iPhone - page 260

One of our biggest hopes for iOS 7 is that it will come with a huge update on UI. iOS is starting to look a bit old and everyone’s tired of the skeuomorphic features. It needs some innovative minimalist touches from Jony Ive.

Mohamed Kerroudj has created his own vision for what the iPhone’s Lockscreen should look like. The linen backgrounds have been replaced by flat white surfaces, but what’s better is you can actually respond to message right from Notification Center, or trash them, or schedule a date in your Calendar, or toggle your Wifi. It’d be great.

Take a look:

Tap Tap See is a camera app for blind people. Sure, any partially or non-sighted person could just snap bad, out-of-focus pictures of their shoes, or of the backs of their friends heads, with any camera app. But only Tap Tap See will then say to them, out loud, “Shoes,” or “Head.”

You see, Tap Tap See is like a sighted assistant that never grow tired of you asking “what’s that?”

WWDC 2012 sold out in under two hours last year. It was insane. A lot of people on the West Coast didn’t even get a chance to buy a ticket because Apple announced tickets were available at 5am.

Everyone who’s really wanting to go to WWDC this year is probably looking for the best method to alert them on tickets, so Oisin Prendiville has created a service that will call you as soon as tickets are available.

iOS 6.1 had not one, but two security exploits that allowed an attacker to bypass an iPhone’s lockscreen to gain access to a users’ data. Apple finally patched up those two holes yesterday with the iOS 6.1.3 update, yet the new version of iOS contains another passcode security flaw.

Using the iPhone’s Control feature, attackers can still bypass your lockscreen. The good news is that the new lockscreen exploit only works on iPhone 4 units right now.

Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch is leaving the company to become Vice President of Technology at Apple, but Tim Cook may have to keep a close eye on him around the iPhones. Back in 2009, Lynch smashed up a whole bunch of them in a bid to get them to run Flash Player. See his destructive side for yourself in the video below.

If you’ve ever had a party with people in various rooms of your house, maybe even outside, Bem’s Wireless Speaker Trio was made just for you.

The Trio is a neat idea: connect your music source (iPhone, iPad, iPod) via Bluetooth to its base station, then move any of its three rechargeable satellite speakers anywhere in your home, up to 120 feet from the base, and they’ll fill that room with music from your iDevice or Mac.

But while Bem’s Wireless Trio is a great idea and was awesome when it worked, my tests brought to light some problems I just couldn’t ignore.

Call Bliss is an app with its own, industrial-strength take on the iPhone’s newish Do Not Disturb feature. It takes Apple’s basic concept — blocking calls with the flick of a switch, or only letting through calls from selected contacts — and infuses it with management features and more powerful options. And now the app adds two more tricks.

QuikIO has been a great solution for getting your files from your Mac to your iOS device for a while now, with AppleTV support added this past January.

Today, however, the app has added yet another great feature: the ability to send your files from iPhone to iPhone with the new QuikBeam feature, letting you send photo, video, and other files between iPhones at higher speeds than otherwise available. The developers claim that the feature will send ten full-resolution photos in as little as one second, using a proprietary network intelligence system that finds the fastest path between two iPhones running the QuikIO app.

Say hello to CubeSensors, sensitive little cubes that detect pretty much everything and tattle to your iPhone about it. The cubes are internet-connected, so you can get their information anywhere, any time.

ABC, NBC, and CBS all have their own iPad and iPhone apps that will finally let you watch some of their shows for free. The catch with all of those apps is that you can’t watch a new show until 24 hours after it’s aired.

To take TV network apps to the next level, ABC is reportedly working on a new app that will let cable subscribers stream live network TV to their iPhone or iPad.

File under the ever-growing list of “things Android does better than iOS.” Today it’s Gmail, which now lets you reply to, archive or delete your messages right there in the notification. Meanwhile, us schmucks with iPhones and iPads are stuck digging into preferences just to toggle Bluetooth on and off, and waving a freshly-slaughtered chicken over our heads as we try to make Photo Stream work again.

One of the biggest complaints about Android, is that Google will announce a new version of Android, but then it takes over six months for that software to actually get on your phone. What gives?

The guys over at Gizmodo decided to talk to both manufacturers and wireless carriers to find out what’s the hold up. It seems like a software update would be a pretty straightforward process, but what they found was a myriad of problems that can take months to answer before your Android phone gets an update.

According to some (questionable) reports, Apple will finally offer the iPhone in various different colors later this year. But rather than waiting to see whether or not that actually happens, why not take matters into your own hands. A number of third-party iPhone 5 replacement parts are now available to purchase, and they come in all sorts of pretty colors.

According to those dandruff-shouldered, bad-breathed “experts” at camera clubs the world over, converging verticals in a photograph are “bad.” Converging verticals are the effect you see when you tip your camera back to capture to top of a building and the verticals appear to point towards each other instead of straight up.

Amazingly, these “experts” never complain about converging horizontals.

So if you are planning on entering a competition at your local camera club, and there will be buildings involved in your pictures, then you might want to take a look at Perspective Correct, an app to — you guessed it — correct perspective.

Apple is expected to unveil its first smartwatch sometime this year, and there’s one company who will be right on its tail, competing for sales. As you may have already guessed, that company is Samsung.

Lee Young Hee, executive vice president of  the Korean company’s mobile business, confirmed the move during an interview with Bloomberg.

T-Mobile has been relegated to being America’s #4 U.S. carrier, thanks to it’s failed acquisition deal with AT&T. Apparently, the company has some big plans to put it back in the spotlight though.

T-Mobile just sent out invites to an exclusive event on March 26th in New York, where it is expected to detail plans to change its wireless business.

Samsung has already explained its love for plastic, and why it chose to stick with it for the flagship Galaxy S4. But after receiving a lot of criticism for that decision, the company’s head of design, Dennis Miloseski, was forced to defend the Galaxy S4’s plastic build once again at Engadget’s Expand conference in San Francisco this weekend.

WhatsApp, the hugely popular cross-platform messaging service, is bringing its paid subscription model to iOS. The company hasn’t yet confirmed when the move take place, but it will “definitely” happen during 2013. When that time comes, you’ll need to pay $0.99 a year to use the service.

The iPhone’s user interface is getting old and Apple isn’t innovating fast enough, according to Thorstein Heins, CEO of BlackBerry. Yes, the same BlackBerry which just released the BlackBerry Z10 (several months late) in a last ditch attempt to save the company from going under because of the iPhone.

Heins admits that Apple “did a fantastic job” with the iPhone and its iOS operating system, but he believes the company is now falling behind, giving Android and the new BlackBerry 10 OS a chance to beat it in many areas.

In response to Samsung’s Galaxy S4 announcement last Thursday, Apple has updated the iPhone 5 pages of its website to remind visitors why people love the iPhone. “Loving it is easy. That’s why so many people do,” the landing page reads, before going on to list all the reasons why the Cupertino company’s smartphone is so popular.

Chinese actor and singer Peter Ho criticized Apple on China’s Twitter-like Weibo service this week. 

But don’t blame Ho. He was apparently just following orders. But orders from whom? And why?

Or rather, “have someone drive you home.”

After being vilified so much for contributing to dangerous roads (along with all other smartphones, of course), the iPhone will soon turn Samaritan, and maybe help to make the roads a little safer. That’s thanks to the new Breathometer, “the world’s first smartphone breathalyzer.”

Add microscopes to the list of things your iPhone can replace. A group of scientist visiting Tanzania were able to convert their iPhone 4S into a microscope using nothing by a $7 lens, some double sided tape, and a torch.

After macgyvering the iPhone 4S into a microscope, the scientest then used it to take pictures of stool samples to determine the presences of eggs in some schoolchildren. Amazingly, the iPhone picked up 70 percent of the infections.

Even though Mailbox for iOS has only been out for a month, it’s taken no time at all for the buzzworthy app to get bought up by a bigger fish.

Dropbox is buying Orchestra Inc., makers of the popular new email app, Mailbox, that allows users to control their email in a new way.

We mix it up on this week’s CultCast! Join us for a very special hour with guest Jeff Cannata, former co-host of The Totally Rad Show (TRS) on Revision3 and current co-host of CNET’s Always On.

For all of you who used to watch and love TRS, we remember the show and relive how its cutting-edge virtual set — all made with just one camera and a Mac Pro — made it one of the most popular and beloved podcasts on the internet. Plus, what’s it feel like Kickstarting over $100,000 for a new show? Jeff knows, and shares his amazing experience.

All that and Mr. Cannata reveals his favorite iPad apps and gadgets! Subscribe to The CultCast now on iTunes to download our newest episode, or just hit play in the player below to listen right in your browser.

Show notes up next!