This is a summary of the most popular news stories published on iDB this past week.
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Top 10 iPhone & iPad News You Might Have Missed This Week
Month: November 2011
iTunes 10.5.1 Beta 3 With iTunes Match Seeded to Developers
Admittedly, we were expecting a final version of iTunes with iTunes Match to hit the scene any day now, but it looks like Apple is still squashing some remaining bugs.
In other words, iTunes 10.5.1 Beta 3 with iTunes Match was just seeded to developers a few minutes ago. We've installed it, and we can report that the overall experience is much faster than previous betas...
Another iPhone Wallet-Case Combo With Aerodynamic Flair
With the holidays just around the corner, expect to start seeing an onslaught of iPhone accessories. Apple is entering the 4th quarter of 2011 with more handsets on more carriers than ever before, and manufacturers are looking to cash in.
One of the more popular iPhone accessories we've been seeing as of late is the wallet-case combo. We've seen offerings from TwelveSouth and Waterfield Designs, and now we have one from the popular laptop bag-maker, Timbuk2...
Are New Bugs Joining the iPhone 4S Battery Drain Issues in iOS 5.0.1?
Apple recently released iOS 5.0.1 to the public in an attempt to fix the battery life issues that have been plaguing iPhone 4S owners on iOS 5.0. Prior to releasing 5.0.1 to the public, Apple seeded two developer betas of the software.
While iOS 5.0.1 was intended to fix poor battery performance on particularly the iPhone 4S, Apple released a statement after the fact saying that, "We continue to investigate a few remaining issues." Now, it seems that a new host of bugs have joined the mix for many users on iOS 5.0.1.
Adobe Manager Explains Why Mobile Flash Failed
Last week, Adobe announced that it was going to be discontinuing its work on its mobile Flash player. The news wasn't that surprising, but it seemed to catch a lot of folks off-guard. There was even some confusion regarding the company's decision to end the project.
With that in mind, Adobe's Principal Product Manager for developer relations on the Flash platform, Mike Chambers, took to his blog yesterday. He felt that he needed to clear the air on why Adobe chose to nix the mobile Flash project...
Veterans Day Weekend Brings Massive Game Sales
Veterans Day is a US holiday, celebrated every year on November 11th. It was established to honor our military veterans, and because it's a federal holiday, many people get the day off from work or school. And do you know what else it means? App sales.
Several developers have started slashing prices on their applications in honor of Veterans Day weekend. Companies like EA and Gameloft have deeply discounted some of their biggest gaming titles, with most of them falling to just under a buck...
Ever Wondered How Angry Birds Works? Take a Look at the Math Behind the Madness
Some things just blow our minds here at iDB. One such thing is the lengths some people will go to in order to analyze something that most of us find mildly interesting at best, and the epitome of that is the work WIRED's Rhett Allain has been doing on the Angry Birds games.
Now, don't take that as a sign that we don't think his research is indeed super awesome, because it is. It's just that we're not convinced we find it as awesome as Rhett does. Or, perhaps, we're just not clever enough to get our collective heads around it!
The series of posts that Rhett Allain has been working on delve into the inner workings of Angry Birds, and more importantly, into how we can better understand the game with the aim of flinging birds from catapults. Told you it was awesome...
iPhone 4S Launches to Huge Lines in 15 More Countries Around the World
People in fifteen new countries can now walk into a store and pick up an iPhone 4S, as long as they can find one, that is!
Hong Kong and South Korea are the headline-makers amongst the group of new countries getting their sticky little fingers on Apple's latest and greatest, along with Albania, Armenia, Bulgaria, El Salvador, Greece, Guatemala, Malta, Montenegro, New Zealand, Panama, Poland, Portugal, and Romania.
That list, in addition with the countries already selling the iPhone 4S, makes this the fastest Apple product rollout yet...
WeeSearch Pro: Search Google and Create Custom Search Queries Right From Notification Center
When we used the basic version of WeeSearch, we came a way a little less than impressed. While the pro version of WeeSearch isn't perfect, it's a lot better than its predecessor.
With WeeSearch Pro you can search a variety of built-in search engines. If that doesn't suit your fancy, you can even add your own custom search queries.
The great thing about WeeSearch Pro is that you can do all of this without ever leaving the comfortable confines of iOS 5's Notification Center...
Meet the Man Who Sold Siri to Apple, Dag Kittlaus
Since the iPhone 4S debuted last month at Apple's "Let's Talk" iPhone event, everyone has been talking about one feature: Siri. Apple's digital assistant has become extremely popular, even outside the tech world.
Unlike most inventions that make their way into Apple's iOS products, Siri wasn't made in Cupertino. It was actually acquired in a deal rumored to be worth close to $200 million, making a handful of men instant millionaires. Meet Dag Kittlaus...
The iPhone 5 Prototype Was Apparently Real?
You'll probably remember that before the iPhone 4S was announced, it was pretty much open season on rumors. We had all kinds of them.
If you believed the rumors, we were going to get a new, smaller iPhone with a larger screen. It was going to be thinner, too. It was going to be even more awesome than something that's really awesome, and we were going to need one. Badly.
What we did get was the iPhone 4S, and while we're not saying that's a bad thing, it's no iPhone 5. But was there any truth to some of those iPhone 5 rumors after all? According to one Business Insider source, there may just have been some...
Apple Confirms iOS 5.0.1 May Not Have Fixed All Battery Issues
After months of beta testing, Apple released iOS 5 to the masses on October 12th. The update was one of the biggest ever for Apple's mobile operating system, bringing in over 200 new features. But unfortunately, they didn't come without a price.
Almost immediately after the new software was released, users began complaining of poor battery performance. Apple responded to the complaints with iOS 5.0.1, an update that was supposed to fix the highly-publicized battery bugs...