So my Honda Civic si 2018 has wired carplay but doesn't have the new wireless carplay. I recently discovered there are dongles that act as a wireless to wired bridge. This of course only works if your car already supports wired carplay.
The first one I bought was apparently an older model even though it is labeled as carlinkit 2.0. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B089W6NR12 It seems to work fine and is around $100 currently.
The main differences is the newer model has a detachable usb-c cable and a much easier to see status LED. Having a removable cable might be important to you especially if you have specific placement needs. Both seems to boot in around 30 sec and both seem to perform about the same with responsiveness very similar to wired. The newer version is suppose to be faster but with the price about the same just go for the newer one. They both have a usb pass through port if you want to still go wired.
Setup is basically the same. Just plug it into your carplay usb port and pair over bluetooth. After that, every time you start your car everything just works. I've heard it can crash occasionally requiring you to unplug and replug the adapter into the usb port but I haven't had it long enough to experience any issues.
Updating is done by navigating to 192.168.50.2 in safari. I had to update twice to get to the latest version. There are some reports of bricking so proceed with caution. I did notice the website would say update is complete but it actually wasn't. Accessing carplay on the head unit would show that it was still updating and the same with the status lights. So just make sure it's completely updated and carplay is tested and working before shutting off your car or unplugging it.
So far this thing is amazing. It's such a nice quality of life change especially if you have wireless charging built into your car. Now I just start the car and toss my iPhone XS Max onto the charging pad and carplay just starts working automatically. I probably won't be using the phone holder much anymore. Well worth the $100.
Recommended apps:
Maps
Google Maps
Waze
Spotify
Audible
AVSub with airsonic server running on a raspberry pi 4
Podcasts
Apple Music
Zoom
UPDATE: 4/25/2021
Took a day trip so about 5 hrs with the wireless carplay adapter.
Carplay is a combination of bluetooth and wifi. Bluetooth is what is initially used to establish the handshake over wifi passing credentials and such. Once wifi connection is established the bluetooth connection is no longer needed and dropped. All audio/video is transmitted via wifi to the head unit. All this happens seamlessly in the background.
So while I had my wife's phone plugged into the usb passthrough odd things happened. First, it seems it's for charging only and my phone was still the one in use with carplay. About every 15-30 min the head unit would just go blank. Rebooting the carplay adapter would fix it but then it would eventually go blank again. Either the usb pass through is pulling too much power or something weird was going on having a different phone plugged in vs the one that was paired. Either way once I no longer used the usb passthrough it seemed to work fine for the most part.
2nd issue, once during a 2.5 hr drive I had audio drop out while listening to the avsub app. It just dropped to phone speaker. After rebooting it held the rest of the drive.
While doing all this my iphone was in the wireless charger and the phone got pretty hot but was charging but slowly. Overall still pretty satisfied but it does have a few glitches.
UPDATE: 5/24/2021
Ok, the usb pass through is indeed very glitchy. I recommend you do NOT use it.
Here is a pretty neat and portable solution to get a dual monitor setup for your macbook.
Mountie is a $25 clip that allows you to attach your ios device to the side of your macbook. It consists of spongy grippy clips that hold on to each device with a stabilizing bar running in between them. It comes with a few different sets of pads of different thicknesses to accommodate different mac/ipad/iphone models. I'm using a macbook pro 15 mid 2014 along with an iPad air 2. The clip is really easy to attach and remove. So that's kind of cool on it's own. But it gets really neat when you pair it with Duet.
Duet is a $16 universal app. I know it's pretty pricey but worth every penny. I picked it up when it was on sale though. So this lets you use your iOS device as a second monitor for you macbook. There have been several similar apps that use wifi but this one has one big difference. It's connection is done over the lightening cable. This gives you incredible performance, reliability, and visual quality. Your iPad will look and respond just as if you had a small secondary monitor attached by hdmi or thunderbolt. This is a great portable/space saving dual monitor solution that's great for travel, on the couch, or if you just have limited desk space.
Highly Recommended. On a table the iPad works well in both portrait and landscape orientation. On your lap I find landscape to throw the balance too far off to feel all that comfortable or stable.
- OK that title is a bit misleading because it's more directed to iOS 8 than iPhone 6
- We upgrade our phones every 2 years so we skip the s models.
- The 4.7" felt big at first but after about an hour of use it felt normal and my old iPhone 5 looked and felt tiny. It's still very easy to operate. Reachability felt pretty gimicky. I'm not sure how usefult it is on the plus but on the regular 6 I never use it. You can disable it in the settings if you want to.
- Build quality are excellent.
- No, it doesn't bend unless you are a moron: http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2014/09/consumer-reports-tests-iphone-6-bendgate/index.htm
- I picked up this case from amazon for $2 shipped when it was on sale. It's not half bad. It's one of those new hybrid cases: the sides are grippy but the back is a hard plastic. It's very minimalist. Just keep in mind it doesn't have much of a lip on the front but I don't go laying my phone face down anyways so that part doesn't bother me.
- I'm going to give this tempered glass screen protector a try. It hasn't arrived yet.
- The 240 fps slow mo video shooting is neat. I tested it on our finches.
- I'm using the tunebelt armband for running. It fits well just note you have to remove the phone from the above case before it will fit.
- I'm using another Ibera bike mount. This one fits the iPhone 6 pretty well and you can even leave it in the case. Here is a write-up I did on reddit on some other options I was considering.
- I tried a few keyboards but settled on swype for now. I like swiftkey and used it on android but it seems to take a split second longer to load than swype. That bit of load lag time is annoying. I'm not overly concerned with privacy at least with these two companies. I like swype type typing for the most part except in cases where your finger doesn't glide smoothly over the glass (after a hard run, or your fingers just aren't very clean). In those cases the hunt and peck on these alternative keyboards never seem as good as the default one.
- 1 password + touchID is wonderful when it works. TouchID is such a nice everyday game changer IMO.
- More apps need to support extensions in general. I'm sure there will be more as more get updated.
- Widgets are nice but I still don't use them much.
- I love having the 128GB options. I'm always running out of space.
iOS 8/iPhone6/App specific bugs:
- iOS 8 is pretty buggy. Even after 8.0.2 this feels to be one of the most buggiest iOS releases ever
- 3rd party keyboards still don't show up as default all the time. UPDATE: Still an issue in 8.1.
- 1password doesn't always allow me to use touchID. I have everything setup properly: keychain, 30 days for master password, etc and it is still hit or miss. UPDATE: 8.1 seems to have fixed this for the most part.
- Bluetooth issues. Lots of reports of having issues pairing with your car. It worked fine with my 2007 Acura TL Type-S but it's having some issues with my MIO Link Heartrate monitor. It constantly connects and disconnects over and over so I get sporadic readings in my apps. I tried pairing it with my iPhone 5 and it worked flawlessly so I know this is an iPhone 6 specific issue. iPhone 6 pairs fine with my wahoo bike and cadence sensor though. MIO is aware of the issue (I emailed support) and they are working on a solution. UPDATE: I exchanged the mio link with another one and this new one seems to work fine. So I guess I just got a bad one.
- None of these are deal breakers but added up it's a constant annoyance and reminder how buggy this release was.
Highly recommended. I love the new size though it's really thin and rounded so I would recommend a case just so it's easier to hold. Also, I don't like how the camera sticks out so a case helps there too so you can lie it down flat. It's very fast, twice the storage, and a bigger screen. I just want these bugs to be worked out sooner than later and maybe they could have tossed in a bit more RAM too. Other than that I'm quite happy with the phone.
So my older kid just started middle school and I figure it was time to get him an actual working phone. For the past year he's been using my old iPhone 4 (at&t model) like an ipod touch (no call capabilities). I did some research and wanted the cheapest plan possible with voice and some texting. At this point I don't think he needs any kind of data plan yet (that will come in probably a few years).
I ended up going with puretalkusa.com (at&t network).
$10 per month (all taxes and everything included. You set a hard maximum and you will never be charged more than this amount).
130 min per month that rolls over forever (never expires)
300 sms messages per month.
no data.
At&t has an online form for unlock but for some reason it didn't work for me. A phone call and 10 min later though I was unlocked. Good site to check the lock status: http://www.imei.info/
If you are using an at&t phone I believe unlocking is optional. Either way I wanted the iPhone unlocked just to avoid any potential issues and to increase the resale value when I do eventually sell it. I did go through the entire itunes backup/restore steps too.
Got the micro sim in 3 days and it was easy to setup. Activating the sim on their website took maybe 5 min. Micro sim cost was $5 but included 150 bonus minutes (which will of course roll over if we he doesn't use it all). They also have a family share plane for $5 per additional line that adds another 60 min into the pool. You can split the minutes between phones anyway you want.
There are cheaper plans out there that are voice only like on t mobile. Virgin mobile has some cheap plans too but really if you want complete coverage you have to go with at&t or verizon. Plus, I really wanted some texting included in the plan. If you need data then straight talk is probably a better deal.
Highly recommended. I think it's a great plan for a kid's first phone or somebody who doesn't need data (there is always freedompop (sprint network) if you want some free data). I'm very satisfied with the service so far.
Activated it, charged up $10 on it, install iphone app, install data apn profile to get data working (the app makes this easy to do).
So the big difference here is everything draws money from your $10 bucket (which expires in 90 days).
5 cents/min calls
5 cents/text
10 cents/MB
I really like how data is rolled in there. Nice feature for find my friend/find my iphone for a bit more security especially for kids. The disadvantage of having it all draw from one bucket is if your kid watches a few youtube videos on 3G it could empty the account and then he won't even be able to make or take a call. I guess it comes down to how much you trust your kid to control himself.
There is an h2o app to check balances and recharge.
I like how after every call it flashes how much you spent on that call, remaining balance, and expiration date. So there should be no surprises. I'll probably recharge $10 every time he hits $5 balance.
So for $10/month - 3 months you actually get everything in very tiny portions. Heh.
Puretalk also just added a 150MB data plan that also rolls over for an additional $10/month. Both sims are still active so I'll test H2O for a bit, check how fast his account drains, and then decide which to keep.
UPDATE 2:
The spammy red messages that keep popping up every time money was spent out of your account got to be too much. It would sometimes even do it with a $0.00 deduction which is just stupid. It's probably the biggest complaint on the amazon reviews and there doesn't seem to be a way to turn it off. You will constantly get interrupted when doing things like just reading or using gps. It really reduces the usability of the smart phone. Since then I've gone back to puretalkusa and added the data plan. H2O is cheap...too cheap for our use case. Also, we got a lot of strange phone calls with H2O which never happened on pure talk. Their web site is pretty horrible with confusing verbiage and very unclear/lack of usage/charge reports. Everything about H2O screams sketchy. But hey it does work and it is about the cheapest thing out there for very low usage situations if you can live with all the annoyances. For me I'll pay a bit more and use puretalk which is very clear and straightforward.
UPDATE 3:
My son only used 55 MB of data over the last 30 days on puretalk so 150 MB/month should be plenty. This is with very light use with mostly just some google hangout chats.
It UPDATE 8/25/2014:
If you need a dirt cheap basic GSM phone (for kids and such) the Samsung a157v is pretty great for $13-$15 (goes on sale once in a while for < $8). Fry's, walmart, and I think best buy all carry this locally. It takes all of about 5 min to unlock: http://funtelligent.blogspot.com/2013/02/how-to-network-unlock-at-gophone.html
Then you can use whatever sim card you want (puretalkusa, h2o, etc). This phone uses a full size sim card so use adapters if you need to up size a micro or nano. For just talk and text this is a really nice phone at a really good price.
If you want to add your own wallpapers just format a jpg or png file at 128X160 resolution. For ringtones a 30 sec or less mp3 file will work. Just plug in a micro usb cable, select transfer on the phone when prompted, and copy the media to the appropriate folders. You have around 107MB of free space to play around with.
Both my kids have a Samsung a157v now. I called up puretalk and converted my $10 flex plan to a $15 family plan. They shipped me a new sim card for free. It was a regular/micro sim depending on which size you punched out.. I kept my 1300 minutes I had left in rollover. For the extra $5 a month I pay I also get another 60 min that goes into my family pool which I can easily allocate between the 2 lines on the website. So for $15 total a month I get 190 min for 2 lines with rollover. That really is a fantastic deal. They also track texting differently now. Instead of separate buckets for minutes and texting, every 3 texts = 1 min used. I guess I'm ok with that since my kids don't really text that much (at least yet). It does simplify things.
- I picked this up at amazon for about $35 shipped.
- It's a BKM (Bluetooth keyboard mouse switch)
- This is an interesting device that fits a particular situation. It's a small usb dongle. When you attach it to a PC through usb it loads some standard HID drivers that are built into windows and also creates a small 4MB flash drive which has a windows/mac tray app. The device also has bluetooth that connects to your tablet or smartphone (iOS or android). Once you pair the EasyBlue with your mobile device you are set. Now you can use your existing desktop keyboard to control your pc or your mobile device by toggling between the two with a hotkey (ctrl + up is the default but can be changed in the tray app). It works seamlessly and super fast. There is ZERO delay switching between pc and mobile device.
- This does NOT add bluetooth to a pc. The pc side is only an HID device and flash drive. The mobile side is all bluetooth.
- So basically you get all the advantages of a bluetooth keyboard (and mouse for android) without having a separate keyboard taking up valuable desk space.
- First thing I did was update the firmware and software to 2.0 from the manufacturer's site. It's all in korean but it wasn't too hard to figure out (let google translate it). http://www.easyblue.co.kr/xe/index.php?mid=down&document_srl=9125
- It has a small hole to put on a keyring.
- The tray app has a lot of settings like custom hot key, custom keymap, toggle tray notifications, toggle the LED light, etc.
- You can cut and paste text (ctrl c, ctrl v) between the pc and mobile device. This is great for urls and such.
- Works even when inside citrix receiver with the easyblue attached to your host pc.
Highly recommended. It's a convenient space saving device. Sure, there are times when you need a portable bluetooth keyboard but this sure is handy if you need to iMessage somebody. Now, if only apple would let you map enter to "send" in the iMessage app (or you can try this kludge which actually does work).
- One of the biggest issues I have with iOS devices are the lack of expandable storage. 64GB is not enough for a power user that likes to have a ton of apps installed and still have room for media (mostly video). CloudFTP solves the problem and quite elegantly.
- This is the second kickstarter project I backed. It was $69 when I backed it. It's available for order at hypershop for $99 but it still shows a 4-6 week wait.
- Semi official forums: http://cloudftp.freeforums.org/index.php
- The basic idea is this little box will connect to any usb storage device (usb flash drives, card readers, usb 2.5" external hard drives, etc) and create an ad hoc wifi network which your iOS (or really any wifi enabled mobile device) will connect to to access the content on the usb device that is attached to the cloudFTP. You do this over a web page (cloudFTP has a little web server and ftp server running). You also configure and change settings of the cloudFTP on that same web page. The cloudFTP outputs 5v 1A on the usb port which is enough to power external 2.5" hard drives. The 2600mah battery is suppose to be able to power a device for up to 5 hrs. Since cloudFTP is charged from usb you can use any external battery that charges usb to extend that time (it still works while charging).
- I tried it out with a 64GB flash drive (ntfs), 40GB 2.5" hdd (ntfs, old ps3 pull), and a 320GB hitachi pulled from a macbook pro. They all worked fine except the hitachi which I had issues with. It wouldn't work formatted as NTFS but worked fine once I switched to exFAT. I tried 3 different 2.5" enclosures and all worked fine so I would say compatibility seems pretty good with my limited testing. It also supports many other file systems like fat32, HSF+, ext 2/3/4 so you should be covered.
- I picked up a 1TB samsung laptop hard drive for $110 from newegg. I had all sorts of troubles getting this drive initialized, partitioned and formatted. I have no idea if it was the enclosure I was using, the age of my motherboard, the esata docking station or what. What finally worked for me was to format it to exFat using OSX disk utility on my macbook pro. After that it seemed to work fine on my win 7 desktop and cloudFTP. I briefly tried HSF+ and that worked fine too but I'll stick with exFat for the greatest compatibility.
- supports 802.11 b/g/n.
- Can stream up to 3 devices simultaneously. I tried it on my iPad 2 and iPhone 4 at the same time and it worked great.
- I converted my videos to iOS friendly mp4 format using handbrake and the iPad profile.
- The web interface works great on iOS devices but is pretty much mangled and unusable on Android.
- I did find some apps that work well by streaming over FTP: goodplayer ($3 universal) and oplayer ($5 not universal) on iOS and es file explorer on android. Both iOS apps have some compatibility and crash issues with certain video files, yet those same files play fine in quicktime from the web interface. Out of the two though I prefer oplayer but neither is perfect. Hopefully cloudFTP comes out with their dedicated app soon. The advantage of using an app is you get better subtitle support and file formats like MKV without the need to transcoding first. I find you can just barely play 720p files on the iPad 2.
- AcePlayer ($3 universal) is another app that I just started testing. Video seems to freeze after a few minutes. Right now I think I like oplayer the most.
- iFiles works pretty well as an ftp client to manage your files.
- You can also put cloudFTP into infrastructure mode where it will connect to a router as a wifi client. Once cloudFTP is on your network it displays the IP address that was assigned so you can browse to it and access the files. This could come in handy say you have a mifi (or some other personal wifi hotspot like a smart phone). You connect the cloudFTP to the mifi and also your iPad to the mifi. Now the iPad has access to the internet and cloudFTP at the same time. The range is pretty short on the cloudFTP so make sure it's close to the router. Performance seems a bit slower in infrastructure mode but other than that it seems to work just fine.
- If you need to connect to a hidden SSID while in infrastructure mode use this url: 192.168.0.1/svdo/WIFI{set,infra,SSID,PASSWORD}
- Has a host name already setup: cloudftp (192.168.0.1) which you can enter as the url address in your browser or as the ftp server address.
- You can change the SSID and secure it with a password. Both are displayed on the cloudFTP. WPA2 is used. This is the only level of security you have which I think is fine.
- The website claims the battery is removable but I haven't found a way to open the box. UPDATE: Somebody just opened one.
- The site claims to have ways to backup to cloud storage sites like box.net and dropbox in infrastructure mode but I see no way of doing it.
- The site also says there are suppose to be native android and iOS apps which have not showed up yet.
- All iOS supported media works like mp3, jpg, or even pdf.
- It also worked streaming to my macbook pro using safari.
- It has 8MB of space (drive X:) which will be used to install additional apps. A SDK is planned to be released in the future so you can write your own programs to run on the cloudFTP.
- I went the the large 2.5" HDD route. The other way to go is maybe use this with a tiny micro usb flash drive (up to 32GB) to make things as portable as possible. You can see several examples here.
- Always shut down normally before disconnecting your usb device so it can be properly unmounted. You can however connect one at anytime. To force a shutdown hold the power button for at least 5 sec and then release.
- The web interface doesn't seem to sort the files list properly. They seem quite random.
Highly recommended! This product is still very early in its development. It has quite a few rough edges and missing features but the core functionality is there and works well. I'm streaming very high quality video to my iOS devices on my own little battery powered portable wifi network which you can set aside and have nothing attached to your iOS device physically. With a 1TB hard drive you can store well over 500 movies (typical handbrake ipad transcoded movies are around 1.5-2GB each). It is firmware updatable so I'm sure things will only get better and more functionality will get added. There are a ton of solutions to stream from storage you have at home over the internet limited by your upstream bandwidth of your ISP. This solution is great for those times you have either no internet or slow unreliable internet where cellular data is spotty, slow, or expensive with bandwidth caps (think planes, trains, ,and automobiles...or even hotels). It's a bit of a niche product but I think it is an important one.
- I figured out my NTFS woes. Apparently I had the hard drive initialized as GPT (guid partition table) vs MBR (master boot record). Macs like GPT so if you are using a hdd pulled from a macbook it's going to be GPT and I found out the hard way cloudFTP does NOT support GPT. It only supports MBR. It's easy enough to convert between the two. In disk manager just delete all the partitions off the hard drive and you can right click the drive and click convert to MBR. Then, recreate your ntfs partition and you are good to go! So what I know for sure GPT + NTFS doesn't work on cloudFTP. I'm not sure about other combinations like GPT + HFS+.
- The drawback of exFat is you can't write to it through the cloudFTP. With ntfs you can read and write using a ftp client like FTP Client pro and actually upload files from your iOS device (like photos and movies from you camera roll, albums, or photo stream) to the usb storage device. Filezilla works well too on a computer. So with the cloudFTP it pretty much can replace the usb camera adapter apple sells. Lets say you shoot some photos with your camera. Then you pop the sd card into a reader connected to the cloudFTP. Fire up ftp client pro on your iOS device and download the images and move them into your camera roll or do a "open in" to open the image in your favorite photo editor. Make your edits and save them back to the camera roll, and now you can upload it back to a usb storage device (maybe like a hard drive for archival) using ftp client pro.
UPDATE: 5/23/2012
- Did my first real field test with a 3 hour car trip using V12 beta firmware. It worked great streaming 2 different movies: one to the hp touchpad running android and the other to the iPad 3. The one thing that surprised me though is the battery life. I got barely over an hour of use while streaming off a 1TB hdd. Hooking up my external usb battery worked great (car usb charger would have worked fine too I'm sure), and let it run the entire trip. The quality and performance were perfect. The wife said it was like an in flight movie but with 200 movies to choose from. The only thing missing were the peanuts and cranberry juice.
- I picked this up for around $50 at amazon.
- The size and feel is very similar to the apple bluetooth keyboard. So if you are familiar and happy with that chiclet styled keyboard you should feel right at home on this logitech one.
- It has some nice iOS specific function keys. There is also an android flavor version of this keyboard.
- The case is pretty nice though it's kind of odd it doesn't cover the entire keyboard but at least it covers all the keys. The case folds out into a nice stand. You have multiple angles and you can do landscape or portrait.
- iPhone works fine too. Worked fine with the hp touchpad running android cyanogenmod 7.
- It's heavier than expected but still pretty portable for a full size qwerty keyboard.
- I type around 80-95 wpm which is just about the maximum speed I type on a regular keyboard.
- I like how this keyboard is more or less generic so it should work with future versions of any tablet, smartphone, or computer, basically anything with bluetooth. Nothing is tied to a specific form factor like the case and keyboard combo devices.
- It uses 4XAAA batteries that are suppose to last 10 months. Yeah! no proprietary batteries or chargers to deal with.
Highly recommended. The keyboard feels great. All the keys are where you expect it. If you use a macbook or apple keyboard you will feel right at home. Basically, you save $20 off of the apple branded one and you get a nice free case/stand to boot. The biggest drawback though is having to carry something extra around with you but if you have some serious typing to do then it's hard to beat.
I decided to skip the iPhone 4S. You can read about my reasons here.
The upgrades went fairly smooth for the 2 iPhone 4 32GB and one iPad 2 64GB. One of the iPhones was updated on a Mac and the other two on a pc. Upgrades took forever (think hours) since all our devices are nearly full. It does a full backup, a factory reset, flashes the new os, a restore, and then syncs back all you apps, music, videos, photos, etc. plus the update itself is over 700MB download. I'm still running into some syncing issues especially with the calendar and contacts with outlook. I've tried some of the things listed here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2669782?start=15&tstart=0 It would work for a while but then the conflicts and errors would come back. It's annoying but not a show stopper. I'm still looking for a solid fix.
There are now a ton and slightly confusing sync/iCloud/backup solutions. If you enable iCloud backup it will no longer backup to your pc through itunes. I wish there was an option to backup to both. If you turn on wireless itunes sync (you must do it on the device summary in itunes while you the device is connected) it seems to always sync over wifi even when you have it connected to usb. It's convenient but a bit slower. What's also nice is the sync happens in the background so you can continue to use your device while it syncs. Contacts and calendars get a bit more complex. I currently sync through itunes with outlook for contacts, notes, and calendars. You can also sync these through iCloud. Once you install the windows iCloud control panel: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1455 You can also sync outlook to iCloud . It seems like you would get some redundant syncing with all these methods having devices sync both through itunes wifi sync and iCloud all against outlook. I wonder if it would be better to disable calendar and contacts syncing through itunes and do it only through iCloud. You can force a wifi sync through settings|general.
Notes syncing is also less than ideal. Once I turned on icloud notes sync I had to create a @me.com email address. This creates a new account in the notes app which is separate than the account where I was syncing with gmail which was also separate what was only on my iphone, which is also separate than what was synced with outlook. I couldn't find a way to just say sync all the notes I have across all accounts to iCloud. I know, I should probably just stick to using evernote instead but sometimes I just want to fire up notes quickly and jot something down. Even more confusing is if I'm in the all notes view and I create a new note it ended up in the gmail account vs the iCoud account. I can't even seem to specify I want my iCloud account to be the default for newly created notes when in the all note view.
UPDATE: So here's what I did to get everything to sync using iCloud as much as possible to share data between my macbook pro, a windows 7 x64 desktop with outlook, iphone 4, and ipad 2.
win 7: setup outlook with the @me.com account that was created when I turned on notes syncing on the iphone icloud. You'll need to setup the servers manually and click on the advance settings. I also set incoming to ssl (and use the right port!) and outgoing to auto (ssl didn't work for me). Here are the icloud mail settings: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4864 I don't really plan to use my @me.com email for anything really except to enable syncing. I disable calendar and contact syncing in itunes (I still left notes outlook syncing on). Enable wifi sync in itunes. In the icloud control panel I enabled contacts and calendar syncing with outlook. This creates a new icloud section in outlook for contacts and calendar.
On the iphone and ipad I enabled all iclould syncing options.
Mac: Update iPhoto and enable all icloud syncing options. Fire up the mail app and setup your new @me.com email. This way you can get to notes. Contacts and calendar should should sync with address book and iCal.
This in theory should let you make changes anywhere in any of those devices and then sync across all devices using icloud.
icloud.com is quite nice and lets you not only view but edit most of your icloud data (contacts, calendars). Find my iphone is also here but notes is missing. You have to fire up the email app with the @me.com email you created when you turned on icloud notes. Yeah, overall notes is a complete mess and is anything but simple or "just works."
Photo stream actually works quite nicely especially on windows. The windows iCloud control panel lets you choose a download and upload directory. It's clean and simple just the way I like it. On the mac it syncs with iPhoto which is ok if you like iPhoto (which I don't).
Apple ID strategy: I have one main apple ID that I share among all my apple devices so you can share itunes purchases like apps. The problem is when you also use it for iCloud. You can in fact use a different apple id for iCloud vs the store on the same device. Also, it makes since to use different apple id's in certain cases. So every device uses the main apple ID that is used for all purchases for the store. I use the same apple ID for iCloud on my iPhone 4, the iPad 2 (since I use it the most), and my macbook pro. This way I can share photos, documents, contacts, calendars, etc among all my devices. It would make no sense for my wife to share my apple ID for her iCloud which would mix up contacts, calendars, documents, photo streams, etc. She uses her own apple ID for iCloud on her iPhone 4 and macbook pro yet continues to use the main apple ID that the purchases are on on both of her devices. This also helps get by the 5gb free space limit used for backups. I could NOT backup both my iphone and ipad (both nearly full) within the 5gb. Once I toggled off backing up certain apps that contain a lot of user data like good reader (pdf's, videos, etc) I was able to get it to all fit. http://www.macworld.com/article/163006/2011/10/how_to_configure_icloud_if_you_share_an_apple_id.html The one drawback is this splits up find my iphone because it's tied to the iCloud apple id. The new find my friends app though works well enough.
The reader feature is nice in safari. Just realize it doesn't work on every web page, only the ones it thinks are articles. When it is on a compatible page a reader button will appear in the address bar.
You can 4 finger swipe on the iPad to swap between running apps. You can also 4 finger swipe up to bring up the task bar. I love the tab browsing.
Wife's visual voice mail got wiped out again but after entering the password it was re-enabled.
1password required re-entering the master password to get dropbox syncing working again.
iSub cache was wiped out after the upgrade.
You can't put newsstand into a folder because it acts more like a special folder than an actual app. I found a few magazines that were actually a bit cheaper than zinio and nook. Just keep in mind these are actual individual apps that meet certain specifications to appear in newsstand. That means you are tied to iOS devices only. With zinio and nook you have broader device support. Right now I still really like the nook for the pricing and selection. I just wish it had push notifications for when new issues arrive (or at least an email). The lack of free trial issues in newsstand is rather annoying. It should be a requirement for every magazine in newsstand to offer at least a free preview of 10 pages or so.
I like the new usage view in settings especially the apps sorted in the amount of space each is using.
iOS 5 brings a lot of new features but IMO quite a bit of complexity too if you have a lot of devices and platforms. Notes is a mess but the rest I like. It's definitely a lot of functionality for free so I can't complain too much.
- Everyair is another remote desktop solution similar to microsoft remote desktop, logmein, vnc, etc. except the focus here is on quick framerates and gaming rather than general desktop use. Think of it as running your own personal OnLive service.
- The iOS client is a universal app and is $5.
- There is a server install for windows or osx. I say install loosely since all you have to do is unzip it and run the exe. I've only tried this with windows so far.
- There is one huge drawback currently. There's no sound. The developer has promised sound in the next major release which will be 1.2.
- Framerates are great over wifi and the controls are pretty responsive with little lag. Video quality isn't half bad. All the usual gestures are there to scale, pinch to zoom, and scroll around. There is a handy button on the top right that automatically scales to full screen for the current foreground application.
- The virtual gamepad isn't too bad and is mapped to the arrow keys for the left stick and by default the mouse to the right stick. You can even toggle right click on which is handy in World of Warcraft so it acts like mouse look.
- I wish I could move the virtual keyboard to the top so I could see my chat window at the same time.
- I tried to use a bluetooth keyboard but that didn't work.
- It only officially supports wifi but it does indeed work over the internet and even 3G. All you have to do is forward ports: 9793-9893 and know you external WAN IP address (domain names do not work). You can require a password but I'm not so sure how secure this thing is. Official internet support is coming in a future build. For now I'm not going to leave the server running or the ports forwarded. If I need to fire it up remotely I can always use logmein and setup everything to get it going and then switch to everyAir. 3G works surprisingly well. The video above is on lowest quality but I also tried on medium and it also worked fine. Controls lag a bit probably due to 3G latency but other than that it really does work.
- The framerates are great so you can even use it to watch flashvideo or surf flash sites on your desktop browser. It's not that great for general desktop application use since it doesn't even emulate a scroll wheel like logmein does.
- Obviously this works with any games you might have, some types of games better than others.
- The server program is still a bit buggy. I wasn't able to connect both my iPad 2 and iPhone at the same time (or maybe that's just not supported). Then, when I went to shut down the program it would crash.
- Maybe with a custom wow UI with large buttons you might be able to do some quests but I don't think I would try a 5 man with this thing quite yet.
- Fullscreen didn't work so well for me. It caused some flickering. Instead, I just ran wow in a windowed mode which worked fine.
I'm pretty floored that this thing actually works. It's some really impressive tech. I'm not entirely sure how practical this is but it sure is neat to mess with. EveryAir has huge potential.
Highly Recommended!
UPDATE: Looks like they got bought out and stopped development. Booo. But they do plan to open source the client and server.
- I tried it briefly. The good: It has sound!, performance is pretty good especially for flash video, it supports bluetooth keyboards, It's more polished overall especially the server software.
- The bad: It performs best when you let it change your desktop resolution to match the native ipad resolution (1024X768). Performance suffers quite a bit if you leave it at your desktop resolution (mine is at 1920X1080). Having your resolution change and then firing up wow will mangle your carefully crafted custom UI that was designed for 1920X1080 so that right there makes this a poor choice for gaming.
- The keyboard support is kind of odd (you must pop up the mini virtual keyboard to put it in keyboard mode). On a bluetooth keyboard there is a pause before the repeat kicks in while holding down a key. So if you hit "w" to move forward there is a pause before your toon continues to move forward. You can't chord keys (like alt+1) without hitting the virtual alt key in the app and then you can hit 1 on your physical keyboard. It's really awkward.
- On the virtual keyboard it's even worse. It doesn't repeat at all. You have to rapidly tap "w" to keep moving forward. It's basically completely unusable for gaming.
- It only has two quality settings: Smooth and sharp. Smooth is good for gaming/video, sharp is good for text. There is no in between slider like everyAir.
- It's not a universal app. They want $5 for the iPad version and $2 for the iPhone version.
- Scroll wheel is implemented (two finger scrolling) but it's slow....a lot slower than logmein.
- There is no handy scale to full screen for current active window.
- It doesn't support fullscreen games at all where everyAir kind of tries to.
- It strictly forces aspect ratio (this can be good or bad) when scaling.
- There are no virtual game pad controls. This is a huge deal for gaming and really makes this worthless for anything more complicated than simple mouse driven games.
- Overall, splashtop is definitely designed for more general purpose use and less for gaming. I can see it being useful for viewing flash based sites (I watched some hulu and it looked very good). But for gaming I think everyAir has a lot more potential (especially once they get sound working).
- The lite version is free and lets you try out their gaming/performance mode for a few days. The universal paid version is $20!!!!
- Performance isn't too bad. It feels similar to splashtop.
- It has sound.
- Resolution is changed.
- Only works in windowed mode.
- It's keyboard implementation is much better. You can also have a series of well laid out sets of keys used commonly in games (like arrow keys or wsad). These work quite well. The big thing it's sill missing though are the virtual control pads like everyAir has. Without a way to map the mouse to a thumb pad it makes certain games like MMO's very hard to play. Developers need to understand that controls are everything when it comes to making a pc game playable on an iPad.
- I like it over all but not $20 like! The price is way too high IMO.
- iSkin Solo was my favorite case for my iPhone 3gs so I've been waiting for them to finally come out with an iPhone 4 model. - It was half price ($15) direct from their site. I think the deal is good until the end of the month. Shipping is a bit high at around $7. - I picked up the black one for myself and the pink one for the wife. - This is a very nice TPU case. I really like the feel. It has a very nice texture around the edge to give it a nice grip without being sticky. The back has that standard TPU feel (slightly grippy but doesn't stick or pick up lint that easily). - The entire case is slightly translucent to give it that smokey look. The back is properly frosted so it looks great with no weird glass meets plastic watery marks. It's pretty shinny. - There is a bit more lip now over the front which I like. This way it will NOT interfere with screen protectors like my awesome power support crystal film set ($20). It's also just thick enough to give some protection to the front of the screen if you lay it face down. There are some slits in the top corners to help you get the iPhone in the case. - Buttons are very easy to press. The cut outs match very well. There is plenty of space around the camera (no flash issues). The only flaw I found was the strip underneath the connector is a bit close and may interfere with 3rd party sync cables like the one I pictured above. You have to pull the case down a bit to get the cable to fit. It's a bit inconvenient. The original sync cable fits perfectly. This is only an issue with 3rd party cables that have a bit more plastic around the connector. Fyi, you can get apple oem sync cables for around $4 shipped on ebay.
Highly recommended. iSkin pretty much gets everything just right. Their attention to detail is near perfect except the aforementioned very minor bottom connector issue. After 6 cases I'm finally happy. iSkin solo + power support crystal = complete protection, great looks, and a great feel.
- This was the free case I picked that you get from Apple. - It's a hard plastic case. It has just enough flex to it to allow you to slip your iPhone 4 in. The plastic is pretty hard but doesn't seem too brittle. It would probably hold up pretty well. - It's very thin and looks pretty good. The back where the glass meets the plastic can still leave some odd looking watery marks. - The top and bottom are almost completely exposed. - Space around the camera is good - It does NOT interfere with screen protectors. The sides barely come up over the front of the screen. - There are cut outs for the mute and volume switch. I found the volume switch a bit too recessed and hard to reach. - It's very slippery. I feel like the phone is going to fly out of my hand.
Not Recommended even for free. It offers too little protection/coverage, and it's too slippery to hold.
- So I'm a big fan of the old Logitech Cordless Mediaboad especially for htpc use. I have several of them. I decided to give this newer Pro model a try. I picked it up from amazon for $55. It's very similar to the old model except it's bluetooth. It's primarily designed for the playstation 3 but it works fine with other devices like computers and iOS as long as it has bluetooth since no dongle is included. I was just basically looking for a nice generic full size bluetooth keyboard, and the touchpad is a bonus. - The key layout is nice and normal. I really like the feel of it. If you use it with windows or osx just note that there is no windows or command key but you can remap some other key if you want in the OS. - It works really well with my iPhone 4. Just note that none of the extra keys or any of the navigation keys outside of the arrow keys and ctrl + arrow work. That means no home button key or any of the media controls for ipod player work. The touchpad obviously doesn't do anything either.
Recommended. It's a better value than the apple wireless bluetooth keyboard though this is a more generic keyboard so it's not going to have any OS specific keys. It feels great to type on and works well with your iOS devices. Plus you get an integrated touchpad.
English to Chinese BETA
English to French
English to German
English to Italian
English to Japanese BETA
English to Korean BETA
English to Russian BETA 
English to Spanish