Posts for Tag: iOS

SendHub.com - What Google Voice could/should have been

I've been using Sendhub for a few days now and love it.  Best integration to date I've seen of a hosted phone service.  I am a Google Voice user and it's not bad but Sendhub is a major improvement.  The iOS app actually functions closer to what making calls is like on the native iOS Phone app.  Pricing seems decent though would love a tier in between the $25 and $50 level.  I could see this being something I implement for employees moving forward who BYOD.

LTE? WTF?!

Received my iPhone 5 bright and early today. After a few SIM related glitches, I was able to get online and test out the new LTE connection. First, a comparison with standard WIFI. Below is my speed test of my home network (Comcast Performance - 20MB down and 5MB up per their specs).

Pretty respectable. I sometimes can get 10MB-15MB down but 5MB+ is the usual norm. Now check out the speed when I turned WIFI off...

Holy... freakin'... shnookies...

I have a feeling that I'm about to be throttled by AT&T quite frequently...

New iPhone, iOS6, etc.

Can't believe it's been two months since I last posted.  Things got busy, I got lazy, etc.  But lots of things coming up so felt it was a good time to get back on the saddle...

According to UPS, my new iPhone 5 arrives by 10:30am tomorrow.  Should be sweet.  

The biggest thing I'm looking forward to?  64GB of memory since I've got about 1.5GB left on my 32GB iPhone 4S (damn baby pictures/videos).

I've been reading about a ton of backlash with iOS6, especially maps.  I think this is great!  When everyone is constantly patting you on the back, you get complacent.  I even think all the success coming from the Android camp is welcome because it forces Apple to be better.  Competition helps everyone.  On a side note, I think the iOS6 maps aren't as bad as everyone makes it out to be.  Sure, there are some warped looking satellite images but I don't rely on that as much as I do the turn-by-turn directions which though aren't perfect, don't seem to be any worse than apps like Waze or TomTom.  I've gotten plenty of wrong directions from those guys.  Plus it's free and Apple will make it better.  I've been using the iOS6 developer beta for a couple of months now and trust me, after a few months of usage, you do get used to the maps.  The only glaring exception is Street View which I liked.  If Google decides to release a new Maps app for iOS, I'll probably download it.  If they decide to give it turn-by-turn directions, I'll probably use it over the Apple Maps app.  Outside of that and the occasional need to use Street View, I'll be using Apple's Map app most of the time as I'm sure most people will.

Best $25 an iPhone designer could spend @Glyphish

I'm currently working on a new iPhone app and starting to understand how difficult it is to build something that is both good looking and also simple to understand/use.  There are so many small nuances to consider since there isn't a lot of real estate with which to get your point across.  One of the most maddening things to get right are icons.  People don't realize how difficult it is to build great looking icons from scratch.  There are only a handful of apps that I consider beautiful and even among those, I have issues with the icons.  After revision after revision of icons from my designer, I started to scour the web for examples of good icons.  To my chagrin, the answer was staring me right in the face - Glyphish.  Here was an extensive set of beautifully designed icons that are so simple and yet so clear in what the icon is supposed to represent.  How good are these icons?  They're used by little known companies like Google, Twitter, and a small phone manufacturer called Apple.  The best part of it?  $25 for a full pro license that doesn't require attribution and can be used in an unlimited number of projects (free version requires attribution, doesn't include Retina Display version of icons).  I've seen icon sets costing four times as much that are no where near as clean and well designed.  Kudos to Joseph Wain for creating these and providing them at a ridiculously cheap price.

Oh, and his $10 set of background images are well worth it, too!