In Germany, bank cards come with NFC chips that let you make small payments just by tapping your wallet onto the POS machine. You pre-load the chip with money from your bank account (only small amounts are allowed, because if you lose the card you lose the money) and spend it as cash.
So I finally see the point of NFC in a phone. And now I can have NFC in my iPhone, thanks to Incipio’s Cashwrap case.
Cortex Camera fixes one big deficiency with the iPhone’s camera: low-light noise. Or more specifically, the iPhone has no way to avoid cranking the ISO when shooting in low light. With a regular camera, you can just choose a longer shutter speed to keep the ISO low, steady the camera on a tripod or other sturdy base, and enjoy noise-free pictures taken in the dark.
And now you can (kinda) do this with your iPhone, using this sweet and simple app.
Pundits (including me) have been predicting Apple’s entry into the mobile payment space — using a smartphone instead of a credit card to buy stuff in the real world — for years.
It hasn’t been a hard prediction to make. The financial rewards are enormous, and Apple has filed multiple patents around mobile payments over the years.
Now, it’s finally happening. And although Apple hasn’t really started yet, they’re already way, way ahead of just about every other player.
The iPhone 5c’s lifespan will be short-lived, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. Apple will reportedly discontinue the 5c this year and release two larger iPhone models.
The initial success of the iPhone 5c has been questioned amidst reports that Apple cut orders by as much as 35% shortly after releasing the phone last fall.
Rumors of larger iPhone designs have been swirling for months now, and the Journal is saying to expect screens larger than 4½ inches and 5 inches.
If you’ve wanted to protect your iPhone 5 without compromising its form factor, then this Cult of Mac Deals promotion is for you.
The unique clasp locking system of the Leverage i5 was inspired by high-end watch clasps, and the metal latch and lever system are built to last. Plus, with its integrated buttons, the case never gets in the way. This bundle also comes with three interchangeable backplates – flat (normal), headphone wrap, and credit card holder (for 1–4 cards) – that add functionality, but only when you need it.
And you can have The Sleek iPhone 5/5S Protection Bundle for just $39.99.
SwiftKey, the most popular third-party keyboard on Android, is coming to iOS through a new note-taking app called SwiftKey Note. A leaked promotional image for the app has been leaked on Twitter today, but it’s not yet clear when it will be available to download from the App Store.
External USB battery packs are a dime a dozen, and most of them look pretty similar. Why bother with one of those, though, when you can power your iPhone with Darth Vader’s fricking lightsaber?
Evernote continues to suck as an app, and excel as a back-end service for better-designed apps. EverMemo is yet another quick note taking app which posts your important scribblings direct to your Evernote account to be indexed and assimilated, all without having to launch Evernote’s own bloated monster and tap desperately as you try to find the new-note button before you forget whatever it was you were trying to remember.
You’re most likely using one of two calendar services, or maybe both: Google Calendar and/or iCloud. Now – if you’re using the truly excellent Fastmail email service – you can test out the beta version of its new calendar. It’s as clean and simple as the mail service, and syncs perfectly with your iDevice or Mac using CalDAV.
Got a car? Got an iPhone? Like to tap away at the iPhone screen and distract yourself instead of watching the road ahead and earning the trust that pedestrians and cyclists put in your every time they venture out onto the road? Then I have good news! Now you can careen down the highway, secure in the knowledge that your precious iPhone will never slip off the dash, nor even deviate from it’s perfectly-chosen angle.
I’ll be honest: Missile Command was never my favorite classic game from the glory days of Atari. Originally released as a coin-op in 1980, designed by Dave Theurer (the man who also created Tempest and the world’s first commercial game to feature 3-D polygonal graphics, I, Robot), Missile Command came straight out of an era in which the scariest thing imaginable was a nuclear attack.
The game puts you in control of three anti-air missile batteries, as you defend cities from being destroyed by an endless hail of ballistic missiles. Like every game of its era, Missile Command didn’t have fancy graphics to carry it: it had to make do with limited processing power and graphical/audio capabilities by crafting a playing experience simple and fun enough to keep you pumping quarters into the arcade.
If you’ve been thinking about ditching your iPhone for an Android-powered smartphone, but you’ve been put off by the time and effort it takes to transfer all of your data, you no longer have an excuse not to make the move. Motorola just updated its Migrate transfer tool to support iPhone users who want to make the switch.
Using Migrate, users can transfer all of their contacts and calendar entries from their old iPhone to a new Motorola handset in just a few simple steps. It all happens without wires, and it’s completely free.
The team behind cult drawing app DrawQuest have sadly announced that it will be closing shop.
For those unfamiliar with it, DrawQuest is was an iOS app — originally for iPad, but with an iPhone version launched in November last year — that set daily drawing challenges to a niche community of artists.
In a blog post on the DrawQuest site, app creator Christopher “moot” Poole (also the man behind 4Chan) wrote the following:
The Bpen is a clever gadget indeed. It takes something almost useless — an iPhone stylus — and turns it into something useful: an iPhone stand. It even works as a car mount, and yet can still be used as a stylus. And as a regular pen. How is this unholy magic achieved? Let’s see…
When Steve Jobs first debuted the original iPhone back in 2007, he promised the audience a device that was three major devices in one: “a widescreen iPod with touch controls,” a “revolutionary mobile phone,” and “a breakthrough Internet communicator.”
At the time, those three things seemed pretty impressive, but if anything, Steve Jobs the Showman was underselling himself. In fact, if you look at this 1991 circular from Radio Shack (which now does quite a bit of business selling the iPhone), Apple’s smartphone is pretty much fourteen devices in one.
Apple’s entire beef with Samsung is that the Korean electronics maker keeps on shamelessly ripping off the design of their devices, so is anyone surprised that the latest roadblock in the Apple vs. Samsung case has to do with an anti-cloning clause that Samsung is trying to be tricky about?
iOS 7 came with a new look and feel, including the font used across the system. It’s a little thinner than earlier versions of iOS, so it might be a bit tricky to read, especially on the small iPhone screen.
You can always increase the size of text dynamically, but if you just need a little boost to the readability, try enabling Bold Text.
Apple will hold its quarterly earnings call next Monday, which means analysts are beginning to weigh in on how many iPhones Apple sold during the holiday quarter. Although Apple’s new sales with China Mobile didn’t make it into the quarter, Apple still had a ton of pent up demand to go along with a set of new phones, plus its was the holidays. All those conditions should make for a perfect storm of sales, and so far top analysts are predicting Apple sold a record-shattering 55.3 million iPhones.
Don’t look now, but here comes India.
While everyone obsessed yesterday over Apple finally launching on the world’s largest carrier, China Mobile — and the Chinese market in general — smart companies are starting to focus on the smartphone market of the future: India.
The country’s 1.2 plus billion people are kinda hard to ignore. Also: India is so much more than the “other China” when you dig into the details of that smartphone market. Everything about India is an opportunity for smartphone companies and providers of mobile anything. And the major companies are each taking radically different approaches.
I think Apple’s strategy is the best one, and I’ll tell you why.
Apple revolutionized your iPhone’s camera with the introduction of the 5S, but now you can unlock its full potential with what’s being offered through this Cult of Mac Deals.
With The Ultimate iPhone Lens Kit, smartphone photography has never been this versatile. This package arms you with six different lenses so you can take virtually any kind of photo in any imaginable situation – from microscopic organisms to full-blown landscapes. And you can get it for a limited time at the low price of just $69 – 65% off the regular price!
You can hit Command-F to find anything on your Mac, or you can hit Command-Space to invoke Spotlight, which took over for Sherlock as the built-in searching system many moons ago. In Windows 8, you can use the Search “charm.”
On the iPhone and iPad, however, some might be a little confused. There’s no keyboard commands in iOS, and Apple has even moved the Search functionality in iOS 7 from the furthermost left icon page.
What’s an iPhone owner to do when she wants to search for that specific app that she’s buried in a folder somewhere on her device, or needs the phone number of her best friend, because she’s always just used Siri to call her and has no idea what her number actually is?
For the musician on the go, in the studio, or on the stage, this Cult of Mac Deals offer is designed to meet all your mobile sound needs.
iLoud is the first portable Bluetooth speaker designed with musicians and audiophiles in mind. It allows you to reproduce your music – in every possible mobile situation – as accurately as you would in the comfort of your studio. Plus, it offers a ¼” microphone/guitar input for use with iOS music creation apps, so you can record, edit, and perform all on-the-go. And Cult of Mac Deals has the iLoud for just $239 during this limited time offer.
Apple has been accused of censorship in the past when it has been a little heavy-handed (to say the least) about banning content in the App Store.
With that being said, few were upset to hear that Plastic Surgery for Barbie — a game which asks players of 9 years+ to perform liposuction on Barbie-styled characters to make them “slim and beautiful” — has been pulled from the App Store. Google has similarly pulled the app from its own Google Play store.
While Touch ID saves you the pain of writing in a passcode to unlock your iPhone, until now Mac users haven’t been afforded the same ease of use.
A new jailbreak feature is looking to change that, however, since it gives users the opportunity of using their iPhone 5s’ Touch ID feature to unlock their Mac computer.
After years of speculation — and some incredibly drawn-out contract negotiations along the way — China Mobile finally began selling iPhones today.
Tim Cook was in Beijing for the launch, where he handed out autographed iPhones to customers, alongside China Mobile Chairman Xi Guohua. Cook tweeted the following: