Year: 2012

Is the end of the iFactory Girl upon us?

Christian Zibreg ∙ July 16, 2012

Despite ongoing criticism of poor labor conditions at its factories (sometimes likened to sweatshops), especially following The New York Times' iEconomy series, the world's largest assembler of electronics Foxconn could still be interested in replacing some of its one million low-wage workers with advanced industrial robots. Such an unprecedented switch wouldn't be without pitfalls. Robots promise to make gadget manufacturing faster, way more reliable and potentially cheaper, but also render a ton of human workers obsolete in the process...

RedSn0w updated with support for iOS 6 beta 3

Cody Lee ∙ Updated February 25, 2013

The Dev Team released an update to the beta version of its popular RedSn0w jailbreak tool this afternoon, with support for the latest iOS 6 firmware.

Earlier today, Apple seeded iOS 6 beta 3 to developers. And for those of you that updated, you can now jailbreak with RedSn0w version 0.9.13dev3...

AT&T preparing to launch shared data plans

Cody Lee ∙ Updated March 19, 2019

Once Verizon announced its new 'shared data plan' strategy, we knew that it was only a matter of time before AT&T followed suit. As the two largest carriers in the US, the companies often take queues from one another.

AT&T's CEO all-but-confirmed the carrier's switch to shared data back in May of this year, but wouldn't give any specifics on a launch date. It can't be too far off though, as some users are already seeing the new plans...

Thoughts: iPad mini could be big with women

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated March 18, 2016

We told you yesterday that The New York Times joined The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg in backing the rumor calling for a smaller, cheaper iPad, affectionately dubbed by the media the iPad mini. But the smaller $249-$299 iPad wouldn't just give Google's $199 Nexus 7 tablet a run for its money, it might strike a chord with women similarly to how the first iPod mini music player with its five attractive colors (silver, gold, pink, blue and green) had become big with female buyers...

European carriers stocking up on nano-SIMs ahead of new iPhone launch

Cody Lee ∙ July 16, 2012

Last month, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (or ETSI) gave Apple's nano-SIM card proposal the green light. The new card offers the same functionality as current SIM cards, but take up significantly less space.

According to a new report this afternoon, European carriers are expecting Apple to utilize the new card in its upcoming smartphone. And they've already begun stocking up on nano-SIMs in anticipation of an early fall release...

Is Siri’s magic wearing off?

Cody Lee ∙ Updated March 12, 2018

When Apple unveiled Siri last fall, the tech world seemed genuinely excited. Sure, other platforms like Android and Windows Phone already had voice control, but Apple's assistant seemed to be on another level.

Over the next few months, however, that excitement slowly began to wear off. Siri's beta roots started showing with service outages, and a noticeable drop in accuracy. And then the lawsuits started to appear...

How to quickly search iDB on your iPhone from anywhere

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated February 25, 2013

QuickiDB is an upcoming jailbreak tweak that will allow you to search the contents of iDownloadBlog from anywhere. It accomplishes this feat by means of an Activator action that invokes a dialogue box with a simple search field.

With QuickiDB installed, it's easier than ever to search the contents of iDownloadBlog. Now all of your favorite jailbreak apps, tweaks, reviews, and opinions are just a couple of taps away, and you don't even have leave your current activity to do so...

Octopus Keyboard now available on Cydia’s BigBoss repo

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated February 25, 2013

[tube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GCxr6NowXs[/tube]

Octopus Keyboard — the highly anticipated BlackBerry 10 keyboard tweak for jailbroken iOS devices — has finally touched down on the default BigBoss Cydia repo.

Prior to its landing on the BigBoss repo, the developer released the tweak on his own personal repo. You can check out our further analysis of Octopus Keyboard both here, and here.

Although the download is free of charge, be aware of the fact that you must purchase a $4.99 license via PayPal in order to use the tweak. Have you been waiting for Octopus Keyboard to finally appear on the default Cydia repos? If so, are you going to try it?

icloud.com email addresses now available for iCloud mail users

Christian Zibreg ∙ July 16, 2012

As pointed out by MacRumors, Apple today began a long-expected transition from old @me.com email addresses hosted at the discontinued MobileMe service over to new iCloud addresses. People who are signing up for new Apple IDs will automatically get an @icloud.com email address. Those with a @me.com email address will also get a matching iCloud email, provided their devices run the just-released iOS 6 Beta 3...

Samsung widens lead over Apple, sells 50M smartphones in June quarter

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated April 18, 2016

Samsung, the maker of Galaxy smartphones and tablets, has widened its lead over Apple in the second quarter of this year, according to a non-scientific poll conducted by Reuters. It is estimated that Samsung sold 50 million smartphones in the June quarter while Apple is seeing selling 30.5 million iPhones.

Of course, the South Korean conglomerate recently launched the Galaxy S III smartphone, its flagship product backed with an aggressive advertising campaign, while Apple is left to fight with the nine-months-old iPhone 4S as the new iPhone won't arrive until September or October...

Apple seeds iOS 6 Beta 3 to registered developers

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 25, 2016

Apple has just issued a third beta build of iOS 6 to developers. The new software has not yet appeared on Apple’s iOS Developer Center though devices running iOS 6 Beta 2 can update over-the-air (go to Settings > General > Software Update). The update prompt mentions only "bug fixes and improvements" so we're doing some digging as we speak and will update when we find out more...

Jobs’ advice to Yelp CEO: don’t go Google

Christian Zibreg ∙ July 16, 2012

It was one of those classic Jobs moments Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman will never forget. He was in a middle of a conference call with venture capitalists as Steve Jobs called in to offer a word of advice regarding a takeover bid from Google. In hindsight, Jobs wanted Yelp to stay independent as Apple had big plans with iOS 6 Maps and Siri that included Yelp...