The iPhone 5 is the best mobile phone ever made, in my opinion. And the iOS platform has the best mobile apps.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t add up to the best phone experience anymore.
What Apple lacks is the best experience with using Internet-based services. And Apple will fall much further behind on June 26.
Here’s what Apple needs to change in order to offer the best overall mobile phone experience.
If you’ve been wishing for an easy way to charge your smartphone when you’re on the go, look no further because now you can with this portable PowerBar smartphone charger offer courtesy of Cult of Mac Deals.
Never have your smartphone die on your again with this powerful little portable charger. When you travel as much as I do, this device can be a real plus – now I don’t have to think about how much juice I’ve got left on my smartphone. I can simply plug the PowerBar into my smartphone and the charging will begin.
This offer from Cult of Mac Deals saves you 44% on this gadget. It’s only $39 – but only for a limited time.
Apple’s iBooks provides one of the best, most accessible ereading experience on the iPad, in my opinion, and it’s pretty darn simple to use.
That said, there’s always room to learn just a few more tricks to make the experience even better for you. Here, then, are five tips to master iBooks on your iOS device of choice.
When rumors of the iWatch first surfaced, most insiders pegged its launch date for somewhere around the end of 2013 and everyone got super excited that our wrists are going to get blinged out by Apple really soon. However, lately we’ve been hearing that that might not be the case, and we won’t be able to slap Apple’s magical wrist watch on until 2014.
The unreleased iWatch isn’t the only timepiece Apple’s ever made though, so if you’re really desperate to get a watch made by Apple you totally can, but it might cost you more than your iPhone.
Here are 11 of the coolest retro Apple iWatches you can buy right now. We’ll start with the cheap stuff and work our way down:
AT&T’s GoPhone prepaid service has never been friendly to the iPhone. In fact, AT&T has tried to keep iPhones off it for years, hoping that iPhone users will pay for bigger data contracts instead. It looks like AT&T is starting to feel some pressure from T-Mobile and other prepaid networks though, because starting today you’ll be able to use an iPhone on the GoPhone network.
After preventing data access for iPhones for years, AT&T is enabling iPhone support to GoPhone, along with 4G HSPA+ and LTE access, and Visual Voicemail.
Apple has stopped advertising 24-hour dispatch for products sold through some international online stores. Many of the Cupertino company’s popular products offered 24-hour dispatch providing they were in stock, but in some markets that’s now been increased to 1-2 business days.
Verizon Cloud, a new backup service that first came to Android last month, is now available on iOS. The app allows you to backup your photos and videos to the cloud, and access contacts, documents, and music that you’ve stored in the cloud using your PC.
Best Buy is set to knock $50 off the iPhone for a four-week promotion that starts this Sunday, AllThingsD reports. The discount will apply to the iPhone 4, the iPhone 4S, and the iPhone 5 when bought with a two-year contract on AT&T, Sprint, or Verizon.
Remember when the iPhone launched, and people complained that the non-removable battery was a “deal-breaker”? And then the very same thing happened to the MacBook in the form of the Air, and the very same people whined the same whine?
Happy days indeed. Now we know better: we can indeed carry spare batteries for our iPhones, only they’re external and don’t require that we power down the phone just to swap them.
And the batteries in our MacBook last way longer thanks to the fact that they are squished into every internal nook and cranny of the computer’s case instead of having to be an easy-to-remove rectangle. Not that anyone ever needed to swap a battery into a computer anyway. Well, except those dullards who would stare at a single Excel spreadsheet for the entire duration of a six-hour plane ride, and they all own PCs anyway.
Which is to say, in a very roundabout way, that Eagle has made available yet another external battery pack. And this one is orange.
Probably the biggest problem you have in your modern life is finding a place to store your earbuds when you’re not using them. Unless, of course, your life isn’t a shallow, empty parody of existence used by a gadget blogger to make a lame point.
That said, tangled cables are a pain. Probably not enough of a pain for me to stick a special case to the back of my iPhone and actually use it, but I’m just plain lazy. For those of you who care, there’s the Sound Pocket, a rear shell with a small compartment on the back for your Apple EarPods.
Apple is rumored to be working on a budget iPhone targeted at emerging markets. The device will allegedly be made of plastic and look like an iPod touch in the back and an iPhone 5 in the front. Other reports have claimed that Apple is working on multiple color variations beyond the traditional black and white.
Today a new report from Japanese publication Macotakara claims that Apple is currently testing such a device in the supply chain for production later this year.
Starting in May, AT&T is introducing a new “Mobility Administrative Fee” to the bill of all postpaid customers. The new fee will cost AT&T customers an extra $0.61 per line, per month.
While the total cost of the fee is unlikely to break the bank on your next bill, it does mean that you’re going to pay an extra $7.32 per phone line per year on your wireless bill, so if you have multiple lines on your account, you’ll pay much more than an extra 7 bucks a year.
The new fee is crummy deal for customers, but AT&T is super excited to take more of your pennies because with over 70 million postpaid customers the new fee will generate hundreds of millions of dollars in extra revenue every year.
If you drop your iPhone and you don’t have it covered by AppleCare or another insurance plan, it’s almost always cheaper to have it repaired by a third-party than it is to have Apple do it. Unless you have an iPhone 5.
Apple’s tight control over iPhone 5 components means that they’re so hard to get hold of, repair costs remain high — even with third-party services. Some have even been unable to offer iPhone 5 repairs because they cannot obtain the parts.
Mailbox, the hugely popular third-party Gmail client for iOS that has changed the way we manage our emails, is now available on the iPad. The update comes just over three months after Mailbox made its debut on the iPhone, and you’ll be pleased to know that you no longer have to wait in line to use it.
Clear, the popular list-making client for iPhone and Mac from Realmac Software, now allows you to email your lists thanks to a new update that’s available to download from the App Store today. The release also brings some new themes, and teases upcoming support for the iPad.
Is your iBooks library starting to outgrow those beautiful skeuomorphic wooden bookshelves that Apple provided for you? Have you purchased way too many Star Wars novels, only to find them crowding out your beloved Jane Eyre collection?
Well, there’s a simple way to manage an epic, ever-growing iBook collection, of course (why else would I be writing this), and here’s how.
There’s nothing worse on a road trip than battling the ZZZ’s while driving (except maybe a jack rabbit destroying your vehicle), so a chain of coffee shops has created an app called Drive Awake that tracks a drivers’ drowsiness and directs them to the closest coffee shop whenever they nod off.
Drive Awake works by using the iPhone’s front-facing camera to monitor a drivers eyes. You simply mount your iPhone to your windshield and it tracks your retinas to see if they’re open. Once the app determines you’re falling asleep it emits a loud and annoying parrot squawk to get your attention and help you find some coffee.
Here’s a video of the app in action:
If you’re active you know how many pairs of headphones you can blow through in a given year, so a nice extra set is always needed. This Cult of Mac Deals offer has just what you’re looking for – and at price you’re looking for as well.
These headphones combine high quality sound output with scientifically developed sound isolation that creates a music listening experience you won’t be disappointed with – especially for just $15.
Here’s something for you: a bendable but still rigid Lightning-to-USB cable that can function not just as a charging and sync cable for your iPhone, but also as a make-shift stand, propping up your device on a coffee table, desk or even when it’s in a wall charger. $19.95. None too shabby.
One of Intel’s biggest mistakes in the last decade was being blind-sided by the rise of mobile devices. Intel should have seen it coming: Apple asked Intel to make chips for the original iPhone, only to be turned down. Simultaneously, Cupertino was pressuring Intel to get the power-management of their chips under control. It’s not too far-fetched to say that if Intel had been paying attention to all the signals, then today they could be as dominant in mobile chips as they are in PCs and servers.
But Intel under former CEO Paul Otellini turned a blind-eye to mobile until it was too late. It’s a mistake new Intel CEO Brian Krzanich is determined not to repeat, which is why he has created a brand new “New Devices” division within Intel to focus on emerging trends, including “ultra-mobile devices.”
What’s an ultra-mobile device? Think wearable computing, like Google Glass or the iWatch.
You may assume that there’s little use for a fragile smartphone on the battlefield, but you’d be completely wrong. The Inteliscope is a new iPhone accessory unlike anything you’ve ever seen before that turns your device into an intelligent scope for your rifle.
No, not a toy rifle. A real rifle.
The Apple online store went down for just over four hours earlier today, and it came back with Apple’s new Father’s Day promotion and a few noticeable design changes.
The Cupertino company is again heavily promoting the iPad and the iPad mini, but the iPhone 5 also gets a lot of room on the store’s homepage.
PhotoExif is an app that lets you add EXIF data to photos shot with a film camera. You can dial in aperture, shutter speed, focus distance and focal length, along with notes about your photo, and when you get the photos back, freshly scanned from the lab, you can add the info to the digital images.
Walmart’s video on demand service, Vudu, just rolled out a new update for its iOS app. Version 2.0 of Vudu now lets you download videos from the service, and then watch them even if you’re offline. The player itself is streamlined, and Closed Captioning–already supported on the iPad version of the Vudu app–is now available on the iPhone, too.
Intel lost the opportunity to power the iPhone, but the company is hard at work to make sure they don’t get completely shut out of mobile hardware, and to do so they’re hiring some old Apple talent.
To lead the charge in its plans to build “smart devices” Intel has hired former Apple Vice President, Mike Bell, to head up Intel’s new Smart Devices Unit.