Apple kills Genius and replaces it with Near Me

Apparently there are something like 900,000 apps in the iOS App Store, but how many can you find on your iPhone or iPad? There are some in the Featured section and there are Top charts. In each of these two sections you can choose a category from around a dozen or so. Add up all the apps you can find and I bet they won't come to much more than a thousand. There are another 899,000 somewhere in the App Store, but it is a mystery how to find them. There certainly aren't any facilities in iOS to help you.

Of course, there is a search facility that can be used to find apps, but you really have to know what you are looking for and searching for 'photo editor' or 'social networking' doesn't really help. You might as well browse the top 50 in those categories.

I often don't know what I am looking for. I just want to see what's new, I just want to see some amazing apps, I want to be surprised, but discovering apps isn't high on Apple's list of priorities. There is Genius of course, and this does help a bit. It suggests new apps based on apps you have downloaded before. However, the list of apps it produces is very limited. You'll get 20 suggestions in a category and that's it. There are still 899,000 apps out there.

What I would really like is a list of apps that can be sorted by date, name, downloads, category and rating. This would enable you to see what's new today or this week, to see the highest rated, the most downloaded and so on. Apple simply doesn't provide these facilities and Genius is a very limited way to discover apps. Perhaps this is why Apple has abandoned it in iOS 7.

Look at the screen shot below (from Apple's iOS 7 features page). Where genius used to be at the bottom is Near Me. When you are out with your iPhone you can tap the Near Me button to see apps related to places near you, like art galleries and so on. Under certain circumstances this can be very useful, but when you are having a coffee break at work or sitting at home playing with your phone, it is useless. Won't it show the same apps every single time?

We spend a lot of time at home or sitting in offices or doing the same tasks and  this means Near Me just isn't very interesting. I know what's near my house or my office thank you very much. I can see Near Me being useful maybe once a month or when I am on holiday. It is not something I can use every day to discover new apps, so those 899,000 apps will go unnoticed.

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I recently came across an interesting app called App Roulette that can help you to discover new apps. It is no substitute for a decent App Store listing with sortable results, but it can be fun to use.

App Roulette is nothing to do with gambling and what it does is to compare the apps on your iPhone with a random person's iPhone. The screen shot above right shows the result - 49 apps on my phone, 102 on someone else's. It is completely anonymous so you don't know who it is and there is no way to find out. You don't need to know who it is or where they are, just what apps are installed

It shows we have 20 apps in common, such as Instagram, Tumblr and Twitter, but also 82 apps I don't have. Tap the 82 and it switches to list mode and displays a list of all the apps with prices and links to the App Store. You can repeat this with any number of random people and it is an interesting way to discover new apps. Someone else may have discovered a great app you don't have and you can check it out and see whether it is something you might like.

You can run App Roulette at any time and the results are always different. I find it an interesting and unique way to discover apps I either never knew about or perhaps have seen in the store, but not bothered to install. Seeing it on someone else's phone is an indication that it might be worth having.

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Set data bandwidth limits on the Samsung Galaxy S4

If you have a mobile phone or tablet and a data contract, you have a certain amount of bandwidth or data to use each month. It may be 250MB, 500MB or even 1GB. Whatever the limit is for your particular mobile contract, you had better not exceed it because the cost can be quite high. You may be charged for each megabyte over your limit and the charges quickly mount up.

Fortunately, there are ways of monitoring the amount of data you have used and this helps you to avoid extra costs. I will be using a Samsung Galaxy S4, but the technique works with other Android phones and tablets too. You just need to be running a recent version of Android. Later Android versions are better at data monitoring than older ones.

On the S4, pull down from the top and tap the gear icon to go to Settings. Tap Data Usage in the Connections category. There is a chart showing the amount of data used over time. The time period is usually a month.

Tick the box labelled Set mobile data limit and you now have two horizontal bars. One is orange and this is the warning level and the other is red and this is the limit. You can drag the bars down the chart by tapping and dragging at the right hand side. Set the data limit to just below your data allowance. So if you are allowed 500MB a month, set it to something like 490MB. The reason is that the way that your mobile phone company measures data usage may be slightly different to the way the phone reports it. To ensure that you don't go over the limit you must set the phone to just below it.

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When a data limit is set and you reach the limit, Mobile data is turned off. This means that you will only be able to access the web, emails and use internet-enabled apps when there is Wi-Fi available.

The orange warning line can be dragged down and set to 40 or 50MB below the limit. You will then be notified if you reach the warning level and you can then cut down on the mobile data and only use it when absolutely necessary.

Tip: when dragging data limit bar down, let go and the chart scale is changed. It makes it easier to make small adjustments. You can also tap a data limit or warning line and adjust the limit manually.

With a limit set and a warning when you are near it, you should not incur extra changes and get a nasty surprise in your next mobile phone bill.

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Love the new Instagram video, but where's the iPad app?

Last Thursday a new version of Instagram was launched and as many users have discovered, it now features video clips. Check your device for app updates and make sure you download the new Instagram if you don't see them. However, a major disappointment was no news of an iPad version of the app.

You can get Instagram for the iPhone, iPod Touch, Android phones and Android tablets, but the iPad version is mysteriously missing. What's wrong with the iPad?

Instagram is all about taking photos and sharing them, so I can only guess that the company (now owned by Facebook of course), thinks that people don't take and share photos using their iPad. This is wrong. The iPad is not as portable as the iPhone, but there are still plenty of photo opportunities around the home and some people do carry iPads around with them when they are out too. Does Instagram not think that iPad owners take photos?

Even if Instagram is right, it still wouldn't be a good reason for not producing an iPad version. I have Instagram on my Google nexus 7. This is a 7in tablet and it is just one inch smaller than an iPad Mini, so why can't I have Instagram on an iPad Mini? Even if your iPad never leaves the house and you never take photos with it, Instagram has some fantastic photos and I would love to be able to sit and view them on the iPad's big screen. (Not being able to see the photos full screen  - on any device - is another irritation.)

Instagram is a social network too, and even if you don't take photos on the iPad, you could view and post comments and join in the discussion on an iPad. If there was an iPad version that is.

Pictacular

Theofficial app does actually work on the iPad, but it looks awful. It runs either as a small iPhone window in the centre of  the screen, or you can double the size and make it nearly fill the screen with a blury image. This isn't good enough Instagram.

There are some third party apps that you can use instead and Pictactular and Padgram are two that are worth checking out. However, they don't support video clips yet. I hope this will be added soon.

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Free memory on the Samsung Galaxy S4, Google Nexus 7 and other Android devices

Apps are increasing in size and they consume more and more memory. After installing some apps on your Samsung Galaxy S4, Google nexus 7 or other Android phone or tablet, you might be struggling for space. Checking the Storage in Settings might show that there is little memory left. Where has it all gone to?

Apps can appear to be quite small, but appearances are deceptive. I showed how the amount of space used by apps is nothing like the size of the app you download on the iPhone and iPad. A good example is Vine, the six-second video sharing app. This takes up 31MB of memory on Android devices. However, it seems to store every video you watch in a cache and it can actually consume 400MB of memory or more. If you have several apps like this then several gigabytes of memory can be used for caches.

A cache is simply temporary storage that is used for data that might be needed again by the app. If you wanted to watch those Vine videos again then they can be replayed from memory rather than downloading them from the internet all over again.

So a cache contains nothing that can't be replaced and anything important, such as app settings, should be stored elsewhere by the app

This means that you can safely erase the contents of a cache and the only disadvantage is that if the data it contained is ever needed again it will have to be downloaded all over again or recreated again. The advantage of erasing a cache is that it can free up lots of memory.

On the left is a screen shot of the Google Nexus 7. To see this screen on your own tablet, pull down from the top of the screen and tap settings. Tap Storage in the Device section. Other Android devices such as phones and tablets are similar, so hunt around in the settings for Storage and tap it.

Storage shows the amount of memory used by various things, such as apps, pictures and videos, audio, downloads and so on. Down near the bottom is Cached data. Look at the first screen shot. There is 1.68GB of memory available, but down near the bottom the Cached data is over 2GB.

If you tap Cached data, you are asked if you would like to clear all the cached data. I haven't found any app that relied on its cache and clearing it should do no harm at all. This means that if we clear the 2GB of cached data, we will gain an extra 2GB of memory.

Go ahead and press the OK button to clear the cache. It can take 30 seconds or so for this to take place, so be patient. I also found that the figures on the screen did not completely update. However, pressing the back button and then pressing Storage again updated the figures and displayed the new memory usage.

After clearing the cache you can see that it is now just 1.41MB. What's more, the free memory shown under Available at the top says 3.59GB. That is a significant improvement over the original figure. In fact it is double the free memory that was originally available.

If you look at Storage in Settings on the Samsung Galaxy S4 (and no doubt some other Android phones), it does not show the cache and therefore there isn't an option to clear it.

Don't worry because there are other ways to achieve the same task. You could go to Settings, More, Application Manager. Selecting an app like Vine, shows the memory usage and there is a button to clear the cache.

It would be tedious, but you could manually go through all the apps clearing the caches used by them. You could take a guess and just look at the likely suspects, or after doing it once, remember which apps used a lot of cache so that you can target them next time.

Another task you can perform on the Samsung Galaxy S4 is to clear memory. Hold down the home button for about two seconds and then press the pie chart that is displayed in the toolbar at the bottom. Select the RAM tile at the top and press Clear memory at the bottom. This closes unused applications that are stored in memory just on the off-chance that you might want to run them again soon. The memory display at the top shows how much free memory there is and the total memory. This is working memory for apps that are running rather than memory used for storage.

These techniques will free up memory on your phone or tablet. If the device has lots of memory then it is best to let apps cache everything, but when you are down to your last gigabyte of free memory, it is well worth clearing the caches of the worst offending apps.

Useful links:

Master the volume control on your phone or tablet

Lock screen notifications on the Samsung Galaxy S4 and other Android phones

Turn off 3G when you aren't using it to save battery life

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7in tablet sales rocket despite the Google Nexus 7's flaws

According to DisplaySearch, a subsidiary of The NPD Group, the leading global provider of consumer and retail market research, sales of tablet panels reached 27 million in March this year. This represents an increase of 67% month over month and 48% of those 27m panels are 7in. That is a sizeable chunk of the tablet market and it shows how popular small, cheap tablets have become. Apple doesn't give a breakdown of sales figures, but there are rumours that the iPad Mini sells extremely well too. It seems that Steve Jobs was wrong about 9.7in tablets being the perfect size.

There are two reasons why 7in tablets (and the 8in iPad Mini) are so popular. The first is the price and there are many cheap Android tablets, such as the Google Nexus 7, Samsung Galaxy Tab 2, Amazon's Kindle Fire, plus numerous less well known brands competing for crumbs at the bottom end of the market. People do like bargains and tablets costing a fraction of Apple's iPad certainly look very tempting.

The second reason for the popularity of 7in tablets is that they are more portable and easier to hold. The iPad is a fantastic tablet with a great screen display and Microsoft's Surface is interesting, but for some tasks they are simply too big and heavy. A 7in tablet is more comfortable to hold and it is ideal for reading ebooks as it is roughly the same size as a printed book. People spend a lot of time on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks and these are also fine in 7in format too. It isn't perfect for everything though and sometimes you do need a large screen, but mostly 7in is fine.

I have been using the Google Nexus 7 for around a year now and it has been a great tablet. To be honest, I've kind of been forced to use it because the rest of the family hog the iPad so much. Despite it having a nine-hour battery life, it often needs charging up every night. The thing is never off.

I'm mostly happy with my Nexus 7, but it does have some flaws that will hopefully be fixed in the next version. One flaw is the software buttons. A Samsung Galaxy S2/3/4 for example, has buttons at the bottom of the phone for Home, Back and Menu. The Google Nexus 7 puts these buttons on the screen. The screen is very tall and narrow at 1280 pixels high and 800 wide. It is fine in portrait mode because there is sufficient screen depth to give space over to the software buttons at the bottom.

In landscape mode however, there just isn't enough vertical space to dedicate to software buttons. Most apps display a black strip across the bottom of the screen that is simply wasted space - it contains the Home, Back and Menu buttons. Perhaps it was cheaper than putting in hardware buttons as Samsung does, but it is a bad idea. It is less of a problem on the Nexus 10 because the screen is bigger and the resolution is much greater.

Another flaw of the Nexus 7 is the lack of a back-facing camera. It would be so useful to be able to take photos and videos and it is a shame that Google skimped on this part. Apart from shooting photos and videos for fun, one of the things the iPad gets used for in my house is for creating eBay auctions. You can create a listing with the eBay app, shoot the photos, and upload everything. You just can't do that on the Nexus 7. It does have a camera, but it is on the front, so you have to point the screen away from you and you can't see what you are taking a photo of.

My next tablet is unlikely to be a 10in model and it will probably be a smaller one. What will yours be?

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Get a cheap iPhone today

Almost daily there are rumours that Apple is working on a cheaper iPhone. It is always 'coming soon' and is due to be launched later in the year. This is very puzzling because Apple already has two cheaper iPhone models. If you want a cheap iPhone you can go out and buy one today.

In the Independent today, a British newspaper and website, is an article asking "Will Apple hit back at Samsung with phablets and a $99 mini iPhone?" I don't get this because if you go to the Apple website there are three models to choose from:

On the left is the 4in iPhone 5 and on the right are the 3.5in 4S and 4. Look at the prices. They are $199 for the iPhone 5 (with a contract), $99 for the 4S and $0 for the 4. Prices here in the UK are £529, £449 and £319 for unlocked phones without a contract.

If Apple already has a cheaper, smaller iPhone, why would it need another one? The specification of the iPhone 4 is getting a bit long in the tooth, but the 4S is actually a pretty good specification. Manufacturing costs tend to fall over time, so this is likely to be cheaper to make than when it was first launched. Apple could continue to make the 4S as its smaller, cheaper $99 iPhone.

Of course, Apple really could be working on a small, cheap iPhone, but would the specification actually be any different to the 4S? I can't see any advantage for the company. Just think of the development cost of a new phone - it must cost millions of dollars and a lot of man-power. Why bother when the 4S is all done and dusted?

What about a larger phone? This is a certainty. Samsung and others have shown that there is a market for large screen phones, so I would put money on a big iPhone coming from Apple sooner or later. I don't think we will see a phablet - a 5.7in iPhone. Although some people like these large phone/tablet hybrids, I don't think it is a mass market. Most people carry phones in their pockets and bags and 5.7in devices are just too big to be comfortable. I can fit my Nexus 7 in my jeans pocket, but then I can't bend over or sit down and I walk with a stiff leg. The Samsung Galaxy S4 with its 5in screen is as big as I need. It is significantly bigger than my iPhone 5, but not too big to carry around in a pocket.

An iPhone with a 4.7 to 5in screen makes perfect sense. Apple needs it and it needs it now. Samsung and others are grabbing the market for this and there is no competition from Apple. However, Apple has traditionally been on a two-year hardware upgrade cycle. It launches a phone then a year later it has a minor specification bump, a new phone then a spec bump and so on. Just think of the 3G and 3GS, 4 and 4S, 5 and... well, it surely has to be a 5S with a minor spec bump.

My guess is that we will see a new iPhone 5S with slightly better specifications and iOS 7 launched in September with it going on sale at the end of the month.

It will probably have a faster processor and a higher resolution camera among other minor tweaks. It won't be that different to the 5, but it will seem very different mainly because of iOS 7. However, if you upgrade your iPhone 5 with iOS 7 then the differences between the two will be quite minor.

My guess is that we will have to wait until next year for a larger iPhone - the iPhone 6. I think it will go for what is becoming the standard for mobile phone screens - 1920 x 1080 pixels in either 4.7 or 5in. Probably the former rather than the latter knowing how conservative Apple is (Steve Jobs rubbished larger phones). Apple really needs the iPhone 6 this year, but I don't think they could manage it and the company is locked into its two-year cycle. Under normal circumstances it wouldn't be a problem, but it has been caught out by the rising popularity of larger phones and more nimble rivals satisfying that demand.

Ignore rumours of smaller, cheaper iPhones and larger phablets. Apple already has a cheap iPhone and it doesn't need a phablet. Wait until next year and get an iPhone 6.

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iOS 7 looks like Android

iOS 7 for the iPhone and iPad was announced by Apple yesterday and it looks modern, clean and much better than iOS 6. After all, iOS hasn't changed much since it was launched in 2007. Six years is a long time and the world had moved on, leaving iOS looking a bit dull and old fashioned. It was in desperate need of an upgrade.

Now we have it, but don't you think that it looks a lot like Android, with a bit of Windows 8 thrown in too. Take a look at these two screens - one is Android and the other is iOS 7:

 

There is a bit more colour in Android on the right, but if you removed that you you be hard pressed to tell the difference at a glance. Some of the other apps look very Android like too. It seems that Apple is following the current fashion trend rather setting it and waiting for everyone to catch up.

iOS was like nothing we had seen before when it was first released, but this update merely brings it in line with what everyone else is doing.

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Master the volume on your mobile

Mobile phones and tablets have hardware buttons on the side to adjust the volume. Press the volume up button and the sound output gets louder, press the volume down button and it gets quieter. What could be simpler?

It actually isn't that simple and there is a lot more to the device's audio volume than you might think. Incorrectly setting the volume could mean that you miss important events, such as a Skype call or notification.

The reason is that there isn't a single volume control and there are multiple volume settings. Different applications have different volumes and while you might think that the volume is turned right up because the phone is loud when it rings, the volume could be set to the minimum for other things like apps and notifications.

The volume controls adjust the currently applicable volume. For example, if you switch on your phone and it is at the home screen, the volume buttons on the device adjust the loudness of the ringtone when someone calls you. Fire up the music player and the volume controls on the device adjust the music/media volume. It does not affect the loudness of the ringtone, notifications or anything else.

Go into an app, whether it is a game or video chat app like Skype and there is a different volume control. So you could have maximum volume for the ringer, but your video calling app could be set to the minimum and unless you are actually looking at the phone or tablet when someone calls, you will miss the call.

It doesn't matter whether you have an iPad, iPhone, or Android phone or tablet. They are all the same. The only difference is where to find the controls. On a Samsung device for example, press the volume button and the volume control appears on the screen. Press the gear icon at the right side and four volume controls appear. Just drag the sliders to set the volumes.

On an iPhone or iPad you can adjust the volume in each app, such as within Music or the ringer on the home screen. Other volumes, such as the notification volume are in Settings, Sounds and Settings, Notifications.

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