Tag Archives: iTunes

Ah, December 26th. Boxing Day. Christmas is finally over and it’s time to take stock of your gifts. Invariably, many of us receive colorful plastic cards, with a dancing silhouette on it, worth trading for digital things on iTunes. A fine gift and all, but what the heck do you do with it? You don’t buy music (Spotify Premium takes care of that) or movies or TV shows (Netflix!) so that just leaves apps and games to blow a measly $10 gift card on. Believe it or not, there are applications that are worth spending money on, and it’s all the sweeter when you’re not spending your own money.

10000000 ($2.99) and You Must Build A Boat ($2.99)

10000000 is a simple fast-paced match-three game with RPG elements. Your little guy runs through a 16-bit dungeon and into monsters, and you need to match tiles in order to attack, defend, and get items. Easy to pick up yet painfully addictive, 10000000 gives you plenty of replays as you try to ultimately get the ten million points needed to open the door to your freedom. Once you hit that milestone, download the sequel: You Must Build A Boat. The goal is different (you must build a boat) but the gameplay is the same, and with tons of new features and secrets as you build your boat bigger and bigger, recruiting monsters to act as your crew while moving up-river.

Pocket Casts ($3.99)

If you’re tired of the iTunes podcast interface, give Pocket Casts a try. We prefer it for two main features: reverse-chronological sorting (for starting a podcast series at the beginning) and easy downloads for offline listening. Almost everything is customizable, from playback to storage, and convenient features such as intro-skipping, silence-removal, and variable speed lets you get the most pod for your time. We also believe that every app should have at least an option for a retina-pleasing dark theme, and Pocket Casts makes the cut. Some podcasts the iFixYouri crew enjoys:

99% Invisible – Interesting stories about day-to-day designs you don’t generally think about (examples: revolving doors, the NBC chimes, and “Busta Rhymes Island”).
Welcome to Night Vale – Regular updates from the creepiest town in the Southwest. Surreal, often-dark humor in the form of local newscasts from the fictional Night Vale.
Embedded – Investigative journalism for people who like self-contained stories, unlike the months-long yarns of Serial. Each episode stands alone and covers its topic in gripping, explorative fashion.

Djay Pro 2

Algoriddim’s popular app lets you be a pro DJ, allowing playback and mixing of digital audio files with a user interface that tries to simulate the concept of two turntables and a microphone. Works decently well on your phone but you really need an iPad to fully realize its potential. Integrates with Spotify (Premium account required) and features a huge array of effects, waveforms, and sampling capabilities. A lot of professionals use Djay for both composing and live performances, but for such a low cost, it can be just as much fun for a desktop disc-jockey to start mixing their favorite tunes.

DIY Fix, News, Tips

What To Do If Your iPhone Touch Screen Isn’t Responding

December 13, 2012 Staff 1 Comment

An iPhone touch screen that is not responding can be a challenging problem. The device is quite costly, so any issue that requires repair is automatically frustrating. When it stops working, it means that your main line of communication is cut off from the world. It can even endanger your livelihood, if you rely on your phone for work.

Here are a few things that a person can do when the screen becomes unresponsive.

Troubleshooting Unresponsive iPhone Touchscreen

Certain applications take up a great deal of memory, which can cause the phone to freeze up. This is very likely to occur when several programs are being run at the same time. If the phone becomes unresponsive, it is best to force the application to stop. To do this, hold down the home button until the application stops and the screen once again becomes responsive.

Restart the iPhone

If you’re unsuccessful in stopping the application, it may be necessary to restart the entire phone. The on/off button should be held until the red slide bar appears. Power down the phone and turned back on. This should make the phone responsive again.

Resetting the iPhone

Under rare circumstances, an iPhone touchscreen will still not respond after a restart. In these cases, it will become necessary to reset the phone. This is different from the above restart; the phone will be forced to shut down without the normal closeout process. Resetting the phone involves holding the on/off button and the home button at the same time until the Apple logo appears and goes away. After the device is off, it can be turned back on in a few seconds. By this time, the phone should be working again.

Restoring with iTunes

If none of the above seem to work, the next step is to connect the phone to a computer and open iTunes. On the Summary pane, a person can select “Restore”. If the phone does not appear in iTunes, there’s not much you can do yourself at this point, but you can still get it fixed or salvage the value of the phone.

Professional Assistance for Unresponsive iPhone Touch Screen

If the iPhone screen is still not responding, it may be necessary to take the phone in for professional repair or sell your iPhone for cash. An experienced repair shop, like iFixYouri, will be able to evaluate and fix the problem with no hassle. This will avoid further damage or loss of data in the phone. iPhones are very expensive and sensitive. Getting the job done correctly will save a lot of headaches down the line.

iPhone, Tips

Make iPhone Ringtones for Free in iTunes

October 15, 2012 Staff 4 Comments

So you just bought an iPhone, and you want to buy a custom ringtone. Then you discover the songs are a buck each, and then another buck to make them into a ringtone on iTunes. If you want them for free, I’ll show you how to do it all within iTunes, no external program required.

Set Up for Free iPhone Ringtone

What to do first is to go into iTunes and pick a song. You can only pick a song that was not bought in the iTunes store. So either a song ripped from a CD, or that you find elsewhere on the internet.

Take the song, right-click on it and select “Get info”. Go down to the options menu and pick the start time and the stop time. Say the part of the song that you want to use for a ringtone is in the middle of it. Indicate the start time for when the section of the song begins, and end it wherever you want. It doesn’t matter where it is in the song, as long as it lasts less than 40 seconds. Notice there are no dots in between minutes and seconds.

Now you’ve set when the song starts, and when it stops. If you were to play the song now that you’ve created a start and stop time, it will only last as long as the segment you indicated, even though the length of the song will still be the same. What you can do is right-click again, and choose “create AAC version”. Create an AAC version and iTunes will create a copy of the song with the times that you have selected.

Fix Your Files

Next, go back to the song you’ve altered and undo the time changes you made in the options. That way, when you go back to listen to it later, it doesn’t just play the short clip you arranged. Then take the short version for your ringtone to your desktop, and return to iTunes. Delete the short version from iTunes, so the copy isn’t taking up space in iTunes anymore.

Make the iPhone Ringtone

Next, go to the short track on your desktop, click on it, and change the name. Notice the format of the song is MPEG4 (‘M4A’ file extension). You’re just going to delete the A, to create an R, so the file’s extension would be .M4R instead of .M4A. If an alert comes up, confirm that you’re changing the extension.

Double-click on the song, and when it starts playing, it’s added in your ringtones automatically. Finally, on your iPhone, go to the ringtones section and sync it. Now your ringtone will be on it.

Adding personalized ringtones can make an old phone feel like new. Before you purchase a new phone for fancy build-in ringtones, consider trying this simple method. If your current phone isn’t performing properly, getting it fixed will also make it new. Don’t take chances: leave iPhone repairs to the experts at iFixYouri.

Tablets

Easy iPad Set Up: Step By Step Tutorial

October 10, 2012 Staff 2 Comments

In this tutorial, we’ll talk about how to set up your brand new iPad step by step. If you’ve ever dealt with any iPhones or iPods before, the process is quite similar. Even if you haven’t, don’t worry, the process isn’t too difficult.

Step 1) Unwrap

Remove the shrink wrap plastic protective covering from your factory fresh iPad, then open the box.

Step 2) Open iTunes

If you don’t already have iTunes installed in your computer, you need to download it at iTunes.com/download. Then just enter your email address, click the download button and click run.

Step 3) Connect Your iPad

Plug the cable that came in the box into the side slot on your iPad, then plug the other end into a USB slot in your computer. iTunes should open automatically. If it doesn’t, just click on the iTunes icon on your computer to open it up manually.

Step 4) Register Your iPad

iTunes will open a welcome screen the first time you plug your iPad into your computer. The next few screens prompt you to register your iPad and set up your iTunes account, if you haven’t already done this in the past. If you’ve already used the iTunes store, then you already have an Apple ID. That’s what you use to sign in into iTunes.

Step 5) Sign in

Just enter your Apple ID and password on the first registration screen and hit Continue. If you don’t have an Apple ID, simply check “I don’t have an Apple ID”, click “continue” and you can sign up for one. Just fill out the form. It’s pretty quick and painless.

Step 6) New iPad Set Up

After you get past the Apple ID registration form, you’ll be asked if you want to restore from a back up or set up a new iPad. If you don’t have anything previously purchased from iTunes, just select to set it up as a new iPad. Now that your iPad and iTunes account are in sync, you’ll see a folder for your new iPad on the left side of iTunes.

Step 7) Charge Overnight

Your iPad comes partially charged from the Apple factory but you’ll want to charge it up fully after playing with it for a while. Remove the cube shaped power charger from the box by pulling up on the little plastic tab then wrestle with the shrink wrap for a while. (Really? Do they really need to shrink wrap this?) Next remove the USB plug from your computer and plug it into the power charger, then plug the power charger into the wall. You’ll probably want to charge it overnight, so you can play with your new iPad all day tomorrow.

Have fun with your new iPad. Take good care of it — it’s a precious item. In the event that something does happen to it, there is hope: at iFixYouri, we can fix any issue you have with your iPad.

iFixYouri Blog