iPhone News

JailbreakCon 2014: behind the scene

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated April 16, 2018

As I am trying to write a catchy intro for this post, I can’t help but feel the pressure. I’m feeling the pressure mainly because I wrote a similar piece a couple of years ago when I first attended JailbreakCon. To date, this post is still one of my favorites I have published on iDB. Having set the bar pretty high, this sequel could prove to be like most sequels: uninspired and thrown out there to cash in on a previous success. This is a risk I am willing to take today.

Maybe more importantly, I am feeling the pressure because I don’t want to disappoint readers by writing the same story I wrote a couple years ago. I guess I’m feeling like a musician that is incapable of finding a different sound for his next album, you know, kinda like the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Sometimes it’s good to keep the same sound. Sometimes it gets repetitive and boring. Hopefully, this time will still feel as refreshingly honest as it did the first time, while still entertaining readers, which really is my ultimate goal.

Yes, my goal is not so much to tell you about all the great workshops and talks I attended at JailbreakCon this year. My goal is to share the other side of the story. The side that no one not attending the event would be able to experience if it wasn’t for the words I’m typing on the keyboard right now. Let’s call it the behind the scene story of JailbreakCon.

So this is me, sharing my story of JailbreakCon 2014. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed living it…

Beats Music app updated with new Offline mode, in-app subscriptions and more

Cody Lee ∙ Updated March 20, 2018

Beats Music updated its iPhone client late last night, bringing the app to version 1.0.7. The update brings about a number of improvements, including better Facebook and Twitter account management, a new Find Your Friends feature for locating and following your Facebook friends, and more.

Perhaps the biggest change, though, is that the app now supports in-app subscriptions. This means that users now have the ability to bill their monthly subscription fee directly to their iTunes account. There's also a new Offline listening mode and thousands of new tracks available for The Sentence...

Nike gives up on the FuelBand, making more room for the iWatch

Sébastien Page ∙ April 18, 2014

Nick Statt, reporting for CNET:

Nike is gearing up to shutter its wearable-hardware efforts, and the sportswear company this week fired the majority of the team responsible for the development of its FuelBand fitness tracker, a person familiar with the matter told CNET.

As early as this fall, Nike planned on releasing another iteration of the FuelBand -- an even slimmer version -- but cancelled the project, and it appears to have shelved all future physical product projects under the Digital Sport helm, the person familiar with the matter added.

One might argue it never really made sense for a shoe maker to build hardware. Still, it's an interesting move, at an interesting time, especially when you know Tim Cook is on Nike's board.

Watchout for Unflod, a malware targeting jailbroken devices

Sébastien Page ∙ April 18, 2014

We often praise iOS as a very secure platform, and this is mostly true, as many studies have confirmed over the years. But sometimes, it's not so much the platform that is responsible for the lack of security, it is the user himself.

The perfect illustration of this is when you jailbreak your device. By gaining root access to your iPhone or iPad, you start walking outside of Apple's walled garden and actually put yourself at risk of having untrusted files installed on your device without your knowledge.

As a jailbreaker myself, I am very well aware of the risks, but I do not mind them because the benefits usually far outweigh the drawbacks, and I assume most jailbreak users feel the same.

This being said, a new malware called Unflod has been targeting jailbroken devices for a few weeks. While there is still a lot we don't know about Unflod, the little information we have about it is enough to raise concerns...

ShareLock lets you share photos directly from the Lock screen

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated April 16, 2018

There are a few tweaks that are dear to my heart, mainly because I came up with the concept behind them. SkipLock is one of these tweaks, and ShareLock is another one that was just released on Ryan Petrich's beta repo.

The idea of ShareLock is pretty simple. It lifts the restriction put in place by Apple that prevents you from sharing photos you have taken using the camera grabber on the Lock screen. With ShareLock, you can simply launch the Camera app from the Lock screen grabber, snap a picture, and share it right away...

Disney releases Where’s My Water? Featuring XYY

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 26, 2018

Where's My Water? by Disney Mobile has proven itself a worthy challenger to Rovio's Angry Birds, the famous bird-slinging physics-based puzzler some folks feel has long run its course. For those unfamiliar with Disney's puzzler, it's available across multiple platforms and requires you to route a supply of water to a fastidious alligator.

Following its September 2011 debut, the franchise saw a sequel, Where's My Water 2, released in September 2013 and has inspired two spin-offs to date, one named Where’s My Perry? and the other called Where’s My Mickey?.

Disney has now launched another title in the series, Where’s My Water? Featuring XYY, which takes you on an adventure through medieval China along with the brightest Chinese TV cartoon character, called XYY.

Download it in the App Store for 99 cents and jump past the fold to read more about it...

Facebook updates Paper with photo comments, birthdays, events, group updates and more

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 26, 2018

Following yesterday's release of Facebook 9.0 for the iPhone and iPad with direct comment replies and other improvements, the social networking giant today issued the first major update to its Paper for iPhone application, which was released on February 3.

Paper version 1.1, now available free in the App Store, includes a bunch of useful features that were missing in the initial release.

You can now add photos to comments, get notified about upcoming birthdays and events, follow posts from your favorite groups, choose among the nine new article covers from outlets like Fox News, Bloomberg News, Mashable, FT, kottke, Popular Science, The Hollywood Reporter, Vanity Fair and Hacker News and more...

Samsung-GlobalFoundries deal gives Apple’s chip production greater flexibility

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 12, 2018

As Apple continues to move anything it can away from Samsung as a result of heightened competition, fierce rivalry and an ugly patent spat between the two technology giants, Samsung seems to be doing the opposite, hoping to to please Apple's enormous appetite for mobile processors powering iOS devices.

More than a thousand in-house Apple engineers design chips like the A7 processor and the M7 motion coprocessor. The former, the mobile industry's first 64-bit processor, serves as the engine that drives the latest crop of iOS devices like the iPad Air, the iPad mini with Retina display and the iPhone 5s.

To manufacture these things in volume according to its blueprints, Apple relies on some of the biggest of the chip-making services known as foundries because it doesn't have or operate its own semiconductor plant, an investment upward of $10 billion.

Samsung semiconductor arm has thus far churned out all Apple-designed mobile chips. Moreover, the company remains adamant to do so in the future despite its straining relationship with Apple and persistent talk of the iPhone maker throwing itself into the arms of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world's largest independent semiconductor foundry.

Samsung and GlobalFoundries, the Santa Clara, California headquartered chip foundry, yesterday signed a global partnership to standardize mobile chip production around the same 14nm FinFET process technology. The deal gives Apple the flexibility to build its A-series processors at both foundries, which was previously impossible due to the foundries' incompatible production processes...

How to fix choppy video playback in Safari on OS X

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 16, 2018

Recently I ran into a problem that I found to be quite annoying. Flash video playback in Safari began suffering from major stuttering and choppiness. It was so bad that videos essentially became unwatchable while using Safari.

For someone who's constantly watching and editing video like me, this proved to be a big problem. I even pondered switching to Chrome for a bit, but quickly dismissed that thought and set out to find a solution to the problem.

Fortunately, the solution to fixing choppy video playback in Safari is an easy one. Have a look inside and we'll show you how.

VLC for iOS introduces folders, new file types, subtitle improvements and more

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 18, 2014

Back in January, VideoLan's cross-platform media player, VLC, rolled out a major iOS 7-centric redesign of its iPhone and iPad client. It's also fixed numerous bugs while adding the ability to stream media from Google Drive and Dropbox.

Apps like VLC are needed to enjoy "foreign" audio and video file types on iOS devices, stuff like mkv, avi, wma, divx and more.

Following a few maintenance releases, the team today released a new version that refines the user interface and extends the app's functionality.

The new VLC 2.3 for iOS is now available free in the App Store, bringing support for folders for your media files. In addition, there are two new options in settings dealing with subtitles and gestures, the app can now play password protected HTTP streams, it's got new translations, supports additional audio and video file formats and more...

Apple’s former UI wizard applies his magic touch to a deck of cards

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 27, 2016

Australia-born user interface designer Robert Padbury was employed by Apple for nearly three years. In his Senior UI Designer role with the company, Padbury was helping create the visuals for a range of consumer and pro applications for the Mac and iOS.

Prior to joining Apple, he worked with numerous startups including Stipple, Cooliris, Gaia Interactive, Tapulous, DoubleTwist and more.

Now self-employed, Padbury is providing creative services like software design, identity design and design strategy for clients such as Uber, Forage and Stipple. His latest project involves applying Apple's principles of clean and striking design to such ordinary objects as a deck of cards...

Assumed iPad Air 2 front panel leaks

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 18, 2014

Like everyone and their brother, KGI Securities analysts Ming-Chi Kuo is counting on the release of a second-generation iPad Air by October. The device should be refreshed with Apple's upcoming in-house designed A8 processor, the Touch ID sensor, an improved back-facing iSight camera with a new eight-megapixel sensor, the analyst reckoned in a recent note to clients.

That said, we haven't seen much in the way of leaks concerning the iPad Air 2 - that is, until today. An image posted this morning by Dutch blog One More Thing claims to represent a front panel said to belong to the forthcoming device, revealing what appears to be an integrated display technology that should results in a thinner and lighter display assembly...