Month: February 2013

Orchestra’s Mailbox hits the iPhone, download now to reserve your spot

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 22, 2018

Orchestra's anticipated email client aptly named Mailbox has finally hit the App Store, following months of private beta testing. In between Google's slow pace of adding necessary new features to its Gmail iOS client and Sparrow lingering with maintenance updates but no new stuff, Mailbox is Godsent. Not only is it arguably the best-looking iOS email client, Mailbox outsmarts Apple's stock Mail, Gmail and Sparrow with its chat-like approach to email, crisp UI and the cool 'snooze' function...

Cut the Rope ‘Lantern’ box arrives in time for Chinese New Year

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated February 17, 2018

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwziSZJ7gpk

Chinese New Year, also known as Lunar New Year, is the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays. Ahead of the upcoming festivities which come with a seemingly endless stream of colorful lanterns being released in the sky, Cut the Rope maker Zeptolab and UK publisher Chillingo have issued a content update which brings a brand new Lantern box full of - you guessed right - floating paper lanterns. With the 25 new levels, Cut the Rope now has a total of 350 levels spread across fourteen different boxes. Not bad for a 99-cent game...

The Woz: Apple has fallen ‘somewhat behind with features in the smartphone business’

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 7, 2013

One needs not ask Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak twice to comment on Apple's moves. For better or worse, he always makes headlines, sometimes by dissing Siri or the iPhone 4S battery life and other times by firing pot shots at Apple for not building a phablet of its own. Speaking at the Business Week Best Brand Awards yesterday, the Apple employee #1 discussed the iPhone, Samsung and competition.

Though an Apple loyalists, Woz isn't gullible and certainly doesn't shy away from confessing that competition has caught up with Apple. Other vendors did pass the iPhone in certain features and Samsung, he says, is a big competitor now.

In fact, he openly says that the South Korean conglomerate currently makes "great products". But worry not: the top geek loves the company he co-founded and "if Apple made lousy products, I would not be in line". Jump past the fold for other noteworthy quotes and a nice video...

Skype for iPhone gains emergency call redirection, automatic call recovery

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 26, 2016

Following a Skype for iPad update earlier this week that has enabled automatic dropped call recovery, in-app purchase of Skype credits and a minor UI tweak, the Microsoft-owned VoIP provider has pushed out an update to its iPhone and iPod touch client this morning. Borrowing from the latest iPad build, the iPhone version will now automatically reconnect any dropped call.

More importantly emergency calls now get routed through the native dialer, which is interesting knowing most other VoIP apps don't support this feature. A few more tidbits and the full changelog follow after the jump...

FreedomPop confirms LTE iPad clip, launches in H2 2013

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 7, 2013

Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom-backed FreedomPop startup made waves with its Freedom Hub Burst no-contract wireless appliance that serves one gigabyte of free 4G data each month to up to 10 wireless or wired devices simultaneously.

Monday, Forbes reported that FreedomPop could unveil an iPad sleeve with 4G data via Sprint’s LTE network. A new report out today sheds more light on the matter: a FreedomPop LTE clip compatible with iPads is indeed due in the second half of this year. We've got more tidbits right after the break...

Sprint sold record 2.2M iPhones during the holiday quarter

Ed Sutherland ∙ February 7, 2013

U.S. carrier Sprint, the latest wireless provider to offer the Apple iPhone, announced Thursday it sold a record 2.2 million during the holiday fourth-quarter. A total of 6.6 million iPhones were sold for all of 2012, according to the company. Despite complaints of losses due to high subsidies, the iPhone has improved Sprint's ability to attract new customers.

The company said 38 percent of iPhone buyers during the fourth quarter were new subscribers. That's just slightly below the 40 percent of iPhones purchased by new customers throughout the entire year, according to the firm...

Canalys: iPad accounted for 1 in 6 PCs in Q4 2012

Ed Sutherland ∙ February 7, 2013

Apple's iPad mini is doing the job exactly as the company planned: slowing a slipping market share. The 7.9-inch device is working so well one analyst credited it for preventing Apple's fourth-quarter share of the tablet market falling below 49 percent.

Another, even more striking tidbit: the iPad accounted for one-in-six PCs shipped in the fourth quarter of 2012, per research firm Canalys. And if you counted tablets instead of PCs, demand during the fourth quarter would be up twelve percent to 134 million units. Instead, PC shipments fell by five percent in 2012, emphasizing how tablets such as the iPad could recharge a flagging industry...

Apple, Samsung took 103% of 2012 handset profits

Ed Sutherland ∙ Updated January 26, 2016

We have often written how the handset market is essentially a duopoly of operating systems - iOS and Android - as well as brands: Apple and Samsung. Yesterday came even another way the two are dominating the mobile world - profits. Apple and Samsung accounted for 103 percent of handset profits in 2013, a figure made possible by the zero or negative growth by six of the eight leading handset makers. Apple held 69 percent of handset profits earned in all of 2012, more than double that of the South Korean Samsung, which hauled in 34 percent of phone profits last year, according to Canaccord Genuity...

Australia’s Treasury Department the latest to switch from BlackBerry to iPhone

Cody Lee ∙ February 7, 2013

RIM may have a new name, operating system and a pair of devices on the way, but Australia's chief information officer Peter Alexander says that it's almost too little too late. The comments follow a recent announcement that the country's Treasury Department would be trading in their BlackBerry devices for iPhones—a seemingly popular trend lately...

Evasi0n 1.1 released with fixes for Weather and long reboot bugs

Cody Lee ∙ February 6, 2013

Earlier today, the evad3rs uploaded two new packages to Cydia that were built to fix a few bugs found in the latest jailbreak: one that caused the Weather app to crash, and another that caused longer reboot times.

This afternoon, the team has released an update to evasi0n, bringing the utility to version 1.1. And as expected, it includes these bug fixes, so users should no longer encounter them when jailbreaking their devices...

Apple seeds iOS 6.1.1 beta to developers

Cody Lee ∙ February 6, 2013

It's only been a week since Apple released iOS 6.1 to the public, and it's already hard at work on the software's next update. The iPhone-maker has seeded the first beta of iOS 6.1.1 to developers this morning, bringing the build to version 10B311.

It's also worth noting that today's beta arrives just 48 hours after the iOS 6.x evasi0n jailbreak was released. So obviously, those of you who are jailbroken that have access to today's software update will want to avoid it until it's investigated...

iOS discovered to be saving deleted iMessage attachments

Cody Lee ∙ February 6, 2013

This is kind of odd. It's recently been discovered that iOS has been holding on to deleted SMS and iMessage attachments. The software stores all attachments in the Library/SMS/Attachments directory, and when they're erased from Messages, they're supposed to be erased there too.

But as many folks have pointed out, that doesn't seem to be the case. One user in particular, on a quest to determine what the 'Other' category listed in his device storage consisted of, found that the directory contained thousands of sub-folders with images he was sure he had deleted...