iOS - page 147

While we all eagerly await an untethered jailbreak for iOS 5 and the iPhone 4S, many of us are using custom settings shortcuts on our iOS homescreens to duplicate the functionality of a more robust Cydia hack like SBSettings.

The only problem? While the shortcuts work really well, some of the icons can be ugly and distinctly un-Apple-like.

Why settle for some puked-up icons, though, when you can have icons sexy enough to lick? Just go over to https://brdrck.me/settings/ on your iDevice and get downloading. Follow our previous how-to if you need guidance on setting these up.

[via iDB]

It’s Thanksgiving Week, and that means most of us Americans will start thinking about how much weight we’ll gain and how much money we’ll end up spending on Black Friday, especially if we have children clamoring for an iPhone, iPod or iPad.

If you, like many other parents, are planning on buying your kids an iDevice this Christmas, you should know that your kids will need an iTunes account to use with their new device. Presumably, you’ll want to control how much they can spend buying apps. So you’ll be happy to know you can set up an iTunes account without a credit card. Your kid will be able to download a plethora of free apps and you’ll be able to give them gift cards to use to buy paid ones. This will let you control how much they spend, which is a lot better than giving them carte blanche access to your line of credit.

Hauling my back end out of bed each morning is a horrible task, especially during the winter months. Even with the recommended eight hours sleep, I never wake up feeling refreshed. However, I was hoping all that was about to change, thanks to a little app-enhanced headband.

The WakeMate ($60) is an accessory and app for your iOS device that has two main objectives: to help you track and analyze your sleep pattern; and to wake you up at the optimal time in your sleep cycle so that you feel better about waking up early — which is just what I needed.

Forget Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Oakland, Occupy Boston and all the rest of the 995 protests. The Occupy movement is now coming to your browser, but not how you’d expect: they want to eliminate Adobe Flash from all web browsers.

Today’s – probably this week’s – Best Thing Ever is the amazing, ear-exploding wonder that is Brian Blessed Alarm Clock.

Earlier this week we announced our newest Cult of Mac Deal – a $79 iOS App Development Course. To make things even better for our awesome readers, this weekend we’re having a giveaway for one free admission into the course so you can get started on turning your ideas into the next great app. This contest will run from today till Sunday, November 20th at 9PM PST. The rules for entering are incredibly simple; here’s what you got to do to enter.

Mixel is a free digital art and social networking app for iPad. It works beautifully; you and your kids will love it. The only downer is its unfortunate requirement that you link it to Facebook. No Facebook means no Mixel.

Apple has made a subtle change to its App Store app for the iPad today, but subtle though it may be, it makes navigating the store a much nicer, and much faster, experience.

Evil Twin is a joke photo app that makes use of something called the Thatcher Effect.

If you’re a photographer, designer or marketing type, chances are you’ve used Shutterstock‘s stock image service at some point — either to hawk your wares, or to grab inexpensive(ish) good-looking images for a project. And if you use the service frequently, things just became a little easier — thanks to Shutterstock’s new iPad app (as long as you have an iPad, of course; if you’re a photographer without an iPad, well, get one).

Myxer, which just released its iPhone app, is alot like Pandora, only with a huge side of friends. Instead of being based around a solitary experience, Myxer encourages users to listen to what their friends are into — which is great for discovering new tunes.

I recall the time I met someone who was not only vision impaired, but nearly blind. However, their loss of vision didn’t prevent them from enjoying computers. Although we were both able to get a lot done, they wouldn’t have been able to get as much as I can get done without special tools like a large display with overly magnified and software enhancements on their computer.

Apple’s iOS mobile operating system offers nearly the same features to help the vision impaired and even people who depend on reading glasses to see things displayed on the iPhone’s tiny display. Here’s how to access them.

Apple’s iOS devices, especially the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S, are famous for their inability to endure even the smallest of drops without their displays shattering into a thousand tiny pieces. However, according to a patent application from the company, future iPhones could employ a fancy airbag system that prevents them from cracking when they hit the ground.

A couple weeks ago, we posted about TwelveSix’s PlugBug, a cute little attachment that plugs into your standard MacBook MagSafe charger and gives it a 10W USB port, perfect for charging your MacBook and iPad simultaneously.

The PlugBug’s an ingenious little idea, and I’m reviewing one now. However, PlugBug’s days might be numbered: a new patent says that Apple is working on a universal power adapter that can charge MacBook Pros, iPhones and iPads, all at the same time.

Apple’s Texas Hold’em game was one of the first titles I purchased from the App Store when it opened for business in 2008, and the only game Apple has developed for iOS devices. And while it was a fantastic purchase at the time, the Cupertino company hasn’t exactly been committed to maintaining its popularity.

Its last update came in September 2008, and today, the game has been removed from the App Store completely.

Digging through the bowels of iOS 5.0.1, developer John Heaton found something neat: some code strings that strongly hint iChat functionality will be coming to iOS sometime more or less relativistically soon.

It’s here. It’s Minecraft. And now you can play it on your iOS device. Clap your blocky hands together and praise Notch.

If you’ve played Minecraft before, this isn’t quite the game you’re used to. As it stands, Minecraft: Pocket Edition is a stripped-down version that removes what many existing fans of the game will say are the best bits. Don’t pay too much attention to the complaints, though, because there’s still a lot of fun to be had with what remains.

Fanhattan is absolutely the required guide for TV/Movie junkies who frequently view titles on the iPhone. Just like on the iPad version, the app acts as a gateway to entertainment — it gathers a heap of information about shows or movies that can be watched on the iPhone, then serves up that information in a super-cool, easy-to-navigate interface (that looks absolutely stunning on the iPhone 4).

https://vimeo.com/31513704

Ticket to Ride began as a hugely successful, massively award-winning board game, then jumped to the iPad and rocked the gaming world all over again as a shining example of what a board game should be on the iPad. Today, it’s set to take the mobile gaming world by storm again as it emerges on the iPhone — and it’s going to go through the roof.

We’ve been burned on Google’s official Gmail app for iOS before, but after having been pulled mere hours after its initial release for being completely broken, it is now back with fixed push support.

Don’t expect any other new features though: there’s no multi-account functionality or anything else, just a simple app wrapper around the HTML5 interface. Google swears more features are coming, but at this point, we’re taking any of Google’s promises with a grain of salt.

Still having battery life issues on your iPhone 4S under iOS 5.0.1? We’ve already proven the issue is a software problem, not a hardware problem, which means Apple should be able to fix the iPhone 4S’s electric arterial spray… but when?

Real soon, as it happens. In fact, one Apple software engineer says the iOS 5.0.2 update is coming next week. In addition, Apple’s working on its first big point release of iOS 5, which will bring new extensions and abilities to Siri!

Do you prefer to do your typing on a real keyboard with your iPhone or iPad? iOS already allows you devices with a Bluetooth keyboard, but what if you don’t have a spare one handy? Let’s say, for example, that your Apple Bluetooth Keyboard is already paired to your Mac, or you’re on the go and only have your MacBook Air handy. What then?

Enter Type2Phone, a great new app that allows you to make your Mac show up as a Bluetooth keyboard to iOS 3.2 or above. Now you don’t need a dedicated keyboard to type on your iPhone or iPad… your Mac can do it for you.

It seems early iPhone 4S adopters the world over have discovered a new issue with Apple’s latest handset. No, it has nothing to do with poor battery life, but rather a complete loss of signal for no apparent reason. To be clear, this isn’t a new “antennagate” — the issue does not occur while holding the device in a certain position — it’s a new problem that causes the device to lose its signal randomly. Users report they can be enjoying a full five-bar signal one minute, then be greeted by that frustrating “No Service” status the next.

AppZilla 2 is one of those jack-of-all-trades apps, squeezing 120 little mini-apps into one place.

Tap it, and it grinds open with a dramatic kzzzzzzrrr-tang sound. Inside, you see a springboard-within-a-springboard, with pages of apps to mess around with.

Making an album of new songs seems to be too much like hard work for bands these days. It’s so much easier to pay some developers to make an app instead.