Browsing Problems category.

Worried about Photo Stream leaks?

Sunday, October 23rd, 2011

There’s been a number of articles about the possibility of Apple’s new iOS 5 Photo Stream service spreading the “wrong” photos around, and the option to avoid this is generally “reset the Photo Stream“. An alternate I proved today – set your i device to airplane mode (or otherwise disable uploading); now go through and [...]

Apple service, nothing better!

Tuesday, October 18th, 2011

Last week, on vacation, I discovered that my iPad 2 was not recording sound; I tried recording some sounds and just got static; I then tried the Skype Test Call service and that also was silent. Tonight I booked and visited the Genius Bar at my local Apple store. The “genius” tried to record using [...]

iPad 2 negatives

Monday, March 21st, 2011

All over the web are positive reviews of iPad 2, and I’m sure that they are accurate – but here are a few thoughts from my first few hours with a 64GB 3G (black) iPad 2 … The display appears to be a little crisper than my original iPad; hard to quantify exactly since the [...]

iOS 4.3 breaks USB charging?

Friday, March 11th, 2011

I always charge my iPad on my 27″ iMac, leaving it connected overnight to sync/backup and charge – it’s always worked perfectly. On Wednesday I left it connected while it was updating to iOS 4.3, and then overnight. But instead of being fully charged Thursday morning, it was only about 55%. Strange … Then last [...]

Printing with iOS 4.2

Thursday, November 11th, 2010

While AirPrint might be available one day, right now it’s missing. I’d already found that my HP printer is not new enough for the iPad to recognize it, though it works fine with various iPad printing Apps; so I’d hoped that it would be possible to print via my iMac, but last nights 10.6.5 update [...]

Google Instant

Thursday, November 4th, 2010

Google Instant is quite an interesting new feature; when you search at Google.com you are given actual search results rather than the previous search suggestions. On a large screen computer it makes some sense: The new feature is now being made available on portable devices like the iPad – but it’s pretty pointless when most [...]

iOS4 required

Monday, July 5th, 2010

The iPad ability to run iPhone Apps will apparently be restricted somewhat now, as Apps are updated and released that require iOS4 – MotionX GPS lite is the first I’ve encountered, but likely not the last (at least it’s not an App I paid for) …

No AT&T means no maps

Sunday, June 27th, 2010

We spent this weekend in the White Mountains region of New Hampshire, and AT&T basically has zero coverage there – just a little service in some towns, but nothing at all in many areas. So navigating with MotionX GPS Drive HD was challenging, at the least … The App knew exactly where we were, thanks [...]

Skype

Sunday, June 13th, 2010

It turns out that you CAN use your iPad as a “voice communications device” – a Phone. Skype works fine on the iPad, even though it’s an iPhone App (it’s just a bit pixely at 2x, and a bit small at 1x – but you’re talking rather than reading!): After successfully using Skype’s test call [...]

WiFi “Connecting”

Sunday, June 13th, 2010

On my original WiFi-only iPad, I’d sometimes get WiFi connection issues (here and here); sometimes the App store throws up a strange “can’t” error message when trying to download an App, and sometimes Safari displays a “Connecting” error, even though it was connected perfectly well. I had not seen this issue on the 3G iPad, [...]

3G usage

Thursday, June 3rd, 2010

Beware AT&T’s new data rate plans, coming next week: (image from TUAW) Just a short couple of months ago, Apple announced amazing 3G data plans for the iPad: Now, AT&T are about to eliminate the unlimited option – I do think that “bait & switch” is the correct term here, with blame falling on Apple [...]

Get rid of iTunes

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

When I got my iPad back in early April, I was amazed that it was unusable until it was connected to a computer running iTunes! Today on Gizmodo Matt Buchanan discusses the same issue: A minute after I pull any Android phone out of the box for the very first time, it’s loaded with all [...]

iPad glitches

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

While the iPad is mostly great and reliable, there are still curiosities now and then. The worst is the WiFi connectivity issue, where suddenly you lose connectivity and get the dim screen and “connecting” message in Safari; I find that it always occurs twice in a row, then all is back to normal again. Sometimes [...]

Does iPad need Flash?

Sunday, May 23rd, 2010

Constantly since the iPad was launched, we’re reading about Adobe Flash, both positive and negative in relation to the iPad. Famously, Steve Jobs says that Flash is too buggy, and “New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win“, so … let’s see how the iPad does with HTML5! There’s some [...]

App store bug

Friday, May 21st, 2010

Of course iPad OS V3.2 is the first release for the iPad so I guess I should be surprised how few problems there are … but there are definitely problems. The most annoying is the WiFi issue where the iPad loses connectivity for a short time. This display for example I caught just a few [...]

iBooks and Craig Ferguson

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

I haven’t done much reading yet on the iPad, but before my flight home I thought I’d check out what’s available – and sadly there’s not so much really! But I was interested by Craig Ferguson’s American On Purpose, promoted on the front page of the iBooks store today: So I downloaded it, read the [...]

Too hot!

Wednesday, May 12th, 2010

OK, I admit it’s quite warm and sunny here in Florida, and the iPad is “wrapped” in a dark iPad case, but even so – it’s not too hot for me, but it is too hot for the iPad! My iPhone, in the same location and also wrapped in a black case, has not shut [...]

The iPhone is not a camera

Monday, May 3rd, 2010

Did you think maybe that the iPhone was a camera too? Well, the iPad doesn’t agree! If you connect the iPhone to the iPad via the USB camera connector, then the iPhone isn’t powered, and doesn’t appear as images in the iPad – as you see above, both devices just ignore each other

USB sticks and the Camera Connection Kit

Monday, May 3rd, 2010

If you were hoping to use the USB camera connector to transfer files between iPad and USB stick, forget it! This is definitely something that should work – there’s discussion that the whole approach to document handling that Apple has taken is poor on the iPad; I think there should be some central file storage [...]

Camera Connection Kit incompatible with iPhone

Monday, May 3rd, 2010

This is stupid! While the iPad camera connection kit works fine with my iPad, it won’t work with my iPhone, running the same OS! That’s just annoying, Apple In case you were wondering, the iPhone doesn’t work with the old iPod kit either!

iPad App store slowed down by photos!

Friday, April 16th, 2010

Yes, a very mysterious effect … but after experimenting for days on the issue of slow connectivity of my iPad (WiFi tests, App store tests), I have a conclusion / solution – but it’s stupid and disappointing … Here, I’ve video’ed my iPad loading the App store when it has just a few hundred photos [...]

Slow App store, resolved? (NO!)

Thursday, April 15th, 2010

My concerns about iPad WiFi performance continued to worry, and while it seems that holding the iPad “correctly”(!) significantly improves connectivity, I still found the App store really sluggish – taking maybe 20s to load up, especially poor when compared with my iPhone that loads so much faster. Of course, the iPhone App store needs [...]

Too many photos!

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010

Sadly not everything about the iPad is “magical” yet! Example: When I sync’ed my iPad, I let it sync my complete iPhoto library – this was a mistake for a couple of reasons. First, the sync took many hours as my computer compressed the photos for transfer to iPad (but that’s a good thing at [...]

WiFi testing

Sunday, April 11th, 2010

More and more as I use my iPad, I’m concerned that WiFi performance is poor – it takes much too long to access the Apps store, and sometimes I see long pauses accessing websites (or even the “connecting” message appearing, when WiFi is unchanged and I’m not moving!) I’ve found this iPhone speed test website, [...]

WiFi performance and download quirks

Saturday, April 10th, 2010

There’s MANY web pages discussing whether or not the iPad has WiFi connectivity issues (here, here, here, …). My experience has left me thinking there are some issues – but it’s really hard to be sure of anything. First, in my opinion the official Apple response is irrelevant, no more than an attempted smoke-screen to [...]