iPhone - page 329

Rumors have been flying about Apple’s next-gen iPhone featuring a liquidmetal alloy casing, unlike the glass backing that currently cradles the iPhone 4 and 4S’s precious internals. Liquidmetal would assumedly create a lighter iPhone that’s also more durable and scratch resistant. There’s also been rumors that the next-gen MacBooks will be made of liquidmetal, but no hard evidence has surfaced to support the speculation.

Two years ago Apple bought exclusive rights to use material from Liquidmetal Technologies in its products, but we have yet to see a liquidmetal iPhone. The only liquidmetal material to be incorporated was the pin used for ejecting the iPhone 3G SIM card. Will 2012 be the year Apple’s product line goes liquidmetal? Sadly, the odds don’t look good.

May is Mobile Management Month at Cult of Mac, where we will be profiling a different mobile management company every weekday. You can find all previous entries here  and read our Mobile Management manifesto here.

AirWatch provides a full range of mobile management features and implements all of the iOS 4 and iOS 5 management and monitoring capabilities. The software integrates with a range of enterprise technologies including directory services. The service works with a wide range of clients including small and mid-size businesses, large and enterprise organizations as well as government agencies.

The BYOD movement has transformed the relationship between IT staffers and other employees in a wide range of companies. While there are benefits to BYOD, there are also headaches – and securing data on personal devices and/or securing the devices themselves is one of the biggest. While there’s an ongoing discussion about whether to manage data, apps, or devices, right now most companies are developing a strategy that has a mix of approaches.

All that could change if the mobile management industry unfolds the way Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney expects. Dulaney is an advocate of creating what he calls “beneficial viruses” that companies can layer into apps and data itself – the idea being that the data could delete itself if it becomes compromised.

Scott Forstall, Apple’s Senior Vice President of iOS Software, has sold 65,151 shares of his Apple stock — the equivalent of 95% of his stake in the company — for a staggering $38.7 million. He now owns just 2,988 Apple shares, worth around $1.8 million, but if he sticks around, there’s plenty more where they came from.

“Unopened! Still sealed in original retail box!” cry the Craigslist ads advertising “new” iPhones and iPads at lower-than-retail prices, but the truth is far more insidious: many of the “new” iPhones you see on Craigslist and eBay are actually old, used iPhones repackaged and sold as new using the hardware equivalent of meat glue.

Many of us are dreaming of a liquidmetal casing for the next iPhone which will sport a tapered, teardrop design that will help make the sixth-generation device thinner than its predecessor. However, a SIM tray that is believed to be destined for the new device suggests it could feature a box-like design similar to the iPhone 4S.

The jailbreak community has always been striving to improve the way iOS handles system settings. iOS 5 failed to introduce a quicker way of managing preferences like screen brightness and Bluetooth, and jailbreakers still use tweaks like SBSettings to toggle prefs without popping into the Settings app.

More elegant solutions for enhancing iOS have started coming out in Cydia over the last year or so, and a jailbreak tweak called Swipebright brings very useful functionality to the status bar.

Siri is already about as simple as it gets, but that hasn’t stopped freelance journalist and TV host Marc Saltzman from creating Siri For Dummies. The 192-page book “shows you all the cool things Siri can do for you, so you can get the most from your iPhone’s voice-activated personal assistant.”

We here at Cult of Mac just can’t get enough of Instagram. It’s really hard to not love the little photo sharing app, even after it got bought by Facebook for $1 billion.

Have you ever wondered why images upload so quickly in Instagram? The whole app feels super snappy, and images can seem to upload instantly after you take a picture and apply a filter. What kind of magic is going on in the background?

As it turns out, the app’s design tricks you into believing its working faster than it really is.

Notifications on the iPhone are annoying. There, I said it. They drop at the most inopportune times, and I always end up activating them, while the iPhone is more than happy to hop over to the application that sent the Notification in the first place. There is, however, a couple of cool ways of dismissing them without activating them, short of waiting for them to go away, which is what I’ve done since they appeared in iOS 5. Today’s tip shows you how.

The iPhone and iPad are revolutionizing business as we know it, causing companies to throw out old playbooks that mandated strict control over every piece of technology in the workplace. That revolution is liberating workers everywhere to choose their own devices, pick the best apps, and enjoy using technology in the office for the first time since… well ever.

All this month, we’re going to spend time highlighting the businesses helping to power that revolution: companies that take iPhones and iPads into the office and let them drive and control all the enterprise systems in place in your workplace.

Do you carry a backup battery, a camera connection kit and a charger with you in your man-sack? Yeah, me too, and it’s really no big deal as even together they weight almost nothing. But if you’d rather combine these items into one easy-to-lose box, then the Cellink I is just the thing for you.

This is a rather beautiful concept for what the next-gen iPhone could look like, courtesy of French designer Antoine Brieux. . It’s fanciful stuff, of course, featuring a Liquid Metal casing, but what I find most interesting is this idea that the home button could be replaced with a “virtual home button” that displays on a larger 4.5-inch widescreen display.

There is perhaps no name in the world of hacking as legendary as Geohot. George Hotz was the first person to unlock the original iPhone back in 2007. He was 17 years old at the time. He also released multiple jailbreaks, including “purplera1n” for the iPhone 3GS. Hotz later went on to hack the PlayStation 3 and battle Sony in a high-profile lawsuit.

In a recent profile by The New Yorker, we get a fascinating look at Hotz and several stories from his career as a prolific, self-taught hacker.

Like the rest of the BookBook range, Twelve South’s BookBook for iPhone ($60) is a luxury, handmade leather wallet case that’s designed to look like a pocket-sized vintage book. Not only will it lovingly house your iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S, but it also features three credit card pockets, and a larger pouch for notes and bills.

The BookBook is available in a dark tan brown leather, and every one is hand-distressed to ensure each one is a little bit unique. As you’d expect, the case provides access to your iPhone’s dock connector; headphone jack; mute switch; and volume, home, and sleep/wake buttons.

Going camping this spring? And by “camping” I mean hiking or biking with your home on your back, and heading out into the wilderness. I don’t mean loading up your SUV and dragging a grill, a tent the size of a European house and enough ball games to keep an entire schools-worth of kids occupied for a month.

So, if you’re heading out under your own power, how about taking a stove that a) requires no liquid fuel, b) burns fast and hot and c) charges your iPhone? What’s not to like?

A jailbreak tweak called Forecast presents a handy weather widget on your iPhone’s lock screen for displaying current weather and the weekly forecast. Powered by Apple’s own Weather app, Forecast replaces the standard time and date at the top of your iPhone’s lock screen. Weather info is displayed on the right while the time is still displayed on the top left of the lock screen, giving you the best of both worlds.

There’s an unforeseen cost for companies as workers become more mobile and trends like BYOD become ever more common. It isn’t the cost of a mobile management solution, deploying iOS apps, or even supporting iPads and iPhones that users want to use to connect to the work email and other business resources.

What is this hidden cost? Wi-Fi.

Popular iOS Twitter client Tweetbot has been updated with several new features and improvements in the App Store. Version 2.3 for iPhone and iPad is available now with more gestures, added timeline thumbnail support, and more. Storify and Droplr integration has also been included for sharing Twitter conversations and media/links with followers.

The jailbreakers among you will undoubtedly already be familiar with DreamBoard, an awesome tweak that quickly applies custom themes to an iOS device. It’s probably the easiest way to give your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch a nice new look, and therefore it’s extremely popular.

One shameless iOS developer is attempting to cash in on that popularity by creating a DreamBoard knockoff that is now available in the App Store for $2.99.

Despite his love for the iPhone and its iOS operating system, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak surprisingly feels that Windows Phone apps are “more beautiful” than their counterparts on Android and iOS, and jokes that Steve Jobs may have been reincarnated inside Microsoft.

Woz also revealed that he favours Windows Phone over Android, but that iOS is still his number one choice.

If you visited the site yesterday, you’ll already be aware that Cult of Mac’s weekly must-have apps and games roundups are now back. This is where we choose our pick of the best new releases and updates to hit the App Store in the past week.

This week’s feature includes the official Klout app, which has finally made its way to iOS; a great service for storing and syncing your passwords from security specialists Norton; a beautiful weather app, and more.

There’s no question that the iPad and iPhone are two of the best ways to watch a movie. But the biggest problem is getting our favorite DVD’s on to the dang things. Sure, you can go to iTunes and buy a digital copy of your movie, again. But that costs a lot of money if you want a digital copy of all your movies, and if you already own the physical disc, what’s the point? Plus, once you download those movies, the iPad only has a limited amount of storage available. Those two hurdles prevent a lot of people from fully realizing the beauty of owning an iOS device by watching their favorite movies.

This week we’re bringing you two solutions to get over your DVD ripping hurdles: the MacX DVD Ripper Pro Stream Edition and MacX Video Converter Pro by Digiarty. MacX DVD Ripper Pro Streamer’s package includes the ability to rip movie files from the DVDs you already own, convert them into iPhone and iPad supported video files, and wirelessly stream them to your iOS device. MacX Video Converter Pro can take those files and convert them to any video format you need, or download your favorite Vimeo and YouTube videos right off the web. Not only is Digiarty’s software awesome, and easy enough for your momma to use, but they’re giving it away, FREE, to all Cult of Mac readers for the next 7 days!

Here’s how to get your copy:

Following a short hiatus, Cult of Mac’s weekly must-have apps and games features are back! Here we’ll roundup our pick of the week’s best iOS titles, including our favorite new releases and updates worth writing home about.

This week’s picks feature what is quite possibly the best arcade fighter yet to hit the App Store, awesome updates to Angry Birds Space and Jetpack Joyride, plus a fantastic platformer that I just can’t put down.

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This week featured a handful of announcements relating to using your iPhone as a virtual wallet including news of Boston’s smartphone-based commuter rail payment system and CVS integrating its loyalty card system into its iPhone app.

Capping the week is news that restaurant chain T.G.I. Fridays announcement that more than of its franchises in the U.S. will begin offering patrons the ability to settle their restaurant or bar tab using an app. The move comes as part of partnership with startup Tabbedout – a mobile payment company that aims to bring iPhone (and Android phone)  payments into the mainstream with a focus on bars and restaurants.