iDB Top Picks

The best email apps for iPhone

It wasn’t that long ago that email was an untapped resource. Within the past decade or so, technology and the Internet have advanced so far that it is incredibly easy to stay in touch with people all over the world at any hour of the day. Emailing has become a behemoth that has gotten out of control.

If you are unsatisfied with the native Mail app and are looking for something to help you get to Inbox Zero, we’ve got a list of what we believe are some of the best email apps for iPhone, and our favorite apps for organizing and reducing the daily routine of checking email.

How to set up an iTunes and App Store allowance

I recently found out there is a feature in iTunes that allows you to set up an allowance for someone to have access to a pre-determined amount of money to spend each month in the iTunes Store, App Store, or iBooks Store.

A perfect illustration of this feature would be the case where parents would be able to set up an allowance for their kids. This way, kids have access to a credit they can spend each month, either on apps, movies, musics, books, etc.

In this post, I will show you how to set up an iTunes allowance so you can send a monthly iTunes Store credit to anyone...

iOS 7: the ultimate App Store guide

The App Store app is the hub used to download additional apps on an iOS device. Out of the box, the iPhone only comes bundled with a handful of stock apps. The App Store app allows you to choose from hundreds of thousands of apps to download on to your device.

Apps can be anything from productivity tools, to games, to periodicals. There is a wealth of apps available to download in the App Store, and while some may come at a price, many of them are free.

It's good to become familiar with the App Store's features, because this is the only place where you can download additional software on a stock iOS device. Check inside as we journey through a detailed explanation of the App Store.

The best apps for learning music

I’ve been actively playing music in a variety of bands for the past 17 years. I taught myself everything I know. I’m far from being an expert or professional, but I can hold my own against other musicians.

I would have loved an iPhone or iPad when I was learning how to play music. I probably would have progressed a lot faster, and might even be more competent than I am now.

For those potential musicians or secret rock stars out there, we’ve got a list of apps that are geared toward learning your instrument. We believe these are some of the best apps for learning music. Have a look at our selection and add to it if you think we've missed something...

The best calendar apps for iPhone

Calendar apps are like blue jeans. Everyone has a different idea of what makes them good, and oftentimes, they get more comfortable the more you use them. Especially when you haven’t washed them for a week. Different types of people have different needs from their calendar. Some want a simple design with very little clutter. Others want a productivity workhorse that will offer a wide variety of features.

Whether you know what kind of calendar app you prefer or not, we've done some research to track down the best in this category. We came up with a list of what we believe are the best calendar apps for iPhone. No matter what you're looking for in a calendar app, we think these are just the right fit for the wide variety of readers we have at iDB…

iOS 7: the ultimate Mail app guide

The stock Mail app is the best way to send, receive, and manage email on iOS 7. There are, of course, alternatives to the stock Mail app such as the official Gmail app and Yahoo Mail app, but no third-party app can match the feature-set and integration of the stock Mail application.

One of the primary advantages of the stock Mail app is that it can handle multiple mail accounts from a large variety of providers. There's support for Gmail, Yahoo mail, Outlook.com, Exchange, Aol Mail, and iCloud mail. You can even configure an email account from your own server if you wish to do so.

The Mail app is an extremely versatile app with an insane amount of options, features, and idiosyncrasies. Have a look at our ultimate guide to the stock Mail app for more info on what makes it tick

iOS 7: The ultimate Music app guide

The Music app is a stock application that comes preinstalled on all iOS devices. It's the primary way for playing music on the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. With iOS 7.0, a new feature was baked into the stock Music app called iTunes Radio. iTunes Radio is an ad-supported service that allows users to browse more than 250 curated stations. Users can also create and build their own stations, which feature Pandora-like customization over time.

The stock Music app has endured significant changes over the past few years. The Music app was once exclusively relegated to the iPod touch, with iPhone models offering an "iPod" app as a means to play music and watch videos. Eventually, with the advent of iOS 5, the iPod app was broken-up into separate Music and Video apps for the iPhone line, unifying the stock Music app presence across all iOS hardware.

While there are many ways to play music via third-party apps on iOS, the stock Music app is the only music application that's closely integrated with iTunes and allows you to use the iTunes Match iCloud-hosting service. There may be benefits to other apps like Spotify, but no app is as tightly intertwined with the rest of iOS as the stock Music app. With that in mind, please take a look inside, as we break down the many facets of this ever-growing and ever-changing stock application.

How to export one, multiple, or all your Mac contacts

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Whether you want to share a contact card with someone or backup all your Mac contacts to your computer, there is an easy way to go at it. It's actually much easier to do that on your Mac than it is on your iPhone, as you'll be able to tell.

In this post, we will show you various ways to share a contact card with someone and export your contacts directly to your Mac, so you can use them as a backup or simply share them with someone.

How to remove geolocation data from iPhone photos

iPhone photo with geolocation

We recently published an article showing you how to view the metadata of iPhone photos, including EXIF data and GPS data. Being able to view the metadata of your iPhone photos is great, but being able to delete that metadata, and maybe more importantly, deleting geolocation tags from these photos, can actually be even more helpful.

iOS 7: The ultimate Notification Center guide

Notification Center first appeared in iOS 5 as a way of receiving and accessing notifications from anywhere. It consists of an overlay slide down menu interface, banner notifications, and other types of alerts. Prior to iOS 5, notifications were extremely intrusive and clunky. Notification Center solved many of the issues stemming from receiving notifications on iOS.

Over the past two iOS iterations, Notification Center has been streamlined and improved. iOS 7 brought about several new changes to Notification Center, including the new Today View, which provides users with an overview of the pertinent appointments, stock prices, and even driving alerts.

Needless to day, Notification Center has evolved into a significant feature in iOS with many moving parts. To assist you, we’ve created this ultimate Notification Center guide in order to help you understand how to benefit most from this handy feature.

How to send group text messages on iPhone

iPhone group text message

We all know how to send an SMS or iMessage to a group of friends: open up the Messages application and type in the name of the contacts you want to include in this group message. This is fine if you want to send a text message to just a handful of contacts, but what if you want to send a message to 25 contacts, for example? Adding each of them to the group chat could be a time-consuming process.

As always, the App Store can provide a solution to this problem. We will show you how to text message a group of contacts on your iPhone in a quick and efficient manner. To do so, we'll be using our application called Contact Groups, an app we developed ourselves. There are other applications that can streamline your group messaging, but we'll be using Contact Groups as it is a free alternative that works really well for what we want to accomplish.

Siri guide: everything you should know about Siri

Siri is a personal assistant feature found on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, that allows you to use your voice to control your device. You can use Siri to send messages, emails, tweets, and more. You can also use Siri to get movie showtimes, sports scores and times, make dinner reservations, etc.

The great thing about Siri is that it doesn't require you to look at your device's screen in order to interface with it. And Siri is smart enough to consider your location along with the context of your commands and conversations. By doing so, Siri can respond intelligently to your requests.

Inside, we'll teach you some of the history of Siri and show you some of its basic usage features. We'll then present to you with an exhaustive list of voice commands, and discuss Siri's dictation features. Check inside for all of the details...