assistivetouch
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Apple finally brings mouse support to iPad with iPadOS
Apple has at long last answered the hopes and dreams of people hoping for mouse support on iPad. With the new iPadOS, you'll be able to hook up a USB mouse or the likes of Apple's Magic Trackpad, as iOS developer Steve Troughton-Smith discovered once the developer beta went live.
How to power off or lock the screen of an iPhone with a broken power button
I have an iPhone 4 kicking around that I use with my children so they can contact me when they are away from home. It worked perfectly until recently, when the power button broke. The biggest drawback to a broken power button is that you can no longer turn off the screen to put the phone to sleep or power off the device to conserve the battery. After a few weeks of accidental butt dials and dead batteries, I stumbled upon this posting at GrownUpGeek by Randy Brown. It turns out that you can lock an iPhone or power it off without touching the power button when you enable AssistiveTouch in the Accessibility options. Open Settings > General > Accessibility. Scroll down to AssistiveTouch and tap AssistiveTouch and tap the toggle to turn it ON. The toggle will be green when the feature is enabled in iOS 7. A small dark square with a white circle in the middle should now appear at the edge your screen. You can drag this square icon to a convenient location on your screen. Tap the circle icon to open the AssistiveTouch menu and then tap "Device" to access the device-specific commands as shown in the image at the top of the page. You will see an icon for "Lock Screen" as shown in the image at the top of the page. Tap this once if you want to lock the screen of your iPhone. Tap and hold if you want to activate the iPhone's power-off slider. Now that your iPhone is sleep mode, just tap the home button to wake it up. If you turned off your iPhone using the power-off slider button, you will need to plug in the device using your charging cable in order to power it back on.
Apple enables 'Assistive Touch' features on iPad in latest iOS 5 beta
Apple has enabled a very cool feature for iPad users in the latest beta of iOS 5. "Assistive Touch" allows users to perform gestures and button actions on the iPad with one touch. Users can call up the Assistive Touch menu by tapping a designated corner of the iPad's screen. The menu itself is similar to the bezel overlay that appears when adjusting the iPad's volume. As noted by MacRumors, the Assistive Touch menu "allows one-tap access to all of the iPad's functions including rotation, shaking, volume changes and even gestures. Known gestures such as pinch and swipe can be recalled by a tap, and custom gestures can even be recorded and played back on command." Assistive Touch is primarily meant to help those who might have trouble using some of the gesture elements of the iPad's multitouch features, like the elderly. The feature's settings were present in earlier iOS 5 beta's but were not enabled until the release of iOS 5 beta 3 earlier today.
