BarneyBlog

The iPhone has a number of problems, but the inability to background applications is one that just got fixed.  There's a new app on Cydia for backgrounding an arbitrary application, called surprisingly enough, Backgrounder.  It adds a couple behaviours to your home button for backgrounding, as well as supporting the ability configure apps to always background.

Obviously have to have a jailbroken phone to do it, but with QuickPwn it's a breeze.  Now you can listen to Pandora while you surf the web or check your email just like you can with the iPod app.  Or stay signed into chat while you go look up a contact.  Now if only they'd fix copy and paste, attaching images to emails, text selection, etc.

After a couple weeks of reloading the whole GMail app to check for new messages, I found a better way. It always seemed silly to have to do it, but there isn't a refresh button like on the desktop interface. Like so many things with Google products, all it takes is stepping back from what you expect based on other apps and just doing what seems rational. It often just works.

So how do you do it?

Just tap the page label. The one with the message count. It updates, and reloads the massage list if needed.

The wi-fi on the iPhone is totally kick ass. I was really impressed. At home I had to manually type in my long hex WEP key, but at work (where it's a pain) the phone detected an "enterprise wi-fi" network, prompted me for my Active Directory credentials and that was it. Note that this is a iPhone getting in to a Windows environment.

With my laptop (which is a Windows) machine, I've completely failed to get on the wi-fi, instead resorting to an Ethernet cable to a spare jack. Seems silly. So props to Apple for getting this dead on.

On the typing front, I've decided that the one finger approach is way faster than trying to use my thumbs. The phone just moves around too much when I use my thumbs, so I miss a lot. I can't hit the keys quite as fast with one finger, but it's WAY more accurate.