Pips ‘N’ Peelings

Make a contact (perhaps First Name iPhone, Last Name Dictionary so you remember) and put in the company field all the words you don’t want auto-corrected.

That’s it.

I think it is daft that we have to go to such lengths, but fab that there is a work around. I have sent so many SMS, tweets, and social network messages with gaffs in them thanks to the iPhone auto-correct feature. It is a godsend when typing quickly on the phone as it catches most of the miss-types fairly intelligently, but its when it has corrected something you meant to type that it gets infuriating.

Thanks to a fairly cryptic tweet from @goobimama of Smoking Apples. ‘Ducking He’ll’. I’m a bit slow.

When setting up an Microsoft Exchange mail account on the iPhone you will need to take at least one error message with a pinch of salt. I was running around for days with the settings for an Exchange account.

First let me say that if the Microsoft Exchange mail set-up doesn’t work and the emails don’t instantly flood in there are indicators as to progress.

1. If the iPhone asks whether to accept a certificate, it at least means contact with the server has been made. Fed up with this error? Ask the server admin to send you the certificate in an email. Send it to your iPhone unzipped, open the email, tap the attachment and install it.
2. If the iPhone says the password is incorrect, and it doesn’t accept the password you know is right. Always the thing with the iPhone keyboard -  the nagging doubt that you haven’t typed it in right - the problem might be nothing to do with the password:

Look again at what you have entered in “Domain”. If you are like me and you followed what works in Entourage, you might feel confident that you have it right. But double check. I found it was this “optional” entry that was the cause of my problems. It wasn’t until I used the company domain name that the emails started to arrive (rather than the name of any internal domain, or web email server, or anything else I was given or had even worked in Microsoft Entourage). And no password errors.

What I don’t understand is why the iPhone didn’t just say “Unknown Domain” instead of “Incorrect Password”. It would have saved me a day’s messing about.

A good guide to Microsoft Exchange setup here:

http://support.apple.com/manuals/en_US/Enterprise_Deployment_Guide.pdf

So version 2.2 of the iPhone OS software is here. Should I update my iPhone? I probably won’t. Despite the fact that I love the iPhone just as much as I do my Mac, this update doesn’t move me.

My iPhone 2.1 is jailbroken, and that means I have a lot of extras on it that aren’t in 2.2. I am also disappointed with the feature list in 2.2. Here’s a few reasons why:

• Google Maps: Why can’t I view the maps I have saved in my Google account? I have a map showing where my clients are based that I can view on my desktop. I would love to have this on my iPhone in an iPhone-comfortable format.
   
• Google Street View doesn’t work for UK locations (not sure that I care).
   
• Mail enhancements: These are welcome, but why can’t I attach files? Why can’t I have a landscape keyboard like in Safari? (OK, I can if I use a separate app like WritingPad or EasyWriter, but that takes a bit of forward planning). Actually these ar rhetorical questions; if you know the technical reason why not, don’t worry I probably won’t be able to follow it.
   
• Downloadable podcasts: I’m sure this is very slick in iTunes. But I am already doing this via MobileCast (jailbroken iPhone required) though I admit it is a bit flakey. It is the one new feature that really interests me.
   
• Turn on/off auto-correction. Now I’m really irritated when the auto-correct feature corrects an abbreviation I’ve used or changes a word into something else without me noticing. But on other occasions it helps me type at speed. I don’t want to turn this feature off! I want it to improve. My other smartphone* learns my vocabulary and learns what I write and actually guesses right more often as a result. That’s the feature I want.
   

Features I would miss in a non-jailbroken iPhone that Apple should have included in this update:

• Appletalk based file sharing (”netatalk”). I have awakened my iPhone, and there it is in the Devices list in the Mac’s Finder. I can mount it and send files to it just like any other Mac on my network, providing I log on with the right user name and password. Actually, I can see why Apple haven’t done this, as I could log on as “root” and happily trash my iPhone. But the facility to log on as a user and drag and drop files to and from my iPhone is so useful. There are apps that do something similar in the App Store using the WebDAV protocol, but they seem to share their files from different places in the iPhone file structure. There are also those that share via MobileMe iDisk.
   
• Eye candy. I just like having any background I choose behind the app icons, and not just on the splash screen. I want to change my icons and use different themes. Normal behaviour on any other phone.
   
• Terminal. ‘Nuff said.

 Features not in 2.2 or jailbroken iPhone.

• Cut ‘n’ Paste. Aw. That is a major omission that has inconvenienced me regularly.
   
• Some way to automatically arrange the icons like you can in the Finder on the Mac OS. There is the jailbroken app Categories, but there is nothing automatic about it.
   
• Accessory: please can we have an Apple bluetooth keyboard?. Or even one that plugs in? could have a little slot in it for extra storage cards.

 
* Sony Ericsson P990i

Have just installed a plug-in from bravenewcode.com that makes wordpress blogs appear a little more neatly on the iPhone screen, and allows installation of a custom button for the iPhone home screen that links directly to the blog. It was a quick and easy install.

Thanks to Joshua at Macgasm for the tip.

You can write emails in landscape format using the wider keyboard with EasyWriter. For a limited time it is free on iTunes so go get!

Anything that makes it easier to write emails is a must.

I love the way you can add a website bookmark as an icon on the homescreen of the iPhone. It appears as an icon from the website when you chose the option when adding a bookmark in Safari.

So for instance going to the BBC iPlayer site and adding the bookmark from there adds an iPlayer icon to your screen and takes you straight there next time. This makes firing up a favourite website so much more immediate.

My enforced severance from broadband is now over. During that time one of the things I tried (to give some feeling of being connected with the rest of the world) was Twitter and the Twitter clients for iPhone (lots). Twitter is like broadcasting to the world via SMS.

The best client was Twinkle for its simple interface and geographical awareness. It actually got me communicating with people, which I guess is what it’s about, and I can choose to receive ‘tweets’ from increasing distances from my present location.

I also liked Twittervision, which has an iPhone app as well as an online version which can be seen here. It gives a picture of tweets happening right now, and where in the world they are coming from. You might just find someone talking about something that interests you.

Now that I am online again it remains to be seen whether it can keep my interest. But seeing as I think I have reached more people through it than I have through this blog, quite likely I will.

I will also be intrigued to see whether debates in bites of 140 characters can really change minds. Amazing to see how the Presidential Election is being debated in this medium. As somebody who couldn’t believe it when America re-elected Bush, I will at least be able to ask some real Americans why if they shoot themselves in the foot again this time around.

Forced by a broadband fault to max out my iPhone usage… I will be really happy to be corrected about anything in what follows.

Although email is able to receive some attachments it doesn’t seem able to send them.

I can’t resend an email. I had made a typo in the address (not one of my contacts) and it had bounced back so I wanted to send again to the right address. This would have been easy with cut n paste. Instead I had to forward it and I didn’t like the fact that it indicated the forwarding with a blue line in the margin.

I have experimented with Writingpad because it allows me to write a generic email and then pass that to the email app and make modifications before sending. Then I go back to Writingpad to send again making further modifications as necessary. This does work well except it is really impossible to type in a URL because it insists on putting a space after every full point.

When reading PDFs links don’t seem to work. I have a 200 page PDF to go through and I only seem to be able to scroll.

I really miss handwriting recognition. I can write very quickly on my SE p990i and it makes very few mistakes whereas typing on this iPhone is laborious.

No caps lock.

The screen rotation in safari is really good but I need it in email!

Some really basic mobile phone functionality is missing:
MMS - I have to go to O2 in Safari to get the message!
Bluetooth - only good if you want to use a headset, not if you want send anything.
Video - guess there’s an app somewhere that does it, but not ‘out of the box’

Trying to collect email or surf the net with the iPhone without 3G here in the UK is hideous. I am going to have to try to find someone’s open network because while I wait for BT to repair my line I can’t do a thing. Well, there are some things that work well given the narrow bandwidth here in Wantage, Oxon:
1) The App Store (installing new software takes a while but it does work)
2) The wordpress app on the iPhone I am using now
3) Unbelievably the Google maps app
4) The linkedin app

But please O2 sort out 3G coverage in Oxfordshire!

My phone line has been literally severed do I can now only connect via my iPhone. So I’ll be putting it to the test until the 26th when I’m reconnected. Sadly I upgraded to the 2.1 software and the phone is unjailbroken so I can’t use it as a modem. So glad my business depends on the Internet…