Copy Photos from iPhone to Mac

It does not seem that obvious on how to copy photos and video off the iPhone onto a Mac. With Android phones you can look at the file system and locate the required files. One method I used in the past was to use iPhoto, import the photos and then drag the photos into the relevant directory in Finder.

But the quickest method I found was to open up the 'Image Capture' (I use spotlight for this) and from there you can view and browse the images and videos on the phone and drag and drop them into the relevant directories in Finder.

iPhone - How to decline a call when locked

I recently changed my Android phone and decided to move to Apple, there are multiple reasons for doing this, which I might put in another post. One thing that took me sometime to find out was how to decline an incoming call when the phone is locked. Basically it is very simple, just double press the lock button, that is the one on the top of the phone. This is not as intuitive as other functions and I believe Apple could improve on this and make the option available on-screen, but for now this is the only way I know of.

iPhone Sofa - Terrible idea?

I recently saw that a furniture company had manufactured a sofa that included an iPhone dock and speakers. This is an example of someone or a group of people desperately trying to think of something new, here are some reasons why this is an awful idea.

• Sofa space is taken up by a rather large dock.
• Speakers cannot be move to the best place in the room.
• It is fixed to a specific phone so if you change your phone you will need to change your sofa or have a redundant dock.
• It's not the future, surely the best solution is to control your music from holding the phone and not having to plug it into anything. This means the only use for the sofa apart from sitting on it, is as a charger for your phone.

The more I think about it the more I think it is a ridiculous idea, will be interesting to see what the next thing they do is, to try to sell a sofa.

Google Nexus 4 pros and cons

I recently purchased a new Google Nexus 4 phone, I had previously owned iPhones and even though I am a great fan of the iPhone, I decided to try something different and the price of the Nexus is £300 ($465) cheaper than the iPhone 5 costing just £250 compared with £550 for an iPhone. My first impression of the device was it was well built with curved glass edges, the speaker at the back is positioned in a funny place, the camera lens and flash are where you would expect them. There is no physical home button like the iPhone, but the home button is part of the display, which is actually better and I expect Apple will do something similar with the next iPhone..

The power supply for charging is via a micro USB, which is not as nice as the iPhone 5, but is more standard. I have found that the charge like the iPhone does not last that long and need to charge the phone almost everyday.

The Nexus 4 uses the Android 4.2 Jelly Bean operating system, which runs very fast thanks to the quad core snapdragon CPU, and the 2GB of RAM, twice that of the iPhone 5.

The dimensions of the phone are 68.7 x 133.9 x 9.1mm making it larger and thicker than the iPhone and it feels slightly heavier, it has a 4.7 inch screen which fits very close to the edge of the device.

The main camera is 8 mega pixel which works OK, but some of the photos I have taken the result is a bit saturated and the contrast is not that good, it does however have HDR and panoramic options which do work well. There is also a 1.3 mega pixel front facing camera, which currently I have only used to unlock the phone with the great option of face recognition for unlocking.

Here are what I consider the Pros and Cons of the Nexus 4:

Pros

• Price is amazing and what you get for the money cannot be beaten.
• Well made phone which feels nice to use, I have already dropped it from about 5 ft and it survived fine.
• Elegant design with the glass edges curving and the edges having more grip.
• Very fast.
• Latest version of Android.

Cons

• Using headphones the max volume is still a bit to low, solution was to download so free software to boost the output.
• Battery life is short like other smart phones.
• No expandable memory.
• Copy and paste does not work as well as the iPhone.
• Not as intuitive to use as the iPhone.  

In conclusion I am very happy with the phone and at the price is an excellent product.

Using iPad / iPhone as remote mouse

Recently I have been doing some development work on the iPad and iPhone, while doing this I started thinking of ideas for my own App. One of the ideas was that the iPad touch screen works very similar to my MacBook's trackpad, but is larger, so I thought it would be great to be able to use my iPad as the trackpad for my MacBook, my first thought was how it would communicate between the devices and I thought Bluetooth was the solution. Someone has already beaten me to this idea and come up with an App that does this, it is called 'Remote Mouse', if you do a search in the App Store you will find it. You will also need to go to their web site and download the software that needs to be installed on the computer, it can also be installed on a PC. It does not use Bluetooth but uses WiFi, it is a clever app and I am glad I did not spend much time looking into developing one.

Don't take iPhone Skiing

I just read an article which says that iPhones do not operate below 0ºC, and Apple refuses to repair any phones which have breached this specification. In the UK in the winter months it often is below 0, this does mean that if your car break down or if there is a problem and you are stuck in the snow you are not meant to use your iPhone. This also means that you should not use your phone while skiing, this could be a safety issue as I believe having a working phone on the mountain to be a good thing. Last time I went skiing myself and other people did use there iPhones (3Gs) in below 0 conditions without any problem so this could be an iPhone 4 issue. Other phone companies like Sony allow operational use to -20ºC, I think it would be a good idea for Apple to produce a phone that can be used confidently in below 0 conditions.