It’s now 2013 here in the U.S., and the iDB team would like to wish you, our readers, a very happy New Year! Thank you for continuing to allow us to do what we love every day, as none of this would be possible without your support.
2012 was a big year for us, as it was once again for Apple. It refreshed several products, introduced new ones and made some major internal changes. And while we're sad the year has come to an end, we're very excited for 2013...
There's still no way to jailbreak the iPhone 5, or other post-A5 devices running iOS 6, and that makes a lot of people sad, us included. But the lack of a jailbreak hasn't totally stifled the flow of creativity, as it's given rise to a bunch of popular "no jailbreak required" hacks and tweaks.
The latest such example is CarrierEditor — an app that runs on OS X that allows you to easily change your iPhone or cellular enabled iPad's carrier logo without being jailbroken.
There are, of course, plenty of ways to alter the carrier logon on a jailbroken device, but if you're like many who have the iPhone 5, or a non-jailbroken iPhone 4S, then CarrierEditor is a great workaround until a jailbreak finally touches down. Take a look inside as we step through the complete process of altering the carrier logo on an iPhone 5...
Boasting more than 40 years of experience, the International Consumer Electronic Show (CES) is the largest event of its type across the world and this year is no exception. As we head to January 8, the whole tech world is preparing for the largest trade show in global history, with a show floor of 1.86 million square feet. Thousands of companies, techies, press, and gadgets will be huddled together at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Nevada.
I will be heading to Vegas to cover all of the action focused around iOS devices, which includes everything from third party hardware to software. Representing iDownloadBlog as an an official member of the press, I will have access to preshow events and additional after hours meetings with some of the big names surrounding iOS compatible products. To keep everyone in the loop, this article is an opportunity to give our readers a preshow look at what to expect from an attendee's perspective...
Auxo — the popular jailbreak tweak we covered in depth last week — is now available on Cydia with iOS 5.1 support in tow. As you may recall, the initial version only supported iOS 6 out of the gate, and many users, pined for iOS 5.1 support, since a great majority of jailbreakers have chosen to remain on 5.1 firmware for obvious reasons.
Thanks to developer, Kyle Howells, who assisted with porting the tweak, the team behind Auxo was able to meet its turnaround time for adding support for the older iOS firmware. Did the team have to make any sacrifices in order to bring such an awesome tweak to iOS 5.1? It sure doesn't look like it to me. Check inside as we go hands on with Auxo for iOS 5.1 on video...
In what seems like a small victory against app piracy, the Hackulous team announced today on its site that it is shutting down, bringing down its most popular apps in the process: Installous and AppSync.
Although it's still unclear what the reasons behind the shut down are, Hackulous claims on its website that it's mostly due to stagnant forums and the difficulty to moderate them. Although I never hang out in the forums, I find it hard to believe that there was little activity in there, especially given the notoriety of Hackulous in the piracy world...
Like every Sunday, we bring you the stories that were the most popular on iDB during this past week. Whether it is a news piece, an editorial, a tutorial, a new jailbreak tweak, or an accessory review, we sum it all up in one convenient place.
If you like what you're reading, please make sure to spread the love by sharing our posts on your favorite social network. We're usually hanging out a lot on Twitter and Facebook, more rarely on Google+...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8twx1WZcns
Remember Apple's Christmas commercial with a girl singing "I'll Be Home" to her grandfather via FaceTime on an iPad mini? Yeah, it was that memorable - and for all the wrong reasons, cynics might add. Well, bright folks at Amidio certainly did seize the opportunity to take Apple's idea and one-up it a notch.
Have a look at their version and dare telling me it doesn't beat Apple at its own game. Here we have a grown up (and cutesy) girl singing the same song, but using Amidio's Futulele app to also play the tune on her iPad mini. Not sure about you, but I can instantly tell which one I like better...
Instagram's exploding popularity is having long-time iPhoneography buffs pay notice and watch in horror as mainstream users cannot get enough of its filters and max 1080 pixel wide resolution. And with Facebook and Android now in the picture, no wonder some early adopters go to the extremes of closing their account while others, like Apple's marketing honcho, stopped using Instagram for it "jumped the shark".
To the most ardent fans, the last straw was Instagram's confusing handling of the recent terms of service changes - even if it was much ado about nothing.
If you've been seriously contemplating importing your Instagram photos over to Flickr but were put off by the tedious manual uploads - worry not, turns out there are a few ways to get that job done without too much fuss. iDB has you covered with this quick guide to bringing in all your Instagram photos to Flickr with just a few clicks.
All of the concerns voiced about the impending leap off the 'fiscal cliff' and its associated increase in capital gains taxes on stock sales have sent Wall Street into a tizzy. The end result: knocking Apple's target share price down to $740. Nearly a dozen analysts have cut their target price for Apple stock amid talk that the iPhone maker has a dodgy future, what with supply questions hanging over the executives at One Infinity Loop. Despite all the rain clouds, the $740 per share target price reduction is about $225 more than Friday's opening on Wall Street...
How did holiday sales of tablets shake out? Although sales numbers aren't yet available, we can get some idea of which devices were in most demand. For instance, Amazon's Kindle Fire, followed by Samsung's Galaxy tablets and Google Nexus devices were the top three non-iPad products serving ad impressions in December, according to an ad firm.
Although the iPad (both the full-size versions and the iPad mini) accounts for 87 percent of U.S. and Canadian tablet-based ad impressions, the Kindle Fire was next best with 4.25 percent of tablet traffic. The Samsung Galaxy tablets had 2.65 percent, while the Google Nexus family of tablets garnered 1.06 percent of tablet traffic, according to ad network Chitika...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LTZawIaXho
Welcome to The Daily Recap for December 28th, 2012. Watch our video for a quick look at some of the top stories from the day in less than two minutes. If you missed out on any of today's big news, this is a great way for you to get caught up fast.
For your convenience, you'll also find links to all of the stories listed in today's recap inside...
A few weeks ago I published a somewhat controversial post about jailbreaking, and how its popularity is waning. This wasn't intended to be controversial, but it ended up that way, and after some thought I began to backtrack (a bit) on my stance.
The problem stemmed from the fact that I didn't do a very good job of explaining my stance. I didn't intend to say that jailbreaking was dead, my main point was just to show how innovation in the jailbreak community was being stifled by sometimes lazy developers, but mostly by Apple's efforts to stamp out jailbreaking.
While I still stand by my post, I felt that I needlessly ruffled a few feathers, and probably should have kept those thoughts to myself for the time being. When I began to work on this post — the top jailbreak tweaks of the year — it became more apparent that we actually have seen lot of innovation this year. Most of that innovation was earlier in the year, but nevertheless, there have been lots of great jailbreak tweaks to come out in the last 12 months.
Take a look inside as we cover some of this year's best jailbreak efforts from the development community. I'll also crown 2012's top jailbreak tweak of the year.