You running on iOS 16 Beta now?, how Downgrade it to iOS 15

 Did you install the iOS 16 beta but now you’re having second thoughts about running it? If you want to downgrade from iOS 16 beta and revert back to a stable iOS 15 build, you can certainly do that.

 

The method covered here will downgrade an iPhone from iOS 16 back to the latest stable version of iOS 15, however it will erase the iPhone in doing so. This means if you did not create a backup to the computer from iOS 15 before installing iOS 16 beta, you will lose everything on the iPhone by downgrading.

If you are not comfortable with losing everything on the iPhone and do not have a compatible backup available, you should not attempt to downgrade the iPhone from iOS 16. Instead just continue on iOS 16 beta

How to Downgrade iOS 16 Beta to iOS 15.x

This method erases the iPhone to revert from iOS 16 to iOS 15. If you have a backup made from iOS 15 you can then restore that to get your stuff back. If you do not want to erase and lose all data on your iPhone, do not proceed with this method.

    1. Connect the iPhone or iPad to the Mac with a Lightning cable

    2. Open the Finder on Mac

    3. Put the iPhone into Recovery Mode by performing the following sequence: press and release Volume Up, press and release Volume Down, press and hold the Power/Side button until you see the restore screen on the Mac

    4. You’ll see a dialog window that says there’s a problem with the iPhone and giving you the option to restore the device, click on “Restore” to erase iOS 16 beta and restore iOS 15 to the iPhone

    5. Let the restore process complete, it can take a while

When the downgrade has completed, the iPhone will boot back into a clean install of the latest version of iOS 15 that is available, as if the iPhone was brand new. The iPhone will have nothing on it, having been erased.

Assuming you have a backup available that is compatible with iOS 15 on the Mac or archived, you can restore from that backup to get your old stuff back. 

Because this process erases the iPhone and requires a backup from iOS 15 be available to restore their stuff from, this may not be suitable for all users, because most people don’t like to lose everything on their iPhone. But if it’s a secondary iPhone or a test device, you may not mind.

 

Red: OsxDaily

 

Can I Play Fortnite on iPhone with GeForce ?

 You can play Fortnite on iPhone again, thanks to the impressive capabilities of GeForce Now. No, the Fortnite app is not back on the App Store for iPhone or iPad, but it is available to play by streaming from the web through Safari and the Geforce Now service, and believe it or not it works pretty well.

ou can play Fortnite for free but you’ll have limited game time of an hour, and performance is limited to 1080p, which depending on your network connection may be suitable anyway. Or you can pay for for better performance, unlimited game time, and for access to other games too.

How to Play Fortnite on iPhone with GeForce Now

    1. Go to play.geforcenow.com in Safari on iPhone

    2. Follow the onscreen instructions to add GeForce Now to your home screen as a bookmark

    3. Go to the home screen and launch the Geforce Now web app

    4. Sign up for a GeForceNow account if you don’t already have one (you can make a free account with the aforementioned limitations)

    5. Choose Fortnite, and tap Play, and away you go

As long as you have a decent internet connection, you’ll find gameplay is pretty good, even with the limited resolution at the free level. It’s certainly playable.

 

 

 

Whether or not you consider this better than using Xbox, Switch, or another platform to play Fortnite is up to you, but if you’ve been wishing you could play it on your iPhone all over again, this is another solution available.

If this seems familiar, it may be because this has been possible on the Mac and iPad by spoofing the browser user agent, but now it’s officially supported.

And for what it’s worth, you can also play Fortnite on your iPhone or iPad through a web browser with Xbox cloud gaming too. The choice is yours! Have fun and happy gaming.

 

Red: OsxDaily

 

 

 

 

 

Step by step Install MacOS Ventura

 MacOS Ventura beta is available to install and run for Mac users who are interested in trying out the developer version of the upcoming Mac operating system.

 

Installing the Ventura beta is pretty easy, though it’s currently only available to registered Apple Developers. Other users will have to wait until the public beta is released next month, or for the final version in the fall.

Requirements for Installing MacOS Ventura Beta

You will need access to the macOS Ventura beta profile, which requires a developer account. Technically you can find the profiles online, but don’t do that, just wait for the public beta next month.

You will also need a Mac compatible with macOS Ventura, which is a much more strict list than prior MacOS versions. Any Mac from 2017 or later can run Ventura, whereas any Mac from before that can not. Specifically, any iMac from 2017 or newer, MacBook Pro from 2017 or newer, MacBook Air from 2018 or newer, MacBook from 2017 or newer, Mac Pro from 2019 or newer, or iMac Pro can run macOS Ventura.

It’s also not ideal to run beta system software on primary hardware, so preferably you have a test machine to try Ventura out on. And don’t forget that removing Ventura means you have to erase the entire Mac, you can’t simply reinstall Monterey.

How to Install macOS Ventura Beta on a Mac

Be sure to backup your Mac with Time Machine or otherwise before installing macOS Ventura beta. Failure to backup could result in permanent data loss.

     1. Visit the Apple Developer downloads site and login with your Apple ID, then choose MacOS 13 beta (Ventura)

    2. Choose to “Install Profile” to download the macOSDeveloperBetaAccessUtility.dmg file to your Mac

    3. Mount macOSDeveloperBetaAccessUtility.dmg and run the package installer, this installs the MacOS Ventura 13 beta profile onto the Mac

    4. Open System Preferences and go to “Software Update” to find the MacOS 13 Beta available to download and install

     5. Choose to “Upgrade Now” for macOS 13 beta *

     6. Let the macOS Ventura beta installer download, when finished it will reboot the Mac automatically directly into installing

    7. Proceed with the installation as usual, there are no onscreen prompts as Ventura just immediately installs

* Important Note: macOS Ventura beta immediately starts installation and reboots directly to installing over the current operating system, it is not like prior macOS versions where an installer application is downloaded into /Applications/ that you can manually quit.

** Important Note 2: You can also not remove or uninstall macOS Ventura easily, even by booting into Recovery Mode which will only offer the option to reinstall macOS 13. If you want to remove macOS Ventura beta from a Mac, you have to erase the entire hard disk and then use a USB installer drive for macOS Monterey to install that and start over again.

MacOS 13 Ventura beta will restart a few times to complete installation, and when done you will boot directly into Ventura. Again, there is no opportunity to select a different target disk to install Ventura onto, it just starts installing right away as soon as you click “Upgrade Now” from the Monterey system preferences.  

MacOS Ventura is obviously in early beta thus it’s not going to perform as well as expected, and you should anticipate bugs and crashing apps and unusual behavior. Also, many of the features will be refined as the beta period continues, so don’t be surprised if things change and shift as the versions continue to evolve towards the final release this fall. Hopefully things like the System Settings (replacing System Preferences) changes back to a more Mac like interface as well, since as of now it looks like someone copy/pasted the iOS Settings onto the Mac and looks very out of place and is not intuitive at all. There’s also something strange about the fonts display, maybe they system font is thinner, but whatever it is is causing me eye strain. Overall, I would not recommend installing the Ventura beta at this point, for anyone except true developers working on app compatibility.

 

Red: OsxDaily

 

 

Activate Feature Voice Isolation with FaceTime on Mac

 Voice Isolation mode allows FaceTime on the Mac to emphasize your voice while on FaceTime calls, thereby reducing background noises and sounds. This is a nice feature if you have some background noise going on that may drown out your voice when talking or make you otherwise difficult to hear, whether that’s a loud fan running in the background, a cat meowing, dog barking, a neighbors bad music blasting, or any such situation. You can use this on any FaceTime call, whether it’s video, audio, or group chat.

You’d be forgiven for failing to find any setting for voice isolation or background noise reduction while digging around in the FaceTime preferences, because that’s not where the capability resides. Instead, you use the Control Center, as we’ll demonstrate.

How to Reduce Background Noise in FaceTime on Mac with Voice Isolation

This feature is only available on the latest versions of macOS system software (12.0 or later), so if you haven’t updated yet you will need to do that before having access to the feature.

        1. Open FaceTime on the Mac if you haven’t done so already

        2. Now open Control Center on the Mac by clicking on the little switches icon in the menu bar

        3.  Click on “Mic Mode” to switch the microphone mode

 

        4. Choose “Voice Isolation” from the microphone mode options

 

        5. Return to FaceTime and make your FaceTime call as usual, whether video or audio

It’s a little curious that you have to go to Control Center to access the microphone mode to aim for background noise reduction in a FaceTime call, but that’s where the toggle is located. Perhaps in the future there will also be an easy option directly from the FaceTime call or app itself.

This is a feature that is available in macOS Monterey and newer, so if you’re on an earlier version of MacOS you won’t find the feature available.

This feature is really useful if you spend a lot of time making FaceTime calls, whether for personal or professional purposes. You’ll find it works pretty well.

While we’re covering the Mac here, you can also use background noise reduction with FaceTime calls on iPhone and iPad too using the same technology to isolate your voice and reduce background sounds.

Try it out, it works really well. 

You can further improve performance by using a microphone, AirPods, or even the wired EarBuds. In testing with a set of AirPods, I was able to run a vacuum cleaner while chatting on a call, and the person said they couldn’t hear the vacuum at all.

This feature is useful enough that it’s a little surprising it isn’t enabled by default for calls, since most people are making calls to hear a person chat, and not the background noise. Perhaps that will change down the road.

 

Red: OsxDaily

 

 

 

The way to Enable or Disable Macro Camera Controls on iPhone 13 Pro

 You can choose to have manual macro camera controls, or use the automatic macro mode setting, on the latest top-end model iPhones including iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max. This can help you to take macro photos easier, and more suitable to how you use your iPhone camera.

With manual macro camera controls enabled, when the macro camera is available you can tap a flower macro mode option to enable the iPhone macro camera.

With automatic macro camera mode enabled, the macro camera will activate itself when it is available by moving the iPhone camera lens close to an object or subject.

How to Toggle Macro Camera Control On or Off on iPhone Pro

Here’s how to customize the macro camera controls on iPhone:

        1. Open the “Settings” app then go to “Camera”

        2. Scroll down and locate “Macro Control” and toggle the switch ON to enable manual macro camera controls, or toggle the switch OFF to enable automatic macro mode on iPhone camera

 

How you prefer this setting to be is up to you and how you use iPhone camera macro mode.

If you prefer more manual controls, you’ll likely want to enable the Macro Control option, since you can choose when to use Macro Mode on the iPhone camera or not.

If you’d rather have the iPhone take care of things on its own, disabling Macro Control allows the iPhone to enter or exit macro mode on its own whenever using the iPhone camera.

This setting is only available on the latest high end iPhone models, including iPhone 13 Pro, iPhone 13 Pro Max, or better.

 

Red : OsxDaily

 

Why Camera Freezing on iPhone 7 and iPhone 7+ ? How Fixing it?

Some iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus users have discovered their wonderful camera freezes on open and randomly does not work.

When this happens it’s quite obvious; the user attempts to open the Camera either from the lock screen or the Camera app directly, and instead of having access to the camera, either a stuck blank black screen will show up on the camera display or a blurred image will show up on the camera display, and the iPhone is unable to take any picture or video.

Given that most iPhone users rely on it as their primary camera, and the emphasis Apple continuously places on using the iPhone as a camera for all of your photography needs, this is a pretty annoying bug.

While there is no great way to resolve this problem, there is a rather blunt-force solution to fix the stuck iPhone 7 camera issue.

Forcibly reboot the iPhone.

Yes, a forced restart is a decidedly low-tech solution but it works. Unfortunately simply quitting the camera app is not sufficient, you must reboot the iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus to get the camera to function reliably again.
If you have not rebooted the iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus yet, it’s slightly different from restarting prior iPhone models; rather than holding down the Home button you hold down the lower volume button, here is how you reboot the latest iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus models, which will fix the frozen camera problem:

• Hold down Power button and the volume down button until the  Apple logo appears on the iPhone 7 / iPhone 7 Plus screen

Once the iPhone boots up again as normal, access the camera and it will work as intended (for a while anyway, it may randomly freeze up again and require another restart down the road). This is more of a temporary workaround than a true fix since it can happen again, so perhaps a future iOS update will permanently fix the issue.

Here are two examples of what a frozen iPhone 7 / iPhone 7 Plus camera looks like, I personally encounter this issue a few times a week on a device updated to the latest iOS version:

iPhone 7 Plus camera frozen on all-black screen:

 
 iPhone 7 Plus camera frozen on a blurred image:

The iPhone 7 freezing camera issue a well documented problem on YouTube and throughout various discussion forums on Apple support site and elsewhere on the web (1, 2, 3, 4, etc). Oddly enough, release notes in iOS 10.1 noted a bug fix for a similar camera app issue, but the bug persists in the latest versions of iOS including iOS 10.2 and 10.2.1 for some iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus users.

It’s likely the freezing camera issue will be fixed once and for all in a future iOS software update for iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus users, since it is probably software related and not a hardware problem. As always, be sure to keep your iOS devices updated to the latest software versions to receive these bug fixes. You can update iOS system software on an iPhone in the Settings app > General > Software Update.

Since almost all iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus owners likely have their devices under warranty, another option is to contact official Apple Support and let see if they can offer a more permanent solution. Some reports online indicate Apple has swapped out cameras or the entire devices if the issue persists for some users, so if you frequently encounter the problem you may want to go that route.

Have you experienced the frozen camera issue? Did this work for you? Do you have another solution to resolve the frozen camera problem on iPhone 7? Let us know in the comments.


source: http://osxdaily.com

Apple iPhone iOS 7 Release 18th September

iOS 7 will be available to the public on September 18, according to Apple. The release date was announced today at Apple’s iPhone event held at their Cupertino campus.

The update will be available through an OTA Software Update on all compatible devices, and also accessible from iTunes and ISPW as usual. Supported hardware for iOS 7 includes iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPad 2, iPad 3, iPad 4, iPad mini, and the iPod touch 4th and 5th gen. Of course, the new iPhone 5C and 5S models will also support iOS 7 and will ship with the redesigned OS preinstalled.

iOS 7 is a free update offering many new features, along with a significant user interface overhaul to Apple’s mobile experience. Additionally, iWork and iLife apps will become free and be available along with the iOS 7 release, which includes apps like Keynote, Pages, Numbers, iMovie, and iPhoto.

As usual, users are advised to back up their devices before updating to any new version.

Tips to Tell if Someone Snooped Your iPhone / iPad & Read Emails, Messages, Call Log

If you suspect someone is snooping through your iPhone call log, messages, email, or through other apps, you can set a simple trap of sorts to potentially catch such intrusions on privacy. The idea behind this is pretty simple: quit out of all apps to leave the task bar empty, then check on the multitask screen to see if someone used an app. Since most people don’t bother to check what apps are running, they will unintentionally leave their app usage traces behind.

Here’s how to set the app-trap on any iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, and how to check it later to see if someone was using apps and meddling about your business:

Setting the Snoop Trap in iOS

If you’re convinced (or paranoid) that someone is peeking at your apps, messages, or private details, you can do this every time you leave an iOS device alone:

• Double-click the Home button to summon multitasking
• Tap and hold on an app icon then tap the red (-) button to kill the apps – you can use multitouch on the red buttons to quit multiple apps at the same time to speed up the process
• With a blank multitask screen, tap the Home button again to return to the home screen as usual

Now you just need to leave the iPhone, iPad, or iPod alone, placed somewhere that you think the snoop may use the device to poke around in apps, messages, call logs, snap chats, whatever you are suspicious someone is being overly nosy with.

(Note: iOS 7 requires a swipe up on apps to kill them, the tap-and-hold function no longer works to quit apps. All else is the same, however)

Checking the Snoop Trap to See if Someone Used Your iPhone / iPad

After you have set the trap and suspect someone may have used the device, catching the snoop is quite simple:

• Double-tap on the Home button again to summon the multitasking screen – if any apps appear in the menu then you know someone has opened them in your absence

In this screen shot example, someone launched the “Messages” app after all the other apps had been quit, indicating that someone used the iPhone and poked around in the messages application to read texts or iMessages:

Determining if someone read emails would be indicated by Mail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, or whatever email client being left open. Call logs would be shown as the Phone app, and whatever other app(s) left open could be suggestive of someone poking around in there.

If multiple apps have been opened, the order in which they appear – from left to right – indicates which app was most recently used or gone through. You could be a bit more subtle and leave a series of apps in the task bar this way, then simply look for that sequence of apps to be out of order or rearranged to catch prying eyes.

Of course, if someone is savvy enough to check the multitasking bar or is aware of this app trap concept, they’ll be able to evade such tactics by quitting the apps again after browsing through them. Nonetheless, for the average iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch user, this should be sufficient to catch your average petty snoop of a curious little sibling, a suspicious partner, or an invasive roommate.

We’ve discussed similar tricks for the Mac to help determine if someone was opening files or applications, but unlike OS X, iOS offers no easily accessible system logs demonstrating unlock or wake records.

Preventing Privacy Invasions & Snoopers

The best way to prevent any snooping, poking about, or general invasion of your iOS device privacy is by using a pass word on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, preferably setting a strong passcode that is alphanumeric and not easily guessed.

Finally, if you backup an iOS device to your computer through iTunes, be sure to enable backup encryption for the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to prevent determined parties from being able to easily gain access to the device backups, including text messages, call logs, and other personal data.

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Heads up to CultOfMac for this busybody buster trick.

Recovery Your Deleted iPhone Contacts

It’s never fun to accidentally delete a contact that is needed, let alone multiple contacts or even an entire address book. If you find yourself in a situation where you have deleted contacts from your iPhone that you then must recover, you can often get them back by performing a variety of tricks. We’ll cover four ways to get your address book or an individual contact restored, read through each of them to understand their efficacy and determine which is most likely to work for you.

Before attempting any of this, it’s a good idea to make a manual backup of your existing Contacts, you can do that with iTunes or iCloud, iCloud on the web, or the Contacts app in OS X. This insures that if you somehow make things worse, you’ll have a Contacts backup to return to.

1: Restore the Deleted Contact from Contacts in iCloud or OS X

Though Contacts syncs through iCloud, Mac users can use the inevitable syncing latency to their advantage and often retrieve deleted contacts by going to the Contacts (or Address Book) application. This also works with the iCloud web interface, and is best with recently deleted contacts, or with devices that have been offline from iCloud:

• Disable the internet connection by pulling down the Wi-Fi menu and turn Wi-Fi OFF
• Launch Contacts (or Address Book) in OS X, or Contacts from iCloud.com on the web, and use the search feature to locate the contact in question
• Open the contact and pull down the File menu, choosing “Export” then “Export Vcard” to save the contact(s) as a .vcf file – this will serve as a backup in case the next step does not work
• With the contact still selected, click the sharing button arrow and choose “Email Card” to launch the default mail app with the contacts vcard attached
• Turn Wi-Fi back on to send the email containing the contact card
• Go to the iPhone, open the email and choose the attachment, selecting to “Create New Contact”

The reason to turn off wi-fi quickly is to prevent Contacts from syncing changes with the iPhone. If done fast enough, you will often find the contact deleted from your iPhone is still sitting in iCloud.com or Contacts app in OS X.

2: Retrieving Deleted Contacts by Re-Syncing iCloud

This basically resyncs your existing Contacts list with what is stored in iCloud. It does not always work to restore removed contacts, but it’s worth a shot if the above trick wasn’t a success:

• Open Settings and go to “iCloud”
• Flip Contacts to OFF
• Choose “Keep on My iPhone” when asked about what to do with previously synced contacts
• Flip Contacts to ON
• Choose “Merge” to merge existing contacts to those stored in iCloud
• Head back to the Contacts (or Phone) app and check to see if the contact(s) that were deleted are back

When this method works, it’s extremely simple and quite fast, but there is no guarantee here.

3: Restore Everything from an iTunes Backup

If you sync your iPhone regularly to a computer, you can restore the iPhone from a backup within iTunes and recover deleted contacts that way. This will recover them but obviously requires that you have synced and backed up the device to a computer before the removal incident occurred:

• Connect the iPhone to a computer that it has backed up to before
• Launch iTunes and choose “Restore from Backup”
• Select the most recent backup prior to the deletion of the contact(s) and restore to that

Restoring can take a while, so just let it sit. When finished, the iPhone will reboot and you’ll have your contacts back again.

4: Get the Contact Back from Someone Else

If it’s a single contact, find out if a friend, family member, or colleague has the contact information, then just have them share it with you, it will be much easier and faster than any of the other methods of retrieval. Of course this won’t be an option if nobody else has the addressee information though, making this perhaps the least universally applicable option.

Losing important contacts is a major pain, and though it’s a recoverable problem, it does emphasize the importance of regular backups, both locally to a computer, and to iCloud. So back up regularly, and don’t let it happen again!

A quick side note: there are a million and one third party apps preying on the desperate and claiming to be able to recover deleted contacts. These usually charging high prices and offer no guarantees. Don’t buy into it, most are no more effective than manual methods outlined here.

Automatically Back Up Your Photos on iPhone

You can really never have too many backups of your most important files, and since our iPhone photos and pictures often fall into the ‘very important’ category, having an automatic backup solution directly from your iPhone can be a good idea. Yes, using iCloud will back up some photos, but it doesn’t offer direct access to a single picture the way that copying them to your computer does. That’s where Dropbox can come in, offering a bit of both worlds; direct photo access, but the photos are backed up to the cloud.

For the unfamiliar, Dropbox offers an excellent cloud based file storage solution that is free at the entry level for 2GB of space. Referring friends and others to sign up can net you a total of 18GB of free space, otherwise Pro paid solutions offer anywhere from 100GB to 500GB at monthly rates. If you intend on backing up tons and tons of photos to DropBox, jumping to one of the paid plans is probably a good idea, but even at the free level you can store a fair amount of your most important pictures and access them again at any time from anywhere.

This is not meant to be a replacement to regular iPhone backups to iTunes or iCloud, nor regularly transferring pictures to a local computer for backup, but it does offer an excellent simple solution for another layer of backups, providing easy redundancy for photo backups that happens automatically.

Configure Simple Automatic iPhone Photo Backups with Dropbox

• Get Dropbox free from the App Store and sign up for an account if you haven’t done so yet (2GB account is free, pay for more)
• Launch Dropbox on the iPhone and login with DropBox
• At the “Camera Upload” screen, choose “Only Wi-Fi” (recommended) and then tap “Enable”, then tap “Allow” to provide DropBox access to the camera roll to begin uploading photos

The Wi-Fi Only upload setting is recommended otherwise you can quickly go over your cellular data plan limits.

The DropBox app Photos tab will have a red badge indicating how many photos remain to be uploaded, and selecting that tab will show you the progress of uploads from Camera Roll. The initial backup process can take a while, depending on the speed of your connection and how many photos are uploading. You can check the progress any time by going to the Photos tab:

If Wi-Fi is not found, Dropbox is smart enough to wait until a wifi connection is available before trying to upload the images again.

Note: if you would rather manually manage and upload photos from the iPhone directly to Dropbox, turn automatic uploads OFF from Settings, and instead handle uploads directly from the Dropbox app itself.

Accessing Backed Up iPhone Photos from DropBox

Once you have your iPhone photos backed up to Dropbox, you can access them anytime from the Dropbox iOS app on any device using the same login. Browsing through photos stored in Dropbox is easy, and images are stored chronologically.

Downloading a picture back to the iPhone (or another iOS device) is just a matter of launching the app then:

• Tap the Photos tab
• Select the photo you want to download and choose “Save to Photo Library” to transfer it back to your iPhone from Dropbox

Another significant feature of Dropbox is the availability of a desktop app (also a free download), meaning you can always access any photos or files backed up to Dropbox from your iPhone right from the desktop OS, whether that’s Mac OS X or Windows. On the desktop side of things, Dropbox behaves like any other folder in the OS X file system, providing for simple access to everything, with easy drag & drop support of uploads and downloads.

For users who like direct access to files and the file system, Dropbox behaves like iCloudshould behave, without having to resort to quirky tweaks to gain direct control of files like what is required when accessing iCloud from the desktop. Again, it’s not meant to be a replacement to iCloud, but it does offer some nice perks that go well to complement Apple’s backup offerings. Even if you don’t pay for a larger level of Dropbox storage, having the free 2GB plan to store some of your most precious photo memories is so easy that there is little reason not to do so.

How to See Proceses Are Running in the Background of iOS

iOS platform does not have an Activity Monitor or task manager the way that desktop Macs do within OS X, but if you’d like to see what apps and processes are running in the background of an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, you can do so using a few different methods. For most users, simply showing the multitasking bar is sufficient, but the curious can also reveal system-level processes using alternate methods with a third party app or, for users who have jailbroken their devices, the command line.

1: The Basic iOS Task Manager

Just about every iOS user is probably aware of the task manager by now, which is accessed by double-clicking the Home button. The row of icons across the bottom show what apps are running in the background, and you can flip left or right to see more of them.

The task manager only shows apps though, and if you were hoping for something a bit more specific or technical, you’ll need to turn to another solution from a third party.

2: Use a Process App like DeviceStats

DeviceStats is a free third party app that may not be the prettiest thing in the world, but it works to show you which processes are actively running in the background of an iOS device, including daemons and background tasks.

• Grab DeviceStats from the App Store

Launching DeviceStats on an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch will show a variety of tabs and options, but what we’re interested in is the “Processes” tab, which will also have a red badge on it to indicate the total number of processes running.

Scrolling through the list should reveal some familiar names of apps that you have open, things like Camera, Calculator, Videos, Photos, Preferences, Music, etc, and there will also be many tasks shown that are background processes, system tasks, and daemons.

Nothing listed within DeviceStats is directly actionable through the app itself, meaning that even if you identify a process you can’t really do anything about it unless it’s a standard app. Standard apps can be quit as usual, or killed (forcibly quit) through direct measures. There is no way to kill or quit out of background daemons and tasks running within iOS, however.

3: Using ‘top’ or ‘ps aux’ from the Command Line – Jailbreak Only

Users who have jailbroken their iOS devices can access the command line directly, either by using an app like MobileTerminal or by connecting directly to the device through SSH.

Once connected through the command line, you can use the ‘top’ or ‘ps aux’ command to see all active processes. “top” will provide a live updated list of processes, whereas ‘ps aux’ will print a snapshot of all processes and daemons, but not update any live CPU or memory usage. Processes that have been identified by ps or top can also be killed directly through the command line, but that may have unintended consequences for the iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch, and cause it to freeze up or crash, requiring a device reboot. Again, this is only accessible through jailbroken devices, which makes this option fairly limited.

Short ways to change the Home Button Click Speed for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch

If you have an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, you probably know by now that double-clicking and triple-clicking the Home button is required to perform some actions in iOS, like bringing up lock screen music controls, showing the multitasking bar, inverting the screen, enabling zoom, summoning Assistive Touch, or even turning on Guided Access to lock iOS into a single app.
The default speed required for clicking the Home button can be problematic for some individuals though, as it requires a fairly speedy double or triple tap to work. Thankfully, with iOS 6 onward we can now easily make changes to the required click speed required to activate the Home button:

• Open Settings, then go to “General” and “Accessibility”
• Tap on “Home-click Speed” and choose either “Slow” or “Slowest” as the new Home click setting

Tapping any of the Home-click speed choices will cause the iPhone or iPad to vibrate at the new speed required to activate the double-click or triple-click, providing a good indicator of the new leniency allowed.




The “Slow” setting is a fairly reasonable alternative for many people, but for young kids, those with motor impairments, or anyone with a broken hand or wrist, the “Slowest” option will prevent a lot of frustration.
 
You will need iOS 6 or later installed in order to have this feature, but it works the same on an iPad, iPod, or iPhone.

How to Backing Up Your iPhone Contacts Without iTunes

Anytime you use iCloud or iTunes to back up an iPhone or iOS device, the Contacts will be backed up automatically assuming the default settings are preserved. If you want to store an additional backup outside of iTunes and iCloud however, by far the easiest way to do that is with Address Book.

This will create a portable vCard file that contains all contact information, this can be stored anywhere as a manual backup and it can also be sent to other devices and imported to other phones, operating systems, email clients, and much more.

1. Launch Address Book from the Applications folder
2. Pull down the “File” menu and go to “Export” and then to “Export vCard”       
3. Set the save destination and name the .vcf file something like “Contacts-Backup”

The file you just exported is the contacts list backup. The vCard format is widely accepted and can be imported into just about anything else while preserving all names, emails, phone numbers, and whatever other data you had entered.

In fact, if you attach the resulting .vcf file to an email and send it to another iOS device, Windows phone, or Android, you can actually transfer all the contacts to a new phone without using iTunes at all too. This is handy if you want to setup a new phone with only the contacts intact, are sharing contacts with a partner, or you are temporarily using another device and don’t want to manually sync it with a bunch of other stuff.

You can also easily send single contacts directly from iOS if you wish to back up a unique contact or just share it with someone else.

How to Downgrade iOS 6 Beta to iOS 5.1.1

If you went ahead and installed iOS 6 beta and determined the buggy nature of the first developer release isn’t for you, it’s time to downgrade. Most developers should know how to do this already, but if not this process is easy and you’ll be back to running iOS 5.1.1 in no time at all.

Downgrading is identical on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

1. Turn the device off, connect it to the computer via USB, and launch iTunes
2. Place the iOS device into DFU mode: with the device off, hold down the Power and Home buttons together for 10 seconds then release the power button, continue holding Home button until iTunes notifies you of a device in recovery mode being detected. The devices screen should stay black as if turned off.
3. Restore within iTunes through either method a or b:
• a: Restore from the iOS 5.1.1 backup you made prior to installing iOS 6 beta
• b: Restore to iOS 5.1.1 IPSW by Option-Clicking the “Restore” button, and then restore from iCloud backup when finished
4. Let iTunes restore back to iOS 5.1.1, the device will reboot when finished

Typically you can’t downgrade iOS versions so easily, but because Apple is still signing iOS 5.1.1 this allows downgrading to commence with minimal effort.

Troubleshooting the Downgrade:
If you get any strange errors (3194, 1013, etc) when trying to restore, you probably have Apple’s servers blocked in your hosts file. This is relatively common for people who jailbroke a device at some point in their iOS usage. Remove any blocks to Apple’s servers from /etc/hosts and try again.

How to Use FaceTime for Voice-only Calls When Video Stutters or is Problematic

If you’ve used FaceTime in an area without the best internet connections you’ve probably experienced the choppy video, breaking audio, and other call difficulties that can arrise as a result of poor internet service. Rather than giving up on the communication completely, you can turn the video call into a voice-only call and dramatically increase the calls audio quality. This allows you to basically use FaceTime as a voice over IP (VOIP) service, with very clear voice chat working even when the bandwidth is restricted enough for an otherwise awful connection.


To force FaceTime into voice-only mode:

1. Start a FaceTime video call as usual
2. After the connection has been made, hit the Home button on the iPhone, IPad, or iPod touch

This freezes transmission of video but allows the audio to continue streaming. You’ll end up at the homescreen with the iOS status bar showing an active FaceTime connection, saying “touch to resume”, but you’ll notice audio chat works perfectly and the quality of the audio is suddenly dramatically improved.

Presumably the reason this works so well is by reallocating the available bandwidth away from the video channel and all into audio, resulting in surprisingly high quality voice calls. The obvious downside of course is you’ll miss the video chat portion, but if you’re making an important call and either yourself or the recipient is using subpar internet service, a voice call is certainly better than nothing. 

This works wonderfully on iPad and iPhone, and it should even work in the Mac OS X FaceTime client if you just minimize the app into the Dock.

Of course, you can always make true VOIP calls with Skype and Google Voice, but since not everyone has those installed on their iPads, iPods, Macs, and iPhones, this FaceTime solution works for just about anyone. 

Jailbreak iOS 6 with Redsn0w 0.9.13 is Available

The first beta of iOS 6 has only been in the wild a few days but has already been jailbroken. The DevTeam released a dev build of Redsn0w 0.9.13 to handle the jailbreak which works on iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and iPod touch 4G, though each device is tethered for the time being and there are a handful of major issues with the jailbreak that should prevent most users from attempting to use it on their devices.

As the versioning implies, Redsn0w 0.9.13dev1 is intended for developers only. There are many components that do not work, including Apple’s default apps, many 3rd party apps, Cydia apps, and more. Furthermore, this version of the tethered jailbreak does not install Cydia. Because of all the caveats this is really a proof of concept and should not be widely adopted beyond those developing jailbreak tweaks or apps, but it does suggest that when iOS 6 is released to the public a jailbreak will accompany it rather quickly.

Download Redsn0w 0.9.13dev

For the brave devs that wish to try this, these are direct links:

• Mac
• Windows

If you’re a developer and you wish to try this out, point Redsn0w at the iOS 6 IPSW file to jailbreak, and then boot tethered. As the Dev Team mentions, anyone attempting to use this version of redsn0w will need a registered UDID to activate their device.

iOS 6 is scheduled for a public release this fall.

Compatibility & Supported Devices on iOS 6

iOS 6 comes with over 200 new features that will make the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch even better, but there’s a few caveats: first, it doesn’t run on all hardware, and second, on some of the supported devices the feature set will be limited. We’ll sort all of that out.

Devices Supported by iOS 6
According to Apple, the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPad 2, iPad 3, and iPod touch 4th gen will all run iOS 6.

Noticeably absent from the supported device lineup are the iPad 1 and iPod touch 3rd gen, despite those devices having similar hardware to some of the other supported hardware. If you have one of these older devices, consider an upgrade if you want the latest and greatest features.

iOS 6 Feature Compatibility
Here is where things get slightly more complicated: Even if your iPhone or iPad can run iOS 6 that doesn’t mean it will support all of the features.

Some of the more anticipated and prominent improvements in iOS 6 like FaceTime over 3G won’t be supported on the iPhone 4 or 3GS for example, and Siri will come to iPad 3 but not iPad 2. And many of the most exciting features won’t work whatsoever on the iPhone 3GS, and are barely supported by the iPhone 4. If this sounds complicated it’s really not, but to help decipher which of the bigger features will work with what, MacRumors put together a helpful chart…

You’ll notice it’s only the newest hardware that is fully compatible with most of the major features of the newest iOS, but keep in mind that all supported hardware will be benefiting from the smaller improvements, with things like the iPhones new calling features, Guided Access, Single App mode, Facebook integration, Do Not Disturb, and all of the many more subtle improvements that were demoed at WWDC.

iOS 6 was given a loose release date of “Fall” of this year.

on WWDC 2012: New Macs, OS X Mountain Lion, iOS 6, MacBook Pro, etc

If you don’t have time to watch the WWDC 2012 keynote video, here’s a quick summary of everything major that was announced at WWDC and also a few things that were quietly updated behind the scenes. New Macs, new operating systems, new apps, it was a big day for Apple.

Macs & OS X Mountain Lion

• Next-Generation Retina MacBook Pro released, starts at $2199 and features a 15″ whopping 2880×1800 display while weighing 4.4lbs in a thinner unibody enclosure. Quad-core Ivy Bridge CPU’s, 8GB RAM and SSD standard. It’s freakishly powerful and attractive, hide your credit card or else you will probably buy one.
• MacBook Air gets updated at both 11″ and 13″ models, 4GB RAM standard and accepts maximum 8GB RAM, Ivy Bridge CPU, USB 3.0, Intel HD 4000 GPU, faster SSD drives, FaceTime HD camera, all models $100 cheaper. Decent update to great Macs.
• Existing MacBook Pro 13″ and MacBook Pro 15″ models got minor spec updates, Ivy Bridge CPU’s, Nvidia 650M GPU, it’s a matter of opinion but compared to the new Retina MacBook Pro and update MacBook Air line the MacBook Pro is now officially boring.
• OS X Mountain Lion release set for next month, priced at $19.99 and a single purchase installs on all of your Macs. As we mentioned a while back, you can upgrade directly from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion too. OS X 10.8 also has over 200 new features, heavy iCloud integration, iMessage, Share Sheets, Power Nap, and much more.
• OS X Mountain Lion Dev Preview 4 is now available for developers.
• Mac Pro got a quiet minor update so boring that it’s barely worth mentioning.
• MacBook Pro 17″ was silently discontinued. But did we mention the Retina MacBook Pro 15″?

iOS 6 and iOS Related

• iOS 6 Announced: Everyone knew it was coming but iOS 6 was officially announced at WWDC, along with a loose release date of “Fall” which probably coincides with whenever the next iPhone will arrive. Over 200 new features are packed into the update.
• New Maps app with turn-by-turn directions, crowd sourced traffic updates, and more
• FaceTime comes to 3G and 4G networks
• Siri gets major updates and improvements, can launch apps.
• Siri comes to iPad 3 with iOS 6
• Many new cars will have Siri integration, Apple working with auto manufacturers to bring Siri buttons directly into the steering wheel of upcoming cars, support from a huge range of manufacturers
• iOS 6 beta 1 for developers is now available to download.
• iPad “Smart Case” released, it’s basically a Smart Cover with rear protection as well.

Mac & iOS Related

• New AirPort Express was introduced
• Back to School Promo starts today for students, $100 iTunes gift card for a new Mac purchase, and $50 with a new iPad purchase
• iTunes 10.6.3 is out, has bug fixes and required for installing the iOS 6 beta

And that’s about it.