For some iPhone 4S users, Siri is a novelty that quickly wears off within a week or two of unwrapping the handset. But believe it or not, 87% of iPhone 4S users are still using the intelligent assistant at least once a month, according to a new study. Not many of them are using it to its full potential, however.
Good battery life is essential for a mobile device to succeed in the post-PC era, and Apple’s iOS devices continue to pack upgraded internals and improved battery technology into every product iteration. iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users can use a handful of tips and tricks for conserving precious battery on the go. Many of the tips are pretty basic, but every little bit counts when you’re trying to make it through the day on one charge.
Here’s a roundup of tips and tricks for saving battery life on your favorite iOS device:
Apple recently announced the winner of its 25 billionth App Store download contest. Fu Chunli from Qingdao, China won a $10,000 iTunes gift card for downloading the free Where’s My Water? iPhone game.
After she won, Apple flew her to the Beijing to accept her award. Chunli was escorted to Apple’s Chinese corporate headquarters and then taken to the Sanlitun Apple store to accept her gift card and talk to the press.
Earlier this year Apple announced iTunes U, making it clear that Apple intends to make the iPad ubiquitous in academia. The iPad is truly coming into its own as a legitimate alternative to the PC. For students, this means that the iPad is quickly becoming a powerful learning tool, which is good for a lot more than reading.
I sat down with a Boston-based PhD student who, for the past year, has been using her iPad nearly exclusively for her studies. Here are the core peripherals and apps that she recommends in order to supercharge your iPad for use in the academic setting.
Update: And just like that, Microsoft has decided to do the right thing and award Sahas his prize.
Microsoft concocted a brilliant marketing campaign where they challenge mobile users to complete various tasks faster than a Windows phone. Any contestant able to “smoke” a Windows phone with their current mobile phone will be awarded a Hunger Games Special Edition PC worth over $1000. Even if you lose the challenge (which Microsoft has made certain of), you will win the opportunity to trade-in your current phone for a free Windows phone (excluding the Nokia Lumia 800). The contest has been hit heavily with accusations of Microsoft rigging the contest via various methods including deliberately throttling Wi-Fi speeds for non-Windows Phones. Despite the many unfounded accusations, one challenger has come forward claiming Microsoft blatantly denied him his prize after legitimately “smoking” a Windows phone with his Samsung Galaxy Nexus.
Apple CEO Tim Cook was in Beijing today, meeting Chinese officials as the Cupertino company eyes up further growth in China. It’s his first trip to the country since he took over from Steve Jobs as CEO, and he got himself noticed with a visit Apple’s Beijing store where he stopped to pose for photographs with fans.
Steve Jobs coined it: the “Post PC Revolution.” But is this revolution actually occurring? Are people flocking en masse to tablets, forever leaving behind their keyboards and mice?
And what about those rumors that we’re going to see a 15-inch Macbook Air this summer? Is Apple on the verge of releasing the first pro-edition of everyone’s favorite paper-thin notebook?
We answer these questions and more in episode 5 of The CultCast, now ready for your listening pleasure.
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Shortly after the new iPad made its debut earlier this month, it was discovered that the way in which the device calculates its battery life is flawed. Despite telling you its charge is at 100%, your device hasn’t actually finished charging.
New data proves that in fact, your device isn’t finished charging until more than two hours after it reaches “100%,” and if you unplug it before then, you could lose around 1.2 hours of battery life. What’s more, it seems all iOS devices misreport their battery life.
If you thought interest in the slingshotting hit Angry Birds has faded over the years, you’d be sorely mistaken. In fact, it seems to be even more popular according to the latest numbers announced by Rovio. According to Rovio, their latest Angry Birds Space netted 10 million downloads in less than three day. That’s quite an accomplishment, and to put things into perspective, it took Angry Birds Rio ten days to reach 10 million downloads.
Apple is being sued by an 83-year-old lady who broke her nose on a glass door while visiting its retail store in Manhasset, New York. Evelyn Paswall wants $75,000 in medical expenses, in addition to punitive damages for negligence totaling $1 million.
It was revealed last week that Apple is pushing to make its new nano-SIM the next industry standard for miniaturized SIM cards. The company has the backing of most European mobile operators, but rival smartphone vendors — particularly Motorola, RIM, and Nokia — are against the idea.
In a bid to win them over, Apple has promised that it will make nano-SIM licensing free if its proposal is approved.
For years businesses across the world have attempted to dissect Steve Jobs’ career to figure out what made him so incredibly brilliant and successful. Not only did he change the way we use technology, but he changed movies, music, retail shopping and more. His entrepreneur skills were some of the best the world has seen, which is why Fortune magazine declared Steve Jobs “The Greatest Entrepreneur of Our Time” in their ranking of the top 12 entrepreneurs of recent memory.
Complementing the launch of the new Apple TV, an iOS software update made some significant changes to the Apple TV user interface after the new iPad keynote. Over the last couple weeks the new UI has received a heavy dose of criticism from fans who feel like the new interface is a step backwards, and it turns out that those criticisms may be true. Literally.
According to one ex-Apple TV Engineer, the new Apple TV UI has been on the table for about five years, but Steve Jobs himself allegedly didn’t like it and rejected its implementation. Now that Jobs isn’t around “to say no to bad design,” the UI was resurrected.
iOS hackers are some of the most sought after individuals in the security research community. Geniuses like Comex who come up with jailbreaks used by millions of iPhone and iPad users are offered incredible sums of money to sell their exploits to powerful and high profile clients.
Sure, you could win a decent amount of cash at a security conference for showing off the exploits you’ve uncovered, but why not make $250,000 and secretly sell your stuff to say, an entity like the U.S. government?
The likelihood of Apple significantly expanding the size of the next iPhone to make way for a bigger display is pretty laughable, but LTE seems like a lock for the next iPhone. That’s why we’ve got a good feeling about a new report that says that while the next iPhone will be truly 4G in every sense of the term, the biggest change to the overall form factor of the device will be a new micro dock connector.
Episode 5 of The CultCast just hit iTunes my friends, and this one is sure to give you a pleasant, tingly sensation.
This week we investigate the truth behind overheating new iPads; declare why new retina display MacBooks could be in your hands by summer; and new iPad data plans — why are some users chewing through their monthly caps in less than a week?
All that and so much more on this week’s CultCast. Subscribe now!
City officials in Austin, Texas, have agreed to pay Apple $8.6 million in incentives over the next ten years after the Cupertino company revealed its plans to invest $304 million in a new campus. Additionally, it will also receive $21 million from the Texas Enterprise Fund, and possibly a further $6 million from Travis County Commissioners.
Apple and Samsung have battled in court over the design of a number of Samsung’s Galaxy products, which Apple believes were “slavishly” copied from the iPhone and iPad. However, the Korean company’s chief of mobile design maintains that the Galaxy is “original from the beginning,” and believes that one day, he will match Jony Ive by designing a truly iconic product.
Cult of Mac is proud to announce our official partnership with Craig Fox and the rest of the team at WWJC, the first jailbreak convention to hit the United States. As we told you before, JailbreakCon, or the World Wide Jailbreak Convention, will be taking place on September 29th in beautiful San Francisco, California.
Built upon the DNA of NeXT OS, OS X is already one of the most well known Unix-based operating systems, but it could have been supercharged if the father of Linux, Linus Torvalds, had accepted a job offer from Steve Jobs back in 2000.
Carol Gerber wants to help reconcile lawyers who bring in their own iPads to work with the IT department.
Gerber is an former bankruptcy attorney who has been imparting tech training to lawyers for a decade. On the front lines of the Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) movement, she’s created an iPad class approved by the New York State Continuing Legal Education Board.
It’s a well known fact that the new iPad takes significantly longer to charge than the iPad 2. You can chalk that problem up to the fact that the new iPad has approximately 70% more battery in the same form factor than the iPad 2, requiring almost twice as long to charge. Consequently, the iPad has gone from being something you could charge up in just a few hours to a tablet that needs all night to charge to 100%.
But you shouldn’t stop charging your iPad at 100%. No sirree bob. If you want the most battery life from your new iPad, you should keep the device plugged in for at least an hour after it reports full. Why? The iPad battery gauge lies.
Prepare yourself for a another look at OS X Mountain Lion and a peak at iOS 6, because Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference looks set to begin in early June. San Francisco’s Moscone Center — the company’s favorite venue for WWDC — has been booked up for a mysterious “corporate meeting” for one week starting June 11.
Some recent reports have suggested that the new iPad can use more data than its predecessor while on 4G LTE networks. This shouldn’t surprise anyone since faster download speeds on the new iPad will certainly lead to more online activity. It’s like saying an engine won’t get you somewhere faster after its been turbocharged.
One of the biggest features in the new iPad is its ability to use 4G data speeds on AT&T, Verizon, and select carriers in other countries. In most cases one can get faster speeds on the new iPad than a home DSL connection offers. It’s truly phenomenal.
Since you can’t get unlimited data on the iPad here in the states unless you’re grandfathered in, it’s important to be careful about how you use your iPad when you’re away from a WiFi network. It can be easy to blow through 1GB of data in a month if you don’t watch your activity. Here are some helpful tips and tricks for saving 4G data on your new iPad.
Here at Cult of Mac, we’re interested in building a data set which we can use to determine which networks offer the fastest and most reliable 3G & LTE coverage to new iPad owners. We’ll then use this data to report on which new iPad carrier is the best in each country or territory where it’s available.
Will LTE networks be crushed by demand, or will the upgrade to true 4G be as dramatic as the likes of AT&T and Verizon would like us to be. Finally, will most people who buy an iPad Wi-Fi + 4G even live within an LTE coverage area?
If you’ve got a new iPad Wi-Fi + 4G, could you take a couple minutes out of playing with your new, shiny tablet and help us out?