This is really two hints for iPhone 3.0 and MobileMe:
Hint #1: Instead of selecting five photos in Camera Roll and emailing them, select as many photos as you want and copy them. Open a new Mail message, and paste the photos in the body of the email. This is an easy way to email more than five photos.
Hint #2: Set up a new album on MobileMe, and make sure to enable email uploading of photos. Retrieve the email address by clicking on the Settings tab after publishing the new album. Then add that address to your contact list (name it MobileMeUpload or somesuch).
Combining these two hints, you can select all the photos you want in the Camera Roll, copy them, and email them to your MobileMeUpload contact. The iPhone 3G tends to slow down when there are more than 10 or so photos, but it still works with more.
When you have a lot of applications installed on your iPhone, the Apple way of moving their icons (dragging from one screen to the other) may be a cumbersome task.
If your device is jailbroken, it is possible to edit the programs' locations by hand. You have to connect to your iPhone's filesystem (by AFP or SFTP), and then copy this file...
...to your desktop. (This path is for iPhone OS 2.2.1; it may have changed with OS 3.0.)
Open it with Property List Editor and unfold the iconState » iconLists. Icons are ordered by page (from 0 to 8), then an iconMatrix (line from 0 to 4, and column from 0 to 4). Each app is identified by a displayIdentifier code. Hex codes are for Safari desktop favorites, and integers 0 for empty spaces. Here's a screenshot so you can see exactly what it looks like.
So you 'just' have to copy/paste items to change the order as you wish, and put the file back to the iPhone and restart it. If you get the default alphabetical order, just try again!
For all those missing the backspace key in the Calculator (to remove a number you just tapped), just think like Apple: a little swipe over the display will do it.
Seems quite consistent to me, as you also do this to delete stuff in other parts of the UI, like lists. I don't really understand why this isn't mentioned in the User's Guide -- are they betting on when someone finds out? ;-)
[robg adds: I don't know if this worked in iPhone OS 2.x]
After upgrading to an iPhone 3GS, I was pleased to see the new option to send photos and movies to MobileMe. I have two MobleMe accounts configured in Mail on my iPhone: my 'primary' MobileMe account, and a MobileMe sub ('family') account. The primary account is set to only sync Mail to my iPhone, and the family account is set to sync Mail, Contacts, Calendars and Bookmarks (since you're only allowed to fully sync/push one MobileMe account on the iPhone.)
The problem I found was that when trying to send a photo or a movie to MobileMe, the account that the iPhone insisted on using was my primary account. I searched settings and could not find anywhere to change this. I called Apple iPhone tech support, and although they understood the problem, they did not have a solution. (I called the day after the iPhone 3GS release, so they were understandably swamped!)
I just could not believe that the iPhone would not allow me to choose a different MobileMe account. Frustrated, I decided to find my own solution.
What I discovered is this: iPhone uses the first MobileMe account it finds on your phone when choosing which account to default to for sending Photos and Movies (regardless of whether it's a primary or family account.) As I had two MobileMe Mail accounts on the phone, and the first one listed in my Mail app was my primary account, the family account was being ignored.
My solution was this:
Using the Mail app settings, delete the undesired primary email account from the iPhone, leaving only the family account.
Check the Camera app and see that the default MobileMe account has changed to the remaining account -- yes.
Using iTunes, add the primary email account back on the iPhone. The order of the accounts in the Mail app is now different, with the family account listed first, and the primary account listed last.
Upload photos or movies to the desired MobileMe account from the Camera app.
[robg adds: I only have one MobileMe account, so I can't test this one.]
For a long time, I've wanted the ability for the iPhone to speak the name of the caller, based on matching the inbound number to the numbers in Contacts. I waited and waited for iPhone OS 2.x ad then 3.x to do this for me, and do it better, but got sick of waiting. So instead, I wrote an AppleScript app I call Contact Caller ID + Sound Ringtone Maker [44KB download; Mac OS X Hints mirror (v 1.1)]. I've used this script to generate over 100 in-use ringtones, and use it to customize a ringtone for a contact or two almost daily now.
This AppleScript will generate a spoken name file, optionally looking for first, last, and nicknames, for selected Address Book Contacts. For example, "Jennifer Frickin' Connelly is calling....". It will optionally add a traditional (or other) ringtone of your choice to either the beginning or end of a new spoken-text ringtone file:
"Rob Griffiths is calling... [old phone ring here]; [repeat]"
"[old phone ring here] ... Steve Jobs is calling... ; [repeat]"
The script will then add that newly-created file to iTunes, ready for your next sync with iPhone.
You may optionally enter Custom Text (hint: phonetic spelling) when Alex fails to pronounce some of your more exotic friends' and family's names. But it is worth easily minutes of giggles to hear what he comes up with on his own.
You can test these custom entries over and over until you are ready to commit to a finished ringtone. You may enter any text you wish spoken, but the longer it is, the bigger the finished ringtone file, and the longer it takes to repeat a loop on your phone. I suggest six to ten seconds, with 30 seconds max. There's a reason most ringtones are short; don't try to make 'In a Gadda Da Vida' into a ringtone.
On that note, I have not tested this script with overly large add-on ringtones; QuickTime may slow down considerably when trying to export very large files, and may thus produce timing and/or timeout errors. If your files hang, try smaller ones, or add delays after the export command in the script. If you still have problems, try this script with this Old Ring.m4r ringtone.
When I got my iPhone 3GS, I played with all the new features, like everyone else. Then they wore off and I was back to normal use. While playing games, specifically Wild West Pinball, it seemed like all the taps weren't registering properly. Also, when I pressed both flippers at the same time, there was a slight delay.
I thought this was a glitch in the game. But as I used more multi-touch games, it seemed something was wrong with my phone. Before resorting to complaining to Apple, I thought of what could be different from using my old iPhone. Of course, I had turned on the Zoom feature (in the Accessibility section of General Preferences) for no reason other that it was cool that I could do it.
When I turned off the Zoom feature, the taps went back to normal and the multi-touch taps respond quickly again.
Imagine you've purchased a new and shiny iPhone 3GS. Imagine as well that you had an equally-shiny iPhone 3G since day one of its introduction (more or less one year). You set up your 3GS as a new phone in iTunes, in order not to mess with settings and whatnot, only to discover that one year's worth of SMS are lost in your new unit!
Well...fear no more, as you can easily restore the SMS database into your new unit, starting from the backup of the old unit. Read on for the how-to...
This hint doesn't accomplish anything, but if you tap the graphical representation of the mic on the screen in the Voice Memos App on the iPhone (OS 3.0), the VU meter registers just like it would if you were tapping on a real mic. It doesn't register anywhere else on the screen, though; just on the mic.
I was reading a story on tuaw.com about a guy who tracked down his lost iPhone using the new service Find My iPhone. In the post, the iPhone owner wished he could have logged into the the me.com Accounts page and used the service from a friend's iPhone to help track the movements of his lost iPhone, rather than lug a laptop around.
In fact, you can login to the me.com site via the iPhone/iPod touch, but you need an app that uses its own web browser rather than the Safari.app that is on the device. I have done this with an app called iStorage, which uses it own browser rather than switching to Safari.app. It looks like you can also use the browser in IM+ lite 3.0, which is free.
I tested the Find My iPhone feature from my iPod touch, and it worked. It displayed where my iPod touch was at that moment, and I was also able to send a message to it with the alert sound. It was slow, though -- very slow. And I suspect that's why Apple has a redirect when trying to login to me.com from the iPhone/iPod touch. But if needs must...
I don't see why Apple couldn't enable the Find My iPhone page to work as a simple webpage when using an iPhone/iPod touch -- it just needs the map and send message and remote wipe buttons. Until they decide to do this, though, this workaround is a viable solution.
I've been using push notifications with the Beejive app on the iPhone, which got updated recently and it works great. But when using AIM on a Mac, it can be kind of frustrating since you cannot be logged into two Machines at the same time with AIM. So, if you are logged into the iPhone (even in the background), and you connect with iChat or Adium on the Mac, then AIM sends you a message at both places asking you which Machine you want to be connected from.
To me, it would be ideal to only receive notifications on my Mac when I'm using my Mac, and only receive notifications on the iPhone when I'm using my iPhone. This seems to be pretty much attainable when using Google chat (over Jabber) instead of AIM (and thus requiring Beejive instead of AIM on the iPhone). If you are logged into Jabber from two Machines, and someone chats you, it will send the messages to all machines that are logged in, until you reply from one machine. At that point, Google chat will only send messages to that machine, until it logs out. Once you log out, it will then send it to the other machine again.
So the hint is as follows: in Beejive on the iPhone, in Settings, set it to keep you logged in for 24 hours. Then on the Mac, download Adium (instead of iChat -- the desired level of control is not available in iChat), and add your Google account. In Adium's preferences, under the Status tab, set it so that after some period of inactivity (10 minutes perhaps), it switches your account to offline.
Then, when you are using your Mac, Google chat messages will get pushed to Adium (and to your iPhone as well, until you reply to one from your Mac), but after the period of inactivity on your Mac, it will switch you to offline, and those messages will get sent to the iPhone instead. Once you start using your Mac again, message will get pushed there again.
