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.

Apple officially shuts down MobileMe and iWork.com

Apple has officially closed the door on its MobileMe cloud service today. The move comes after a several month-long transition period that allowed users to move their accounts to iCloud and download their remaining files.

As of this morning, the MobileMe site no longer offers users the option to transfer their accounts over to iCloud, or download their remaining data. Instead, MobileMe visitors are redirected to the existing iCloud website...

New report offers more information about Apple-Twitter talks

Last week, news broke that Apple had, at one point, been in talks with Twitter over a massive investment in the social network. The report described the move as a "strategic investment" believed to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Initially, it was believed that these negotiations had taken place in recent months. But a rebuttal by The Wall Street Journal claimed that it's been more than a year since this happened. And today, The WSJ is back with more information...

Martin Scorsese Siri ad gets the parody treatment

Last week, Apple started airing a new Siri commercial featuring the popular film director Martin Scorsese. The ad was the fourth in a string of celebrity spots focused on the digital assistant.

Unsurprisingly, a parody video has just been made to poke fun at the ad. You've seen "The Samuel L. Jackson ad you were hoping for." Now, here's "Scorsese's alternate iPhone commercial..."

Apple’s head mobile chip designer leaves for AMD

Back in June we learned that Bob Mansfield, Apple's Senior Vice President of Hardware, would be retiring. Bob has been a familiar face on Apple's executive team for several years, and an integral part of the success of the iPhone and iPad.

And now it looks like Apple is losing another important piece of its iOS squad. A new report is out today claiming that Jim Keller, Apple's lead chip designer, is leaving the company to take a new position at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD)...

biteSMS updated with new theme options and bug fixes

Those of you who have been around the jailbreak community for a while should be extremely familiar with biteSMS. The Messages app replacement has been around since the early days of iPhone hacking.

The app was updated today, bringing it to version 6.3.10 (or beta 10). The update features some new theming options, as well as several improvements and bug fixes. Full change log after the break...

comScore: iPhone outgrew Android last quarter despite sales slump

Like clockwork, marketing research firm comScore released its quarterly report today on mobile and smartphone marketshare in the US. Today's report covers the three month span between April and June.

The data comes from comScore's intelligent online survey of a "nationally representative sample" of mobile subscribers age 13 and up. Continue reading for the results of last quarter's research...

Apple making several changes to improve customer experience

Apple's chain of retail stores have seen unprecedented success over the past decade. They make more money and see more foot traffic than just about any other store on the planet.

Unfortunately, more foot traffic means longer wait times and other inconveniences for shoppers, which can lead to a poor customer experience. But Apple is looking to change that...

News aggregator Digg gets a makeover, new iPhone app

If you've been around the web for more than a couple of years, chances are you remember Digg. The news aggregation site made social sharing cool long before Facebook or Twitter hit their high notes.

But the last couple of years have been rough for Digg. After seeing a dramatic drop in page views, the site that was once in talks with Google over a $200 million buyout, sold for a measly $500 thousand to the folks at Betaworks.

Enter Digg v1...

iPad newspaper The Daily lays off a third of its staff

We've known for a while now that News Corp.'s made-for-iPad newspaper The Daily was in trouble. Last fall, the paper's audience was estimated to be somewhere in the area of just 100,000 active readers — well short of the 500,000 it needs to break even. Then back in May of this year, word got out that the Daily had been put "on watch" for its poor performance.

Well there must have been some truth to the chatter, as a new report is out today claiming that The Daily just laid off a third of its staff...

FCC tells Verizon to stop blocking tethering apps

This is pretty interesting. Verizon has just reached a settlement with the FCC in their ongoing dispute regarding tethering apps. The carrier will pay out $1.25 million to the US Treasury, and will stop blocking the use of third-party tethering apps.

Unfortunately, the decision only applies to Verizon customers for the time being, as it comes as a stipulation in the carrier's deal to purchase 700 MHz of wireless spectrum from Cox and other cable companies. FCC press release is after the break...

JailbreakCon 2012 schedule: here’s how it’s all going to go down

If you haven't grabbed your tickets for this year's JailbreakCon event, you may want to hurry up and do that. The largest jailbreak-centric convention on the planet is coming to San Francisco, California in just two short months.

The convention is going to be held at the South San Francisco Conference Center, and it already has an impressive list of guest speakers slated to appear. Want to see how it's all going to go down? Here's the 2012 WWJC schedule...

Disable double-height status bars with MonoBar

In the world of jailbreak tweaks, there are some that are really worth getting excited about. These would be tweaks like Dashboard X and Springtomize, that add significant functionality to iOS.

This, however, is not one of those tweaks. MonoBar is just a simple hack that disables the double-height status bar that appears when you're recording a voice note, or in a phone call...