iCloud Photo Stream automatically uploads your photographs and videos to the cloud (online storage), allowing you to synchronize and access them from your Macintosh computer, iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. Simply sign into the same iCloud account on all of your computers and iOS devices, and everything will always be in sync. Unfortunately iCloud, as convenient as it is, can be an annoyance due to a key missing feature. Singular photo deletion!

To our amazement, iCloud currently has no options for deleting photos one at a time. Apple has decided to leave granular photo deletion out of Photo Stream, making things very inconvenient! Deleting unwanted pictures from Photo Stream, requires you to delete your entire cache of iCloud photos.

The problem becomes evident when you want to remove an embarrassing photograph taken at the bar, or a private photograph you don’t want syncing across all of your devices, making it freely accessible. Not having granular deletion controls in iCloud Photo Stream can become a privacy risk, and many of you have been wondering how you can take control of what gets uploaded to your Photo Stream. Luckily, there’s a solution to your iCloud woes.

Here are the steps for deleting and resetting your entire iCloud Photo Stream on iCloud.com:

Photo Stream can be reset via your iCloud account on the web, or a flip of the Photo Stream toggle on your iCloud based iOS device.

NOTE:

Resetting your iCloud photo stream will result in all Photo Stream photographs being deleted! Before you do so, make sure any photographs you want to keep are saved on any of your devices. Photographs already in your camera roll will not be affected.

•  Login to your account on iCloud.com from a Mac or PC

• Click on your name at the top right of the main iCloud page.

• Click on the Advanced option.

• Click “Reset Photo Stream.” Then confirm.

Here are the steps for removal of iCloud Photo Stream on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch:

iCloud Photo Stream will not be reset on your iOS device until you toggle Photo Stream on and off. All photographs will be deleted past this point in iCloud.

• Navigate to settings on your iOS device

• Scroll down to iCloud.

• You will then be on the iCloud menu, Photo Stream should be enabled.

• Toggle the on switch to off. All Photo Stream photographs will be deleted after this point.

iCloud Photo Stream isn’t for everyone. If you’re tired of resetting your photo stream every time it uploads a photograph you don’t want, or having to wait 30 days for your Photo Stream to expire, here’s a solution that can give you a clean slate. Heck, by deleting your Photo Stream, your battery life might even improve! Lets hope its not long until Apple implements granular photo deletion controls in iCloud and Photo Stream. Until then, you have a solution to your iCloud Photo Stream problems.

About the author:

I’m an Apple fanatic and an overall enthusiast of technology. I have a strong interest in business and advertising. I would consider myself as part of Apples’ ‘Think Different’ mentality. I like simple design with stunning visuals. I have a strong interest in photography, and enjoy keeping up to date with the latest and greatest gadgets. Follow me On Twitter @LJamesMcDonald and say hello.

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Have you been wondering about how to forward iPhone text messages? Forwarding SMS and iMessage texts has been a process that has evaded even the most advanced of iOS “Power Users” for quite some time. It seems that Apple has decided to bury yet another useful feature in the most inconspicuous of places; The “Edit” field within your messages app?

That does not make any sense in our opinion. Why would a user associate the word “Edit” with the the word “Forward” within an SMS or iMessage? The answer is poor UI (User Interface) design. Yes, we know, poor UI design is not something that Apple is known for, but in this, and many other minor details, they have been known to make curious decisions that make no reasonable sense. The good news is that we have found the solution to the problem, and solved the mystery for our community.

Here are the steps for how to forward iPhone text messages with SMS or iMessage:

1. Navigate to, and open your Messages app on your iPhone.
2. Open the SMS or iMessage thread that you’d like to forward.
3. Tap on the “Edit” button on the top right of your screen.
4. Tap on the circle next to the SMS or iMessage’(s) you’d like to forward.
5. Tap the “Forward” button on the bottom right of the screen.
6. Enter new contact or phone number in the “To” field.
7. Send your forwarded message to your intended recipient.

And…. That’s all folks! How easy was that? Makes you wonder why Apple would make such a simple task so complicated. Hopefully they will read this post and make some adjustments to iOS 5, and future versions of the software. Until that day arrives, stay tuned to iOS App Advice for all of your Q&A, and app review needs. We are committed to keeping you informed of the best news, reviews, and how-to’s in the world of Apple and iOS.

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Apple implemented many new features into iOS 5; many are behind the UI (User Interface), but many are left unseen until enabled. One of the most useful, and extremely nifty features of iOS 5 is custom vibrations. It allows you to assign custom vibrations, ranging from the defaults of: alert, heartbeat, rapid, S.O.S and symphony, to allowing you the ability to create custom patterns to identify specific contacts. You can recognize who’s calling or texting you with simple and intuitive patterns that help you determine who your alert is from.

This tutorial will show you how to enable custom vibrations in iOS 5, and give you examples of how it can be used to your advantage.

To get started, you’ll need to enable custom vibrations under “hearing” in the accessibility menu. This can be found by following General>Scroll down>Accessibility,  then enabling custom vibrations.

This will then enable an additional option in Sounds. At the bottom of the page, an option will appear called ‘Vibration Patterns’. This is where you can change your vibration alert, and make custom designs.

You will then be greeted by the default vibrations listed under ‘Standard’. Here you can select the vibration you’d like as your default vibration for your whole phone.

There are 5 preset vibration patterns in iOS 5.

1. Alert is the standard vibration you will be familiar with.
2. Heartbeat is self-explanatory, a pulsation of vibration within a sequence.
3. Rapid is an increased vibration.
4. S.O.S follows the morse code style vibration.
5. And lastly, you can choose Symphony which give a unique rhythm to your vibration.

Here is where the true benefit of having custom vibrations in iOS 5 becomes apparent:

 
If you click on ‘Create New Vibration‘, you are welcomed  by a screen that looks similar to the microphone feature built into the iPhone. It has a standard ‘play’ button, and a ‘stop’ button.

To start creating your vibration simply ‘Tap’ on the screen, in your desired style or sequence. You then have 10 seconds to create your unique vibration for your intended purpose or contact.After creating your custom vibration you have the option to play it back and check what it will feel like when you receive a text or call with your chosen sequence. Afterwards, click save to save your customized vibration. You can then enable your newly created vibration for your whole phone by tapping it before leaving the menu.

Here’s where the magic begins and where the true capability starts:

 
If you go onto your contact list, which is accessed via Phone>Contacts, you can then enable the customized vibration you just created. This is perfect for prioritizing your contacts, important calls, or time sensitive texts.

While selecting your contacts that you want to customize, you can click the ‘Edit’ option on the top right hand corner. You will then see the option to define a ringtone, and a vibration. By default it’s the original Apple one, but by simply tapping the customized vibration you created, your selected contact is now assigned that custom vibration, enabling you to know who is calling before checking. Perfect while driving, in a meeting, or when you are busy at home or work.

I use this feature primarily during college to prioritize my calls, text messages with loved ones, relatives, friends, and others. It gives you a clear indication of who is contacting you without distracting you from either your studies or work. Custom vibrations in iOS 5 get your attention, according to the vibrations you’ve selected, allowing you to determine if the call is important or not. This feature is beneficial because it allows you to adjust how long it takes you to respond to calls or texts, and greatly improves your ability to effectively manage your time.

About the author:

I’m an Apple fanatic and an overall enthusiast of technology. I have a strong interest in business and advertising. I would consider myself as part of Apples’ ‘Think Different’ mentality. I like simple design with stunning visuals. I have a strong interest in photography, and enjoy keeping up to date with the latest and greatest gadgets. Follow me On Twitter @LJamesMcDonald and say hello.

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After purchasing Apple’s latest gadget,  my initial judgment on the iPhone 4S battery performance was disappointing. After a full charge of 100%, the battery life I was getting was between 4 hours of usage, and around 5hours and 30 minutes of standby; by any phone terms this is extremely poor. Normal usage included tweeting, texting, odd phone calls and browsing on both 3G, edge and Wi-Fi. It wasn’t lasting even a half a day, and my previous device which was an iPhone 3GS would get around 7 hours of usage, and around 9 hours of standby time. So in comparison, the iPhone 4S battery was terrible.

Battery Usage Stats

I initially thought the addition of the A5 processor, Siri and iOS5 would be the main cause of draining the iPhone 4S battery life, but with some experimenting of changing settings, and altering standard configurations, I consistently got around 11-12 hours standby, with around 6 hours of usage depending on the applications in question.   I Initially removed the “fetch new data” option in Mail, which increased my battery life marginally, but still not enough for day to day usage of the new Apple device. I then made sure Auto-Lock was on 1 minute, with brightness reduced to 50% or less depending on lighting. The automatic mode was selected to reduce waste and keep the screen readable in all lighting conditions.
I, myself receive many messages on Twitter or Facebook, so I removed the multiple notifications I was receiving from the likes of Tweetbot and Twitter For iPhone, in order to reduce my internet usage, and streamline which apps I preferred for notifications; in my case it was Tweetbot. I also disabled the Stocks application in the notification center, so it doesn’t fetch the stock market data every time I slide down to receive a new notification, check on messages or even check the weather.

After isolating the amount of applications that use push notifications, I saw a dramatic improvement in the iPhone’s battery life, not satisfactory, but good nonetheless. I then went into Location Services, and disabled applications I didn’t want to access my location or applications that didn’t require my location, but fetched it even so. I enabled the default Camera application, Maps, Tweetbot and the default weather application, but disabled the apps I did not need. I then noticed a tab at the very bottom of the page labeled ‘System Services’. After noticing that many of the services had been used in the previous 24 hours (or even constantly on in my case) for no reason that was apparent, I disabled the compass calibration, diagnostics & usage, location based iAds, mobile network search, setting time zone, and traffic. All of which I don’t require daily, and would be a drain on resources (battery) if enabled. Before disabling the majority of these, I noticed the status bar icon for location services was continuously on in the menu bar; this could be a flaw within iOS5 or a demand from Siri, but is a drain of the battery to be fetching my current location with no need.

Day 2: After Alterations

Day 1: After Alterations

After 48 hours of constant use of daily tasks such as email, web browsing, social networking, texting and the odd phone call, my standby time increased from around 8-9 hours daily, to around 12 hours, with around 6-7 hours of usage including playing the occasional game. The 48 hours of testing included 3G networks, with edge and Wi-Fi for a small part, but the field testing took place in a range of locations. From fields, to built up areas, to my own office. The final results of my tests, give a range of normal day to day usage an iPhone 4S user may come across, with 3G access not always fully available or up to speed.

About the author:

I’m an Apple fanatic and an overall enthusiast of technology. I have a strong interest in business and advertising. I would consider myself as part of Apples’ ‘Think Different’ mentality. I like simple design with stunning visuals. I have a strong interest in photography, and enjoy keeping up to date with the latest and greatest gadgets. Follow me On Twitter @LJamesMcDonald and say hello.

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Are you wondering how to Tweet with SiRi on your shiny new iPhone 4S? We found out the hard way that SiRi has not been enabled to Tweet as of yet, and we wanted to find a nice little solution to our Tweeting needs. We remembered that SiRi can send text messages, and Twitter has a convenient Text to Tweet service. With a few simple and quick steps, you can start sending and receiving tweets hands-free using SiRi

Here are the instructions for how to tweet using SiRi:

1. Go to Twitter.com and login with your account.
2. Edit your profile, and select the “Mobile” section.
3. Enter your phone number and hit save.
4. Send the verification text to twitter using the number 40404, and the verification code provided on the screen.
5. Make an entry in your contact book (for the number 40404) to send text messages using Siri.
6. DO NOT name the contact book entry you created in step 5 Twitter, as SiRi will not text to that name.

Take a look at some of the commands you can use with SiRi, once you’ve started receiving those Twitter texts:

Twitter commands for SiRi using text messages to 40404

Do more than Tweet! Send these commands to Twitter:

• FOLLOW username – Start following a user
• UNFOLLOW username – Stop following a user
• ON/OFF – Turn all Tweet notifications on or off
• ON/OFF username – Set Tweet notifications for a user on or off (you’ll still be following them even if you set it to off)
• GET username – Shows you the latest tweet from any user
• RETWEET username – Retweet a user’s latest tweet
• FAVORITE username – Favorite a user’s latest tweet
• DM username your-message – Send a direct message to a user

Keep in mind that this is a custom solution for how to tweet using SiRi, and it is not an official solution from Apple or Twitter. We should see SiRi improved over time with new commands, but this type of tweaking will serve us well while we wait. Let us know how the solution is working for you, or if you’ve found any improvements or tweaks that we could add to SiRi.

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There are some very useful hidden iOS 5 features, and one of them is the ability to make keyboard shortcuts. You can assign shortcuts in your keyboard settings, that will allow you to quickly fill in commonly used words or phrases. For example, I can assign the letters OMW to the phrase on my way, and BRB to be right back. I’ve been saving myself tons of agony, by saving my email address as a three letter shortcut. I no longer have to type that big string of letters into submission fields within apps or web pages. This will be a productivity feature, that will increase your overall productivity, and save you tons of time and frustration, by eliminating the need to constantly type words or phrases that you use on a regular basis. The closest comparison to what this feature represents, is an app called “Text Expander Touch”. It’s a very popular app that allows the expansion of text, through the use of pre-assigned shortcuts. I’m thrilled that we can get this functionality from a native feature within iOS, and I figured I’d share the tutorial with you guys

Here are the steps for how to make keyboard shortcuts in iOS 5:

1. Open the settings application on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch running iOS 5.
2. Scroll down and tap on the general section.
3. Scroll down and tap on the keyboard section.
4. Scroll down and tapp on “Add New Shortcut…”.
5. Enter the phrase you’d like to make a shortcut for.
6. Assign a shortcut to the phrase you made in step 5.
7. Marvel at your new creation

Now you can open up any application and test your shortcut by typing it into any text field! This is a pretty powerful feature, and one that most people are not aware of yet. We hope you put it to good use, and that we have helped you to regain countless hours of frustration from repeatedly typing in repeated information on your iOS device.

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Are you wondering how to tech SiRi who your family members are? We’ve figured out how you can specify “Related People” in your contact book on your iPhone 4S.

SiRi can recognize special commands referencing your family members, if you specify who your “Related People” are. You can say things like:

1. Tell my wife I’ll be at the game on time.
2. Call my sister.
3. Email my partner about our media kit.

These commands can make using SiRi very convenient, but she won’t recognize who your wife, sister, or partner is, until you tell her by voice, or by adding a “special field” within each contact book entry.

Here’s how to teach SiRi who your family members are in your iPhone 4S contact book :

1. Activate SiRi by double clicking the home button on your iPhone 4S.
2. Tell Siri who your wife, sister, partner, etc, is by saying: “contact name” is my wife, sister, etc.

Or alternatively, you can:

1. Look up the contact that you’d like SiRi to recognize.
2. Select the “Edit” button on the contact entry.
3. Scroll to the bottom of the entry and tap on “add field”.
4. Scroll to the bottom of the entry and tap on “Related People”.
5. Tap the type of relationship; wife, sister, etc.
6. Enter the name of the person associated with that relationship.

Now you can easily execute voice commands, having SiRi call your wife, text your sister, or email your business partner.

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We can’t figure out why Apple has not released a software update to address the screen brightness issue with iMac target display mode, but we’ve found our own temporary fix for now.

Check out the directions below on how to adjust screen brightness in target display mode on an iMac:

To adjust your screen brightness while in target display mode on your iMac you should:

1. Download the Shades application here.
2. Install shades into your system preferences.
3. Adjust your screen brightness using the slider in the menu bar.

That’s all there is to it folks! It’s a temporary fix, but one that works really well for now. Hopefully we’ll see an official software update from apple soon to address the brightness control in target display mode.

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It’s here! It’s finally here! Months after the original tease on stage at Moscone West, and several torturous and mind-numbingly frustrating betas (yes I ran betas for 2 friggin months), iOS 5.0 is OFFICIALLY available from iTunes! iOS 5 is available for iPhone 3GS, 4, 4S, last two generations of iPod touch, and iPad 1&2.

iOS 5.0 brings the following BIG enhancements

• Notification Center – a central location for all your app and system notifications
• iMessage – an Internet based text messaging service (free) between all iOS 5.0 devices
• Reminders – a simple to-do list type app with GPS location based reminder functionality
• Twitter – sign into twitter once on iOS 5, and almost everything on iOS 5 becomes tweet-able (safari websites, photos etc)
• Newsstand – a central location for all your subscription apps (includes automatic background downloads when new issues are available)
• Camera enhancements – pinch in/out to zoom, use the volume up button to take photos, and lock autofocus/exposure
• Wifi Sync to iTunes: self explanatory
• iCloud support: sync contacts, calendars, mail, documents, app data, and stream photos to all your idevices automatically. Perform wifi backups when devices are locked, charging, and connected to WIFI.

There are over 200 clever tweaks to the system that serve to make your experience on your idevice smoother than ever before. If you notice any additional tweaks that we missed, please sound off in the comments below

There are a couple of things to note for the following group of users-

iOS devices coming from an iOS 5 beta, and upgrading to the official iOS 5:
(YOU MUST DO THE FOLLOWING TO PRESERVE YOUR DATA)

1. Connect your device to your computer and open iTunes
2. Right click on your device in iTunes and click back up
3. Go to http://www.apple.com/iTunes, and download the latest version of iTunes (10.5+)
4. Install iTunes 10.5+
5. Connect your device after opening up iTunes 10.5+ and click the ‘RESTORE’ option
6. NOTE:** If you receive a ‘server contact error’ and your Internet connection is fine, put your device in DFU mode and click RESTORE again
7. iTunes will download the official iOS 5 and install a clean, official copy. Doesn’t that feel good?
8. Before completion of the setup assistant on your devices itself, choose to ‘Restore from iTunes’
9. On your computer, choose your latest backup, and let iTunes bring all of your data back

For users upgrading from iOS 4 to iOS 5:

1. First let me start off by saying that I envy your strong determined will to stay away from buggy betas. That kind of mental strength would’ve saved me 2 months of frustration.
2. Visit www.apple.com/iTunes, and download the latest version of iTunes (10.5+)
3. Install iTunes and connect your device
4. A back up is not mandatory since you will click on the ‘Check for Updates’ button instead of the ‘Restore’ button, but it’s always good practice!
5. After iOS 5 installs, you are set! Now tell us what you find cool in the comments and engage with the editors! We promise we don’t bite!

Oh, and don’t forget to “like” our Facebook page 

For the first time, Apple has decided to provide it’s OSX 10.7 Lion operating system without any install discs. OSX 10.7 Lion is currently only available as a digital download on the Mac App Store. Many people, including myself have found this limitation to be inconvenient. OSX Lion is close to 4GB in size, and without any backup discs, installing Lion on a new Mac requires downloading the files from the Mac App Store. We’ve decided to show you how to create a Lion install disc, reduce the time it takes for the installation, and avoid the repeated downloading of nearly 4GB of data.

NOTE: The OSX Lion installer deletes itself when you upgrade, so in order to create a OSX Lion backup disc, you’ll have to do it before you update your computer to Lion.

Here are the instructions for how to make an OSX 10.7 Lion install disc:

1. Download OSX Lion from the Mac App Store. The installer will download to your Applications folder.
2. Right-click on the OSX Lion installer, and click on “Show Package Contents”. Go to Contents > SharedSupport and find the file called “InstallESD.dmg“.
3. Open Disk Utility, and drag InstallESD.dmg into the left sidebar. Insert a DVD, select InstallESD.dmg in the sidebar, and hit the “Burn” button.
4. Reboot your computer, and hold down the option key after you hear the startup sound. You can select your OSX Lion backup disc, and install without using the Mac App Store.

Here are the instructions for how to make an OSX 10.7 Lion USB thumb drive:

1. Open Disk Utility on your Mac.
2. Plug in your USB thumb drive, and select it in the left-hand sidebar of Disk Utility. Go to the Partition tab, and select 1 Partition from the dropdown menu. Choose “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” on the left.
3. Click on the Options button under the partition table, and choose “GUID Partition Table“.
4. Hit the Apply button when you’re done.  NOTE: This will format your drive, and  erase everything, so be sure to save anything you need before doing this!
5. Click the “Restore” tab, and select the InstallESD.dmg file as the source, and your USB thumb drive as the destination.
6. Click the Apply button, and it will create your bootable OSX Lion USB thumb drive.

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