While it introduced a stack of great new features, iOS 6 also brought a few bugs to our iOS devices this summer. Users have reported problems with Wi-Fi, iPhone 5 display glitches, and more. But Apple could be preparing to fix those before it starts its holiday celebrations.
According to one report, the Cupertino company is currently testing iOS 6.0.1 for a release within the coming weeks, while iOS 6.1 will arrive after the holidays.
The iPhone’s camera is a little wonder, not least in its actual physical manifestation. The tiny lens is now capped with a crystal cover made from the same scratch-shrugging glass used for high-end watches. And all it takes to clean off the daily gunk is a quick rub on your pants leg.
But that hasn’t stopped the folks at Ace Display (ace name, BTW!) from designing a redundant case to protect and clean that same lens.
Two iPhone users claim Apple has violated the Sherman Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by locking their handsets to the AT&T network without their permission. They’re now suing the Cupertino company in an effort to get their iPhones unlocked, and for monetary damages. They also want a restraining order that will prevent Apple from locking its smartphone to carriers completely.
Winter is coming (in the Northern Hemisphere at least), and with it cold weather, frosty mornings, overcoats and gloves. And not much puts a cramp on your smartphone-toting style more than a pair of gloves or mittens. I should know — I one spent a winter in Berlin and was often forced to use the tip of my nose to launch the maps app on my iPod Touch.
The answer is Touchscreen Gloves.
When Apple unveiled the third-generation iPad earlier this year, it reduced the price of the iPad 2 to just $399 in an effort to provide fans with a more affordable option, and to stave off the competition from cheaper Android slates as much as it could. But with the iPad mini set to make its debut tomorrow, will there still be a need for the iPad 2?
One analyst thinks not.
Noteshelf, the iPad’s best handwritten note-taking app, is now even better. V7.0 adds new pens, customs colors and support for pressure-sensitive styluses. If you already own Noteshelf, you likely already downloaded it with great excitement over the weekend. If not, what are you waiting for?
Apple’s iOS lock screen has remained largely unchanged for the last five years. That’s probably because it serves its purpose pretty well, but sometimes it’s nice to try something different. Thanks to Pinch to Unlock, a new tweak for jailbroken iPhones, you can do just that. Rather than sliding to unlock your device, you just pinch.
Borderlands, Gearbox Software’s awesome first-person shooter series, is set to make its debut on iOS this month. Revealed in a advert within a Borderlands 2 digital strategy guide, the game will be called Borderlands Legends and it’ll allow you to play one of four original Borderlands heroes for the first time on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
Apple’s upcoming iPad mini media event will be held at an unusual location, the California Theatre in San Jose, California. Instead of typical locations like the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco or Apple’s own Town Hall, the company is branching out and presenting in a venue it hasn’t used in 7 years.
As usual, the venue was decorated for Tuesday’s event over the weekend. Here are some pictures of Apple’s swanky signage:
Apple’s Maps app is a bomb. A stinker. A sign of the company’s impending doom at the hands of Tim Cook, the CEO who replaced the irreplaceable Steve Jobs.
Landmarks are in the wrong place. Roads are missing. The 3D Flyover view looks like a collapsed sponge cake. There are no directions for buses, bikes or pedestrians. Entire cities are marked as hospitals, the Golden Gate Bridge is in the wrong place, and even Apple’s own retail stores can’t be found. It’s such an embarrasment, Tim Cook apologized for its suckiness.
But if you live in San Francisco, the Maps app rocks. I’ve been using Maps for weeks and I’ve fallen in love with it. I use it even if I’m *not* using it, just to watch the gorgeous 3D display unfold as I’m driving around.
Apple’s Maps app is by far the best maps sofware around. Tim Cook is a wussy. You’d love Maps too — if you lived in a geography where it works.
Shared Photo Streams came along with iOS 6, allowing us all to create our own little photo sharing social networks using nothing more than an iCloud account and our iOS devices. Creating and sharing Photo Streams is dead-simple, but managing some of the more non-intuitive features, like comments and subscribers, can be a bit tricky for the uninitiated.
We took a look at these new features and put together a guide on using Shared Photo Streams to help you get the most out of your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch when creating and sharing your photos with your friends and family.
A wonderful new news app from Reuters kicks off this week’s must-have apps list, providing you with an “unprecedented photography experience” that allows you to immerse yourself in the biggest news stories from around the world. Also included in the roundup is a terrific app for making mobile websites from your iPhone, a new weather app, and more.
Many of the writers here at Cult of Mac use Flipboard to read news, and we know many of you do too. That’s why we’re proud to unveil our new and improved Flipboard page!
We’ve been working closely with Flipboard for the past several months on a special design that fits our style here at Cult of Mac. Our Flipboard page has been tweaked and optimized to mesh with our site layout, and now Flipboard is an even better way to read Cult of Mac on the iPhone and iPad.
The new developer seed for OS X Server v2.2, Seed 2, is out. In an email sent to developer accounts, Apple announced the new download, and included a link to the seed download source, a set of instructions on how to instal and/or upgrade from various previous versions of OS X Server, and a PDF with the new changes detailed.
Kicking off this week’s must-have iOS app is the 1997 violent driving sensation that is Carmageddon. It finally makes its debut on iOS, and it’s an exact port of the original. It’s accompanied by Sonic Jump, Sega’s latest release; Mikey Shorts Halloween, and True Skate.
If you’ve played any of the MapleStory games on the web or iOS, you know Nexon. They’re an established developer of free-to-play online games for iOS, the web, and PC. Today the company announced the launch of another free-to-play iOS game, Space Tanks, for the iPad and iPhone. It’s Nexon’s 27th mobile title this year. Wow.
The MacHeist Bundle is a great deal of software for a great price, and it benefits great charities. This much you know, because we already told you.
Today, however, we learned that another app has been added to the run down, the $50 cooking app, MacGourmet, that developer Mariner Software calls the “iTunes for recipes.”
We told you earlier this week that Apple is gearing up to open a new retail store in the famous Wangfujing shopping district. Not only will the new store be the largest of the 5 other Apple stores in China, but it will also be the largest Apple Store in all of Asia. 300 local employees will work at the flagship Wangfujing store and serve customers with two 360-degree Genius Bars and plenty of floor space.
Apple’s Wangfujing store opens at 9 A.M local time Saturday, October 20th. Lots of people have already gathered in the freezing Beijing weather for the grand opening.
We’re huge fans of TwelveSouth’s BookBook cases here at Cult of Mac. Like everyone else, we’ve been anticipating a BookBook for the iPhone 5. Today we got word that TwelveSouth has an updated BookBook for Apple’s newest iPhone in the pipeline, and the case will be available next month!
BookBook is unique because it doubles as wallet, making it easy to carry your cards and ID with your iPhone. Not only will BookBook for iPhone 5 come in two colors, but TwelveSouth has redesigned the case to include… drum roll please… a hole for the rear-facing camera!
I despise iOS 6 Maps. Despite writing some initially favorable early impressions that now seem like they were written by a slathering moron demon who temporarily possessed my soul, ever since iOS 6 has been released, I have been frustrated by a fail rate on iOS 6 Maps that hovers somewhere around 70%. Not only can I most of the time not get iOS 6 Maps to give me a correct answer to a search query, I usually can’t get it to give me the same wrong answer twice in a row.
I realize a lot of people think iOS 6 Maps is just fine. Some of these are people I respect. I have a hard time reconciling their views on the matter with my reality. I have my suspicions that people who think iOS 6 Maps is just fine commute everywhere in their cars, and have a set pattern of destinations that rarely change: point A to point B to point C. I bike everywhere, I’m constantly going to new addresses, and for me, iOS 6 is just an utter disaster.
I yearn for the return of Google Maps to iOS 6, but I find their web app to be wanting, and most of the maps competition to be slow, ugly and just as bad as iOS 6 Maps when it comes to walking and biking instructions. Up until now, Mapquest (!) was the best app I found for getting me where I’m going.
That’s all changed, now that I’ve discovered Maps+. It’s based off of Google Maps, so it’s accurate. It uses the same tileset as iOS 5 Maps, so it’s pretty and familiar. It’s super fast, and it’s free.
One of the biggest annoyances of using Instagram is when I have a friend who also uses Twitter and I want to mention them in a photo that I’m about to post to Twitter, except their Instagram and Twitter usernames are completely different.
It’s not a huge inconvenience, but it’d just be easier if everything was the same. Instagram says they just solved that problem and now Instagram names will magically be translated to their proper Twitter handle when posted on Twitter.
When the folks at Griffin were choosing a mythical creature for which to name their company1, they might have gone with Janus instead, to better reflect the schizophrenic nature of its offering: serious computer accessories vs. frivolous toys.
That’s not to say that the toys are bad. On the contrary, Griffin’s iOS-controlled choppers look amazing. And now they’re joined by these remote-controlled monster trucks.
Most people will download almost any iOS game, no matter how silly it looks, as long as it’s free. They just won’t stick around for more than one day. A new study on user engagement in free-to-play social games discovered that 85% of new players in the U.S. never go back to the game after the first day.
There are reasons why you should always understand how technology works before taking scandalous pictures of yourself and sending them to your lover. You don’t know where those pictures are going to end up. You might snap a naughty picture with your iPhone that then gets sent to your iCloud Photostream that is then synced with your school’s iPad. Then your students might be playing around on that school iPad, find the pic of you lookin’ saucy, and then all hell breaks loose.
That’s exactly what happened to one middle school teacher. The weird twist to the story is that the teacher didn’t get fired or suspended for having nearly pornographic photos of herself on a school device. The students that found it go suspended instead.
Reuters’ new iPad app is called The Wider Image, and it’s dedicated to showing off the news agency’s photographs. It’s free, and if you want to spend the next few hours lost in amazing photojournalism from around the world, whilst learning a bit about that same world, then go download it now.