Iphone101 Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

iPhone 101: Set up keyboard shortcuts for easier typing

by Chris Rawson (Nov 14th, 2011)

Typing on the iPhone or iPad becomes easier as you get used to it, but some things remain cumbersome to write even after years of use. The keyboard acrobatics required to type something like "Wi-Fi + 3G" or a long email address on a touchscreen keyboard can be somewhat maddening if you have to ...

Tidying up location contacts for Siri and Reminders

by Erica Sadun (Oct 24th, 2011)

My personal address book has no shame. I have contacts for people I haven't spoken to in years, contacts for people who I met at tech conferences, contacts for schools, for local stores, for repairmen, and so forth. It's one big old happy jumbled mess. I'm cool with that. When I want Siri and ...

iPhone 101: Using iOS accessibility to make text larger

by Matt Tinsley (Sep 30th, 2011)

Welcome to iPhone 101, the series that explains the basics of iPhone operation. This time, its making tiny text easier to read using the accessibility features in iOS. Following Stevie Wonder's high praise of the accessibility features found in iOS, we thought we'd take a closer look at some of ...

iPhone 101: Recovering deleted voicemails

by Matt Tinsley (Sep 16th, 2011)

Welcome to iPhone 101, the series that explains the basics of iPhone operation. This time, its retrieving a deleted voice mail message. One of the great features of the iPhone -- that is, one that is actually related to having phone conversations -- is Visual Voicemail. So long as your ...

iPhone 101: How to turn caps lock on

by Matt Tinsley (Aug 19th, 2011)

Welcome to iPhone 101, the series that explains the basics of iPhone operation. This time, its enabling caps lock. It always astounds me how many iPhone users don't know how to enable caps lock while typing, not just newcomers. Just the other day I was chatting with a friend who's had an iPhone ...

iPhone 101: Using Voice Control

by Dave Caolo (Jun 10th, 2011)

While we wait for iOS 5 to deliver cool new features, here's a look at Voice Control, a feature introduced with the iPhone 3GS model. There are three types of Voice Control commands: phone, music and other. Here's how to use each. Launching Voice Control Of course, you can't use Voice Control ...

10 apps you should install FIRST on your iPhone

by Chris Rawson (Jun 4th, 2011)

You've taken the plunge and bought your first iPhone. You've activated your service with your local wireless carrier, connected and synced it with your main computer for the first time, and brought over as much music, photos, and videos as you can squeeze onto it. Maybe you've even played around ...

iPhone: What is DFU mode, and what's the difference from recovery mode?

by Matt Tinsley (May 25th, 2011)

In the past couple of days, we've seen reports here and there of iPhones getting stuck in a restart loop. The black screen with the Apple logo shows up, holds for a while, and then disappears again; repeat ad infinitum. While it's not clear yet exactly what's triggering the issue (the ...

iPhone 101: Location data and GPS

by Dave Caolo (Apr 27th, 2011)

Update: Look here for official word on the iPhone location data controversy from Apple. Recently, the Apple community has become interested in location data as gathered by iPhones. Specifically, The Guardian has reported that researcher and former Apple employee Pete Wardensome and data ...

Verizon iPhone 101: What new owners need to know to get started

by Erica Sadun (Feb 7th, 2011)

You hung in there. For four long years, you hung in there. And now, finally, you've made it to the promised land. For many of you, an iPhone is even now arriving on a FedEx truck. Soon, you'll be able to set up your new baby and start entering the strange and wonderful world of Verizon iPhone use. ...

iPhone 101: Where did I put that app?

by Brett Terpstra (Dec 30th, 2010)

Once you have a fair number of apps on your iOS device, you might find that you occasionally "lose" an app somewhere in the pages and/or folders of your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad. Handily, there's a trick for locating that app using iTunes. I consider myself a seasoned iTunes/iPhone user, and this ...

iPhone 101: Quitting apps in iOS 4

by Erica Sadun (Jun 30th, 2010)

iOS 4 makes it easy to leave apps without quitting, but what happens when you actually do want to terminate an application? Quitting applications can really help with older apps that have not been updated for iOS 4 "multitasking" and that do not properly return to the state they previously were ...

Five little-known features in iOS 4

by Michael Jones (Jun 30th, 2010)

Whenever word gets out about a potential software update, as it did for iOS 4 back in January (then called iPhone OS 4), you don't have to look far to find speculation about features or functionality the new version will include. This is especially true for major revisions of the OS, which is ...

iPhone 101: Save space on your iPhone without removing a thing

by Michael Grothaus (Apr 6th, 2010)

It's important to note that this on-the-fly conversion does not alter your original files inside your iTunes library -- those will remain at whatever bitrate and in whatever file format you had them in. How well does this work? I saved a whopping 1.5GBs of space on my 8GB iPhone. Others here at ...

iPhone 101: How to force quit an unresponsive app

by Aron Trimble (Feb 11th, 2010)

We here at the TUAW headquarters rely pretty heavily on our iPhones when we're away from our desks. This is especially true for the lucky ones on the floor at Macworld 2010. Sometimes however, our little pocket computers go haywire and refuse to respond to our commands. To force quit an ...