Month: February 2013

Mailbox review: an email app that thinks different

Email on iOS is a mess, or that's at least what many app developers with the next big thing want us to believe. For me, it's not just that email is a mess on iOS, it's that email is a mess in general, regardless of the platform.

My philosophy has always been to just manage the email situation well enough, so that I'm not overtaken by its voracious appetite for more of my time. I've never been a so-called "inbox zero" ninja, and never really thought I was capable of doing so...until now.

Indeed, I was fortunate enough to get in a bit early on the Mailbox waiting list. The question is, if you're still waiting, is your pining over access to the app warranted, or will your wait turn into fermented disappointment? Full review, inside.

Bloomberg: Apple has 100 product designers working on wristwatch-like device

Over the weekend, we heard reports from two major news outlets—both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal— that Apple is working on a smartwatch. It's said to feature a curved glass display and run a version of iOS.

Like clockwork, Bloomberg has chimed in with its own 'iWatch' report this afternoon. The site says that two sources inside the company have confirmed that Apple indeed has an enormous team working on a wristwatch-like device...

3 steps to protect your iOS 6 jailbreak

When you consider the amount of hard work that went into providing the public with an iOS 6 jailbreak, and how long it took for that solution to come to fruition, protecting the jailbreak is of paramount concern. Recently BigBoss added a section to each page of its highly visible repo addressing the concern, that's how important it is.

There are some basic fundamental steps that you should take for the sake of preserving your device's iOS 6 jailbreak. That's simply because, as you know, you never know how long it will take for the next jailbreak to come around. Once Apple inevitably addresses the exploits used in the evasi0n untethered jailbreak, chances are we'll have to wait deep into iOS 7's lifecycle before we get another jailbreak, if we do at all.

So again, it's of real concern for those of you who love your jailbroken device, to read the following 3 tips and strategies, and implement them.

Highlights from Tim Cook’s Goldman Sachs talk

As announced yesterday, Apple CEO Tim Cook is speaking at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Interactive Conference in San Francisco. Right on schedule, he began discussing topics of interest at 7.15am Pacific, 10:15am Eastern time, just after the markets open. Originally scheduled at 4:15pm Eastern, Cook's segment was shifted so he could be whisked more than 2,000 miles to Washington DC to sit beside Michelle Obama for the President's State of the Union address.

Apple is streaming its chief executive's remarks live on its Investor web site and should post the full audio shortly after the event. If you don't have the time to sit through the whole thing, we've got you covered with the most interesting bits and pieces from Cooks' presentation...

Flex patch highlight: 5 essential enhancements to iOS

As we've mentioned in the past, Flex is basically a Game Genie for the iPhone. While Flex can't create new content, it can nullify lines of code, override return values, and mess with variable return values. These can be used to prevent jailbreak detection, enable hidden features, hide interface elements in apps, and even, as you may expect, cheat in games.

Flex is a very versatile tool with a near limitless number of potential uses, so today we're going to highlight 5 general purpose Flex patches for iOS...

Forget the iWatch, Apple is researching iHuman – a wearable computer

Have you followed the talk of a possible iWatch from Apple, an all-glass iOS device supposedly putting a smartphone on your wrist? That would be small potatoes compared to a whole network of sensors turning your body into a walking, talking Apple device.

In an 84-page filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the iPhone and iPad maker describes what it calls a "Personal items network." Covering you head-to-toe, sensors would detect movement, temperature - even track how fast your heart beat when watching certain television shows, according to a Tuesday report...

New app streams Pokemon episodes for free

If you're a fan of Pokemon TV, a Nintendo-owned Japanese media franchise, there's a new app in town which lets you stream up to fifty different Pokemom television movies and even related movies, free of charge, no strings attached. That ain't some unofficial hack: the Pokemon TV app comes straight from Pokemon, the company.

You can stream Pokemon TV shows to your iPhone or iPad from the 700+ episode strong library, access special features, watch trailers for upcoming Pokémon movie events and more...

New tweak allows all Notification Center notifications to be sent to Pebble watch

A new jailbreak tweak has recently surfaced that will be of surefire interest to Pebble watch owners. The tweak is called BTNotificationEnabler, and it's created by Conrad Kramer, the same developer behind tweaks such as Graviboard, Gesturizer, etc.

The description for BTNotificationEnabler promises that you'll never miss a notification again. That's thanks, largely in part to its ability to send all Notification Center notifications to a Bluetooth device. The Pebble watch, obviously, is one of the first things that comes to mind. A jailbroken iPhone running iOS 6, mated with a Pebble watch just got a whole lot more interesting.

A&E Networks brings its top TV shows to the iPhone for free

Great news for all of you Duck Dynasty and Pawn Stars fans, you can now watch your favorite TV shows on your iPhone and iPod touch. A+E networks has updated 3 of its iOS apps today with full-length episodes and movies.

A&E, HISTORY and Lifetime apps all now each support the streaming of their top programming—including hit shows like Storage Wars and Pawn Stars —as well as iCloud sync, so you can always pick up where you left off....

iWatch, iTV: an $80 billion opportunity

The iWatch, a rumored Apple smart watch, and the iTV, a rumored standalone Apple TV set, may be just vapourware for the time being, but that's not stopping analysts from guesstimating what the two gadgets might contribute to Apple's bottom line.

Per analyst Katy Huberty, assuming annual sales of 50 million units and an average selling price between $200 and $300, the iWatch could drive an incremental $10 to $15 billion in revenue, or $2.50 to $4.00 in per-share earnings, each year. Dick Tracey's futuristic wrist watch has nothing on it...

Intel VP confirms it’s working on new set-top box and TV service

If Apple is really planning on revolutionizing the TV business, it may want to hurry up and do so before Intel beats it to the punch. Confirming rumors from earlier this year, the company's Media VP Erik Huggers said today that it's working on a set-top box.

But that's not all. In addition to the new hardware, Huggers says that Intel is also working with 'the entire industry' to bring a new Internet TV service—an all-in-one solution that will incorporate live TV, catch-up TV and on-demand TV—to the market...

Microsoft details band-aid fixes for iOS 6.1 Exchange bug

Apple yesterday fixed 3G and reliability issues with the iOS 6.1.1 firmware update for iPhone 4S users, but a bug with Microsoft's Exchange email service persists. First noticed in the iOS 6.1 software update, it kills your battery and AOL thought it was sever enough to temporarily disable the ability to manage meetings on company-issued devices. Theories abound that an Exchange server glitch is causing poor device performance and battery life and Microsoft just issued a support document providing workarounds for the bug...