Year: 2012

Apple’s Upcoming New York Event to Focus on Education and Textbooks

Alex Heath ∙ Updated January 24, 2016

Following yesterday's report that Apple is planning a relatively low-key media event in New York this month, more sources have weighed in on what the company has planned for its upcoming announcement.

Last night TechCrunch said that Apple's event will focus on publishing and iBooks. Four more sources have corroborated that report this morning, and it looks like Apple is about to enter the textbook space.

Our New Downgrade Page Goes Live

Jeff Benjamin ∙ January 3, 2012

It's been a while since we've updated our downgrade page, so we thought it was time to do so.

Our new downgrade page is an overhauled comprehensive resource for all of your iOS downgrading needs. It now includes video tutorials, along with a section-by-section breakdown for some of the most frequently asked downgrading questions.

Now the question remains: Do you know where to find it? Check inside for the answer...

Whip Your Phone App Into Shape With StartDial

Jeff Benjamin ∙ January 3, 2012

Do you ever get annoyed when you open your Phone app and it doesn't go to the section you were expecting?

With StartDial, that problem is a thing of the past. StartDial allows you to always start at a specific section of your Phone app every time you open it by means of a predefined setting.

It's even smart enough to start at your recents whenever you have missed calls. If you make a lot of phone calls, and your iPhone is jailbroken, check out our hands-on experience with StartDial inside...

LockLauncher: Launch Up to 9 Apps From Your Lock Screen

Jeff Benjamin ∙ January 3, 2012

LockLauncher — not to be confused with, well, LockLauncher — is a jailbreak tweak that allows you to launch up to 9 different apps directly from your lock screen.

Despite its unoriginal name, LockLauncher differs from the previous LockLauncher we reviewed last summer. This version of LockLauncher is both free, and features the ability to launch more apps.

Be sure to check out our video walkthrough to see what it brings to the table...

iOS Finishes 2011 With 52% Share of Mobile Web Browsing

Oliver Haslam ∙ January 2, 2012

Apple's iOS platform finished 2011 with a strong showing in the mobile web browsing department, with iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches combining to capture 52.1% of mobile devices accessing the web.

Apple was top of the list in 2011 with over half of all devices. Jave ME came second with 21.3% share, while Google's Android took third, coming in with a respectable 16.2% share.

The numbers, courtesy of Net Applications, show iOS actually dropping in share when compared to November (54%) and October (61.5%), although December's result was not Apple's lowest of the year...

iPhone 4S and Nokia Lumia 800 Browser Performance Benchmarked [Video]

Oliver Haslam ∙ January 2, 2012

Geeks really like benchmarks — they're one of the best ways to compare hardware speeds, and things are no different in the world of smartphones.

With the aim of comparing the iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, and Nokia's Windows Phone 7-powered Lumia 800, YouTube user 359gsm set about running a selection of web-based benchmarks to see just which of the three phones is the quickest when it comes to rendering web pages.

The iPhone 4S did particularly well in the tests, with the older iPhone 4 more than holding its own, too...

Jailbroken Apple TV App Launcher in Action

Sébastien Page ∙ January 2, 2012

For the last couple of days, we've been talking about how a couple of hackers, including Steven Troughton-Smith, have been working on bringing iOS applications to a jailbroken Apple TV near you.

While they appeared to have a few issues at first, things have been looking up for the group that was able to run apps in fullscreen 720p resolution. It gets even better, as shown in this video by Troughton-Smith...

Apple Planning Media Event in New York This Month

Sébastien Page ∙ January 2, 2012

AllThingsD reports that Apple is planning a media event sometimes this month in New York. Apparently, this event will not be related to the upcoming iPad 3 or even the rumored Apple television.

That leaves some kind of advertising or even publishing announcement, which might be the case, since Apple SVP of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue is reportedly involved.

Cue is in charge of a large swath of Apple’s media units, including the iTunes Store, App Store, iBookstore, as well as iAd and its iCloud services.

What do you think it's going to be about?

pod2g Divulges More Details Behind Corona Exploit

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated October 10, 2018

iOS hacker pod2g has posted a very enlightening synopsis of how he was able to pull off his 5.0.1 untethered exploit. Citing Apple's blocking of the exploit methods used prior to iOS 5, he details the alternative methods used for the 5.0.1 untethered exploit and subsequent jailbreaks.

Apple has fixed all previous known ways of executing unsigned binaries in iOS 5.0. Corona does it another way.

Thus, for Corona, I searched for a way to start unsigned code at boot without using the Mach-O loader. That's why I looked for vulnerabilities in existing Apple binaries that I could call using standard launchd plist mechanisms.

For those of you interested in the low-level workings of the latest untethered jailbreak to hit iOS 5 devices, we highly recommend you check out pod2g's analysis on his blog.

How to Jailbreak Apple TV 4.4.4 Untethered With Seas0nPass

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated January 13, 2012

Now that pod2g's untether exploit has been made public, the benefits are now being felt in our living rooms. That's because the team at FireCore has updated their Seas0nPass Apple TV jailbreak tool to take advantage of the untether exploit.

Now you can enjoy all of the benefits of Apple's latest Apple TV update — which includes AirPlay mirroring — coupled with an untethered jailbreak that allows you to do all sorts of interesting things.

Check inside for the full tutorial...