iOS 8 Tips

In iOS you can share Reminders lists with other iCloud users, which can be a useful tool for collaborative efforts. Say you and a group of friends are getting ready to go on a camping trip and you have a list of items that still need to be gathered. You can share this list with the group and everyone can edit it and mark items as completed. Here's how to do it on the iPhone, iPad or iPod touch:

1. The first thing you need to do in order to share a reminder list is turn on Reminders in your iCloud settings. Go to Settings -> iCloud and make sure the toggle next to Reminders is on.

2. Go to Reminders and create your list. You can set alerts by location or by time. So you could set "Pick up fuel for the stove" to alert whenever someone is is near an REI store, etc.

People use Siri to varying degrees; while some depend on her for a majority of their daily iOS usage, others still consider the personal assistant a not-so-useful gimmick. Once you get to know more of Siri's functionality, its likely you'll end up consulting her quite a bit. If you are a sports fan, here are five questions you can ask Siri that will undoubtedly give you quicker answers than if you try to manually look them up on your iPhone's browser:

1. When's the next time Lebron James faces Miami? Siri will look this right up for you. You can also ask when two players or teams will face each other: "When will Tim Lincecum face Clayton Kershaw?" If it's on the books she'll give you an answer, if not you'll get web search results.

With iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, Apple sought to connect its devices with features such as Handoff, which lets you start a task on one device and pick it up on another; phone call relaying, personal hotspot, and SMS and MMS relaying. The last feature allows you to forward messages from your iPhone to your iMac, MacBook or iPad, and it's one of those features that, once you use it, you'll marvel at the neolithic world we lived in just a few short months ago. Now you'll no longer have to leave your computer to check on the chimes you heard coming from the other room, and you'll be able to type your messages a whole lot faster.

Of course we've had this for iMessages for a while, but now you can send to and receive from non-iPhone people (SMS texts require a cell phone carrier while iMessages are routed through Apple's servers).

Here's how to set up SMS and MMS message relaying between your iPhone and Mac:

Continuity is one of the major features of iOS 8 and Yosemite that was touted so highly during Apple's media events earlier this year. It connects all of your iOS 8 and Yosemite devices and includes features like Handoff, which allows you to transfer tasks from one device to another (like starting an email on your iPhone and then continuing it on your iMac), message and call relaying, and personal hotspot. While Handoff requires Bluetooth 4.0 (find out if your devices have it here), message and call relaying do not.

Making calls and receiving them on your Mac is really a great feature. No more walking across the room or, God forbid, up the stairs to grab your phone while you're trying to get work done on your computer. Once you have this set up, you can simply

With iOS 8, Apple has finally given third party developers access to some iOS features, including Photos, the keyboard and Safari among others. The new feature, called Extensions, allows third party apps to access and share data with iOS apps. For Safari this means that you can add "Action Extensions" for applicable apps and then use their tools without ever leaving Safari. For example, if you have a password manager like LastPass, for instance, you can add that extension and then use LastPass from within Safari. Here's how you set up extensions in Safari:

1. Open Safari and tap the Share button (bottom middle).

2. This brings up a variety of options. Scroll to the right on the bottom level until you see the "More" icon. Tap on it.