Yovav (Jay) Meydad's Personal Blog

 
2. Resize any window from anywhere

Yesterday Apple released the much anticipated iOS4 and I decided to upgrade my iPhone 3G to it.

The upgrade process is managed by iTunes and has three steps:
1. Backup existing data files
2. Download the ~350MB OS file
3. Copy & install files to the iPhone

For some unknown reason, the backup process takes a long longer than a typical backups that happen whenever you sync your phone. It could even take 2-3 hours (!) if you have lots of data on your device.

While I was doing it, the progress bar moved very very slow and gives the feeling that the process is hung. In addition, whenever you get a phone call the process terminates and you have to restart it.

After spending about 3-4 hours on 2-3 failed tries I tried a work-around that worked well and cut up the backup process time by 90%. If you are one of the many
who are experiencing the same issue, you might want to give it a try:

Before backup & upgrade, sync your iPhone one more time with minimal amount of data one it. This means that you have to delete all music, video, photos and apps that are on it (but leave mail, calendar, notes and other important settings). The steps for doing that are:

1. Connect your iPhone to your computer but DO NOT start the upgrade process
2. Select the Apps, Music, Videos, Photos tabs and uncheck the main Sync checkbox
3. Then sync your one more time iPhone. This will free up most of the disk space on your iPhone. Once this sync is completed you should see it in the Capacity bar that is displayed on the Summary tab
4. Finally, start the Upgrade process by clicking on “Check for Update” button in iTunes’s iPhone’s Summary tab
5. Backup should take about 5 minutes and the entire upgrade process should be over within 20 minutes.

Welcome to iOS4. Enjoy.

Roy’s interpretation to Steve Jobs’s iPad announcement and what would his older brother, the iPhone, say/sing.

I have been getting many questions & comments about my two posts on how to listen to Israeli radio stations on the iPhone and iPod Touch using the FStream app (here). That’s the “price” I had to pay for being ranked first on google for queries like “israeli radio on iphone”. Hopefully this post will provide answers to many of the questions.

Recently a new free application was released to the App Store called “Visual Radio” (download link). It was developed in Israel by Unicell and it offers the capability to listen to over 10 stations using a clean and elegant user interface.

Unlike the FSTream solution which requires configuring the radio stations’ streams urls into the app and changing the urls whenever those change, Visual Radio comes pre-configured with many radio stations which leads to an easy “install and play” experience. A few stations are still missing and I hope the Unicell team there will add them soon. Other nice features include:

1. Radio Dial that lets you preview what song is being played in a station before actually switching to it – big time saver

2. Displaying artist and song names

3. Song’s lyrics (when available)

4. Programming for every station

Kudos for the Unicell team for a great app. One small tip to the developers – change the app name to say something like “Visual Israeli Radio” so people who search iTunes will be able to easily find it.

Posted via email from jaymeydad’s posterous

I was using Microsoft Excel the other day and had that Eureka moment. I typed in a simple formula that had a closing parenthesis but forgot to put an opening parenthesis. An error message popped up and I realized that I have been getting that same error message, for doing the same mistake, ever since I have been using Excel. And even though Microsoft has released several Excel versions along these years, this specific problem has been carried from version to version without getting an elegant solution.

I am pretty sure that the same exact error happens to millions of users every day, and many of them are clueless and do the same thing – they get frustrated, delete the formula that has a minor error and start over.

So, here’s my suggestion to a very simple killer feature – AutoParenth. Excel should automatically add an opening parenthesis whenever it detects that a cell: (a) has a function (first character inside the cell is minus, plus or the equal signs) and (b) it has a closing parenthesis. This feature should be built similar to the AutoCorrect feature to give the users greater control.

If that’s too difficult to implement, Excel should at least provide an informative error message, just like Apple Numbers and Google Docs do. This is such a common error that a specific error message with clear instructions is necessary.

Apple Numbers informative error message.

Google Docs also provides enough information to guide the user.

I hope that someone at the Microsoft Office team will read this post and add this request to their todo list.

Interesting. Google is running a campaign on iPhones via AdMob to promote the google voice search app.

I saw it on QuickGold which is an app (great one – the Quicksilver version for iPhone) that can be installed only on a jailbroken iPhone.

This makes me wonder, does Google, a long time Apple partner, advertise on semi-illigal applications? Or is that a RON type of buy?

Last week, when I was at the TheMarker COM.Vention in Isreal, I noticed the presence of a very impressive Apple booth on the Expo floor. It was very nice and added to the feeling that this is a true international event (beyond the fact the program was in English and dozens of speakers and many attendees arrived from the US and Europe).

While I was at the Apple booth, I was looking for one of the iDigital mangers to provide some tips & feedback, but since I could not find any of the managers, I will use this post to do it.

Since I first blogged my thoughts about Apple’s web site in Israel, I have been receiving questions and comments from people who visited Israel, purchased an Apple product there, and later on had a need for customer support. Since iDigital’s web site is only in Hebrew they could not find their answer there, and so using the help of Google, these people searched and landed on my blog. I was glad to help as much as I could with basic questions & translations, but did not have answers to all of their questions. So, here’s tip #1 for the iDigital team – create an “English” page with at least “contact us” information. You’d be surprised how many people who do not read Hebrew are looking for a way to contact you.

Anyway, the last question I received was from a woman who was looking for the customer support phone number for iPod, so I visited iDigital’s website and saw that they have recently started offering group workshops and one-to-one training, similar to the training programs that are available at Apple stores across the US. These are great news for Mac users in Israel (but still not for iPhone users since it is not officially sold there yet and therefore not supported) but there is one difference that makes it look somewhat wrong in my point of view – the price.

• Workshops – In the US, group workshops are free and cover a wide range of topics (I sat on a few in the past and learned a lot), but in Israel they cost a small fee and they are limited only to “Introduction to Mac OS”
• One to One – In the US, one to one training personal training costs an annual fee of $99, but in Israel you pay 225 Shekels/hour – roughly $65/hour. I can understand why these private sessions who are done at the client’s house (since there are not Apple stores in Israel) would cost more, but still, the price difference between one to one training is ridiculous.

So here is tip #2 – if you really want to build a market share, look at how things are done where Apple is gaining market share, and then mimic. Only good things could happen if you would do that.

Just received this email from Apple who is using car dealers marketing tactics to get users to try the new MacBook Air. Very smart!

I was just wondering – are we going to see blue, yellow and red balloons rising above Apple stores…?