Year: 2012

Apple rolls out new iPhone, iPad in business websites

When Apple first launched the iPhone back in 2007, it completely ignored the enterprise market. Heck, the handset didn't even get exchange support until mid-2008.

But that's definitely not the case now, as Apple's smartphone has made great strides in enterprise over the last 5 years. And the company continues to push with its new 'iOS in business' websites...

Dropbox improves sharing with direct links to snazzy gallery pages

Dropbox, the popular Cloud storage startup Apple wanted to acquire for a rumored $800 million, rolled out a new feature to enable easy file sharing across mobile and desktop platforms. While it's been possible before to share folders, you can now give people direct links to the stuff in your Dropbox.

It's integrated into the iOS client and across other platforms and basically lets you share files without having to re-upload them.

Clear to-do app updated with shake to undo, secret themes, UI tweaks

Realmac Software’s nice-looking to-do app dubbed Clear has been updated today with new features. It's the first update since the software's debut on the App Store in mid-February.

In addition to the shake-to-undo feature which, in my opinion, makes for a good demo but gets boring fast, Clear 1.1 added additional inspiration quotes while tweaking the interface with new gestures and other nice-to-haves.

The biggest new feature is support for 'secret' user interface themes. How secret? Well, you will need to unlock those to find out...

iCloud boss Eddy Cue: Uncle Sam is lost in agency model

The United States Department of Justice (DoJ), which filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple and five major publishers for alleged price fixing of electronic books sold on the iBookstore, is painfully lost in the intricacies of the so-called agency model exercised on the iBookstore, says Apple's Eddy Cue.

Unlike Amazon which gets to dictate prices, often at the expense of publishers, Apple lets publishers set their own price tags on the iTunes store, opting instead to take its standard 30 percent cut.

Somehow, the government alleges such a practice, which has been widely accepted on iTunes since the dawn of time, is the product of a conspiracy.

Now, Apple had to dispatch its online services boss to set the record straight, saying the government doesn't have a clue...

They poured $250,000 into Instagram, took $78M, but could’ve made way more

Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz had poured a cool quarter million dollars into Instagram back when it was just a small startup called Burbn.

Though it never took off, its photo-sharing component was doing quite well, giving birth to the widely popular Instagram photo-sharing service.

Even though Horowitz never invested in Instagram again, they're poised to walk away with a cool $78 million once the $1 billion deal with Facebook closes.

That's a nice 312 times premium on a $250,000 investment, but they could have made potentially hundreds of millions of dollars if they chose to back Burbn in series-B funding.

Instead, the investors gave cofounding CEO Kevin Systrom back information rights and pro rata rights to the series B, never investing in Instagram again...

Samsung teaser for the upcoming Galaxy SIII likens iPhone users to iSheep

Apple's frenemy Samsung is gearing up for the upcoming Mobile Unpacked 2012 event due May 3 in London. In order to pique interest, the company posted a new YouTube advert teasing its upcoming third-generation Galaxy smartphone.

The device is aimed at stealing the spotlight from Apple's sixth-generation iPhone due later this year. As has been the case with Samsung's advertising as of late, it subtly likens iPhone users to mindless sheep, but doesn't refer them directly.

Instead, the clip wraps up with a line suggesting the Galaxy III smartphone helps one stand out from everyone else, spiced up with an image of sheep. As the iPhone is the iconic handset by the world's top smartphone maker, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out to whom 'everyone else' refers to.

Check out the teaser video right below and tell us what you think...

Gevey releases new Ultra 5.1 SIM interposer for the iPhone 4

We've recently seen some great options surface for unlocking our iPhones. For instance, AT&T recently started unlocking off-contract handsets. And then of course there is the new SAM method that popped up over the weekend.

But the competition hasn't stopped GEVEY from releasing a new SIM interposer. In fact, it's stepping up its game. The new Ultra 5.1 for the GSM iPhone 4 supports more basebands and has more features than ever before...

MotionX Sleep: a sleep cycle alarm clock done right

Do you hate your alarm clock? I certainly did. I have broken many snooze buttons over the years. That's why I'm so excited to have finally found an iPhone app that wakes me up.

MotionX is known for their wonderful navigation apps including MotionX GPS and GPS Drive. MotionX Sleep is their latest addition to their iPhone offerings and unsurprisingly it's a wonderful experience...

How to backup your iPhone’s unlock activation ticket with RedSn0w

Backing up your iPhone's activation ticket was a step suggested by iPhone Dev Team member MuscleNerd. Fortunately for us, his team has made it even easier to perform such a backup using the latest version of RedSn0w.

This step is suggested for those who take part in the recently uncovered SAM iPhone unlock method. If you followed our tutorial to unlock your phone, we suggest you follow through on preserving your activation ticket as well.

Check inside for a full video tutorial that shows how easy it is to successfully backup your iPhone's unlock activation ticket, and any other file that you want to save locally from your iPhone...

RedSn0w 0.9.10b8 released to add unlock activation ticket backup support

It didn't take long for the iPhone Dev Team to release an updated version of RedSn0w to support backing up the precious activation tickets resulting from the SAM unlock.

Instead of having to manually go in and backup your activation tickets, you can use a new option found in RedSn0w instead.

The full download for RedSn0w 0.9.10b8 can be found inside, along with the tool's release notes...

My iPhone 4 was finally unlocked by AT&T

So it took a while, but I can confirm that my iPhone 4 has been officially unlocked by the fine folks at AT&T. It looks like my online chat with the AT&T representative paid off after all.

All I had to do was pop in my T-Mobile SIM and load up iTunes. I was then presented with a beautiful message that stated: Congratulations, your iPhone has been unlocked.

Oddly enough, this unlock has nothing to do with the SAM unlock method that was revealed earlier this morning. This is a follow up to AT&T's promise to unlock out of contract iPhones...