News - page 1428

Ever wonder what’s happening during Cult of Mac’s live blogs of Apple keynote events? Here you go, courtesy of our invisible documentary videographers at Vooza.

Want to program your own jailbreak tweak, but don’t have the programming ability? No problem. The sequel to a popular jailbreak tweak called Flex 2 has hit the BigBoss repo, giving iOS 7 jailbreakers the option to roll-the-own tweaks.

If you’re a user of the official Twitter app for iOS, good news. The app has been updated to version 6.1, and it introduces new options and features, including an easier reply mechanism that allows you to reply with (and edit) photos.

In the latest release of the iOS 7.1 beta, Apple sadly closed the hole that allowed the Team Evasi0n jailbreak to work, closing the door on jailbreaking until the next exploit comes along.

Given that, you might expect that today’s iOS 7.0.5 release would also close the Evasi0n exploit… but no! It’s actually still safe for jailbreakers. You just need to do a (very little) bit of hacking to make it work.

Everyone knows Apple didn’t come up with the name iPhone. Cisco owned the trademark on what they called I-phone long before Steve Jobs unveiled the smartphone that would change the world back in 2007. But did you know that Apple didn’t come up with the name iPad? In fact, Intel was hawking a device they called the I-pad — or “information pad” — way back in 1994.

Fish can swim into some pretty deep dark places, but now they can’t hide from anglers thanks to FishHunter, a floating sonar pod that syncs to your iPhone to tell you where all the big fish are hanging out.

Rather than attaching a sonar sensor to your boat, FishHunter’s sensor can float in the current and sketch the bottom of bodies of water while you’re sitting safely on dry land. Using Bluetooth LE, it transmits data to your iPhone or Android up to 80 ft away, signaling anything it thinks might be a fish.

Its $229.99 price tag is pretty cheap compared to other fish finders, and it’s equipped with extra features like tracking your best fishing spots via GPS and a photo sharing feature so you can let your friends know who’s the best fisherman.

Here’s the product trailer:

Automatic, the smart driving assistant I described as making my old car future-proof, has been updated with iBeacon functionality. The immediate benefit is that the connection between the Automatic hardware and iPhone app will be improved. But putting iBeacons on the road holds some exciting long term possibilities as well.

Spurred on by the holiday season, Apple sold a record 26 million iPads last quarter, which according to IDC’s latest numbers, was enough to boost the company’s tablet market share up to 33.8% to finish off the year, up from 29.7% the previous quarter.

Wall Street was less than impressed with Apple’s sales numbers though, and according to IDC there’s cause to be concerned as signs point to a tablet market that is growing dramatically slower year-over-year.

Apple has released iOS 7.0.5 as a minor update for all devices capable of running iOS 7.

Bug fixes for network provisioning are included for iPhone 5c and 5s models sold in China. Apple recently struck a deal with China Mobile to sell the iPhone on its network, which has the largest subscriber base in the world.

Among the 31 published patents newly granted to Apple this week was a camera-related patent designed to provide iOS devices with swappable, add-on camera lenses to provide optical functions including autofocus, lens zoom, and anti-shake.

Text-to-speech is great. But have you ever wished that it could be a little more creepy? As in, child’s-voice-coming-out-of-your-computer creepy? Well, you’re in luck. Thanks to a service designed to help kids to communicate, you too can make your iPad talk in the voice of a little girl or boy. Shiver.

Super-popular iOS strategy game Clash of Clans has received a major update — most notably adding a slew of new Hero abilities.

Version 5.172 also features numerous gameplay enhancements involving flyers, freezers, boosts, clan co-leaders and gem overgrowth. On top of that, there are various interface improvements, balance tweaks, performance improvements, and the usual unspecified bug fixes.

President Barack Obama may not be able to use an iPhone for security reasons, but that doesn’t mean he can’t praise the work Apple is doing.

In his State of the Union address to the American people Tuesday, Obama credited a number of technology companies — Apple included — for helping with his ConnectED program, which aims to improve Internet access at schools across the U.S.

The Evasi0n7 jailbreak opened iOS 7 up for all kinds of tweaks ,ranging from lock screen launchers to mods that let you use Touch ID in place of your Home button.

Eclipse is almost certainly the most instantly noticeable tweak so far, however — taking the bright colors that are standard with the iOS UI and replacing them with a darker palette of colors and shades to give your iPhone a suitably moody “night mode”.

Felix’s FlipStand is like a better version of Apple’s Smart Cover. It covers the screen and leaves the rear case mostly naked, but instead of using a flimsy folding action to give limited viewing angles when used as a stand, the FlipStand is almost infinitely adjustable between zero and ninety degrees, and holds the iPad steady like a kickstand.

Most iPad drawing apps take a rather old-fashioned approach. They try to mimic paper and pencil, or paint and canvas, and of course they never get it quite right, even with pressure-sensitive styluses and fancy paint engines. Archipad takes a different approach: it recognizes that you’re drawing on a computer screen and embraces that fact, letting you draw to scale, in 3-D and with perfect lines, all my using a finger or stylus.

Regardless of whether you think Apple’s falling share prices are justified or the result of bozos who don’t understand how Apple works, one person is seemingly happy with the immediate response to Apple’s recent financial quarter: Carl Icahn.

If you want an SLR-style mirrorless camera, the Olympus OM-D E-M5 is the camera to beat. But if you don’t want to spend $1,000 on the Micro Four Thirds body, then you can now opt for the OM-D E-M10, a $700 body which uses lots of it’s big brother’s parts.

Apple’s new retail chief (and possible future CEO) Angela Ahrendts has been announced as the recipient of a DBE in the coming weeks — making the American businesswoman a Dame of the British Empire.

While the award was confirmed in October, the information was released quietly and not promoted by either Ahrendts or the British Government.

What if you could print your iPhone photos and have them sent to your door, without paying a penny? Sound impossible, right? But that’s exactly what new Kickstarter-hopeful startup Flag is planning to do. The catch? An ad, printed on the back of each picture.

Evernote’s elephant logo is curiously appropriate. Not because it never forgets your notes, but because the service is slow, lumbering and hard to control. Now, thanks to a complete redesign of the backend servers, one aspect has improved. Sync is now, according to Evernote CEO Phil Libin, four times faster.

Ever wished there was a way to make Pandora (or iTunes Radio) play little snippets of news, tailored to your tastes, just like it does with music? Free app Swell Radio does just that, and does it perfectly.

Every single day, iPhone and iPad owners ask Siri millions of questions. Each and every one of those questions must be analyzed by Apple using computer-intensive natural language processing, translating it into a form that a computer can understand.

That takes a lot of computer horsepower. But how much?

Over the last couple of years, Google has been trying to turn its mobile Chrome browser into a sort of meta-operating system in its own right, by allowing Macs and PCs to run dedicated cross-compatible ‘apps’ right within Chrome. It’s actually a cool idea, but because of Apple’s closed iOS ecosystem, it’s been functionality that iPhone and iPad owners can’t take advantage of. But no longer. Google has just brought Chrome apps to iOS.

For years, Apple has been saying its set-top box, the Apple TV, was a mere “hobby,” and Apple.com reflected that distinction, listing the Apple TV as an accessory instead of a product worthy of its own Apple Store section.

Well, no longer. Today, Apple upgraded the Apple TV to the status of full product line on Apple.com alongside the Mac, iPod, iPhone and iPad. There’s now a dedicated Apple TV section, as well as a section for Apple TV accessories, Community Q&A and more.

It’s hard to think this timing is a coincidence, given the fact that a new Apple TV update with a focus on gaming is expected soon. Apple’s about to double down on the living room, methinks, and this is just the first sign.