We’re all familiar with how costly data can be on our iOS devices if we’re using them to get on the internet abroad with no access to a Wi-Fi hotspot. To prevent nasty charges, most of us turn off data roaming and avoid using our devices for the internet.
However, there’s a nasty bug in Apple’s iOS operating system that could cost you a fortune while you’re on vacation by allowing you to download apps over a 3G data network even with the feature turned off.
While most of the components crammed inside your iOS devices are built by low-cost Asian manufacturers, its dual-core A5 processor is actually built a little closer to home — at Samsung’s new factory in Austin, Texas.
Last week, we asked you to vote for your choice of the best iOS apps of 2011. Big thanks to everyone who contributed. Here are the results.
Let’s go through the list in detail; at the end, we’d like you to vote on the best app of the year, for inclusion in Cult of Mac’s annual Best of 2011 list. Let’s go!
I’ve been so excited for the iOS port of Grand Theft Auto 3 that as soon as I opened my eyes this morning, I reached over to my iPhone and checked the App Store to see if it had arrived. (Sad, I know.) As promised, it was there, and having played it for a little while this morning, I can assure you it’s better than you ever imagined.
Pogoplug has been busy. For a company that focuses really intently on a single concept — namely, putting your stuff in the cloud — it has released a prolific number of products since the original Pogoplug first debuted in early 2009. Today brings their latest offering: The Pogoplug Series 4 ($100).
Cloud Engines, the outfit that makes the Pogoplug, sent us an Series 4 to check out, and we got a little hands-on time with it before the launch today.
Yesterday we reported that Apple was in the process of using its cash hoard to buy Anobit, an Israeli flash memory maker. But what’s so special about Anobit anyway, and why would Apple buy another maker of flash memory when they’ve already got deals in place with some of the world’s best flash manufacturers?
The answer: Anobit is making truly magical technology, and Apple wants that magic for itself.
It’s not always easy to read the tiny text displayed on our iOS devices. But did you know that the iOS operating system features a handy “Speak Selection” feature that will read selected text out loud?
Once activated, the feature allows you to select a piece of text within any app, then have it read out loud. Here’s how to enable and use it!
Shared Paper is a lovely iPad app for making and sharing presentations on a huge scrollable canvas.
Wow, Merry Christmas indeed. Dieter Bohn over at The Verge has put together the end-all-be-all guide to iOS, an overview of Apple’s plucky little mobile OS so well-illustrated, informative and complete, all we can do is stew in jealousy we didn’t do this ourselves.
Solar Walk is an excellent educational app about space and everything in it. With Earth as your home base, you wander the Solar System, cruising the planets and moons and making discoveries along the way.
Microsoft seems more than willing to spend its time on developing software for Apple’s iOS platform, despite it being a direct competitor to its Windows Phone operating system. Why? We don’t know. But we like it.
Especially when the company throws up gems like Kinectimals. My kids love this game on the Xbox 360, which takes advantage of Microsoft’s Kinect accessory, and now it’s available for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.
Till now, HP has held a huge advantage over it’s printer rivals when it comes to printing from the iPad — because even though rivals have made strides with their own apps (like Epson’s slick iPrint app) HP’s printers remain the only ones with AirPrint, which is tied directly to iOS and allows printing from within apps, without having to use an intermediary app (eg iPrint).
Carrier IQ CEO Larry Lenhart and vice president of marketing Andrew Coward have revealed in an interview that despite the company’s assurance that no personal data is recorded by its software, a “bug” did unintentionally collect users’ text messages. What it does collect intentionally — particularly for the Federal Bureau of Investigation — is yet to be clarified, with the FBI refusing to disclose this information.
Jan-Micheal Cart has made quite a name for himself designing impressive new concepts for the iOS operating system, such as the dynamic icons concept you see above, and an awesome system for implementing widgets which we covered back in May.
However, it seems it’s not just iOS users who have been impressed with Cart’s work. The Apple camp in Cupertino has also picked up on it, and they’ve hired him as an intern.
Spotlight search on an iOS device is a fantastic feature. If, like me, you have pages and pages filled with apps, it’s easy to find the one you’re looking for simply by typing the first few letters of its name into Spotlight. You can do the same with songs, contacts, messages, emails, reminders, events, and lots, lots more.
However, there may be some things you don’t want to show in Spotlight. That doesn’t mean you should avoid the feature altogether — just customize its results to suit you. It’s incredibly easy, and not only will this remove items you don’t want to see, it’ll also make it faster to find what you’re looking for.
Chronic Dev-Team member and iOS hacker Pod2g, who we’ve mentioned a number of times in recent reports surrounding an untethered iOS 5 jailbreak, claims to have successfully developed an untethered jailbreak for the iPhone 4 running iOS 5.0.1 and says it’s safe to update to the latest firmware.
There’s over half a million apps on the App Store at this point, but that’s not to say that apps can’t still stand out from the crowd. Choosing the cream of the crop, though, can be a daunting and contentious task.
That’s why we need your help. A week from now, we’re going to announce our ten favorite iOS apps of 2011, then later in the month declare our vote for the best app of the year. Hence this poll; we need you to tell us which app you think qualifies as the best of the best.
By making your photographs available across all of your devices, Photo Stream makes it easier than ever to share your holiday snaps with your friends and family. However, the experience is ruined somewhat when your stream gets cluttered up with screenshots you’ve taken on your iOS devices.
Screenshot Dam is a new tweak for jailbroken devices that aims to solve this problem by preventing screenshots from entering your Photo Stream altogether.
AirPlay has been around for well over a year now, but the range of AirPlay compatible accessories available is still pretty slim. However, that could be about to change.
Apple is reportedly planning to introduce Bluetooth support to AirPlay, which would significantly extend the range of accessories currently compatible with the feature. The company will also improve iOS connectivity for third-party accessories.
For those of us setting out to catch the lunar eclipse early tomorrow morning — here’s a great piece in the Christian Science Monitor on why it’ll be so spectacular out here west of the Rockies — there’s nothing like an iPad armed with a great astronomy app. But according to Tim DeBenedictis, developer of SkySafari 3, his app is the only one that can predict this — and any other — eclipse. That’s fine with us, since he’s offering his app for free all this weekend.
When we have an iOS device stolen, thieves don’t just obtain our precious iPhone, but they also obtain all the information that’s stored on it. Our devices are filled with personal data such as names and addresses for our friends and family, and for our convenience, they save usernames and passwords for all kinds of different services.
That’s why we secure our devices with passcode locks. But did you know you can use an alphanumeric passcode to make it even more secure?
Apple quietly issued an update to its Apple TV earlier this week, which finally introduced TV show streaming from the cloud to users in Australia, Canada, and the U.K. for the first time. However, there may have been a good reason why Apple was so quiet about it.
It would seem that the feature isn’t ready yet — or that it was not meant for certain territories — because just days after being introduced, Apple has removed it again.
Back in November, iOS hacker Pod2g announced in a message on Twitter that he had discovered a bug in the iOS 5 software that could provide an untethered jailbreak. To backup his claims, Pod2g has posted a video to YouTube that demonstrates the hack in action, but he’s yet to provide any indication as to when the jailbreak might go public.
Porn star Jesse Jane has become one of the latest iOS users to recover a stolen purse — with her iPhone inside — using Apple’s Find My iPhone feature. After her device was stolen, Jane took to Twitter to inform her followers that she had successfully tracked down her device, and she kept them updated on its recovery.
Reading the news on the iPad is one of the absolute best experiences you can have on Apple’s magical tablet device. So when news hit yesterday that our two favorite iOS news reader apps came out with updates, we were pretty stoked. While you probably heard a great deal about the other reader app, we wanted to tell you about the awesome news reader you might be missing out on. It’s called Flud, and it was just completely redesigned yesterday.
Besides sporting a major facelift, what’s spectacular about Flud is its new ability to make reading the news a social experience. Rather than relying solely on an app to recommend websites and content to you, Flud users have the ability to see what their friends are reading in the app and share content back with them rather than spamming their Facebook or Twitter feed with the 15 news stories they’ve read throughout the day. Giving each user the ability to create a “news personality,” Flud aims to change the way we consume news much in the same way that Spotify and Rdio have changed the way we listen to music, by allowing users to inspire and be inspired by others based on what they consume.