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How iOS 8 Safari makes it simple to view the desktop version of a mobile website
Safari in iOS 8 has a nifty -- and dare I say, amazing -- new feature which makes it much easier to a) add a site to your list of favorites and b) more easily access the desktop version of a mobile site. The latter is a godsend for websites whose mobile websites are more clunky and less functional than their desktop counterparts. Here's how it works. When you're on a webpage, simply tap the URL bar once to bring up Safari's "favorites" view. You should now be on a page that looks something like this. Next, simply swipe downwards from anywhere below the URL bar and two new options will appear: "Add to Favorites" and "Request Desktop site." Simple as pie. Thanks to Chris for the tip!
Shape up your golf game with Putting Bootcamp
The old adage is "drive for show and putt for dough" and refers to pro golfers where the best putters often make the most money. Well that also applies to us amateurs who are trying to best our golfing partners in a friendly wager. Now Putting Bootcamp has been released and offers a systematic way to improve your putting. The free universal app requires iOS 6.1 or later. The concept behind the app is to make your putting practice into a series of contests that you score. The app tracks your scores and the more you work on your game the higher the scores and in theory you should see a corresponding decrease in the number of putts you take each round. Fewer putts means better scores and an improvement in the chances of winning your best ball match with your friends. Putting Bootcamp lays out five basic parts of your putting game that you can work on: Setup, the Putter Path, Putter Face Alignment, Stroke length and Pace, and how to take what you learn to the golf course. Each segment starts with a video explaining what the drills are supposed to accomplish and why those elements are important. Then each segment offers four or five drills and explains how to do them to accomplish the goals of the segment. These become your contests where you compete against your self and work to improve your scores and hopefully your putting game. As an example, here is the breakout for one of the segments. Understanding the path of the putter comes with five drills: Edge Rail drill, Edge Mirror drill, Putting Rod drill, Balls of Steel drill and Four Corners game. The first four use special training aids which are conveniently sold on the developers web site. However, with a little ingenuity you can duplicate the aids from things around your home. For example, the edge is nothing more than a piece of wood with a straight edge about 12-15 inches long. The goal of the drill is to take the putter back so you keep the heel of the putter along the straight edge which means you are back and through the putt along a straight path. No taking it inside or outside the intended line. Once you see the aids I am sure you can find a way to make them for a lot less than what they would cost on the web site. Not all the drills require anything special. Despite the effort to sell you a bunch of training devices, the concepts demonstrated in Putting Bootcamp are solid and if you do the drills, practice a lot, and score higher, you should become a better putter and lower your handicap. Maybe pocket a few extra dollars from your weekend games with friends.
iOS 8 app switcher good. Recent contacts bad.
While many people may love the "recent contacts" feature in the iOS 8 app switching jump screen, I personally don't. Showing a bunch of names and faces each time I want to move from app-to-app isn't my cup of tea as I find it visually distracting. Fortunately, there is a way to disable this new feature if you're so inclined. Hop into Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars and scroll down to the Contacts section. Toggle the Show In App Switcher setting to off, as in the screen shot at the top of this post. Doing so removes the "quick access" icons from the top of your app switcher window. Once disabled, those icons will no longer appear, simplifying your switcher to a more iOS-7-like appearance.
The iOS 8 Health app: What can you do with it today?
Note: At the time of this post Apple has acknowledged issues with HealthKit have delayed numerous third-party health apps. One of the big announcements out of WWDC 2014 was the iOS 8 Health app and the entire HealthKit framework. The framework is designed to allow third-party app and hardware vendors feed activity and health data into the Health app, which can then -- at some undetermined future time -- be used to communicate that information to your health care providers. Well, iOS 8 is available and the Health app is too, but there's not a lot you can actually do with it right now. Let's take a quick look at the app and how you can use it today. Health has four buttons at the bottom of the screen that demarcate the functionality of the app. First is Dashboard, which will be the repository for information on weight, activity, standing time, stairs climbed, and whatever else can be tracked by your fitness monitor or Apple Watch. The Dashboard is going to be awfully lonely until third parties actually get to add data to the Health Data repository, the second button on the app. One look at Health Data shows you all of the areas that are currently under consideration for storage on your iPhone -- body measurements (fat percentage, BMI, height, lean body mass, weight), fitness (active calories, cycling distance, flights climbed, NikeFuel, resting calories, steps, walking + running distance), "me" (birthdate, biological sex, and blood type), nutrition (biotin, caffeine, calcium, carbohydrates, chloride, chromium, copper, dietary calories, dietary cholesterol, fiber, folate... this list goes on forever), lab results (everything from Blood Alchohol Content to Peripheral Perfusion Index), sleep (interesting, since it's unknown if the Apple Watch is usable as a sleep monitor), and the ever-popular vital signs (blood pressure, body temperature, heart rate, and respiratory rate). Once you've entered data into any one of those hundreds of categories, you can view the numbers for the day, week, month or year. The third button is Sources, which identifies those apps or devices with associated apps that have actually requested permission to update your data. Finally, the one item that you can actually use right now is Medical ID. This can be a very useful tool for loved ones or emergency responders to use in case of a sudden illness or accident, as they do not need to know your device passcode or use your bloody fingertip on a Touch ID Home button to see the information. Instead, they can punch the Home button, swipe to the right to bring up the passcode screen, then tap Emergency. This function used to do one thing -- let others use your phone to call 911 in an emergency situation. Now there's a tiny red "Medical ID" link in the corner that can be tapped. I entered information into this that I feel comfortable having strangers look at in case of an emergency. This includes my blood type, whether or not I'm an organ donor, my weight, my height, existing medical conditions, allergies and reactions, medications I'm on, and emergency contact information. If you don't want that information to show up when your device is locked -- in other words, you don't want to give first responders a hand in saving your life -- you can tap a Show When Locked button to turn it off of the default. As someone who does a lot of traveling, I am personally looking forward to being able to carry more health data along with me wherever I may go. The Health app is here, let's just hope that developers start taking advantage of it.
iOS 8 is here! Read our complete guide to Apple's new mobile OS
Over the past several weeks, TUAW bloggers have been trying out all of the new features in iOS 8 to see how they work and how they'll make your mobile life easier. Now that iOS 8 is officially available, here's a list of all of our detailed write-ups of the new features. While you're waiting for iOS 8 to download and install on your favorite device, take some time to read through our guide to most of the top new features of the mobile operating system. We felt it was a much better idea to give you bite-sized and palatable chunks rather than a 21,000-word review of everything in the new OS. Feel free to bookmark this page for future reference, and be sure to share it with your iPhone-toting friends. We'll be adding more individual feature reviews shortly. Upgrading A list of which iPhones, iPods, and iPads are eligible to upgrade to iOS 8 PSA: Do not upgrade to iCloud Drive during iOS 8 installation PSA: iOS 8 is going to make your iPhone 4s a good bit slower Warning: Dropbox isn't playing well with iOS 8 Photos iOS 8 Photos app: Smart suggestions and searching iOS 8 Camera app: Smart Composition iOS 8 Camera app: Smart Adjustments iOS 8 Camera app: Time-Lapse iOS 8 Camera app: Photo filters and editing You have to delete your photos twice in iOS 8 Messages A new iOS 8 Messages app feature: Audio messages iOS 8 Messages app feature: Video messages iOS 8 Messages app feature: Sending and sharing your location Mail iOS 8 Mail: Drafts and notifications iOS 8 Mail: New swipe gestures General iOS 8's Favorites & Recents: A fast way to get in touch iOS 8: Hey Siri! Setting up two-step verification for Apple ID and iCloud security A look at iOS 8's new QuickType feature The iOS 8 Health app: What can you do with it today?
Setting up two-step verification for Apple ID and iCloud security
Since you're probably moving to iOS 8 soon -- if not as soon as possible after it goes live -- you might want to start thinking about security as well. In particular, Apple has recently enabled two-step verification for iCloud. What's two-step authentication? As Apple describes it on this web page, "Two-step verification is an additional security feature for your Apple ID that's designed to prevent anyone from accessing or using your account, even if they know your password." Considering the recent issues involving nude celebrity photos that were pulled from iCloud, it's great to see that Apple added one more level of security. Basically, two-step verification requires you to verify your identity using one of your devices before you can sign into My Apple ID to manage your account, sign in to iCloud on a new device or at iCloud.com, make an iTunes, iBooks or App Store purchase from a new device, or get Apple ID related support from Apple. I recently set up two-step verification for my Apple ID, and the process isn't that difficult. To begin with, sign into My Apple ID using your Apple ID and password. Once you're in, go to the Password & Security tab on the left side of the My Apple ID page and click it. Under two-step verification, select Get Started, and then follow the simple onscreen instructions. Note that this doesn't all happen in one day. You'll actually have to wait a few days for an email to arrive: Now what will happen is that each and every time you log in to make changes to your account, make a purchase, or connect from a new device, you'll have to verify your identity from one of your devices. This requires you to receive a 4-digit random code on one of your trusted devices that must be entered in to verify that you're coming in from that trusted device. Just yesterday, Apple sent out an update email to two-step authentication users letting them know that the service also protects iCloud. The email, seen below, also includes information about the requirement for app-specific passwords starting on October 1, 2014. That's a big deal. If you use iCloud to store data from any third party apps and you're using two-step verification, remember that you will need to get an app-specific password in order to make it work starting on October 1, 2014.
iOS 8 Photos app: Smart suggestions and searching
Have you ever been frustrated searching for photos in iOS? It's not a lot of fun to manually flip through all your photos to find a certain one, especially if your device is laden with thousands of pictures. Well, the good folks at Apple have built a few new features into iOS 8 that are going to make your life a lot easier. With the new iOS Photos app searching and smart suggestions additions, you'll be able to find photos much faster and without a lot of flipping through your library. At the top of the latest incarnation of the iOS Photos app -- no matter what view you're currently in -- you'll see the familiar Spotlight magnifying glass button (circled in red in the screenshot above). Tap on that, and the first thing you'll see is what Apple calls "smart suggestions." This pulls your images into four primary collections right off the bat; Nearby, One Year Ago, Favorites, and Home. Tap on "Nearby", and Photos serves up a list of photos that were taken at nearby locations. One Year Ago gives you a range of photos from the year ago week, while Favorites displays all of those images that you've tagged as a favorite (by the way, that can now be done by tapping a heart button that appears below a photo you're viewing -- see image below). Home? Well, it shows a collection of all of the images that you've taken at the location that you call home. In that respect, it's going to have a bit of overlap with the images in "Nearby". Searching is really useful as well. Tap the search button and start typing in the name of a location, and immediately you'll start seeing results. The more you type, the more focused the search becomes. For example, I typed in the letters "Las" and immediately saw a bunch of entries for photos that were taken on a recent trip to Las Vegas: There are a lot more tips we've dug up on the new features in iOS 8, so be sure to take a look at our other feature breakouts and try out the time-saving and power tips once you've loaded the new operating system on Wednesday.
iOS 8's Favorites & Recents: A fast way to get in touch
In our countdown to September 17 -- the day iOS 8 will be released to the public -- we've been covering a lot of the features of the new mobile operating system. One of my personal favorites so far is "Favorites and Recents", a fast and easy way to get in touch with your friends and family from your iOS device. Let's take a look! Say you're in the midst of doing something on your iPhone or iPad, like creating a song or editing a photo. You decide that it would be a good idea to contact a friend to get some details on an upcoming party. Rather than dump all the way out of the app to get into Messages or maybe jump into Contacts to get an email address, all you need to do is double-tap your home button and you'll see all of those people you've recently contacted peering at you from the top of your screen in small circular buttons. If those people have a photo associated with their name, you'll see their actual face -- a great way of recognizing a person's button at a glance. Tap that button, and a myriad of little white buttons appear, providing one tap access to phone numbers (indicated by phone icons with the type of phone number -- home, work, etc... below them), messages (a voice balloon icon), FaceTime Video (a video camera icon) and FaceTime Audio (a phone icon with the word FaceTime beneath). But where are your favorites, those people who you've tagged by opening the Contacts app and tapping "Add to Favorites"? They're just a swipe to the right away. As with the Recents, tapping the image of one of your buddies will display all of those little white buttons for instant contact. Favorites and Recents in iOS 8 are just two ways that iOS 8 can save you time and make you more efficient. Be sure to check out our other iOS 8 feature articles before Wednesday.
iOS 8 Mail: Drafts and notifications
Here are a couple more cool new features that you can expect to see in iOS 8 Mail. iOS 8 will be available for download on Wednesday, September 17, so checking our series of iOS 8 new feature articles is a good way to get up to speed on what to expect. Have you ever been part way through writing an email and suddenly realized that you need to copy some text from another email? This happens to me all the time, and with iOS 7 and earlier versions, that meant that I had to stop writing, save an email as a draft, find the other email, copy the necessary text, then open the draft and paste it in. iOS 8 speeds up that process a lot. If you're writing an email and suddenly need to go search in the inbox for another email, just grab the top of the email and drag it to the bottom of your screen. The button bar at the bottom will move up just a bit, and the title of your draft appears at the bottom of the display (see image at the top of this post). Now go off and do what you need to do. When you need to get back to your draft, just tap that draft title at the bottom of the page and it takes over the screen again. The next tip is something that I've wanted for a long time -- notification that someone has responded to an email thread. There are a couple of ways to set up notification. First, you can just tap on the "flag" button at the bottom of an email that you're reading. A pop-up menu appears with several choices, one of which is "Notify Me...". Tap that item to select it, and the following button appears: Tapping that button sets up the notification that will arrive in Notification Center whenever someone responds t the thread. The other way to set up notification is to use one of the new swipe gestures covered in another iOS 8 feature post. When you swipe just a little to the left on a message in the Mail inbox, three buttons appear: More, Flag, and Trash. Tap More, and Notify Me... is one of the choices that you can select.
iOS 8 Mail: New swipe gestures
Hopefully you've been keeping track of our iOS 8 feature articles, which provide tips on how to make the most of Apple's latest version of its mobile operating system. iOS 8 will be available on Wednesday, September 17, so it's a good time to start learning about the features of the new OS. In this post, I'm taking a look at iOS 8 Mail and some new swipe gestures that make organization of your emails a lot easier. First up is swipe to right. What this does in your iOS 8 inbox is bring up a button to either mark an email as read (if it hasn't yet been read) or unread (if it has been read previously). You can see this gesture in action in the image at the top of this post. I often find myself reading an email and then marking it as unread so I'm sure I take action on it later. This swipe gesture is a fast way to do that. Next, swiping to the left partway across an email in the inbox is bring up three buttons: More, Flag, and Trash. Tapping More brings up a menu that can contain quite a few entries -- Reply All, Forward, Flag, Mark as Unread/Read, Move to Junk, Move Message..., Show Related Messages, and Notify Me.... That last selection on the menu is quite useful, as it will provide a notification whenever someone replies to that specific mail thread. Tapping the Flag button is similar to reading a message and tapping on the Flag button to set a flag on an email. The Trash button will show the number of messages you'll be throwing away if you tap on it, as you might be tossing all of the entries in an email thread into the trash. Finally, if you happen to swipe an email all the way to the left, it will be deleted immediately. While this can speed up deletion of emails in iOS 8, I found that I accidentally deleted some messages when I meant to flag them, so be careful.
Adam Christianson's great tip on how to type an Apple symbol in iOS
TUAW bloggers love writing up things that we know make life easier for our readers. Every once in a while, we see a tip on another site that makes us say "Why didn't I think of that?" That's the case with this wonderful tip posted yesterday by Adam Christianson (@maccast) over on The Mac Observer. For those of us who need the ability to type the Apple symbol -- -- on an iOS device, this tip is pure gold. I'm not going through all of the steps in the details that Adam did; you'll need to pop over to MacObserver.com to do that. But when you want to send your buddies some love or do some iPhone blogging about the watch, here's the condensed version of his tip: From a device with a real keyboard, send yourself an email or message with the Apple symbol in it. That's Option-Shift-K. If you're reading this post on your iOS device, just copy the . Open that email or message on the device you want to add to, then copy the symbol. On the device, open Settings > General > Keyboard > Shortcuts. Tap the + to add a new shortcut, paste the into the "Phrase" field, then type a shortcut into the "shortcut" field. Adam used a comma followed by the letters apl as his shortcut, and I found it worked really well since it's not something you'll ordinarily type. Now, whenever you type the shortcut, the will appear in its place. What was interesting is that the shortcut quickly appeared on my Macs, apparently through iCloud syncing. However, that syncing did not happen between my various iOS devices, so I had to physically add the shortcut to each device. All of those iOS devices are running iOS 8 betas, so it might be a bug. I'm looking forward to using Adam's shortcut on that new iPhone 6 Plus that should be showing up next Friday...
iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus? That is the question. Here's an answer.
Remember those days when we were all trying to get the smallest possible cell phone? If you don't, you're probably young. That all went out the window with the introduction of the iPhone and its competitors, since fairly quickly we started seeing a trend towards larger screens. Now Apple has kept the screen size growth relatively slow in the past, but the two newest iPhones have suddenly undergone a growth spurt that rivals a teenager during puberty. If you decide to go with one of Apple's new phones, how do you know if it's going to fit your hands, your pants pockets, and your lifestyle? Never fear, TUAW's here with some answers. The best way to do this is to carry around a mock iPhone 6 or 6 Plus. The folks at WonderHowTo have made a pair of exact size templates that you can download (it's a PDF file), print, and then use as your pretend play-pal iPhone 6. Almost immediately after printing out the templates, I realized just how big these new phones really are compared to the iPhone 5s I carry around now: These templates have one problem -- they're thin. So I started the search for cardboard that would approximate the thickness of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus (the 6 Plus is the thickest of the two at .28 inches). Turns out that's pretty hard to do, since most of the cardboard boxes I have were 1/8-inch thick at the most. Two layers would be required. With the help of Pippin the kitten (who inadvertently lent some of his sleek black fur to the "iPhone 6"), scissors, and tape, I quickly assembled my faux phones. The only problem was that they didn't have enough heft to feel like real iPhones. For the iPhone 6 , I needed to add about 5.47 ounces. This is where a box of coins I have sitting around came in handy ... until I realized that even quarters are pretty lightweight. 23 of them and a penny made the mock iPhone 6 Plus feel pretty real. My mockup ended up weighing about 6.2 ounces (an iPhone 6 Plus is 6.07 ounces) and was a bit thicker due to the quarters taped to the back, but I figured this would give me a better feel for the weight and size of the unit anyway. Since I'm probably going to go for the iPhone 6 Plus, I decided to stop digging through my stash of quarters and didn't add weight to the iPhone 6 mockup. My verdict? I think I can put up with the weight and size of the iPhone 6 Plus. It fits the pocket of my shorts (real men don't wear pants, amirite @jgamet?) nicely. My iPhone 5s currently wears a Mophie Juice Pack Helium that brings its weight up to 6.3 ounces -- a full .23 ounces more than an iPhone 6 Plus -- so the weight isn't going to be bad. How about holding the device? To be honest, although it looks much larger, I tend to use my iPhone two-handed anyway, except for making phone calls. Did I feel like I was holding a brick up to my head with the mockup? No -- I have fairly small hands and it fit nicely, and I think that the extra length of the iPhone 6 Plus is going to end up bringing the microphone closer to the mouth for better clarity. There are a lot of other factors to consider when deciding which of these phones to get. First, the iPhone 6 Plus is $100 more in each capacity than its smaller brethren. Next, if you're considering doing a lot of photography with the new device, you might want to opt for the optical image stabilization in the 6 Plus. Finally, if you're an old guy like me and your eyes aren't the best, I think you're going to love having the biggest screen possible. To end this post, I thought it would an interesting juxtaposition to take a photo of my mockup next to my Newton MessagePad 2100 and Mophie-enhanced iPhone 5s. Now there's a device that didn't even make phone calls, and it's much thicker and heavier. In the end, what iPhone you buy (or don't buy) is all your decision, but if the size and weight of the new phones has you concerned, I think making a similar mockup will set your mind at ease. Let me know what you made a mockup and what your feelings are about the bigger size and heavier weight. The comments are below.
How to tell if you're eligible for an iPhone 6 and how much you'll pay
For those of us in the tech blogging business, yesterday started up yet another round of the "should I or shouldn't I?" questions -- as in "Should I get a new iPhone 6 to replace my iPhone 5s that I bought last year, or wait?" The answer is that everyone can pretty much get a new phone if they really want one, it's just how much you'll have to pay for it or how long you'll have to wait to get it at the best price. With my particular case as an example, let's find out how to see just how much you'll have to pay or how long you'll need to wait. Here's my situation: I have a 32GB iPhone 5s (gold) in really good condition that I purchased last year at the launch. It's running on the AT&T network. Now I've already committed to Gazelle to sell them the phone for at least $275, so I have that "rebate" to consider. Shawn "Doc Rock" Boyd sent out a tweet yesterday with the codes that subscribers on the AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon networks can dial to get an immediate idea of their eligibility. Those codes are: AT&T: *639# Sprint: 1311 T-Mobile: #874 Verizon: #874 So, I dialed the AT&T number and within a few seconds received this text response: Great. So, they want me to switch to one of the AT&T Next 12 plans, which means that I pay an installment every month for my new phone... I needed more information, so the next thing to do was go to Apple's website, naturally. You'll want to go to the iPhone 6 "Buy" page. Down under section 3 "Choose A Carrier" you'll find a link for checking your eligibility with your carrier: Click that link, and you'll be asked to select your current wireless carrier. Note that T-Mobile isn't on the list since they provide unlocked phones at "full price" instead of at a carrier-subsidized price. So, upon clicking the AT&T button, I was asked to enter my wireless number, billing zip code, and the last four digits of my Social Security Number before clicking the big blue Check Eligibility button. While the results showed all available iPhones, I was just interested in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Here's what they offered: Now, since I need to start writing reviews of iPhone cases and other accessories as soon as possible, I will be sitting at my computer in my underwear at 1 AM MDT on Friday morning anxiously trying to get my device ordered. That means that the nice $250 "discount" I could get for waiting until October 5, 2015 is not an option. If I decide to get the 64GB version of the iPhone 6 Plus for $649, that means I'll be getting the phone for essentially about $374 after my Gazelle rebate. That's painful, but not too bad. Alternatively, I supposed I could see what that AT&T Next 12 package is all about... That $42.45 per month price tag apparently also activates a discount of about $25 per month on certain wireless plans, which means I'd be spending about $17.45 per month for the phone. That honestly does look like the best possible deal since it essentially drops the cost of the phone down to a bit over $200 for one year, but I'm just not sure I want to change plans. This is just my case, and I'm sure that every TUAW reader out there has a slightly different set of circumstances that they'll need to take into account. How about you? Are you going to wait until your two-year contract is officially over, or get a new phone now and start a new contract? Will the iPhone 6 make you think about one of those AT&T Next or Verizon Edge plans? Tell us about your plans in the comments below.
Video: How to easily make your own ringtones in GarageBand for iOS
While the iPhone's standard ringtones certainly have their respective charms there's nothing quite like picking your own ringtones. It's your own little inside joke whenever your Grandmother calls and David Bowie's "Space Oddity" plays or you get a ring from the boss set to the "Imperial March." Thanks to the power of GarageBand the world of custom ringtones can be your oyster. You don't even need to mess with iTunes or a computer. You can do it all from your phone. This video shows how you can easily make your own ringtones using the free iOS GarageBand software available in iTunes. If you've owned an iPhone for years this may be old hat to you, but considering Apple sells millions of phones a year there are still readers who still haven't learned this trick. Once you're done with the video continue reading for a quick tutorial on how to assign your new ringtones to specific people. Here's how to set a personalize ringtone for a friend. Step 1: Go to contacts and select the contact you'd like to set the ringtone for. Step 2: Once inside the contact info hit Edit Step 3: Scroll down until you see Ringtone and select the option. Step 4: Select the song you're looking for and hit done. Your ringtone is now set.
Kill no-close-em Safari pages with AppleScript
I hate those pop-ups that hijack Safari even when I've enabled Settings > Security > Block Pop-up windows. Sure, I've edited my hosts file with Someonewhocare's updates to avoid them in the first place but even so, bad pages still happen. With a simple web search, you'll find a variety of conventional solutions for these situations. I prefer to close them automatically without interacting with pop-ups directly or force-quitting Safari. Here's where a simple AppleScript application can help. I use AppleScript to tell Safari to "close window 1", i.e. the frontmost window. This dismisses the problematic window on my behalf. I have this script saved to an application (File > Export > File Format > Application) and have docked it for easy access. When bad windows open, my solution is just a click away. Got another fix or an improvement to this one? Drop a note in the comments and share.
Swing better and lower your scores with Golfer Setup
If you play golf you know how frustrating the game can be. Golfer Setup, a US$.99 Universal app runs on iOS 7.1 and could help you eliminate some of those frustrations. First be aware the developer of this app is not a golf professional. He claims to be an avid golfer who through hard work and lots of studying the golf swing has lowered his average score from an 18 handicap down to about a 3. The basic information contained in his app parallels golf instruction I received over the last twenty years from one of the best teaching pros in Florida. So following the instructions should get you off to a good start. Both the app and my golf pro friend stress that most amateurs are in trouble before they ever start to take the club back in their swings. Golfer Setup stresses the need for golfers to be in the correct position before they swing. My pro called it GAPS: Grip, Alignment, Positioning, and Stance. If those are not correct, golfers cannot make a successful swing. Golfer Setup uses a quote from Jack Nicklaus, "If you set up correctly, there's a good chance you'll hit a reasonable shot, even if you make a mediocre swing. If you set up to the ball poorly, you'll hit a lousy shot even if you make the greatest swing in the world." This app breaks the golf swing down for a driver and fairway woods and for irons. Golfer Setup then offers detailed views from behind and from the side of a golfer at setup. Once you have selected one of the views, you receive a further breakdown on just where all parts of your body should be at address before you swing. This includes your head, arms, shoulders, hands, feet, hips, knee and back. Users can then select one of the body parts and receive a more detailed description of the proper positioning, and explanation why to do it this way, and information on the most common faults. The app shows you what it looks like and what happens if you do it correctly and what happens if you do it the wrong way. The side view also discusses the proper positioning of the golf ball in your stance for specific clubs, off your left heel for the driver, in the middle of your stance for most irons, and slightly further back for wedges. The message is clear in Golfer Setup. Golfers need to get into their bodies, hands, feet, and head into the correct position before they can improve. If you do that I would expect your scores will start to come down. Golfer Setup is also offered in a Free version however, that version does not allow you access to all the views and breakdowns available in the paid app.
How to make a magnetic iPhone Gorillapod for $25
Ever been inspired to mount your Gorillapod tripod on a metal surface, but can't find a suitable grip? If you are a creative photographer, then you should check out this Instructable that shows you how to modify an existing Gorillapod by adding some magnetic feet. The detailed directions were created for the standard Gorillapod model that's compatible with a camera, but you can use the same steps to modify the iPhone version. The process is not too difficult, requiring you to drill a small hole in the bottom of the tripod feet, fill the hole with a magnet and use epoxy to hold everything in place. A final coating of sugru helps to give the feet a smooth, professional-looking finish. If you are a savvy shopper, the cost of each magnetic Gorillapod can be quite reasonable with each unit requiring about $25, though you may have to shell out $40 to get everything you need. You will need a $16 Gorillapod, a $12 pack of ten rare earth magnets (1/2" x 3/8) and about $12 in sugru. After using three magnets and a touch of the sugru, there will be plenty of supplies leftover for future projects. It's a clever and relatively inexpensive modification that'll provide a novel way to hold your iPhone while you position it to get a unique angle shot. [Via PetaPixel]
How to make OS X Mavericks re-run the Setup Assistant
I recently loaded OS X Mavericks on an old (2007) 20" iMac, and to check that everything was fine I ran the machine through the full Setup Assistant -- setting up a user with my name in the process. Rather than reloading Mavericks on the iMac to clean it off, I did a quick Google search on how to get Mavericks to re-run the Setup Assistant, and I was lucky to find this post by Mark Boszko where he referenced an earlier Mac OS X Hints post on the same topic. If you're command-line averse, you may wish to just reload OS X, but if you know your way around the CLI, here's how you clean up a Mac and get it to re-run the Setup Assistant: Boot into single-user mode by holding down Command-S on the keyboard during startup At the command-line prompt, type mount -uw / rm -R /Library/Preferences rm -R /Users/YOURUSERNAME/ <-- replace YOURUSERNAME with whatever your user name is cd /var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default ls (to list the files) Delete the file that is named after your user account with a .plist extension. For example, for user name "stevesande" you'd type rm stevesande.plist rm /private/var/db/.AppleSetupDone reboot At this point, OS X restarts and the Setup Assistant launches automatically, initially asking you what language you want to set up the Mac in. Since you're going through this entire dog-and-pony show to set up the Mac for a new user, you don't want to run Setup Assistant again, so just press Command-Q at the language screen, then click the Shut Down button. When the new owner boots up their shiny "new to them" Mac, they're greeted with the Setup Assistant just as if they'd picked up the device at their local Apple Store.
How Contacts in OS X Mavericks speeds data entry
Over the past week or so I've been doing a lot of maintenance on my OS X contacts, primarily because I had literally hundreds of names and addresses that I no longer needed. At the same time, I realized that there were some addresses missing, so I've queried some friends for their current address info and created some new contacts. I was surprised to find that Contacts does some data parsing to help speed things up when you're entering addresses. Previously, when entering addresses into OS X I would copy the street address of a location, paste it into the street address field, copy the city name, paste it into its proper location, and so on. It was time-consuming and occasionally the addresses would be truncated because of a mistake in copying. Well, I was surprised to find out that if you copy a full address, Contacts parses the information when you paste it into the address field and separates all of the information into the proper sub-fields. For example, copying this: 1 Infinite Loop Cupertino, CA 95014 USA and pasting it into the address field of a contact card results in the following on the contact card: Each of those fields that makes up the address, including the street address, city, state, zip and country, is now populated with the correct information. Likewise, Contacts also nicely formats phone numbers when pasted into the phone number fields. Take this string of text and numbers -- +13035551212 -- and paste it into the phone number field, and when you press Return on your keyboard, the number is nicely formatted as follows, complete with country code. Frankly, I don't know if this parsing capability was in OS X before Mavericks, but it's made life so much easier for me this week that I thought it merited passing along to TUAW readers. Do you have any other tricks for Contacts that you can pass along to readers? Let us know in the comments.
Monitor OS X network, CPU and disk activity in the Dock
For those Mac users who love to push their hardware to its limits, the OS X Activity Monitor (found in Applications > Utilities) can be a handy tool. I often use it to find out if one process or another has suddenly decided to take over my iMac, to figure out if I'm redlining my network bandwidth, and to see if adding one more app while editing video is going to cause issues. This fun tip puts an updating icon into the Dock so you can keep an eye on one parameter while you're doing work. Simply launch Activity Monitor, and you'll see the usual list of processes and what percentage of CPU cycles, RAM, energy use, disk input and output, and network traffic each process is using (the image below shows what you'll normally see when running Activity Monitor). Now, click and hold on the Activity Monitor icon in the Dock, and select "Hide" to remove the window from your Mac screen. Next, press the Control and Option keys and then click and hold on the Activity Monitor Dock icon. On the menu, you'll see an item for Dock Icon. Select it and several choices appear (see image at the top of this post) -- Show CPU Usage, Show CPU History, Show Network Usage, and Show Disk Activity. Selecting any one of these items turns the Activity Monitor Dock icon into a constantly updating graphic view of that specific parameter. Should you decide to go back to the original app icon, that's the final selection under the Dock Icon menu item. All in all, this is a very useful and no-cost way to keep an eye on certain aspects of your Mac's operation. There are also handy apps like StatsBar (US$3.99) that you can add to your Mac menu bar to keep an eye on similar parameters.
