This just in: your iPhone (and iPad or iPod touch) is a marvel of engineering and does some amazing things, keeping you connected to the rest of the world with its super amazing technology. All that connectivity, though, can come with a price.
Push services are there to let you know when you have stuff to do, or emails to check. It’s pretty handy. However, when you need to conserve your battery, it’s probably time to turn them off. Here’s how, straight from Apple.
We’re spending more and more time on the go with our mobile devices, and watching video on them is becoming increasingly popular. Converting your videos to watch on mobile devices can get a bit unwieldy, though.
Cult of Mac Deals has an offer that will make your day – and converting videos for mobile a breeze…and it won’t cost you a dime.
Thanks to our friends over at Digiarty, we’re able to hook you up with MacX Mobile Video Converter – their new mobile video converting Mac app – for free!
Wearable tech has really started to take off over the last two years thanks in part to fitness trackers like the Nike Fuelband and FitBit. But while those companies are worrying about humans, a new company called Whistle is launching a new fitness tracker specifically for mans best friend.
The Whistle Activity Monitor is a little on-collar device that will track all of your dog’s activities, including rest, walks, playtime, and other activities. It’s kind of like a FitBit for dogs. The device comes with a slick iOS app too that lets you check in on your dogs stats throughout the day no matter where you are.
Sounds kind of crazy to buy a pet its own activity tracker, but when you consider most people only take there dog to the vet once every 3 years, Whistle will probably help you keep your pet in shape and enjoy a couple extra years together.
Here’s a video of how Whistle works:
Analog for Mac from Realmac Software has today received all of the pretty filters that were introduced with Analog Camera for iPhone last week. It has also been reduced to just $4.99 until Sunday evening.
Still using that Ikea wind-up kitchen timer to take your time-lapse videos? Ditch it, because somebody has finally come up with a purpose-made iPhone motion rig that is cheap, fits in your pocket and can do double (triple?) duty as a panoramarator[1], and a passive sound-amplifying iPhone dock.
Shelfy is a new iPhone app which lets you quickly and easily keep a record of the books you have read, and the books you want to read. And unlike apps like Delicious Library, it doesn’t assume that you have a stack of physical paper books to scan: Input is strictly via search, and all the better for it.
Dispatch is the iPhone e-mail client I have been looking for for years. It’s kind of like Drafts for email, only in reverse – the emails come in from pretty much any service you like, then you quickly triage them. Then, you send the results off to another app or service on your iPhone.
Remember the Wally iPhone wallet? It was Kickstarted back in the misty far-off days of February, and is now a fully-available product that you can, like, buy. Don’t remember it? Then let me jog your memory: The Wally is a minimal and lightweight leather wallet that sticks to the back of your iPhone using hi-tech future adhesives. And the good news is that it’s currently shipping at 20% off – just $40.
Every year thousands of Apple developers flock to San Francisco to attend Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference to be educated in all things Apple. Over the past decade the conference has undergone some big changes as Apple has introduced products like the iPhone, Mac Pro, Intel Processors, Mac OS X operating systems, and much more.
An event that used to be lightly attended has now become the most popular developers conference in the world and sold out within 2 hours this years
Here’s a look at the many banners that have decorated the halls of WWDC over the past 11 years:
There isn’t a much sadder sight in the modern urban landscape than a pair of friends walking together, both isolated by their own music playing on their own headphones. Why even bother meeting your friend i all you’re going to do is ignore each other?
Now, it gets a little better – and quite a lot cuter – when those friends share one pair of earbuds, maybe to listen to the same piece of music.
And then Double Music comes along and ruins everything again. Double Music is an app that will play a different track into each bud, severing the couple’s connection even as they’re physically joined by white wires.
The iOS developer behind Home Remind has published a blog post about the Facebook apps for iPhone, iPad and Facebook Messenger. He says that according to his testing, the Facebook apps consume way more CPU time than is strictly necessary. Excessive CPU time can lead to battery drain.
The developer used Apple’s own Mac-based app, Instruments, to look at what was running on his iPhone, and found that his Facebook app was activating, doing something for ten seconds, then going back to sleep. It did this all day long during his test. He tested the Messenger app and the Facebook iPad app, and found the same pattern.
If that’s the case, the Facebook app is never truly going to sleep and then terminating like a good app. As a result, it’s using up CPU time, and a lot of your battery.
Battery life, it’s the bane of every iPhone user’s existence, right? It’s hard to tell, really, reading the internet, which specific steps to take to make sure your battery is working at its most efficient, giving you the longest life without compromising performance.
One of the most misunderstood areas of managing battery life may just be the brightness settings. Here’s what Apple has to say about it.
WordPress just released a new update for its iOS app that is sure to make WordPress bloggers happy. The new app features a overhauled UI that makes it easier and faster to blog from your iPhone than before.
The new update ditches the single pane view for a multi-pane view that users can swipe between to access different areas of the app (kind of like the Facebook and Rdio apps). WordPress also added a shortcut to the sidebar to make posting faster, there are also new translations for Russian, Danish, and Korean, improved Tumblr importing, and bug fixes.
Here are the full release notes:
PopCap has today confirmed the release date for the much-anticipated Plants vs. Zombies 2: It’s About Time, which will be exclusive to iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. The company has also released an awesome new launch trailer that teases some of the new plants and new worlds.
Apple is expected to announce a new low-cost iPhone later this year in an effort to compete with rivals like Samsung in emerging markets. Reports have suggested that to keep costs low, the Cupertino company will give it a plastic form factor similar to that of the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS.
And now that plastic shell appears to have been leaked for the first time.
Thanks to Apple’s strict software approval process, iOS devices are generally considered some of the most secure. But you might want to be careful about where you plug them in for charging. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a modified charger capable of installing malware onto any device running Apple’s latest iOS operating system.
Evernote is a fantastically useful service, with clients for the web, Mac, PC, and iOS. The iOS version is as full featured as the desktop version, a rarity these days, and really makes Evernote my go-to app for keeping track of stuff of all kinds.
Here, then, are four fantastic tips and tricks to get the most out of the Evernote app on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.
Circumstantial evidence may suggest that Apple has acquired the predictive search app Grokr. And if they haven’t done, they should do.
Grokr has been called the “Google Now for iOS.”
With Grokr’s predictive search capability and Siri’s natural language capability combined into a single feature could put Apple in the overall lead in the crucial area of virtual assistant technology.
Here’s why Apple needs to buy Grokr (and why I think they already did).
Tired of slingshotting those angry birds at ever-more preposterous structures build by pigs? Bored with trying to best your friends using nothing more than words?
Bloom Box is a new, cutesy puzzle game from Nexx Studio (Pig Shot, Glow Puzzle) where you’ll need to set up chain reactions to explode the aforementioned boxes, make flowers bloom, and collect all the stars in each level.
Did you know that you can add Passbook passes to your iPhone from your Mac? It’s a feature Apple hasn’t really promoted, but iCloud syncs passes added from OS X to the iPhone with a click of a button.
Hat tip to David Chartier for pointing out this feature on his Finer Things in Tech blog. When viewing a Passbook pass from a source like Ticketmaster or Second Gear Software, simply click the “Add to Passbook” button. You’ll then see the above prompt, and the pass will be added to your iPhone via iCloud.
For more great Passbook tips, check out our handy roundup.
Source: Finer Things in Tech
The Chicago Sun-Times, one of the remnants of traditional paper journalism, has let go its entire photography staff of 28 people. Now its reporters will start receiving “iPhone photography basics” training to start producing their own photos and videos.
The move is part of a growing trend towards publications using the iPhone as a replacement for fancy, expensive DSLRs. It’s a also a sign of how traditional journalism is being changed by technology like the iPhone and the advent of digital publishing.
It takes practice to learn how to efficiently type on the iOS keyboard. Because all the keys are virtual, you have to tab through multiple layouts to access all of the available characters. I remember how slow I was at alternating keyboards to type numbers and punctation when I got my first iPhone. Over time, muscle memory kicks in and it becomes second nature.
What if there was a more productive way to type on iOS? A new jailbreak tweak called AltKeyboard is a fantastic enhancement every iPhone typist needs.
Have you ever contemplated just how many displays Apple’s manufactured for the iPhone since 2007? And then, have you ever thought how cool it’d be to combine all those iPhone displays into one gigantic Monophone that’s docked in the middle of Manhattan?
Josh Orter over at Stupid Calculations was wondering what such an object would look like too, so he did all the calculations and discovered the Monophone screen would stretch 5,059 feet into the sky, and measure 2,846 feet across, for a total surface area of 23-acres. It would be enough screen space to watch Game of Thrones on all fours sides of fourteen World Trade Centers.
Here’s another picture of what the Monophone would look like in Manhattan:
There are a few things I really like about Kubxlab’s AmpJacket. It’s soft and squiggly, so it’s kind of fun to play with even when not on the phone. It’s also very small when you consider what it does – it’ll even slide into a pants pocket. And finally, there;s the fact that it not only amplifies the sound fro the iPhone’s speaker, but protects that iPhone and even raises it out of the way of spills in the kitchen.
Despite launching iAd in 2010, Apple’s foothold in the mobile advertising business hasn’t really taken off yet. Tim Cook even addressed Apple’s advertising strategies during his interview at the All Things D tech conference this week, and stated advertising isn’t core to Apple’s business.
Apple’s enthusiasm for mobile advertising might start picking up soon though if today’s latest rumor turns out to be true. According to Business Insider, Apple is planning to launch an ad exchange, similar to way Facebook and Twitter have recently done.