iOS – Tech, writing, and tech writing

Installing apps on older versions of iOS

Ever tried to download an iOS app on your iThing and got a “This application requires iOS X.Y or greater” message, but no app? Annoying as heck.

There are various reasons you might not be able to install/run iOS X.Y. For example, I have an original iPad running iOS 5.1.1 – I can’t upgrade any higher, the device isn’t supported on later versions. My iPhone could have upgraded, but I ran out of storage space, so it couldn’t handle the installation, and I couldn’t find a convenient time to archive a bunch of content, so I was similarly blocked there for a while.

Newer apps (or newer releases of older apps) tend to make the most of the latest fun features in iOS, so don’t support older versions. But apps that have been knocking around for a while probably did at some stage, and that’s something you can take advantage of. Continue reading “Installing apps on older versions of iOS”

Do not disturb!

The Do not disturb feature on my iPhone is my new best friend. I seem to be receiving more cold calls than usual of late, and turning on Do not disturb allows me to ensure that important calls still get through, but time-sink calls that I can easily filter and deal with at a more convenient time can be avoided. Continue reading “Do not disturb!”

Screenshotting

A quick roundup of how to screenshot on various devices.

iOS: Power button and Home button – image goes to your Camera Roll album.
Android (4.0 and up): Power button and Volume Down button – image goes to the Screenshot album of the Gallery app.
Mac: Cmd–Shift–4, then drag the crosshairs that appear to section of a rectangular area of your screen – image goes to your desktop.
Windows: Ctrl–Alt–Print Screen to grab the active window, or Print Screen to grab the whole desktop – image goes to your clipboard, so open a graphics program, or Word, or mail, or … and paste it in.

Improving Webpage Readability in Safari on iOS

I don’t know how I’ve managed to miss this trick up to now, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to change my life. If you read web pages on an iOS device, it may change yours too.

If you’re looking at a webpage in the Safari browser on iOS and you see a little icon to the left of the URL field, you can click the icon to strip out all extraneous information on the page leaving only the text (automatically bumped up to a more readable size) and the images associated with the main page story. See the example below.

Note: You can achieve the same results on a MacOS device by clicking the Reader button to the right of the URL field.