Month: April 2012

Meet the iPhone Plus

Those of you who have been reading iDB for a while know we love a good iPhone concept. So when we came across these beautiful renderings of the iPhone Plus from the folks over at ADR Studio, we knew we had to post them.

If the name ADR Studio sounds familiar, it's because it's the same design firm behind other concepts we've featured on our site, including the iPhone SJ. And as usual, they didn't disappoint. Meet the iPhone Plus...

We’re giving away three ‘Lima’ beta invites

Last week we brought you an in-depth look at Lima — the web-based Cydia alternative for jailbroken iOS devices. Needless to say, we were thoroughly impressed by what we saw.

If you're anxious to get your hands on Lima, then here is your chance. As promised, we're giving away three Lima beta invitations.

Want one? Check inside for the details...

Jailbreaker’s Choice: top five free tweaks roundup

Well readers, the results are in for our second Jailbreak's Choice. Your votes have been counted for the top five free jailbreak tweaks. Over 150 iDB readers shared their favorite free downloads from Cydia, and the results are a bit surprising.

Among the most popular are a few expected veterans and a few essential newcomers. Read on to see the results of the poll and to cast your vote for the number one tweak…

Confirmed: Bloom Energy to power iCloud cell farm

Itćs been officially confirmed today that Apple will use cutting-edge, power-efficient, eco-friendly fuel cells from California-based Bloom Energy startup to power its huge iCloud data center located in Maiden, North Carolina.

Hopefully this move will appease Greenpeace, whose recent report titled How Clean Is Your Cloud slammed Apple over the company's use of "19th-century coal energy” for its data centers...

‘SiriStatus’ can help you troubleshoot Siri

SiriStatus is a recently released jailbreak tweak that reveals a hidden Siri status bar. This bar is located at the top of your screen, and is used for checking the current query status and manually entering in queries via the keyboard.

If you tend to find yourself experiencing problems with Siri, then SiriStatus can help you decipher what the problem may be.

Check out our video walkthrough straight ahead...

iTunes Match goes live in new markets across the globe

iTunes Match, Apple's $25 a year cloud locker and scan-and-match music service, is being rolled out in additional countries, according to web reports. Last time we heard, Apple expanded iTunes Match to 19 countries, with a focus on the Baltic states, Latin America and the Netherlands.

Macstories first spotted that the iTunes terms and conditions for Italy have been updated with new terms suggesting an imminent launch in the country. Other web reports confirmed a similar changes to iTunes terms and conditions for Greece, Portugal, Austria, Slovenia, Bulgaria and other markets...

iOS 5.1 jailbreak update: two big vulnerabilities found

We've just received a major update on the status of the iOS 5.1 jailbreak. Pod2g just tweeted that he had "a productive weekend," reportedly finding "2 big vulnerabilities. 1 kernel land and 1 root land."

The news comes just 5 days after the hacker posted a poll on his personal website, asking jailbreakers if hackers should continue work on an iOS 5.1 jailbreak or hold off until Apple seeds iOS 6...

The New Yorker profiles infamous hacker George “GeoHot” Hotz

George "GeoHot" Hotz has been described as one of the most famous hackers of our generation. Most of us know him for his work in the jailbreak community, and his original iPhone unlock that launched him into the public eye.

But Hotz is much more than that. He's a a former Facebook and Google alum, and a two-time finalist at Intel's International Science and Engineering fair. And more recently, he's the subject of a lengthy article in The New Yorker...

Rivals left with loose change as Apple, Samsung pwn mobile industry profits

Apple and Samsung have pwnd the entire cell phone market, which includes smartphones, feature phones and dumb phones, one analyst noted. Together, the two frenemies have managed to gulp literally all of the cell phone industry's profits during the first quarter of this year, leaving rival device makers with inadequate revenues to fund research and development and justify costs associated with carpet-bombing the market with numerous handsets...

Specifically, Apple accounted for a whopping 80 percent of all mobile industry profits while rival Samsung clung onto the remaining 20 percent. Together, Apple and Samsung accounted for more than an astounding three-quarters of the cell phone industry revenues...

Tweetbot gets updated with new gestures and more

A new version of TweetBot for iOS has popped up in the App Store today, bringing the popular Twitter client to version 2.3. The update is a sizable one, featuring a number of new additions and bug fixes.

The theme of 2.3 seems to be all about speed. If you've ever disliked Tweetbot because you felt it was too slow, this new version might be worth trying — it's much faster. Keep reading for the full changelog...

Tony Fadell spills the beans on iPhone prototypes [video]

Here's a nice little nugget that sheds more light on how Apple at one point had seriously considered giving the iPhone a physical keyboard, as we learned last week.

The Verge's sweet little teaser for their podcast series features former Apple engineer Tony Fadell (also known as the iPod Godfather) going into detail on different iPhone prototypes Apple originally tested...

Top videos of the week

Things have been quite exciting over the past week, with the unveiling and release of a true iPad multitasking tweak — Quasar — to the beta launch of Lima — an alternative to Cydia — leading the way.

Please be sure to share our iPhone, iPad, and iOS video guides by spreading our posts on Twitter and Facebook.