Since updating to iOS 7.1, a number of users have complained of tethering issues — meaning that information doesn’t save when trying to entering custom APN settings into a device’s Cellular menu.
In the update, Apple has apparently disabled users from setting up Personal Hotspots on carriers who either aren’t official iPhone partners, or who don’t support the feature.
Venus — the 256-foot super-yacht, commissioned by Steve Jobs — has been sighted in Mexico’s Cabo San Lucas bay.
Despite telling journalist John Markoff in 1980 that, “There’s no yacht in my future,” Jobs began working on building his dream sailing vessel around 2008 prior to his liver transplant. Jobs commissioned legendary French designer Philippe Starck to design the yacht, which cost more than €100 million to build, although Jobs died before he was able to use it.
Browsing the App Store can be a bit overwhelming. Which apps are new? Which ones are good? Are the paid ones worth paying for, or do they have a free, lite version that will work well enough?
Well, if you stop interrogating me for a second, hypothetical App Store shopper, I can tell you about this thing we do here.
Every week, we highlight some of the most interesting new apps and collect them here for your consideration. This time, our picks include a sleep meter, an app that’s all ads, and something to help you get home safely.
Here you go:
I know I don’t get enough sleep, but I’m kinda dumb, so sometimes I need to look at pictures to really put things into perspective. That’s where SleepBattery comes in. You tell it how old you are, and it suggests how much sleep you should be getting every night. When you go to bed, you tap a button, and the screen-sized battery begins to fill. When you wake up, you tap the screen again, and the battery begins to drain.
When it’s completely empty, it tells you to go to bed. And I probably won’t, but it’s nice to know the app cares.
SleepBattery – Free | Max Haubold
Hey, did you know that the Veronica Mars movie is out now? I didn’t until I saw it listed on HypeDrive. I’m not interested in the Veronica Mars movie, but good looking out, HypeDrive.
It’s an app that lets you keep track of all the movies, TV shows, games, and other projects that interest you. You can add them to a list to stay up-to-date, but that requires a login. If you don’t feel like registering, you can also just look stuff up, but it won’t save. You’ll have to write it down or something. Like a caveman.
Hypedrive – Free | Hypedrive LLC
Sometimes, I’m standing in the produce section of my local grocery store, and I see fruit I’ve never even heard of before. And while nobody has developed an app that will let me taste them to see if they’re any good, Wholesome gives a pretty good idea of how good it is for me.
The app groups everything, mostly by color, but it also has categories for spices, meat and seafood, dairy, etc. You just pick your group and food, and then the information is all there for your perusal. You can even adjust quantities if you’re working from a recipe.
That fruit-tasting idea is free, by the way. Somebody please get on that.
Wholesome – Free | Sachin Hegde
Bind is kind of a weird idea for an app, but then again, I know people who watch the Super Bowl just for the commercials. So if you want big companies to try to sell you things without all that pesky programming getting in the way, here’s where you should go.
It collects ads. Just ads. Do you want to watch ads? Bind has all the ads including movie trailers and those ones people at work were attempting to describe (poorly) the day after the Big Game. And you can rate and share your favorites with your friends.
So at the very least, it’ll save you a trip to YouTube.
So maybe one night you’re stumbling to your car and realize you really shouldn’t be driving. And also you’re so drunk that Siri can’t understand you. And the buttons in your contact list are so small.
Enter Too Drunk To Drive, an app that hopes to keep you from ending up dead in a molten hell of metal and glass. You pre-program it with the numbers of your local cab company or a reliable friend, and then all you have to do is plunk your drunken thumb down on one of the app’s two enormous and clearly labeled buttons.
Giving the other person directions is still up to you, though. So good luck with that.
iTunes Radio still has a long way to go before it catches up with Pandora’s number of subscribers, but in an effort to keep up with increasing royalty costs, Pandora announced this morning that it’s bumping up the monthly subscription price for Pandora One.
Starting in May new subscribers will have to pay $4.99 per month if they want their music stream ad free, which is still cheaper than competitors like Spotify and Rdio (both $9.99 per month).
Apple’s alternative, iTunes Radio is ad-free with $24.99 annual iTunes Match subscription, but Pandora is deciding to just drop the annual subscription option altogether.
Here’s a breakdown of the pricing changes:
When I opened the box that contained the Pi Dock-It Pro from Parle Innovations, my first thought was that it looked like an older model HP or IBM laptop. The dark gray plastic case, surrounded on all sides with a matte, silvery metal structure just scream “high tech,” albeit from a time in the recent past.
The manufacturer wants you to use the Dock-It Pro to turn your iPad into a laptop while letting it remain useful as a tablet, and they’ve succeeded in doing just that, at least from a design standpoint. I found myself using the Dock-It Pro case as a flip-up laptop more often than as an tablet, though.
Does The Dock-It Pro truly transcend its clunky, quaint visual style and become something truly useful? The answer is–of course–somewhere in the middle.
The LA Unified School District made headlines when it pledged to make it rain iPads on students by spending $1 billion on Apple’s tablets, but teachers are more concerned of the rain leaking through their classroom roofs.
The school district’s initiative is aimed to enhance students educational experience but a number of angry teachers have started a ‘Repairs, Not iPads‘ page on Facebook filled with pictures of everything from rat feces on desks, broken toilets, dead mice, termite infestations, leaky roofs and more, along with a demand that district spend money on much needed repairs before iPads.
So maybe one night you’re stumbling to your car and realize you really shouldn’t be driving. And also you’re so drunk that Siri can’t understand you. And the buttons in your contact list are so small.
Enter Too Drunk To Drive, an app that hopes to keep you from ending up dead in a molten hell of metal and glass. You preprogram it with the numbers of your local cab company or a reliable friend, and then all you have to do is plunk your drunken thumb down on one of the app’s two enormous and clearly labeled buttons.
Giving the other person directions is still up to you, though. So good luck with that.
I like endless runners as much as the next person (which works out well considering how many I review), but I’m not opposed to a developer trying something new with them.
Dark Guardians is one such attempt, adding rhythm-game elements and arcade twitch play to the well-trod genre. And it’s an experiment that pays off big, resulting in an exciting and all-around fun title.
It’s also smart and good-looking. And the music is excellent. Basically, I’m a fan.
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Recently Cult of Mac described how among Siri’s Easter eggs is a whole back story — programmed by her creators, and accessible by asking just the right questions.
Beginning life as a five-year DARPA-backed project to build an intelligent virtual assistant, Siri certainly has some stories to tell: if only we could gain access to them.
When I wrote my story a couple of weeks ago, I asked readers to send in any insights they managed to unlock. Dallas-based tech columnist and CoM reader Jim Rossman read the article and sent in some interesting screenshots from his own conversations with Siri — revealing some insights that go beyond her usual “I was designed by Apple in California” spiel.