iPhone - page 354

There was a certain irony that was almost comical last week when RIM CEO Thorsten Heins announced to 2000 BlackBerry developers in Europe that the company was “ready to compete” because that statement came during a week when the BlackBerry maker lost to high profile enterprise clients – both Halliburton and NOAA will be dropping the BlackBerry support and replacing existing handsets with iPhones.

The statement became even more ironic, though with a tragic rather than comic tone, over the weekend as it became widely known that one major travel company that it was canceling all plans future updates on the BlackBerry platform as well as terminating technical/user support for BlackBerry users.

Spotify has issued an update to its hugely popular iPhone app that introduces the ability to stream music at an “extreme” 320kbps — the same quality Spotify Premium members enjoy from the Spotify applications for Mac and Windows.

The 54th Annual GRAMMY Awards will be held tonight at 8:00 PM at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. You can stream the event live, including the pre-show this afternoon, for free on your mobile devices.

Thanks to the free GRAMMY Live app in the App Store, you can stream today’s festivities to your iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.

Still struggling to think of things to do this Valentine’s Day? Maybe you haven’t even got a date yet. But don’t worry, our app guide is here to help. We’ve compiled a list of great iOS apps that will make you the perfect valentine on February 14. They’ll help you find a date, book a table for dinner, buy movie tickets, and even send flowers. All you’ll need is your iPhone.

Samsung is going all-out to promote the Galaxy Note as the company’s new iPhone killer.

The now-famous Superbowl ad imagines a scenario in which iPhone fans waiting in line outside Apple stores for the next phone see a guy using a Galaxy Note with a pen. They’re stunned as they realize that he can draw on maps and pictures using the phone’s stylus. So overwhelmed with the revelation that one might use a pen with a phone, than they bust out of the line and erupt in a display of unbridled enthusiasm all over the city.

Instagram has been updated to version 2.1 in the App Store. The update brings several improvements, including a revamped interface. More photo editing features have been added, like the “Lux” editing tool and the new “Sierra” filter.

According to a new report, iOS web traffic has surpassed Mac OS X for the first time in history. iOS market share has grown nearly 50% over the last 6 months, and Apple’s mobile products are now driving more web traffic while the Mac’s traffic share has declined.

One of the best things about Apple’s iPod nano is its radio app that allows you to listen to live radio anytime, anywhere. Unfortunately, we don’t get that feature with the iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad… unless we use third-party apps.

TuneIn Radio allows you to listen live to over 50,000 stations around the world, pause and rewind your favorite shows, share stations and songs on social networks, and a whole lot more. Here’s how to get started.

A new Apple patent published this week by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office confirms that the company has been working on introducing 3D to our iOS devices. However, it may not be the glasses-free 3D technology we’ve already seen from devices like the Nintendo 3DS and the HTC EVO 3D.

Instead, Apple’s invention uses your device’s front-facing camera to track the position of your eyes and the location of light.

A really nifty jailbreak widget for iOS 5’s Notification Center is now available in Cydia. WeeTrackData lets you quickly check your iPhone’s data usage from Notification Center, and you can set a monthly limit to make sure you don’t exceed your allowance.

While most Notification Center widgets seem to be rather trivial functionality-wise, WeeTrackData is one of the first jailbreak widgets with some real practicality.

Earlier this week, it was revealed that energy giant Haliburton is was going to begin a transition that will replace all corporate BlackBerry devices with iPhones.

RIM got more bad news today in the form of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announcing that the federal agency will also be dropping the BlackBerry platform in favor of the iPhone.

We’ve already shown you jailbreak tweaks like AssistantExtensions that let you tweet using your voice and Siri, and now there’s a way to easily read your Twitter timeline with Apple’s digital assistant. Using a simple keyword, you can have Siri show your recent tweets from within its linen window.

There’s no doubt that iCloud offers some great value to Mac and iOS users. It even has some potential as a business tool. Unfortunately, like many other personal cloud services, iCloud presents some major securtiy concerns when it comes into the workplace – either on a user’s iOS device or on a business Mac or PC. Those concerns stem from the ability to sync business data to outside devices and computers as well as its capacity to archive some of that data on Apple’s iCloud servers.

Unlike most personal cloud products, which can be difficult to effectively disable in corporate or business settings, iCloud use can be restricted or blocked. That leaves IT departments with the question of whether or not iCloud access should be managed or disabled. It’s a tricky question, particularly in BYOD settings where the device belongs to a user and not the company. It’s made even trickier because the choices involved in managing iCloud are rather blunt in approach and don’t offer much in the way of fine tuning to specific needs.

Isn’t it frustrating when you’re playing a game on your iPad and your hands keep spoiling the view? That’s the problem with virtual controls on touchscreen devices, but there is a way around this.

Joypad allows you to control a selection of iPad games using your iPhone, so you can enjoy your favorite titles without your hands blocking the view. It features a selection of control pad layouts that are individually tailored to certain games, and you can customize things like the touch radius for each button.

Here’s how to get started with Joypad.

Today BYOD and the consumerization of IT aren’t just buzzwords on the horizon, they’re fact of business life and have begun transforming the workplace for millions of professionals. Many solutions exist to deal with managing user-owned mobile devices and integrating them to varying degrees with corporate resources and shared data – something that the explosion of cloud products is helping to drive. Many enterprise cloud solutions (public and private) exist to meet these demands while ensuring data management and security.

Unfortauntely, cloud solutions aren’t limited to the workplace and consumer cloud products including Apple’s iCloud, Dropbox, Box.net, Google Docs and many others have become staple parts of our daily lives. That’s great news for all of as consumers. It gives us access to our files and data anywhere at anytime on almost any device. But consumer cloud technologies pose a big headache for IT professionals who are responsible with keeping business and workplace data both readily available and appropriately secured.

Your brand new car starts losing value the second you drive it off the dealer’s lot – that an old (and very true) addage. Like a new, a new piece of technology begins to lose value or depreciate as soon as you leave the store. With cars and with major tech purchases like a new iMac, this isn’t an immediate source of pain or dismay since you’ll be using them for at least a few years.

When it comes to smartphones and other mobile devices like our iPhones and iPads, depreceiation and loss of dollar value is equally true. The big difference is that most of us don’t hold to them for nearly as long.

If you’re in the habit of passing your iPhone or other mobile device onto friends or family members, that may not matter too much. But what if you’re looking to recoup some your investment?

Whether Samsung’s blatant Apple bashing adverts are actually convincing customers to buy its products is unclear, but they are at least inspiring other companies to mock Apple’s gadgets in their own ads.

Amazion is the latest, with a new Kindle ad that takes aim at the iPad for its poor reading conditions in direct sunlight, and its heavy price tag.

Apple’s concept of the App Store works well for consumers. Search for whatever apps you want or need and buy or download them with one-click shopping in iTunes of the App Store app on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. That system starts to break down when it comes to iOS devices in the workplace, particularly for companies that create internal apps that need to be rolled out to a large number of users. It can become even more complicated when dealing with employee-owned devices because IT may never see the iPhone or iPads that are being used and therefore need a specific set of apps.

The best option for addressing this need is the concept of an enterprise app store – an app that users can install from a central location on their corporate network that will allow them to peruse a selection of apps developed by their company’s IT department as well as business apps from Apple’s App Store.

We’ve all been wondering when Apple will release the next update for iOS 5, with many speculating we won’t see 5.1 until the next-generation iPad is unveiled. According to a new discovery in the iPhone’s carrier operator profiles, Apple could be set to drop iOS 5.1 on Friday, March 9th.

Apple’s decision to shun Flash Player for its iOS devices has been well documented over the years. But with the iPhone nearly five years old now, it’s no surprise third-party developers are offering up their own solutions for accessing Flash on our iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads.

One of those developers is Skyfire Labs, which is behind Skyfire for iOS — a web browser that allows you to watch Flash videos without unauthorized jailbreak tweaks. Here’s how to get started with Skyfire.

Tapbots released Tweetbot 2.0 for iPhone in the App Store today. The update brings
 several significant improvements, including one-tap links, image preview thumbnails, 
faster performance, and a UI facelift.

Tweetbot was already one of the best third-party Twitter clients in the App Store, and it 
just got even better with version 2.0.

It seems as if everyone and their uncle are building iPhone apps these days. As a result, the competition is getting fiercer and fiercer by the day, and it’s becoming tougher to stand out amongst the crowd.

That said, there are a ton of apps that just don’t “cut the mustard” and the user experience suffers because of that lack of care and quality. David Sparks, the man behind the popular MacSparky blog, said the following about what he calls “speculative developers”:

If you want to develop apps, take your time and make something awesome. Make it fast. Make it beautiful. Make something you’re proud of. Don’t make 60 crappy apps: Make one really good one.

I couldn’t agree more, but when you’re faced with the haze of substandard apps that claim to be able to deliver the goods, how can a developer get their app noticed — and adopted — over the long-term?

The latest Cult of Mac Deal may have the solution to that problem.

We told you yesterday that Path was secretly uploading your iPhone’s entire address book to its servers. Users of the inclusive social network voiced concern, and many decided to remove the app entirely until Path addresses the issue in an upcoming update.

It’s common practice for third-party apps to access and even store your contacts elsewhere. The problem with Path is that there was no indication that this activity was taking place. Path’s CEO stated that the app would make the activity opt-in when the next update is pushed out.

Thanks to a brand new jailbreak tweak, you’ll never have to worry about an app silently stealing your personal contacts data again.

It’s pretty much impossible to argue that Apple didn’t revolutionize and reshape the mobile intdustry in the U.S. and around the world. The iPhone changed the concept of what a smartphone could be in 2007. The App Store reimagined smartphone apps and how they could be sold in 2008. And the iPad revolutionized the face of tablet computing in 2010. Those are pretty significant accomplishments technically and culturally.

Now, we also know how Apple reshaped and grew mobile industry financially… and how all of that growth is pocketed in the process.

There’s something magical about the days of the original Macintosh and the first iPod. We were on the cusp of a new age in personal computing, and Apple was solidifying itself as a staple brand in the consumer technology market.

Some retro iPhone cases from a company called Schreer Delights replicate the original Macintosh, iMac and iPod with charming detail.