We are, of course, big fans of the iPhone’s Map application, and now reader Derek Mendenhall weighs in with a tip that makes a great feature even more useful for that next extended road trip:
Something I just found today while I was e-mailing my wife directions, I was on my computer at work, went to maps.google.com and searched out some directions. Then I clicked the send link, which gave me the option of e-mailing it to myself as well, so I did.
I opened that e-mail on my iPhone, which is essentially just a long link back to that specific page. The iPhone opens the link using Maps, not Safari, and laid in the directions for me. I thought if you’re going on a trip and need multiple sets of driving directions for different places and things that you may want to see along the way, you could look up the different routes, e-mail them to yourself, and now the directions are just a click away in Mail! Very handy while driving.
Indeed. My modus operandi for travel has been to print out the Google driving directions in advance of the trip, and having whoever’s riding shotgun handle the task of navigating via print-out. Derek’s tip certainly saves the hassle of hauling along a stack of driving directions the next time I travel.
Copyright Mac Publishing LLC. This RSS feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you’re not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you’re looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact webmaster@macworld.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Written by Philip Michaels on September 20th, 2007 with no comments.
Read more articles on Reader Experiences and Tips & Troubleshooting.
In my neverending quest to plumb the depths of iPhone multisync, I’ve got an update for you fans of ringtones purchased from Apple as well as those you create yourself and sneak into the Ringtones area via Rogue Amoeba’s MakeiPhoneRingtone utility.
As Daring Fireball’s John Gruber points out, the new terms-of-service agreement governing ringtones limits them to a single device:
You shall be able to store Products from up to five different Accounts on certain devices, such as an iPod or iPhone, at a time; provided that each iPhone may sync ring tone Products with only a single Apple-authorized device at a time, and that synching an iPhone with another Apple-authorized device will cause any ring tone Products stored on such iPhone to be erased and, if you so choose, to be replaced with any ring tone Products stored on such other Apple-authorized device.
What this says: If you attach an iPhone containing ringtones to another computer, it will wipe the ringtones. What it seems to mean, however, can be summed up in this screen shot:
In other words, just as music and videos can only be synced together from a single computer, Ringtones are also a part of that party. Note the phrasing in the dialog box: “An iPhone can be synced with only one iTunes library at a time.” Not one computer, but one iTunes library. So syncing your calendar and contacts from one computer, and your photos from another, is fine — but just the single iTunes library (for music, videos, and ringtrones), please.
Note that podcasts fall into this weird gray area, since you can sync them on a different system, but every time you sync with the master iTunes library they get wiped out and must be re-synced.
(Users of Ambrosia’s iToner will be happy to know that iToner completely bypasses this limitation. iToner ringtones are hardy beasts, or stealthy ones.)
Copyright Mac Publishing LLC. This RSS feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you’re not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you’re looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact webmaster@macworld.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Written by Jason Snell on September 12th, 2007 with no comments.
Read more articles on Tips & Troubleshooting.
I recently reported that iTunes 7.4 killed custom ringtones installed by Ambrosia Software’s $15 iToner. Thanks to quick work by the Ambrosia team, those ringtones are dead no longer.
Just-released iToner 1.0.1 includes these changes:
Compatibility with iTunes 7.4, supports file dragging from iTunes, improved playlist handling, and other bug fixes and enhancements.
Unlike the ringtone installation technique described by my colleague, Dan Moren, iToner works with both AAC and MP3 files.
Copyright Mac Publishing LLC. This RSS feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you’re not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you’re looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact webmaster@macworld.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Written by Christopher Breen on September 7th, 2007 with no comments.
Read more articles on Tips & Troubleshooting.
If you’re looking for yet another way to get custom ringtones on your iPhone, the folks at Mac Rumors have discovered a little workaround for iTunes 7.4. Here’s the scoop: change an AAC file’s suffix from .m4a to .m4r in the Finder, and then double click it, and iTunes ought to import it and let you sync it to your iPhone.
I tried this out on my own computer, and while it does work, there are some limitations you should be aware of. First up: make sure your iPhone is updated to the latest firmware. It didn’t work for me on 1.0.1, but that may also be because of other hacks and ringtones that I’d installed from other means. Once I updated to 1.0.2, it worked swimmingly. Next, make sure the AAC file doesn’t already exist in your iTunes library. Otherwise, it’ll just try and play the song that’s already there. If it does, remove it by hitting delete (you can keep the files where they are, and reimport them later). Also, try as I might, I couldn’t get it to work with protected AAC files from the iTunes Store; it just added them to my library and started to play them instead. MP3 files are right out.
Chances are that this is a hole that Apple simply missed when adding the ringtone functionality into iTunes, so I’d be unsurprised to see it plugged in a subsequent update. But for now, if you’re willing to go through the dance, you can make all the ringtones you like.
Update: It appears that iTunes 7.4.1 sort of breaks this hack. But, in fact, if you go into your iTunes Library/Ringtones folder and change the suffix on any ringtones you’ve imported back to .m4a from .m4r, you’ll find that they’ll work again. So, to keep making free ringtones, follow the steps above, and then change the suffix back to .m4a.
Copyright Mac Publishing LLC. This RSS feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you’re not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you’re looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact webmaster@macworld.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Written by Dan Moren on September 7th, 2007 with no comments.
Read more articles on Software and Tips & Troubleshooting.
If, like me, you watched yesterday’s Apple presentation and, when Steve Jobs announced custom ringtones from the iTunes Store, thought “Interesting, but I’ll continue to use Ambrosia Software’s $15 iToner to create my own” you’re in for a rude surprise when you next sync your iPhone with iTunes 7.4.
Why? After doing so, custom ringtones apparently disappear from the phone.
Before breaking out the pitchforks and torches, please understand that this appears to be an unwelcome side-effect of the way iTunes goes about its business rather than an attempt to target iToner or other methods for installing custom ringtones. I suggest this because, after the sync, the ringtones remain on the iPhone. If you have Terminal/sftp access to your phone because you’re hacked it, you’ll find them here:
/private/var/root/Media/iTunes_Control/Ringtones
What appears to happen is that as iTunes syncs it accesses an index of its “approved” ringtones (this index would include the stock ringtones as well as any you’ve purchased from the iTunes Store) and makes sure that the ringtones on that list appear on the iPhone after the sync. Any ringtones that aren’t part of the index are ignored rather than erased from the phone.
For now, the workaround is to sync the iPhone, fire up iToner, and reinstall your custom ringtones. After doing so, your iToner ringtones will be back in place.
My very best guess is that Ambrosia is already hard at work on the problem and will make an updated version of iToner available in the near future.
Copyright Mac Publishing LLC. This RSS feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you’re not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you’re looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact webmaster@macworld.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Written by Christopher Breen on September 6th, 2007 with no comments.
Read more articles on Tips & Troubleshooting.
