Kibbles & Bytes Blog

With the nearly palpable anticipation and excitement surrounding yesterday’s “*iPhone 4 launch*”:http://www.macrumors.com/2010/06/23/standing-in-line-for-the-iphone-4/, many have been eager to get their hands on Apple’s latest piece of hardware as well as its software, “*iOS4.*”:http://www.apple.com/iphone/softwareupdate/

Though the new mobile OS has been available to 3G and 3Gs owners since Monday afternoon, for many, today marks the first hands-on experience with the 100+ new features iOS4 brings with it. While features such as multi-tasking, a unified mail inbox, folders, and enhanced camera features were highlighted directly by Apple, many of the other enhancements were not mentioned at all. Some more subtle than others, there are numerous “hidden features” of iOS4. While these changes are small, they work in conjunction with the other larger new aspects of the OS to deliver a vastly improved and streamlined user experience.

*iPod*
Apple has significantly improved the iPod component of iOS4. The most striking update is perhaps the ability to create custom playlists right from the device. As opposed of the limited “On the go” functionality found in previous versions of the software, iOS4 users can give their playlists unique titles and create as many as they’d like.

The album view has also been retouched. When selected, albums feature an enlarged artwork tile as well as some basic metadata. This data includes: the year the album was released, the number of songs, and the runtime.

*Spotlight*
The built-in search feature of iOS4 has been tweaked to include web results and a direct link to Wikipedia at the bottom of each search. This convenient feature makes searching a snap, and has the potential to replace dedicated search specific apps.

*Notes*
Apple has finally enabled notes to join the ranks of mail, contacts, and calendars with syncing to MobileMe. This feature can be enabled by visiting *Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > MobileMe.*

*Calendar*
iOS4 finally allows for calendars to be turned on and off. For users with a lot of calendars this will likely come as good news. Previously, only a selected calendar or all calendars simultaneously could be viewed. Now you can pick and choose to help keep things uncluttered.

*Mail*
With the unified inbox garnering most of the attention, it is easy to overlook several of Mail’s other new features. Message threading is a big deal. If you get a ton of emails daily, threading can help keep you organized within a certain conversation. Mail has also been upgraded to take advantage of custom email service features. For instance, custom alias are now offered in MobileMe, and archiving has been enabled in Gmail. Apple has also allowed for attachments to be sent to 3rd party apps (a feature first introduced on the iPad).

With new features big and small, iOS4 is as revolutionary as the new iPhone 4. A free upgrade for any user with a compatible device, the new OS is the biggest evolution of the mobile platform since the introduction of the App Store in iOS2.

This is just a taste of the many refinements introduced in iOS4. If you have any more that you’ve discovered or would like to share, email me!

“See Kali’s iOS4 article for instructions on how to upgrade if you haven’t already!”:http://blog.smalldog.com/article/ios4-is-here-100-features-are-worth-the-wait/

I’m not usually an “early adopter,” but combine the fact that I had a 3G that was due for an upgrade, AT&T’s waiver of the last six months of our contract and that I have some special in-laws who are chomping at the bit to claim the 3Gs for their own, my husband and I pre-ordered our iPhone 4s on the 16th (and officially labeled them our ‘anniversary gifts’ to each other).

Amazingly enough, even though we waited a day to get our orders in to avoid some of the upgrade hassle I heard so much about, we received our phones yesterday. I grabbed mine from the UPS guy in the morning (who, by the way, had a look of pity on his face when I reacted so gleefully to a brown box) and headed into work.

Ben and I shot an unboxing video for the fun of it yesterday, “which you can see here.”:http://blog.smalldog.com/article/3476/iphone-4-unboxing I’ll give some first impressions next week, and stay tuned for more about iOS4. Of course, we’ll be blogging all week about them on our “blog, Barkings!”:http://blog.smalldog.com

Did you know that iTunes keeps a back-up copy of every iPod, iPhone, and iPad software update ever downloaded? If you’re a long time “iDevice” user or have multiple devices in your family synced to the same machine, these updates can really add up in terms of disk space. With the introduction of more feature robust products such as the iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad, software updates have grown considerably in size. If left unchecked, these updates can devour precious hard drive space. Since a circumstance requiring you to revert to a previous version of software would be considerably rare, these extraneous copies are safe to delete.

To clear out this collection of amassed updates, simply navigate to: *Your Home Folder/Library/iTunes*. Here, you’ll find folders containing updates for any devices synced with your machine. It might be a good idea to save the most recent update just in case you need to restore your device, but older updates can safely be trashed and deleted. If you’ve been steadily updating an iPod or iPhone over the past few years you’ll likely reclaim anywhere from a few hundred megabytes to one or two gigabytes. If for whatever reason you find yourself in need of an older update, all of them can be found and downloaded “*here*”:http://www.felixbruns.de/iPod/firmware/

_Dear Friends,_

I woke up early yesterday morning with excitement about iPhone 4 day but soon heard my old iPhone vibrating on the desk. I saw it was Katie and when I picked up, she simply said, “we got robbed!” She had been at our store since the alarm went off and had met the police at the S. Burlington location. Some low-life had thrown a rock through the window, scampered in and stolen a couple dozen iPods. Scared by the alarm and the police sirens, he skipped the iPads and MacBooks.

The S. Burlington Police Department is awesome and is usually on the scene literally within a minute of the alarm and expressed disappointment that the crook got away, at least for now. We have him on video and will work with the police to arrest him. Katie, Gary and Mark were on the scene, secured the area and started the clean up to get ourselves open for the day. I guess this is a by-product of selling the hottest products on the planet, but it sure does make us invest in security where we could be passing savings to customers.

As I was driving home last night, I had an experience that was in marked contrast to this bad news. There is a small organic farm stand on my way home and I frequently see the farmer working his garden both early in the morning and late in the day. I stopped by to get some strawberries after he was gone for the day. Sure enough, there were several baskets of berries sitting on the counter and big basket next to it. I looked in the basket and smiled because inside was a bunch of money, singles, 5s, 10s, 20s and more. It was truly a self-service honor system and I tossed a 20 into the basket and made myself change and drove off with my berries. What a wonderful feeling to have such a great resource near me. I sure hope that he can continue to exhibit that kind of faith in humanity–it is such a breath of fresh air. And really good organic berries, too!

I got my iPhone 4 yesterday and Hapy and I immediately tested out FaceTime and even with our weak signal in the office, we were able to carry on a good conversation and see each other clearly. I was playing with Voice Control when I got home. I was definitely wowed by that new feature. You can control iTunes by saying, “Play more like this song” or ask “What’s Playing?”. Even with Hammerhead barking in the background, the iPhone told me what song was playing and created a genius playlist based on that song. Then I tried it with the phone and when I said, “call Grace” it responded with “multiple numbers for Grace; which do you want?” and then listed them all. Very, very cool.

I started organizing my apps into folders and tested out multitasking, too. The iPhone is a winner for me; I love the bright clear display and the speed is so much better than my iPhone 3G. One of my friends did some testing on tethering and here’s his report:

__Just thought you might be interested to know that I have spent the last five hours doing some heavy iPhone 4 to MacBook tethering, and I now feel confident that I can ditch my Sprint AirCard wireless broadband. I went to “speedtest.net”:http://speedtest.net/ and tested them both out on multiple times. The iPhone ping time averaged about 120ms vs. 158ms for the Sprint, the download speed was around 2.40mps vs. 0.38, and the upload 1.07 vs. 0.30. Pretty impressive.__