Back when I had a jailbroken iPhone, one of my favorite Cydia tweaks was a hack called Switchy, which came to life based upon an initial forum post mocking up a more advanced app switcher for iOS. I’m hopeful, then, that the same will prove true for this new switcher concept posted over the weekend, which might be the best looking, most attractive and most functional app switcher we’ve seen yet.
Looks like iOS 6 users aren’t the only ones unhappy with Apple’s new Maps app. The Taiwanese government is also complaining about the service, which reveals its new $1.4 billion early warning radar station in satellite view. The Defense Ministry is now asking the Cupertino company to obscure the images.
Apple won’t let you put the iOS Newsstand icon in a folder for some ridiculous reason. It’s annoying. A lot of people don’t use Newsstand on the iPhone, and after awhile that wooden bookshelf icon seems to just sit there, mocking you. Wouldn’t it to be nice to hide it in a folder with all the other stock apps you don’t you use, like that stupid Compass app?
There was a trick discovered in iOS 5 that lets you hide Newsstand with some finger magic, but the process is a little tedious. A new utility app for the Mac called StifleStand puts Newsstand in an iOS folder for you, no jailbreak required.
You know those old-style video demos which presented images as an endless wall, and your point of view was that of a tiny creature as the wall sped past you? Gridditor is that, only its also an iPad photo editing app.
So, the wacky little app-thingy that we all wondered about in iOS 6, Passbook, seems like it’s starting to grow up a bit. Now, when you tap the App Store button in the Passbook App, the new “Apps for Passbook” section of the iTunes App Store, only available via your iPhone running iOS, has quite a few new apps available.
The Hipstamatic folks sent us word that their new 260 update is here, with some rad new features, like Multiple Exposures, Rock the Vote free films, a new switch for the flash, and fully iOS 6 and iPhone 5 capabilities – no more letterboxing.
You can now create double exposure (or triple or quadruple) to spice up your photographic styles. It’s available as a $0.99 in-app purchase, and should let you play around with lens, film, and flash combinations to your heart’s content.
I like to be notified when email comes in, but I sure do get a lot of email. Prior to iOS 6, I was relegated to just dealing with it, and setting the type of notification–Badges, Banners, and Sounds–for eMail in general. It got a bit tedious, to say the least, with the four main accounts I check on my iPhone.
You know now that you can set up a different signature for each email account you check on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch running iOS 6. But did you know you could also set up a different Notification style for each account, as well?
Here’s how.
Cult of Mac reader, Scott, asks this week:
“I would like to find out how to create a hyperlink in my Sig using my iPad. Example: Find me on twitter ( with twitter being a hyperlink taking them to my home page.”
I’ve shown you how to use Emoji in your signature, taking advantage of the rich text abilities of iOS 5 and up, but iOS 6 adds HTML support for signatures. Now you can put any rendered HTML into your signature on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. Here’s how.
While iOS 6 may be “the world’s most advanced mobile operating system,” its new Maps app is, quite frankly, a heap of trash. It boasts some terrific features, such as 3D Flyover and voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation, but they’re only terrific when the Maps that power them actually work. And Apple’s don’t in a lot of places.
The Cupertino company’s CEO, Tim Cook, has apologized to customers for the frustration the new app has caused, and it’s led us to wonder why Apple even released it. It still had a year left on its contract with Google, so why did it rush into releasing its own, half-baked service so quickly?
Well, one reason behind the move is that Steve Jobs had grown to hate Google. So much so that he set up a new Maps team just to kick Google Maps off the iOS devices.
While the App Store has listed Things as an “amazing app” for iPhone 5 for the past week or so, the app didn’t actually support the new handset’s larger display. But it does now, thanks to a brand new update, which also delivers the ability to create new to-dos using Siri.
Apple Maps has taken a lot of heat over the last few weeks for its abysmal performance. The data on Apple Maps is pretty terrible, but there’s no denying it’s one of the prettiest maps apps on available. Case in point, take a look at the detail on Apple’s highway icons on their maps verses that found on Google.
Apple’s icons contain details for each particular state, while Google’s is just a bland icon that’s used for every state highway. Now if Apple Maps could just get their data to be as good as Google Maps they might become everyone’s favorite maps app.
Source: Reddit
iOS 6 is spreading like wildfire across Apple’s iDevices. Within two days of its release a quarter of all iOS devices had adopted Apple’s newest mobile operating system, and its use continues to grow. Chitika Insights has released their new data on iOS 6 adoption rates and they’ve found that 60% of iPhone users have already installed iOS 6, but only 39% of iPod touch users are on the new iOS.
If someone told you that iOS 6 Maps had one advantage over Google Maps, and that it was 80% more efficient in using data, you’d probably quip, “That’s because it’s 80% less accurate” then do an air drum roll and punctuate the whole thing with the sound of a cymbal crashing that you made with your mouth.
Joking aside, though, it’s true. iOS 6 Maps uses way less data than Google Maps, and it has nothing to do with accuracy, but with its beautiful new vector graphics.
Conan O’Brien loves to do bits on the latest Apple product, and the latest iPhone 5 feature to become the fodder for laughs is the new Panorama feature, which Chris Parnell & Deon Cole says is the perfect photographic equipment for the well-endowed male. While Deon Cole’s delivery is perfect, it’s Chris Parnell’s matter-of-fact dissection of the joke — “that Deon is implying that his penis is too large to be capture in a normal camera aspect ratio’s field of view” — that pushes this bit over the top for me. Tell me about it. Just don’t shoot it in bright light or it’ll get a purplish hue, although chances are, if you need to shoot your penis in panorama, it’s already got one.
Source: Team Coco
It won’t add transit directions, nor will it stiffen those melted roads which are draped, Dalí-esque, over the underlying terrain. But this simple, one-setting tweak will make iOS 6’s beleaguered maps app a whole lot more useful.
Now that Apple has apologized for its decision to release a half-baked Maps app in iOS 6, the vast majority of us will carry on with our lives and use a third-party solution until Apple’s is fixed. Right now, it seems Apple is a company that can achieve anything. So it won’t be too long before Maps is as good as — if not better then — Google Maps. Right?
Maybe not. You see, Apple’s Maps problem could be much bigger than we think, and it could be a long time before we can say goodbye to third-party alternatives.
FastTrack Navigator is just about the simplest navigation app you could ever want: It’s a big arrow on the screen telling you the direction of your destination, along with a number telling you how far away it is. But that’s not to say that it isn’t beautifully designed.
Apple has issued its first software update to the iPhone 5 just over a week after the handset was released — but you’ll only see it if you’re on Verizon. No, the update doesn’t make Maps work. Instead, it “resolves an issue in which, under certain circumstances, iPhone 5 may use Verizon cellular data while the phone is connected to a Wi-Fi network.”
Kicking off this week’s must-have apps roundup is an awesome new Twitter client that reminds me of the old (and awesome) Tweetie app — before Twitter bought it and ruined it. It’s accompanied by Camera+, which now supports the iPhone 5’s larger display, and comes to the iPad; an awesome new update to Mixel; and more.
Siri has been updated along with the rest of the iOS in the new iteration from Apple. The personal voice assistant can take dictation, help you plan your wardrobe around the weather, keep track of your buddies, inform you on all sorts of sports information, and help you choose the best movie to go see, all using basic spoken English.
Of course, it helps to know what kinds of questions and commands you can actually say to produce the desired results. Here’s five things you can do with Siri the right way, so you can spend less time repeating yourself and more time going to those movies and meeting up with those friends.
Apple silently updated the iOS 6 App Store today, adding more accessibility features to its VoiceOver interface for users who experience blindness and low vision. The new changes are in response to user complaints about accessibility in the iOS 6 App Store, and will help those users perform faster searches when interacting with the App Store via the VoiceOver system.
I have to admit, I was intrigued by Passbook when I first heard of it. An app that keeps my airline and movie tickets together with my coupons and customer loyalty cards seems like a good idea. For now, however, Passbook in iOS 6 seems like a placeholder to me, an app with no real purpose in and of itself, a place to link to other apps.
Apple quietly added a little explanation in the form of a paragraph in the iTunes Store page for Passbook apps which shows, at least, that they’re planning on more and that they understand that we all might feel a bit nonplused about one of the bigger features of the new iOS.
Apple did something unprecedented today.
I’m not talking about Tim Cook’s apology for iOS 6 Maps. While it’s rare, Apple has apologized before, especially recently: see John Browett’s admission that the company had “messed up” when cutting shifts among Retail Employees, and Apple’s public about-face when pulling out of the EPEAT rating system. One of the things that makes Apple great is they’re not afraid to be as harsh on themselves as they are on the competition when they’ve fucked up.
No, what Apple did today is far more uncharacteristic than an apology. They suggested that you use a third-party app instead of their own.
The iPhone 5 has been a massive success for Apple. It’s only been out a week, but it’s already the fastest-selling iPhone in history, racking up 5 million units sold during its first three days of availability. But this isn’t just having a positive affect on Apple’s revenue; it’s also big business for iOS developers, who are seeing massive boosts to their download figures.
In addition to posting an extraordinarily classy apology for the iOS 6 Maps fiasco written by CEO Tim Cook, Apple has also gone to the length of pushing online a page explaining how to add a website icon to your home screen in four easy steps, and while the website they use for the example is Apple.com, they clearly mean for you to do this on maps.google.com.
Source: Apple
