In episode 71 of Let’s Talk iOS, Apple sends out media invites to its March 9th event, a discussion about Apple Watch battery life, Samsung reveals its latest smartphones and services, and Jeff signs up for a unique new sleeping regiment.
Support Let’s Talk iOS:
CASPER — Get $50 toward any mattress purchase by visiting www.casper.com/ios and using promo code ios.
Based on Apple’s official data shared at its portal for developers, iOS 8 is now running on 75 percent of iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices, as measured by the App Store on March 3, 2015, good for a two percentage-point increase.
Two weeks ago, Apple’s mobile operating system was adopted by 73 percent of active device owners, representing a tiny one percentage point increase from the 72 percent mark recorded a month ago. Read More
Following its mid-2014 announcement and a beta release last October, the latest edition of the Unity graphics engine by Unity Technoologies is now available for download.
The all-new Unity 5, released at the 2015 Game Developers Conference, features upgraded animation and physics, a new lighting system, new audio options and many other improvements designed to make mobile games more gorgeous and shiny than ever before.
On the Apple side of things, Unity 5 offers support for 64-bit computing and Metal, Apple’s high-performance graphics framework aimed at game developers which can speed up graphics by a factor of ten compared to OpenGL. Read More
Following the outcry in Silicon Valley regarding the treatment of part-time employees, and in general people who work for technology companies, Apple is now moving to “dramatically expand” its in-house security team by giving contracted workers the same benefits as other employees, as per Mercury News Tuesday.
A company spokesperson confirmed to the paper that Apple has now decided to hire the majority of its day-to-day security staff in Silicon Valley as full-time workers, following a yearlong review. Read More
The official mobile app of South by Southwest (SXSW), a set of film, interactive and music festivals and conferences that take place annually in mid-March in Austin, Texas, has been refreshed with a few new features.
Among them is an enhanced experience allowing your device to receive iBeacon notifications to see what’s going on around you and who else is there. This year’s show will feature the world’s largest deployment of iBeacons. Read More
NoSwitchBar is a brand new free jailbreak tweak that just touched down on the Cydia store. It lets users eschew the status bar at the top of the app card previews in the App Switcher, allowing for a cleaner look. Read More
Google is ostensibly working on an iPhone app that will bring iOS compatibility to all Android Wear-driven smartwatches on the market. Google’s Android-powered software platform for wearable devices launched a year ago without official support for the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and Mac devices. Word of a possible solution came Tuesday via 01Net and was passed along to us by French blog iPhon.fr.
Whichever way you look at it, making Android Wear compatible with the iPhone could help extend the market for Android-driven wearable devices to include Apple users, too.
About 720,000 Android Wear smartwatches were shipped in 2014, according to Canalys, the research firm. Various analysts estimate Apple’s Watch could sell about ten or more million devices in 2015. Read More
More than two decades following its 1992 debut on the the Genesis, SNES and arcades, Mortal Kombat, a video game franchise developed by Midway Games’ Chicago studio, is about to go mobile with the impending release of Mortal Kombat X for iOS and Android, as first noted by Eurogamer.
Developed by NetherRealm Studios, the game will be published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, which acquired the Mortal Kombat development team in 2011 and now owns the rights of the series. Read More
After announcing new Pebble Time models featuring a color e-paper screen, built-in mic, an enhanced software and other improvements last week, Pebble Technology today took the wraps off a higher-end Time Steel model. Featureing a face made of machined stainless steel protected by Gorilla Glass, the Steel supports two watch straps, one made of leather and another of stainless steel.
Compared to the regular Pebble Time, the Steel model is one millimeter thicker and has 10 days’ worth of battery life. By comparison, the Time has a weeklong battery. The Steel edition will be available in three metallic finishes: silver, gold and black. Read More
Apple’s latest ‘Shot on iPhone 6’ advertising campaign featuring crowdsourced iPhone photography from around the world is bound to reach massive audiences as the Cupertino firm started showcasing users’ best photos found online out in the real world. Specifically, Apple is hanging billboards on skyscrapers around the world, plastering them on bus stops and train stations.
In addition, the company is using the photos in minimalistic ads run in major magazines and newspapers. All told, the ad campaign features 77 photographers in 70 cities across 24 countries around the world. Read More
Yesterday, I found this thread on Reddit and was reminded of how many great jailbreak tweaks exist outside of Cydia’s default repos. Of course, developers like Ryan Petrich are well-known for their beta repos, but there are some other lesser-known repos that you should be aware of as well. Here’s a list of ten jailbreak tweaks that are available outside of the popular BigBoss and ModMyi repos. Read More
Are you extremely particular about your iPhone’s Home screen app layout? If so, then InstallReset is going to be a tweak that you either hate or love.
InstallReset forces your iPhone’s Home screen layout to reset to defaults upon a new app installation or an app uninstallation. It will therefore keep your apps organized in alphabetical order along with keeping the default Home screen app icons in stock order. Read More
It’s been a while since I’ve told you about the must-have jailbreak tweaks for iOS. In this post, I’m going to highlight the staple tweaks that I use. But this isn’t just some randomly generated and arbitrary list of tweaks put together for the sheer sake of doing so. No, this is a list of eight tweaks that makes the iPhone a better device overall.
Some people are claiming that jailbreaking is dead or that it’s a mere shell of its once glorious self. I say baloney. Until iOS can solve the problems that these eight jailbreak tweaks solve natively, then jailbreaking will always be alive and kicking in my eyes. Read More
The App Recap is iDB’s daily roundup of notable news from the crazy world of iOS software. Below you’ll find a list of discounts, updates and new releases we think are worth checking out. Today’s picks include discounts on hit games Tempo, Nihilumbra and Wheel and Deal. Read More
Whether you want to craft beautiful websites, manage your digital collection, create hilarious videos or access to the world’s leading voice transcription software, you can find great deals on all kinds of Mac apps at the iDownloadBlog Deals store, often at huge discounts. Here are our top Mac app deals right now. Read More
Though it may seem the world doesn’t really need another book on Steve Jobs, I beg to differ given Walter Isaacson’s disappointing biography on Apple’s famous co-founder and late CEO.
Written by the The Wall Street Journal and Fortune reporter Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli, Executive Editor with Fast Company, Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader promises to be the Steve Jobs book that true fans deserve.
Scheduled to arrive on March 24 via Crown Publishing Group, it’s now available for pre-order over at Apple’s iBooks Store or Amazon’s Kindle Store for $15. Read More
Twitter has had a nice JavaScript-powered embed widget available on the web for quite some time now. Anyone is permitted to use the widget to highlight and inject specific tweets into their own blog posts and on websites.
Soon after the micro-blogging startup introduced the ability to shoot video directly within its mobile apps more than a month ago, the need arose for embedding Twitter video.
In this post, I’ll show you how to use Twitter’s widget to get the embed code for Twitter-hosted video to use on your own website or blog. Read More
The first beta of the forthcoming OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 software update which contains the long-expected Photos for Mac application, is now available via the AppleSeed Public Beta service.
Participants in the OS X Public Beta program can download the software update right now via the Updates tab of the Mac App Store. The public beta carries a build number of 14D87, the same like the second 10.10.3 beta that the company seeded to its registered Mac developers a week ago. Read More
Like its iOS counterpart, Notification Center on the Mac features a Do Not Disturb mode for suppressing notifications at inopportune times. The great thing about Notification Center on iOS is that it can be quickly enabled via a handy Control Center toggle. But did you know that there’s a quick and easy way to enable Do Not Disturb mode on your Mac, as well? Read More
As Apple is prepping to share more information about its upcoming wrist-worn device at the March 9 “Spring Forward” media event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, CEO Tim Cook just dropped a few interesting tidbits about the lineup of launch apps for the Watch.
He told employees of Apple’s flagship retail store in Berlin that “a whole ton of announcements are coming shortly about all of the apps coming” for it.
The comment indicates that the upcoming media event will have a strong focus on third-party applications for the device. “Some of the best hotels in the world” will allow Watch owners to use the device to unlock room doors, he told employees, 9to5Mac learned. Read More
