iPhone - page 247

Apple haters, Android geeks and misinformed Wall Street analysts will tell you that Apple’s iPhone is falling behind because Apple can’t innovate anymore.

I don’t buy the Apple-doesn’t-innovate BS. Apple is super innovative, and their innovation is focused, disciplined and ultimately results in industry-dominating revenue and profits.

But iPhones are still lacking some of the best innovations out there. This isn’t because Apple can’t innovate. It’s because Apple can’t share. Apple can’t play nice with others. Apple wants to control the user experience, even at the expense of the user.

Apple isn’t open.

This quality used to be a benefit because it prevented the platform from becoming an ugly, confusing, fragmented mess.

But in the past month, Apple’s lack of openness has become a serious problem.

Here’s what I’m talking about.

Slip on your Nikes and grab your Kool-Aid, dear brethren, it’s time for a new episode of The CultCast. This time around, iOS 7 takes over your car; 5S gets better at selfies; Jony Ive is under pressure; Tim Cook really doubles down on secrecy, ya’ll; and we pitch our favorite tech and apps on an all new Fave’s ‘N Raves.

All that and more on this week’s CultCast! Stream or download new and past episodes on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing now on iTunes, or hit play below and let the good times roll.

Break on through to the other side for the show notes.

It seems like a week can’t pass by without a new video streaming app coming out of the wood work. If you need more video streaming options on your iPhone, T-Mobile’s got a new app to hook you up.

T-Mobile TV was just released for iPhone yesterday. The app has been on Android devices since 2010, but this is the first time the magenta carrier is bringing it to iPhone. The “free” app includes a number of channels, such as Disney, Nickelodeon, E!, TLC, ESPN, NBC, MTV, Comedy Central and more.

It’s no secret that AT&T is the least affordable carrier for the iPhone in the U.S. While T-Mobile has quickly rebranded itself as “The UnCarrier” and other prepaid carriers have attracted customers with their flexible plans and cheaper service, AT&T has clung to its expensive data and phone plans. All that might be ending soon though.

AT&T is planning to launch a pre-paid brand called ‘All In One” on June 15th to compete with other pre-paid carriers like Cricket, U.S. Cellular, Boost and now T-Mobile. The new AT&T pre-paid brand will offer customers monthly services starting at $35 per month for feature phones and $50 per month on smartphones.

Now days, if you’re a carrier and you’re not selling the iPhone, you’re kind of screwed. As T-Mobile became the last of the four major U.S. carriers to start selling the iPhone earlier this year, smaller carriers like Cricket and U.S. Cellular have been trying to attract customers with cheaper phone and data rates.

Along with expanding its LTE offerings to over 86% of it’s customer in 2013, U.S. Cellular just announced that they will probably start selling the iPhone by the end of 2013.

Want to easily create interactive 3D objects on your Mac for the web? Want something so simple that no Flash or QuickTime plugins are required to run them – which means the objects will even work on your iPhone or iPad as well? Want to save 51% on such a software solution in the process?

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In today’s world it can be really difficult to set a website apart from the rest. BoxshotVR is here to help bring a unique UX to any page by making it easy for you to create interactive 3D objects that you can add to any site. Not only will it help a website stand out but it will also help you put a new twist on anyone’s website. Cult of Mac Deals is offering you an opportunity to pick up Boxshot VR for only $23.99 – but only for a limited time.

While Google Glass is already compatible with iPhone, some of its killer features — including turn-by-turn navigation and text messaging — require a companion app that’s currently only available on Android. But according to one Google employee, Glass will soon be able to offer these features no matter what device it’s connected to.

Spotify has acquired Swedish music discovery startup Tunigo in an effort to compete with Twitter’s new music service, AllThingsD reports. Tunigo will continue to operate as normal for the time being, but all of the company’s employees will reportedly move into Spotify’s offices in Stockholm and New York to work on Spotify’s main music streaming service.

With the countdown to 50 billion App Store downloads now underway, Apple has begun highlighting the “top 25 all-time” free and paid apps on iOS. The Cupertino company did a similar thing in the run up to 25 billion downloads last year, and for 10 billion downloads in January 2011.

Some of the apps included in the list are no surprise, with the likes of Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Skype topping the free chart, and Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, and Doodle Jump topping the paid chart.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is the best thing that ever happened to the “Games” folder on my iPad. It’s one of my favorite games of all time, and I love that I can play it whenever, wherever now that it’s on iOS. If you haven’t already snapped it up, now’s a great time, because it’s on sale for the first time since it hit the App Store.

The Galaxy S4 has been cleared for government use by the U.S. Department of Defense, with Samsung’s new Knox security software deemed safe for military use. It’s the first Android-powered smartphone to ever win DoD approval, and it gets it ahead of Apple’s iPhone.

In a characteristically terse reports, the ever-spotty DigiTimes is backing up recent reports that Apple is readying a plastic 4-inch iPhone with a colorful casing… but also claiming, bizarrely, that Apple doesn’t have much faith that such an iPhone would sell.

OpenStreetMap is a project that makes and distributes free map data for the world, letting anyone use the data for free, without any legal or technical restrictions.

Startup skobbler uses this global mapping data to create its own set of location-aware mobile apps, like ForeverMap 2, an app that has been on Android for a while now, and which is now available on the App Store for your iOS device.

We’ve talked before about all of the Braun products that have inspired Apple’s designs. Perhaps the best known is the Braun ET66 pocket calculator, first released in 1987 replacing the earlier ET22 model which inspired iOS’s own calculator app and has become a Dieter Rams design classic.

Outside of inside your iPhone, it’s hard to find a working ET66 these days, which is why it’s so great that Braun intends on re-releasing the original model later this year as an official replica. No word on price or exact availibility yet, but I know I’ll be getting one. Won’t you?

Source: Acquire

Foxconn is notorious for its tough working conditions and labor practices, but the company has started relaxing on some of its strict factory rules after two recent suicides occurred at its Zhengzhou factory last month.

Starting now, Foxconn has decided it will stop forcing workers from fraternizing with one another during work hours. Foxconn’s factories have used a “mute mode” policy with workers that prohibits any conversation that is not relevant to their jobs while in the workshop, but the iPhone-maker has decided it’s probably good for workers’ health to be able to talk to each other.

There are so many pictures of clouds, coffee, sunsets and trees on Instagram, that sometimes it can be hard as hell to find pictures of things you actually care about, like family and friends. Instagram is rolling out a new photo tagging feature today that will help make finding people way easier – which might be a good or bad thing.

The new feature, called Photos of You, allows users to tag friends who are in the photo. A new Photos of You section now graces the your profile, where you can find all the Instagram photo’s you’ve been tagged in. Just like on Facebook, if you don’t want to be tagged in a certain picture, you can decided to remove it.

Here’s a video Instagram released to promote Photos of You:

Blockbuster has been teetering on the edge of oblivion ever since its bankruptcy filing in 2010, but after being bought by Dish Network in 2011, the company has begun a push to get back into the movie businesses.

Blockbuster relaunched its streaming video service, Blockbuster On Demand, last year, and the company is finally bringing it to iOS today. Users of the new app can stream movies to their iPhone or iPad. Unlike Netflix’s all-you-can-stream model, Blockbuster charges a rental fee per video watched, that runs between $2.99 and $4.99 per movie. Blockbuster’s movie catalogue offers thousands of hit movies and the app now supports HD.

Here’s the full description:

Sometimes Cult of Mac Deals is able to offer you a deal on something that you might not need to use all the time, but could come in handy when you want to stretch your creativity on a project – or simply do something fun for family and friends. This is one of those offers.

CrazyTalk7 Pro for Mac is the most popular facial animation tool that uses sound and text to vividly animate facial images. With this groundbreaking Auto Motion technology, you just need to import images, specify the facial feature points and record your own voice to automatically generate lip-syncs to create 3D life-like, talking videos. And we’ve got CrazyTalk7 Pro for Mac for 33% off the regular price – just $99.99 – for a limited time!

Australian airline Qantas has always been quick to embrace new technology. Back in October 2010, it became one of the first airlines to offer iPads as in-flight entertainment systems, and one of the first to embrace Passbook last November.

Today the company launched a new iPhone app that allows users to search and book flights, find accommodation  and store digital boarding passes in Passbook.

Angry Birds Friends, the latest bird slinger from Rovio, has today landed on iOS. It’s a little different from the other titles in the series, because this one’s all about social gaming, rather than playing alone. The game connects to Facebook, than allows you to challenge your buddies to weekly tournaments, and brag about your highest scores.

Yahoo! launched its new Weather app for iPhone a few weeks ago, and it’s quite possibly one of the prettiest weather apps you’ll find in the App Store. It’s received a ton of praise for its design, which combines gorgeous Flickr photos with clean, minimalist graphics.

If you instantly made it your new weather app — just like we did — then you’ll be pleased to know you can know make it your default weather app on iPhone with a new jailbreak tweak called “YahooWeatherisBetter.”

The second-most-common use for my iPhone’s camera is
scanning. I snap pages from recipe books, business cards from, well, from the kind of people who still carry business cards, and hand-written notes from index cards. Which means that my Camera Roll is full of pictures of slightly skewed documents with my pink thumb peeking in at the bottom corner.

Standscan will stop this.

UK low-cost airline Easyjet – referred to by some Brits as "sleazyjet" – has brought Passbook support to its mobile app. Now you can not only shop for flights with the app, you can check in and have the boarding pass sent to your iPhone’s Passbook app.

There was a study by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) last week which concluded that voice-to-text apps, like Siri, offer no benefit over standard texting. In fact, they say, reaction time nearly doubled when using these types of apps.

Adam Cheyer, one of the scientists that helped create Siri, however, begs to differ.

One of the more useful features of modern browsing, the AutoFill function started on the desktop, then made its way to the iPhone and iPad a while ago. It lets your iOS device hold all the form data, populating the oft-repeated fields with your personal info like your name and address. That way, you don’t have to type it all in all the time, which is brilliant on a mobile device with a small touch-keyboard.

When you share a device like an iPAd, like I do with my kids at home, you may not want to share this personal data. Until a proper multi-user experience comes to iOS, the best way to get around this is to clear out your personal info, and then turn off AutoFill. Here’s how.