Year: 2012

Fuzel Pro brings snail mail back in style

Jim Gresham ∙ Updated January 22, 2018

It is the holiday season and, inevitably, you will be snapping lots of photos at the dinner table, the bar, and your favorite aunt Suzi's house. Truly, the best of times and the worst of times are captured digitally and you need to share that giant family portrait everyone loved by the Christmas tree. Aside from the usual, Facebook, Twitter, and everyone's favorite social app to hate, Instagram, you can try sharing photos the old school way, with snail mail. Blending tech and print, Fuzel Pro, App Store Best of 2012, creates picture collages and mails them straight from your iPhone...

New Facebook Poke app now available in the App Store

Cody Lee ∙ Updated January 22, 2018

Facebook is building up quite the app library on Apple's mobile platform. There's the official app, and then there's several subsidiaries like Camera, Pages, and Messenger. And today we're adding another one to the list.

This afternoon, Facebook has announced the release of Facebook Poke, an app that, as you might have guessed, allows you to 'Poke' your friends, by sending them a quick message, photo or video. More details after the fold...

IMDb iPad app updated with new features and look

Cody Lee ∙ Updated November 20, 2017

Great news movie buffs. Popular online film database IMDb has just released a major update to its iPad app, bringing some new features and an all-new design to the tablet software.

You can still use the app to research your favorite actors, watch movie trailers, or look up your favorite TV and film trivia, but version 3.0 lets you do it all in style...

This jailbreak tweak allows you to fake certain statistics on your iPhone

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 14, 2018

I've been known to give jailbreak developers a pass when it comes to developing what many deem as "worthless" tweaks, because I know that there is always someone who will find a tweak to be useful. The latest such item to teeter upon this fine line is Fake iOS 6 About — a jailbreak tweak that allows you to fake statistical information about your device.

If you've ever wanted to pretend that your device could hold a million songs, or that you reside on a carrier not available in your country, then Fake iOS 6 About is the tweak for you. In most cases, many will feel that such a tweak is worthless. I'll be totally honest with you; this time, it's hard not to agree with those sentiments.

WSJ joins Apple’s Newsstand

Christian Zibreg ∙ December 21, 2012

News Corp.-owned Dow Jones' The Wall Street Journal newspaper has finally signed up for Apple's Newsstand, a service that brings subscription-based digital newspapers and magazines to your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad. This means you can now subscribe to WSJ in-app, via iTunes billing, and get daily issues delivered straight to your iOS devices each morning.

You will also get alerts for breaking news and avoid sharing detailed information about yourself with the publisher. The move wasn't entirely unexpected knowing that rival Time Inc., which had been the most prominent holdout, also signed on earlier this year...

‘Download To Newsstand’ makes it easier to identify pending downloads

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 14, 2018

It's always great to open up the App Store and find a dozen new app updates waiting for download, but downloading so many items at once presents a small issue. If you're like me and you have a ton of apps scattered around four or five pages in multiple folders, then it can be tedious to locate each app to check its download progress.

Download To Newsstand is a recently released jailbreak tweak that attempts to address this. It moves all pending downloads into the Newsstand folder for an easy to see centralized location for all pending downloads.

Apple is doomed: iPhone’s US share hits record 53%, Android down to 42%

Ed Sutherland ∙ December 21, 2012

If you skimmed recent headlines, you could think Google's Android was clearly in charge of the smartphone arms race. Yet, there are these pesky indicators that Apple's impending collapse ranks right up there with the Mayan Calendar crazy talk.

However, a new report by a smartphone tracking firm shows Apple has more than half of the US market.

In other words, one out of each two smartphones sold in the country is the iPhone. According to Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, Apple now has captured a cool 53 percent of the market for smartphones in the United States, an increase from 37 percent in 2011. Meanwhile, Android fell to 42 percent, down from 53 percent a year ago. Along with grabbing ten percent from Android, Apple also apparently gained six percent of the market from RIM...

Italy slaps Apple with a $264,000 fine in ongoing AppleCare warranty dispute

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 12, 2018

Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (AGCM), Italy’s antitrust authority, punished Apple over failing to comply with local laws concerning AppleCare warranties, a report Friday noted. After the company had faced a temporary closure of Italy operations and even removed its AppleCare products from all sales channels in the country (except for its online store), the country's regulator nevertheless fined the iPhone maker 200,000 euros, or approximately $264,000. This is in addition to the 900,000 euro (approximately $1.2 million) fine from March over failing to tell customers about their rights to free assistance, as mandated by EU laws...

Jobs family yacht impounded in Amsterdam over a bill dispute with designer

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 26, 2016

French designer Philippe Starck needs no introduction. He's been designing pretty much everything, from houses to consumer products such as tooth brushes and some think he will also revamp Apple Stores. The 63-year-old is also known for his work on a yacht for Apple's late co-founder Steve Jobs, which now belongs to the Jobs family.

But the 80-meter-long mega yacht named "Venus" (after the Roman goddess of love, beauty, sex, fertility, prosperity and victory), revealed by Starck himself last October, has reportedly been impounded in Amsterdam over a payment dispute with the designer...

TSMC CEO insists US chip plant has nothing to do with Apple

Christian Zibreg ∙ December 21, 2012

Apple has lately been rumored to have been moving some production lines to the United States amid whispers of a $10 billion silicon manufacturing facility being considered in the country. Various reports mention both New York and Oregon for this project, code-named Azalea.

And because of its reported $10 billion construction cost, there are some who suspect Project Azalea is a chip-making plant for Apple’s products aimed at replacing Samsung. Remember, the Galaxy maker semiconductor arm's $14 billion Austin, Texas facility exclusively churns out Apple-designed mobile chips that serve as the engine for the iPhone and iPad.

The rumor-mill has been adamant that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world's largest independent semiconductor foundry, will run the upcoming US facility in co-operation with Apple, but now TSMC CEO has issued a somewhat weak denial...

Apple’s strict MFi terms force Kickstarter project to shut down

Cody Lee ∙ December 21, 2012

Back in September, things were going pretty good for the folks at Edison Junior. Their Kickstarter project POP, a portable power station, was a huge success, raising more than $100,000. And they were hoping to start shipping the accessory by early December.

But unfortunately, instead of mailing out POPs to their backers this month, Edison Junior is trying to figure out how to not go broke returning everyone's money. It seems that Apple has rejected their application for a Lightning certificate, forcing them to shut down...

Instagram returns to original ad terms after fallout

Cody Lee ∙ December 21, 2012

Things have been pretty rough for Instagram here lately. Earlier this week, the photo sharing network announced an update for its TOS (or terms of service) that included talk of "advertising" and "your photos." Obviously, this didn't sit well with many of its users, and mayhem ensued.

To stop the wildfire, co-founder Kevin Systrom published a blog post assuring the community it was all a misunderstanding, and that Instagram would be changing the language in its TOS to clear things up. Now its reverted to the original terms to try and get everything back to normal...