News - page 1552

T-Mobile finally has the iPhone 5. It’s great, and cheap, but unfortunately its data speeds are slower than an iPhone 5 on AT&T. Not satisfied with their slower iPhone 5s, Joseph Brown and Sky Zangas did some digging around in carrier update files and figured out a way to boost data speeds on the T-Mobile iPhone 5.

To get faster data speeds on T-Mobile’s network with the iPhone 5 all you have to do is install a custom carrier update. That sounds like a tough task, but it’s actually pretty easy, and thanks to the guys at TmoNews, here’s a quick guide on how to do it:

Earlier this week we reported that ABC plans to be the first major network in the U.S. to offer live TV programming on your iPad. Well the rebranded ‘Watch ABC’ app just hit the App Store, which means if you live in certain areas you could get free live TV on your iPad now.

Watch ABC’s live video feature currently only works in Philadelphia and New York City, but more cities should be added throughout the year. To get the live streaming service running after July 1st you’ll have to confirm that you have an active cable subscription with either Comcast, Cablevision, Cox, AT&T U-Verse, Charter and Midcontinent.

Here are the release notes:

Apple’s got to keep the ever-mounting demands on its Siri servers down somehow, so here’s a new one. If you ask her something too long, Siri will respond with trite quotes upon the power of brevity, such as this one by William Strunk of Strunk & White fame:

A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.

Of course, it’s not up to a voice-recognition program to dictate what is an unnnecessary word or sentence, any more than it is up to a pencil which line in a drawing is “unnecessary”, or an engine schematic which part isn’t needed.

But here’s something ironic! Take that exact quote above by Strunk and modify it into a question. “Siri, should a sentence contain any unnecessary words, or a paragraph any unnecessary sentences, for the same reasons that a drawing should not have any unnecessary lines or a machine any unnecessary parts?” And guess what! Siri will accuse Strunk of being long-winded. Take that Elements of Style!

Source: iLounge

Square is quickly becoming one of the most convenient and coolest ways for small businesses to process transactions. If you’ve ever visited a shop that uses Square you’ve probably seen a number of improvised iPad cash registers, but Square just debuted its own iPad register called Square Stand.

The Square Stand will go on sale starting June 8th for $299, but you can already pre-order it on Square’s website. The new hardware is to be utilized in conjunction with the Square Register app that is already used by thousands of businesses across the country.

Philips Hue lightbulbs have quickly become one of our favorite iPhone accessories for the home. Not only can change your lighting to fit any mood, you can also create light shows with your music, and now Philips is adding some new features to the bulbs to make them even more powerful.

Philips released a new update for its Philips Hue app for iOS today that adds a number of features including geo-fencing, timers, alarms, and IFTTT support.

Here’s a video of some of the new features:

Realmac Software, the creators of Clear, today announced Analog Camera for iPhone, a brand new camera app that’s coming to the App Store soon. Just like Realmac’s Analog app for Mac, the iPhone version will offer “stunning filters” and a fluid user interface that’s “incredibly easy to use.”

Facebook for iOS has received another new update today, which adds a new “photo viewer button” which allows you to save and share images, and make them your profile picture. It also makes improvements to places editing, and more.

By now, you’ve probably see Commander Chris Hadfield’s tear-jerking farewell to the International Space Station: a cover of David Bowie’s classic space song, Space Oddity, filmed and performed by Hadfield himself in zero-g. In case you haven’t, we’ve embedded it above: it’s hard not to be proud of humanity after watching it.

But do you know how Hadfield actually recorded it? With his iPad, of course.

Jefferies & Co.’s Peter Misek is our favorite know-nothing analyst, having been proven hysterically, horribly wrong on about every major Apple prediction he’s ever made. He’s probably safe on this prediction, though: even Misek doesn’t think Apple’s going to surprise us with a new iPhone in June. But he’s still kind of an idiot, since it directly contradicts his own prophecies back in December.

Twitterrific, one of my favorite Twitter clients on iOS, got a new update this week that adds Readability integration for bookmarking tweets you want to catch up with later, as well as support for image hosting service Droplr. The update also comes with a ton of bug fixes and improvements.

What would a budget or mid-range iPhone mini look like with a radical new vision of iOS 7 installed on it, fronted by that skeuomorph-hating design perfectionist, Jony Ive?

Martin Hajek — one of the most talented Apple concept designers around — wanted to know, so he created a new budget iPhone concept that features bighter colors, a smaller screen, and a plastic backshell inspired by the iPad mini, then “installed” Dámaso Benítez’ “really nice concept” of how Jony Ive might flatten iOS 7.

On my part, I seriously doubt iOS 7 will look anything like this: Ive’s sense of design sophistication is not going to have him making app icons that look as if they would be right at home in a preschoolers sticker book. But it’s a nice concept none the less.

Some more images after the break to wet your whistle.

The iPhone 5S could come with a sapphire crystal capacitive touch home button that incorporates a new fingerprint sensor, according to supply chain sources in Taiwan.

Apple is expected to do away with the traditional physical home button, which has long been one of the most unreliable components on iOS devices. It’s thought that using sapphire crystal, which has a hardness second only to diamond, will prevent the button from getting scratched and ruining the fingerprint sensor.

Crowd-sourced funding is hot these days, with outfits like Kickstarter and Indiegogo allowing anyone with a hot business idea to pitch their service, product, or–in this case–app to those bleeding edge enough to want to support an idea before it’s even built.

MiWallet has that hot idea, and now they want you to help fund it. Think of the convenience of the Apple Store app checkout via iTunes connected with the security of Google Wallet, and you’ve got the general idea.

Heroes and Castles, Foursaken Media’s mix of a third-person shooter with the castle defense genre, is a heck of a lot of fun to play, and today the iOS game has gotten a big old update, with a ton of great stuff to extend the fun, possibly enticing new players to try it out as well.

There are three new characters to play and level up: a stealthy (and free) Assassin, a natural-magic Druid, and a brawny Barbarian character. You’ll be able to put each through their paces in a brand new single player campaign, available as an unlock upon completion of the original campaign, with an entirely new environment and a ton of new enemies to battle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=XEh-Q_7VuGk#!

Microscope-like macro lenses are super neat — and not just because they let you see the little hairs on a ladybug’s leg. No, macro lenses can show you a whole new world. Or macro lenses can spark (or rekindle) a love affair with photography. Heck, at the very least, they’re good for hours of amusement.

There’s no shortage of macro lenses for the iPhone: There’s the high-end Olloclip, which also comes with a fisheye and a wide-angle lens; then there’s also this rubber-band macro from Photojojo, and these magnetic specimens.

Add to the list the new Carson ML-515 LensMag, a pair of iPhone macro lenses that clip magnetically onto the iPhone 5 — pretty standard fare. Only there is something different.

So far, it’s been an interesting few weeks for digital publishing. Late last month saw the introduction of Flowboard, a digital publishing platform centered around an iPad app.

Now Disney has come out with their (highly simplified) take. Disney Story is a free iPhone app that lets you easily create a storyboard from photos on your iPhone, with accompanying text, which you can then share via email or on Facebook.

If you hate remembering and entering passwords, then you’re probably intimately familiar with 1Password. If you’re not, then you really should give the app a try because it just got a meaty update in the App Store.

1Password 4.2 was just released on the Apple Store today and it comes with a ton of new features, including the ability to share items through Messages, search for vault items by URL, lots of bug fixes, and more. The app will set you back $17.99 but the peace of mind it will bring you is well worth it.

Here are the release notes:

If you’re a Daft Punk fan who can’t wait to hear the random access beats of their latest album, Random Access Memories, it’s now streamingfree and live on iTunes here on a computer or iPad. You can also preorder the entire album for $11.99.

I’ve got to say, between this and David Bowie’s latest album, I’m liking this streaming trend Apple’s started.

Source: iTunes

iPhone theft has become a huge issue in big city like New York City. In fact, Mayor Bloomberg says the iPhone was responsible for New York City’s first increase in crime in 20 years.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is supposedly pretty tired of his constituents getting their iPhones stolen from them, so he’s written a public letter to Tim Cook asking why Apple isn’t doing more to stop iPhone theft.

T-Mobile had that slamming deal on the iPhone 5 to kick off its rebranding as “The Uncarrier” but those fun and happy days are all gone.

The Uncarrier has decided to bump up the down payment price of the iPhone 5 from $99 to $149 without ever really telling anyone that the $99 price was just a promotion.

Every major television network in the U.S. has its own iOS app that lets users watch episodes of their favorite TV shows, but ABC is revolutionizing its iOS app this week by offering live TV streaming.

ABC’s iOS app will be updated later this week to include a button called “live,” which will allow users to press it at anytime to view a live-stream of ABC’s local stations in the area.

Hon Hai Precision Industry, better known as Foxconn, has long been Apple’s biggest manufacturing partner, with around 60-70% of its revenue coming from the Cupertino company. But local rival Pegatron is hoping to change that.

By offering Apple more competitive prices and sacrificing its profit margins, Pegatron appears to be securing iPhone and iPad assembly orders that would have normally gone straight to Foxconn.

Killing iOS apps — not just closing them, but killing them completely — is nowhere near as simple as it should be.

First you have to double-tap the home button to open the multitasking tray, then you have to tap and hold the app’s icon, and then you have to close it by tapping the tiny circle. That’s a pain if you have several apps you wish to kill at once.

But with a new tweak for jailbroken iOS devices called Slide2Kill, you can completely kill iOS apps with just a swipe.

Todd McLellan is an artist whose forte is taking things apart and arranging them neatly, peeling back the layers of an everday object and allowing you to see the shocking mechanical complexity within. He’s like one part Andy Warhol, one part .

This is McLellan’s dissection of a Macintosh Classic, every single piece separated from one another and neatly laid out for your examination. It’s part of his Things Come Apart series, in which “fifty design classics—arranged first by size and then by intricacy—are beautifully displayed, piece by piece, exploding in midair and dissected in real-time, frame-by-frame video stills.” You can see more of McLellan’s work here.

In addition, McLellan has a book coming out at the end of the month called Things Come Apart: A Teardown Manual for Modern Living. The cover art for the book is actually the striking image above. If you want it, you can preorder it online from Amazon.

Source: Todd McLellan

Steve & Steve, an online graphic novel being undertaken by Patrick Sean Farley, has got to be the trippiest thing you’ll ever read about the friendship between Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, in their early HP/Atari days.

How trippy? Well, in the graphic novel, Steve & Steve drop acid in a strange geodesic dome in the middle of the woods, where they begin to debate the origins of technology, Steve Jobs called Arthur C. Clarke a degenerate, Wozniak eludes to a strange criminal past and fantasizes about kissing a girl in his chess club. Then, a Russian nuclear weapon is fired straight at Silicon Valley… or is it?

And that’s just the prologue. It’s beautifully illustrated and written, with some incredible typography. We’ve included a few panels after the jump, but check out the official Steve & Steve site for more. This is already shaping up to be the best Steve Jobs comic we’ve ever seen.