iOS - page 69

So you went out to drink with your friends and you forgot to charge your battery. What an idiot. At one point in the evening you know you’re going to get one of those dreaded “20% of battery remaining” notifications, but by that point you’ll probably be too drunk to care about conserving battery.

Maybe if the iPhone’s low battery notifications had a little bit more sass we’d listen to them more? I don’t know. But it sure would be a hell of a lot more fun if they were like these mockups from College Humor.

Source: College Humor

Via: Gizmodo

Kids love the iPad; download a few children’s games and it’ll keep them entertained for hours. But don’t leave them unsupervised too long, because it could cost you. Sharon and Greg Kitchen from Bristol, England, found that out the hard way when their five-year-old son Danny spent $2,550 on in-app purchases in just 10 minutes.

The latest App Report from research firm Appthority has found that free apps downloaded onto iOS devices are more likely to collect your personal data than free apps downloaded on Android, with 60% of the top ten App Store downloads sharing data with advertising and analytics networks.

The report suggests that due to the volume of titles in the App Store, iOS developers are more likely to collect your data and pass it on as an alternative revenue stream.

It’s a bad week for app updates. Hot on the heels of an epic Kindle for iOS bug that wiped out users’ e-book libraries comes a bug affecting version 5.2 of Evernote, which causes the app to crash upon startup. Luckily, it’s a simple fix.

Teardown specialists iFixit have published a new tablet repairability guide that quickly tells you how difficult it’s going to be to mend your broken Android, iOS, or Windows 8 slate. The guide features 18 popular tablets, which have been given a repairability score between one and ten. The higher the score, the easier they are to repair.

Unsurprisingly, Apple’s iPads are some of the hardest tablets to fix, second only to the Microsoft Surface Pro — the only tablet with a score of one. Amazon’s Kindle Fire’s, on the other hand, are relatively easy to repair, as are Dell’s devices.

British carrier O2 has today launched a new VoIP and messaging service called TU Go, which is available to its pay monthly customers with Android and iOS devices. The service allows users to make calls and send texts over the Internet, so even when they have no cell reception, they can connect to a Wi-Fi hotspot and get in touch with friends and family.

Yeah yeah, Vine is all the rage right now. But remember Socialcam, the share-heavy iOS video app from effects-wizard Autodesk? If you don’t, here’s a reminder that the app is a sharp tool for shooting and sharing quick vids on Facebook — and it’s just been spiced up with HDR, new filters and the ability to shoot in 720p.

It’s taken three years, but HeartMath has finally responded, in the form of a major redesign, to the concerns we (and probably other critics) voiced over their original emWave stress-management gadget.

Where the emWave required plugging in to a USB port and cost $300, their new Inner Balance system works with pretty much any 30-pin iDevice and sells for just $99.

We got it wrong last week, when we thought a cryptic Disney teaser was a clue to something we’ve been salivating over for a few months: the arrival of Android and iOS at Disney’s Infinity platform.

Instead, Disney has released a beautiful Toy Story 3D puzzler game for iOS and Android; and even though it’s not exactly what we’ve been waiting for, it still looks really freaking cool.

Google has a released a pretty big update for its YouTube iOS app that adds a “send to TV” option. The feature was added to Android last year.

This is basically Google’s version of AirPlay. It’s an open protocol that’s in Google TV, Xbox, PS3, and some new HDTV sets. Once you’ve paired with the device, the YouTube iOS app becomes a remote for discovering and playing back videos on the big screen.

After saying that the highly anticipated racing game would launch in 2012, EA and Firemonkeys have finally released Real Racing 3 in the U.S. App Store. The Real Racing franchise has been a staple part of the App Store since 2009, and the third installment was demoed onstage at Apple’s iPhone 5 event last September.

Real Racing 3 is perhaps the most visually stunning iOS game ever, and it’s free to download. However, there is one catch…

It’s understood that iOS cameras are insanely high-quality given their size. The only real knock about them is the fixed lens. Today’s Cult of Mac Deals offer aims to “fix” that – pun totally intended – with this compact lens kit. It includes 3 versatile options that fit snugly over your iOS lens with a tech-friendly magnet – and you can get this kit for only $25 for a limited time!

(Please note: This offer – which includes free shipping – is only available to customers in the United States and Canada.)

While you may chalk up any pro-Apple sentiment here as only true to form, it’s perhaps even more telling when there’s another, more impartial group, claiming an Apple win.

Good Technology is one such independent group. The company provides mobile device, app, and data security to over 4000 customers, including banks, healthcare organizations, governments, and retailers. They also do a quarterly Device Activation Report, which looks at the type of mobile devices and uses in the Enterprise. The Q4 report, released today, details which and how many smartphone and tablet devices were activated by Good Technology’s enterprise customers.

Guess what they found? Hint: it’s in the headline.

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS — As I was walking around the show floor at MWC today, I noticed a number of smartphones that looked very familiar — yet they were being paraded by Chinese companies I’d never heard of. I saw what looked like a large iPhone 5, an entire range of Samsung Galaxy devices, and a number of high-end HTC handsets.

Except they weren’t really Apple, Samsung, or HTC devices at all; they were actually cheap clones that were trying their best to look like the real thing. They even had fake accessories that were identical to the originals.

Jake Marsh is the designer of the stunning, minimalist iOS weather app, Conditions, which costs just $0.99 on the App Store. But because some people are so lame that they would rather go through the trouble of pirating a good app that they like than give the developer a buck for it, Jake decided to program a special ‘Pirate Mode’ into Conditions, in which users who pirate the app always get a weather report of 666 degrees in which fire and brimstone literally hails down upon them.

The prevailing conditions? “ARRRmageddon.” Absolute genius.

Via: Twitter

In an attempt to go head-to-head with the likes of iMessage and BBM in emerging markets, social network Facebook has just announced that it will be allowing users of its Messenger app to send messages at free or heavily discounted data rates.

When you’re trying to get fit, a boot camp is one of the best ways to get started on that path. So we’ve brought back a popular video boot camp that will set you on the right path to becoming a top-notch developer.

These 6 video courses are great in that they cover everything from web development to design to Photoshop – and tons of things in between – and they can be accessed when you want so that you can learn at your own pace. But the best part about this Cult of Mac Deals offer is that you can have it all – valued at over $900 – for just $99 for a limited time.

Delver’s Drop is an upcoming 2D physics puzzler role-playing game (RPG) with strong visual and gameplay inspiration from NES-era games like A Link to the Past and Secret of Mana. However, it’s also a fully modern game that uses the latest in gaming technologies. The developers created a Kickstarter project to finish this labor of love, and to be able to bring it to Mac, PC, and Linux platforms, with some hopeful plans to be able to bring the game to iOS and Android in the future, and in another Kickstarter campaign.

Facebook has pushed out a pretty big update to its iOS app that brings a notable new feature: free voice calling for users in the U.S. and Canada. The same feature was brought to the Facebook Messenger app last month.

Other additions to the app include redesigned buttons for liking, commenting, and sharing posts in the News Feed.

With 60 episodes, over 1,000,000 downloads, and more appearances as an iTunes top tech podcast than we can count, we celebrate our first year anniversary on our newest episode of The CultCast! Join us as we remember our favorite episodes and guests, and tell the story of how CultCast almost never made it on the air.

But first, true to form, we discuss this week’s best Apple news and stories, including the new iOS features Sony is introducing into their just-announced Playstation 4; the honor Jony Ive just received that’s even better than a knighthood; and Woz says Apple is close to losing its cool—we disagree!

Get a fun weekly dose of all things Apple, subscribe to The CultCast now on iTunes, or easily stream new and previous episodes via Apple’s free Podcasts App.

Street View is a new $0.99 iOS app from FutureTap that promises to bring Google Street View back to Apple’s Maps app on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Once installed, you’ll be able to access Street View from within Apple Maps with a series of simple taps. It’s not seamless, but it works.

Google has updated its Google Maps SDK for iOS to version 1.1, opening up its API to all third-party developers who now have the ability to build iOS apps with Google Maps embedded. The update also adds support for ground overlays, gesture controls, and more.

Now that you’ve upgraded to the latest iOS devices, you’re probably wondering what to do with all your old 30-pin speaker docks. You could get a $30 Lightning to 30-pin adapter from Apple and continue to use them, but for just $15 extra, you can get the auris and turn them into wireless Bluetooth speakers.

The official Call of Duty Elite app for iOS has today been updated to version 2.2.0, which adds a number of handy new features. Players can now compare their statistics with those of their friends, and track their progress during clan operations and challenges.

Sony and Microsoft, are all coming out with new gaming consoles this year, but when it comes to handheld gaming, Apple and Google have got them beat.

A new report claims that in the fourth quarter of 2012, gamers spend more money on iOS and Android games combined than the amount spent on dedicated handheld devices.