If you’ve ever tried to set a square photo as your lock screen or homes screen wallpaper, you know that iOS will zoom into the photo, resizing it to fit the entire iPhone screen.
This is fine with some images, but square ones, like the ones you save on Instagram or take with your iPhone’s square photo feature, just zoom in too far, obscuring much of the photo.
Here’s a quick and easy work around that will let you see the whole square photo when you use it as wallpaper.
Apple fans obsess over which new features will get added to the iPhone every year, but if the latest concept from designer Martin Hajek ever becomes a reality, the new iPhone will be more notable for the hardware it’s missing.
The iDot concept packs no camera, no internet connection, zero apps and minimal distractions, so you can focus on what’s really important instead of having your soul slowly sucked away by your iPhone screen.
‘Tis the season to be jolly — or, if you’re a tech writer hoping to score enough clicks to help pay off the post-Christmas credit card, ’tis the season to label this the worst year for Apple since records began.
From Gizmodo’s restrained “Everything Apple Introduced This Year Kinda Sucked,” to The Verge calling this the year Apple spent in beta, to Bloomberg banging the “lemon of the year” gong for the Apple Watch, pundits aren’t exactly being kind to Cupertino as 2015 draws to a close.
But, you know what? They’re dead wrong. This was the most important year for Apple since 2007, when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone.
Rapper, producer and dance meme-maker Soulja Boy finally removed his regrettable Gucci forehead tattoo over Christmas weekend, and to celebrate he released a fresh new song that’s all about his love of Steve Jobs’ greatest gift to gangsters: the iPhone.
The new meme-worthy trap song blasts the same highly repetitive lyrics and catchy trap beats that turned Soulja Boy into a sensation in 2007 with his hit “Crank That.” Aptly titled “Trappin On My iPhone” (but not to be confused with Bigg Quan’s “Trappin Off My iPhone“), the ridiculous new song contains more than 40 iPhone references and talks about why true CEOs of the streets manage drug empires with the best smartphone, instead of a lame flip-phone burner.
Listen to the song below:
If all of the big boys’ flagship phones – the iPhone 6s Plus, the Google Nexus 6P and Microsoft’s Lumia 950 XL – raced in NASCAR, which would be the fastest phone around? This speed-test video puts that concept to the test, making all three phones “run laps” to see which is the fastest.
This time of the year typically means gifts, both giving and receiving them. Surely some of you have gotten a brand new Macbook, iMac, iPhone or iPad (Pro, anyone?).
If so, you might be looking at a lovely morning playing with your shiny new toys. But where to start? What essential tweaks, software tricks and necessary little tips do you need to make sure they’re set up the right way?
Well, we’ve got your back, with roundups to help you easily set up your iPhone 6s or 6s Plus, iPad (Pro, Air 2 or mini), Apple Watch or new Apple TV the right way. Here’s the list of setup guides to get you up and running with your brand new Apple gear.
Police in Tigard, Oregon have cracked an organized retail crime ring which used stolen gift cards worth three-quarters of a million dollars to buy iPhones bound for the Hong Kong black market.
Tigard Detective T.J. Hahn told the local KOIN 6 News that organized retail theft has become a bigger crime than even drug sales.
“This kind of activity makes millions of millions of dollars, into the billions,” he said.
Sometimes I’m browsing a site like Cult of Mac on my iPhone and I’m looking for something specific, like a story about encryption, for example. Instead of swiping down the page and hoping I see the story I’m looking for, I want to just search for it.
When you’re on your Mac, it’s super easy to find something like this: simply hit Command-F, type in the text string you’re looking for, and Safari (or any other web browser on the Mac, really) will find them all in the web page you’re on, highlighting them for you.
But what about finding stuff when browsing the web on your iPhone? There’s no Command-key on the built-in keyboard, so how do you search your favorite web page to find keywords?
Turns out, there are two ways to do it, which is kind of odd.
The biggest wireless carrier in the world may have just revealed when the iPhone 6c 7c will finally launch.
Rumors of the iPhone 7c have been heating up the rumormill for months now, and with the device’s big unveiling supposedly just around the corner, it appears that China Mobile has accidentally confirmed to the world that the new low-cost iPhone will arrive by April 2016.
We were too busy taking our own pictures in 2015 to notice that something about photography had changed.
This was the year the photo moved. It shed its flat, two-dimensional constraints and showed a life once left to the imagination.
The movement could be slight, as in Apple’s Live Photos, a new feature on the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus camera that records a snippet of video before and after the frozen moment to add an extra dimension.
Sometimes you just want to plug your iPhone into your Mac without having to deal with all that iTunes stuff, like synchronizing or backing up.
Or, maybe a friend of yours needs to sip off your Macbook’s power and you don’t want to have iTunes sync their iPhone.
Either way, you can eject the connected iPhone, thereby avoiding all the iTunes stuff but still letting the physically connected iPhone pull power from the USB port. Even better: when you’re done charging, just pull the USB cable out from your Macbook without any worry.
Here are three different ways to do just that.
Big savings on Apple products have meant that Best Buy is increasingly living up to its name, but today’s iPhone deal may be one of the best yet for the cash-starved.
The retailer is selling the 16GB iPhone 6s for $1, while also throwing in a $200 gift card if you trade in a working iPhone 5 as part of the deal.
Scribblenauts Unlimited, the latest version of a fun game that’s been on one device or another since 2009, is headed to mobile.
Main character and magic notebook owner Maxwell’s got a sister, Lily, who he’s gotten cursed, thanks to his smart-ass ways. The pair go to see Edwin, one of the 40 other brothers and sisters of Maxwell and Lily (go figure), and find out that doing nice things for people is the only way to earn starite, the magical cure for Lily’s curse.
Selfie sticks receive a lot of hate for being annoying instruments of narcissism. They’re inconvinient to carry around and can make you look just plain silly.
A brilliant new selfie stick may have solved the device’s worst problems though with a cleverly designed iPhone case that hides a telescoping 28-inch long selfie stick in the back. It looks like something Data from The Goonies would invent. And for that reason alone, I love it.
Check it out:
BlackBerry CEO John Chen has waded in on the the question of whether or not Apple is right to refuse to help the government access smartphone data for security purposes.
“For years, government officials have pleaded to the technology industry for help,” Chen wrote in a recent blogpost. “Yet [the requests] have been met with disdain.”
Chen’s position is simple: that, “We are indeed in a dark place when companies put their reputations above the greater good.”
Ten employees of Apple manufacturer Pegatron have been jailed after stealing and selling 227 iPhones, 360 motherboards and 58 Apple batteries — with a total market value of $154,000.
People who are hoping Apple will one day sever ties with Samsung as a supplier are likely to be sorely disappointed, as a new report states that Apple will be relying on OLED displays from Samsung Display when it makes the switch to OLED screens for future iPhones.
Apple convinced us we couldn’t live without a smartphone. Now many of us have a smartphone in hand and Apple may be facing the curse side of the blessing — finding new customers for the iPhone.
Credit Suisse recently issued a report to investors that further fuels speculation that iPhone sales will dip for the first time since Apple introduced it in 2007. The upshot: Smartphone ownership is approaching 100 percent. We’re nearing “peak smartphone.”
Hit-and-miss Apple analyst Gene Munster has admitted he couldn’t have been more wrong about the likely customer uptake of Apple’s iPhone Upgrade Program, the $32+ per month scheme designed to get new iPhones into the hands of people happy to pay a monthly fee to Apple.
Apple has opened a secret production lab in northern Taiwan, developing screens for future iOS devices, a new report claims.
The company has reportedly hired talent from display makers AU Optronics and Qualcomm — the latter company having previously operated the building. By running its own display manufacturing facility, Apple hopes to reduce its reliance on third party suppliers such as Samsung, LG Display, Sharp, and Japan Display.
Samsung agreed to finally pay Apple $548 million for the patent infringement case the iPhone-maker won way back in 2012, but it appears Samsung has had a change of heart and is now taking the fight to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The company filed a 219-page appeal to the Supreme Court today, claiming that the way U.S. courts handle patent lawsuits isn’t fair because juries aren’t given enough information on how to understand the patents. Samsung is also disputing the way patent damages are calculated, noting that if multiple firms sue a company for design patent issues, the company could have to pay multiple times the profit they actually made.
Apple’s iPhone business may have been stronger than ever in 2015, but — never fear — the Apple doom predictors are never far away.
In this case, the doom report comes from Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty who predicts that iPhone sales will drop for the first time ever in 2016.
This week on The CultCast: We take a look at Apple’s zany new Smart Battery Case; cover the new and notable in the watchOS, tvOS and iOS updates; and discuss our favorite strategies for managing overloaded inboxes.
Stick around till the end for our favorite iOS apps and games of 2015!
You have so much great video footage on your iPhone, but therein lies the problem. The thought of sitting down at a computer to edit any of it seems like a mountain you have no time to climb.
Cielo de la Paz is happy to help you reach the summit – rather quickly, too. de la Paz is a fearless creator whose soulful wanderings with her iPhone camera inspired Apple to select some of her work for the “Shot on iPhone 6” advertising campaign.
There’s never been a better time to scoop up the new iPhone 6s if you’re on AT&T.
The carrier announced this morning that it’s having a huge ‘buy one get one free’ promotion that includes top of the line Android devices like the Samsung Galaxy S6, Galaxy Note 5, iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus.