Month: November 2015

A9X teardown showcases Apple’s impressive strides in chip design

Jeff Benjamin ∙ November 28, 2015

The fine folks over at Chipworks have provided the first up close and personal look at the A9X processor found inside of the recently launched iPad Pro. What it uncovered was yet another impressive design job, one that should, again, make Intel take notice.

Not only is the A9X extremely powerful, besting some laptop machines powered by Intel chips, but it's also much bigger than the A9 processors supplied by both Samsung and TSMC that are found in the iPhone 6s.

The Motley Fool recently contacted Chipworks for insight into Apple's newest SoC. What it found was a technical achievement that Apple's designers should be more than proud of.

Amazon allegedly confirms that Instant Video is hitting Apple TV before year-end

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 28, 2019

Online retail giant Amazon is bringing its Instant Video service to the new Apple TV after all. As a quick refresher, Amazon recently pulled both Google’s Chromecast HDMI dongle and Apple’s Apple TV from sale because the two set-top boxes, in Amazon's own words, don’t “interact well” with its video subscription service. Confirmation of a tvOS version of Instant Video was inadvertently leaked by Amazon itself in response to a question on Twitter.

The app should hit the Apple TV App Store by the end of the year.

Puzzle platformer To-Fu Fury is Apple’s new Free App of the Week

Christian Zibreg ∙ November 28, 2015

To-Fu Fury from Amazon Game Studios, regularly $1.99, is available at no charge until next Thursday as Apple's new Free App of the Week via the App Store's weekly promotion.

Released in July 2015, this puzzle platformer challenges you to save the Fortune Kitty playing as To-Fu, a stretchy, sticky, flingy and combative cube of bean-curd. Expect a lot of puzzle solving and physics-based action in this game.

Sidefari, Ubongo, Remember, and more apps to check out this weekend

Lory Gil ∙ Updated March 17, 2019

If you are reading this, then you made it through Thanksgiving and Black Friday. After surviving the biggest shopping day of the year, you deserve a treat. It's time to relax and enjoy an afternoon without the family (unless the family is still visiting).

We've got a list of apps and games that you can treat yourself with this weekend. Treat yourself while you can. Christmas is around the corner and all of your free time and money will be spent on someone else soon enough.

How to fix the ‘Redownload Unavailable’ error in the App Store

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 19, 2018

Let's face it; everyone experiences buyer's remorse from time to time, which results in a change of heart about a purchase. Then there are those occasions when you regret changing your mind about changing your mind. That's what recently happened to me after I requested an App Store refund for an app that I later realized I actually wanted and needed.

Oddly, I encountered a weird error telling me that since I had previously requested a refund for the app, I could no longer purchase it again. That makes no sense. Why would Apple not want to take my money just because I had requested a prior refund?

The error reads "This redownload is not available for this Apple ID either because it was bought by a different user or the item was refunded or cancelled."

Whatever the reason for the error, after searching Google, it's obvious that I'm not the first to encounter this issue. The good news is that fixing the Redownload Unavailable with This Apple ID error is very easy to do...

AnySpot for iOS 9: Search Spotlight from anywhere on your jailbroken iPhone

Jeff Benjamin ∙ November 27, 2015

Unless you happen to have a physical Bluetooth keyboard attached to your iPhone or iPad, you cannot invoke Spotlight on iOS 9 unless you happen to be on the Home screen. AnySpot for iOS 9 aims to change this.

AnySpot lets you assign an Activator gesture to Spotlight so that you can access the search interface from anywhere on your iPhone or iPad, even if you happen to be within an app. If you want Spotlight search to work closer to how it works on the Mac, allowing you to access it from anywhere, then you should consider using AnySpot.

Tatton: a jailbreak tweak that brings a grab bag of special settings to iOS

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 19, 2018

Tatton is a recently released tweak that’s geared towards making your iPhone faster. In fact, the name Tatton itself is Greek for faster, and that’s what this tweak claims to do.

In order to accomplish this feat, Tatton, a free tweak available right now on the BigBoss repo, removes unnecessary features that can slow down iOS’ animations—think blurs and things of that nature. The developer of Tatton says that older devices in particular can benefit from his tweak. Does such a claim ring true?

Rumor: iPhone 7 to lose 3.5mm headphone port in favor of Lightning port

Christian Zibreg ∙ November 27, 2015

Apple's next iPhone will be so thin that the company has decided to ditch the standard 3.5mm headphone port for the first time since the iPhone's 2007 inception, a reasonably accurate Japaese blog, Macotakara, reported Friday.

The move should help Apple's engineers shave off another millimeter of thickness or so, reports the publication, adding that users will instead connect wireless headphones over Bluetooth or compatible wired headphones over the Lightning port.

Nightmode9: a tweak that brings a system-wide dark mode to iOS 9

Jeff Benjamin ∙ November 27, 2015

Using a bright screen in a dark environment isn’t doing any favor to your eyes, and that’s why some apps incorporate a so-called night-mode for dark settings. But night mode features within apps have a big limitation, and that’s that they only work within specific apps.

Wouldn’t it be better if iOS had a true system-wide night mode that worked in apps as well as the iOS interface as a whole? That’s the basic idea behind Nightmode9, a recently released jailbreak tweak that adds tons of user-configurable night mode features to iOS 9.

Apple products among the most popular Black Friday items at Target

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated March 17, 2019

Target, the second-largest discount retailer in the United States behind Walmart, today released a chart listing the most popular products that shoppers were purchasing on Thanksgiving and Black Friday.

The iPads were top sellers in Target's brick-and-mortar and online stores, with the retailer selling an iPad every second throughout the day on Thanksgiving, Forbes reports.

How to delete your Vine account

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated December 20, 2015

I think you'll agree with me that Vine has become quite a phenomenon. A short-form video sharing service owned by Twitter, Vine is the place where many people go to share and watch six-second looping video clips, some of which are quite amusing and engaging.

But if you've watched one too many vines and have decided that you won't be active on the service going forward, it might be a good idea to deactivate your account.

In this post, you'll learn how to deactivate your Vine profile through the mobile app and permanently delete all its underlying data.

PwnTunes for iOS 9: manually manage music via Windows on a jailbroken device

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated June 12, 2018

PwnTunes is a jailbreak tweak that’s been around since the every early days of jailbreaking. If memory serves me correctly, I think it’s been available since the iOS 3 days, which seems like an eternity now that we’re only 7 months or so away from iOS 10.

The basic premise behind PwnTunes is that it affords Windows users drag and drop access to import and export music without iTunes. The tweak is able to accomplish this feat by turning an iPhone into a mass storage device that’s accessible via Windows Explorer.