Meet iCandy, a device with one, simple purpose: distracting children. The iCandy is a bracket that screws into the bottom of your SLR camera and holds your iPhone out in front of it, ready to entertain children and stop them from getting bored during portrait sessions. Think of it as a kind of digital version of the plush Mickey Mouses held up by ambidextrous photographers of the past.
Twitpic, the photo-sharing service for Twitter, has finally gotten its own standalone app. You can use is to post pictures to Twitter from your iPhone, and you can also browse previous photos you have uploaded to the service (and you probably will have some there already, as many Twitter apps use Twitpic).
You can also use the app as a client to browse photos taken by people you follow on Twitter.
Apple’s iPhone is about to be implemented into the American railroad system in a big way. Amtrak, the government agency that oversees the nation’s train services, will be adopting the iPhone as a digital ticket scanner. The 1,700 conductors who currently work for Amtrak have been undergoing training with the iPhone since November, and the new initiative will be fully rolled out by late summer.
May is Mobile Management Month at Cult of Mac,
Excitor produces the DME line of mobile management tools. The lineup currently offers a device management component that includes basic app management functionality and a secure messaging component. The secure messaging component offers companies a fully secured on-device message, contacts, and calendar data store that is separate from Apple’s Mail, Contacts, and Calendar apps – this helps ensure business data is not readable on a lost or stolen device even if that device is unlocked. Excitor has announced two additional DME components that, according to the company’s website, are not yet available. The first, is focused on creating an on-device secure data store while the second is a secure mobile browser.
Let’s hear that again. Apple is taking in 84 percent of all mobile gaming revenue in the US.
With all the fooferaw about how many more Android handsets are selling than iPhones, it’s easy to think that Apple may be on the way out. Not so, says a new report from NewZoo, a market research company in the gaming space.
There’s plenty of news out there about the way mobile technology, BYOD programs, and other facets of the consumerization of IT trend are reshaping the workplace and the IT department. The traditional daily routine of typing a username and password into PC in the morning, using that computer all day long, and shutting it down before heading home is gone for many of us.
Today, we use a mix of devices in the office, during meetings, on the road, and often from home. That mix of devices, a range of different apps, cloud services, and remote access empowers us in ways that were unimaginable a few years ago. In this new workplace, however, do we need something more than the old username and password to make resources available and keep them business data secure?
One of the surprising, and some might say disturbing, realities of today’s consumerized IT departments is that IT staff are being left out of the loop on technology projects. Nowhere is that more evident than when it comes to developing mobile app strategies, particularly customer-facing app strategies.
Instead many business and marketing managers are recruiting or contracting app developers directly, often bypassing CIOs and IT managers in the process. While this new trend is primarily focused on app development, it could easily be the start of a slippery slope that leads to more and more outsourcing of technology projects and management.
An update to the GPS photo-tagging app PlaceTagger brings support for the iPad, and also shows us exactly what iCloud was meant for. The v2.0 version not only lets you import photos via camera connection kit and then tag them right there on the iPad — it also syncs the GPS data seamlessly to the Mac version so you can tag photos right there. No tedious exporting of GPX files (unless you want to), nor even having to fix time discrepancies with the iPad and the camera’s clocks.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V25cOgGMgZM
If you’re a mobile gamer, then Gameloft is the development studio to keep your eye on over the coming months. In addition to the much-anticipated N.O.V.A. 3, the company has confirmed it is also working on the official Men in Black 3 mobile game, and Asphalt 7: Heat, the next release in its popular racing series.
Instacast, undoubtedly the best podcast manager for iOS, just got a whopping update that includes a long list of new features and improvements. In addition to a “revamped and improved” user interface, the update brings episode archiving, a sleep timer, a download manager, and lots, lots more.
Many have been wondering what Apple will call the next-generation iPhone. iPhone 5? iPhone 6? iPhone 4G Epic Touch? Or what about “the new iPhone?” After the third-gen iPad, it looks like Apple may be starting to abandon its traditional naming conventions for iOS devices altogether.
Interestingly, Apple has filed a claim with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to gain control of the iPhone5.com domain name.
Lego Harry Potter is finally back on iOS to play out his final years at Hogwarts, and he’s at the top of this week’s pick of must-have iOS games. Toothless from DreamWork’s How To Train Your Dragon also makes his App Store debut in a terrific physics-based puzzle game, and we’ve chosen one of the cutest adventure games you’ll ever play.
An innovate idea for iOS often gets introduced to high praises from the Apple community, and one of three things usually happens: 1.) Apple implements the idea, 2.) Jailbreakers implement it first and Apple eventually does the same, 3.) Apple ignores the idea entirely and jailbreakers enjoy it exclusively. We’re hoping that number 2.) will happen in this case.
Remember when we showed you the amazing concept video for easily editing text on the iPad? Put together by Daniel Chase Hooper, the concept showed how you could edit text with finger drags and gestures instead of the tedious ‘tap and drag’ method Apple currently implements. Many of us said we wanted to see Hooper’s concept in iOS 6.
As it is known to do, the jailbreak community has already heard our collective cry and answered with a new jailbreak tweak that just went live in Cydia today. Dubbed SwipeSelection, a new way of editing text is now available for jailbroken iPad and iPhone users.
Speculating about future Apple products is really hard to do well. That doesn’t keep everyone from trying. Even grizzled Apple-watching veterans often fail catastrophically with each new Apple announcement.
The reason it’s difficult is that “evidence,” which would normally be the best tool for predicting things, doesn’t work in Apple’s case.
The best criteria are strategic and cultural analyses. But even these are not perfectly reliable.
If you’ve struggled to accurately guess in the past what Apple will announce, don’t feel bad. Even Apple executives themselves don’t know until often very late in the game.
Here’s why predicting Apple products is so hard.
After months and months of waiting, Spotify finally released its iPad app this week, and it does not disappoint. It features a terrific interface optimized for the iPad’s larger screen, plus plenty of other great features. There’s no wonder why it’s at the top of this week’s must-have iOS apps roundup.
Other picks include a great little app for controlling Bluetooth from your home screen, an impressive photography app from Polaroid, an innovative new web browser, and more.
It’s always tempting to avoid the high prices of a Genius Bar screen repair and find a third-party repair center that can fix your iPhone for fraction of the price. I’ve done it. You might want to think twice before you take your iPhone repair off the grid, though.
Late last year news broke of an iPhone that ignited into flame on board an Australian flight. No one was hurt, and at the time no one knew what caused the iPhone to spontaneously erupt. After further investigation though, it looks like a careless third-party repair agent might be the one to blame.
Jailbreakers will rejoice to hear that third-party warranty provider SquareTrade has expanded its coverage to include jailbroken Apple iPhones. Unlike Apple’s own AppleCare+ program and standard warranty, SquareTrade will give you customer support and even replace your iPhone whether it’s jailbroken or not. This is the first time a warranty has been offered that specifically covers jailbroken iOS devices, although it’s currently unclear if jailbroken iPads and iPod touches are included.
BYOD programs have a tendency to worry IT departments. After decades of being charged with keeping computers, supporting devices, and data safe and in working order, losing control of hardware is a massive culture shift. Even absent a BYOD program, the growing number of mobile devices that are used outside of the office and take corporate data outside the security of an enterprise network can be disorienting for long term IT professionals.
That leads to a tendency to clamp down with every ounce of security muscle available – mobile device management (MDM) can’t entirely secure an iPhone or iPad, but they can do a pretty good job of locking it down, monitoring it in the office or on the road, and make it easy to wipe everything off of it at a moment’s notice.
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.
Centrify’s DirectControl for Mobile offers free device management capabilities. Unlike many other management solutions, device management can be performed using mobile-specific Active Directory group policy extensions rather than any additional interface (though a cloud service interface is also available). Being a free solution, DirectControl for Mobile focuses on a handful of device security functionality. Centrify plans to extend the offering over the course of this year with a full featured premium edition. Although completely functional (see our review), Centrify still lists DirectControl as being a beta release. For organizations with minimal needs or limited budgets, DirectControl is a good option. Centrify also produces a Mac client management tool called DirectControl for Mac that uses Active Directory extensions for securing and managing Mac workstations.
Remember the Glif? It was probably the first Kickstarter project to take off, and of course it was an iPhone photography accessory. The original Glif probably went on to make its creators — Studio Neat –billionaires, and now it’s back, in the form of the Glif Plus. And what’s more, it comes with a bunch of bad new typography-based puns.
When most of us here words like forensics, we picture an episode of CSI or NCIS. We think of ballistics results form a murder scene or fingerprints on a gun. An iPhone or iPad isn’t the first automatic visual that comes to mind. Yet more and more iPhones and iPads are becoming the subjects of forensic investigations according to warrants issued via the U.S. federal court system.
What you’re seeing above are Steve Jobs’s speech notes that he brought with him on January 9, 2007 when he announced the original iPhone, and they are in many ways a telling encapsulation of the man himself. Jobs was a natural showman who needed only the barest outline to announce the changing of the world, and his notes here are so simple that they could have been scrawled on the back of a napkin, but Jobs was also a perfectionist: he had them expertly type set, printed out and bound.
Amazing. Also, if you’re wondering what those three devices are below the notes on Steve’s podium, they’re actually iPhones with special attachments so they can do video on the big screen behind him. Steve would only use one; the others were probably backups.
VSCO’s Cam is a film emulation app for the iPhone and iPad (pixel doubled). It is also one of the new generation of “serious” iPhone camera apps which capture uncompressed JPG files before applying filters, for a much higher quality end product.
When Apple introduced the new iPad earlier this year, it didn’t just discontinue the iPad 2; it dropped its price and sent it out to do battle with cheaper, Android-powered tablets from the likes of Amazon. But that’s not the only change the Cupertino company made to the device.
Although there’s no mention of it, if you buy a brand new iPad today, it will pack a new A5 processor under the hood that’s a little different to earlier A5 chips, and delivers much better battery life.
First Temple Run, then Instagram, and now Flipboard.
Continuing the trend of high-profile iPhone apps making their way to the Android platform, popular reading app Flipboard has unveiled its exclusive partnership window with Samsung for the just-announced Galaxy S III. This is the first time Flipboard has ventured away from iOS, and its Android app will be available exclusively for the Galaxy S III for an undisclosed amount of time. The app will then be available for all Android handsets in Google’s Play store.