Technology and Body

Access iCloud more easily iCloud has never been the easiest cloud storage service to actually get at (most of what it does happens behind the scenes) but iOS 9 makes it a little more visible: Go to Settings, iCloud then iCloud Drive and toggle the switch marked Show on Home Screen to enable the icon shortcut. End battery woes iOS 9 wants to ease your battery life woes with a new low-power mode that you can activate from the Battery menu inside Settings (it switches off a few background processes and can add up to an hour of life). Your battery icon turns yellow and you get a percentage view of the juice that's left. Abandon poor Wi-Fi connections The new Wi-Fi Assist feature in iOS9 lets you hop onto a speedy LTE connection if the Wi-Fi connection you're using isn't up to scratch (quite likely if you're out and about). Head to Settings then Cellular and tap on the Wi-Fi Assist toggle switch at the bottom to make use of the feature. Zoom in on ...

iPhone: Spark is one of our favorite email clients on the iPhone , but it's still in its early stages. Today, they're adding some new features that make it a bit better, including HTML signatures, support for aliases, and a new set of gestures Alias support seems like the big one for a lot of people. You can now add aliases for your Gmail, iCloud, and Yahoo accounts. You can also now move email between accounts, which is handy if you have a lot of them. The update adds some new gestures as well, where you can swipe to send emails to Evernote, Dropbox, or a handful of other services

It’s the little things in life. Like, you know, being able to tell if your keyboard is currently set to use capital letters or not. With iOS 9, Apple is finally fixing one of the platform’s strangest quirks: the keyboard will no longer appear to be all caps, all the time. If you’re an Android user, or someone who just doesn’t think about stuff like this all that much, you might have no idea what I’m talking about. You see, in all builds of iOS thus far, the keyboard always uses capital letters to represent each key — whether or not you’ve actually hit shift or have caps lock on. That works well enough on physical keyboards — for the most part, you’re holding the shift key when you want shift turned on. On a touchscreen keyboard, where you tap shift instead of hold, it’s not so simple. Sometimes you tap shift and forget, or tap it on accident. Sometimes the keyboard rolls into view with shift on by default. To date, iOS has shown you’re in shift/caps lock ...

Apple’s WWDC Keynote In 90 Seconds WWDC Apple Keynote Recap Apple had a lot to announce at its Worldwide Developer Conference this morning, and it was easy to miss big news as it happened during the two-hour-plus keynote. We’ve summed it up right here, with links to our coverage if you want to know more. Off the bat, Apple announced Mac OS X El Capitan. While it doesn’t come with a visual overhaul like last year’s Yosemite update, it does bring improved gesture support, the ability to snap windows to fill the sides of your screen, and natural language processing capabilities for Spotlight search. Gamers will be happy to hear that Apple is bringing its Metal API to the Mac from iOS, where it helped developers get significantly better graphics without requiring beefier hardware. With iOS 9, Apple unveiled its Proactive assistant. It’s a lot like Google Now, showing you helpful reminders thoughout the day. Instead of processing everything in the cloud, Appl...

The Strengths And Weaknesses Of Apple Music Spotify killer? Or Ping 2.0? Apple today finally announced its move into on-demand music streaming with the unveiling of Apple Music. Now the question is whether Apple Music will be a hit with the public, bringing legions of new users to streaming and stealing from competitors. Or whether it will be another Apple app we stuff in a folder and forget about. Here’s a comparison between Apple Music and its competitors, plus a deeper look at the positive and negative points from the launch: Strength: On-Demand Streaming – Music download sales are falling fast and streaming is quickly on the rise. Apple desperately needed to transition from its iTunes sales model to subscription streaming, or risk watching usage and revenue decay. Weakness: Launch Date – With the whole world watching, Apple could have told us to go download its new Music app and start listening now. Instead, we have to wait until June 30th for the launch,...

Apple’s newest iOS update is out, bringing support for over 300 new emoji, in line with the update that went out for OS X today, too. That means the new, more diverse and potentially more expressive emoticons will work across both platforms. iOS 8.3 also includes a laundry list of bug fixes and improvements, addressing features ranging from Wi-Fi, app launching and Bluetooth to Messages, CarPlay and more. The update list is extremely long, in a rare display of transparency for Apple, which normally keeps its release notes glib. Some changes worth noting include a fix for issues where orientation wouldn’t automatically adjust when a phone was rotated, as well as intermittent disconnection from both Wi-Fi networks and Bluetooth accessories like speakers. Some big additions with this update include support for wireless CarPlay communication with vehicles that support that, as well as the addition of junk and spam filters for iMessage to help clear up text-bas...

6 Use Cases for Apple Watch that I’m Excited About Ads by Google There’s a multitude of Apple Watch articles out there. Everything from focusing way too much on the $10,000 anomaly that is the Apple Watch Edition, to obsessing over the fashion element, to discussing the range of bands and their combination, to articles that question the mere existence of such a device. Today, I thought I’d focus on the useful aspects of Apple Watch. Specifically, how it would be useful for me. The guy who’s not a well off American – clearly out of Apple Watch’s key demographic. During both Apple Watch keynotes, there was little I could relate to. I don’t take coast to coast flights every weekend that would be made easier thanks to Apple Watch. It won’t help me avoid all human interaction when it comes to booking a hotel room (that one I’m actually sad about). I don’t have the automation system in place to unlock my garage door from the Watch (damn). Also, no Apple Pay here in Indi...

2 Apps to Lock Other Apps Using Touch ID on Jailbroken iPhones Ads by Google While talking about the iAppLock sometime ago, I promised to come up with an app for the iPhone 5s and above that enables you to use Touch ID to lock individual apps. I know I’m a bit late with making good on that promise and I apologize, but the whole time I was waiting for a free app that I could discuss with my readers. There were a handful of paid apps available on Cydia, but just a few days back a free app was released that actually worked . A free app, no matter how basic it might be, always gets the upper hand. So keeping that in mind, today I am going to talk about two jailbreak tweaks you can install on the iPhone to get Touch ID security for individual apps. So let’s check out the features of both of them. AppScan Once you install the AppScan module from the Cydia store, the phone will respring. The module doesn’t appear on the Spring Board as a regular app and you wil...

2 iPhone Apps to Manage Expenses and Budget Efficiently Ads by Google While budgeting might not be one of the most exciting things to do (I’m sure a lot of people consider it boring and tedious), it is an extremely important activity that every household should undertake. With budgeting, you are able to plan your financial life and afford things you need and like. In short, proper budgeting lets you enjoy life to the fullest through sound financial planning. And while the task might indeed feel a bit like a chore for some, the good news is that you don’t need to make this a complex process. In fact, there are several apps out there that help people take care of their finances, and some of them allow you to do it in a very simple way, without creating complex online profiles or adding your bank accounts if you don’t want to. So if you want to know more about two such iPhone apps, read along. Pocket Expense Created by developer Appxy, Pocket Expense lets yo...