How to Name Locations in Apple’s Find My Friends App

Do you share your location with your friends, family or spouse? Well here is a little trick that you can use to name frequent locations such as ‘Home’ or ‘Work’ so that you can quickly see from notification centre where your contacts are with friendly names. 

Here are the simple steps to follow:

  1. If you haven’t already, install Find My Friends app from the App Store it’s a free app. Many people don’t know this exists as it’s possible to share your location without it.
  2. Open the Find My Friends app and tap on the contact who’s locations you want to name. Note: They need to be in one of these locations to change its name.
  3. You should be looking at a map screen showing your contacts location. Along the top bar, blow their name, should be three menu options. Tap ‘More’.
  4. It should show an address just below the map with a little piece of orange text just above, tap that and a menu will appear with a list of location names such as ‘Home’, ‘Work’ or ‘Custom’. Make your choice based on the label you want to add.
  5. Go back to your phone home screen and swipe down from the top of the screen to bring up the ‘Today’ and ‘Notifications’ tabs. Scroll to the bottom and hit edit and add ‘Find My Friends’ if it isn’t already. Now when you view the today tab it will use your friendly names for your contact. 

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Review: Verbatim MediaShare Wireless – Turn a Hard Drive into a Wireless Hard Drive and Stream Files, Movies and Data Wirelessly to Your Mobile Device

Disclaimer: This was a personnel purchase, as such it is being reviewed completely independently.

Buy now in the United Kingdom or in the United States

What is it?

The Verbatim MediaShare Wireless is a wireless hub turning a ‘wired’ hard drive into wireless hard drive that provides a way to share files and media between up to 5 connected devices on its private wi-if network via its file manager app. With 9 hrs of continuous battery life there is plenty of juice on the device to keep you going for a long plane flight or work day, it can even help charge your mobile device if needed.

Unlike wireless hard drive units this device acts more like a hub allowing you to connect a USB hard disk or thumb drive as well as an SD card. This has pros and also some cons. The pros are you can connect any USB hard drive to the unit and are not limited to a single drive, another advantage of which is the ability to then connect those drives to a Mac and back them up with Backblaze. It also provides you the ability to insert a camera SD card and transfer them wirelessly to a hard drive whilst on the road, also allowing you to view them on any mobile device. The obvious cons are that you need to carry both this unit and a storage unit, and you will need to connect the two together which might be a hindrance whilst travelling unlike a traditional wireless hard drive. 

 

Who is this for?

This device appeals if you are looking to do the following:

  1. Carry a lot of media (movies etc) on the road with you when you are travelling without a laptop. 
  2. You want to transfer photos from your camera SD card to a large hard drive when you are out and about, allowing you to take more pictures.
  3. You want to go iOS only.
  4. You travel with kids. This is great to keep them (and you) occupied on a long flight. You could also wire this into your car 12v supply and tuck it neatly away in your boot (trunk) with a hard drive attached. This would create an in car media hub. 
  5. You need to share large files or media with a project team quickly and securely.
  6. You want more flexibility than a wireless hard drive unit. 

How Well Does it Work?

The hardware itself works really well. It is well designed, feels solid and is easy to access. 

However, where the whole package falls down is the app software, at least on iOS. It works well, but hasn’t been updated and looks just plain weird on iOS. Verbatim need to update it ASAP from a visual perspective. I’ve been able to stream movies, open PDFs, pictures all with great speed and ease. When opening a movie file, there was no buffering or lag at all. There isn’t a desktop app, so you are limited to mobile devices. Obviously with removable media this isn’t an issue. I’m not sure if the dedicated wireless hard drives come with desktop software, but if not, this could be a distinct benefit of going with this unit.

Conclusion

The main point of a product review description is should you by it or not? Well if you need to share a large storage device with one or several mobile devices or you travel with kids then the answer is simply yes. If you want more flexibility that a wireless hard drive whilst effectively converting multiple wire hard drives into wireless hard drives then this product is for you. The software needs to be updated urgently, but still functions fine. The hardware is solid and fast as well as nice and compact.  You can buy the device from the links below, and if you do please leave a comment on your thoughts of the device.

Buy now in the United Kingdom or in the United States

What we Published, and Links of Note

Here is a list of articles we published this week. You can keep up to date with Apple Resource by following us on Twitter, Facebook or Signing Up to our weekly update e-mail.

How to know if someone has blocked you on iOS

Has someone suddenly disappeared on you and you have sent iMessages and FaceTime calls with no response? Are you being ignored or, worse yet, are you blocked? This article will help you work out which one it is.

Carl Icahn Sells His Apple Stock

Should you be concerned that one of Apple’s largest private investors has just sold his 0.8% stake in the company citing fears over China’s sentiments towards Apple? 

How to Combine Videos on Your Mac Without Additional Software Using

Have you ever needed to quickly combine some video files without wanting to buy or look for additional software beyond the OS? Well you can with QuickTime X.

 Moving Forward with Digital Assistants

A nice piece written by David Sparks about his encounters with Amazon’s Echo. Having personally used an Echo and with the recent announcements about ‘Viv’ from the guys that created Siri it is clear that Apple is slipping behind the rest of the market.

How to Combine Videos on Your Mac Without Additional Software Using QuickTime X

If you have followed my writing over at DavidJMoore.com then you will know my passion for Taking the Straight Line – getting from A to B as quickly and as simply as possible. I also have a passion for achieving great results using the base apps on both iOS and OS X. This isn’t always possible, but when combining videos it is.

QuickTime X comes pre-installed on all Macs and makes it very simple to combine a set of video files. To do this all you need to do is open the video you want first in the sequence then select the rest of the files in a finder window and drag them onto the video that’s open in QuickTime X. When you do so, you will notice some yellow film placeholders appear where you can drop the files you are dragging onto. You can then rearrange them as you see fit and once done hit File -> Export and you are done.

Do you have any other tips we should share with the wider community? If so let us know HERE or via Twitter.

Carl Icahn Sells His Apple Stock

Should you be concerned that one of Apple’s largest private investors has just sold his 0.8% stake in the company citing fears over China’s sentiments towards Apple? 

Disclaimer: The author is an investor in Apple Stock

Carl Icahn announced on 28th April 2016 that he is selling his 0.8% stake in Apple due to fears over China’s attitude towards Apple and that he would happily by back in if China’s sentiments change. Whilst Icahn has obviously been very successful in the investment world, if what I have read even has a shred of truth it’s more through his aggression, bullying and secondary deals off of his investments than through shrewd value investing like Warren Buffet. 

Icahn has been very vocal during his ownership of Apple stock, including his demands for accelerated stock buyback in October 2014.

Here are my thoughts on the sell off:

  1. He left himself an ‘In’ to buy the stock off in his media fuelled sell of his shares. In other words, to me, this stinks of a forced stock price drop through media sensationalist reports where he or entities related to him will then buy large volumes at the drop and pocket the profits when the price stabilises. 
  2. No where is there anything raised about the correlation between China’s stand against Apple alongside the whole device encryption debate that is ongoing – centring around Apple. I doubt China likes the thoughts of its citizens being able to hold information from the government. With this respect I think the App Store is only the tip of the iceberg here. 
  3. With collapsing industry in westernised countries, for example steel in the UK, it is only a matter of time before China holds all the manufacturing of things like Aluminium, Steel etc. At which point they will control the prices and it will inevitably go up. 
  4. Icahn leaving will give the Apple executives a bit of peace and quiet to focus on their product line, which quite frankly is starting to become misaligned and suffer.

China always has been an issue and will continue to be so going forward, for reasons far beyond Apple and closing its App Store. They will soon control the worlds supply of materials and with it the price of all of our goods. We have farmed all of our industries out to the East and will soon reap the seed that we have sown. 

This goes far beyond Apple, as such, will I be selling my Apple stock on the back of Icahn’s statement and actions? Not a chance. Now, Apple, refocus your product line and quality and consider your long term strategy of where you will operate. China will only prove to be more difficult over ‘Privacy’, ‘Monopoly’ and ‘Material’ issues moving forward – maybe a return to the west would best serve your future?

As a final note, this article was written the day after, Friday 29th May 2016 that the news broke and is being published on Wednesday 4th May 2016, some six days after the event showing how concerned I am as a share holder.

How to Know if Someone has Blocked you on iOS

UPDATE JULY 2016: It appears Apple may have made a change to how Messages appear when you are blocked. It used to be that they showed as ‘Delivered’, now they don’t show anything. So if you send a message and it returns no status at all you are either blocked, or the persons phone is off. 

Have you ever got yourself in a situation where you are wondering why someone isn’t replying to your FaceTime calls or iMessages? How do you know if you have been blocked or if you are just being plain ignored? 

There are many articles on the Internet, all stretch the topic out far more than it really needs to be. Here is the simple answer.

How to Know for Certain

To be 100% certain, the person you are trying to contact has to have an iPhone and you need to make a cellular call to their phone on more than one occasion. If the phone goes straight to voicemail you are either blocked, or their phone is off. To confirm this step you need to disable your caller ID and call them back straight away. 

Switch Off Caller ID

  1. Tap on ’Settings’
  2. Tap on ‘Phone’
  3. Tap on ‘Show My Caller ID’ and switch it to ‘Off’
  4. Call them straight away.

If the phone now rings you can confirm you were blocked. 

What About Messages?

Messages is a cloudy way of telling. It used to be that when you were blocked your messages still showed as ‘Delivered’, this gives no definitive indication. However, per the notice at the top of the post, I’ve noticed that when you are newly blocked the message receives no status. A few days to weeks later. I’ve noticed it then changes back to ‘Delivered’. Remember though, showing no status could also mean the phone is off. So really, two calls is the only real way to know. 

What About FaceTime?

FaceTime calls will just ring and ring and then eventually fail, in short they will act as though they are going through but the person is simply not answering.

What Else?

If you were once sharing locations with the person via ‘Find My Friends’ then this will be a massive clue. If you see ‘XXXX XXXX is no longer sharing their location with you’ in your iMessage conversation, where ‘XXXX XXXX’ is the person name, then you have a good indicator they have blocked you. If it says ‘Location Unavailable’ then this IS NOT an indicator of being blocked, merely that they are out of reception, their phone has died or they have turned it off. 

So in conclusion, the only sure fire way is via a cell call with an iMessage as a belts and braces check. It should be noted that the user must have iOS7+ to be able to block a caller, so check this as well. The information in this article is valid up to (and most likely beyond) iOS 10.2.

Have you noticed any other behaviour? Reading this long after iOS 10.2 and wondering if this article is still valid? Leave me a comment below or on Twitter. 

What we Published, and Links of Note

Weekly article round up and note of interest.

Here is a list of articles we published this week. You can keep up to date with Apple Resource by following us on Twitter or Signing Up to our weekly update e-mail.

Calibrate Your iPhone and iPad Battery

Is your battery percentage not reporting correctly or acting erratically? This post gives you a guide on how you can recalibrate your device battery. 

Create PDFs of Web Pages on iOS

Have you ever needed or wanted to create a PDF version of a webpage? Well now you can using the Workflow app and this post shows you how.

How to troubleshoot incorrect matches on Apple Music

A great article by Bradley Chambers on ‘The Sweet Setup’ on how to fix your Apple Music matches that have gone wrong.

Create PDFs of Web Pages on iOS

Have you ever needed or wanted to create a PDF version of a webpage? Well now you can using the Workflow app and this post shows you how.

Have you ever found an interesting web article and you wanted to create a PDF of the webpage that you could save for later? Unfortunately Apple has yet to enable ‘Print to PDF’ yet and the most popular method so far has been to send the page to iBooks which will make you a lovely PDF, but then the only way to get it out of iBooks is via Messages or Mail.

However, there is another way using the app ‘Workflow‘ and this article will outline the simple steps needed to create a workflow in ‘Workflow‘ to create a PDF from a webpage on iOS.

  1. Get ‘Workflow‘ from the Apple App Store
  2. Open the app and click the ‘+’ to add a new workflow. You want to create an ‘Action Extension’ in which the three steps you need in your work flow are:
    1. ‘Get Article from Web Page’
    2. ‘Make PDF’
    3. ‘Quick Look’ though this could be substituted with something else like ‘Save to Dropbox’
  3. Save the workflow with whatever name you like
  4. When you are in Safari at the page you want to make into a PDF, you hit the share sheet button (square box with the up arrow) and select ‘Run Workflow’. When ‘Workflow’ opens you tap on the workflow you just created and a PDF will be created!
  5. If you used ‘Quick Look’ as your final step you can then use the share sheet at this point to send the PDF to another app of your choice in iOS.

Calibrate Your iPhone and iPad Battery

Is your battery percentage not reporting correctly or acting erratically? This post gives you a guide on how you can recalibrate your device battery. 

Have you ever noticed that one moment your iPhone or iPad is reading a certain battery percentage, then all of a sudden it drops 5 or 10%? Have you noticed that it sits at 1-2% for a very long time? Have you noticed that as soon as you plug it in that it suddenly jumps up by tens of percent?

All of these symptoms give an indication that your device is no longer able to accurately predict the amount of juice that it has in its battery. This doesn’t necessarily mean there is anything wrong from a hardware point if view, more that you need to teach it to present the correct level of power to you – this is called recalibrating the battery. 

You can recalibrate your iPhone and iPad battery with a few simple steps:

  1. Use the device until it powers down of its own accord
  2. Leave the device off over night or for at least several hours
  3. Plug the device in and wait for it to start of its own accord
  4. As soon as it has started up and you are at the iOS home screen, power off your device
  5. Leave the device off whilst it charges to 100% and let it charge for a good few hours after it is full
  6. Unplug the device
  7. Power the device on and monitor how the battery percentage fairs, if it still isn’t quite right, repeat these steps again. If several attempts fail to resolve the issue then a clean install of iOS (not a restore) would be an appropriate step before you have to admit that it is an actual hardware issue

Why does your battery get like this? I’m not sure, but I would assume that plugging the device in for partial charges doesn’t help. It would be helpful to carry out these steps on a monthly or bi-monthly basis.

iOS 9.3 Web Links Crashing

iOS 9.3 has a web link bug which is causing the app in which the link is located to crash as soon as you tap on it.

MacRumors has an article about web links crashing in iOS 9.3. 

We can confirm this to be the case, not only do the links not work it effectively crashes the app in which you are trying to launch the link in.

For now we suggest you avoid iOS 9.3.