I’ve been a heavy reader for as long as I can remember. Growing up, I was nearly a permanent fixture at our local library. I chewed through the best parts of the kids section by the time I was 9 or 10 and had written permission on file that allowed me to check out anything in the place that my little old heart desired. Sci-fi, murder mysteries and historical fiction were among my best friends.

These days, I tend to ignore printed media in favor of ebooks on my Kindle, iPad or iPod touch, but I’m also hooked on audiobooks. My current iPod nanos each carry a bunch of audiobooks for listening on the go. I get my audiobooks from multiple sources, including our local library, a subscription to Audible.com and occasional purchases from Tantor Media.  Audible is probably my favorite, and their download/listening app for iPad/iPhone is one of the best. The download is fast, and it’s easy to move between books without losing my place. It always remembers. It also recognizes audiobooks from other sources that are in my iTunes library. Nice touch.

Tantor released their own iPad/iPhone app in November, and I recently downloaded it to give it a try. In all fairness, it’s still v1.01, but it needs a lot of changes before I’ll try it again. Downloads are s-l-o-w. I mean really slow. It will download one chapter at a time or the entire book, but unlike the Audible app, once you start a download, there is no way to abort it. Much faster to download to my iMac and then transfer via iTunes. And playing? That was the real deal breaker. Turn off the screen and it stops playing. Huh? How did they let that pass? Fortunately, my Audible app doesn’t care if my books have been ripped from CDs or downloaded from Tantor.

One complaint I’ve heard about borrowing downloaded audiobooks from the library using the required Overdrive software is that they expire too fast for some people. Easy solution — copy the files from the Overdrive download folder to iTunes. Overdrive only looks for the files in one place. While Overdrive will transfer directly to a connected iPod, I always transfer using iTunes.

If audiobooks are your thing, try the Audible app. You don’t even have to buy your books from them, but you might want to give them a try. They have some nice sales, and their tech support people are the best.

Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are finally past and the countdown to Christmas and Hanukkah has started. I’ve started looking at iPad/iPhone holiday apps, and there are a few new ones available.

FIrst up is Appy Christmas. An animated Santa will give you an Advent countdown, with a new free app every day starting on December 1st. Try to open one of the doors early and Santa will tell you “no, no, no” or “please be patient” and refuse to open it. Talk to Santa and he’ll parrot back whatever is said in a chipmunk-like voice. He’ll also give a countdown in days, hours or minutes. It’s cute, and of course, the price is right. Free.

Next up is XMas Radio. Like Halloween Radio, this has a bunch of streaming stations from North America & Europe. Haven’t played with it much, but it seems to have a bit of everything.

Finally, a revisit to one of my favorite addictive games from last year is in order. Cut the Rope: Holiday Gift has been updated to take advantage of that camera in your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad 2. Create a photo greeting card, complete with Om Nom and various props. This is one of the few games that I keep going back to. It’s fun, and candy-eating Om Nom is really cute.

That’s it for this week. I’ll leave you with a video from last year. The snow hasn’t arrived yet, but here in Michigan we won’t have long to wait, I’m sure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCikxhL4FC8

Last week, Navigon unveiled it’s latest version of its iOS navigation app. Until recently, I had been using the TomTom app (for reasons documented here). But circumstances led me back to Navigon, at least for the moment.

What circumstances? Shortly after upgrading to iOS 5, my real-time traffic subscription ran out on the TomTom (unlike Navigon, TomTom requires you to pony up yearly – Navigon has a one-time charge). No problem, I’ll go into the app and re-up. Except – there was a bug in the app, and you couldn’t make any in-app purchases (TomTom came out with a fix a week or so later). I use the traffic very day on my way to work – the traffic is very unpredictable, and some days I need to take an alternate route to get to work on time. So I switched over to Navigon.

Around this time, Navigon released version 2 of the app. It has some great new features (and one annoying omission) that could have been implemented a bit better, but overall is an improvement on the previous version.

One of the touted new features is the ability to download just a portion of the map. For many people, this will be a great boon, as they are fighting for free space on their device. However, I have the space, and actually want the majority of the maps on my device. I do a lot of “what if” planning for drives, and do drive quite a bit across many states each year.

Since I don’t need it for directions, just traffic, I wasn’t worried about the glaring error it makes on my way to work that tries to send me off in thew wrong direction. It worked OK, but I felt the TomTom was better at routing me around heavy traffic.

So I downloaded the new version – which is only 45.2 MB instead of the 1.5+ GB of the monolithic version. Unfortunately, here’s where we run into a trouble spot. After loading the app for the first time, you’re created with a screen that asks you to download the maps you want. Here’s the first annoyance – if, like me, you want most of the maps, be prepared to tap, tap, tap, tap, tap,scroll, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, scroll, tap, tap…yeah, you have to tap on each and every map you want to download. Yes, you can download maps later (and even remove them). But I already know I need most of them, so I might as well download them so I don’t forget one I need. A “Select All” button would have been nice (I wouldn’t mind so much unselecting a few items rather than hitting most of them). But that’s only one time, right? (If only…)

So after 40 minutes or so I finally have all the maps.I then go into the “Extras” and re-download my 3D views and re-activate the radar trap warnings and the real-time traffic (thank you for one time charges, Navigon!). I also decided to pop for the quarterly map updates (although it’s unclear to me if that was a lifetime or yearly sub).

I check my favorites and, unlike many people who’ve complained on the ‘net, mine are all still there (many reports of them getting wiped). Yay! I use it into work, and the menus are much easier to see, and the traffic info is presented better, with a small box listing the delay time and a line on the road next to the slow area. Navigon has always had (at least in my opinion) better depictions of the exits and the signs than TomTom, and they are still great here.

After getting to work, I decide to let it plot my way hope to see if it has decided to take any odd routes (the TomTom app wants me to make some very strange turns near the end of my drive to work, and while they will get me there, they take me out of my way to do it). So I tap on the left menu button to show the menu overlay (which still leaves the map up in the background, which I like) and tap “Take Me Home.” It then asks me to enter the address. Hmm. Well, if all I lost was my home address as opposed to all my favorites, not so bad. I go to Contacts, pick my card, and tell Navigon it’s my home address. Then it’s back to the main screen, hit “Take Me Home,” and…it wants me to enter an address. Sigh. OK, so I go through the address route. Hit “Take Me Home” and…it asks me to enter the address. Great. So I try killing the program and re-entering the address, rebooting the phone and entering the address…and it still won’t stick. That only leaves the nuclear option – I delete the program from my phone and re-download.

OK, so that’s not so bad…oh yeah, I get to tap like a madman all over again to get my maps (and wait again for them to download). Of course, this time, a couple of the maps fail to download and have to be restarted. Yippie. At least this time it takes my address, but of course now all my favorites are gone.

So not a great opening experience. But traffic seems to be much quicker than I remember from the old version, and it’s routing me around trouble spots nicely. So for the most part, after the lousy install experience, I’m fairly happy with the new version.

Only “fairly happy?” Yeah. Because one of my favorite features is gone. There used to be a small iPod symbol in the lower part of the screen – touch it, and the map would peel away and reveal the album cover of the current sone, the title/artist/album name, and show you the play controls. Well, it’s gone. I made use of that feature quite often.

Also, it seems that even with the new maps, the glaring wrong turn on my way to work hasn’t been fixed (yes, I have reported it more than once). So that’s a bit disappointing, because you don’t know when it might send you astray when you don’t know where you’re going.

Another of my pet peeves is the graphics in the lower left. Usually, it’s fine – it shows you the distance to your next turn and which way you need to go. At the end, that turns into a checkered flag and an arrow that points to the side of the road that your destination is on. Well, it’s a good thing the program announces the side, too, because if the arrow was any smaller you’d need a microscope to see it. Really, Navigon? No one there as looked at that tiny arrow and noticed that there’s quite a bit of space there available for something readable?

Overall, this is a worthwhile upgrade – don’t let my complaining make you think otherwise. But a few of the design choices keep this from being even better.

UPDATE: on December 19, 2011, Navigon release version 2.01 that restores the iPod controls (yay!), adds a button to “select all maps”  in the Map Manager (yay!) and makes map downloading more reliable. It also fixes the lost Favorites (if you haven’t updated yet or were on the fence). It’s also on sale right now, and live lifetime traffic is 25% off. So if you were on the fence, or were waiting to upgrade, go for it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8akbo4pMK8

Lots of reports on teh inter webs about people having power issues with their iPhones and iPads under iOS5. I hadn’t seen it on any of my equipment (and I’d run several betas before the final version arrived), but one of the guys at work with an iPad was seeing it big time. In just a couple of hours of it sitting on his desk, with the Smart Cover closed, his iPad went from 88% battery down to 17%!

I didn’t see any strange programs running. But one of the new items in iOS5 that is part of Location Services is a check of your location to set the time zone. If you’ve read the hints on the web, you know that one solution is to turn off the auto time zone. Go to Settings->Location Services->then scroll to the bottom and choose “System Services” where you’ll find some new settings:

Turn off “Setting Time Zone” and you will hopefully see the power problem go away (my co-worker did).

Some more magic – some folks are seeing the “Personal Hotspot” disappear from the Network page (nothing up my sleeve – presto!). This seems to be happening with devices that have been upgraded or had an iPhone 4 restore applied – the new phones we have been setting up at work have been fine. A co-worker and I both saw this on our upgraded phones, but since I still have an unlimited plan, I didn’t really care. My co-worker’s account has the hotspot on it though, and he uses it, so he wanted it back. The solution is to go to Settings->General->Reset (again, scroll all the way down), and then select “Reset Network Settings.” Be forewarned – this will forget all your WiFi networks and their passwords, as well as any VPNs and their setups (I hope you remember all those passwords and shared secrets!). For most people this won’t be a big deal, but we both have quite a few networks and VPNs set up. Since I don’t use the hotspot, I’ve decided to pass on the reset, but my co-worker had little choice. Hopefully, an update to iOS5 will address this (and since updates can come over the air now as small, partial updates, we may see them a bit more often).

One piece of magic that does work well – if you’ve set up an iCloud account – is Photo Stream. It not only sends your photos off to other iOS devices, Apple TVs, and your Macs, but things you save to your photos as well. This includes screen shots taken on your device and graphics you download from the web. Touch and hold on a graphic in Safari and you’ll be asked by a popup menu of you want to Open it, Open it in a New Page, Add it to your Reading List (which also syncs nicely with other devices and your Mac), Save the Image, or Copy it. If you Save it, the image goes to your photo roll and to your photo stream, just as if you took a picture.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwvikYBN28E

Based on some of the questions asked at the Genius Table at the last MacGroup meeting, it sounds like people are a bit confused about iCloud and whether or not they should move from MobileMe. Since that trip is one way if you take it (no going back), you best be sure that’s what you want to do before you take the plunge.

First off, if you want to sync your calendar and contacts with your iDevice (iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad) on iOS5, and you aren’t running the most current version of Lion (10.7.2), then you should not move to iCloud. Stick with MobileMe. There is a work-around for your calendars if you are on Snow Leopard, and you can always use any IMAP client for mail, but your contacts will not sync via iCloud without Lion.

If you want to use a mail client besides Apple Mail, just use the information in this Apple Knowledge Base article to set up your mail client. You must use a client that understand IMAP – no more POP mail (and that’s actually a good thing).

If you want to sync calendars with a Snow Leopard (10.6) machine, you can go into iCal preferences and then Accounts to create a new CalDAV account. Click the plus sign at the bottom for a new account, change the type from Automatic to CalDAV, and fill in your whoever@me.com username and password (make sure you use the “@.me” after your name).  For the server, use p02-caldav.icloud.com. You may get a dialog box like this one:

Select the iCloud server, click “Create,” and you’re all set. Leopard (10.5) supposedly supports CalDAV, but I couldn’t make it work.

A better alternative might be to switch to Google for your contacts and calendar syncing. Leopard and Snow Leopard both support this natively (Leopard with 10.5.3, and all versions of Snow Leopard).

Don’t forget that MobileMe will continue to work until next June. So you don’t have to rush into anything. Maybe you’re planning an upgrade to Lion in a few months. If so, you might just want to sit tight with MobileMe until then.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOkID1qzR6A

Although my hobby is photography and I have a few DSLR cameras as well as a couple of point and shoots, I would say the camera that I actually use the most is the one on my iPhone. It’s the one that’s always with me. I don’t look at it as a replacement for my professional bodies, but I do look at it as a replacement for about 99% of what I used to carry a point & shoot for. I find that I only use my point & shoot these days for concerts. Needless to say I was happy to see a much improved camera on the iPhone 4s. The one on the iPhone 4 was a bit of a let down with early white balance problems (yellow tint) and shots that didn’t look that much better than the 3GS I had before it. The iPhone 4s is a big improvement across the board AND iOS 5 has a few tricks up it’s sleeve too.

1. Double Tap the Home Button on the Lock Screen

I have missed my share of shots. By the time it takes me to unlock my screen, find the camera app, fire it up and what for it open, many times the action was over. Now, in iOS 5 on the iPhone and iPod touch all you have to do is double tap the home button to get right to the camera. BONUS TIP: The Volume Up button also fires the shutter!

2. Swipe to get to the Camera Roll

One of the nice and hidden iOS 5 features is the ability to switch between the camera and the camera roll to see the shots you just took. When the camera is up, you can swipe to the right anytime you want to see your shots and swipe right back to continue shooting.

3. Tweet it right from the camera roll

If you took a shot and want to immediately Tweet it, you no longer have to fire up your Twitter App. Just use the Share menu and Tweet your shot right from the camera roll.

4. Edit your images right from the camera roll

You can do basic edits right on your iDevice without having to launch another App. You can crop, remove redeye, rotate and Auto Enhance just by tapping the Edit button.

5. Move your images into Albums

Finally on iOS 5 you can take images with your camera and then create and move those images into albums. Unfortunately you still can’t edit the albums sync’d via iTunes, but this is a good step in the right direction.

I think we pay enough, finding alternatives to being nickel and dimed is always good… Sorry, that should read $5′d and $10′d.

With the new iOS 5 release, I’m very happy to see the iMessage app with free text, photo, video and audio messaging to all my iPhone pals. But, alas, not all of my pals have iPhones.

With this one little sticking point, there would still be messaging charges to my other pals.

But there is an app that I have been using for well over a year now that has let make and receive all of the above messaging formats to my pals regardless of make of smartphone they own, as long as they have the app also. That app? WhatsApp Messenger.

WhatsApp Messenger is available for the iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Nokia phones. Using it, you can receive text messages, photos, audio files, and video files at no extra cost.

WhatsApp Messenger is compatible with iPhone iOS 3.1 and higher, allowing even those who may still own the original iPhone to partake of the image/video/audio text message frenzy. Even better, right now at this writing, WhatsApp Messenger is free.

Click HERE learn more about the WhatsApp Messenger app on iTunes.

Or visit the WhatsApp Inc., site

:::

So, did you get a load of that terrible iPhone 4S? Utterly horrible. Huge letdown. At least, that’s what all the pundits said last week shortly after the announcement. After all, Apple had built up everyone’s expectations so high!

Well, no. The rumor mill certainly pumped the ‘net full of stories, some listed as being from “reliable sources,” and many of those pumped up some people – again, most notably the self-appoint tech gurus who know what’s best for us all.

After reading over some of those pronouncements, you’d guess that last Friday’s pre-orders were a dud. Of course, Apple might not agree. Seems like they broke another record for first-day pre-orders. But I guess that’s what happens when the public is filled with so many people who haven’t a clue what’s good for them.

I stopped thinking I knew what new Apple items would sell well when the iPod Mini came out. I took one look and said, “Why would anyone buy one of those when a full iPod – with a lot more disk space – wasn’t much more?” (Hey, remember when most iPods sold had disk drives in them?). I thought Apple and Jobs were nuts. The Mini was going to flop.

In case you’ve forgotten, the Mini didn’t exactly flop. It was so successful they pushed back the world-wide release from April to July because they couldn’t make them fast enough. That was a real wake-up call for me – Apple and Jobs actually thought this stuff through and knew exactly what they were doing. So when the next year, Apple killed the iPod Mini and replaced it with the Nano, I figured it would be a hit.

I think the only thing they’ve come up with since that time that didn’t do well – and I didn’t think it would – was the Apple iPod Hi-Fi speaker for your iPod. It just seemed too expensive, when better alternatives were available for the iPod. It also didn’t seem like the iPod was very secure, sitting on the top. It seemed like the typical Apple attention to detail was lacking here.

So my point? Don’t bet against Apple (even without Steve Jobs – just because he’s passed away, don’t think he hasn’t passed on a lot of himself to the folks at Apple). yeah, they may not be perfect, but they seem to have a pretty good idea of what they’re doing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmSlwT1xzus

Unless you just dropped in from another planet, you probably know about Apple’s announcements yesterday of the release of iOS 5 and iPhone 4S on the 12th and 14th, respectively. You’ve got a week before the update – so know’s the perfect time to clean house and get rid of some dead weight on you iOS device before upgrading. As there will be new features and functions, there’s probably going to be a bigger storage footprint used by the OS, and you might want to make some extra room for it.Or maybe you’ll be upgrading to a spiffy new iPhone 4S and need the extra space for the larger photos and higher-def videos you’ll be capturing.

You’ve probably got some apps that you used once or twice and never used again. I try to move those apps to the last page of my device, then I look it over every month or so. Anything I haven’t used in a while, and I’m not likely to use, I delete from the device. Fortunately, the app will still be on your computer, and can be re-synced later. The next sync you do, iTunes will be smart enough to see you removed the app and uncheck the box on the Apps page so it won’t automatically download again. If you change your mind, just check the box again and you’ll get it back.

What you won’t get back are any documents or settings that were in that app – so be sure before you whack it. For example, the baseball scoring app I use stores all the stats in the app. Whack the app and reinstall, and the stats are gone. Note that if you erase the entire device and do a restore from a backup, you will get all that data back. In the case of iScore, the baseball app, they also allow you to export the data to their servers and re-import it later. So before you trash an app that stores data, take a look and see if there’s some way to back that data up, just in case you change your mind. Unlike your Mac, it’s not as easy to recover just part of the system.

You’ll also be able to re-download the app from the app store, so even if you remove it from your computer, you can get it back. So even if you switch to doing your backups with iCloud instead of iTunes, you’re covered.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQ2fLoxe9iQ

Our MacNews site is powered by WordPress. While the experience is good on a destop browser and pretty good on the iPad it wasn't really optimized for the iPad. You could always use our iPhone/iPod touch App, but that App wasn't designed for iPad either. With an update to our WP Touch Pro plug-in MacNews is now a bonified "web app" too. 

What's the difference between a web app and a native iOS app?

For those of us old enough to remember when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone back in 2007 he touted "web apps" as a way to get custom Apps onto the iPhone. That didn't go over too well with developers that wanted to access native functions (APIs) of the device. So Apple opened the doors to native App development for those wishing to create Apps using Objective C and distribute them on the App Store. Hundreds of thousands of Apps later, that was definitely the right thing to do. However, the fact of the matter is that web apps are still useful when the task isn't as complex as some native apps. With a web app you now can get the "feel" of a native App but without the need to actually write a program using Objective C. Web Apps are built with HTML, Javascript, CSS, and JQuery Mobile. These open standards not only mean that anyone can develop an App (using tools like Adobe Dreamweaver CS 5.5) it also means that the App doesn't have to go through Apple's (or anyone else's) App Store approval process. The other advantage of a web App over a native App is that the developer only has to write one App that will work across all platforms including, dare I say it, your desktop/laptop too.

What's the difference between a web app and just adding a website to your home screen?

In iOS you can go to any website in Safari and add an icon (bookmark) to that site right on your homescreen. This will give you a one tap access to load that site in Mobile Safari. That's great, but all it really is is a button that accesses a bookmarked URL. With a web App you navigate to the site first in Mobile Safari as you always did, but when you save that site to your homescreen and launch it from that icon it launches like a regular App and you don't see the Safari interface around it. It functions like a true App with the ability to remember things like where you left off in the App and you get the same kind of animations during navigation that you would in a native App. Also the Web App can take advantage of things like a different layout for horizontal viewing vs. vertical viewing and even some of the hardware (ie. camera, acelerometer, etc. just like a native App.

Try it for yourself

Load MacNews on your iPad (or iPhone/iPod touch) in mobile Safari. Then tap the share icon to Add it to your Home Screen. At this point you can also name the App whatever you like ie. "MacNews". Now go to your Home Screen and launch it like you would any other App.  I am still tweaking the performance, but otherwise it should be good to go. Keep in mind if you don't like it you can always access the site via mobile Safari as you always did. In Mobile Safari just scroll down to the bottom of the page and turn off the mobile theme and you'll be back to the regular site.