Skip to content

Apple Universe

Top-level category for all Apple, Mac, and OS X related topics.

Leaked—Tim Cook’s October 16th monologue notes!

[Serious, reserved look]
At Apple, your trust means everything to us. And we know that recently we've lost that trust. We released a horridly-rushed iOS 8.0.1 update that clobbered a number of users' phones. Our celebrity users had their most private moments shared with the world. Our web site crashed when people tried to order the new iPhone 6. We had to ship iOS 8 without HealthKit and iCloud Drive. We spammed everyone with a U2 album that not everyone wanted. Hell, the last time I tried to give one of these talks, most everyone on the internet had to listen to a Chinese version of myself at the same time.

[Earnest appearance, eye contact with everyone!]
As you can see, we've made a number of seriously un-Apple-like mistakes recently, and quite frankly, that's not acceptable. Not acceptable to you, our customers. Not acceptable to me, and certainly not acceptable to everyone else here at the company. This is not the Apple we all know and love[dramatic pause]…users have been putting up with this for way too long, and today, it ends! [demonstrative]

[continue reading…]



Portable power pack products prevent powerless problems

"Hello, my name is Rob, and I have a portable power problem. It's been six days, 13 hours, and 23 minutes since I last bought a portable power solution."

OK, so that's a bit over the top. But still, I find portable chargers appealing, as I don't like being without power when away from a wall outlet. Whether it's a long flight, a camping trip, or a Mother Nature-induced power outage, I like having alternatives. That's why there are currently eight chargers in my collection, as seen in the image at right (click for larger).

And while I can't pretend to be anywhere near as thorough as The Wirecutter, I thought it'd be interesting to compare all eight of these portable chargers.

The following table provides baseline specs on all eight chargers, and shows how much power you're getting for each ounce of weight you carry (mAh per Ounce) and how much you'll pay per milliampere-hour (mAh per Dollar)—so you can choose by power effectiveness or cost effectiveness. (The order of the table corresponds to the numbering in the above-right photo.)

My two favorites are highlighted; the Jackery is an ideal size to carry around nearly everywhere, and the EC Technology is excellent for camping trips or other extended periods away from power. Beyond the table, I share a few thoughts on each of these power bricks, in case you're really interested in these things.

#ProductSize (LxWxH, inches)Volue (cubic inches)Weight (oz)Capacity (mAh)mAh per OunceCost ($)mAh per Dollar
1OrigAudio w/ Oracle logo3.751.750.805.34.11,000243.9----
2Sony CPV3 Portable Power Pack4.001.500.754.53.02,800933.3
3Sony USB Portable Charger5.132.750.638.89.610,0001,041.7
--Sony Cycle Energy - 2+3 sold as a set13.312.612,8001,015.9$83.85152.7
4Zagg 6000 battery pack4.252.751.7019.97.56,000800.0$55.89107.4
5EC Technology Power Bank6.302.900.8014.615.422,4001,454.5$45.95487.5
6Jackery Giant+ Portable Charger4.303.100.8010.710.412,0001,153.8$39.95300.4
7Boostcase Hybrid Battery Case5.502.380.405.22.82,200800.0$99.9522.0
8JunoPower JunoJumper5.472.950.599.57.26,000833.3$99.9960.0

Read on for a little blurb on each charger…

[continue reading…]



An odd iOS8 wallpaper placement issue

While creating and testing my iPhone 6 wallpapers, I ran into a little issue with how iOS 8 (I think that's the culprit) places wallpaper. You can see the issue by watching (and listening; yes, there's an audio track!) the movie at right.

You won't see this problem unless you try to use a wallpaper with a visible row for iOS's page indicator dots; I prefer this style of home screen, as I like the separation it adds between the dock and the icon area.

When placing such a wallpaper, however, if you don't bounce it off the top of the display, it winds up being positioned just a bit too low—the row that's supposed to contain the page indicator dots won't quite be in the right spot. As I wrote on my iPhone 6 wallpapers post, here's the workaround in text:

  1. Tap the desired home screen icon to see the full-size version.
  2. Disable Perspective Zoom. (It won't work right with the navigation highlight row I use.)
  3. Pinch and zoom out so the image is at it's 100% size.
  4. Now drag the image up and let it bounce—this is the critical step.

This really strikes me as a bug, because the images I'm using are 750x1334, which exactly matches the iPhone's resolution. So with perspective zoom off, and the image shrunk to its smallest (actual) size, there should only be one way to put that image on the screen. But, as seen in the video, that's not the case.

This is probably of use to only a couple other people on the planet who like divider rows for the page indicator dots…but if you're one of those people, hopefully this helps you get your wallpapers properly positioned.



Wallpapers: iPhone 6

Once I had my iPhone 6 syncing, it was time to get to work on my home and lock screen wallpapers. I have made these for every iOS device I've owned—here's the full collection.

My home screen wallpapers feature a bar to highlight the paging dots, and are typically "low noise" to make it easy to see icons and text. The lock screen wallpapers have no such restriction, and include a little bit of everything.

These wallpapers are 750x1344 pixels in size, and are designed for use on the iPhone 6, as that's what I have. (If you use a Plus, and really like an image or two, let me know and I can make one for the larger phone.) Note that the images shown in the image sliders below (hover and click to cycle) are low-quality 180x320 JPEG representations of the actual photos; to get the high-quality images, download the entire bundle [24MB] and install only those you wish to use.

Home Screens (16)Lock Screens (52)

Note: Due to a quirk in iOS 8, you need to use these steps when installing one of my home screens, otherwise the nav bar (the bar that shows the page navigation buttons) won't be located in the right spot. Here's how, assuming you're in the "Choose a new wallpaper" section of iOS:

  1. Tap the desired home screen icon to see the full-size version.
  2. Disable Perspective Zoom. (It won't work right with the navigation highlight row I use.)
  3. Pinch and zoom out so the image is at it's 100% size.
  4. Now drag the image up and let it bounce—this is the critical step.

If you've done the above steps right, then you'll see quite a few pixels of the nav bar above the Perspective Zoom button (top image). If you haven't done it properly, then the nav bar will barely clear the button (bottom image).

Given the images are the same resolution as the screen, I have no idea why this happens…but it does, and this is the only way to make sure the nav bar winds up where you want it.

License: All photographs in these wallpapers are © Rob Griffiths, and are freely provided for personal use only. You may not include these wallpapers on other sites, nor in any commercial product, without my prior permission. (I hate having to put this here, but prior experience has shown it to be necessary.)



A visual guide to iPhone screen resolution over time

While I was working on some iPhone 6 lock and home screens, I paused for a few minutes to put together this visual guide to the iPhone's changing screen resolution over the years (click to zoom):

Both the inline and zoomed image above are smaller than 100% scale, of course. But if you'd prefer, you can check out the massive full-size version. Be forewarned, this is a 3628x2188 pixel photo, and it's 1.7MB in size.

For the curious, the original photo was taken at Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, at roughly this spot, looking north-ish.

When viewed in this comparative manner, the iPhone Six Plus' resolution really stands out—there are a ton of pixels on that gorgeous screen!



A nasty little iTunes/iOS bug may be causing media sync issues

November 18th update: My sync issues returned, but due to a different cause this time. Details in this post.

After complaining to Tim Cook, and separately starting a (now closed) support ticket, it appears that my iOS/iTunes sync nightmare has finally come to an end!

I have not seen a progress bar that busy since the day I brought my iPhone 6 back home. Whatever I tried, iTunes simply would not sync everything in my library. In the end, the problem turned out to be as simple—but as deadly—as this:

In the current version of iTunes/iOS, there's a bug that only appears when you have duplicates of purchased songs. When encountered, a duplicate of a purchased song will (almost always) cause iTunes to silently stop syncing.

This is a known-to-Apple issue, and it will be fixed in a forthcoming update. I'm fairly certain it's an iTunes bug, but as Apple didn't clearly state which it was, I'm calling it iTunes/iOS. Either way, until it's fixed, it's a really bad bug.

Here's what happens: If you have duplicates of purchased songs, iTunes simply silently stops syncing when it hits one of those duplicates. From your perspective, it will look like everything is working—iTunes never throws an error, and it proceeds through all six (or seven or whatever) steps of the sync process, as seen in the status window of iTunes.

But behind the scenes, nothing is happening—at least, nothing relative to syncing your files. As seen by my troubles, this can be incredibly frustrating and hard to fix.

Continue reading to see how I was able to finally (with Apple's help) get my devices syncing again—the tricky part is finding all the duplicates, because they're not all obvious. Also note that if you are not having sync issues, I wouldn't worry about duplicates—no need to endanger what's already working well!

[continue reading…]



An iPhone 6, (no) movies, and me

On Friday, I received my new iPhone 6, which I really like—a lot, in fact. Over the weekend, however, I discovered that my new iPhone does not like iTunes—at least not syncing my movies via iTunes.

Things started great, with the arrival of the new iPhone 6 on Friday afternoon:

From there, though, things didn't go exactly according to plan…and I documented my progress (or lack thereof) via Twitter over the weekend. Read on for the full story, as told in 140 character increments.

[continue reading…]



I asked Tim Cook for tech support…and you should, too!

Those following me on Twitter this weekend will have noticed that my (lovely, stunning, amazing, I am keeping it) iPhone 6 is not playing nicely with iTunes. I've invested over 10 hours—in one day—just trying to get music and movies onto my iPhone.

Frustrated as hell, I decided ask Tim Cook for some tech help, not that I have much hope of any sort of reply. Emails to his address, however, are apparently all read by someone. For those having similar issues, I think it may be useful to also send your feedback in Tim's direction; his email address (not a secret, published in many places) is tcook at Apple's domain. Perhaps if there are enough voices providing feedback in high places (not that Tim reads these himself), we might see some action.

Further update: I have now done two full system restores. I did the second just before bed last night, and let the iPhone sync overnight. On wake, everything worked! So then I added in a few more movies, and—of course—they failed to sync. So now I'm back where I started, oh so many hours ago.

Anyway, For the curious, here's the tech support request I sent to Tim yesterday.

[continue reading…]



My iPhone 6 case of choice…or choice of case?

With my recent iPhone 6 purchase, at first I was contemplating no case at all. I was thinking I'd just put on a set of Bodyguardz clear skins and call it good.

But (to me, at least) the iPhone 6 is quite slippery—much more so than my iPhone 5. And given my history of dropping my iPhone 5 in some really bad spots, I decided a case was a good idea.

At the Apple Store, they had Apple's own leather and silicon cases, and some cases from an unknown (to me) company, Tech21. The Apple cases are nice, but they completely cover the gorgeous phone. So I tried one of the Tech21 cases, and came away impressed enough to buy one.

The cases in the Apple Store—the Evo Mesh for iPhone 6 and 6 Plus—aren't even on the Tech21 site yet. However, it's the same design as the Evo Mesh for iPhone 5s, just upsized. You can find the case listed on the Apple Store, though not the color I purchased (smoke with the protective edge bits in orange).

I like that the case is really thin and light, that I can still see the back of the iPhone, and that the important bits are all protected. I'm not sure about the effectiveness of Impactology, and I hope I never have to find out.

Even in the case, my iPhone 6 is slimmer than my iPhone 5 in its also-very-thin case, as seen in the image above—the iPhone 5 is the blue case in the background.

The Evo Mesh case is grippy soft plastic, making the phone easy to hold. It's not, however, so grippy that it won't slide in and out of pockets, which is good. The cover slips on easily, fully covers the volume and power buttons, and leaves the important ports uncovered. The top protrudes just slightly above the height of the phone, so I can set the phone face down without worry. The case is also just thick enough that the protruding camera lens no longer protrudes, which I love.

Overall, I'm impressed with this case. We'll see how it holds up over the next few months, but initial impressions are good.



This one’s not going back

My friend Kirk McElhearn recently wrote about returning his iPhone 6:

I used the iPhone 6 for a week; I went back to the iPhone 5s on Friday, to see if I really liked it better. And I did.

At the time Kirk wrote that, I didn't yet have my iPhone Six Plus—it was still on order. I do now have an iPhone 6, though, and I have to say that I think Kirk's passion for Shakespeare has muddled his modern-day thinking—he's probably out shopping for an abacus right now. As for me, well, there's no way my iPhone 6 is going back!

But I'm jumping ahead of myself, because as of this morning, I didn't actually have an iPhone 6. I still had an iPhone Six Plus on order, with a ship date expected between yesterday and October 13th. I was planning on waiting it out, but after numerous trips to both the AT&T and Apple stores over the last week or so, I decided that the Six Plus was simply too big—despite what I wrote earlier.

This morning, I called AT&T and canceled my iPhone Six Plus order (which they handled very pleasantly). I only did this, though, after using the "check availability" button in the Apple online store's iPhone section. We're lucky enough to have three Apple Stores in the Portland area, and the tool indicated I could find a space gray 128GB AT&T phone at two of the three (Bridgeport Village and Pioneer Place but not Washington Square).

All my previous iPhones have been secured on launch day, either via the mail or by waiting in line. I was curious how it'd go now, a couple weeks after launch. By the time I got my phone, I had been surprised a number of times.

[continue reading…]