Although you probably wouldn’t usually call it a PC, the iPad is a personal computer. And it’s currently dominating the PC market. During the fourth quarter of 2012, every one in six PCs sold was an iPad, according to research firm Canalys. When you include the Mac as well, more than a third of worldwide PC shipments during the holiday quarter were from Apple.
The iPhone 5’s been on sale for almost five months now, but there are still plenty of apps that have yet been updated to take advantage of its larger 4-inch display. They don’t get blown up automatically, either, so they sit in the middle of the screen and look silly.
As is often the case, a tweak is now available for jailbroken iPhones that solves that. Developed by Ryan Petrich, the creator of many popular jailbreak tweaks, FullForce automatically takes apps designed for the iPhone 4/4S and makes them longer for the iPhone 5.
Speck’s CandyShell cases are available for Apple’s entire lineup of iOS devices, and the latest edition comes to the iPad mini. Consisting of a soft, rubbery interior and a hard outer shell, the CandyShell promises impact protection from everyday dings and drops — without adding too much weight to your device.
Its simple shell design makes the CandyShell one of the most basic cases in Speck’s lineup. It provides protection from almost every angle, and leaves access to all of your ports, buttons, and cameras. But there’s nothing too fancy here; there’s no front cover or fold-out stand or pockets for your credit cards.
It is available in a number of bright and pretty colors, however, including raspberry & cool grey, flamingo & fuchsia, and harbor & malachite. It’s price at $44.95, but is it worth it?
Struggling to find a gift for your loved one this Valentine’s Day? If you get really desperate, you could always buy them something from the App Store. Seriously. That’s what Apple’s suggesting with its new Valentine’s Day Gift Guide, which features a collection of apps and games suited to music lovers, writers, photographers, foodies, and more.
Apple has today announced that its iTunes Store has set yet another record as it surpasses more than 25 billion songs sold. The 25 billionth song to be downloaded was “Monkey Drums” by Chase Buch, and it was purchased by Phillip Lüpke from Germany, who will receive a €10,000 iTunes Gift Card from Apple.
Apple has been improving Siri since the intelligent assistant first made its debut on the iPhone 4S back in October 2011, and has also been working to expand its availability; it’s now available on all the latest iOS devices, and some older ones, too. It seems inevitable that Siri will one day be introduced to the Mac as well, and that day could be getting closer as Apple searches for new engineers who will be tasked with bringing it to the desktop.
Display Recorder, a popular tool that records what’s happening on the display of a jailbroken iOS device, has today been updated to support the iOS 6.1 firmware. The update follows this week’s evasi0n release, which became the first untethered jailbreak which supports the latest iOS devices — including the iPhone 5 and the iPad mini.
Apple has today introduced a new featured section to the U.S. iTunes Store called “Breakout Books,” which offers a hand-picked collection of self-published iBooks from emerging talents. New books are added “as the begin taking off,” according to the Cupertino company, helping you quickly discover your next great read.
The official WordPress app for iOS has been updated to introduce a number of new features, including push notifications for “everything happening on your blog.” The company has also improved the way in which you manage comments, allowing you to view, moderate, and edit them from one screen.
The new 128GB iPad with Retina display is now available to order from the Apple online store. The device is priced from $799, and it’s currently shipping in 1-3 business days. You’ll also be able to find it in your local Apple retail store.
If you’ve got your music stored in the cloud, then streaming it to your iPhone might be difficult. Depending on which service you use, you may need to find a third-party app — one that actually works well, and is designed specifically for music playback. AudioBox is exactly that.
Compatible with a whole host of cloud-based storage services — including Google Drive, SkyDrive, Box, and Dropbox — AudioBox ensures that you can take your entire music library with you on your iPhone.
It’s a bad time to purchase one of Apple’s latest iMacs if you’re living in Europe. Shipping times for the all-new, all-in-one have slipped for the second time in under a month, and customers are now facing lengthy waits for both the 21.5-inch and the 27-inch models. The former currently has a 3-4 week shipping delay, while its bigger brother will keep you waiting 4-6 weeks.
If you’ve already jailbroken an iOS device running the latest iOS 6.1 software using the tethered jailbreak, then you won’t need to restore it and perform the whole process again to get an untethered jailbreak later today when evasi0n drops. Although this is recommended, you will be able to convert your existing jailbreak into an untethered one using a simple tweak available through Cydia.
Apple has introduced new short URLs for the App Store, making links to iOS apps and games much simpler to remember, and easier to read. Like its short URLs for the iTunes Store, you can now tell which app you have been linked to before you’ve even clicked on it. The new system has already been put to good use, making its debut during a Super Bowl commercial for the Star Trek app.
iPad mini shipping times have today been reduced to just 1-3 business days at the Apple online store, which is the shortest wait the device has seen since it made its debut back in November. The new timescale currently applies only to the U.S. and Canadian stores at the moment, but it’s expected to roll out into other territories soon.
A number of Apple executives, including Vice President for Education John Couch, met with Turkish president Abdullah Gül today to discuss a deal that could see the iPad introduced to Turkish education. The Turkish government’s FAITH project was set up to put more than 15 million tablets into its schools at an estimated cost of around $4.5 billion.
Path, the mobile social network that first launched on the iPhone in November 2010, has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it deceived its users by collecting personal information from their address books without their knowledge or consent. The settlement requires the company to establish a comprehensive privacy program and to have independent privacy assessments carried out every other year.
The company has also been fined $800,000 for illegally collecting personal information from children without their parents’ consent.
Apple is on the hunt for two senior software engineers that will join its iLife development team to “re-imagine how user interfaces should be built and work.” Both positions, which were posted to the vacancies page of Apple’s website, are based at the company’s Cupertino headquarters, and indicate Apple is working to overhaul the iLife software suite, which consists of GarageBand, iMovie, and iPhoto.
Penultimate for iPad has today received its first major update since it was acquired by Evernote back in May 2012. In addition to Evernote syncing, the app offers a number of nifty new features, the most impressive of which is handwriting search — which uses handwriting recognition technology to allow you to find notes you’ve written by hand. And if that wasn’t enough, the app is now completely free.
Wunderlist for Mac has today been updated to introduce a number of new features including the ability to email and print your to-do lists. It also adds contextual menus, makes performance and stability improvements, and adds additional languages.
Valve co-founder Gabe Newell has revealed that he sees Apple TV as more of a threat to the Steam Box than consoles like the Xbox or PlayStation. The Cupertino company has an “obvious pathway” into the living room with its platform, Newell told students at the University of Texas — and competitors must try to establish themselves before Apple does something about it.
The upcoming evasi0n jailbreak that will will allow users to hack iOS devices running Apple’s latest iOS 6.1 firmware has been completed for Mac and Windows ahead of its public release. The team behind it the exploit confirmed the update on Twitter this morning. All that remains is the Linux client and “some testing.”
For the first time, we’re rolling our weekly must-have apps and games features into one to make them a little easier to digest. Kicking off this week’s roundup is an awesome new Ghostbusters game in which you’ll be freeing New York City from some creepy spooks and spirits. We also have a brand new video sharing app from Twitter called Vine, a great little app that’ll help you pack for your next trip, and more. Read on for this week’s best iOS releases.
Apple’s fifth-generation iPad is expected to finally ditch the existing design and adopt a new form factor that’s said to be much like the iPad mini’s, according to a new report that has surfaced today. A physical model of the device indicates it will be significantly smaller in almost every way, with virtually no bezel down the sides of the display.
As for the iPhone 5S, that’s expected to be very similar to the iPhone 5 — as you may have guessed; while Apple’s new low-cost iPhone, which will reportedly launch some time this year, will be built with China Mobile’s 700 million customers in mind.
EA’s Origin platform is finally making its way to the Mac, starting with an open alpha release that’s available to download from today. Although it’s open to the public, only “a few thousand users” in North America and the United Kingdom will gain access to it, according to EA — those who get in will be gifted a free copy of Bookworm, a popular word-puzzle game from PopCap.