iPhone: What’s Missing (4) – Turn Off Auto Landscape

 iPhone  No Responses »
Jan 232010
 

When you first encounter those iPhone apps which automatically rotate into some form of landscape mode (often with a larger on screen keyboard), you think “Oh cool”. And it seems pretty useful.

Well the landscape mode certainly is, but the automatic rotation between portrait and landscape mode can begin to grate a little – it often seems to activate when you don’t want it to, and refuses to activate when you want it to. Not that it’s the fault of the iPhone really. It is just the our usage of the iPhone is too unpredictable to say that whenever the iPhone is in a landscape orientation that we want to use it in that orientation. We may simply have bent over to scratch a knee and accidentally rotated the iPhone.

It would be nice if the iPhone OS had two additional features :-

  • The ability to turn off the autorotation feature at a global level.
  • The ability to manually switch into landscape mode – presumably with some sort of twist gesture on the screen.

Interestingly it seems that others may also agree as I have come across other iPhone apps that do offer the facility to turn off auto-landscape mode.

Film Review: Lesbian Vampire Killers (and watching films on an iPhone)

 Film, iPhone  No Responses »
Jan 012010
 

So O2 is giving away free downloads for the 12 days of Christmas (or something like that) and have just given away a free copy of the film “Lesbian Spank Inferno” … sorry I mean “Lesbian Vampire Killers“. Well as it was free, I decided to give it a go …

The first thing to note is that watching films on an iPhone is a pretty bad idea. Ok, it is portable and probably isn’t too bad for watching an old film that you are familiar with for entertainment on the move (although reading a book is probably better). The screen is just too small.

As for the film itself, well you will have to turn off your “PC filters” before watching – the title itself and the first few minutes reveal a misogynistic fear of lesbians (the writers seem to be under the impression that lesbians are that way through a hatred of men!).

After you turn off these filters, what do you get ? Well two principle characters who are pretty repulsive – one pathetic type whose girlfriend  is routinely unfaithful (and with good reason), and another who is even more pathetic and unsurprisingly has no girlfriend.

These two pathetic losers journey to a village under an ancient curse whereby all 18 year old women suddenly turn into lesbian vampires (surely a contradiction in terms). They meet up with an unlikely bunch of history students – all female and all with a predilection for wearing low-cut tops. At which point the “story” (if it can be called such) progresses through an unlikely series of events until our two “heros” with a surviving love interest manage to defeat the lesbian vampire queen.

It isn’t good porn (whatever that is).

It isn’t comedy. And no I’m not being superior – I like simplistic “Carry On” style smutty comedy.

It isn’t a good vampire story. It doesn’t even have much of a story.

All in all, a complete waste of time. One of those “freebies” that cost too much.

Don’t bother.

iPhone: What’s Missing (3): Change Red Numbers From “Unseen” To “Not Replied”

 iPhone  No Responses »
Oct 032009
 

It might be a little too much to expect, but it would be nice if there were an option to change the meaning of the little red numbers that show up on the Mail icon, the Messages icon (and other messaging apps) from “unseen” to “not replied”.

I often quickly visit a message to see if it’s something that needs dealing with straight away, and go away if it is not that important. But as soon as I do, I lose the little number that reminds me there’s a message to deal with. The whole concept of changing an icon with a little number to show how many messages there are is brilliant.

And undoubtedly for many more organised people knowing how many new messages there are is just what they need. But some of us would like to know how many messages have not been replied to or dealt with in some other way.

iPhone: What’s Missing (2): Where’s The Keyboard ?

 Computing, iPhone  No Responses »
Jul 122009
 

I’m very fussy about keyboards; perhaps ridiculously so. But I cannot understand the criticism of the virtual keyboard that comes with the iPhone. It takes some getting used to, and the auto correct feature whilst very useful can also be very irritating. Enough so that Apple should probably have a keyboard button marked “turn off auto correct for a while”. But it is perfectly adequate for what it is  – something to do a little text entry from time to time.

So why am I complaining about the lack of a decent keyboard ? Because quite simply if I’m doing any writing (and I don’t at present) on the iPhone, I would like to be able to type at full speed – which for me requires a decent clicky keyboard so I can get up to a reasonable speed (apparently about 120wpm!).

Adding bluetooth drivers to the iPhone should be pretty trivial for Apple after all there are already OSX bluetooth keyboard drivers available, and the iPhone operating system is OSX. So why does Apple not include one ? Sure there’s an excuse for the first release not to include one – Apple wanted to make sure that the phone was rock solid in a totally new market to them. But now?

Surely it cannot be because they feel that releasing such a driver would be an admission that the virtual keyboard is no good. After all, I’m not exactly an enemy of the virtual keyboard, but I want a real keyboard interface for those occasions when one would be useful.

iPhone: What Is Missing (1)

 Computing, iPhone  No Responses »
Jul 122009
 

The iPhone is hardly perfect, although it is quite good for a smartphone. However now we are loading up our iPhones with dozens of added applications, the old swipe-able screen interface needs a bit of care.

The first improvement would be the ability to tag particular screens with names. This would be merely an aid to organisation, but in practice would be very handy. There is plenty of space in the status bar for the “name” of a screen, or Apple could do something funkier involving putting the name onto the background.

Secondly it would be handy to have icons that could “warp” to a particular screen – presumably by name. This would work as a simplistic form of ‘folders’ for the applications.

Finally it would be useful to be able to make certain application icons “sticky” so that they remain available no matter what screen is currently active.

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