TimesToCome Mobile

To MMS a map of your location: Go to Google Maps; when it finds you tap the blue arrow; tap ’share location’

To remember where you parked the car, go to Google Maps, when it finds you tap the blue arrow, then ‘add to bookmarks’. To find the car again go to Google Maps; tap the page curl on the bottom right, go to ‘list’.

When sending a text, shake the iPhone to bring up the undo option.

If your icons suddenly get too large for the screen use 3 fingers to scroll and 3 finger double taps to change size.

To erase everything on your iPhone go to Settings->General->Reset ( Reset is at the very bottom of the page )

When typing an URL hold the “.com” key to select from .net, .edu, .org

When typing a URL hold the key for the first letter and a list of previous URLs beginning with that letter will appear.

To restart music while screen is dimmed just press the home button fast twice and you won’t have to unlock phone to start the music again.

In Google maps double tap with one finger to zoom in, tap once with two fingers to zoom out.

To drop a pin on Google maps, tap the page curl button on bottom right and an option to drop a pin will appear. Tap the blue arrow on the pin to get to the option to remove it.

Click your headphones once to answer a call or pause a song, twice to skip to the next song, three clicks to go to previous song.

To take a screen shot from your iPhone hold down the round home button and click the power button.

To add or remove contacts from groups you must do it in the address book on your computer.

More than a few people have come to me with this problem of late. I think there’s a holiday gremlin messing with everyone’s settings.

If your iPhone icons get too large to be usable you ‘re in zoom mode.

Tap twice with three fingers to zoom in or out
Drag three fingers to move around

Go to Settings->General->Accessibility->Zoom and turn it off to keep your icons from blowing up.

iPhone your life is a website put together by Apple to help you choose the best applications for your iPhone.  Along with recommended applications for many tasks the iPhone your life site has tips and tricks to help you get the most out of your iPhone.

Accessing AT&T’s Wi-Fi hotspots is easy. You can use any Wi-Fi enabled laptop or other device to connect quickly and seamlessly.

iPhone users, get started with Wi-Fi

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Activate Wi-Fi from the settings icon on your iPhone
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Select “attwifi” from the list of available networks
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Enter your 10-digit mobile number and check the box to agree to the Acceptable Use Policy. Tap ‘continue’
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You will receive a text message from AT&T with a secure link to the AT&T Wi-Fi hotspot. You will not be charged for the text message.
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The SMS link will only be valid for 24 hours at the location it was requested. Another request must be submitted when using another hotspot location.
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Open the text message and tap on the link for 24-hour access to the AT&T Wi-Fi hotspot

The Basics

It has been painful learning to write programs for the iPhone. My C++ is shamefully rusty and I’ve done everything from a command line for years. So I had to learn ObjC and how to develop code in XCode.

The first thing you must do is sign up for the iPhone Developer Program. There is a free program that will get you the developer kit, manuals, and source code. Pay $99 and you can obtain the certificates that will let you load code onto your phone for testing or put it up on the iTunes store.

Once you’ve signed up you’ll need to download and install the developer kit onto your computer.

If you plan to sell applications on the App store fill out your bank and tax information since it takes a long time for the contract information to get approved. ( iPhone Dev Center -> Program Portal -> Distribution -> App Store -> Learn more -> Go to iTunes Connect -> Contracts, Tax & Banking Information )

The Good

The pdf manuals you’ll find most useful for getting started in ObjC and XCode are:
iPhone OS Programming Guide
ObjC

Then move onto both of these pdfs which walk you through simple projects:
ObjCTutorial.pdf
iPhone101.pdf

Then download all the sample code, you use it often.

(* Note: you must sign up for the developer program to download these manuals and code from Apple. )

The icodeblog has several code examples and it walks you through in very tiny steps.

Another very useful blog with well explained examples and source code is MikeTeo.

‘Programming in Objective-C (Developer’s Library)‘is a great place to start if you are new to ObjC.

‘Cocoa(R) Programming for Mac(R) OS X (3rd Edition)‘ is good for learning Cocoa if you know ObjC but it is written for desktop application, not iPhone applications.

If you have written code for cell phones before you’ll find much of the interface stuff is familiar.  It’s just a matter of getting the hang of the Apple drag and drop GUI. You’ll probably want to start with Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK if you already know ObJC and Cocoa. I’m only on chapter 11but I can see already it’ll be a well used, well worn book. (Forums for book and the example code for the book )

iPhone Dev Central has forums and video tutorials. I’m not big on video tutorials so I haven’t tried them, but they come highly recommended.

If you want to write games you’ll have to brush up on or learn OpenGL and get the basics of that down. For a really cool example of 3d graphics on the iPhone check out iHologram

If you are totally new to programming you’ll want to download the free pdf or buy Thinking in C++: Introduction to Standard C++, Volume One (2nd Edition) and dig into code get your basic stuff down first.

Also see Miklos Fazekas’s Blog entry on Debugging iPhone provision profiles/certificates. It was a great help to me when I got trapped in certificate hell.

Another place you might get stuck is changing the name of your project in XCode, Me and Mark’s Xcode Tools Tips has some help for that.

Stanford iPhone class is now putting the whole class online not just the slides. I watched the intro lecture and already learned some new tricks.

The Bad

‘iPhone Open Application Development: Write Native Objective-C Applications for the iPhone‘ The ‘iPhone Open Application Development’ book looks to have some interesting information so far I haven’t found a use for any thing in it.

The Ugly

Do not purchase The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook: Building Applications with the iPhone SDK (Developer’s Library) it was a total waste of money and it’s not even large enough to make a good door stop.

When you are debugging and testing applications on your iPhone the gdb runs the existing application if it exists, not the new, leading to some embarrassing got-yas. Before testing, delete existing copies of the application from your phone.

There is little to no information or examples using OpenGL on the iPhone so I added a few to get you started.

Other useful things:
How to rotate a UITabBarController

Your iPhone photo library syncs with a folder on your computer. Plug in your phone, go to iTunes->Devices->Photos and select a folder to sync photos into (iPhonePhotos ).

Now when you sync your iPhone up comes Image Capture. Choose another folder (iPhonePhotoDownloads) to put photos into that you download from your iPhone. All photos you take on your device are downloaded to that folder.

* If Image Capture does not start automatically, you’ll find it in your Apps folder, just start it manually.

Once your photos are downloaded you’ll want to crop or shrink them to 480×360. If you do not iTunes will alter them and it usually rotates the photo sideways when it does so. So resize your photos, then move them from iPhonePhotoDownloads to iPhonePhotos.

Next time you sync the photos you took, resized and moved will be in your iPhone Photo Library.

I only put the photos I really like in the library.

I know this isn’t the easiest solution, but it works and if I figure out an easier way I’ll post it here.

If you do the software update on your old iPhone, or likely new one, while the phone is in airplane mode then when you are finished it will be stuck in a loop.

The iPhone will tell you to plug it in to iTunes, iTunes will tell you it can’t access the phone till the phone is activated.

To break the loop. Go to the phone and tell it you want to make an emergency call. It will tell it must turn off airplane mode. Tell to go ahead. Then you can plug it into iTunes and everything will work itself out and be fine.

After I bought the new iPhone I decided to keep the old one as a back up ipod.

I loaded up the leaked copy of 2.0, then erased it and put the official version on it, then wiped it and resynced it. Just because.

I found that even if I had wifi hooked up the phone would not let me reset up the email accounts in airplane mode. I kept getting “Cannot connect using SSL” errors. Turn off airplane mode to set up the email accounts, then you can swap it back to airplane mode on/ wifi on and all will be well.

If you have it in airplane mode it won’t keep searching for the ATT network and run down your battery on you. Plus you won’t keep getting the ‘activation’ error messages.

Don’t worry about wiping it. I totally wiped it and put the 2.0 software update on after I took that phone off the ATT phone plan and had no problems.

You can sync both the old and the new phone with the same computer. You might want to rename one of them. While syncing click on the name of the phone in the iTunes sidebar. It will let you erase the old name and enter a new name.

Purchased music can be loaded on both phones, you are allowed up to 5 devices including the computer where you store all your information.

Remember to reset time zone support [ Settings->Mail, Contacts, Calendar scroll all the way down ] to your time zone. My calendar appointments kept changing times. It drove me nuts for a couple of days till I stumbled upon that setting.

If an activation screen pops up on iTunes while synching your old phone, just select ‘cancel’.