Category: iPad

I came across a couple of sites earlier today that found a neat little hack in iOS5, which allows you to access certain parts & preferences of the iOS operating system using specific URL’s.

My good friend from iPhoneZA.co.za put together a neat little web app called IconSettings which allows you to create icons and add them to your home screen and access specific portions.

After being inspired and loving what he had done, I started playing around with HTML5 and some javascript stuff (non dev dude here), and came up with a nifty little tool (I think so anyways) called Qprefs.info

Basically you can access all of these hidden links on 1 page. So for example, you can turn wifi on or off using this page, or even get access to the brightness screen. Turn Location services On/Off, check for software updates. Loads more, there are around 35 different functions on the screen.

To access this, you need to visit http://Qprefs.info on your iPhone/iPad/iPad touch. Or simply just snap the QR Code below, and you will be redirected to the page.

Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below :)

If you recall, my last post was about the awesome FNB offer that they were offering, where you could get a number of different smartphones or iPads at a greatly reduced cost.

The response to the campaign has been phenomenal and I know of at LEAST 4 people on a personal  level who have changed banks, just because of FNB’s innovation. Everyone I have spoken to about the promotion wants one, and I know that at least 75% of my friends who are FNB customers have applied for one. I got mine last week ;)

Earlier today I asked Michael Jordaan on Twitter how many iPads & Smartphones they have “sold” during the promotion, and got a really interesting, mindblowing response.

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/MichaelJordaan/status/134297472431427584″]

2 units A MINUTE !!! Holy Moly !

So I did some very broad calculations

About 20 days since the promotion started. If we take 7 hours a day of “sales”, which works out to 420 minutes a day, and 840 iPads a day, you looking at around 16,800 iPads/Smartphones in less than a month. I would take a very random guess and say around 75% of these are iPads (cause that is what everyone is talking about) and you looking at around 12,500 iPads. That is a LOT !

*Disclaimer. These figures are VERY thumbsucked, and are really just a guestimate. Personally, I think it’s more. 

So, again. Well done to FNB on the innovation. I really really can’t wait to see what’s next :)

Even though iOS5 has some cool new features and  changed the way we work on the iPhone, it hasn’t been without it’s flaws. Following a couple of posts around the web, you can see that there are still a few nigglies with the software.

So I thought I would put a quick list together on what some of the issues are, and if there is a work around how to get past them.

1) Maps not working in South Africa

There seems to be a rather bizarre issue by when you drop a pin on a specific point, it doesn’t geo-code it properly to the street, but only shows the province & maybe, sometimes the town level. This doesn’t help if you are trying to find out what the address is of a specific place. But, it is not THE end of the world. You can still search for addresses and navigate to and from them.

2) iMessage not syncing problems

I picked this up from a friends blog post, although I haven’t experienced it myself just yet. There seems to be an issue with having iMessage on mulitple devices, and the messages not appearing across the 2. There is a way around this, I think, so I would highly suggest taking a look at Mike Robert’s post about iMessage Syncing Problems

3) Location Reminders draining the battery

If you have tried out the cool new feature called location reminders, you will see that once you have set the reminder, it constantly uses your location services on your phone, and eventually starts draining your battery. The simple workaround for this, is to either to turn location services off for the Reminders app, or simply just delete the said reminder.

4) Location Sharing doesn’t work via iMessage

You can share you location on your iPhone using the Maps application and dropping a pin on your current location, and then, sharing that specific location. From there you have an option to Email, Message or Tweet. The problem here comes in, if you try and use the message function, it puts it into a new message using the Message Appiction (iMessage or SMS), but then sends a blank message using the SMS fucntionality, instead of the iMessage system if you are sending it to an iMessage user

5) Can’t delete or move the Newsstand app into a folder.

This is a rather annoying one, and even though it is standard practice not to be able to delete the standard Apple apps, you can’t even move the Newsstand app into it’s own seperate folder. At the moment the app is pretty useless to us, unless there are some really cool magazines which you want to subscribe to, but for now, I want to be able to move it into that “Folder which does not get openend”. Annoying, and I hope Apple fix that in the next release

There are some more small nigglies that people have found. Have you found any issues ? Leave a comment below, and let the others know :)