Keep your iPhone close by. Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac
A newly-discovered flaw in iOS 13 lets anyone access your contacts without your passcode.
It takes just a few simple steps to bypass your iPhone’s lockscreen and see every phone number, email address, and physical address you have saved. But a fix is already on the way.
The iPhone's lockscreen could use some changes. Photo: Matt Birchler
Apple is set to unveil big changes for the iPhone at WWDC 2017 and one feature that could definitely use some improvements is the lockscreen.
In a new concept design that imagines some potential lockscreen upgrades, Matt Birchler shows how a few very simple changes could make the lockscreen feel totally new.
iOS 10 brought a ton of new features to iPhone. Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
It’s only been five months since Apple unleashed iOS 10 on the world, but the new mobile operating system is already installed on nearly 4 out of 5 iOS devices.
Apple revealed its latest App Store stats today that show iOS 10’s install base has grown to account for 79% of all mobile Apple devices, making it one of Apple’s fastest adopted releases ever.
Don’t miss out on iOS 13. Ditch your old iPhone now. Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
Apple’s iOS 10 update for iPhones and iPads is the biggest software refresh the iPhone-maker has launched in years, adding a host of major and minor new features that completely change the iOS experience.
I’ve been using beta versions of iOS 10 on my iPhone 6s and iPad Pro since June. While some of the high-profile additions to Messages, Photos, Apple Music and Apple News aren’t totally mind-blowing, the smaller tweaks make all the difference. With iOS 10, using Apple’s devices is easier, faster and far more enjoyable than ever.
This is the big iOS update you’ve been waiting for, but not for all the reasons Apple thinks.
It wouldn’t be a major iOS release without another lockscreen bug. This time, you use Command Center into tricking iOS 7 to give you full access to the Camera Roll and sharing options. The method was uncovered by a veteran lockscreen-bug-finder named Jose Rodriguez, who admits that he likes to “submit my iPhone to cruel methods of torture” in his spare time (which he apparently has a lot of).
This is another small but great feature in iOS 7: you can now scrub through songs from the lockscreen if you are playing them through the official Music app. This doesn’t work with third-party music apps, like Rdio, and in practice in the first beta, it can be a little difficult to scrub (the touch target is too small). Still a very nice addition indeed.
Ever since the iPhone came out in 2007, users have always had to slide a finger along the bottom of the screen to unlock it. With iOS 7, Apple’s still has the ‘slide to unlock’ message at the bottom of the lockscreen, but rather than having to drag a little square across the screen to open your device, now you can swipe pretty much anywhere.
You can slide to unlock from the bottom, top, middle; you can even swipe from the top left corner down to the bottom right corner and iOS 7 will still unlock your screen.
It’s one of the most convient little features in iOS 7, so Gizmodo created a handy GIF to show all the new ways you can swipe to unlock, check it out below:
Apple has been using ideas that originated in the jailbreak community for years. A jailbreak tweak called MobileNotifier enhanced push notifications in iOS 4, and Apple hired the guy who made it and released Notification Center in iOS 5. Jailbreakers were doing multitasking and tethering before Apple too.
Looking ahead at iOS 7, I honestly have no idea what to expect from Apple. Jony Ive has never really been a big fan of skeuomorphism, so flatter and more minimalist graphics wouldn’t surprise me. Some truly innovate ideas for enhancing the iOS experience have arisen in the past year, and I think it would be foolish for Apple to not at least draw inspiration from these three.
If there’s one part of iOS that Apple needs to be paying more attention to, it’s the lockscreen. Case in point: jailbreak developers and concept designers are coming up with some really innovate ideas for making use of the first screen we all see when we check our iPhones.
Axis, a new jailbreak tweak that began as a simple concept some months ago, is another great example of doing more with the lockscreen. Apps can be assigned to the bottom of the screen and quickly opened with a swipe gesture.
I like to keep my iPhone’s lockscreen clean and free of distractions. Jailbreak tweaks that add weather, RSS, and more are useful for many, but the lockscreen can easily start to feel cluttered after awhile.
That’s why I’m excited to present “atom,” a new jailbreak tweak for the lockscreen that replaces the unlock slider with a beautifully subtle app launcher.