Tag: iOS

How to Create E-mail Signatures in iOS

This blog post is for my mom.  She was an Android OS users for a few years with my brother providing tech support since he bought the device.  After years of using Android OS devices each with a different user interface that confounded my mother,  my brother finally bought her an iPhone and threw me under the bus for tech support.  Apparently my mom called him a lot.  A lot.

After walking her through the initial setup of her iPhone 5, my mom has called me only once with a problem with her phone.  She had accidentally toggled the mute switch.  Easy enough to fix once she found the button.

On a recent email I noticed my mom had used an email signature.  It contained her parting salutation, her home address, and phone numbers.  Of course I could see that she was typing this out and had not yet discovered the email signature feature of iOS.

In iOS you can create a standard email signature that is attached to each message you send.  You can create a one signature for use with all email accounts or create unique ones for each email account.  Here's how you do it.

Launch the Settings app.

  
In the Settings app, tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars.  Gently slide your finger up the screen to scroll down until you see the menu item for Signature.  Tap on the > or the word Signature.

 
Enter the signature text you want to use.  This text will be appended to the bottom of every email you send from your iPhone.

  

The iPad Is A Consumption Device

ignore the code: iPad: A Consumption Device, After All? by Lukas Mathis

Right now, for most of its users, the iPad is a consumption device. It’s not a PC replacement, and it’s not much better than a phone for gaming or watching movies or reading. That puts it into an awkward position. But it doesn’t have to be. There’s no reason the iPad couldn’t replace most PCs in people’s homes, and be better than those PCs at most tasks for which people currently use PCs. No reason — except for Apple’s lack of willingness to make the iPad into that device.

With the exception of the statement about the iPhone being better for watching movies or reading1, I agree with what Lukas has written. After a few years of using it as a productivity tool, I have started using it mostly for casual reading and minor photo editing.

  1. Most of the people making statement are young and have fracking idea how hard it is for someone over 40 to read the tiny text on an iPhone. No idea! ↩

Kill Switch

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One of the biggest “duh” technologies that we got in the last year or two was the phone kill switch. Lose your phone? Nuke it from orbit. Phone stolen? Nuke it from orbit. Jealous ex texting you at 3am? If you know their Apple ID password, nuke it from orbit. Johnathan Lyman

That last one about the ex; that is not theoretical. This has most likely happened to someone. Couples tends to share account information. Even within some families there is one Apple ID used for shared iTunes purchases and email.

Of course, Apple will get blamed for it when it happens and there will be calls for Apple to do something to make sure this can't happen again. Tim Cook may want to start investing in magic pixie dust. Consumers never take responsibility.