MacLife January Highlights - Chips, Siri, and Rays

Here are some of the highlights from this months MacLife magazine available on the web.



MacLife: The Future of ARM - A great story on where ARM is headed with their processes. More power, less electricity should make for some great devices.



MacLife: iPhone 4s Review - The scoop on what is new with the iPhone 4s.



MacLife: 10 Questions to Ask Siri - I like the fact that Siri has a sense of humor. I look forward to this sort of tech.



Ray Solar Charger - For $50, get your own Solar charger for your iPhone.

MacLife: Apple MD - Troubleshooting your Mac and iOS Apps

This months issue of MacLife has a great series of stories on troubleshooting problems with your Mac, iPhone, and iPad.



Here are the best ones I could find:

• How to Diagnose Mac Problems | Mac|Life


• How to Reset iOS Apps | Mac|Life


• Why's My Mac Slow? | Mac|Life


• How to Boot Your Mac in Safe Mode | Mac|Life


• How to Fix Your Fonts | Mac|Life


• How to Recover Your Passwords | Mac|Life


• How to Sweep Your Drive Clean with Software | Mac|Life

I highly recommend a subscription.

Opening Safari with a Blank Page

Ran across a great tip from MacWorld this weekend. Whenever you open Safari in an iPhone, iPod or iPad, the last page you used in the browser tries to reload. This can be a big of a pain if there is a lot of data on that page. Dan Frakes at MacWorld has the answer. Add a blank page icon your app home page. The article provides a step by step guide for setting up the icon.



Open iOS Safari to a blank page | Browsers & Add-Ons | iOS Central | Macworld

Behold, the iCloud Cometh

A number of stories today on the new iCloud service to be offered by Apple. The announcement is planned for next Monday's WWDC keynote along with details on OS X Lion and iOS 5.



Initial indications are that iCloud provides online music storage like the Amazon and Google cloud offerings of the last few weeks. The main difference is that, Apple will be able to read your library and make the music you have purchased available without requiring an upload. Services like this were provided in the 1990s, but all were sued into bankruptcy by the music labels.



I don't see an online library and player as that big a deal. We already have an infrastructure built around the iPhone and iPod. So being able to play music from the net seems a bit redundant and not all that useful.



What we really need is the ability to sync all our devices from a central location. I want to put my music files and movies in one place in cloud. Then, use that master copy to keep all my devices synced. Hopefully that is what will be announced. But somehow I doubt the entertainment industry is ready to go that far.



Mashable: More iCloud Details Emerge

Steve Jobs Says He�ll Show Off Apple�s �iCloud� June 6 � AllThingsD

6 Great News Sites for Mobile Phones

Here are 6 good news sites that work well on your mobile phone. To make the list, the main pages and immediate links are all formatted for mobile devices. In addition, the sites must be free. This rules out 2 great sites in the NT Times and Wall Street Journal.

1. CNN


2. Fox News


3. The Sun (UK)


4. The Telegraph (UK)


5. USA Today


6. Yahoo! News

Great stuff to read while waiting in line.

Atari's Greatest Video Games hit iPhone/iPod

Atari is making many of its classic arcade and video games available on the iPhone and iPod:

Atari's Greatest Hits collection brings 100 classic games to iOS devices -- Engadget



It really is amazing think that those games can now easily be played on handheld computers.

Let the Battle for Music in the Cloud Begin!

The gauntlet has been thrown down. Amazon today announced a service to store your music and media in the clous and play it back anywhere anytime. CNet has the details:

CNet: Amazon launches digital music locker



So you get 5GB of storage for free. 20GB for $20 a year. You can play your music in any Mac or PC browser and on Android devices. However, you can not play your music on iOS devices. That's right no iPod, iPhone, iPad. Odd isn't it? Mashable has the details and a few word arounds.



Mashable How To: Use Amazon Cloud Player With iOS Devices



So according to the story, there is no technical reason why the player will not work on iOS devices. In fact, only Mobile Safari doesn't work. If you use an alternative web browser, it plays just fine.



So why the rather odd snub to Apple products? There have been a number of reports that both Apple and Google will be announcing similar products this year. That could be the reason, but I don't think so. More likely this has too do with Apple's new subscription policy on the App store. Apple is planning to ban any apps that sell things outside of the app store. That would include Kindle books and newspaper subscriptions. Given the low prices of ebooks, it seems likely that paying Apple a 30% cut is just not feasible. So this move seems directly aimed at that app store environment. It will be interesting to see if Amazon "fixes" this issue in a timely manner.



Anyway, I expect some "leaks" about Apple and Google offerings sooner than later.

How to Contact AT&T Customer Service

This might seem a bit silly. But I tried to find a customer support phone number on the AT&T Site. In the end, I had to Google it.



Here is the page:

AT&T Wireless Customer Support Page



And the number:

Customer Service 1-800-331-0500



Update: On another humorous note, my first attempt to look up the number was on my iPhone. I discovered AT&T does not yet have a mobile version of their site. Of course neither does Apple. lol.