iLounge

The long-awaited Google Maps has finally arrived for the iPhone and iPod touch. Like most of Google’s “free” apps, however, it comes with the price of encouraging you to offer up your location data to Google in exchange for access to the company’s excellent mapping service.  While Google Maps should prompt you on first run as to whether or not you want to participate, if you missed that screen in your rush to get right into the app and explore, you may have a hard time figuring out exactly where the option is afterward.  The good news is that the option is still in the app, however Google seems to have buried it in a pretty obscure location that most users may find challenging to locate. 

To turn off Location Data Collection in the new Google Maps app, first go into the application’s settings by selecting your user profile via the small person icon in the top-right corner of the main screen followed by the gear icon that appears in its place on the user profile screen. From here, you need to go into About, terms & privacy and then one more level down from there into Terms & privacy, where the Location data collection option will appear.

With iOS devices becoming ever more capable of creating and downloading content and apps, managing your device’s storage has become increasingly important. If you find yourself running out of room on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, there’s a simple way to see what apps are using the most storage. Open the Settings app, tap on General, then tap on Usage. At the top of the screen under the Storage header, you’ll see a list of your installed apps, sorted by the amount of storage used, with an option to show all apps at the bottom. Using this list, you can discover which apps are the most storage hungry, and simply tap on any app to see more details, along with a button to delete the app, letting you delete only those apps that are adversely affecting your storage and leave the rest on your device.

No matter how hard you try, sometimes you just aren’t able to make the first available train offered to you by the Maps application’s transit schedule. Luckily, there’s a simple way to adjust the times to allow for a certain departure or arrival time. Once you’ve done your route search and settled on one you’re happy with, tap the clock icon to see the available options, then tap on Depart to bring up a page that will allow you to adjust your departure or arrival time to better fit your schedule. Just note that it’s not a time machine, so setting the Arrive By time to two hours ago won’t get you there on time. [via CoM | UK Cnet]

Ever in a hurry and enter one too many numbers into the Calculator app for iOS? Instead of clearing the whole number out, use this tip to quickly get rid of the extra digit. Simply swipe your finger across the number display and the app will clear out only the rightmost digit, allowing you to continue on with your calculations without needing to reenter a thing. [via Cult of Mac]

Got a third-generation iPad? Well, the handful of apps that have been updated for the device’s gargantuan 2048 x 1536 display aren’t the only apps that can get in on the Retina iPad fun. If you have any Retina-ready iPhone and iPod touch apps installed, the new iPad allows those to appear in all their glory — something that’s supported on no other iPad thus far. It’s even noticeable when running the apps in 2x mode, making those few small-screen apps you can’t live without that much more enjoyable.

The ability to re-download apps you’ve bought in the past is great, but if you’re anything like us, you’ve downloaded plenty of apps that you don’t actually use. Luckily, Apple has built in a super-simple way to hide those purchases, so they aren’t cluttering up your Purchased list. To do this from an iOS device, simply find an app you’d lie to hide and swipe across it, and you’ll see the iCloud download button replaced with a red Hide button, which you can tap to hide the app. To unhide purchases, visit the account management pane of the App Store, and tap on Hidden Purchases. You can also achieve this trick from iTunes on the PC or Mac by visiting your Purchased apps and hovering over the icon of any app you’d like to hide until a small x button appears in the corner; you can likewise unhide purchases by visiting your account settings page.

When Apple added PDF support in iBooks, it was a huge boon to users who hadn’t yet sprung for a standalone, third-party reader. But did you know that you can add files directly to this PDF library from Safari on the iPad? Simply open a PDF in Safari and tap the page - at the top you’ll see a button to “Open in iBooks,” which will automatically add the document to your library. Starting in iOS 5, you’ll also be able to take advantage of this feature on your iPhone or iPod touch, making the process of adding a PDF to your iBooks library far more streamlined.

Long before the advent of iTunes LP, Apple offered—and still does offer—so-called Digital Booklets with certain album purchases. Unfortunately, these files have been basically useless outside of iTunes, as Apple has never offered a good way to organize and view them on its portable devices—until it added PDF support iBooks. While it might not do it automatically, iTunes does offer an easy way to gather these Booklets up and move them over to iBooks.