Typing Special Symbols in OS X and iOS

Posted by Will | Posted in General | Posted on 13-09-2010

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I’m a university law professor, and apparently I’m the only person who has ever wanted to type the © and ® and ™ symbols. I can’t find them on my iPhone, and I can’t find them on my Mac. I need to type these symbols regularly.

On your iPhone, most special symbols and accented letters can be found by pressing and holding down different keys on your iPhone’s keyboard. Give it a try–you’ll be surprised at what you find when you press and hold on a key.

But those three common symbols, the © and ® and ™ symbols, can only be found on the iPhone’s hidden emoticon keyboard. Strangely enough, Apple has only enabled this emoticon keyboard on iPhones sold in Japan. So if you want access to this special keyboard, you’ll have to cough up 99 cents to purchase the iEmoji app from the App Store.


iEmoji opens up a whole new world of symbols and icons on your iPhone.

Not only will iEmoji give you the three symbols that are currently missing from your iPhone’s keyboard, but it will give you over 600 adorable icons you can use as well. While the three symbols you need should display on anyone’s computer or phone, the other icons will only appear on iPhones, so they are best used for sending text messages to other iPhone users.

Oh, and on your Mac, the copyright symbol © is Option-G, the registered trademark symbol ® is Option-R, and the trademark symbol ™ is Option-2. For additional symbols, check the menus in the applications you’re using for an “Insert special characters” option or install the handy shareware program PopChar X (€30, ergonis.com).


This is how Keyboard Viewer looks when you press the Option key.

To see which symbols have keyboard shortcuts associated with them, enable the Keyboard Viewer Input menu in your menu bar (located in System Preferences > International in 10.5, or System Preferences > Language & Text in 10.6). Then, choose Show Keyboard Viewer from the new icon in your menu bar and press Option, Shift, or both Option and Shift to see the different symbols that you can type.

 

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iLoveHandles Fashions Your iPod nano Into a Wristwatch

Posted by Will | Posted in General | Posted on 11-09-2010

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Y’know, when we first laid eyes on the new iPod nano in clock mode, we definitely thought that it resembled a twentieth century pocket watch. Well, apparently it doesn’t have to stay in your pocket. The new iLoveHandles “Rock Band” turns your iPod nano into a wrist watch, so you can use your nano to check the time or keep it clipped onto your wrist for easy playlist access.

The iPod nano Rock Band costs $19.95 and is available online.

Oh, and check out this cool reader mail we got from David A. Logan, who fashioned his own iPod nano wristwatch.

Way cool!


Follow this article’s author, Florence Ion, on Twitter.

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Apple Applies for Clip On Camera Lens Patent

Posted by Will | Posted in General | Posted on 09-09-2010

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A scant few days after Apple dropped a bevy of new products in the laps of eager consumers, it seems that they wizards of Cupertino are at it again. This time around, if the details of a recent patent application uncovered by Patently Apple are any indication, we could be in for some snazzy attachment lenses to use with our iPhone and iPod touch cameras.

While the diagram shows that the lens is being held on by a clip, Patently Apple explains that the main focus of the Patent Application details the use of a series of magnets to hold the peripheral in place. With the quality of cameras being seen in Apple’s hardware releases improving with each new generation, it’ll be nice to see how the options of rocking a high-quality zoom or macro lens will affect the photos that we’ll take with an iPhone a few years down the road. More so, with Apple taking a greater interest in designing and selling their own peripherals at every turn, it’ll be fun to watch third-party peripheral developers up their game to compete.

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Android-based TVs Try to Knock Apple Out of the Top Spot

Posted by Will | Posted in General | Posted on 07-09-2010

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It looks like some companies may be looking to horn in on Apple’s “hobby.”

According to a report filed by The Street, Samsung may soon be cramming their televisions chock full of Android. According to the report, Samsung is set to include the OS in their television sets to provide a web and application enabled television experience much like that being offered by other companies such as Sony and LG.

What does Apple TV have to do with all of this? Well, it seems that Google has been cooking up a TV solution of their own recently, one that relies upon a new style of cable box for the delivery of content and integration into home entertainment systems. Traditionally, companies attempting to force their way into the cable box game have come up short, mostly due to cable companies not being thrilled with the notion of marginalization for the sake of technological advancement. After all, would you want to endorse a product that offers the same content that you’re already asking customers to pay for? By placing Android in the actual television set as opposed to packaging it with a peripheral, Google could bypass cable companies and the issue of convincing consumers to purchase yet another piece of hardware all together–this would allow them focus on content delivery. Under such circumstances, even with the freshly lowered cost of Cupertino’s new iteration of Apple TV, Google could still prove to have the upper hand.

That said, don’t go counting Apple TV out just yet. You see, the device has one very important thing going for it: Apple. Having already enjoyed content provision agreements with a wide number of media companies for the years now, they’ve got an excellent lead on newcomers in the downloadable content game. That edge, combined with the ability to hook an Apple TV up to pretty much any device with an HDMI port, could be the only in that they require in order to turn their hobby into a full-time money making behemoth.

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In Case You Missed It: Aug. 29 – Sep. 4

Posted by Will | Posted in General | Posted on 05-09-2010

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Well, what do you think? Did Apple’s Annual Music Event live up to your expectations? The iPod touch refresh did for us, but what about Apple TV? And iTunes 10. What about that? There are some things to like, some things to not like so very much, and ways to fix a few things you liked better in version 9. As always, Mac|Life has it covered.

Features:

- First Look: Apple TV – Look closely if you want to see this one, since Apple TV’s gotten teeny tiny. It fits in the palm of your hand, which really would have been handy if it had gotten its own App Store and games, but fear not, Cupertino has packed it full of goodness. What else would you have expected? We got a first look and we’ve got the pictures to prove it.

- First Look: New iPods – We also got our hands on the new iPods, and the nano and the shuffle are super cute. The easy navigating screen on the nano has all the similar qualities of the touch or the iPhone. Speaking of the iPod touch, the new version brings some of that iPhone 4 sweetness to the mix with FaceTime, front and rear facing cameras, and the beautiful Retina Display. Heck, we could go on and on, so just go read the article, already.

Reviews:

- Counter-Strike: Source Review – At long last. Can you believe there were people who actually bought a Windows machine just so they could play this? No, we can’t either — we might have even made that up. But now that Valve’s Steam has brought it to your Mac, you can get all your killing and being killed that you can handle. What’s not to love?

- Livescribe Echo Smartpen Review – Sure, some people still take notes with paper and pen, as 20th century as that sounds. Livescribe presses the fast-forward on this old school habit and brings “smart” to the pen set. Of course, you still have to buy their special paper, but there are apps to download (to a pen!). Once the Mac version of Livescribe’s Desktop is up to par with the Windows version, in a update hopefully, this could be a serious go-to for note taking.

How-Tos:

- 24 iTunes 10 Tips, Tricks and Features – We’re tinkerers. It’s in our DNA. So you had to know that within hours of it being released, we’d poked, prodded, and probed the inner depths of iTunes 10, finding as many new gizmos and limitations to the new software as we could. And, as usual, we brought them here for you.

- How to Use Put Back to Save the Day – The worst part about accidentally sending something to the Trash is getting it back to where it used to belong. Dragging and dropping is all fine and good, unless your original file location is nested within seven hosting folders. The Put Back option sends your files back where they belong.

News:

Even with the sweet new iPod line set to roll out, it appears that retailers are still having trouble keeping iPhone 4s in stock…which makes us wonder what to make of this rumor from Mexico that all the models released after September 30th will have the antenna issues fixed…if so, be still our beating hearts, just not so still we can’t hear them with our iStethoscopes (UPDATED: apparently the free version’s been pulled from the App Store)…in other international news, China Unicom is now offering in-store jailbreaking when you buy your iPhone; now that’s what we call service…and since it’s another slow week in iPhone news, roll that beautiful government held FCC iPod footage…and when it hits the market, it will come with iOS 4.1, which is packed full of what iPhone users are going to love…which will still not include Flash, and for good reason, as Android rolled it out just recently to the sound of le sucke

Of course, you already know it, but just in case you couldn’t make bail or were stuck in a liferaft miles from shore and a working 3G tower, we rolled out a smooth little app of our own…speaking of the ultra-cool Mac|Life app, you might have noticed, ahem, that that little piece of fantastic shot right up to number one with a bullet in the App Store…we are quite proud of it, even if we are one of 250,000 apps in the store…and in the speed category, looks like there might be something to those Intel Inside rumors about the iPad, as the company picked up Infineon, maker of the iPhone 4′s baseband chip…and according to the CEO of Intel, Steve’s pretty happy about this deal, so expect to see a super chip in the next iPad…at the very least, expect to see the multitasking in November as iOS 4.2 for the iPad rolls out…even sooner you can expect also to see some hardcore gaming next week when Chinatown Wars HD hits the App Store…but you can tuck away your iPad to look all corporate instead of gangbanging with this particular case…and maybe these iPad thingamajigs will finally be easier to get a hold of now that Apple plans to make 3 million a month.

And since iTunes 10 is out with all kinds of changes, it wouldn’t be an all star In Case You Missed It without news of that kind, like for starters, how to change the iTunes 10 logo (which nearly everyone hates) back to the old familiar…and by nearly everyone, we obviously don’t mean Steve and Cupertino…sure to be hated by the same people who don’t like the new logo and maybe even more, is iTunes’ option to make ringtones…the biggest new thing in iTunes, is, of course, Apple’s Ping service, yet another social network; we’re still kinda on the fence about it, some of us…but we will tell you who does love the new iTunes and Ping pretty hard: scammers. They want you to have a “free” iPhone…could that be why Facebook maybe blocked Ping? Or did they?…Steve has a few things to say about Faceborg…so what could Apple bring to Ping to improve their fledging music-based social network? Of course, we have some suggestions.

And lastly, since it brings iPhone, iPad, and iTunes news all together in one tidy little package, everyone’s favorite online comic, The Oatmeal, sums it all up for us.

mmmm oatmealy

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