A new jailbreak tweak called Stride brings better-than-Android-like gestures to your iOS lock screen. Developed by talented App Store and jailbreak developer Adam Bell, Stride costs $3 in Cydia. Gone are the boring days of the ‘slide to unlock’ bar. Now you can unlock your jailbroken iPhone with a pre-set gesture of your choice! And boy does it look sweet.
Whispers have been circulating for months about Apple releasing a larger iPhone later this year. Since the original iPhone launch, Apple has kept the iPhone’s essential dimensions intact, and we still have the same 3.5-inch display size Steve Jobs demoed at Macworld in 2007. While the rest of the smartphone industry has been experimenting with all kinds of crazy screen sizes and aspect ratios, Apple has stuck with a simple 3:2 aspect ratio and 3.5 inches.
There have been plenty of arguments made for why Apple will release a 4-inch iPhone in the future, but one smart forum user has put together an argument that trumps the rest.
Following in the footsteps of his former boss and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, Tim Cook will be speaking at the 10th D: All Things Digital conference next month in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. This is the first time Cook has appeared at D. He is officially the headlining speaker for the opening-night of D10.
What. A. Day. The single most important mobile app acquisition to date has sent the internet into a flurry of disarray. In case you haven’t heard from everyone except your aged grandmother, Facebook has bought Instagram for a mouth-dropping $1 billion.
There will be (and already have been) thousands of articles written on the internet about this news today, and for good reason — it deserves discussion. But what exactly does this all mean for our beloved Instagram?
In what is being called the largest mobile app acquisition in history, Facebook’s $1 billion buyout of Instagram is landing the iPhone app’s founders in a boatload of cash. Instagram’s two co-founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, will cash in $500 million combined as a result of getting in bed with the social network behemoth. Quite the pay day for an app that’s been in the App Store for barley two years.
Ever since Apple integrated Twitter into iOS 5, many have been clamoring to also have Facebook integration for posting status updates and photos anywhere in the OS. There was reportedly some drama between Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs over the Ping debacle and iOS 5 integration. The two companies just can’t seem to get along.
Whether Facebook ever makes its way to iOS or not, a new jailbreak tweak brings integration with the social network giant right now. Fusion lets you simultaneously post to Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, and even MySpace.
A new jailbreak tweak called Curiosa lets you see incoming Cydia updates in the iOS 5 Notification Center. Instead of having to open the Cydia app and refresh for changes, new updates will be pushed as notifications for you to quickly view and open.
Developed by prominent jailbreak dev Ryan Petrich, Curiosa is available for free in Cydia now. It comes with some nice features to enhance its functionality.
When Apple announced that it was bringing movies and TV shows purchased in the iTunes Store to iCloud, every major production house was onboard except Universal and Fox. Due to licensing conflicts with HBO, Universal and Fox were not able to offer video content in iCloud initially. HBO later said that it would be loosening its grip on the studios to allow for licensing agreements with Apple.
It now appears that Universal Studios has been able to start offering its movies in the iTunes Store for re-download in iCloud.
It looks like Apple is finally starting to swap out old iPad 2 billboards around the country for new iPad ads. We highlighted the odd fact that Apple hasn’t updated its signage for the new iPad yesterday, although a new billboard was spotted in sunny Hollywood, California.
In less than 24 hours, Apple has replaced the iPad 2 billboard hanging above one of its larger stores in New York’s Meatpacking district. Dan Frommer snapped a pic of the above billboard today in front of Apple’s 14th Street store in New York City.
If you spot a new iPad billboard, let us know by tweeting to @cultofmac on Twitter.
About.me has been creating significant buzz as a popular web service for creating personality profiles. You can create a free, one-page website with About.me to share your bio, social network activity, work links, photos and more.
Today, the folks at About.me are announcing their official iPhone app for free in the App Store.
When the App Store first launched on iOS, the need for an alternative marketplace quickly arose. Jailbreakers and power-users wanted a way to download and install apps that gave them more control over their devices than what Apple would allow.
That was how Cydia was born. Created by Jay ‘saurik‘ Freeman, the Cydia app store allows users with jailbroken devices to not only install apps that bypass a number of iOS’s built-in restrictions, but to more easily discover them.
On the Mac, there’s obviously no jailbreaking, but given the sandboxing restrictions placed upon App Store developers, there’s still a need for a Cydia-like alternative: an easy-to-use, curated catalog for apps that give power-users too much control over their systems for Apple’s comfort.
Enter the HackStore, which hopes one day to be as synonymous with user-empowered Macs as Cydia is with jailbroken iOS devices.
Rumors of a smaller iPad just won’t die. After months and months of speculation followed by debunking, the idea that Apple release a 7-8-inch iPad still persists.
Well-informed and long-time Apple pundit John Gruber recently dished on the possibility of a 7.85-inch iPad being testing in Apple’s super secret Cupertino labs.
Apple has released a new version of its iAd Producer application with multiple additions and fixes. Overall speed and stability for version 2.1 has improved, and features like Twitter integration, support for the third-gen iPad, improved ad testing, and more have been added.
A jailbreak tweak called Aero reinvents the interface for multitasking on the iPhone. With Aero, you use a list of animations and effects to create your optimal multitasking environment in iOS 5. It completely changes the feel of switching between apps.
If you still don’t see the value of jailbreaking after watching this 3-minute video, you’re kidding yourself. Great stuff by JailbreakMatrix.
For all of our jailbreak coverage, click here. More to come.
Avatron has released a new version of its popular Air Display iOS app that allows the user to view OS X Lion in hi-res HiDPI mode on the new iPad’s Retina display. Air Display turns your iPad or iPhone into a secondary display for your Mac, and the latest update takes advantage of the new iPad’s 2048×1536 screen resolution by exploiting a super hi-resolution mode in Lion called HiDPI.
When Cliff Weitzman emailed me about his Black SMS iPhone app, I was impressed by the pitch alone. An App Store app that encrypts text messages and emails between iPhones and iPads? Sign me up!
Black SMS accomplishes a task that I haven’t seen anything from the App Store come close to replicating. It does indeed encrypt your texts and emails so that they are unreadable without the Black SMS app and an associated password. CIA agents and paranoid boyfriends should take notice of this one.
The official Facebook for iPad app has finally been updated with Retina graphics for Apple’s third-gen iPad. Version 4.1.1 of the app is available now with offline chat mode, photo bug fixes, added language support and stability improvements.
Breaking free from the mold of conventional apps like Tweetbot and the official Twitter for iPad, developers Adam Bell and Miles Ponson have created a unique Twitter app for the iPad called Crest. Priced at $1.99 in the App Store, Crest isn’t a power user’s tool for digesting vast amount of tweets. Instead, it’s a fun, leisurely way to view your Twitter stream from the comfort of your new iPad’s Retina display.
My friend Chris Herbert has released another wallpaper pack, and this time he’s made 200 beautifully minimal designs for the new iPad’s Retina display. His new collection, Subtle Papers II, is available for free now, and you’re sure to find at least one wallpaper that suits your fancy. A lot of sweat and love when into this collection, so be a kind soul and share it with your friends!
The folks at FireCore have released a new jailbreak for the latest Apple TV iOS version that Apple released on March 7th. The set-top box’s interface was revamped alongside the release of the third-gen Apple TV, and FireCore’s tethered jailbreak will work on the second-gen Apple TV running iOS 5.0.
New versions of Seas0nPass and aTV Flash (black) have been released to enhance the Apple TV experience on the latest software.
A tweak called SiriSports gives you access to MLB, NBA and NHL game times and scores in Siri on your jailbroken iPhone 4S. Developed by Evan Coleman, SiriSports requires no configuration and is available for free in Cydia.
“Did the Knicks win last night?” “Are the Yankees winning?” These types of question can be answered once you have SiriSports installed.
Apple introduced Find My Friends ahead of iOS 5 last year. The iOS app allows you to see where your friends and family are located around you. Apple pitched the service as something for a family to use at Disneyland, but honestly, it feels more like a tool for digital stalking.
My colleague John Brownlee highlighted a major issue with Facebook privacy earlier today, so it’s only fitting that we take a look at another app from the same vein. Although you won’t be able to stalk random women with Find My Facebook Friends, you will be able to see your friends on a map. The only difference is that Find My Facebook Friends takes user privacy pretty seriously. If only the app was less buggy.
Have you ever wished that there was an easier way to check your data usage on the iPhone? For those of us that aren’t lucky enough to have a grandfathered unlimited plan, bits are precious. It can be too easy to blow through a 1GB data plan in a month’s time.
If your iPhone is jailbroken, you have access to a great tweak called Data Usage Monitor. Once installed, your usage will be shown unobtrusively in your iPhone’s status bar. The beauty is that it will only appear whenever you are using data.
Adobe released a free public beta of Photoshop CS6 last week, and the app has already been downloaded over 500,000 times. The next app up to bat from the new creative suite is the all new Illustrator. Adobe demos the design tool in the 3-minute sneak peak video above. Illustrator’s new Pattern Creation tool is the main focus. You’ll also notice that, like the new Photoshop, Illustrator sports a darker interface.
Adobe has yet to announce a free beta for the new Illustrator and a release date for CS6.