Tired of typing out long words, names, and sentences and wondering how to create text shortcuts? Lucky you! One of the new features of iOS 5 is the ability to do just that. For example, instead of typing out “On my way!”, you just type “omw” and the iPhone automatically changes the acronym to the full phrase. This phrase is actually the only shortcut that comes setup with iOS 5. To find out how to add your own, follow along!

1. Launch Settings
2. Tap General
3. Tap Keyboard (towards the bottom)
4. You will find a section called Shortcuts and a pre-created shortcut for omw.
5. Tap Add New Shortcut…
6. In the Phrase field, type in the entire phrase you’d like to create a shortcut for
7. In the Shortcut field, type in the acronym you want to be replaced with the above phrase
8. Tap Save
9. To edit a shortcut, tap on it from the Keyboard menu.
10. To delete a shortcut, tap Edit in the top right corner of the Keyboard menu

There you go! Now you’re all set to create you own shortcuts! They work exactly like autocorrect, so there’s nothing special you need to do to use them. Just type the shortcut and you’ll see a bubble pop up with the replacement phrase. Pressing space with allow the replacement, and tapping the bubble will cancel the replacement.

Any other favorite texting tips? Let us know, and let us know what your favorite shortcuts are!

Daily Tips range from beginner-level 101 to advanced-level ninjary. If you already know this tip, keep the link handy as a quick way to help a friend. If you have a tip of your own you'd like to suggest, add them to the comments or send them in to dailytips@tipb.com. (If it's especially awesome and previously unknown to us, we'll even give ya a reward…)

On Monday morning I picked up several shiny new iPhone 4S handsets that my Apple Business rep had set aside for me earlier in the week. I knew I would be traveling over the launch weekend and I needed quite a few phones, and my Apple Business rep couldn’t have been more helpful in arranging everything.

One of the best things I ever did for NickelFish was to register as a small business client with our local Apple Store. The experience and service the Business Team provides is absolutely incredible. Knowing that you have a reliable resource at your disposal that can help you with almost any issue you run into is very comforting. As part of an initiative started [last summer, Apple has been reaching out more to local companies, and it’s been a great move.

The funny thing is, I only registered as an afterthought. I was there one day about a year ago buying a laptop for one of our staff members, and the person I was working with saw my business credit card and offered to help me join. I honestly didn’t think about it prior to this, and I figured it wouldn’t hurt. I met the manager of the Business Team (who has since become a friend) and he said he would add us to the Apple local directory for vendors, and would let interested parties know about our capabilities if anyone inquired. Again, I figured, can’t hurt.

Over the course of the past year, I have been able to email or call at any point and ask tons of questions, reserve equipment for purchase, set up service appointments and just generally feel that we’re completely cared for in our hardware and software needs. As a business customer, you’re sometimes also eligible for discounts, depending on what you’re buying. In addition to this, we’ve had leads sent our way for web and mobile development projects through our association with Apple.

But the most important part of the entire experience for me is that every time I speak to someone at the store or stop by for a visit, every single team member I interact with is exceptionally professional and makes me feel like a VIP. It seems silly, but there aren’t all that many places in which you can get this level of service without paying a crazy premium. The Apple Business Team places a high level of emphasis on making business customers comfortable and providing a completely frictionless experience. They truly are a partner to your company, and if you’re running a small business and using Macs, I highly recommend investigating with your local Apple Store and reps.

If you have used Siri to add a relationship on your iPhone 4S(http://www.tipb.com/iphone-4s) you may be wondering how to go about removing it. Maybe you had someone labeled as a girlfriend or boyfriend and need to remove that relationship. While Siri can’t remove relationships (yet) itself, we can walk you through how to do it manually.

When iOS adds relationships it simply remembers them via your own contact card. So we’ll need to edit that.

1. First go into your Address Book and find your own contact card.
2. You’ll want to tap Edit in the top right corner.

3. Now scroll down a little ways and you’ll see a relationships section.
4. Simply delete whatever relationships you don’t want anymore.
5. Scroll back up and click Done.

iOS should no longer remember those relationships. You can always use Siri or manually add relationships again anytime you want.

DM1 is a virtual drum machine for the iPad. It comes with over 40 electronic drum kits: 18 classic vintage drum kits plus 22 in-house produced electronic kits. Too see the DM1 in action, check out the video below.

DM1 is an advanced vintage Drum Machine. It turns your iPad into a fun and creative beat making machine. Easy and fast to use, loaded with 40 superb electronic drum kits and beautiful hyper-realistic graphics, DM1 has been designed for a lot of instant fun.

DM1 offers 5 main sections:

1. The step sequencer frees your imagination with a smart use of the multi-touch screen. Just turn on and off steps in your sequence with the tip of your fingers to create cool beats, or unexpected rhythms!
2. The drum pads simply lets you play and record the beat that tickles your fingers. No need to be a first-class drummer, automatic quantize does the work for you.
3. The mixer for quick and subtle sound mixing of your drum kits. Featuring settings for volume, pitch, sample length, custom drum kit element for each channel, mute and solo mode.
4. The FX trackpads a creative duo of FX trackpads to distort, modulate and transform your beats. The effects include: Overdrive, Delay, Phaser, Texturizer, Robotizer, Filter and Compressor.
5. The song composer allows you to quickly make a song with the beat patterns you have created. Just drag and drop the patterns onto the timeline. Fast and easy.

Specifications:

• Graphic design by Jonas Eriksson
• Smart ergonomy for fast creativity and fun
• 40 vintage and produced drum kits, mastered at in-house Fingerlab Sound Studios
• Mixer page with pitch, length and level rotary controls, pan controls, and custom drum kit per channel
• Extra fast drum kit loading
• Playable pattern selection for extra creativity
• 9 Big Drum pads, quantized recording and MPC-like Repeat touch-stripe
• Step Sequencer with multi-touch matrix
• Duo FX Trackpads for real-time sonic destruction and multi-FX
• Mode song with intuitive editing
• High-quality export to email or iTunes shared folder
• Audio background mode

Giveaway

The good folks at Fingerlab have given us 5 promo codes to give away to you, our awesome readers! For a chance to win, just leave a comment below!

DM1 – The Drum Machine is available on the iPad and on sale for $0.99 until October 24.

[App Store link]

Have an app you’d love to see featured on TiPb? Email us at iosapps@tipb.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Apple today announced their Q4 2011 financial results, including 17.7 million iPhones, 11.2 million iPads, 6.62 million iPods, $6.62 billion in profits. Unfortunately for Apple’s stock in after-hours trading, that’s below expectations — the first time Apple hasn’t exceeded expectations since Q2 2002.

"We are thrilled with the very strong finish of an outstanding fiscal 2011, growing annual revenue to $108 billion and growing earnings to $26 billion," said Tim Cook, Apple's CEO. "Customer response to iPhone 4S has been fantastic, we have strong momentum going into the holiday season, and we remain really enthusiastic about our product pipeline."

"We are extremely pleased with our record September quarter revenue and earnings and with cash generation of $5.4 billion during the quarter," said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's CFO. "Looking ahead to the first fiscal quarter of 2012, which will span 14 weeks rather than 13, we expect revenue of about $37 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about $9.30."

Of course these results don’t include 4 million iPhone 4S sold last weekend. In other words, North Carolina might not be enough. They’re going to need a bigger money bin.

We’ll be covering Apple’s financial results call at 5pm EDT, so keep your browsers’ locked here.

• Tim Cook (TC): First call since the loss of Steve Jobs. Cook is repeating the email he sent out previously.
• Peter Oppenheimer (PO): New record for Mac and iPad, new quarterly record for iPhone.
• PO: [Going over results]
• PO: Going over new MacBook Airs, Lion, Mac business.
• 6.6 million iPods, down from 9.3 million. iPod touch still 50%. iPod share remains 70% according to NPD. Continues to be best selling in most country. 4-6 weeks inventory.
• iBookstore has 180 million downloads.
• 17.1 million iPhones, compared to 14 million in previous quarter. New September record. Asia almost doubled. Please with growth as they transition to iPhone 4S. Expected design following new product rumors at WWDC. Declined in second half of quarter due to increased speculation. 4-6 weeks channel inventory.
• Deferred new carrier additions until after launch. Sprint and KDDI now added.
• iPhone ranked highest in customer satisfaction, performance, ease of opperation, features, design. 93% of Fortune 500 testing or deploying, 60% of Global 500 testing or deploying. Lowes is in process of rolling out custom app. L’Orelieel, RBS, SAP, TI, Land Rover, CXS.
• Thrilled to be shipping iPhone 4S, Siri. Customers will love performance of A5, camera, 1080p. Now in 7 countries, working hard to roll out in 22 countries by end of next month.
• New record 11.1M iPads sold. iPad 2 launched in 28 countries, 90 countries total. $6.9 billion in revenue. 4-6 weeks channel inventory.
• Only 18 months sicne introduction. 92% of Fortune 500 is testing or deploying. 52% of Global 500 testing or deploying.
• United Continental is putting iPad in airplanes. Sonic Automotive is using for checkin, analytics. General Mills, Siemens, others using them.
• 250 cumulative iOS device sales to date. Customers are loving iOS 5.
• iCloud launched last week. It’s the easiest way for customers to manage content. Early reviews excellent.
• App Store 500,000 apps, 18 billion download. 123 countries total.
• Apple Stores growing, Mac and iPad sales. iPhone sales slowed.
• Will be restoring or replacing older Apple Stores in US that can’t meet demand.
• $81 billion in cash.
• Next quarter to span 14 instead of 13 weeks. Talking expectations. Apple is usually very conservative.
• 4 72 million iPhones, 32 million iPads, 17 million Macs. 40 new stores
• Q&A!
• Q: iPhone 4S close to holidays, how do you mitigate shortage?
• TS: 4 million sold, great start, thrilled. Confident in supply, won’t speculate when demand will balance. Confident will set all time record for iPhone this quarter.
• Primary negative impact was sell-through pause? No inventory issues?
• TS: Much less of a reduction they were expecting. Revenue exceeded guidance. Knew there was great anticipation of June/July iPhone. That was pace for last several years. Decline did occur but not to extent they though, beat guidance. Reduction happened in back half of the quarter as speculation hit highs. Thrilled to be shipping iPhone 4S, iCloud, iOS 5.
• In wildest dreams couldn’t have gotten off to better start.
• Q: Why can’t you do better than 40% in September given how well iPhone 4S is already doing, favorable components.
• PO: Expect gross margins to be flat. Favorable environment will continue, healthy mix of iPhone. Fully offset of higher cost structures, lower price points for iPhone, iPod, US dollar.
• Q: Traction in China, any update? Insight? How substantial?
• TC: Progress has been amazing. Greater China was 2% in ’09. 12% in 2011. 16% last Q. Fastest growing major region by far. Up 4x, 270% year over year. Total revenue over 13 billion. A year ago, they were right above 3 billion. Growing at feverish pace. New retail stores. Online store opened at the end of last year. 200 mono-branded stores (resellers). Premium experience. 7000 point-of-sales on iPhone in Greater China. How far can it go? Never seen a country with as many people rising into the middle class, aspiring to buy products Apple makes. Enormous opportunity. Place more stores. Middle East has significant opportunities.
• TC: iPhone introduced whole new customers to Apple. iPad will do the same. The sky is the limit.
• Q: Update on margin flexibility as you start to use more than one source?
• TC: Outstanding team in this area, unparalleled track record. Keep trying to improve it. Use balance sheet in favorable way to do strategic deals. Very important to Apple across series of products. As they get larger, they have elected to diversify some, however their approach has been and will always be to do business with as few as possible to be very deep, do as great an innovation as possible. Give Apple great quality, reasonable prices. Helps margin.
• Q: Amazon with Kindle Fire, lower price points, limited features. Hybrid market?
• TC: Outstanding iPad quarter. 11 million. Same time setting Mac record. Phenominal. Seen several competitors try to compete with iPad. Different form factors, price points. Reasonable to say none have thus far gained traction. In fact, iPad share went up. June quarter, IDC said 3/4 tablets were Apple. Assess this thing, look at iOS 5, iCloud, iTunes and App Store ecosystem, books, movies, 140k native apps for iPad vs. 100s for other guys. He feels very comforatble in ability to compete. Pipeline.
• Q: Why defer carriers?
• PO: Knew they would launch iPhone 4S, wanted to launch new carriers with new device. Biggest impact was rumors. Pervasive. Behind them. iPhone 4S is off to fantastic start. Thrilled to be including Sprint, KDDI, best product line EVER!
• Q: Size of tablet market? Not netbook? How big could it be?
• TC: Thought from beginning it would be huge, has been even greater than they thought. 40 million iPads sold cumulative basis. Still believes tablet market will be larger than PC. Not guidance, what he believes. More people can access it, ease of use is off the charts.
• Q: How many iPhone units were deferred? How should they think of iPhone 4S launch? Velocity?
• TC: Can’t run experiment twice. Can’t tell with precision if no rumors, no expectation. He believes they were substantial. Get same answer from customers. 4S is off the charts. Do comparison of 3 days of launch. 4 was 1.7 million. 4S was over 4 million. Mother of all uplifts. Feedback is fantastic.
• Q: iPad category, now that it’s more experienced, Macs are up sequentially, how would iPad seasonality work? Gut feel?
• PO: Expect to establish new records for both iPhone and iPad, fantastic products, great market.
• Q: Siri?
• TC: Number of people using it is amazing. Questions, personality, is incredible. See Siri as profound innovation. Over time, many many people will use it in a substantial way. What percentage of input, search will be Siri, he doesn’t know but his gut it substantial, incredible innovation. Feedback they’re getting from customers.
• Q: Thailand?
• TC: Hearts go out to everyone who has lost life and family from monsoons, flooding. Apple has factories not-operable. Timeline is unknown. Whether hasn’t allowed assessment. Primary exposure is on Mac. Number of drive components sourced, Thailand is significant. Can’t give precise accounting, he’s concerned about it. Overall industry shortage of disk drives. Not sure. Placed assessment to degree they’ve already provided.
• Q: Patent disputes with Samsung, Android. What are your objectives? Injunctions, royalty fees?
• TC: Don’t want to comment on litigation. As you know, spend a lot of time and money and resource on coming up with innovation. Don’t like it when someone else takes those. Unfortunately pushed into court system. Don’t want to comment on remedies.
• Q: Price reduction on iPhone 3GS? Free on contract, cheap off. Elasticity? New segment of consumers? Prepaid vs. postpaid?
• TC: Wanted to make iPhone more accessible to broader market. Also lowered price of iPhone 4 to $99. These are still fantastic products. Can do reasonably well. Also has advantage in pre-paid markets. Lower than where entry points were previously. Did it for both markets. Both are very important. Thinking for a while to do that.
• Q: More on components!
• TC: Take is seriously!
• Q: Pressure on gross margins? Can expand or maintain if pressure from product mix?
• PO: Repeating December quarter predictions.
• Q: iPad, where is distribution rollout? Any pause? Growth in emerging markets?
• TC: In 90 countries on iPad. About 40,000 POS. 50,000 on iPod. 120,000 on iPhone. Still countries left to do. Are in main countries. Was there a slow down? With iPhone numbers, crystal clear there was a showdown. Not the case with iPad. Supply/demand, entered balance, stayed there for quarter. Outside of China, has already started looking at other countries. Already done. Over $900 million in Brazil. Some have protectionist strategies, very high if no local content.
• Q: First call as CEO, anything thoughts on different strategy, dividend, buy back? Cannibalization levels of iPad vs. Mac?
• TC: Second first. Seeing cannibalization. Showing up in 2 ways. Some buying iPad over Mac. Larger number are electing to buy iPad over Windows PC. Coming out very well. Mac had best quarter by far last quarter.
• TC: Wanted to maintain flexibility. Cash not burning a hole in their pocket. Conservative investments. Done a good job. Done things like acquire companies, acquired IP. Invested in supply chain. Build out stores. New product tooling. What they’re doing with cash, doing extremely good job. Very frugal.
• TC: Not religious about holding/not holding cash. Will ask what’s in Apple’s best interest and will always do that.
• PO: $81 in cash. $51 billion was offshore.
• TC: Series of unbelievable products. Pipeline is unbelievable. Totally separate and distinct things. Cash is always a topic. Always do what’s in Apple’s best interest.
• Q: iPhone goal was audacious at 1% at launch, now at 5%. 95% of market to go. Similarly audacious goal for next few years?
• TC: Want iPhone in as many hands as possible. Thinks it’s the greatest phone by far. Aspire to greater volumes. Smartphone market will absorb handset market. 1.5 billion handsets. Smartphone is 400 million. Huge growth. Also grow in sector. Big win is eat into 1.5. For anyone. Apple is very focused on doing that.
• Q: Extra week linear on revenue and expenses?
• PO: 14 week will conclude on New Year Eve day. Strong but not as strong as Thanksgiving to Christmas. For expenses, variable, payroll for 14 week. Fixed costs are fixed, benefit there as well.
• Q: Japan, bigger disparity on units vs. revenue?
• TC: Huge percentage of Japan total revenue in year ago quarter was iPhone 4 launch. Adversely effects revenue compare. Mac grew 48 percent. iPhone was negative year-over-year. One of first 7 countries, very good start.
• Q: tablet market higher or lower end?
• TC: Fantastic things in pipeline, sold 40 million in first 18 months. Have good handle on what to do next.
• Q: iPhone business into emerging market? Carriers thoughts on pricing change?
• TC: Look at channel inventory on iPhone at end of Q4, September 24 cut off. Half of that has already sold through. One portion driving that is elasticity. Also did, in a very few countries, dropped 3GS price a bit early. Particularly in pre-pay markets. Pleased with results.
• That’s it folks.!

We’ve already looked at new iPhone 4S features like the 8MP camera and 1080p video recording, but I’ve been taking it out to test the fancy new intelligently switching dual antenna array.

After all the backlash over antennagate last year, Apple claims they’ve rebuilt the technology to supposedly offer better voice quality and call handling. Until I got my hands on my iPhone 4S this past week I wasn’t too sure how much of a difference it would make. Turns out the newly designed antenna really does function better.

Death grip and death touch

We all know about the iPhone 4 death touch issue. So is the iPhone 4S affected by it? In short, no.

It appears whatever Apple did to the antenna design fixed not only the single-point-of-failure death touch, but also made it more resilient agains the industry wide death grip issue. I’ve been trying to reproduce the issue since the day I picked up my iPhone 4S in various locations and haven’t had any success. Sure a bar may fluctuate here and there but in my experience that’s simply due to signal strength in general. I fluctuate between 4-5 bars in my office. As you can see from the video above, the iPhone 4 drops bars when the bottom is held. The iPhone 4S does not seem to drop bars. It fluctuates a bit towards the end but I’m almost certain this is just due to signal strength in my office.

When tested in other locations and even in downtown Chicago I was not able to reproduce the death grip issue on my iPhone 4S.

Signal strength

As stated above, I haven’t noticed too much of a signal strength difference from what I experienced with my iPhone 4. This could be due to the fact that my area is heavily blanketed with AT&T HSPA+. I receive 5 full bars of service in most places.

To test this theory I made a note of my bars in the one area I typically have issues getting signal — the lake. In this scenario I seemed to maintain a signal (2-3 bars) and was able to make and receive calls or use data services just fine. My iPhone 4 has a few issues holding connectivity on a call or using data services on the lakefront. So the newly designed antenna seems to be a bit more constant when it comes to holding onto a signal.

Overall call quality

So far call quality on my iPhone 4S has been exceptional. I’ve not had one dropped call so far. I never had too many on my iPhone 4 either as we have very good service with AT&T in my area. It also appears that the volume when you’re on speakerphone has been enhanced and is quite a bit louder than my iPhone 4 ever was. (A volume increase would make sense given the addition of Siri.

I’ve had next to no issue with or without a headset either. It seems noise reduction is just as good if not better as well. Several times while on the phone I felt the need to ask if someone was still there since I could hear next to no background noise at all. I always noticed it a bit on my iPhone 4 but I can’t notice it at all with iPhone 4S.

Conclusion

All in all, the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S are both great phones. When it comes to call quality, however, the iPhone 4S is clearly ahead. If you’re in an area that has great service you probably won’t notice a big difference . If you’re in an area with somewhat spotty cellular service the iPhone 4S is a safer bet.

According to Economic Daily News out of Taiwan, Apple has purportedly paired up with LG Display and AU Optronics for a new 7.85-inch iPad to be released in early 2012. The smaller iPad would supposedly carry the same 1024×768 resolution of the current iPad 2, making a higher DPI level and helping Apple compete with the recently-announced 7-inch Kindle Fire.

This isn’t the first we’ve heard of a smaller iPad from Economic Daily News, as around the same time last year there were rumors of Apple prepping a 7-inch iPad for a Christmas 2010 release that never saw the light of day.

As with all iPad speculation, take this with a 7.8-inch grain of salt. Steve Jobs famously hated on the idea due to the lack of screen size limiting the quality of the apps.

Anyone else get the feeling the crazy rumor people won’t be happy until they’ve spread word of Apple making an imagined tablet in every size Samsung makes a real one?

Source: Economic Daily News via UnwiredView

Every day, TiPb gets flooded with announcements for new and updated iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad apps and games. So every day we pick just a few of the most interesting, the most notable, and simply the most awesome to share with you!

• Calculus doodlus A calculator for elementary calculations that creates a tape that looks like you did the arithmetic by hand – in your own handwriting! [$0.99 - App Store link]

• 500px: The official iPad app for 500px is here! Enjoy the world’s best photos right at your fingertips. Discover exhilarating landscapes, cutest moments of wildlife, striking portraits and more. [Free for iPad - App Store link]

• Feathergears: A simple and addictive flight game with amazing hd graphics. [Free for iPhone - App Store link]

• Lady’s Days: Easy-to-use app for tracking your periods. This app contains everything you need for health monitoring. [Free for iPhone - App Store link]

• jPuzzle: Turns your photos and pictures into an exciting, fun and easy to use Jigsaw Puzzle. [$0.99 for iPhone - App Store link]

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on TiPb? Email us at iosapps@tipb.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

OfficeTime is a time and expense tracker for the iPhone and iPad. The interface is clean, elegant, and designed so you can quickly be in and out – keeping track of your time shouldn’t take a lot of time!

Ideal for anyone who bills by the hour, OfficeTime makes recording and tracking time and expenses simple with a clean, elegant interface. The iPhone and iPad versions focus on ease-of-use, recognizing that if time tracking is simple to do, users will be more likely to take the time to do it.

• Pay once. Get for both iPad and iPhone
• Export to Numbers or Excel
• Get cross team reports on your desktop.
• Work with cross platform offices: PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch
• Track by project and category.
• Run multiple timers
• Rapidly switch tasks
• Time in the background
• Pay no monthly fees
• Work offline. No need for WiFi or 3G

Giveaway

The good folks at OfficeTime Software have given us 5 promo codes to giveaway. But that not all! One of the promo code winners will also receive a copy of the OfficeTime desktop application ($47 value)! For a chance to win, just leave a comment below!

OfficeTime – Time & Expense Tracking is available on the iPhone and iPad for $7.99.

[App Store link]

Have an app you’d love to see featured on TiPb? Email us at iosapps@tipb.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

So you went and got a super sweet new iPhone 4S and you’ve had a few days to try it out, play with Siri, take some 8 megapixel photos and shoot some 1080p video, and no doubt try your darndest to death grip the new antenna, and — what do you think?

Is it the best phone you’ve ever owned? Is it just a decent upgrade? Is it about the same as your previous phone? Or are you already regretting the decision to buy?

We’ve already told you what we think about the iPhone 4S, now it’s your turn TiPb Nation. Vote in the poll up top and give me the details in the comments below!