Cody Lee

Cody Lee, iDownloadBlog.com’s longest-serving Editor, joined the site in 2008. He specializes in uncovering the best deals on Apple products, apps, and accessories. With years of experience in technology journalism, Cody helps readers save money while staying informed about the latest trends and updates in the Apple ecosystem. Cody’s history with smartphones goes almost as far back as he does. As the son of a Nokia employee, he was exposed early on to handsets like the N91 and the Communicator. He has since been involved in nearly every aspect of the mobile phone industry. While going to college, he worked at a Nokia factory, building handsets, and later moved on to a sales position at a major wireless carrier.

Major Pinterest update brings push notifications, mentions and more

Say what you will about Pinterest. But with more than 50 million users, and a staggering $2.5 billion valuation, you can't ignore it. It has become a social networking powerhouse, and it doesn't show any signs of slowing down.

With that being said, the company released a major update for its iOS app today. The update, which brings the app to version 2.4, includes a handful of new features and improvements like push notifications, mentions and more...

Perform calculations on the fly with Calculator for Velox

It seems like developers are really enjoying making add-ons for Velox. The jailbreak tweak was released a little over a week ago, and already we've seen several extensions for it like Addial, Compass and App Store.

Today we've got another one for you, called Calculator for Velox. And as you've probably already guessed by now, it provides you with Home screen access to your Calculator app...

App Store for Velox puts app searches a swipe away

Just as we had hoped, developers seem to be really taking their ideas for Velox add-ons and running with them. We've already seen a number of extensions for the popular Spring board jailbreak tweak, including Addial and Compass.

And today, we've got another one to show you called App Store for Velox. As the name implies, the add-on utilizes Velox's enhanced folder feature to allow you to search the App Store for iOS applications from your Home screen...

Twitterrific updated with Droplr, Readability support and more

Good news for Twitterrific users this afternoon. The folks over at the Iconfactory have released an update to their Twitter client, bringing it to version 5.2.2. The update includes a handful of new features, as well as several bug fixes and improvements.

As for the new features, the app now supports the popular bookmarking service Readibility, and Droplr for image uploads. And the long list of improvements includes larger font sizes for the iPad app, more accurate timeline details, and more...

How to bypass the outgoing video size limit in Messages

Have you ever noticed that, by default, you can't send videos from the Messages app longer than three and a half minutes? It's a precautionary thing, so users don't unknowingly eat up their monthly data allotments by sending large clips.

But some folks out there still have unlimited data plans, and would like to be able to send longer videos via a text or iMessage. And for those of you who fall into that category, we've come across a few easy workarounds to that size limit...

ABC to start live streaming content via iOS apps this week

This is kind of interesting. ABC, a TV network under the Walt Disney umbrella, is set to revolutionize its iPhone and iPad apps this week. It's going to be adding a new 'Live' viewing option to the software, which will [obviously] play live programming.

The live stream will work anywhere in a local market—as long as it's supported— the same way an old-fashioned antenna would. And according to The New York Times, this is the first time that a major broadcaster has turned on this kind of technology...

Message Send Percent is a status indicator for your outgoing messages

We try to cover as many new jailbreak tweaks as we can here at iDB, from game-changers like Velox to the smallest of UI changes. And this next one we're going to be talking about definitely falls in the latter category.

Message Send Percent, by developer greensnow, is a simple little UI tweak that adds a percentage indicator to your Messages app. This enables you to get a more precise readout on the progress of your outgoing messages...

iPhone, iPad granted security clearance for Pentagon’s network

It appears that all of that talk regarding iOS devices being close to gaining Pentagon clearance was spot on. Bloomberg is reporting this weekend that the US Department of Defense plans to give Apple security clearance later this week.

As we've discussed before, the DoD's approval would mean a lot for the Cupertino company, who has been trying to get its iPhone and iPad into government buildings, that were once reserved for BlackBerry, for quite some time now...

Kill apps in a single swipe with Slide2Kill

Like Sebastien, I uninstalled the popular jailbreak tweak Auxo earlier this year. Though beautifully designed, the app switcher replacement felt a little too bloated for me, and I was convinced that it made my iPhone slower.

I do miss a few of Auxo's features though, like its revamped iPod controls and the ability to swipe down on an app icon to close it out of the switcher. But luckily, a new tweak just came out that takes care of the latter for me...

Quickly clear your Messages text field with Triple Tap To Clear

Inputting text on the iPhone can be a tedious task. It's not so much the typing. But due to limited display space, editing can be irksome. It seems like doing things such as copying or deleting text are more complicated than they need to be.

Case in point, try typing a lengthy message in your Messages app. Now delete the whole thing. As it stands, the fastest way to do this is to tap on your text, 'Select All' and then delete it. But as with most things in iOS, it could always be faster....

Customize the look of your Home screen icons with Athena

Folks who enjoy customizing their iOS devices, but hate overweight theming apps like WinterBoard, might want to check out Athena. The new jailbreak tweak, developed by SuperDev, allows you to completely change the look of your Home screen icons.

Want dark icons? No problem. Want pink icons? No problem. Athena has a wide array of settings that enable you to change nearly everything about the color attributes of your app icons, providing you with seemingly endless customization options...

Major changes reportedly coming to AppleCare this fall

Apple reportedly held a town hall session with its employees this week to discuss some significant changes coming to its AppleCare warranty service. The new policies are expected to start rolling out in the US 'very soon,' and international shortly after.

So what's going to be different? According to the report, one of the biggest changes has to do with how Apple Store employees handle iPhone repairs. Apparently, staff have been told that they will be doing a lot more in-store repairs, and less exchanges...