Month: February 2013

iTap: Keep your iPhone power on tap

There's nothing more boring than an iPhone wall charger. It's a plug, and it charges things when a USB cable is attached to it. That's about as glamorous as it gets. Until now.

Meet iTap, the latest and greatest thing in the world of charging. It quite literally keeps electricity on tap. Well, not a real tap. That would just be silly! The photo above should be able to sell the idea of the iTap much more successfully than any text we can put together, it is a tap plugged into a wall after all...

LG saw 90% drop in iPad panel shipments in January

A new report out of China claims that LG Display saw shipments of its 9.7-inch iPad display panels drop 90% in January, from 6 million units in December all the way down to 600,000. The drop-off is said to be a main factor in LG's poor performance in the month.

The reason for the order cuts? Well according to supply chain sources, it's a combination of a few things including the fact that January was the first post-holiday month, the growing popularity of the iPad mini, and a general shift in the market to lower-priced tablets...

Angry Birds Toons premiering March 16

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5px1IbyAjw

Determined to milk the Angry Birds franchise for all its worth, Finnish developer Rovio is bringing the birds and the pesky pigs to the world of animation with Angry Birds Toons, an all-new animated series premiering on the weekend of March 16 and 17. The animated shorts take place on the Piggy Island and invite fans to get up close and personal with their favorite characters. Rovio says it will air a brand new episode featuring the latest adventures of the birds and pigs every week starting the weekend of March 16...

Staples US web store starts selling Apple accessories

After test page ads for an Apple TV and other Apple gear appeared on Staples’ United States web store, and following hints Staples execs dropped which pointed to the retailer partnering with Apple on carrying various products in its Stateside locations, the new Apple-focused mini-store has gone live over at the Staples web store.

The company is offering a range of iPad, iPod, iPhone and Mac accessories and peripherals, including mice, keyboards, Apple's Smart Covers, the $99 Apple TV set-top box, as well as Airport Express, Airport Extreme and Time Capsule wireless appliances...

HTC targets iPhone users with new data migration software

If you're HTC, I'd imagine you'd try anything at this point to drum up buyers for your new flagship handset. After suffering steep losses over the last several quarters, the Taiwanese electronics giant desperately needs the HTC One to be a hit.

And it's latest effort isn't a half-bad one. In an attempt to make it easier for iPhone users to make the switch to the One, HTC has enabled it to extract data from backup files. This will allow for automatic transfers of photos, videos and more...

PlanetBeing: evasi0n jailbreak likely killed in upcoming iOS 6.1.3 update

We knew that the fun wouldn't last forever, and it looks like the vulnerabilities used for the evasi0n jailbreak will be fixed in an upcoming iOS update. PlanetBeing, one of the founding members of the evad3rs team that brought us the long awaited iOS 6.x untethered jailbreak, reports that Apple has patched one of the five exploits that evasi0n uses to accomplish the jailbreak.

PlanetBeing, known as David Wang among close associates, briefly sat down with Forbes writer Andy Greenberg, and confirmed what everyone knew was inevitable. The evasi0n jailbreak will most likely be patched in iOS 6.1.3.

Another iOS 6.1 trick to bypass the Lock screen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKOj0GMf810#at=49

So what's up with Apple and the iPhone's Lock screen? I mean, the various Lock screen vulnerabilities have persisted in iOS since the first passcode flaw was discovered in iOS 2.0 - and that was way back in July of 2008. And now, in addition to a simple passcode bypass trick a YouTube user detailed on Valentine's Day, another method of circumventing the Lock screen passcode has been discovered and highlighted in a video above...

Samsung confirms March 14 Galaxy S IV event

The South Korean conglomerate Samsung has confirmed that a major media event will take place on March 14 in New York, about two weeks after the currently-running 2013 Mobile World Congress wraps up in Barcelona, Spain. The company confirmed to Reuters that the press conference is a launchpad for a Galaxy S III successor, the Galaxy S IV.

Samsung Monday morning sent out invites to select members of the press to "come and meet" the next Galaxy at the March 14 Unpacked event. The somewhat reliable Jefferies analyst Peter Misek estimates Samsung's enormous build plan calls for a hundred million Galaxy S IV shipments from a March-April launch until the end of the year...

$149 MYO armband brings wearable gesture control to Macs and iDevices

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWu9TFJjHaM

Here's an accessory that looks like something straight out of a James Bond movie, or Minority Report for that matter. A company called Thalmic Labs has just launched a sci-fi gesture control for Mac and Windows PCs via its new armband called MYO. Connecting to your desktop or mobile device via low-power Bluetooth, the $149 gizmo detects the electrical activity produced by your muscles, translating finger and hand movement into user interface interactions, Kinect style.

For example, you could use a circular hand motion to control the volume of iTunes playback, scroll up and down a web page by lifting or lowering your hand, switch between running tasks by swiping to the left and right with two fingers and more. What's best, the MYO is a standalone accessory in that it doesn’t require a camera to interpret the user's gestures. The video certainly looks promising...

Apple orders Retina iPad mini screens from Japan Display and LG Display

Apple, according to a new supply chain report out of Asia, has placed orders with LG Display and Japan Display for high-resolution Retina screens for a second-generation iPad mini. Japan Display is a merger of the mobile display operations of Sony, Hitachi and Toshiba, in conjunction with the Innovation Network Corporation of Japan. Now, LG Display and AU Optronics both currently supply 1,024-by-768 panels for the iPad mini, and iDB last week heard the latter has already started mass producing Retina panels for the second-generation iPad mini.

With LG Display and Japan Display now reportedly having been added to the mix - and with leaks like this purported back shell - all signs point to Apple lining up its suppliers ahead of manufacturing, usually a tell-tale sign that the official announcement is around the corner. And if the iPad mini 2 is in fact looming, we're probably looking at a summer launch at WWDC...

Meet Apple TV’s newest competitor, the Samsung HomeSync

As you've probably noticed by now, we're huge fans of the Apple TV here at iDB. Apple's set-top box is inexpensive, easy-to-use, and it integrates perfectly with our iOS devices. Plus, older versions of it can be jailbroken.

The device has been doing remarkably well for Apple, despite the fact that it has several competitors. But we'll see if that hot streak can continue now that Samsung's throwing its hat in the ring with its new HomeSync...

A simple Lock screen that displays the local weather forecast

The iPhone Lock screen has not changed since 2007 and it is certainly boring, even outdated. Everyone loves a good Lock screen and we wanted to give a quick how-to for a simple tweak. Getting things looking fresh on your iPhone can be a jumbled mess while plowing through Cydia, looking for the right packages. A few days ago we had users submit their favorite Lock screens, screen shots, and tweaks, which led to this post. While this initial posting is simple, we hope it inspires you to construct your own beautiful Lock screens...