Basic Tutorial: Playing Personal Music in Any Application

Without the multitasking feature available thanks to the [almost outdated] iOS 4, the above title wouldn’t be as easy to make happen. Currently, many applications will stop your music that’s playing in the background due to their SFX and BGM starting to play when the app is opened; I’ll let you know a simple way to get past this simple frustration-causing problem because it truly does get annoying when your music is constantly halted.

Also available with the multitasking bar, is the music control section, which can be accessed by sliding to the left upon double clicking your home button. From here, you’d normally be able to press play and your music would start playing. That’s sadly not the case when you open an application with your own music already playing. The buttons are gray and not clickable. Now, many applications have the option to play custom playlists, but for those that do not, use the following steps to play your own music:

1. Open up the application and once it fully boots up, press the home button to return to your pages.

2. Play the desired music.

3. Open up the same application again – if it’s multitasking enabled, it should boot up without the whole loading that it previously needed for the first step above.

4. Turn off the sound effects and background music, if any, using the application’s option menu (if there is one)

5. Enjoy your music: the music control section should not be grayed out, so you can also switch songs.

If you don’t believe that (1) music stops playing when an application is opened and/or (2) the play button, usable via the music control section of the multitasking bar, try them out and let me know. If everything I’ve stated does somehow work for you, then my iPod is just morbidly screwed up. Then again, there have already been signs indicating that, one being the fact that my iPod allows me to delete applications whilst they’re downloading – something that no one else that I’ve checked with can do, although it’s greatly beneficial.

I hope you enjoyed this iPhone Noobtorial. It still puzzles me why Apple would completely gray out the buttons, but I guess that’s why people are in question of whether or not iOS should receive an href="http://www.iphonealley.com/productguide/does-ios-need-an-interactive-tutorial">interactive tutorial.

Week in iPad for September 18, 2011

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App for That: How to sync calendars across multiple iPads

There are hundreds of thousands of iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad apps for just about everything — so how come the one you need, the one you know just has to be there, is so hard to find? Enter TiPb’s new weekly feature where staff and readers alike sort through the App Store and help you find just the right App for That. This week, Kevin asks:

We are looking for an app that can be updated by several different users at the same time and display that updated schedule to everyone on their iPad. Let me give you the specifics to better explain what I am looking for.

The setting is a cold storage facility with 10 different buildings. Throughout those 10 buildings are 5-6 workers loading or unloading trucks and 2 employees in the office checking in drivers. The office employees make the appointments for the drivers but appointments can be made on the same day.

So we would like the warehouse workers to be able to see the updated schedule as it changes as well as be able to note the arrival and departure times of the drivers from the delivery docks. It doesn’t need a lot of bells and whistles but it just needs to be current and easily updatable by different parties at the same time.

CalenGoo [$6.99 - App Store link] is an iPhone and iPad app designed to keep your Google calendars synced across all devices. Additionally, it integrates Google Tasks which may be helpful in a work environment.

Obviously, Kevin will need to create a Google account in order to use this app, but that will only take a few moments and then he’d be good to go.

Another option is to still use a Google calendar account, but to set it up in the iPad’s built in Calendar as an exchange account.

Anyone else have any App for That suggestions for Kevin? Let him — and all of us — know.

Having trouble finding what you need in the app store? Head on over to our App and Game Feature Forum and let us know what you’re looking for. The TiPb community will do our best to find you just the right App for That!

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