Category Archives: iOS

Which 2020 iPad is right for you

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Well, another new (actually 2) iPads are here for 2020.  The new iPad Air and the new iPad 8th generation. With the new iPad Air becoming the smaller version of the iPad pro with a screen.  Of course, both new iPads come with new processors.

Which iPad

First, are you in the market for a new iPad?  How old is your iPad? Is it several years old?  Apple has figured out that an iPad does not need to be updated every year so there are no big changes in 2020.  It is quite obvious that if you bought a new iPad last year (7th generation or iPad Air ) then you have no real reason to update this year. The biggest change is that the iPad air now is similar to the 11″ iPad Pro and the 2020 iPad is similar to last year’s iPad Air. For homeschoolers, there does not seem to be any reason the get the smaller Pro.  Here are the new 2020 iPads.

The biggest advantage to the 2020 iPad Air might be the USB C port. This could possibly allow storage options like USB C hard drives. You would also need a new Apple Pencil and keyboard. For most cost conscience homeschoolers the 2020 iPad Air price is not worth it. I would recommend the 2020 iPad or if you see a good deal on last year’s iPad Air that would also be a good option but only if it’s less than the $329 2020 iPad or has more memory.

Here is a comparison of the new 2020 iPad with last year’s iPad Air.

So there you have it. This year you can basically get last year’s iPad Air for only $329.

What do you think? Which iPad will you buy? If I were you I would watch apples refurbished iPad Air from last year here if you can get one with more memory at around $329.

Here are the two I would recommend.

Best iOS 11 Feature for Educators

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The iPad/iPhone screen capture feature is one of my favorites.  Its easy to take take a screen shot on the iPhone or iPad by pressing the home and power buttons at the same time. (Screen capture on the iPhoneX is a little different – On the iphoneX you press Volume Up button and Power button together at the same time to screen capture.)

What the new iOS 11 screen capture lets you do:

Now with iOS11 you can actually do something more than just save the screen capture to your photos.  You can:

  • Draw on the captured image: You can use different types of markers and different colors to draw.  You can even use shapes, text or add a custom signature. Just start drawing on the screen image. To add a signature touch the + sign at the bottom right.
  • Crop the image: This allows you to cut off parts of the screen you don’t want. I sometimes do this before I txt a screen capture so it doesn’t take up as much memory. To crop the image just drag any of the blue frame corners to the size you want.
  • You can also magnifying a section of screen capture.

  • Send captured image to other apps: You can send the screen capture or edited screen capture to other apps or other people via txt or email. When you are ready just tap on the up arrow in a box at the bottom left.

Screen capture is not the only place you can use the new iOS 11 markup tools. You can also do the same mark ups on pdf files in iBooks. Just click on the picture that looks like a pencil at the top of the screen.

What are your favorite uses of the screen capture tool?

How to create great video memories on the iPhone and iPad

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While I’d like to think someday I’ll be a great videographer that probably won’t happen anytime soon. Thankfully the memories section in the iOS photos app has you covered. Apart from a few quirks, the memories app will help you quickly put together your favorite memories into a nice video.  You can quickly create awesome movies to preserve your memories using just the iOS photos app. Here is a quick guide on using the photos app to make a video memory.

How to get to the memories app

  1. Open the photos app
  2. At the bottom select the second icon labeled memories
  3. There will be several memory videos already created.


How to customize

You have to play the memory video first before you can customize or edit the Memories movie.  If the video looks exactly like you want and the music is to your liking, then you can go on to the steps below to preserve this Memories video.  Otherwise you can edit the the video by selecting the “Edit” link in the upper right hand corner.

(in iOS 10 it will be a small icon with lines on the bottom right) .The easiest edits are to change the Mood of the music and change the length of the video as shown above.  You can set the movie length to short, medium, or long.  You can also change the music to dreamy, sentimental, gentle, chill, happy, uplifting, epic, club, or extreme.  The photos Memories app will automatically update the movie with your new choice.

Choose more pictures or videos

The app does a pretty good job choosing pictures, but what happens if you have a picture in your Memory video that you don’t want? You can choose not to include some of the pictures or videos in the memories video.  You can also add more pictures and videos to your Memories movie. 

Select the Photos & Videos to edit what pictures are used in the Memories video.  You can scroll along the bottom to see all the pictures included in your Memories video.  Tap on the picture or video you want to edit.  You can change the length of the video clip or you can remove the picture or video by putting it in the trash.  (It does not delete the picture on your iPhone or iPad)

 

You can also add more pictures by pressing the + sign at the bottom left.

Edit title and song choice

Now that you have the pictures you want you can edit the title and song.  You can either choose from Apples song Soundtracks or music you have saved from iTunes on your iPhone or iPad.

How to save and export video memories

Since the Memories movies are always changing you need to preserve your favorite memories so they won’t get changed or removed.  To preserve the memory movie scroll to the bottom of all the pictures and then select “Add to Memories”.

 

Having finalized the memories video I highly recommend you export and save your video. Ideally you would think the logical export option would be iMovie but alas I was dearly disappointed. You can indeed export to iMovie but there is little you can do since the whole memory is exported as a video. To save your Memories movie file press the box with the up arrow at the bottom of the screen where you edit the Memories movie.

You now have several options on how you want to export your Memories video.


https://support.apple.com/en-us/ht207023

P.S. Memory movies only work on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Apple TV. You won’t see Memory movies on your Mac (for now).

5 reasons why I updated to the new 2017 iPad

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ipad-2017I am back with the new iPad! I had kind of fallen off the tablet bandwagon recently. It was partly due to having a new baby two years ago! I have been so busy that haven’t updated this blog in a long time!
My iPad 2 had a broken screen which I successfully replaced! Yay! However, I damaged the wifi antenna and my thirty pin connector had become difficult to connect to the computer. This limited the usefulness of the iPad 2. Thankfully Best Buy gave me about $50 for it!
Here are five reasons why I bought the new 2017 iPad:

  • Price: While the new 2017 iPad is not the cheapest Tablet it is cheaper than my previous iPad 2. Also there was a $30 discount which brought the price down to $300.
  • Storage: The 16 GB iPad just doesn’t work anymore. I was constantly having to manage my storage on the iPad 2. The base storage on the cheapest 2017 iPad is 32 GB. While that still is not humungus for a tablet but it is double the storage of my old iPad. Now I have enough storage to keep some downloaded movies on the iPad for traveling and still download multiple apps and other storage hog items.
  • Smaller size: It was appealing to have a slightly smaller iPad but keep the same screen size. I like my iPad mini but the screen is a little small for some tasks. The newer iPads have nice form factor. Since I mostly use a protector the smaller bezel isn’t an issue.
  • Multitasking with iOS 11: I never realized how wonderful multitasking is since it never worked on my iPad 2. Even with iOS 10 multitasking on the iPad is wonderful. You can actually type and have a book or web page pulled up in split view. The upcoming iOS 11 multitasking update really shows that the iPad can be used for serious work.
  • Swift Playgrounds: Since Apple announced Swift Playgrounds to help learn coding I have been intrigued. The app would not work on my old iPad 2 so I could never evaluate it. Now that I have the 2017 iPad I can run the swift playground app. The Swift playgrounds app helps you learn programming for free!

What do you think? Is the new 2017 iPad worth the update?

Using Kenote as a remote

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Apple Keynote can control Keynote. I gave a talk this weekend and I thought it might be nice to have a remote for my Keynote presentation.  A quick internet search revealed that the latest version of Keynote for iOS includes a remote control mode.

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When you open the Keynote app, there is a small icon up top that looks like a remote symbol.  If the icon is not available then you may need to update the Keynote iOS app.  Make sure both devices you want to use either have bluetooth enabled, or they are on the same wifi network.  I used Bluetooth since I didn’t know if wifi was available when I needed to give my presentation.  You must also link the two devices before you can use the iPhone as a remote for Keynote.

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Keynote will start looking for another apple device with Keynote open.  Once it connects, there are various remote layouts you can use on the iOS device.  If you are using an iPhone as the remote, then it can be difficult to read some of the layouts because of the screen size.  All the more reason to use large fonts and few words for your slides.

To advance to the next slide, you just swipe in the direction you want to go.  The swiping to advance is my main compliant for the remote feature.  I wish there was an option for a simple next button.  Maybe I just need more practice but I kept messing up causing the slide to go backwards when I wanted to go forward.

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Here is a picture of the “current and next slide” layout.  You can see that a marker symbol in the upper right hand side of the screen.  This allows you to write on you slide or use a virtual pointer.  Again a small screen may not be optimal for this function.

20140520-075139.jpgOverall it worked pretty well when using an iPhone.  You can also use an iOS device with a Mac.  On the Mac you must go to the preferences and turn on the Keynote remote feature.  You also must link the two devices together for the remote app to work.

 

 

Fix for iPad 2 iOS 7 wifi droping

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The iPad 2 has been a great tablet.  I have had little issues with the iPad including connecting to wifi networks.  Unfortunately that seems to have changed with the update to iOS 7.  I really didn’t want to update my iPad 2 to the latest OS but unfortunately my iPad broke. I had to send it the iPad away to be fixed. When th iPad came back from repair it was updated to ios7 and that seems to be when the problems started.  Ever since the repair I have had problems with my iPads wifi connection.  The iPad 2 would loose the wifi connection or it would the connection would be very slow.  I tried a number of changes to my router based on some Apple forums but none of them seemed to fix my problems.  If I restarted the iPad things would work for a little while but then the problems would came back.  Resseting the wifi setting seemed to work temporarily but  I was getting tired of always resetting the wifi.

Finally I decided it was time to update my wireless router.  I had read that a different router worked for some people.  I hate the idea of changing hardware just so my iPad 2 works but If I could find a good cheap router it would be worth it instead of sending my iPad back to Best buy and being without an iPad for 18 days!

I found a new western Digital router that allowed two USB hard drives to be connected to it.  This would also help my storage limitations on the iPad.  So I gave it a try.

Results:
It seems to work!  One of the reasons why a different router seems to make the difference is the 5 MHz band.  Apparently my old router only used the 2.4 GHz band.  With my new router I named the two networks with 2.4 and 5 in the names so I could tell what connection each device used.  I was surprised that the iPad preferred the 5 GHz band while my iPhone 4S preferred the 2.4 GHz band.  My guess is that the iPad 2 had some issue with 2.4 GHz and possibly has something to do with iOS 7 update.

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Not only did the new router seem to fix my iPad 2 wifi connection problems but it also has the potential to fix my iPad storage issue. The router has two USB ports which I hope to use as a cloud storage solution for the iPad. I hope to write more about it in the next few days.