Stories about kids who gain access to their parents’ iTunes passwords and run up huge bills on apps and in-app purchases are becoming all too common. The latest, concerning 13-year-old Cameron Crossan from the U.K., has an interesting twist.
When Cameron ran up a £3,700 ($5,620) iTunes bill playing iPad games, his father, policeman Doug Crossan, called Apple to get a refund. Apple refused to give the Crossans their money back, so Doug went down a different route. He reported his son for fraud.
A decade ago, playing a game of Tetris on a flight I was taking to Paris, I remember an irate stewardess telling me quite insistently to stop putting my fellow passengers in danger and turn off my Gameboy. I did, but not before asking her, “Isn’t it time someone Gameboy-proofed these airplanes?” She had nothing to say, because the absurdity was self-evident.
Ten years later, and airplanes still aren’t any more impervious to being taken down by a Gameboy, or an iPhone, or an iPad than they ever were… which is to say, they are just as impervious to being taken down by an electronic device as they ever were, which is technically “not at all” but, as far as the FAA is concerned, “quite likely indeed.”
Luckily, the stupidity may be about to come to an end, at least partially, with a couple of anonymous insiders at the Federal Aviation Administration telling The New York Times that the agency is under tremendous pressure to relax their rules regarding some types of devices during takeoff and landing.
The one part of your iPhone or iPad you use the most is the on screen keyboard, a fantastically complex little app in its own right that must meet your needs all the time, across a ton of different situations. Whether you’re typing an iMessage, a Note or Reminder, or an email to your family, you’re using the iOS Keyboard. Why not take the time to get to know it even better?
Here’s a list of five great tips and tricks to help you get the most out of your time with this ubiquitous bit of software at the center of your iOS experience.
Kicking off this week’s must-have apps roundup is EverClip for iPad, a terrific tool that lets you “clip” almost anything to Evernote, so that you can’t forget them. We also have a wonderful new music player for the iPad, the new Star Wars Pinball game, and more.
There’s been a lot of buzzing lately about Samsung’s hot new Galaxy S4 phone and its gimmicky cutting-edge new features. But bizarre air gestures aside, we’ll tell you which of its features we’d love to see Apple “borrow” for iPhone 6 on our all-new CultCast.
Plus, a new Steve Jobs movie you’ll actually want to see; and, is it possible for Apple for make a device more perfect than the iPad mini?
All that and more on this episode of the CultCast! Subscribe nowon iTunes to download our new episodes, or easily stream new and previous episodes via Apple’s newly updated Podcasts App.
Or, you know, just hit play below.
HBO Go is one of the best TV apps for the iPad. You can stream episodes of shows like Girls and Game of Thrones to your iPad whenever you’re craving some drama. The only problem is you have a cable subscription with HBO to access the app.
While HBO isn’t ready to ditch the subscription model altogether just yet, but the company’s CEO indicated this week that they might make the app available to cord cutters that pay for broadband Internet.
If you had asked me yesterday what I thought a “couch player” might be, I would have guessed that it was some stoner kid sat at home in his parents living room, checking the price of Glocks online and listening to bad hip hop.
But that was yesterday. If you asked me right now, I’d tell your that Couch Player is an awesome new music player for the iPad.
This is big: Blizzard, the mega-developers behind the Starcraft and Diablo series, is planning on releasing their first iPad game, set in the Warcraft universe.
Even better? It’ll be free.
Back in February, the Australian parliament demanded explanations from Apple, Adobe, and Microsoft over the prices charged for their products down under, with some goods costing as much as 70% more than they do in the United States. Apple has today responded to the inquiry, but don’t expect the Cupertino company to be reducing its prices anytime soon.
Everclip is one of the most used apps on my iPad, despite being iPhone-only. Until now, that is. Along with an update to the regular iPhone Everclip, there’s now an iPad version. No, it’s not universal and yes, it’ll cost you another $6, but if you’re an Everclip fan, you really won’t care.
Call it the Dracula of iPhone chargers: the ChargeBite doesn’t charge your iPhone by juicing it up from an inclosed battery pack, but by sucking precious electricity from a friend’s iPhone and siphoning it into your own.
Roguelike games are marked by four main things: randomly generated levels, permadeath , turn-based gameplay and (usually) ASCII graphics. They also usually have insane difficulty levels and absolutely unhinged gameplay mechanics that you simply can’t find in other types of games.
I’ve written about my unapologetic love for roguelikes before, but unfortunately, they’re very keyboard heavy games… and that means that the very thing I love most about them (their unhinged gameplay mechanics) tend to make them entirely unsuitable for playing on a touchscreen device like an iPhone or iPad.
It seems, though, that one of the best modern roguelikes out there has successfully made the transition to the iPad pretty much unscathed. It’s called Brogue, and whether you’re an existing fan of roguelike games or someone who wants to figure out what the fuss is all about, this is a game you should play.
The Google Glass project has been in the news a fair bit in recent months, but it seems Google may have another wearable gadget in development that’s been flying under the radar. The Financial Times reports that just like Apple and Samsung, the search giant is working on its own smartwatch that will act as an extension to the smartphone.
Autodesk has a stunning — and I’m not using the word lightly here — catalog of free design-focused iOS apps that do everything from applying filters to photos, to drawing on your iPad — or even turning the subject of an iPhone photo into a 3D model. Now, they’re taking their deep knowledge of modeling, physics and mechanics and using it to make iPad apps that’ll teach your kids cool stuff. For free.
Update: A Department of Defense spokesperson emailed us today to set the record straight. Here’s what he had to say:
The department is aware of recent reporting that asserts it is ‘dropping’ BlackBerry. This reporting is in error. The department recently released its mobility strategy and supporting implementation plan, which clarifies we are moving towards a mobile management capability that supports a variety of devices, to include BlackBerry. As clarified in the recent release of our Commercial Mobile Device Implementation Plan, we are working towards establishing a multi-vendor environment in support of the DoD mobility strategy.
The Commercial Mobile Device Implementation Plan updates the June 2012 Mobile Strategy with specific objectives and puts the strategy into action. A key objective of the plan is to establish a department-wide mobile enterprise solution that permits the use of the latest commercial technology such as smart phones and tablets, and the development of an enterprise mobile device management capability and application store to support approximately 100,000 multivendor devices by February 2014. DoD currently has more than 600,000 Commercial Mobile Devices in operational and pilot use, including 470,000 Blackberries, 41,000 Apple Operating Systems and 8,700 Android Systems.
The original article continues below.
This is actually my favorite tip ever, and it’s usually the one I share with any new iOS owners I come across.
When you’re tapping away on the keyboard on your iPhone, there are bound to be times when you miss the right key. It happens, right? So, the options are to tap the delete button, and deal with all the auto-correct stuff, or just do this one little thing and make it all better.
BenQ has launched a new portable projector which will work alongside your iOS devices. Called the GP10, the device will take the movies and TV shows you have stored on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch and project them into a 40-inch high-definition image fit for any home cinema. It has a ton of cool features, too.
Over the last couple of years, one of the industries which has really been transformed by the iPad is the aviation industry, where pilots have all of a sudden been able to trade-in their bulky flight bags stuffed with fifty pounds worth of flight manuals and materials for light, thin iPads.
We’ve written a lot of stories about pilots getting iPads (here’s another one!), but we’ve never actually gotten a good look at the iPad set-up pilots are using instead. Consider that remedied.
We’ve seen a lot of iPad-enhancing accessories over the last couple of years. Speaker cases like the Belkin Thunderstorm, bring-your-own-keyboard cases like the Incase Origami, and even iPad battery cases. But here’s a new one: DOCKr, an accessory that brings all these advantages together in one Skittle-colored package.
If it isn’t already obvious: I’m a huge bike nut. I’ve sold bikes, fixed them, raced on them and even slept on one once (hey, cycling is tiring). So I get pretty excited when fellow bike nuts make something ingenious that’ll let my bike haul my Apple gear. Case in point: Timbuk2’s new Basket Case duffel and their Cog Pannier.
A joint venture company between Philips and Sony called Intertrust, has decided to file a patent infringement suit against Apple, asserting that 15 of the company’s patents have been violated.
Intertrust’s patents cover a range of devices and services for digital restrictions management (DRM) to protect intellectual property.
Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablets have been some of the best competition to the iPad, mostly because they’re cheap but come with good software. It seems like Amazon would sell the Kindle for as cheap as possible if it meant taking a slice of Apple’s pie.
Earlier this morning, a rumor was floated by TechCrunch that Amazon is making a $99 tablet to compete with the iPad mini. It sounded crazy at the time because the Kindle Fire is already $130 cheaper than the iPad mini. Turns out that the rumor was too good to be true and Amazon’s already shot it down.
If you’ve ever had a party with people in various rooms of your house, maybe even outside, Bem’s Wireless Speaker Trio was made just for you.
The Trio is a neat idea: connect your music source (iPhone, iPad, iPod) via Bluetooth to its base station, then move any of its three rechargeable satellite speakers anywhere in your home, up to 120 feet from the base, and they’ll fill that room with music from your iDevice or Mac.
But while Bem’s Wireless Trio is a great idea and was awesome when it worked, my tests brought to light some problems I just couldn’t ignore.
QuikIO has been a great solution for getting your files from your Mac to your iOS device for a while now, with AppleTV support added this past January.
Today, however, the app has added yet another great feature: the ability to send your files from iPhone to iPhone with the new QuikBeam feature, letting you send photo, video, and other files between iPhones at higher speeds than otherwise available. The developers claim that the feature will send ten full-resolution photos in as little as one second, using a proprietary network intelligence system that finds the fastest path between two iPhones running the QuikIO app.
ABC, NBC, and CBS all have their own iPad and iPhone apps that will finally let you watch some of their shows for free. The catch with all of those apps is that you can’t watch a new show until 24 hours after it’s aired.
To take TV network apps to the next level, ABC is reportedly working on a new app that will let cable subscribers stream live network TV to their iPhone or iPad.