Month: September 2012

iPhone 5 personal pickup live after 10pm tonight

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 26, 2016

Strong demand and five million sales (perhaps even more) during the opening weekend continue to put a strain on the initial iPhone 5 supply. If you're in the market for an iPhone 5 and are an avid Apple fan, there's a reasonable chance you'll want to waltz inside one of Cupertino's shiny retail shrines. After all, a new iPhone is a once-in-a-year event so why not treat yourself to that talked-about buying and ownership experience, right?

The problem is, the iPhone 5 is hard to come by at the moment, even as Apple is regularly stocking stores. Luckily, there's now a better way of buying the sought-after device involving a simple online pre-reservation for in-store pickup the following day...

Apple TV gets Shared Photo Streams, new screen savers, iTunes account switching and more

Christian Zibreg ∙ September 24, 2012

Apple today pushed out an update for its Apple TV set-top box. The update is focused on iOS 5.1 build 10A406e and a slew of enhancements and a few new features. Among the things we like in the new Apple TV software (in addition to the obligatory stability and performance fixes) is the ability to easily save multiple iTunes accounts and switch between them, support for Shared Photo Streams and AirPlay broadcasting from Apple TV to other devices...

iPhone 5 support is “coming soon” to Sparrow

Christian Zibreg ∙ September 24, 2012

According to co-founder and developer Dominique Leca, the Sparrow team (now part of Google's Gmail team) is working on a minor update that will enable support for the iPhone 5 and its taller screen. "iPhone 5 support is coming soon to Sparrow", Dominique wrote on Twitter.

Still a big fan and regular user of Sparrow on both the Mac and iOS platform, I sure am pleased that they are continuing to provide at least basic level of support to ensure the program runs smoothly on refreshed devices...

Keyboard shortcuts not working on iOS? Here is a quick fix

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated February 27, 2020

If there is one jailbreak tweak I particularly miss, it's Xpandr, a tweak that let's you create keyboard shortcuts, just like TextExpander does on your Mac. To me, it's an invaluable tool that has saved be hours of typing.

Keyboard shortcuts aren't a jailbreak-only feature though, as they were introduced with iOS 5 a few years ago. Though not as powerful as Xpandr, they're my fallback solution when there is no jailbreak available for my device.

So one of the first thing I did when I got my new iPhone last Friday was setting up a bunch of shortcuts (Apple calls them Text Replacement) that I use on a daily basis. Everything worked fine for a day, and then, they magically stopped working. Though I was worried I'd have to restore my iPhone to fix the issue, it turns out the solution was much simpler than I thought.

That didn’t take long: Passbook for Android lands

Christian Zibreg ∙ September 24, 2012

The brand new Passbook app in iOS 6 is garnering traction in both tech press and the real world with the likes of Starbucks, Target, theme park Accesso, airlines Delta, American Airlines, Virgin Australia and others all announcing they have or are implementing Passbook support.

As Passbook simply organizes digital coupons, tickets, loyalty cards and other items wrapped inside Apple’s new .pkpass file type, developer Attido Mobile was able to create a handy Passbook client for Android devices. It has been available for some time, is called PassWallet, does pretty much everything Apple's app is capable of and could easily be gone if Apple has any say over it...

We’re giving away 10 copies of TwitkaFly

Cody Lee ∙ Updated February 25, 2013

In case you haven't figured it out by now, we love giveaways here at iDB. It's our way of saying thanks to you, our awesome readers, by giving you a chance to win something cool.

For today's giveaway, we're offering up 10 copies of moeseth's popular TwitkaFly jailbreak tweak, which allows you to tweet and reply to Twitter notifications from anywhere in iOS.

Keep reading for details on how to enter...

iPhone 5 initial sales held back by limited supplies

Ed Sutherland ∙ Updated April 10, 2018

Wall Street analysts were busy Monday attempting to explain why Apple's record-setting sales of 5 million iPhone 5 handsets during the weekend was fewer than investors expected. Among the chief reasons offered: there just weren't enough of the new smartphones to meet demand. Despite the disappointment, Apple watchers remained confident the Cupertino, Calif. company still has the Midas Touch.

High-profile analyst Gene Munster told investors Apple's sales figures released earlier today did not include online preorders, which he estimated at around 1 million units. Another potential reason "only" 5 million iPhone 5 were reported sold during the initial launch weekend: Apple was reserving some of its inventory for the smartphone's international launch on Friday...

Light leaks reported on some white iPhone 5 models

Christian Zibreg ∙ September 24, 2012

In addition to discovering aluminum is softer than glass, some iPhone 5 users are now reporting issues with light leaks. It's unclear whether this is a minor manufacturing issue affecting a small portion of users or a widespread problem. People may not even be aware that their device is leaking light as this becomes apparent only in low-light situations and for many it's not even a biggie. Did you spot light leaking out of your iPhone 5?

Swiss Federal Railways to meet with Apple to talk iPad clock design

Christian Zibreg ∙ September 24, 2012

That beautiful clock design in Apple's new iPad Clock app in iOS 6 has evidently been copied from the Swiss Federal Railway service as they are the sole owner of the trademark and copyright of the railway clock. The Swiss firm, as previously reported, got in contact with Apple to talk the trademark dispute. According to a new report, its lawyers might be looking to eventually strike a licensing agreement of sorts with the Cupertino-based iPhone maker...

Apple beats Aston Martin, Google, Bang & Olufsen to rise as UK’s coolest brand

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated November 20, 2017

CoolBrands, an annual initiative to identify the UK's coolest brands annually since 2001, has published the official results for the calendar year 2012. Based on responses from 3,000 consumers and a panel of 39 experts, Apple was voted UK's number one brand. In fact, the Apple brand beat second-ranked YouTube, Aston Martin (#3), Twitter (#4) and Google (#5). Last year, the iPhone and iPod brands were ranked second and third, respectively, as Aston Martin took the leading spot...

Poll: did opening weekend iPhone 5 sales disappoint?

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 11, 2018

You may have heard that the "boring" iPhone 5 sold five million units during its first weekend on availability in nine major markets. Apple also announced that a hundred million iOS devices are now running iOS 6. But even as Apple notes that "we sold out of our initial supply" of iPhones while promising to "regularly" stock retail stores, first-weekend sales came in below the six million units estimated by analyst Gene Munster (ten million was his best case scenario). As a result, Apple's shares are down two percent in pre-market trading, perhaps indicating that Wall Street was expecting Cook & Co. to perform slightly better...

Foxconn closes iPhone 5 plant after mass brawl

Oliver Haslam ∙ September 24, 2012

Apple's relationship with Foxconn is already under scrutiny, but the iPhone maker is set to be posed yet more questions about working conditions after the news that a 2,000 person brawl erupted at one of its factories.

The Taiyuan facility was closed by Foxconn after a fight broke out about an apparently non-work related matter. Reports suggest that things escalated however once guards and factory workers began to fight.

Reports also suggest that around 40 people have been injured as a result of the disturbance...