iPad

A few days ago, I went to Sam’s club to buy an iPad. It was very exciting. Before this, iPads were awesome toys/productivity tools that a ton of my friends seemed to own. To be honest, I didn’t really know what I was going to do with it, but I knew I would have fun with it. Got home, started playing with it, and realized that the microphone wasn't working properly. The next day, it was exchanged for my 3rd gen 16 GB wifi-only iPad on iOS 5.1.1. They first app I downloaded was Google Chrome, and I immediately got to work setting up my home screen of icons (because I'm rather picky with that). Next I downloaded a few more apps I could think of, stopped at Starbucks, and got a free download of Soundhound∞ from their app pick of the week. I was deciding whether to jailbreak it, and eventually went for it. Absinthe hung on “Waiting for reboot...” So, I had to manually reboot it, which was scary. I didn't want to have to restore my new iPad already. It worked fine, though. I started trying out a few tweaks, and wasn't really impressed, so I decided to update to iOS 6. It would be nicer to have everything on my iPhone on my iPad, like Facebook integration and most of all, Siri. So I got my UDID registered and updated (more blogs about that coming soon). It's really cool to see what iOS translates into from my iPhone (“default iOS”) to my iPad. I really like all the design styles that apps use, from multi-column to little pop-up windows for things. It should be a fun time relearning iOS on a larger screen. It's weird going back to using my iPhone, even for a second, after using my iPad. My iPhone seems almost like a tiny little toy. I imagine over time I'll adjust. I'm going to have fun writing more about my new iPad.

Welcome Ty

A couple days ago, I posted a blog about some changes here. One of those changes is a new author joining World of Tech. His name is Ty, and he's going to be writing blog posts here. He's one of the few guys that I know that can keep up with all the tech stuff inside my head, often surpassing it. I think he has a lot to contribute, and I hope everyone will enjoy his content! Welcome, Ty!

Expanding

Very soon, World of my Tech will be experiencing some growth, which means a new name and new URL. Instead of http://cm5womt.blogspot.com, we'll be located at http://worldotech.blogspot.com. And instead of World of my Tech, we'll be called World of Tech. Reason being is that a new author is joining the blog, and the "my" part just doesn't fit for a multi-person blog. There will be a few other changes, so stay tuned. And remember, if nothing is at this domain, it's been moved to http://worldotech.blogspot.com.

We're on Google+!

World of my Tech has a Google+ page! I've started focusing on getting the word out about my blog, and a Google+ page is a good start. Every time a blog is posted, it's shared via the WOMT G+ page. Adding it to a Circle is a quick and easy way to see the latest posts, as well as get some occasional behind-the-scenes info. And don't forget to +1 the page and blog posts!

Find us on Google+

My homescreen through the years

For the longest time, the first page of my homescreen was set up almost completely like what it looked like on a brand new device. I recently dug through all my photos from device backups, computer backups, Dropbox accounts, and anywhere else I could think of that would have screenshots of my homescreen stored away. The oldest image I found was of my iPod's homescreen in December of 2010. If I remember correctly, I got my iPod in late March and jailbroke it for the first time in June. To compare to a "default" homescreen setup, I found this image of a 4th generation iPod Touch. My iPod is a 3rd gen, so it doesn't have a FaceTime or Camera app, but everything else should be about the same.

My initial design was having the Mail app first (where the FaceTime is); leaving the Calendar, Photos, and Contacts (which was by default where the Camera is) apps alone; not messing with the second or third row (the Settings app was next to the Utilities folder, not on the fourth row); and putting 2 frequently used apps on the bottom row, next to Game Center and the App Store. On the dock, I left Music first (or iPod, as a jailbreak tweak turned it into for awhile), Safari second, and 2 folders last. I was almost always jailbroken, so I had 5 icons on my dock. The other app would be iFile (a jailbreak app) and the 2 folders would usually contain my Favorites apps and my Jailbreak apps. This setup, which will be the template for 2 years, 2 devices, and over a dozen iOS updates of homescreens, is shown in my first screenshot.

iOS 6: New stuff in beta 4

To check out more blog posts about iOS 6, including my introductory one, click here.

I finally was able to update to iOS 6 beta 4, and one new feature immediately showed up. When a new iOS device is set up running iOS 5 or higher, it goes through this setup process on the device. It appears that a similar process will occur after updating.

iOS 6: Betas 3 & 4

To check out more blog posts about iOS 6, including my introductory one, click here.

I didn't post anything about iOS 6 beta 3 because it was a very minor update. The changelog included some settings for the Maps app, the foundation for @me.com email addresses to be converted to @icloud.com addresses, and other little things. One I don't like at all is when opening the Passbook app, the brightness setting is changed to 75%. It's supposed to help with showing coupons, card info, etc. that's stored in Passbook even if the screen would have been too dark to make it out. That would be great and all, except the brightness stays at 75% even after exiting Passbook. So, every time you open Passbook, you have to go into Settings and change the brightness back. The build ID for beta 3 is 10A5155d. And just today, beta 4 build 10A5376e was released. Currently, my iPhone cannot even connect to Apple's servers to perform the update, so I can't exactly say what's new (if anything). My guess is that Apple's cleaning up a little before the official release in just over a month. There's always more bugs and back-end problems to fix. 9to5Mac has a rather technical changelog, so you can read through that until some actual UI changes emerge.