in iOS 4, and then only just barely, unless you get the excellent Printopia for twenty buckos. We will cross that bridge later.

If I had to pick my favorite "Sharing" items, I'd pick "Email Photo" and "Mail Link to this Page." I use those constantly. The other Sharing items are interesting too, though, so give them a chance and see what you think.

That's nine.

Ten tips in ten days. It's the iMom Project, Day Eight.

If this were Jeopardy! they'd call it "Potpourri." But, it's not Jeopardy!, so I'm calling it "My Favorite iPhone Tips." Try 'em all.

Favorite Tip #1: The Home Button.
The Home button is very important. If you're using an app (Mail, maybe) and you press the Home button you'll be taken to the Home screen that you were last looking at. You can have more than one Home screen, as you have probably noticed-- some of your apps are on "this" Home screen and some of them are on "that" Home screen and some of them are on "the other" Home screen, etc. But, when you press Home, you come back to the one you were last on.

If you press the Home button when you're already looking at a Home screen, you are taken to the first Home screen (the one at the far left). That's handier than swipe-swipe-swipe. And, if you're already on the first Home screen, and you press the Home button, you are taken to the Search screen, which we talked about a few days ago.

Favorite Tip #2: Take a Screen Shot
There are plenty of times when you're going to see something funny on your iPhone and you want me to tell you what it is. But, since I'm not always going to be in the neighborhood your best bet is to take a picture of the iPhone's screen and email it to me. It is very easy to do. Just press the Home button and the Sleep button (at the top right edge of the iPhone) at the same time. (They're not super-strict about "at the same time." You can be a little late with one button or the other and it will still work.) When you do it right, you'll hear a sound, the same one you hear when you use the iPhone to take a picture. You will also see the screen sort of "flash" a little. After that, nothing happens, but the screen's been captured. Go to the Photos app and you'll see it in the "Camera Roll" (which is where all of the photos taken with the iPhone are). From there, you touch the picture, then touch the "Sharing" button at bottom left (rectangle with a curvy arrow flying out of it), just as you do with photos that you want to email. The rest you already know how to do-- just address it, title it, and send it.

Bonus to Favorite Tip #2: if you take too long to hit the Sharing button, it disappears. That's not a problem. Just touch the picture to bring the Sharing button back. Touch the picture again to make it disappear.

Favorite Tip #3: Scroll to the Top
Lots of iPhone apps have more information than fits on one little screen. The Contacts app, the Mail App, the Calendar app, Safari-- all of those, and many more, involve a bit of scrolling. Sometimes you end up way way down and you want to scroll back to the top. You could do the swipe-swipe swipe method, but better and faster is to just touch the time at the very top of the iPhone's screen. That will take you straight to the top, in one quick move.

Bonus to Favorite Tip #3: if you use this "touch the time" method in Mail, it not only takes you to the top, but it reveals a Search box where you can type and find a particular message. If you do it in Safari it takes you to the top and reveals the address box plus the Google search box. Do it in Contacts and you get a search box too. Very handy.

That's eight.

Ten tips in ten days. Day Six.

One of the things that we've grown used to on the Mac is Undo. Make a mistake, and if you catch it soon enough you can go to the Edit menu and choose Undo. Super powerful, and super handy. I use it all the time. Turns out the iPhone has Undo too, but you have to know how to do it. Or undo it. Whatever.

First let's look at some scenarios where you'd want to use Undo. Maybe you've been writing an email on your iPhone, and somehow you select a bunch of text, like so:


And then, with all that text selected, you start typing again, or maybe just accidentally touch a key on the iPhone keyboard, and all of a sudden all of that text that was selected is gone. It happens. Oops.


Or, maybe you typed something, backspaced over it on purpose, and then changed your mind again and decided you wanted it back after all. Each of these scenarios screams for an "Undo." So now we're going to learn how.

Remember the Etch-a-Sketch? Remember how you erased it by shaking it? Of course you do. If you think of it as "undoing" your Etch-a-Sketch picture (instead of erasing it) you will know how to "undo" on the iPhone. That's right: when you want to Undo something on the iPhone, you shake it.

Give it a whirl. Type something into an email (or anywhere else that you enter text on the iPhone). Now shake the iPhone (side to side). A little message pops up, with a button that lets you "Undo Typing." Looks like this:


Touch the Undo Typing button, and of course you are back to where you started... but if you shake the iPhone again, you get another little message, and this time there's a "Redo Typing" button. (There's still an Undo Typing button, which would "Undo" your typing even further.) Looks like this:



You can tell from the times on these screen shots that I took a long time to think about whether I wanted to undo or redo, but that's OK. You can take as long as you like.

This "Shake to Undo" method works on the iPads also but you really have to move it to make it happen. I recommend that those who want to use "Shake to Undo" on an iPad hold on with both hands because if you don't have a good grip you will fling the iPad across the room.

That wraps up Day Six of the iMom Project. Hoping you learned something.

Bonus: music to shake your iPhone to.

Ten tips in ten days. Day Four.

Today's tip: use the "search" screen. It looks like this:


Once you get to this screen (I will tell you how in a minute), you can search for just about anything on your iPhone (or iPad). Here's a partial list:

• Apps
• People
• Notes
• Emails
• Calendar events

I say "partial list" because you can also search, right from this screen, the web (using Google), or the famous Wikipedia. But that stuff's not actually "on" your phone, and the list was about stuff on your phone, so we have to make that distinction.

Let's talk about how to get to this screen. There are two ways that I know of:

1. You can, from any of the home screens, swipe from left to right until you get there, or...
2. You can, from any home screen, press the Home button (which takes you to the first home screen), and then press the Home button again. If you're already at the first home screen when you press "Home" so much the better.

Note: do not press the Home button multiple times quickly. Press it once, see what happens, and then (if necessary) press it again.

So... let's say you want to call me on your fancy new iPhone. Yes, you could go to Contacts, and then you could search for me, and then you could touch my phone number to call me. But, now that you know how to search the whole iPhone, you can press the Home button a time or two to get there, type in a few letters, and voila, there I am. You save yourself the trouble of going to the Contacts, and the result is just as good. See below.


Just touch my name, which brings up all of my numbers, and touch the one you want to call. By the way, I got rid of the old 310-927-3711 phone number so you can take that out of your address book. There are enough ways to contact me without having a second cell phone.

Notice, when you find stuff this way, that you don't have to specify WHERE you want to look. The search automatically in all of the places listed above, all at once. That's cool. Also, you don't even have to touch the blue Search button. The iPhone will search as soon as you stop typing. Everything should be so easy.

So that's it. Play around with this. I think you will be surprised at how handy it is. You might even find things that you didn't know were there!

Here we go. Day Three.


The iPhone clock app. So simple. Yet, so fabulous. I use the clock every day and so should you. Here are some ideas for you:

1. Use it as an alarm clock. It's way way WAY better than the alarm clock you use now, because with this one you can set multiple alarms! Set an alarm for 7 AM on weekdays and for 9 AM on weekends. Set an alarm to remind you that your favorite TV show will soon be on. Set an alarm to remind yourself to go to bed!
2. Use it as a timer. It's way way WAY better than the timer you use now, because the one in the kitchen is attached to the oven and if you're out in the yard you won't hear it go off. Set a timer for two minutes so you don't forget to stir the coffee. Set a timer for 12 minutes so you don't forget to take the biscuits out of the oven. Set a timer for 60 minutes so you don't run out of time on the parking meter.

The clock app actually has four functions, not just two, but I never use the stopwatch and I only used the World Clock a couple of times-- I don't need to know what time it is in Paris on a daily basis. But who cares about what I don't use. It's the stuff that I DO use that is so neat. Anyway, get familiar with the iPhone's Clock app, and you'll find yourself using it all the time.

Here's a picture of my iPhone, with various alarms set for various days.


And here's a picture of the timer, ready for the biscuits.


That's it. Check back tomorrow.

Ten tips in ten days. Day 2.

When taking a picture with the iPhone, remember that the picture is taken when you take your finger off of the button, not when you touch it. So, get the camera app going, compose your picture, put your finger on the button and keep it there waiting for that perfect moment... and then, very gently, take your finger away. You will get better pictures this way (stabbing at the button to capture the picture at just the right time results in a jarred iPhone, and a blurry picture).

Bonus: remember that that the camera "button" is on the screen-- it's NOT the home button. See below.

I set Mom up with an iPhone 3GS this week, and she's getting the hang of it. I thought I'd speed up the learning process by teaching her a tiny bit about the iPhone every day. My plan is ten tips in ten days. Figuring that a lot of other people are new to the iPhone too I thought I'd put the tips here on the blog so everyone else can benefit. That means you, Debbie, and also you, Christi.

So here we go with Tip Number One.

Know How to Zoom In and Zoom Out
There's a shortcut for zooming in (and out) and people usually "discover" it by mistake. The feature is not necessarily turned on, but if it is, a three-fingered double-tap on the iPhone screen will zoom you way in.

Here's what a home screen looks like normally...


Here's what it looks like after a three-finger double-tap:

That's a 500% zoom, by the way.

I've received calls from people who have accidentally triggered a zoom with the three-finger double-tap. They think that something was wrong with their phones. It can be pretty mysterious the first time, that is for sure, but all you have to do to get out of it is do the three-finger double-tap again. Easy.

You can zoom any screen, any time. Works everywhere. If you want to scroll around when you're zoomed in, use three fingers to drag the screen around.

If you find yourself accidentally zooming in and you want to turn the feature off, do it like this:

Tap the Settings app, then General, then Accessibility, then Zoom. Turn it off using the switch next to the word "Zoom." Of course, if it's off and you want it on, you can switch it ON, and try it right there. No need to "save" or logout or reboot or anything. You can always come back and change this setting later. I leave mine set to "On" because zooming in comes in handy every so often.

OK, that's it for Tip Number One. Give it a whirl.

Welcome to the party, Mom.

I know, everyone knows how to use Google... but not everyone knows how to use Google IMAGES to search by COLOR. They will if they read this blog entry.

Suppose you go to Google and you search for something. Here, I've searched for Yoda. I want pictures, so I'll click either of the three red-circled "Images" links.

The result of course is a page full of Yoda images.

Of course you can use the options in the left-hand column to choose an image size (use "Medium" or "Large" if you intend to print the image). But... how about those color options? Who would have guessed that you can find images of Yoda that match a color scheme?

Here's what you get when you click the green square.

Of course, Yoda is green. So you don't see a major effect here. However, look what you get with blue, and black, and purple. Very interesting, and just what you need to match your bag and shoes!



Of course it works with other searches, not just for Yoda. Here are some examples of color-filtered Texas wildflowers. First, the non-filtered search...


Then red (it shows right there on the screen)...


Then yellow...


Then pink...


Then blue. Neat.

I think it's rather amazing. I don't know when they added this feature, but as always, as soon as I noticed I wrote it up here.

I talked Saturday with with Digital Village, a terrific radio program based in Los Angeles, about Apple's recently concluded World Wide Developers' Conference. We talked about iCloud, iOS 5, and Mac OS X Lion. This link will take you to Digital Village's archived audio page-- my part is right at the top (or, if you're coming in late, it's in the June 11th 2011 section). Lots of other good stuff to listen to while you're in there. Have a look around.

From their web page:

"Digital Village is a weekly broadcast about the impact of technology, computers and the Internet on media and popular culture, hosted by Ric Allan and Doran Barons.

Rather than endless product reviews, we focus on how the technology is changing the way we communicate."

That works for me.

I sure love my iPad 2... but I seem to spend a lot of time switching between the regular onscreen keyboard and the numbers one and then back. At least I used to. Now, I make use of a bunch of nifty shortcuts. All of them involve holding down a key on the iPad's onscreen keyboard until you see a pop-up of other keys you can choose from.

See the picture:


This picture shows the pop-ups you'll get when you hold down the iPad's "E" or the "N" or the comma or the period (dark gray keys). The blue shows which symbol will be inserted if you let go without doing anything more. It's easy to get an accented "e" in this manner-- just hold the "E" key, slide up and over to the accented "e", and then let go.

There are many other keys (including the vowels) that will also pop up alternate symbols if you press and hold, so experiment a little and see what you can find. The numbers keyboard also has some alternate symbols-- give that a try as well.

Using this press, hold, and slide method you can save yourself a trip to the numbers keyboard just to get an apostrophe. Now you know how to get an apostrophe from the ABC keyboard, by pressing and holding on the command key. It's only a second or two, but they add up.

Try it. You'l like it.

BONUS: when addressing an email you get a different keyboard. On that one, holding the period down gives you .com, .net, .org, .edu, and .us (in addition to the period). How handy is that! It's my new favorite shortcut. Here's a picture.


DOUBLE BONUS: a lot of this works on the iPhone as well.

Recently I hit upon the idea of gathering up as many of my PDF manuals as I could-- manuals for my printer, for software, for my camera, etc.-- and putting them onto my iPad for reading in the iBooks app. The way I do it is easier than what I'd seen described online, so I thought I'd document my method in video form so everyone can benefit.


You can see the three PDFs (Olympus camera manual, HP printer manual, and AppleScript Language Guide) on the top shelf of the iBooks bookcase. Watch for another blog entry here with all kinds of iBooks tips.

UPDATE: if your iTunes is set to "Sync Books" you should drag your PDFs to the LIBRARY in iTunes, at the top left of the iTunes window. If you try to drag to the iPad itself it won't work. You will also have to click the "Sync" button in iTunes when you are done dragging. If you're synching "All Books" that's all you do. If you are synching "Selected Books" you will have to check the box next to these newly-dragged books. Either way, it's not hard.

I don't know why everything seems to be printed in itsy-bitsy type these days but armed with my trusty iPhone I can read almost anything. It's ridiculously easy. I don't know why it took so long to come up with the idea but it did.

All you do is use the iPhone's camera app to take a picture of the tiny type. Then, tap the icon at lower left to display the picture. Then, "un-pinch" to enlarge. Problem solved.

For example: I needed to get some numbers from the back of an Apple Time Capsule. I took the picture on the left, then stretched it until it was big enough to read. See for yourself.



This works with an iPad 2 also though not as well since the camera on the iPad 2 isn't very good.

You can of course aim the camera at the tiny type, then touch the screen, then use the zoom controls to zoom in without taking a picture but that doesn't work as well because it takes two hands and you don't end up with anything permanent. If you need to take another look you have to return to wherever it was that you didn't take the picture. Take the picture to begin with and have it forever.

I was in Round Rock, Texas last weekend and while there I used my MacBook to bring up the Los Angeles Times website. I noticed a couple of ads that mentioned a "Round Rock Mom" and wouldn't have thought much of it except that the "Round Rock Mom" looked familiar. The reason she looked familiar is that I'd seen her picture many times before while reading the Times from home in Santa Monica-- but, in those cases, she was cast as "Santa Monica Mom." Hmm.

Here's how it looked when viewed in Texas...


And here's how it looked when viewed in Santa Monica.


I suppose they could be twins. But probably not.

I clicked the links and shockingly they wanted to sell me something. Here's where they took me:

After clicking "Round Rock Mom"


After clicking "Santa Monica Mom"

I did appreciate that they personalized things to my location either way. "EXPOSED" indeed. Scam-o-matic.

But wait, therer's more! While in Texas, I accidentally clicked an ad and found myself looking at a web page telling me that I (me!) was "Today's Lucky Texas Visitor!" See, it says so right on the web page.

I wondered a little bit about the snowflakes and the "Holiday" reference at the top, but for a free Apple iPad 2 who's complaining? I scrolled down a bit and saw a list of previous winners, and what do you know, someone in my own neighborhood was on the list. I didn't know who she was but it had her name and picture and it said "Round Rock, TX" and that "proved" it.


Just for laughs I connected to my machine in Santa Monica and brought up the same web page, clicked the ad, and up came the same web page. Except this time I was the Lucky California Visitor! What are the odds of THAT! I had visions of me carrying an iPad 2 in each arm, looking like Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments. (Please click the link.)


I scrolled down a bit to see the people who'd won before, and what a surprise to see our new friend Jennifer Layton-- except this time she lived in Santa Monica.

After seeing Jennifer in two places, I couldn't believe it either.

Turns out it is not very hard for a website programmer to determine the general location of your computer, based on your IP address. Try this link and see if it "knows" where you are. I'll bet it's pretty close. Eye-opening.

The point is, don't fall for the old "Gee, there's a picture of someone from my neighborhood, that makes this offer so much more believable" trick. It's probably faked. If you want $84 per hour, or an iPad 2, you're going to have to earn it. Sorry to be the one to tell you.

A friend sent me a link to a New York Times article called "How to Procure an iPad 2." The article was very interesting and made it sound like you could get one at Best Buy with minimal effort. Unfortunately, the article is wrong. So, read it if you want, but with a grain of salt. And like your Mom told you, don't believe everything you read. Even in the New York Times. Shocking.

I will bet you, however, that your Mom NEVER told you not to believe what you read here on The Boyce Blog. Your Mom was right. You can trust The Boyce Blog.

I did some legwork today, visiting the Best Buy in West Los Angeles in person, and calling Best Buy in Culver City, California on the phone. I got the same story both places and they told me that I would get the same story no matter where I went. The story from Best Buy is this:

• They do have a waiting list for iPad 2s, but they are not adding names to it any longer.
• The waiting list was available ONLY for people who came into the store, not over the phone.
• Getting on the list meant making a $100 deposit.
• A person on the waiting list could buy a single iPad 2.
• The waiting list was closed three days ago.
• Best Buy has not received an iPad 2 shipment since opening day, Friday March 11th.
• The waiting list is several times larger than the initial shipment of iPad 2s, so it's going to be a while before they get through the list.

Well now. That's quite a bit different than what the New York Times reported. Based on the above, it appears that there is no sense in going to Best Buy for an iPad 2 anytime soon. No sense in camping out overnight to be the first one in the store, because any iPad 2s Best Buy receives will be going to people on the waiting list. No sense in calling them up to get on the waiting list because the waiting list is closed (and they wouldn't do it over the phone even if they still were taking names). No sense trying to order online because they aren't taking iPad 2 orders online at this time.

So, cross Best Buy off your list of places to go to get an iPad 2 before everyone else. You can't buy what Best Buy doesn't have. Eventually, they'll have them. But they don't have them now. UPDATE: they have them now (March 23rd, 2011). Use the Best Buy iPad 2 Availability Checker (thanks, www.obamapacman.com).

Target doesn't have any either. They haven't seen any since opening day, same as Best Buy. However, you can check Target's iPad 2 inventory. Don't get excited, you probably won't find an iPad 2 anywhere near you. But it is interesting to see how many Target stores there are.

Apple Stores might have some but they're gone in minutes. A week after launch, the lines are still longer than the supply. So, unless you're willing to be in line before 5 AM, don't plan on getting an iPad 2 at an Apple Store. At least not now.

It comes down to this: if you're wondering how to get an iPad 2, your best answer right now is "order one through Apple's online store." Do it that way and get the back engraved for free. Order the thing today and you can expect it in 4 to 5 weeks. I know, that's a long time, but do it that way and you can quit chasing the thing, letting you move on to other stuff, like figuring out which 3G wireless plan to buy.

Note: as long as you're here, take a look around. I've posted hundreds of Mac and iPhone and iPad tips and hints and shortcuts. Click this link to go to the home page.

Facebook has a nice little security hole, and someone has already done a "proof of concept" hack to show that it's easy to get into someone's account. The hack involves "listening" as people log into Facebook using an open network (such as what you'd find at Starbucks) and capturing names and passwords. Once that happens, the hacker has all he needs. He can log in with the captured Facebook credentials and post things and comment on things and delete things and generally cause a bunch of trouble. You don't want that.

Unfortunately, the person who developed the hack released it into the wilds, making it possible for anyone with a little knowledge to hack into other people's Facebook accounts. Fortunately, it's really easy to prevent anyone from hacking into YOUR Facebook account, and double-fortunately, here I am to tell you how.

First, go to the Account menu and choose "Account Settings."


Second, click "Change" in the Account Security section.


Third, make your settings look like this and click Save .

The most important one is "Secure Browsing (https)". The others are optional, but it would be interesting to know that someone has logged into your account, right when it happens, wouldn't it? If that does happen, make another trip to this same Account Security section in Facebook's settings and if it's not authorized, you can click an "End Activity" button to turn off that machine's access. Don't be alarmed (like I was) if you see something like this in Facebook's settings:



When I saw this, I thought "Whoa, who was accessing my account in Anaheim at 4:36 PM?" Turns out the location is VERY approximate. If you hover your mouse over the location, they show the IP address for that location, and it turns out they were off by a few miles. The IP they reported was my own. (You can determine your own IP by going to www.whatismyip.net).

Changing this one security setting takes less time to do than to read about. Do it now and you're all set.

Best Buy sells the iPad 2, and they have a handy online iPad 2 availability checker where you can tell it which iPad 2 you want, enter a zip code, and find out whether Best Buy has it in stock at a store near you. They are not currently accepting iPad 2 orders online so if they do have it in stock you'll have to RUN to the store and get one (because you can't reserve it online). Still, it beats driving all over the place and making a bunch of phone calls.

UPDATE: Best Buy has changed their site a tiny bit. Now, when you follow the link above, you get to a page where they show the iPads, but then you have to click on a link to check availability for that particular unit. Of course, they don't have any iPad 2s, in any flavor, when I check, but who knows, you might get lucky. Here's a picture of what you're looking for. Bonus: click anywhere on the picture to see Best Buy's complete selection of iPad 2s. From there, click those "Check Shipping & Availability" links.



UPDATE 2: Target also sells the iPad 2, but it appears that Best Buy is a better bet. I went to a big Target in Los Angeles and they told me they'd received FIVE iPad 2 units-- not even one of each Wi-Fi flavor-- on launch day, and nothing since. They have no idea when they'll get more.

UPDATE 3: Best Buy has them now (March 23rd, 2011). Use the Best Buy iPad 2 Availability Checker (thanks, www.obamapacman.com).

Note: as long as you're here, take a look around. I've posted hundreds of Mac and iPhone and iPad tips and hints and shortcuts here. Click this link to go to the home page.

This is a business card.



So is the black-and-white mess below. And the messy one is easier to put into your address book. That's because it's a "QR code," and it turns out it contains all of the information in the card above-- and you can read it using your iPhone's camera and add it to your address book without doing any typing at all. I'm telling you, it's the Next Big Thing.



The QR code format is rather broad. Storing name, address, and phone numbers is only the beginning. You can use a code, and your iPhone's camera, to generate a pre-addressed email, or to go straight to a website-- no typing required. And lest you think that this is an iPhone-only thing, it's not. Just about any decent smartphone can do it.

Obviously, there are two aspects to these QR codes: making them, and using them. I'll tell you how to do both.

First, let's make a QR code. You can search the internet for a QR code generator, but I've already done it and the best QR code generator is by Kerem Erkan, in the beautiful country of Turkey. Click the link and make yourself a code. It's fun. Here's one I made, using a Code Action of "Browse to a Website" (the simplest kind, but have a look at the other options in that Code Action menu).

In a minute, after I show you how to read a code, you can figure out which site I chose. When you create your own QR code, type in the desired web site URL, and then click the Generate Code button at the bottom. You'll get a nice big code-- click on it and drag it to your desktop for later use.

Now, let's figure out how to read these codes. What you need is an iPhone app called Qrafter. (There are nearly 200 iPhone apps that can read a QR code, but once again I've done the work for you and found the needle in the haystack. You want Qrafter.) It's free, so you have nothing to lose. Here's a bigger button to click.


While you're at the iTunes Store, have a look at Qrafter's screenshots.The main screen is shown below, and it could hardly be simpler. Just touch the giant "Scan with Camera" button, aim your iPhone's camera at a QR code, and in a second or two the image is recognized and decoded. It feels like magic, even after you've done it hundreds of times.



You can experiment with the Settings (at the bottom of the screen) yourself, but I recommend the options shown below. You'll also want to click the "Info" button at Qrafter's bottom right to learn a little more about the program.



Now let's go back and scan the codes we saw earlier.

Touch the "Scan with Camera" button and aim it at the first code... and you get all of my contact info, perfectly done, no mistakes. Scroll down a bit and you'll see a button to "Create New Contact" and another to "Add to Existing Contact." Touch the one that's right for you and all of my name/address/phone number info is added to your Contacts app. Easy, fast, and error-free.

Try the second code-- the one I generated with a "Browse to Website" Code Action. If your settings are like mine, you'll go straight to the website I chose. If not, you'll have to touch a button to "Open URL in Safari." Try it and see (and then change your settings so that "Scan and Go" is ON). Try the code you made and dragged to your desktop-- I think it will work.

You can use Qrafter to scan QR codes in magazines and other places too-- who knows what you've been missing.

So... now you know how to create a QR code, and you know how to read them. All you need to do now is figure out how to use them. Here's one way: I've printed up stickers with my business card info on them and stuck them to the backs of my business cards. Next time I have cards printed, I'll include the code, but the stickers work great.

Here are some other ideas:

• Make a "Browse to Website" QR code with your blog or website address on it, and put it on your business cards or stationery.
• Make a "Google Maps" QR code showing your business' location and put it on all of your company materials.
• Make a "Free Formatted Text" QR code with additional information about a product or service, or a list of ingredients for a dish at a restaurant-- or send "secret" messages to your friends (secret, that is, until everyone catches on to QR codes).

QR codes are easy to make, easy to read, and they don't make typographical errors. They take you from print (the code) to the web, or to email, or to a phone call, or to a text message-- all with a simple scan of a code. Fast, accurate, easy, and bridging the print and online worlds-- that's a pretty tall order, but QR codes deliver, and that's why I'm convinced that QR codes are the Next Big Thing.

UPDATES: The "QR" in "QR Code" stands for "Quick Response." And, it turns out that you can store over 4000 characters in a QR code. That's almost enough to store the text of this particular blog post. Find out more about QR codes using this link to Wikipedia. Very interesting stuff.

If you have an iPad, or think you might want an iPad, you ought to have a look at these videos. As usual, Apple's made it look easy (and with the iPad, it really IS easy). Watch even one of these short videos and you'll think "I could use one of these things! I could do what they're doing! It looks like fun! I want an iPad!" And you'll wish you had time to watch every one of the videos.

It is interesting to compare these to Motorola's XOOM tablet videos-- watch one of those and you think "This is just a commercial!"

(It is also interesting to compare the experience of going to www.apple.com with the experience of going to www.motorola.com. I know, I know: totally different companies--- but geez, Motorola, why make it so hard to get started? Do I want "Motorola Mobility", which "delivers personalized information to meet the needs of consumers both in the home and on the go", or "Motorola Solutions", which "provides business and mission-critical communications products and services to enterprises and governments"? Just for laughs, try entering "Xoom" in the Motorola Solutions search box. I think you'll shake your head in disgust. What a horrible experience.)

It's not easy keeping up with Google-- they make changes all the time, and they almost never make a big deal about them. Google Instant Previews is a good example of that. What it does is show you "Instant Previews" (hmmm!) of each website in search results, which makes it a little easier, sometimes, to figure out which website you want to go to.

For example, here I've searched for Barbecue Recipes, and as expected I found a LOT of results: approximately thirteen million, four hundred thousand. I don't want to plow through thirteen million four hundred thousand websites. I don't even want to plow through the ten on the first page. I want, somehow, to find the right one on the first try. I'm looking for one with a nice layout, with pictures as well as text. Google Instant Previews can help.

Start by clicking the magnifying glass to the right of any item in the search results. I've drawn a big red arrow here to show you where to look.


When you click on a magnifying glass you get a preview of that site, and since what you've really done is turn Instant Previews on for everything on the page, all you have to do now is hover over each item in the listing. No need to click another magnifying glass-- in fact, if you do, you'll turn the feature off.

Here I've just turned the feature on, showing a preview of the second site in my search results.


Now I can roll the mouse around and hover over other items in the search results, giving me a quick idea of what each site looks like.


I don't like the looks of this site with the green sidebar-- no pictures, at least not on the first page. Based on the previews, I could make a decision about which site to go to, saving me a little time. I know, I know: don't judge a book by its cover. But I'm busy. Seeing the cover helps.

You can watch a nice video by Google Themselves that explains it a little further. Turns out Google Instant Previews is even handier on the iPhone. Check it out. Here's the link.

No better way to find out about the iPad 2 than to watch Steve Jobs introduce it himself. Watch the unveiling. You'll want an iPad 2 before the video's anywhere near finished. Worth watching to the end though so you can hear Jonathan Ive, Apple's Senior Vice President of Design, say "Aluminium" (1:04:15).

Certainly nice to see Mr. Jobs. I hope he's feeling better.

Ever buy something online, and right at the end you see a little box that says "Enter your promotional code here"? Ever wonder how you're supposed to get those codes? I get them from Retailmenot.com. Retailmenot.com provides discount codes for use on other websites (and printable coupons for use in stores, and news about special offers). I've made checking with Retailmenot.com a habit-- every time I'm about to buy something online, I open another browser window (File/New Window, or Command-N) and see if Retailmenot can help me save some money. A lot of the time they can.

It's an easy website to figure out. Here's what it looks like (note: it's better on a Mac than on an iPhone):



You can search for a store-- here's what happens when you start typing "Jcpenney":


Rather handy. When you see the store you're interested in you can click on it and boom, you're shown a list of discounts and special offers for that store. Here's part of what that looks like (it's a long list).



Retailmenot is pretty clever. They'll show you deals for other stores and online merchants that are similar to the one you've chosen. And sometimes they just come out of the blue with a great idea. Here's one they recently showed me from Amazon:



Who knew? That's a great deal. Thanks, Retailmenot.com!

The iPhone's Safari browser is nice and quick. What isn't quick is typing in a web address-- it takes longer to tap-tap-tap http://christianboyce.blogspot.com into Safari than it does to read the articles when you get there. There are ways to make getting to websites in Safari quicker; here are two of the best. The second one's better than the first but read the whole thing anyway.

First, use the bookmarks. The icon looks like an open book, at the bottom of the Safari app (circled in red below). Tap that button and you're on your way. Of course, you have to get bookmarks into your iPhone. The easy way: set them up in Safari on your Mac, check the box in iTunes to synchronize bookmarks, and sync. Or add them via the Share button on your iPhone (keep reading).


Having bookmarks makes using Safari on your iPhone a lot easier-- just tap Safari, tap the Bookmarks button, scroll around through the folders and eventually you find what you're looking for and then you tap that. Whew. Not easy enough.

Here's the right way: add icons for your favorite websites to your Home screen so you can load them in one tap. Actually, make that "Home screens." As long as there is room for another icon on one of your Home screens this tip works. When there's no more room, you can't use this tip.

So how do we do it? Easily, that's how:

1. Go to the web page that you want to make an icon for.
2. Tap the "Share" button (just to the left of the bookmarks button). You'll get this screen:



You want "Add to Home Screen." Choose that, and you get this:



Like they say-- "An icon will be added to your home screen so you can quickly access this web site." Adjust the name as desired (more on that later) and tap the blue "Add" button. That's it. Here's how your Home screen might look after adding this site:



One tap on that red-circled icon and you go straight to the web page. Pretty neat, but not actually pretty. There's room for improvement. Two tricks: first, before adding the icon to the Home screen, stretch the web page until you're looking at exactly what you want the icon to look like. Here's an example, using http://christianboyce.blogspot.com:



I know this guy.

NOW when you hit that "Share" button your icon will look pretty good, depending of course on who's looking. Mom likes this one.

The second thing to do is to keep the name short. As we saw above, "The Boyce Blog" turned into "The Bo... Blog"-- sounds a little stinky. Shorten up the name and you'll end up with something that fits, as seen below.



Next time you want to go to the Boyce Blog, poke that icon in the nose and the page will come right up.

(Bonus: to get rid of an icon just touch it and hold it until it wiggles. Then tap the circled X in the top left corner of the icon. Double-bonus: this whole thing works for iPads too.)

From the press release:

New York, NY, February 2, 2011 – Today Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of News Corporation, unveiled The Daily -- the industry’s first national daily news publication created from the ground up for iPad.  
 
“New times demand new journalism,” said Mr. Murdoch. “So we built The Daily completely from scratch -- on the most innovative device to come about in my time -- the iPad."
 
“The magic of great newspapers -- and great blogs -- lies in their serendipity and surprise, and the touch of a good editor,” continued Mr. Murdoch. “We’re going to bring that magic to The Daily -- to inform people, to make them think, to help them engage in the great issues of the day. And as we continue to improve and evolve, we are going to use the best in new technology to push the boundaries of reporting.”
 
The Daily’s unique mix of text, photography, audio, video, information graphics, touch interactivity and real-time data and social feeds provides its editors with the ability to decide not only which stories are most important -- but also the best format to deliver these stories to their readers.

You can download The Daily from the App Store via this link. It's free. But not completely (and of course you have to have an iPad-- there is no version for the iPhone). When you subscribe to The Daily they send you a new edition every day, and it costs you roughly 14 cents per day (exactly 99 cents per week). If you pay for a year up front it's $39.99 for the year, or roughly 11 cents per day, or $3.33 per month. Compare that to what it costs to subscribe to a newspaper on a Kindle:

• New York Times, $19.99 per month
• The Wall Street Journal, $14.99 per month
• The Los Angeles Times, $9.99 per month
• The Austin American-Statesman, $5.99 per month
• The Boston Globe, $14.99 per month
• Chicago Tribune, $9.99 per month
• The Denver Post, $5.99 per month
• The Houston Chronicle, $5.99 per month

There are some advantages to the Kindle offerings (for starters, you can read them on a Kindle, and that's a GREAT way to read stuff), but they're not in color (The Daily is), they're not loaded with movies and sounds and interactive elements (The Daily is), and they're not designed to be read on an iPad (The Daily is). Of course, there's that little matter of "content" and it will be interesting to see whether The Daily turns out to be as polarizing as Murdoch's Fox News Channel (note to Mr. Murdoch: please, no).

They're offering a 14-day trial so if you have an iPad you may as well check it out. The Daily includes daily crossword and sudoku puzzles, by the way, and though I haven't tried it out I am guessing that doing them on the iPad will be a neat experience (literally).

Whether The Daily turns out to be great journalism or not, it's a step in the modern direction as far as presentation and delivery, and while you can't wrap a fish in it I think the modern way is going to win. I am guessing that a LOT of people in the "real" newspaper business will be watching The Daily very closely-- and if it's a success you can bet that we'll see a bunch of publications putting themselves onto the iPad too. I'm thinking that "newspaper delivery boy" may not be a really good career choice in the not-too-distant future.

You can read the official press release here. You can go to The Daily's website here. Lots of good stuff in both places.

I'm back from Macworld 2011 and as usual, it was a lot of fun. Also as usual, it was a lot of walking but this year I wore tennis shoes instead of cowboy boots. It took a while but I'm getting smarter.

There was plenty of cool stuff to look and play with and you can read about some of it here, here, and here. Rather than describe every interesting item I saw at Macworld I'm going to tell you about the things that I bought. You know I had to like it if I spent my own money on it. Here, then, is what I bought.

Camera Plus Pro (iPhone app for cropping/fixing/enhancing photos), $1.99. Share your modified pictures via email, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and Picassa with just a couple of taps. You get a lot for your money with this one.

Here's a picture I took with my iPhone 4.


Here's how it looks after cropping and sharpening and a little "warming" using Camera Plus Pro. I could touch that triangle in the lower left-hand corner and post it to Facebook in a jiffy if I wanted to.


Here's what the interface looks like for cropping. Easy enough to do.


L5 Remote (iPhone app combined with an infrared transmitter), free app, $49.99 for the transmitter. Use your iPhone as a custom universal remote control for TV and stereo. Create multiple remotes (swipe to move between them) for different rooms. I can make one for controlling Mom's TV and another for controlling my own stuff.

Here's an example of what you can do. Note the buttons at the bottom for various stations-- Tennis, Golf, ESPN and ESPN2, etc. Set those up and you'll never have to remember that ESPN is channel 417 and ESPN2 is channel 429.


Two things I'm going to buy soon:

Kensington "SoundWave" Sound-Amplifying iPhone mount (for use in the car-- attaches to windshield with a suction cup or to an air vent with a clamp), $29.99 with free shipping (via Amazon.com). I've decided to use my iPhone as a GPS, but I need to attach it to the car somehow. This Kensington device is the ticket. The part that makes this thing special is the sound from the iPhone comes out of its bottom speakers and is routed through some tubes into a couple of flared-out openings, and it makes the sound louder-- a very important thing when using a GPS in the car. Without some sort of amplification the iPhone isn't loud enough to be heard in the car. This holder's design approximately doubles the iPhone's volume. And you don't have to take the iPhone's case off to make it fit.


IRIS "Scan Anywhere 2" scanner. List price is $199 but the people at the IRIS booth told me it will go on sale at Frys.com with a $75 mail-in rebate starting February 1st. They expect the price to get down to about $120 after the rebate. This scanner is about as big as a box of aluminum foil so it is very portable. It connects to your Mac with a USB cable and you can shove paper into it a sheet at a time and it scans just fine. The really big news: you can do it even without being connected to your Mac. The Scan Anywhere 2 has rechargeable batteries in it, and it has built-in memory, and it has an SD (camera card) slot, AND it has a USB port for attaching a USB "thumb" drive. So, you can use the Scan Anywhere 2 on an airplane, or in a hotel room, or really just about anywhere. Then, after doing your scans, you connect it to your Mac (or pull the SD card or USB stick and connect that to your Mac), and it mounts on the desktop like an everyday drive, and from there you can drag the scans to wherever you want to drag them. Very neat, especially at $120.

Here's a picture.

Macworld 2011 begins today in San Francisco. Historically the largest annual Mac-related love fest held near a large body of water, Macworld has evolved over the years to a smaller show, with iPods and iPhones pushing Macs aside. However, it is still held near the same large body of water.

I think I've been to every Macworld Expo, which means something like 25 of them, which also means that I'm not 22 anymore. Hmm. I expect to see a lot of iPad-related things at the show, but one thing about Macworld Expo is you really can't predict it. One other thing about Macworld Expo is you can "do" Macworld in thirty minutes by listening to my Macworld Report on KPFK-FM radio this Saturday at 10:30 AM. Click here to listen (or tune to 90.7 FM in Los Angeles). Not now, silly-- Saturday at 10:30 AM. Of course it is OK to practice in advance.

UPDATE: Here's a link to a recording of my Macworld report. Twenty-two minutes and 46 seconds.

Steve Jobs is a lot of things, but he's not a mind-reader. I mention this because article after article tells us:
• "For years, and across a career, knowing what consumers want has been the self-appointed task of Mr. Jobs" (New York Times)
• "Jobs' greatest gift hasn't been for invention as much his uncanny ability to anticipate what people want" (The Associated Press)
• "He is perhaps singular in his ability to know what people want" (The Christian Science Monitor)

I say bah.

Steve Jobs can't tell what people want. But he doesn't have to. He knows what he wants, and he knows that when he shows it to you, you're probably going to say "I want that."

I am willing to bet that you NEVER sat around thinking "You know what I want? I want some raw fish. And wrap it in seaweed. And make it expensive while you're at it." And then someone introduced you to sushi and you said "I want that." You didn't know you wanted it because you hadn't thought of it. And if the person who introduced you to sushi had asked you what you wanted to eat you sure as heck wouldn't have said "raw fish, wrapped in seaweed, very expensive." No chance-- because it would never have crossed your mind.

Henry Ford said "If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said 'a faster horse.'" Steve Jobs has cited that quote a few times, usually when someone asks him why Apple doesn't use focus groups to help design products. More to the point, he's put it this way:

"It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."

That makes sense to me. The point is that a lot of us don't really know what we want-- but show us something, and we'll know whether we want that particular thing or not. The hard part is in the imagining. There is nothing magic about this, and it happens in other fields, notably writing (hardly anyone can start with a blank page and put something good on it, but almost everyone can tell whether someone else's writing is worth reading). Steve Jobs has done a great job of putting ideas on paper and turning them into products. And, when he shows them to us-- and that includes me-- we all say "I want one!" Actually, I usually say "I want two!"

Knowing that people WILL want something (once they see it) is different than "knowing what they want." Lucky for us, Henry Ford and Steve Jobs didn't ask us what we want-- because if they had, we'd all be riding a faster horse, and though horses don't have charging ports for iPhones it wouldn't matter because the iPhone wouldn't exist.

When you search with Google you sometimes get MORE than what you want, and it clutters up the results. For example, suppose you're looking for Mac help in Austin, Texas. You type in...

Mac help Austin Texas

... and you get a pretty good list. But, there are a lot of repair places listed, and you don't need repairs, you need help. You can make the "repairs" items go away by modifying your search like so (the minus sign is the key):

Mac help Austin Texas -repair

Pretty good. But, it turns out there's a cosmetic company called MAC and they're showing up at the top of your search. Change it again, using the minus sign:

Mac help Austin Texas -repair -cosmetics

That just about does it (though, at this writing, the top item is a help-wanted ad, where someone needs a chicken sitter! I do not make this stuff up).

So, what have we learned? Use the minus sign in front of words that you DON'T want included in the search results. Be sure that the minus is preceded by a space, and that there is no space after the minus. You want this:

-repair

not this:

- repair

Get it?

Bonus Tip: Google doesn't care about the capitalization. So mac help austin texas -repair -cosmetics gives the same results as Mac help Austin Texas -repair -cosmetics. Save yourself a tiny bit of work there.

Note: I am honored to present this special Guest Expert blog post, written by my friend Zach, a Macintosh and iPhone gaming expert.
-- Christian Boyce

Top 3 iPhone Games
by Zach, age 9


First Place: Ancient War
Type of game: side-scrolling battle
Point of the game: destroy a totem pole without your own totem pole being destroyed too
Cost: $1.99

Ancient War is great difficulty-wise.  It has different levels that start off really easy and become extremely hard.  Also Ancient War has good action, good controls and okay sound effects. I like how every couple of minutes you get to shoot fireballs.

Ancient War

Second Place: Angry Birds
Type of game: Arcade
Point of the game: get your eggs back from the green pigs by launching birds at the pigs using a big slingshot
Cost: 99 cents

Angry Birds is like Ancient War difficulty-wise.  It has different levels, some easy and some not.  Good controls, pretty good action, and ok sound effects. I like how you shoot your birds from the slingshot and hit something hard.

Angry Birds

Third Place: Eliminate Pro
Type of game: shooting
Point of the game: kill a guy without being killed
Cost: FREE

I like Eliminate Pro because you can play people online. I play it with my friend William online almost every week. It is good for advanced players and beginners.  If you play someone good it is hard, but if you play someone not so good it is easy.  It has great action, not so good controls because controls fade away a lot when you need them most so you don't know where every button is, and good sound affects. I like how if you shoot a guy when he is dead he explodes.

Eliminate Pro

Note: this is a repeat of a blog entry from last year, with updated data for 2010. Preseason games are not included.

I wanted an iCal calendar of the prime-time NFL games (Monday Night Football, the Sunday night game, the occasional Thursday night game) but I couldn't find one online. I did find the entire NFL schedule, but that was way more than I wanted. Solution: I imported the entire NFL schedule, then wrote an AppleScript to remove every game whose starting time was before 4 PM. Simple. Here's the script, for educational purposes...

-- By Christian Boyce, macman@christianboyce.com

tell application "iCal"
set the_games to every event in calendar "NFL"
repeat with i from 1 to (count of the_games)
set the_start_date to start date of item i of the_games
set the_day to word 1 of (the_start_date as string)
set the_hour to character 1 of time string of the_start_date as string
--
if the_hour is not greater than 3 then
set the_event_id to uid of item i of the_games
delete event id the_event_id of calendar "NFL"
end if
--
end repeat
end tell

and here's the NFL Prime Time calendar, ready for you to click on and import.

Note: you will get the chance to put this calendar's events into one of your existing iCal calendars. That's probably not a good idea. Choose the "New Calendar" option when asked and I think you'll be happier.

Thanks to http://www.southendzone.com/ for the entire NFL schedule in iCal form.

Like the calendar? Did it help you? Leave a comment and let us know.
You can support the Boyce Blog by using the box below when you want to buy something from Amazon as that generates a referral fee for the Blog. Thank you very much.

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and a referral fee for The Boyce Blog.
That's what keeps The Boyce Blog going.
I thank you in advance.

RadioShack wants your old stuff. And they'll pay for it.

Start by clicking this link to the RadioShack Trade & Save program. Once you're there, you tell them what sort of stuff you're looking to get rid of. Here are the choices.



Suppose you have an iPhone 3G, and you're moving up to an iPhone 4 (which you can buy at RadioShack). You click on the Phones button, then choose Apple from the several manufacturers listed, then indicate which model iPhone you have. Click a few buttons to show what kind of condition your iPhone is in, click the "Calculate" button, and just like that they tell you what they'll give you for your phone. Neat. Looks like this:

Your next move is to send your stuff to RadioShack, which you do with a pre-paid shipping label that RadioShack will generate for you. When RadioShack gets your item(s) they'll look them over to be sure they're what you said they were, and then they'll send you a RadioShack gift card loaded up with money.

Of course, you may want to do this at a RadioShack store, and you can, as long as the thing you're trading in is relatively small. Here's the list of things you can bring to a RadioShack store:

• wireless phones
• GPS receivers
• digital cameras
• digital camcorders
• video games
• mp3 players

Everything else has to be done online, and then mailed in, but that's not much of a hardship. Still, I think I'd rather get my gift card on the spot instead of waiting for it to arrive in the mail, so where that's possible that's what I'll do.

Note: there is a slight possibility that you will not become rich by sending your old electronics to RadioShack. Some stuff, such as my 17-inch Apple Studio Display which cost $699 new, fetches an almost insultingly low price-- in the case of my monitor, $7.20. (I have to wonder about the 20 cents there-- I would have figured $7.35, easy.) Still, something is better than nothing, and since RadioShack is going to turn right around and sell your old stuff to someone else, your perfectly-good-but-not-the-latest-model electronic gizmo will get a new life with a new owner, and that's worth something too. Considering that I thought I'd have to tape ten dollars to some of my old stuff just to give it away this RadioShack program sounds like the best thing ever.

Now all I need to do is figure out what to do with the $7.20.

AppMiner.
Some iPhone apps are free. Some aren't. Except when they are. Turns out that iPhone app pricing changes all the time. That app that you didn't buy because it cost too much might suddenly cost half as much-- or maybe even nothing at all. The trick, of course, is to get 'em when they're cheap. AppMiner, itself a free iPhone app, helps you do it.

In a nutshell, AppMiner watches the prices on the iTunes App Store, and when a price goes down, AppMiner makes a note of it. All you have to do it launch AppMiner and check the categories you're interested in. See below.


Here are some of the categories...


Here are some more...


And here are the rest.


The numbers tell you how many items in each category have dropped in price either today or yesterday. They don't go further back because prices change pretty quickly and out of date info wouldn't be useful.

Touch a category and you'll see something like this:


We're looking here at items that used to cost something, but don't anymore, in the Education category. You can see that some of these things are marked down considerably.

Touch any of the items and you get a description of the app, just like on the iTunes App store. Here's what it looks like:


If the description sounds interesting you can tap the "Free" button (or the "Get It!" button) to go straight to the right place on the iTunes App store, where you can "buy" the thing (for free). Otherwise, you can just go back and see what else might be interesting.

Of course you don't have to check only what's free. You can check what's on sale, what's new, what's top rated, etc. I go for the free stuff myself.

I check AppMiner every night to see what gems may have fallen into my lap. I don't know exactly how much money I've saved but I do know that I have a whole lot of apps on my iPhone and I've paid for only a few. AppMiner is saving me money and I'm sure it will for you also. It's on my first home screen-- a place of honor. Go get AppMiner and check, check check it. You'll be glad you did.

Pretty good motto.

Apple's iTunes university offers more than 250,000 free lectures, videos, films, and other materials-- from universities, museums and art institutions, and libraries all over the world. You'll find courses from Stanford, Michigan, and Cal (and from roughly 300 others-- click this link for a current list); lectures about past and current exhibits from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MOMA (the Museum of Modern Art), and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (and many, many more); and discussions and insights from The New York Public Library, The Royal Opera House in London, and the Carnegie Institution for Science among many, many others. And it's free. Unbelievable.
Did I mention that it's all free?

Some of the offerings on iTunes U are audio, some of them have video too. I'm currently watching a set of lectures on iPhone programming, recordings of classes given at Stanford University. It's just like being there, except that I don't have to do it at Stanford and I don't have to do it at any particular time. And, if I feel like taking a coffee break I can simply pause the lecture, and if I fall asleep in class I can rewind the lecture and watch it "again."

You want this. Trust me. Start up iTunes, click on "iTunes Store" at the left, and then "iTunes U" at the right. The rest is pure exploration.

Here are some screen shots to get you in the mood.

iTunes U categories

The class I'm "taking" at Stanford

Still from a Stanford lecture

Interesting-looking class-- I should take this one

Still frame from "Introduction to Drawing" class-- I should take this one too

Offerings from UC Davis

Interesting mini-series from UC Davis

From the University of Michigan

Whatever he's teaching, I'm going to watch

Find something interesting, give it a double-click, and watch it right there on your Mac. Or, download these things onto your iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch and watch them on the go. Either way, it's all free free free, so get in there and start clicking. I guarantee you'll find something interesting.

I still can't believe it's free.

MacWorld Expo 2011 is six months away, but if you plan ahead a little you can save major buckos on admission. In fact, if you use this link before the end of the day on July 26th, you can get in for free. San Francisco in January isn't exactly balmy but who cares, it's SAN FRANCISCO, and it's MacWorld-- the biggest Mac (and iPhone, and iPad) love-fest on Planet Earth. You are likely to have a great time. Mark your calendar.

Note: they've changed the dates. The conference part of MacWorld Expo starts January 26th and the exhibits part (the part you can get into for free via this link) starts on January 27th.

Here's a handy iPhone app, especially if you were in Southern California at 4:53 pm today. It's called Epicentral and it tells you where and when and how big the earthquake was.

Here's the link.

In case you wondered: Anza Borrego Desert State Park, magnitude 5.7.

In case you didn't get enough fireworks tonight here's an iPhone app that lets you make fireworks anytime you want. It's called "iLoveFireworks Lite" and it's free.I can't find any written directions but through trial and error I've discovered a few things. First, tap on the screen to make a small firework. Second, drag your finger (in any direction) to make a trail that ends up in a firework. Third, tap and hold to make a BIG firework (when you lift your finger). Fourth, and this is my favorite, tap and hold with multiple fingers to make that many fireworks at once.

Here's a picture.


Go have fun. For free.

In the "better late than never" category, here's a calendar for your iCal with the time and date of every World Cup match.

Click here to get the calendar.

All you do is click on it. iCal will add it automatically. I would set it to refresh once per day-- not so important now, but when we get to the knockout round it will be nice to have the country names rather than "1st place Group C vs. 2nd Place Group D." You can turn it off with a simple uncheck-of-the-box later, or even delete it. So you're not stuck with this calendar for life.

(Note: last week one of my customers-- Tom Nevermann, AKA "The Moving Doctor"-- asked me to help him find a good deal on USB-powered speakers for his Mac. I took him to www.dealnews.com and set up an email alert for him, and now every time a good deal on USB-powered speakers comes along, Tom gets notified by email. That experience inspired me to write this blog entry as I know DealNews can save you some money too.)

I get a lot of questions that start with "Where's the best place to buy..."? Generally speaking I refer the asker to DealNews, the best website for finding great deals on tech stuff like Macs, software, printers, and networking equipment-- and a whole lot more. Here's a picture of the DealNews site, with their categories across the top. I never use the categories-- I just leave it on "Everything"-- but the categories give you an idea of the kinds of things that DealNews tracks.

Here's that same page, scrolled down a bit so you can see the deals (the top of the site isn't where the action is):

DealNews doesn't sell anything (except for advertising space). Their business revolves around getting people to come to the site, which they do by scouring the web for great deals and presenting the deals in an easy-to-navigate webpage. They don't care which store offers the deal- it might be Sears, it might be Buy.com, it might be Dunkin' Donuts. Doesn't matter to DealNews (although, if the store gets complaints, DealNews will quit showing their deals).

The more people come to DealNews the more they can charge for their advertisements, so DealNews does what they can to make you want to come back. One way they do it is by updating constantly, and that's a good reason for YOU to sort the deals in chronological order (look for a "sort by" pop-up toward the right), and also a good reason for you to check in on the site more than once a day. Deals don't last forever and sometimes they don't even last an hour. Keep that in mind when you find something you like on the site-- my advice is "buy it right now."

You can search DealNews (see the box at the top right). That's a good start, but a lot of the time the stuff you'll find has already expired. That's a drag, but DealNews has a "Get Deals via Email" feature (right above the search box) and with email alerts you'll know about deals as quickly as they're put on the site. You do have to sign up, but it's free, and they promise not to sell your email address or use it for anything else, so I think you can go ahead with this.

Setting up a DealNews email alert is easy-- you pick a store, or a product, or a category (or some combination), and DealNews will send you an email when something that matches comes along. You can set up as many alerts as you'd like, and with Christmas coming up (only 7 months away) you can sit back and cherry-pick the very best deals and save a bunch of money on your presents. I already have three presents stashed away in my secret present place, all purchased via a DealNews email alert.

Note to Suspicious Minds: you may be thinking "I'll bet they just post the deals of the people who pay the most! That's how they make their money!" Well, that might be true, but their Editorial Guarantee says they will never do that. I think they're telling the truth. If they took payola we'd find out soon enough, and when that happened we'd all go somewhere else for deals. They know that. It's in their best interests long-term to be honest, and that's what I think they are.

Of course they do take ads-- that's how they make their money-- but the ads are clearly labeled and they're not mixed in with the rest of the deals.

I check DealNews at least once a day. Recent deals that I've taken advantage of include free ice cream at Ben and Jerry's, 10-foot USB cables for $1.97 shipped, and a 42-inch 120 Hz Philips LCD TV (not for me, for a friend-- and he saved about $300). Go check it out.

In Case You Wondered
No, we do not get anything for recommending DealNews. We do get something for recommending products on Amazon.com, so if you can't find what you want via DealNews please feel free to use the Amazon link at the top of the page here. When you go to Amazon via that link they'll know we sent you, and a tiny referral fee comes our way when you buy something. It comes out of Amazon's pocket, not out of yours, so you have nothing to lose and the great feeling of supporting this blog to gain.

I've thought quite a bit about this Apple, Adobe, and Flash issue. I think it comes down to this: Adobe is saying "Hardware doesn't matter." They have an idea for an app (for a smartphone) or an idea for a desktop application (for a Mac or a PC), and then they try to make it run on all of the machines they can. They don't care which phone you use-- iPhone, Droid, Blackberry, something else-- they just want to get their program to work on it, and if they're able to make it work on your phone, you can be sure that it will look exactly the way it looks on someone else's phone. Even if you have an iPhone with lots of cool hardware features, and the other guy has some other phone that isn't as good. Adobe starts "at the top" with an idea of how they want their app to work. The hardware that it runs on is irrelevant to them.

Same thing with their desktop applications (Photoshop, InDesign, etc.). They have an idea of what their program should be, and then they try to fit it onto Macs and onto PCs. They ignore much of what makes a Mac special, because that's not interesting to them. Adobe's focus is on getting Photoshop to run on as many machines as possible-- and to look exactly the same, whether you're running a Mac or a PC. Again, the hardware doesn't matter to them.

The problem with this, of course, is that some machines are simply better than others. Some phones have accelerometers, and GPS devices, and touch screens. Others don't. Macs have features that PCs don't, notably the Mac OS X operating system and a set of user interface guidelines that make using a Mac a consistent, predicable experience-- unless you're using Adobe applications, with their own Print and Save As and Open dialog boxes, a complete thumbing of the nose to the ones Apple provides for all developers to use.

If you're making smoothies it doesn't really matter if your blender is a Waring or a Hamilton Beach. If you're painting a house you can use a brush from Ace or from Home Depot (but use the one from Home Depot, I have stock). In cases like that, nobody cares about the hardware, because when you get right down to it all blenders blend, and all paint brushes paint, and there's not a lot of difference between them. When you're dealing with phones, and desktop/laptop computers, there IS a lot of difference between the offerings from different companies, and when Adobe ignores those differences, you (the iPhone and Mac owner) end up with the same crummy experience that people with lesser phones and computers get. And it's not very good.

In my opinion, hardware DOES matter. It matters a lot. So does the operating system. Adobe doesn't think so, Apple does, and that's the root of this conflict.

You may have heard that Apple's iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch do not run Flash. Flash is Adobe's plug-in software, used by web designers for animations and video. Apple doesn't like Flash because it's buggy and slow, and-- I suspect-- because it leads to sloppy, cheesy websites with gratuitous rollover action.

Adobe gives away the Flash plug-in-- you probably have it. They sell the tools that developers use to MAKE Flash (you watch it for free, but the people who make it pay to make it). This is a nice business for Adobe, with no real competition. They'd like to keep that going.

Adobe also makes tools that help people make applications for cellular phones-- including, but not restricted to, iPhones. Using Adobe's tools, which they sell, a programmer could write ONE program and have it work on an iPhone, a Blackberry, a Google Droid, etc. That's not possible with any other tool today. You can imagine how appealing this is to a programmer-- write your app once, and sell it to everyone with a smart phone, whether that device is an iPhone or not.

The trouble with Adobe's write once, works everywhere approach is that all smart phones are not created equal. A programmer then has to develop for the least common denominator-- that is, the set of features common to all smart phones. (Example: iPhones have accelerometers built in, so when you rotate the screen your email and your web page etc. can rotate automatically. Other smart phones don't have accelerometers. A programmer writing an app for a wide audience would not include features reliant on accelerometers because those features would only work on the iPhone.) The result is a watered-down, dumbed-down, why-did-I-spend-all-this-money-for-an-iPhone-if-the-apps-don't-take-advantage-of-its-features experience. It was the same way with Java-- you might remember. I remember, and Apple remembers, and Apple's not going to let it happen again.

Apple's recently changed its agreement with iPhone app developers to say, in effect, "use Apple software to create your apps. Otherwise, they won't be approved for sale in the App Store." Pretty compelling argument to the developer! Apple wants to ensure that applications take full advantage of the features they've built into the iPhone, the iPad, and the iPhone OS, and eliminating a middle-man (Adobe) that may not be motivated to do so is a good move in terms of guaranteeing a high-quality experience for users of Apple's devices.

Adobe's come down on Apple, officially and unofficially, saying that not supporting Flash is bad for users, nevermind bad for Adobe, and that forcing app developers to use Apple's tools will lead to stifled creativity etc. This has gone on for a few weeks now, played out on blogs and in interviews, but now Steve Jobs has addressed the issues in a nice long letter. It's interesting reading. Provide the coffee and I'll talk it over with you.

Here's the link to Steve Jobs' letter.

Apple showed off its upcoming iPhone software update, the so-called iPhone OS 4. It really looks great but to most people, it won't "look" at all because it's mostly under the hood, which is how it ought to be. All you'll know is your iPhone (and iPad) will be easier and more fun to use.

There are plenty of things to like about this new version but the thing I'm looking forward to the most is Multi-tasking. Multi-tasking means that with iPhone OS 4 the iPhone can do more than one thing at a time. This lets you receive Skype phone calls on your iPhone even if you're doing something else. It lets you listen to Pandora radio while you do other things. It lets you use the very cool "Line2" voice-over-IP app even if you switch away from the Line2 app. (It also lets you move between apps very quickly. This will solve a problem for ME-- the one where I'm reading a book and want to adjust the brightness. It used to be hit the Home button, find the Settings, go to the Brightness, then back to the Home screen, then find the book app, then finally tap it. Yikes. Now it's going to be about three taps. About. Yay.

I'm also looking forward to organizing my apps in iPhone OS 4's new "folders."

You can watch Steve Jobs and Co. introduce iPhone OS 4 by clicking the link. You'll see multi-tasking, folders, and a whole lot more.

The iPhone OS 4 software will come to us this summer. Watch for it.

300,000 iPads sold so far. Pretty impressive for something that no one thought they wanted or needed-- really, an extra device, not a replacement for anything else-- until Apple showed it to us in January.

Correction: it's 300,000 iPads as of midnight Saturday April 3rd (the first day they were available). That's even better.

PCMag.com reviewed the iPad and produced this very nice video that tells you all about it. Yes, the narrator speaks too rapidly, but you're in control-- put your mouse over the video and pause it if you need to (I did). Or grab the time (above the little stripe showing how much you've watched) and drag it back to the left to make the guy back up (I did that too).

PCMag: Apple iPad video review from PCMag.com Reviews on Vimeo.

David Pogue reviewed the iPad. Actually, he reviewed it twice. Worth a quick read.

You may not have heard but Apple has something new called the iPad and it's coming out April 3rd (this Saturday). They've made some sales tools, I mean instructional videos, and you can watch them via this link. Warning: the videos are very well done and you may find yourself ordering an iPad after watching them.

Kids, take note: look at the hands in these iPad videos. Take care of your nails and you too could be an Apple "hand model." It beats working. Trust me.