iPhone - page 351

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD / iWORLD 2012 — Those brainstorming sessions that we’d all like to eavesdrop on at Apple are managed using an iPad system.

Laaaaaaaaaaadies and Gentlemen, welcome to Friday Night Fights, a new series of weekly deathmatches between two no-mercy brawlers who will fight to the death — or at least agree to disagree — about which is better: Apple or Google, iOS or Android?

After this week’s topic, someone’s going to be spitting teeth. Our question: Should The iPhone Allow You To Easily Swap In And Out Batteries? A lot of Android phones let you swap in and out batteries if you’re low on power, but Apple’s never done so. Is this just another example of Apple hardware oppression, or do they have a good reason?

In one corner, we have the 900 pound gorilla, Cult of Mac; in the opposite corner, wearing the green trunks, we have the plucky upstart, Cult of Android!

Place your bets, gentlemen! This is going be a bloody one.

ATTENTION all devs, designers, geeks, engineer-newbies, iLovers, creatives, and dreamers who want to learn the mastery of iPhone app design from the beginning – we have a special offer that will BLOW you away!

This iPhone app design course not only comes with a complete video tutorial overview of how to design your first iOS app, but also comes equipped with 40MB of pixel-perfect photoshop templates to accelerate you along the way.

Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone at Macworld on January 9, 2007, to thunderous applause. The revolutionary phone — a product that has now made Apple the top smartphone manufacturer in the world — then went on sale June 29, 2007, to long lines of eager customers and fanboys.

Several years later, Jobs announced that the iPhone’s software would be called “iOS.” These two names, iPhone and iOS, have not only become a part of Apple’s core, but also staple, household names worldwide.

Most people don’t know, however, the story of how Steve Jobs took both names from an enterprise/infrastructure company by the name of Cisco. Took? Well, steamrolled, really.

Once you’ve connected to a Wi-Fi network on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad, your device remembers its credentials and, for your convenience, connects automatically next time. However, this isn’t always helpful. Sometimes we connect to hotspots accidentally, and it’s frustrating when your device connects to a network you don’t want it to.

You can prevent this by “forgetting” the networks you’ve previously connected to. Once forgotten, your device will no longer connect automatically, and only when you tell it to. Here’s how to forget a Wi-Fi network.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD / iWORLD 2012 — If you want to create great photos from your iPhone, start by shooting everywhere. Including the dentist’s office or out the window of a friend’s bathroom.

Photographer Jonathan Marks has snapped his evocative pics in both those places, plus waiting at a traffic light and at a Whole Foods parking lot. He shoots and processes everything directly on his iPhone, thanks to a handful of key apps.

A Brazil-made iPad has been in the offing since July 2011. However, plans by Taiwan’s Foxconn to build the tablet in South America were held up by negotiations surrounding taxes that could double the cost of Apple’s tablet. Now comes word the government has exempted the iPad, freeing Foxconn to begin churning out iPads stamped “Made in Brazil.”

Although Apple sells millions of iPhones, 500,000 of the smartphones spell the difference between being No. 1 and runner-up in the race against South Korean rival Samsung. New numbers reveal the Cupertino, Calif. tech giant retook by a nose the crown of top smartphone maker in the world.

Did you know that your iPhone’s serial number says a lot about your device? It isn’t just a random string of digits. It reveals the factory in which your device was built, the year it was manufactured, its unique identifier, and more. Here’s how to decode your iPhone’s serial number.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD / IWORLD 2012 — The Neat Company has long been known for its scanning devices, like NeatReceipts and NeatDesk. Those devices let you take your paper receipts, documents and business cards and scan them into your Mac so that you can organize them in a way that makes sense to you.

But here at Macworld/iWorld 2012, The Neat Company is focusing on their latest venture: conquering the digital realm. The thrust of what they are presenting here is all about the cloud. NeatCloud and NeatMobile, to be specific.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD / iWORLD 2012 — The inaugural edition of the Original iPhone Film Festival (OIFF) gave out awards to small-screen Steven Spielbergs.

OIFF founders Corey Rogers and Matt Dessner were on hand to talk about common iPhone filmmaking problems, like getting release forms and copyright snafus. (If you want to take your iPhone videos from crappy to snappy, check out our exclusive interview with some great tips from Dessner.)

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/IWORLD 2012 — As you walk the exhibit floor here at Moscone West, there are the much larger booths that make up the bulk of what you’ll see. But there are also some of the smaller booths — known as “pods” — that a lot of the mobile apps are housed in. There’s plenty of iOS apps being featured in this area of the hall, and plenty to discover.

One of my favourite apps I’ve found here is called — oddly enough — FavorIt, an app that lets you and your friends share what their favourite apps are with one another.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD / iWorld 2012 — At the media preview last night at Macworld/iWorld, VIPOrbit Software had a ton of news to offer.

First, they unveiled a new version of VIPOrbit for the iPhone. The latest version has new features requested by its users, an improved user interface and an enhanced Dashboard.

Then they debuted VIPOrbit for iPad, bringing signature features from the initial iPhone app to iPad users.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD / iWORLD 2012 — There are no shortage of iPhone cases being showcased here at Macworld/iWorld 2012, but only one grabbed my attention at last night’s media preview. It was a case called Flygrip, and it promises to keep your iPhone in hand so you can do other things without worrying about dropping your valuable device.

Macworld/iWorld marks the launch of FlyGrip, and I was given a unit to test out.

Ever wondered how you take a screenshot on your iOS device? It’s actually a lot simpler than you may think, with no need for third-party software or unauthorized tweaks.

In fact, this is one of the simplest tips we have. But seeing as though yesterday’s simple tip went down so well, we thought another one wouldn’t hurt. Here’s how to take screenshots on an iOS device.

The march just continues on for Apple’s entry into the enterprise. New numbers show 46 percent of large companies now provide Macs to staff with more than half of those companies planning to support the iPhone. As for Android, well, we’ve already heard that story, right?

As a bit of a productivity nerd, it was great to see a couple of apps that revolve around that niche having a presence at the Macworld/iWorld media preview. One of these apps was Pocket Informant, which looks both elegant and compelling. And its available for both the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. For those looking to get a little bit more productive and want a pleasurable-looking experience while doing so, this might just be the app for you.

Pocket Informant fully integrates your calendar, tasks, notes and contacts into one spot, which allows you to focus on everything you’ve got going on in a day. This is a bit of a departure from other productivity-type apps in that they tend to put the emphasis on your tasks and let everything else fade into the background. Pocket Informant keeps everything close at hand and visible so that you don’t miss out on somewhere you’ve got go, someone you need to get in touch with or something you have to do.

You know that moment when your iPhone slips out of your hands and begins its slow tumble to the ground? Time slows down, as it does in the milliseconds before any horrific accident, and you absolutely freeze with a sort of full-body shudder of anticipation at the shattered glass screen you just know will be the end result of its 32 feet per second per second fall towards the concrete.

In a recent episode of Fred Armise and Carrie Brownstein’s Portlandia, they did a skit that documents the internal monologue of such a reverie. The end’s a bit surreal (and a little weak), but as an iPhone owner myself, I can relate. Looks like it’s time for Brownstein to buy a bumper.

Last August, Spotify launched a public API for mobile developers to piggy back off of their system and release their own apps. The hope was the abiogenesis of a series of cool new music apps that pushed the boundaries of how we discover music, with Spotify’s library of 15 million tracks as the lifeblood.

The first app to really come from Spotify’s initiative and impress? SpotON Radio, a Pandora-like service built upon Spotify that allows you to create custom tailored music stations, share them with friends and sync them across the iCloud. Plus, it’s got a really swank visual aesthetic that just sings on iOS devices.

While Apple has been actively seeking to improve the working conditions for employees at the Chinese factories manufacturing its products, a former executive for the Cupertino company believes it could do more. The trouble is, Apple’s infamous secrecy is getting in the way.

“We’re trying really hard to make things better,” said one former Apple executive. “But most people would still be really disturbed if they saw where their iPhone comes from.”

Despite losing its exclusive standing with Apple, AT&T announced selling 7.6 million iPhones, comprising 20 percent of Apple’s 37 million smartphone sales during the fourth quarter of 2011, which ended Dec. 31. Even more impressive: Apple’s handset accounts for 80 percent of all smartphones the carrier sells.

I distinctly recall a bit of maneuvering when Joe Daileda, head of sales and marketing at MEElectronics, contacted us about reviewing some of their earphones. Joe seemed particularly keen on getting a pair of their ceramic CC51Ps in our hands, but I wanted none of it — being the armature junkie I am, I was fixated on their armature-powered A151s ($75). Joe eventually ended up sending us three models (impressions of the unique, modular SP51 coming soon to a review near you).

Joe’s favoritism may have been entirely in my head — I get like that sometimes; but true enough, the CC51Ps turned out to be a stunning revelation. The A151s? Not so much.

We love Jeff Broderick’s work here at Cult of Mac. We’ve told you about some of his web app projects, like QuickWiFi and QuickContact, and his latest creation is called Photogram. As the name implies, you can use Photogram to view Instagram in your web browser. The app is beautiful and optimized for both the desktop and mobile experience.

Sometimes the simplest tips are the most helpful ones, and that’s certainly the case with today’s, which will show you how to enable orientation lock on your iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.

Following Apple’s incredible sales numbers from yesterday’s quarterly earnings report, the iPhone has taken the number one spot in U.S. market share from Google’s Android OS, according to the researchers at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. 37 million iPhones were sold in the fourth quarter of 2011, making Apple the top smartphone manufacturer on the planet.

Based on the last 12 weeks of sales in 9 countries (including the U.S., U.K., and Australia), the iPhone is growing faster than Android. The tides are turning.