Beautiful iOS Keyboard Editing Feature

For years, I've wanted a simple feature for the iOS keyboard which let me reposition the cursor without lifting my finger off the keyboard. It turns out this exact feature has been in iOS, but I don't know for how long. Regardless, it's very handy. Simply press and hold on your iOS keyboard and it will turn your keyboard into a virtual trackpad. 

Apple Talk Mystery Photo [u]

Here's a minor mystery that has me stumped.

The group selfie photo I snapped.

Last week, I gave my Apple Talk in the Bay Area to a business delegation from China. I began the talk with a group selfie. As I snapped a few pictures, the group got up from their seats and huddled in the center of the room so they would be in my photo.

The group selfie photo that an audience member posted.

A little after midnight, a woman who attended my talk posted some photos from my presentation (she's in the front row, next to my left ear). At first, I didn't think anything of it when I saw she posted one of my selfie pics. Then, when I looked closer, I noticed that the selfie pic she posted wasn't one of mine. After comparing all of my group selfie pics to her photo, I noticed that it was from a slightly different vantage point. This had me (and still has me) puzzled. When I snapped my photo, I was standing in front of the room, up against the whiteboard, and there was a desk between me and the audience. In other words, no one was in front of me or near me.

So, how or where did she get a similar group selfie photo? 

After looking closely at her photo, I noticed a black line, in the upper left of her photo, which I've concluded is the edge of my phone. It seems that the picture she posted was a photo taken of my phone's screen as I positioned my phone and preparing to take the group selfie. Clever.

This theory of mine seems to make sense, except I can't figure out where the camera was located in the audience (lots of audience members snapped photos throughout my presentation). If you take a selfie photo of someone when they're taking a photo of your phone's screen then you'd expect to see them in the selfie picture.

My best guess, without claiming any "my phone was hacked" conspiracy theories is that the camera, which took the photo of my phone's screen, was out of frame or blocked from view by another person, despite the fact that her photo looks to have been taken head-on. And that theory seems to make sense because the same woman, later at Apple Park, showed me some photos she took of my presentation and she made the point that her phone's camera software (not an iPhone) had the ability to remove the keystone effect when a photo is not taken perpendicular to the subject. Basically, her phone's software has the ability to remove distortion from photos taken at sharp angles.

I still want to know where the camera was located in the audience that snapped the photo of my phone screen. Hmm.

Update 24 May 2018: Hear ye, hear ye. It took a couple weeks, but the mystery has been solved. It turns out that the inexplicable selfie photo was taken by my translator. She was standing next to me, in the front of the room, as we began and she took a selfie at the same moment I did, except she was out-of-frame in her photo. 

Apple ID Two-step vs Two-factor Authentication

I recently had a slew of unauthorized attempted logins on my iCloud account which kept locking me out, requiring a password reset. I called AppleCare and the CSR asked me if had turned on two-factor authentication. I told him that I did and, after looking at my account details, he told me that I didn't have two-factor authentication turned on. Instead, he said that I had two-step authentication enabled. Hmm, I didn't know there was a difference.

The key difference is that Apple's two-factor authentication is more secure than two-step authentication. Two-factor authentication is built into iOS. However, if you have an Apple ID for, say, the iTunes Store, but you don't have any Apple devices then you can't take advantage of two-factor authentication; instead, you can use two-step authentication.

Throughout history, people have authenticated themselves in one of three ways (knows, has, is):
1. Something a person knows (a combination to a lock).
2. Something a person has (a key to a house).
3. Something a person is (I walk though the front door of my house and my family recognizes me).

With two-factor authentication, a person needs two things to prove who they are. We experience this when we withdraw money from an ATM since we need our ATM card (first factor) plus our PIN (second factor). With a two-factor Apple ID login, I need to know both my password and I need to have my iPhone handy so I can see a verification code sent to me when I log in.

Without realizing it, we might use three-factor authentication to get into our home by entering a code to drive into an apartment complex, followed by using a key to open our front door, and finally being recognized by another family member or roommate once we enter our home.

Once I switched over to two-factor authentication, which the CSR at AppleCare walked me through, the password resets immediately ended.

Protecting Notes in iOS 9.3 with Touch ID

For years, I've been storing sensitive information in the Notes app on my iPhone. At today's Apple Keynote, it was announced that individual notes can now be protected (locked) with either a password or Touch ID. It's fairly simple to use, but not intuitively obvious to set up since it requires a few steps which I've outlined, below.

0. Update your iPhone to iOS 9.3.

1. Settings → Notes → Password → Enable Touch ID and enter a password to protect your notes.

2. To password (or Touch ID) protect a note, you'll need to click on the Share icon when the note is open 

You must manually lock or unlock a note. It seems, though, that unlocking a single note will unlock all of the notes (or at least it appears that unlocking a single note unlocks all the notes that were locked with the same password). I'll post updates, here, if I discover anything new.

Uploading iOS Voice Memos into iTunes Match

Last night, I listened to friends perform at a jazz jam. Their music was phenomenal. I enjoyed it so much that I recorded most of the jam session. When I got home, I discovered that moving a voice memo into iTunes Match (iCloud) was a small challenge requiring a little trial an error.

The problem with moving an iOS voice memo into iTunes Match is iTunes considers voice memos "ineligible" for the iTunes Match service. That means there wasn't a simple way for me to get my jazz recording into a playlist that could be shared across my computers and iOS devices.

I reread my 2007 blog post about legally converting iTunes Store purchases into MP3s and that gave me an idea. Since iTunes won't sync voice memos across devices, I converted it to an AAC format which solved my problem. I'm not sure exactly what happens during the conversion process, since the pre and post converted files are both AAC, but twice the size. Perhaps it simply took the mono recording and doubled it into a stereo file. Regardless, it worked and the newly converted file successfully uploaded into iTunes Match.

The conversion process is easy. In iTunes, simply right-click (control-click) on the voice memo and select "Create AAC Version." Once you've converted the voice memo, you can choose "Update iTunes Match" from the Store pull-down menu to put it into the cloud. That's it.

iOS Spotlight Bug

Without noticing it, I've installed well over 100 apps on my iPhone. Obviously, the ones I use most frequently are on my first home screen with a couple stragglers on the second screen. Occasionally, I need an app that's buried somewhere on the other 15 screens. To find those apps, I, like most everyone, pull down on the home screen to reveal the Spotlight search text field.

Unfortunately, after most iOS updates or after restoring a phone from a backup, Spotlight seems to stop finding apps until I open the app I'm looking for, for the first time.

This is a reproducible problem that I've noticed for at least a year. Here's what it looks like along with my workaround.

1. Confirm that the Applications option is checked and it's at the top of your Spotlight search setting.

2. Search for the app that Spotlight can't find. In my case, I was looking for my little-used eBay app. Sure enough, it didn't show up in Spotlight.

3. Search for the app in the Apple App Store. The App Store knows if you've already installed an app so that you don't need to redownload it. If an app is already installed on your iPhone, the GET or $x.xx button will say OPEN. Tap the OPEN button and the App Store, which is hundreds or thousands of miles away, will find and open the app that Spotlight, running on your own phone, couldn't find.

4. Once I've opened the app and then closed it, it magically appears in future searches. As a matter of fact, once I've gone through this exercise it seems that Spotlight is now primed to find other apps too.

Postscript: I've also seen a similar issue when searching for people or text in the iPhone's Messages app, but I haven't found a work around for that, yet.

Tomorrow's Apple Keynote: What to Expect

Tomorrow is Apple's Keynote. New iPhones are a given. They'll probably introduce mobile payments too. Then there's the talk of an iWatch. Most people don't wear watches, so could it really be a big deal? My thinking is, "Yes."

Entertainment

The iPod was a pivotal change for Apple. Steve decided to build a product for the right reasons: to make something he loved that would be better designed and integrated than any before it. Obviously it was a success. Then, in typical Apple fashion, after starting with well over 90% market share, they let it erode since they moved on to the next thing. Here are two key points. Apple doesn't go after market share for market share sake. Also, the iPod was about listening to music and, at the end of the day, it was only an entertainment product.

Communications

Next came the iPhone. Before the iPhone, getting apps, ring tones, wallpaper, etc., on to your mobile phone was a lousy experience. Plus, the wireless carriers dictated what could go on a phone and how it could be used. Remember the Rokr E1? Apple partnered with Motorola to put iTunes into a phone. But it wasn't an Apple product. One key limitation was that its firmware restricted it to only holding 100 songs. Other carriers placed similar restrictions on their phones such as not allowing tethered syncing. Rather, they wanted their users to transfer files and photos over-the-air so they could charge them for data usage.

An iPod owner could go days, weeks, or months without using their iPod, but iPhone owners use their phone every single day. For many of us, it's the last piece of technology we touch when going to sleep and the first thing we touch before getting out of bed.

Health

While we may need to communicate every day, we need to live every second. What if the iWatch has the ability to monitor our health in a nonintrusive way? So much can be told just from our basic vitals like our heart rate, temperature, respiration, and sleep cycles. As a runner, I've worn a heart rate monitor for nearly every one of my runs over the past 20 years. It gives me an absolute indication of my effort level based on my health. If I'm coming down with something or it's a hot day, or I'm dehydrated then my heart rate monitor indicates that. But, I only wear it when I'm running. What's going on with my body the rest of the day?

Twenty years ago, I didn't carry a mobile phone. This afternoon, I ventured a block away without my iPhone. I knew I'd be gone for only a few minutes. Yet, as I crossed the street, I seriously considered going back to get it – not that I was expecting any calls, e-mails, or texts. I simply felt unconnected. Could an iWatch become so ingrained into our health that we'd feel exposed without it?

Stump the Apple Genius With iOS E-mail Issues

I stumped an Apple Genius with an iOS 7 e-mail issue. Simply put, the e-mails I sent from different accounts on my iPad disappeared. I'd click send and the Mail app didn't even appear to try to send out my e-mail – it was as if I had hit delete instead of send. The e-mails neither appeared in my drafts folder nor did they end up in my sent folder and they certainly weren't delivered to the recipient.

A quick search of the Web revealed this is an issue that hasn't been addressed by Apple. I was able to easily reproduce the bug for the Apple Genius and we tried several different things such as resetting my iPad followed by deleting and re-adding the e-mail accounts without any luck. The e-mails simply vanished when clicking send.

At this point, it's hard for me to figure out how long this has been an issue. Next up, I'll try resetting my iPad back to factory settings to see if that fixes the problem.

New iPad Gotcha

Yesterday, my wife bought the iPad 3 new iPad for me.

Today, she surprised me by buying the top of the line MacBook Air for me - I am loved, but I digress.

The new iPad has a very nice display - I definitely noticed the higher resolution right off the bat - and it runs snappier. It's just a bit heavier than the iPad 2, yet, significantly lighter than the iPad 1.

Data Plan Gotcha

There's one big gotcha. Don't simply swap the micro-SIM cards, like I did, to move your data plan to your new iPad. At best, that might work for a little while.

Traditionally, a mobile device's phone number and its wireless service is attached to the SIM card. But, with the new iPad - since we don't care about our phone number - the attachment is through the e-mail account associated with the data plan.

Also, the micro-SIM in the new iPad is a 4G specific micro-SIM. I tried swapping out the micro-SIMs and I ran into problems. The AT&T service displayed next the bars at the top of my new iPad screen showed 3G instead of either 4G or LTE. Time to call AT&T.

Doing it Right

If you're upgrading from an iPad 2 to the new iPad, you should probably call AT&T (1-800-332-0500) to make sure everything goes smoothly, especially if, like me, you've been grandfathered into AT&T's unlimited data plans.

The two AT&T customer service reps who I dealt with were stellar. They knew exactly what they were doing. Both of them told me that swapping the micro-SIM cards wouldn't work and took the time to explain how the process works. This level of service was a far cry better than someone simply parroting my problem, "So, you say that you're having a problem with your iPad?" and then reading a trouble shooting script over the phone. I felt like I was talking to an Apple employee on the phone who fully understood my problem. Hat tip to AT&T. I have yet to try my new iPad on LTE, but the rep told me that it's amazingly fast.

So, the bottom line is that I still have my unlimited data plans (yes, I know about the AT&T data throttling on both my iPhone and iPad) plus my wife is now the proud owner of my iPad 2 hand-me-down. She's the best.

Scrolling In Mac OS X Lion

One of the first things that people notice when upgrading to Mac OS X Lion is that scrolling works the opposite way that it used to worked.

Without a doubt, this will seem backwards – at first. Most people have said that it takes several days to get used to the new format. But, why change a paradigm that's work for the last quarter century?

The answer is simple and most people haven't really noticed that this is the exact same way that scrolling works on the iPhone. Before Lion, if you wanted to scroll down a web page, you'd have to grab the scroll bar and pull it down. The metaphor was that you were pulling the window down the page to view the content "below the fold."

Now, the metaphor has been changed to match the iPhone and a layer of abstraction has been removed. Instead of pulling a window down to view the content, you now pull the content up to see it. No more window model – it's just you and your content.

Give it several days to a week to see if you get used to it – it's like learning to drive on the other side of the road. If you use the iPhone, then you'll probably get used to it and not notice it in the same way that you never noticed that the iPhone worked the opposite way.

But, if you really can't stand it, you can change the settings back to always display scroll bars in the General part of System Preferences.

Apple's Worst Product Design (and it's not really that bad). Due to Steve Jobs Attire?

Without a doubt, I believe that the mic on the earphones that ship with iOS devices is currently Apple's worst designed product.

When I worked at Apple, high praise was, "This doesn't suck too bad." And, that's true, for the most part, about the earphone mic.

However, this problem is not an issue of sound quality or intended functionality. I love how a single click on the middle of the mic can either answer or hangup a phone call - or how it will pause and resume music. Two clicks of it will skip to the next song. I also love how convenient it is to have the volume adjustment on the mic too.

But, what I can't stand is the mic's industrial design. Its poor functionality reminds me of the old hockey puck mouse that shipped, for so many years, with the original iMac.

The problem with the design of the mic on the earphone cord is that it has tiny, right angle, edges that are about a sixteenth of an inch. While this is a tiny lip, it's a huge pain when trying to use the earbuds while speaking on the phone and turning your head because it constantly gets caught on my shirt collars and pulls the ear buds out of my ears. Obviously that's a distraction we can do without while driving.

The solution to this problem is obvious: simply taper the edges of the mic. It seems like a simple fix.

I wonder if Steve Jobs is overlooking this problem since he always wears an uncollared mock turtleneck shirt?

What Happens When You Give Apple A Good Idea?

Last year, an iOS developer created the "WiFi Sync" app which allowed the iPhone and iPod touch to sync wirelessly with iTunes over WiFi. Unfortunately for the developer, Apple rejected his app and then implemented the same WiFi sync feature which Steve Jobs announced at last week's WWDC keynote presentation.

There's no way that Apple can say they didn't know about the WiFi sync app. AppleInsider reported that the developer was told by Apple that the app didn't "technically break the rules" and that Apple engineers "were quite impressed." Should Apple get away with this?

In many ways, the App Store is a just store, like amazon.com or drugstore.com. Vendors can present their products to the store and the store can stock their shelves with the vendor's items or reject them. It seems that this WiFi Sync incident is the equivalent of asking Walmart to sell your widget and then, after they turn you down, they manufacture and sell the widget themselves.

Vendors are free to sell their products elsewhere if they're turned down. So, where does an iOS developer take their app when it's rejected by Apple? You can either port the app to another platform, such as Android, or you can sell it at Cydia, which is a store for jailbroken iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches.

But, there is still one very interesting question: Why did Apple reject the WiFi Sync app in the first place? Apple has never had a policy of not introducing new features for fear of making third party apps obsolete. In one swoop, last week, iOS 5 made not only a few apps, obsolete, but it also antiquated entire categories of third party apps.

Apple’s Unsolicited Idea Submission Policy

When I worked at Apple, we highly discouraged people from telling us their ideas. There are practical legal reasons for this: history has no shortages of two parties simultaneously inventing the same thing at virtually the same time. When I was in college, my roommate told me that he had an idea for a laptop keyboard that was backlit so you could, as I'm doing right now, type in the dark. Lo and behold, Apple was the first company, that I'm aware of, to sell such an invention and I never communicated my roommate's idea to anyone else.

Apple's idea submission policy basically says:

Don't send us your ideas. If you do, their contents will automatically become Apple property and you will receive no compensation.

Click to see Apple's full policy

So, legally, this WiFi Sync incident might not be any different than the Walmart scenario. But it just doesn't feel right. It feels very... Microsoftish.

iOS 5 Just Increased Apple's Addressable Market By 5x

During this week's keynote address at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC), Steve Jobs pointed out, with the introduction of iCloud, that Apple's iOS devices, such as the iPhone and iPad, can be standalone devices. In other words, you no longer need a personal computer to configure, set up, or update Apple's mobile devices.

This is more than just a great convenience and I don't think many people get it... yet.



Wall Street
Wall Street, as predicted, always wants more. Yesterday, investors were looking for a pleasant surprise like an iPhone 5. But it wasn't to be and Apple did its best to set expectations with last week's "preannouncement announcement" that this year's WWDC was all about software.

Investors were looking for things that Apple could sell and the most expensive WWDC announcement was that the next operating system version, Mac OS X Lion, which will cost $29.99. Apple also announced that iTunes Match will cost $25/year but everything else was free. On top of that, Apple will stop charging for MobileMe; so that's even more lost revenue.

Growing Market Share
In order for Apple to continue growing, it needs to sell more things and their best bet is to expand their market. Otherwise, just like the iPod, the iPhone and iPad market will become saturated. While Apple is great at making their own products obsolete, they still need to get bigger and iOS 5 is their answer.

In 2005, when you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting someone listening to an iPod in the U.S. and Europe, I had the opportunity to live in East Africa. As an Apple employee, living in this poor part of the world, I was stuck by two things. First, was the obvious lack of iPods being used by any of the locals. Second, when it came to technology, their life revolved around their mobile phones. I was amazed at the advanced state of East African Cell Phones. They were texting well before it was popular in the U.S.

Leaping the Digital Divide
In a developing country, a $1,000 personal computer is nearly a year's pay when living on $3/day. But, poor doesn't mean that they don't want high tech solutions - I can't afford a yacht, but I'd still like one. The beauty of mobile phones is that even the poorest of developing countries already have the wireless infrastructure in place.

I can easily see people in developing countries skipping over personal computers, much the way they skipped over land lines, and acquiring standalone networked mobile devices, such as iPhones and iPads running iOS 5. Also, many of these people are unbanked, but with services like PayPal and Square, they can find ways to keep their money safe. It may sound strange, but, it's no stranger than when I saw Maasai, who lived in mud huts, pull out their cell phones to text money to each other... and that was six years ago.