Year: 2012

Happy fifth birthday, iPhone!

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated March 18, 2016

"An iPod... A phone... And an Internet communicator," Steve Jobs quipped as a few in the audience broke out into sporadic laughter. Clearly on top of his game, Apple's mercurial chief executive is delivering a career-defining presentation. Behind him, three icons on a giant screen representing a music player, a phone and a Safari browser rotate in sync as each gets a mention.

It is January 2007 and the air is sucked out of the Moscone West building. As Jobs confidently strides on stage, holding the audience in the palm of his hand, MacWorld Expo attendees, journalists attending the CES show in Las Vegas and fans the world over, their eyes glued to news sites, are all beginning to realize that something really, really profound is going down in San Francisco.

Following years of ambiguous denials and many, many, many months of rampant speculation, Apple - a Cupertino, California-based Macintosh and iPod creator - is about to tell the world it would revolutionize the phone...

Make Chrome your default browser in iOS with BrowserChooser

Cody Lee ∙ Updated February 25, 2013

So that didn't take long. It hasn't been 12 hours since Chrome popped up in the App Store, and there's already a jailbreak tweak available that allows you to make it the default browser in iOS.

BrowserChooser comes courtesy of jailbreak developer Ryan Petrich. And if you're a fan of Google's mobile browser, you're going to want to download this package as soon as possible...

All hundred Atari’s Greatest Hits games are free for the next six hours

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 10, 2018

As part of Atari's 40th birthday, the publisher just announced an interesting promotion that lets you grab all of its classic game ports for the iPhone and iPad totally free of charge.

The Atari's Greatest Hits app has always been a free download, but each of a hundred Atari 2600 and arcade games found in this collection is normally a paid download through in-app purchases (except Missile Command).

You don't want to pass on this one, but there are some caveats you should know about...

Apple’s SVP of Hardware Bob Mansfield is retiring

Cody Lee ∙ June 28, 2012

We don't typically cover employee departures at Apple, but in this case, we figured it was definitely worth mentioning. Apple has announced this afternoon that its vice president of Mac and iOS hardware, Bob Mansfield, is retiring...

Verizon launches Share Everything plans

Cody Lee ∙ Updated May 30, 2017

As expected, Verizon launched its new Share Everything plans today. The plans feature unlimited voice minutes, unlimited text messaging, and various data allotments.

Current subscribers will be able to hold on to their legacy plans (for the time being). But new customers will be forced to choose from one of these new shared options...

Google Chrome vs Safari speed test on iPhone

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated August 30, 2023

It's funny to hear so many reports about how much slower than Safari Google Chrome will inevitably be, due to its lack of access to the Nitro Javascript engine. While that may be true from a technical standpoint, and no doubt data heads will be able to show me numbers that back that fact up, in real world usage, such stats tend to be tossed to the sidelines.

I'm not going to claim that the following speed test is anything close to scientific, but it will give you a decent idea as to what to expect from Google Chrome.

So, who won our speed test? Check inside for the details...

AT&T asked RIM to make an iPhone competitor back in 2010

Cody Lee ∙ June 28, 2012

There's a new report out today that claims that back in 2010, AT&T went to BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion, and asked them to create a touch-screen iPhone competitor.

This is interesting for a couple of reasons. But perhaps the most important one is the fact that back in 2010, AT&T was still Apple's exclusive iPhone partner here in the U.S...

Google Chrome now available for the iPhone and iPad

Jeff Benjamin ∙ June 28, 2012

Well, that's a headline that's been a long time in the making. Google Chrome is now officially available on some App Stores — including the US App Store.

You can download Google Chrome here.

Google Chrome for iOS is a universal app for the iPhone and the iPad, and both versions cater to each device's form factor. As a Chrome desktop user, the biggest highlight for me is the ability to sync bookmarks and tabs between all devices...

Google Now pitted against Siri in voice assistant face-off

Cody Lee ∙ Updated March 19, 2019

Google announced a lot of shiny new things yesterday during its mid-morning media event. Among those, was the next version of Android OS with a built-in voice assistant.

The company's Google Now voice commander is the latest in what's becoming a long line of "Siri competitors." But it looks like this one might actually be up to the task...

Google Drive is now available for iOS

Jeff Benjamin ∙ June 28, 2012

Google Drive — the Cloud storage solution much in the same vein as Dropbox — will be making its way to iOS today. It joins Google's Chrome browser as the second Google developed offering to hit the rival iOS platform.

Back in April we covered the official launch of Google Drive, but at the time, the service lacked an iOS app.

All of that should change by the end of the day today, as Google Drive is slated to release some time today.

Google Chrome coming to iOS today

Jeff Benjamin ∙ June 28, 2012

After many rumors, and much speculation, Google has confirmed that their popular Chrome browser is indeed iOS bound at day two of the Google I/O developers conference. When will we see Chrome come to iOS? Today.

Google Chrome has been developed to support both the iPhone/iPod touch and the iPad. This means that all of your bookmarks and other information synced to your Google ID should automatically be available once your sign into Chrome on iOS.

For Chrome desktop users, this means that our desktop and mobile browsing experiences may finally be in sync with one another. Needless to say, as an avid Chrome user, I'm totally pumped for this.