Fix iMessage and FaceTime Activation Errors with iOS 7 osxdailynews.blogspot.com

osxdailynews.blogspot.com ® Fix iMessage and FaceTime Activation Errors with iOS 7

Some iOS 7 users have reported problems activating iMessage and FaceTime on their freshly updated iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices. Some of the initial activation errors were probably due to immense simultaneous demand being placed on Apple servers, but since some people are still experiencing this problem after the initial iOS 7 release rush, we think it’s worth addressing.

Most of iMessage and FaceTime activation errors are one or both of the following; either a device gets stuck on “Waiting for activation…” or you get stuck with a lovingly vague popup that says “An error occurred during activation. Try again.” which looks like this:

That is exactly the kind of error message we’re looking to resolve here, so follow the steps in order and you should be able to get your services functioning again in short order.

1: Confirm Apple ID is Set for iMessages & FaceTime

Is your email address configured properly? Is your phone number included in the list? Here’s how you can make sure:

iMessages

• Open Settings > Messages > iMessage > Check if “Apple ID” is your email address and that phone numbers are stored below


• Tap on “Apple ID: email@address” to sign out or change accounts if necessary

FaceTime

• Open Settings > FaceTime > Be sure “Apple ID” is set to the proper address and that phone and email numbers are correctly entered

If that stuff looks good, try toggling the services off and on again.

2: Toggle Both Services OFF & ON

After making changes to the Apple ID, you’ll want to toggle the settings off and on again:

• Settings > Messages > OFF, wait a few seconds, then toggle back ON


• Settings > FaceTime > OFF, wait, then turn back ON

Still getting the Activation error? Try resetting your network settings next.

3: Reset Network Settings

Note that you will have to re-enter your stored wi-fi passwords by doing this:

• Go to “Settings” > General > Reset > choose “Reset Network Settings”

If you have a passcode set you will need to enter it before resetting. When finished, join your primary wi-fi network again and check messages and/or FaceTime to see if it’s working. Send an iMessage to someone who also uses iMessage and it should go through. This is a tried and true trick that has worked since iMessage was first introduced.

For FaceTime, you may want to attempt to initiate an audio call before a video call. Audio calls are lower bandwidth than video and we’ve seen a few reports of this causing both to work.

4: Reboot

Turn the iPhone or iPad on and off again. All you need to do is hold down the Power button, slide to power off, then power it back on.

Once you’re booted up again, try sending an iMessage or initiating a FaceTime call, everything should be working as expected.

Still Not Working? Restore

In particularly stubborn situations you may need to restore iOS from a backup. You can also try resetting the device to defaults, setting it up as new, activate iMessage and FaceTime through your Apple ID, then restore from a backup once you have confirmed it works – we have received an email from a user stating that particular sequence to be effective when everything else didn’t work. Restoring takes a little while, but so long as you back up first it’s not too bad, and if you go through official channels an contact AppleCare about continuous iMessage activation issues they will probably recommend you restore from a backup after performing a variety of other tricks.

Finally, you may find that using a new Apple ID also resolves some of the issues, but considering how much stuff is tied to an Apple ID this is really not recommended.

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For most people, updating to iOS 7 has been trouble free, but now that we’ve fixed your iMessage and FaceTime errors, you can go about addressing battery life issues with iOS 7 and resolving any speed problems. If you are experiencing a persistent problem with iOS 7, let us know on Twitter, Facebook, email, or Google+, and we just may be able to resolve it.

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If You Think iOS 7 Feels Slow Here’s How to Speed It Up osxdailynews.blogspot.com

osxdailynews.blogspot.com ® If You Think iOS 7 Feels Slow Here’s How to Speed It Up

Most users are satisfied with iOS 7 performance, but some iPhone and iPad owners have discovered the major update has impacted the speed of their devices. If you feel like iOS 7 has made your hardware slower than it was before the update, there are some changes you can make that will likely speed things up a bit. These tricks will make the biggest difference on older device hardware running iOS 7, so if your device feels a bit sluggish after updating take a moment to make a few settings adjustments. The first few tricks may also boost your battery life too…

Use “Increase Contrast” to Eliminate Transparency & Blur Effects

The widespread transparencies, blurs, and fancy overlays throughout iOS 7 look fantastic, but on older hardware they can also make devices run slower by using up system resources.

• Open Settings and go to “General” then to “Accessibility”


• Choose “Increase Contrast” and toggle it to ON

This makes the Notification Center, Control Center, folders, and some other UI elements a bit less attractive since it takes away the eye candy, removing the transparent effects and changing their respective backgrounds to a solid color. If you notice any sort of lag with opening the aforementioned features, you’ll notice a nice speed boost by turning the contrast on.

Note that some hardware doesn’t support as many transparencies to begin with, but you can still toggle the setting to reduce it further.

Turn Off Background App Refresh

This feature lets apps update in the background, and while it’s handy, it also slows down older iOS devices and is one of the biggest battery draining elements of iOS 7 with devices we’ve used it on… so sorry Background App Refresh, you have to go:

• From “Settings”, go to “General” and choose “Background App Refresh”


• Switch “Background App Refresh” to the OFF position

Turning this off basically means that apps will only refresh once they are active, which is the same behavior that existed prior to iOS 7 anyway. Toggling this setting has a noticeable impact on iPhone 4 performance in particular.

Turn On Motion Reduction

Like most other eye candy, the snazzy motion effects in iOS 7 are pleasant to look at but can tax system resources a bit. Thus, turning the feature off will reduce the system load and can speed up performance on some hardware:

• Back in Settings, head over to “General” and then on to “Accessibility”


• Select “Reduce Motion” and flip the toggle so that it’s ON

Note that some older iPhone and iPad models won’t even have this setting available to them, because it’s turned OFF by default. If you don’t see the “Reduce Motion” setting in your Accessibility panel, it’s because it is not supported on your device – likely for performance reasons.

Lose Automatic Updates & Downloads

The reason for turning this off is simple: anything running in the background uses system resources to do so, the same theory behind disabling Background App Refresh. Turn off Automatic Downloads and Updates for everything:

• Go to Settings and then to “iTunes & App Store”


• Choose “Automatic Downloads” and toggle everything to OFF

Turning these settings off means you will have to manually update your apps through the App Store, and you will also need to manually download songs and apps on this particular device if you started downloading the same apps on other iOS devices. Three useful features indeed, but ones that aren’t hard to live without in the name of better device performance.

Consider a Complete Restore to Factory Defaults

A bit extreme, but sometimes you can boost performance on virtually any iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch simply by clearing off everything and resetting it to factory default settings. Be sure to back up your device before you do this, and then you can restore from a backup when it’s finished, or just start with a clean slate.

Admittedly this is a pain in the rear, but there is a long history of positive reports ever since the earliest days of iOS (and OS X or Windows for that matter…) of wiping everything out and clean installing an operating system.

For extreme cases this may resolve some lingering performance issues, but for most users we would not recommend this simply because it’s a nuisance.

Update to iOS 7.1 (or Whatever) When It Arrives

iOS 7 is a major update and there are some bugs and performance issues that shipped with the first release. This is why we recommended some users hold off on the first 7.0 release, since history has long informed us that initial releasees of major updates are often buggy and can impact performance in a negative way. Whether you’re waiting to update or not, be sure to jump on the iOS update releases when they come out, as it will almost certainly contain significant improvements and bug fixes, refining the iOS 7 experience considerably.

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Set Messages to Display Full Names in iOS 7 osxdailynews.blogspot.com

osxdailynews.blogspot.com ® Set Messages to Display Full Names in iOS 7

The Messages app in iOS 7 defaults to shortening contacts names to only display their first name. That is done to make things look nice and tidy, and it also helps to prevent an overlap between the contact name and navigational elements on iPhone screens while avoiding name truncation. An obvious problem with this default setting reveals itself if you have contacts that share first names, which is probably just about everyone.

Because message windows from “Bob Jones” will look the same as “Bob McKowski” and both look like they’re from “Bob”, it becomes impossible to tell them apart from the message window itself (outside of reading the message contents, of course). That could potentially lead to an awkward situation where you inadvertently respond to the wrong text, or send something to the wrong person who just happens to share a name. Fortunately, preventing such a scenario is just an easy settings adjustment away, though it’s a little buried in the preferences.

Set Messages to Display Full Names in iOS 7

Adjusting a setting allows Messages to show the complete name of contacts in Message threads:

• Open Settings and go to “Mail, Contacts, Calendars” then scroll down to the ‘Contacts’ section


• Select “Short Name” and flip “Short Name” to OFF to display the full name of contacts


• Go back to Messages and open an individual thread to see the change

Turning off Short Name will make things look like they did prior to iOS 7.

Do note that some full names do not fit into the allotted titlebar of iOS 7′s Messages app and they might wind up truncating the names anyway with a ‘…’ at a randomly placed interval. When showing full names the shortening varies based upon if you have bold text enabled, the length of the name, and also the size of the screen, with larger screen devices being less impacted than the smaller iPhone and iPod touch displays. If you see a lot of name shortening going then choose one of the settings based upon initials, showing the first name and last initial can be a good compromise to prevent confusion and also still have things look decent.

Change Messages to Display Names with Initials

If you experience truncation with the full name shown, or if you’d rather have some tidiness to the windows, you can use various Initial based options instead:

• Open Settings and go to “Mail, Contacts, Calendars” then scroll down to the ‘Contacts’ section and go back to “Short Name”, then choose one of the following options:


• 
  
  
  
  • First Name & Last Initial – good middle ground choice
  
  
  • First Initial & Last Name Only
  
  
  • First Name Only – the annoying default
  
  
  • Last Name Only – OK if you’re on a football team
  
  
  • Optionally, set “Prefer Nicknames” to your preference
  
  
  
  


• Go back to Messages and view a thread to see the change

First Name and Last Initial is also a decent choice because it eliminates messaging confusion in most situations, while still looking decent in the Messages window. The screenshot below shows a message thread showing the full first name and only the last initial:

Further down in the Settings panel you will find that “Prefer Nicknames” is on by default, and it’s a good choice to leave enabled if you have nicknames configured for various contacts (moms, dads, grandmas, grandpas, etc). If you haven’t set any nicknames yet, you can do so through the Contacts app by editing any individuals contact details, or by using Siri to say “[Contact] nickname is [nickname]” and confirming the change with Siri.

If you never would have thought to find this on your own, don’t feel too bad, it’s admittedly peculiar for a Messages setting to reside under the “Mail, Contacts, Calendars” preferences rather than the “Messages” settings, but that’s where it is for now. Don’t be surprised if it gets reassigned to the Messages panels at some point in a future update.

Still getting the hang of iOS 7? Don’t miss these four essential tips to get started and immediately get a better grasp of things.

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MacUpdate Fall 2013 Promo: Get 9 Great Mac Apps for $50 osxdailynews.blogspot.com

osxdailynews.blogspot.com ® MacUpdate Fall 2013 Promo: Get 9 Great Mac Apps for $50

Looking for some new great apps for your Mac? MacUpdate packages together some great software bundles for OS X, and the MacUpdate Fall 2013 bundle is no different. Containing 9 Mac apps that would typically retail for a combined total of $460, you can pick them all up as a single pack for just $50. The apps are all compatible with recent versions of OS X (including Mavericks) and cover a wide range of functionality:

• TechTool Pro 7 – Powerful system test, repair, optimization utility


• ScreenFlow 4 – Feature-rich screen recording and editing app


• Civilization 5 Gold Edition – Wildly fun and addictive strategy game


• PDFpen 6 – Edit PDF’s and OCR files with ease


• Snapheal Pro – Easy photo editor and enhancer


• Deltawalke – Compare and merge files and folders


• Vitamin-R – Productivity enhancing task management


• Choco – Easy photo collage tool


• Aurora – Popular alarm clock app for the Mac

The apps deliver as a simple download, and the bundle deal is live for the remainder of September.

You can read more about each app, and buy the package deal over at MacUpdate for $49.99.

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Find the iOS 7 Font Hard to Read? Make It Easier to Read with Bolder Text osxdailynews.blogspot.com

osxdailynews.blogspot.com ® Find the iOS 7 Font Hard to Read? Make It Easier to Read with Bolder Text

One of the biggest complaints we’ve heard regarding iOS 7 is about the font change (the other complaint is usually about battery life, which is also extremely easy to fix). The new default system font is fairly narrow in weight, and as a result it can make text difficult to read throughout the various menus, settings, notifications, and even the Home Screen as icon text is quite thin.

If you find the default font and text to be difficult to read in iOS 7, stop squinting and take a moment to make a simple change that increases the weight of the font, making it bolder. This change is all encompassing and impacts all system fonts, and you will find nearly every text and font element to be much easier to read afterwards.

How to Make the iOS 7 Font Easier to Read with Bolder Text

• Open Settings and go to “General”, then choose “Accessibility”


• Scroll down to locate “Bold Text” and flip it ON


• Reboot the iPhone, iPad, iPod touch when asked

Don’t worry about the reboot process, it’s extremely fast nowadays so it only takes a few seconds to complete. When finished, the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch will have bolder fonts that are much easier on the eyes. If you haven’t seen it yet don’t assume you’ll have big fat fonts, the ‘bold’ text is actually very similar in weight to the default font in prior versions of iOS. Below are a few screen shots demonstrating the difference of bold text vs normal text in iOS 7 on an iPhone 5.

The most significant change is shown in the Settings menus, where everything is much easier to read:

The home screen text under icons also gets the bold treatment, before is on the left and after is on the right:

You’ll find the lock screen, Notification Center, and Control Center are also impacted by the font change. This really is a systemwide adjustment, but screen shots really don’t do the change justice. If you find the text difficult to read in iOS 7 make the setting adjustment yourself to see just how big of a change it really offers, if you don’t like it you can always toggle it back off again and go back to the narrow text default. It looks great on the retina screens, but non-retina devices may find it to be an even greater improvement.

This seems to apply to everyone, and despite being in the “Accessibility” settings even those with very sharp eyesight tend to appreciate the bolder option. Make the change and you should be a bit happier with the iOS 7 experience, and don’t forget to master these four essential tips to jump ahead of the pack with iOS 7. The overall experience may be a bit different than we’ve all been accustomed to, but once you learn the basics you’ll find it’s very nice.

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Show iTunes Song Change Notifications in OS X osxdailynews.blogspot.com

osxdailynews.blogspot.com ® Show iTunes Song Change Notifications in OS X

iTunes 11.1 brought with it support for iOS 7 and the excellent iTunes Radio feature, but another small feature lets you see song changes in the OS X Notification Center. Though it’s a fairly minor feature, there have been a variety of third party tweaks and apps to provide similar services over the years, making it pretty nice to have this natively.

Enable iTunes Song Change Notifications in OS X

The initial setting to see Notifications is handled through iTunes, though the total song count is adjusted through System Preferences as shown in the next step.

• From iTunes, pull down the iTunes menu and choose “Preferences”


• Under “General” you’ll find “Notifications”, check the boxes for “When song changes”


• Optional: Check the box for “Keep all song changes in Notification Center”

Show More Songs in Notification Center

The optional setting of “Keep all song changes” maintains a running tab of what songs have played, creating a playlist of sorts that you can recall later by looking through Notification Center. By default, only 5 songs will show up in the Notification panel, but you can adjust that through general system settings to display up to 20 songs:

• Pull down the  Apple menu and go to “System Preferences”


• Choose “Notifications” and locate “iTunes” in the list


• Alongside ‘Show in Notification Center’ pull down the submenu and select “20 Recent Items” (or 10, 5, etc)

Showing 20 songs may seem excessive for users who rely on Notification Center for other alerts, but for those who don’t use the feature much otherwise it can be an interesting way to see a songs played list that wouldn’t otherwise be accessible.

This feature obviously requires Notification Center to be enabled, which is part of OS X Mountain Lion or OS X Mavericks, thus Lion users won’t find the option or the notifications. If you disabled Notification Center at some point, you will need to re-enable it beforehand.

Macs with older versions of OS X and iTunes can continue to use a defaults command to enable a Dock-based song alert instead.

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Set Messages to Display Full Names in iOS 7 osxdailynews.blogspot.com

osxdailynews.blogspot.com ® Set Messages to Display Full Names in iOS 7

The Messages app in iOS 7 defaults to shortening contacts names to only display their first name. That is done to make things look nice and tidy, and it also helps to prevent an overlap between the contact name and navigational elements on iPhone screens while avoiding name truncation. An obvious problem with this default setting reveals itself if you have contacts that share first names, which is probably just about everyone.

Because message windows from “Bob Jones” will look the same as “Bob McKowski” and both look like they’re from “Bob”, it becomes impossible to tell them apart from the message window itself (outside of reading the message contents, of course). That could potentially lead to an awkward situation where you inadvertently respond to the wrong text, or send something to the wrong person who just happens to share a name. Fortunately, preventing such a scenario is just an easy settings adjustment away, though it’s a little buried in the preferences.

Set Messages to Display Full Names in iOS 7

Adjusting a setting allows Messages to show the complete name of contacts in Message threads:

• Open Settings and go to “Mail, Contacts, Calendars” then scroll down to the ‘Contacts’ section


• Select “Short Name” and flip “Short Name” to OFF to display the full name of contacts


• Go back to Messages and open an individual thread to see the change

Turning off Short Name will make things look like they did prior to iOS 7.

Do note that some full names do not fit into the allotted titlebar of iOS 7′s Messages app and they might wind up truncating the names anyway with a ‘…’ at a randomly placed interval. When showing full names the shortening varies based upon if you have bold text enabled, the length of the name, and also the size of the screen, with larger screen devices being less impacted than the smaller iPhone and iPod touch displays. If you see a lot of name shortening going then choose one of the settings based upon initials, showing the first name and last initial can be a good compromise to prevent confusion and also still have things look decent.

Change Messages to Display Names with Initials

If you experience truncation with the full name shown, or if you’d rather have some tidiness to the windows, you can use various Initial based options instead:

• Open Settings and go to “Mail, Contacts, Calendars” then scroll down to the ‘Contacts’ section and go back to “Short Name”, then choose one of the following options:


• 
  
  
  
  • First Name & Last Initial – good middle ground choice
  
  
  • First Initial & Last Name Only
  
  
  • First Name Only – the annoying default
  
  
  • Last Name Only – OK if you’re on a football team
  
  
  • Optionally, set “Prefer Nicknames” to your preference
  
  
  
  


• Go back to Messages and view a thread to see the change

First Name and Last Initial is also a decent choice because it eliminates messaging confusion in most situations, while still looking decent in the Messages window. The screenshot below shows a message thread showing the full first name and only the last initial:

Further down in the Settings panel you will find that “Prefer Nicknames” is on by default, and it’s a good choice to leave enabled if you have nicknames configured for various contacts (moms, dads, grandmas, grandpas, etc). If you haven’t set any nicknames yet, you can do so through the Contacts app by editing any individuals contact details, or by using Siri to say “[Contact] nickname is [nickname]” and confirming the change with Siri.

If you never would have thought to find this on your own, don’t feel too bad, it’s admittedly peculiar for a Messages setting to reside under the “Mail, Contacts, Calendars” preferences rather than the “Messages” settings, but that’s where it is for now. Don’t be surprised if it gets reassigned to the Messages panels at some point in a future update.

Still getting the hang of iOS 7? Don’t miss these four essential tips to get started and immediately get a better grasp of things.

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