Month: January 2013

Steve Jobs’ house burglar gets 7-year sentence

Cody Lee ∙ January 19, 2013

Remember when someone broke into Steve Jobs' home last summer and stole over $60,000 worth of computers and stuff? Well that somebody ended up getting caught (believe it or not, Steve's iPad did him in), was found guilty, and just received his jail sentence.

Kariem McFarlin has just been sentenced to seven years in a California state prison for the robbery, as well as a string of other burglaries in the Bay Area. The 35 year-old was arrested in August of last year, with hundreds of thousands of dollars in stolen property...

‘Bolt’ hides the battery from the status bar, displays simple logo while charging

Mike Schnier ∙ Updated February 25, 2013

You might have noticed that it is uncharacteristically redundant of Apple to have the accurate battery percentage meter beside a graphical representation of the remaining battery life. The interface only needs one or the other, though it's still good to have an indicator on whether the power cord is connected. Personally, my preference is to stick with the percentage meter and ax the logo.

Bolt is an old jailbreak tweak that we neglected to feature when it debuted in 2011. The tweak is a relatively simple MobileSubstrate hack that removes the space-hogging battery icon from the Status Bar, but still displays a small lightning bolt icon while your device is charging...

Pod2g and planetbeing make progress on iOS 6 jailbreak

Cody Lee ∙ January 19, 2013

So here's something we haven't heard in a while: good news on the jailbreak front. It looks like now that pod2g has completed his first iOS app, entitled podDJ, the security expert has turned his attention to hacking iOS 6.

His return alone is great news, since it seems like he's been gone from the community forever. But to add to the excitement, the hacker just announced that he and planetbeing recently discovered two new vulnerabilities...

Bump update allows for swapping Dropbox files

Mike Schnier ∙ Updated January 24, 2016

Bump recently received an update to version 3.5.3, which adds support for sharing Dropbox files. Dropbox support is a long time coming, considering it's been a popular service for storing and sharing files in the cloud since 2008.

All you need to do is open Bump, swipe to the button for sharing Dropbox files, and link your Dropbox account to the app. Once you're done, you'll be able to send Dropbox file links to friends with a bump of your phone...

Samsung’s Galaxy S IV seen building iPhone-like hype

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 10, 2018

The Wall Street Journal published an interesting article today by Evan Ramstad entitled "Hype Builds for Smartphone, but It Isn't an Apple Device." Essentially, the whole piece is about how the commotion surrounding Samsung's upcoming Galaxy S IV handset is reaching iPhone-like proportions.

I didn't agree at first — I've seen leaked photos of Android handsets before, and heard rumors and speculation. But as I started to dig in a little bit I realized that Ramstad was right, there's something different this time around. A lot of people are talking about Samsung's next flagship handset...

Lock Screen Drawer is another iOS 7 toggle concept

Mike Schnier ∙ Updated February 13, 2018

One of the annoying quirks of iOS is there's no way to quickly toggle battery-draining and data-thirsty features and services we like to use selectively. Of course, that's without jailbreaking. Considering BossPrefs (the precursor to SBSettings) was released in 2007, it's about time Apple caught up with the demand for an official quick toggle panel. But how would Apple approach the problem?

Jean-Marc Denis posted one possibility to Dribbble. It's a concept called 'Lock Screen Drawer', which would allow users to access toggles by pulling on a tab under the lock screen clock. Pull the tab, and a small tray slides out. In the concept, the tray is equipped with toggles for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, airplane mode, and hotspot. We'd like to see GPS on the list too, so hopefully there would be a way to customize the toggles...

Create, add, and share beautiful filters for your photos with Digiback

Mike Schnier ∙ Updated March 17, 2019

There is an embarrassment of photography and filter apps on iTunes. If you're not keeping track, Hipstamatic allows users to play with swappable filters disguised as virtual camera equipment, Instagram shares retro-filtered photos to a community, while Snapseed gives mobile users fine control of photo editing on the go. That barely scratches the surface of iPhoneography. In a flooded marketplace, what else can an iOS photography app allow users to do?

Digiback is a recently released photography app that allows users to not only share pictures they've taken, but to also share their custom filters with other users. Not only can users create impressive photography effects for their own use, you can also share these effects with others, and then benefit from effects created by Digiback's community...

Volume production of Apple silicon looms as TSMC’s 2013 wafer shipments triple

Christian Zibreg ∙ January 18, 2013

Following up on talk that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is prepping to manufacture Apple’s A6X processor and whispers of Tim Cook & Co. negotiating a deal with the foundry to make mobile chips for iOS devices on its 20 nanometer process technology, China Times now quotes Chairman and CEO Morris Chang's words that TSMC is close to achieving a hundred percent market share on its 28nm process technology.

But why have TSCM's wafer shipments all of a sudden tripled, allowing it to achieve a virtual monopoly on the 28nm silicon? That's where the Apple link comes into full view...

Former Color employee gives behind-the-scenes look at Apple’s Lala acquisition

Cody Lee ∙ Updated January 26, 2016

This is probably one of the more interesting Steve Jobs-Apple anecdotes I've heard in a while. It comes from Aubrey Johnson, a former Color employee, who gives us a behind-the-scenes look at Apple's acquisitions of two startups: Lala and Color.

Apple purchased Lala, a streaming music company, back in late 2009, and it just completed its buyout of Color. And outside of the fact that both startups were founded by Bill Nguyen, not much else was really known about the two deals. Until now...

Caption contest: Jony Ive at Silicon Valley’s all-star pizza dinner

Christian Zibreg ∙ January 18, 2013

This photo is gold. Twelve of the most important people in Silicon Valley gathered for a dinner tonight, hosted by Nextdoor CEO and longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur Nirav Tolia.

In attendance was Apple's design guru Jonathan Ive alongside a few other Silicon Valley celebrities.

Most notably, these include Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, Google X director Mike Cassidy, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and CEOs of Yelp, Dropbox ("you're just a feature") and Path. Ive is just behind Yahoo's Marissa on the right.

Such a rare photo-op, and with an informal Jony Ive as a bonus? Priceless. At any rate, it's nice to see the world's most acclaimed industrial designer hanging out with Silicon Valley's most influential entrepreneurs, even if he doesn't look like he's having much fun. Perhaps you could write your own caption?

DataMan Next tracks your cellular data usage in a very elegant way

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated January 22, 2018

I didn't care much about cellular data tracking apps until I gave up my unlimited data plan, a couple months ago. Then all the sudden it became important to me to figure out how much data I was using and make sure I didn't go over my allocated amount. My wife and I share 4GB, and although we've historically never been close to using all of that, I like to keep an eye on my usage, just to feel safe.

So I downloaded the DataMan app, which has served its purpose wonderfully ever since as it provided me with real time data usage. One thing always bothered me about this app though: it just looked bad.

But this morning, I received an email from Johnny Ixe, the developer of DataMan, letting me know about his new app called DataMan Next. It serves the exact same purpose as DataMan, except it looks much better. I'd actually go as fasr as saying it looks beautiful, but you might want to see for yourself...