The Belkin Grip Sheer, provided by the fine folks at MobileFun, is an iPhone 5 case manufactured from thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) that promises to be “super durable, yet thin enough to slip easily into your pocket.”

Priced at just $21 (£16), the Grip Sheer comes in a range of fancy colors, and boasts a high-gloss transparent finish that’s designed to look good and feel great. It also provides you with access to all your buttons and ports, and leaves a nice big cutout for your iPhone 5’s camera and flash.

So, is the Grip Sheer a case you should be picking up with your new iPhone 5?

Ready for take off? Maybe fly a little radio controlled helicopter around the office? Buzz over marketing. Hover by the coffee area. Take a break in the parking lot or a park. Yep, these little RC copters are very cool.

Last Christmas we had these in an Apple retailer I was working at (different brand and packaging, but pretty much identical copters) and with a little practice, these are really fun to fly around. In fact so fun that I’ve thought about picking up one for myelf just to mess around with. Well maybe here’s my chance—Fly High With The Robocopter GST Special Edition: Have Fun Flying a Powerful Toy Helicopter Around Your Office

Samsung is hell bent on telling iPhone users that they are all a bunch of hipster sheep that missed the cool wave, by showing them that Samsung Galaxy S3 users are a bunch of hipster sheep that switched their loyalties from Apple to Samsung.

It’s probably not going to work, but they just made two more commercials to try to convert us. What do you think of Samsung’s marketing strategy? Will it ever work or influence you? Let us know in the comments.

The iPhone 5 is a cutting-edge device with a lot of impressive new technology, from Apple’s incredibly fast new A6 chip to impressive new in-cell touch display technology and a brand new Lightning dock connector. It’s a certainty that Apple will use some of this technology in the fourth-generation iPad, which is likely due in March of next year. Here’s what the iPhone 5 tells us about what the iPad 4 will be.

Last night Dropbox announced the release of their new beta, Dropbox 1.5 for Mac. The update will bring a few new features and UI changes to the popular cloud storage service. Users of the desktop client will discover a redesigned menu system  that combines all the functionality of the older tray menu with a new view of Dropbox’s event stream that allows you to see your latest changes.

The iPhone 5’s new camera is supposed to be incredibly amazing with improved low-light performance and a fancy crystal sapphire lens that is less prone to scratching, but for many users though, the new camera is having a weird issue where a purple halo or flare splashes across a photo when a bright light source is just outside the frame, and there’s no way to get rid of it.

Lens flair is a common occurrence with all camera lenses, but it’s generally not purple and this issue never happened with the iPhone 4 or iPhone 4s which is why many iPhone 5 users have been upset by the purple halo discovery.

Steve Wozniak was lucky enough to get his hands on the iPhone 5 long before the vast majority of us; not because he co-founded Apple, but because he was in Australia where Apple retail stores open a good 14 hours earlier than those on the East Coast of the United States.

Woz has been in Australia a lot recent, and he’s just revealed that he is planning to wave goodbye to his California home and move there. He has already applied for an Australian citizenship, and proclaimed he’s going to “live and die as an Australian.”

You can never have too many wallpapers to choose from for your new iPhone 5. Even though there are a cacophony of options out there, we always enjoy a nice currated collection of wallpapers so we don’t have to spend hours trying to find the best thing out there.

Here are 12 more amazing wallpapers for you iPhone 5. A few of them are geometric iPad wallpapers that we featured earlier this year, but they’ve since been converted to iPhone 5 wallpapers. Check them out, download them, and make your iPhone 5 look fabulous.

Given the recent tragedies that have gripped Apple’s manufacturing arm with the Foxconn riots that have left at least ten individuals dead the week after the iPhone 5 launch, this parody commercial for an “18% rustier, 20% thinner” iShiv designed to “revolutuonize factory riots” by Conan O’Brien is undeniably in bad taste. Whether it’s offensively bad taste or hilariously bad taste is ultimately a matter of opinion.

Personally, I hate to admit it, but I laughed, then felt really terrible about having laughed. What’s happening at Foxconn is no joke, but at the same time, it’s the job of a comedian to push the standards of taste and to riff upon tragedy for a laugh, thus putting that tragedy into deeper relief. What do you think?

Via: iDownloadBlog

As we reported on Tuesday, Instagram has updated its iOS app to introduce support for iPhone 5 and iOS 6. It’s a welcome update to those enjoying a new 4-inch display, but it’s not all good news: Instagram also pulled live filters from the iPhone 5. It has since confirmed that live filters will soon be phased out of the iOS app completely, but for now, there is a workaround for those who miss them.

Back in 2007, Steve Jobs used a famous quote from ice hockey player Wayne Gretzky to summarize Apple’s commitment to innovation: “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.” That’s long been true for Apple and products like the iPhone and iPad. But for more than four years, jailbeaking has pushed the boundaries of iOS even farther.

If Apple skates to where the puck is going to be, then jailbreakers have usually already been there and left. The hackers and tinkerers that find security loopholes in Apple’s software are some of the most brilliant, innovative minds in the tech world.

We’ll be covering JailbreakCon 2012 this weekend in San Francisco, the world’s first convention dedicated solely to the jailbreak community. What better way to get ready for the future of jailbreaking than to examine the past? Let’s start from the beginning:

A new report suggests that Apple is making deals in the carbon fiber business, possibly ahead of next year’s iPad launch.

Japanese site Macotakara can be a hit or miss source. They were one of the first sites to leak images of what would prove to be the iPhone 5’s new display, but they habe also said that the new iPod nanos would have WiFi and that Apple’s making a Galaxy Note like phablet. So their rumors need to be taken with a grain of salt.

Now Macotakara is reporting that an anonymous source is telling them that Apple is buying huge amounts of carbon fiber. This makes sense, as Apple has shown a lot of interest in carbon fiber in the past, patenting an iPad design made out of the stuff and making key hires with the expertise necessary to mass produce carbon fiber gadgets.

By using carbon fiber for future devices, Apple could create products that weigh significantly less than the aluminum and stainless steel devices they produce today, but be just as sturdy. So it’s obvious Apple’s got a lot to gain by making this switch. The question is when it will happen? In time for next year’s iPad debut, or is carbon fiber still far off in the future?

Source: Macotakara

Remember Jonathan Mann? He became popular on YouTube for writing and uploading a brand new song each and every day, and he’s famous among Apple fans for writing a song about the iPhone 4’s Antennagate, which was played at a special press event held by Apple to discuss the issue. He also did a duet with Siri, which we covered back in October.

Mann’s now back with Apple’s digital assistant for a special happy birthday song.

The satisfaction rates of iPhone users are notorious, an industry best. That’s not surprising, considering Apple makes some of the best devices on Earth and that, for the most part, the competition can’t really measure up.

But while people are satisfied with their iPhones, iOS 6 and, in particular, its buggy, half-formed implementation of Maps has caused a dip in customer satisfaction. It’s not a massive drop, but it’s enough to show that the Maps debacle is tarnishing what is otherwise Apple’s best operating system.

We’ve heard a lot of rumors surrounding a Google Maps app for iOS over the past week, and now The New York Times is weighing in with information from its own sources. Fortunately, it’s good news: it claims Google is indeed working on a Maps app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, and that the company is hoping to have it ready and released by the end of this year.

Why’s it taking so long? Well, Google had no idea Apple was kicking Google Maps out of iOS until Apple first previewed iOS 6 back in June.

Let’s face it: the Mac App Store, and the iTunes App Store that it’s modeled on, just isn’t made for comparing apps. Let’s say you want to find the best note taking app for your Mac. You can launch the Mac App Store, search for note taking apps, and see one at a time. If you want to look at more than one, you end up clicking the back button endlessly.

Sometimes it’s just better to be able to flip through a bunch of apps at once. If only the App Stores had tabbed browsing. Luckily, you can browse more than one app at once with a bit of a workaround and your web browser.

Almost everything Apple creates is patented and trademarked in an effort to ensure that other companies can’t steal its ideas (though they do). However, sometimes the folks in Cupertino hit a stumbling block. That’s what happened when Apple attempted to trademark its Music app icon recently, only to find that Myspace got there first.

Facebook has released the latest version of its SDK — version 3.1 — to iOS developers. The update brings a number of great new features, such as native Facebook login for third-party apps, native sharing sheets, and more, and Facebook promises that it will make it “easier to build more immersive social experiences, as well as better ways to distribute and promote your app.”

Earlier this year Apple acquired Chomp – a startup app-search service – presumably to help it improve app-search in iOS. The move seemed brilliant at the time because finding apps in the iOS App Store was more painful and tedious than hiking through the jungles of the Amazon.

App Store searching has improved a bit with iOS 6, but it’s still not great. We probably wont experience the full fruits of the Chomp acquisition for many more months, but if you look at the picture above, Apple’s already implemented Chomp’s search UI into the App Store. Do you think Apple plans to do more with Chomp and their app-search technology? Let us hear your thoughts in the comments.

Source: Reddit

Gameloft is doing what it does best: teasing its upcoming titles. Next on their list is Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour and they’ve released quite the reveal trailer for us to drool over. Being released for Android and iOS this fall, the next installation in the Modern Combat series looks just as intense as the 3rd and chock full of guns, ammo and bloodshed.

We told you last week about the Humble Indie Bundle, now in its sixth iteration. Today, four new games were added, bringing the total to ten games on offer with a pay-what-you-want model that sends the purchase price along to independent developers, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and Child’s Play, a charity that provides game consoles to children in hospitals.

While Google Maps may no longer be available as either the default iOS map app or as a standalone app of its own, the search giant’s other flagship software has been quietly updated for iPhone 5,iOS 6, and an unspecified number of “Stability and security improvements,” according to the App Store description page for the alternate iOS browser.

Apparently, Apple made the decision to dump Google maps for iOS 6 was made more than a year before the contract with Google for their map system expired, says a new post at The Verge that cites “independent sources familiar with the matter.” Further, the choice may have caused Google to start development on it’s own iOS Google Maps app before it was ready to. These same sources say the potential app won’t be ready for several months.

While you’re waiting for new docks for the iPhone 5 to come on the market, why not make your own? NYC filmmaker Casey Neistat (of iPod “dirty secret” battery fame; remember that?) shows you how. It’s perhaps the ugliest dock ever, but it works!

Don’t miss the video after the jump. Neistat always makes a good movie.

Good news for Instagram addicts: the app has finally been updated for iOS 6 and the iPhone 5’s larger display.

Not only has compatibility been added for Apple’s latest smartphone and mobile OS, but Instagram has also added an improved registration flow and password recovery tool.