iPhone News

Instagram reportedly testing location integration with Facebook Places

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated November 30, 2016

Facebook-owned Instagram has traditionally relied on Foursquare for its vast database of points of interest.

For example, upon uploading a photograph Instagram gives you an option of choosing a location where the image was taken using its Foursquare integration, simply by tapping a 'Name This Location' button.

Post acquisition, however, things have become a little weird.

Facebook has long been maintaining its own location database, Facebook Places. Two years into the acquisition, Instagram has now started using Facebook Places as its mapping service, at least for a subset of its users.

Despite this (expected) change, more than the 150 million Instagram fans can continue to share their check-ins to Foursquare from Instagram...

Apple surpasses the 500 million iPhone mark

Cody Lee ∙ March 25, 2014

We're now less than a week away from the end of Apple's current quarter (January-March), and the company is expected to have sold around 38 million iPhones during the three month period. If true, the Cupertino firm has ventured into elite territory.

According to a Forbes report, Apple had sold around 472 million iPhones heading into its Q2 2014. And if its iPhone sales for the quarter come anywhere close to projections, it will mean that the company has [quietly] passed the 500 million iPhone mark...

Flexibits teases Fantastical for iPad coming

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 26, 2018

My daily productivity depends on a powerful and flexible personal information management system and Flexibits' Fantastical for iPhone has quickly become an indispensable part of that workflow.

I use this versatile app to save reminders for upcoming stories and industry events, create calendar entries for meetings and daily schedules, organize my weekly/monthly planning and lots more.

It's fast, has powerful search, looks business and lets me safely paste passages of text knowing its intelligent natural-language processing will automatically parse entries like 'conference call with Seb next Monday at 1PM PT' to create related events.

My only gripe with Fantastical stems not from the app itself, but from the iPhone's four-inch screen as I often find myself squinting rows and columns of small text.

I guess you could say that until Apple delivers a rumored large-screened iPhone, I'll be left yearning for the Fantastical experience on the iPad's 9.7-inch screen. But not for long, it seems. Tuesday, developers posted a new page teasing the upcoming edition of Fantastical for iPad...

Apple now refunding unwanted in-app purchases

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 26, 2016

Following numerous probes by government agencies and looming class action lawsuits the company is now facing around the world, Apple is finally reaching out to customers to inform them they may be entitled to refunds concerning unwanted in-app purchases made by minors due to weak iOS Restrictions at the time.

Last year, the iPhone maker reluctantly settled with the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regarding in-app purchases, agreeing to compensate consumers and modify its in-app billing system by March 31 to make things a little clearer for its customers...

How to add a color keyboard to iOS 7

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated September 18, 2014

Sometimes you just want to switch up the look and feel of things, and that is what Color Keyboard for iOS 7 allows you to do. As you might have imagined, Color Keyboard is not new to the jailbreak scene. It's a tweak that's been available for lesser firmware, but was just recently updated to cooperate with iOS 7.

Update: with the release of iOS 8, Apple now allows third-party keyboards in the App Store. If you're looking for a different keyboard for your iPhone or iPad, make sure to check out our list of iOS 8 keyboards.

If you've used Color Keyboard in the past, then you'll be intimately familiar with the contents of the iOS 7 version of the tweak. If you want to change up the look of your keyboard, then Color Keyboard for iOS 7 is one of the best tweaks that you can use. Have a look inside as we delve into Color Keyboard for iOS 7's feature-set on video.

How to enable swipe-to-delete in the stock Clock app

Jeff Benjamin ∙ March 25, 2014

I don't know about you guys, but I find it really annoying when there's not a swipe-to-delete option available in an application. One good example of this is found in the stock Clock app. On its world clock tab, you are forced to use the edit button in the upper left-hand corner in order to delete a clock.

Wouldn't it be nice if you could add swipe-to-delete functionality and cut the amount of gestures necessary to delete a clock down from three to two? That's the premise behind Edit Clocks—it makes deleting clocks found in the stock Clock app uber-intuitive and easy. Have a look at our video demonstration of the tweak in action after the break.

How to change the color of the Calendar icon’s text

Jeff Benjamin ∙ March 25, 2014

Colendar is a brand new jailbreak tweak from developer Julian Weiss that allows you to change up the color of the text present on the stock Calendar app. The tweak, which is geared towards themers, also works with Ryan Petrich's Gregorian calendar app.

Included in Colendar's preferences are options to adjust the color of the day and date text and offset parameters for adjusting the location of the text assets as well. Have a look at our video walkthrough inside for more insight...

Twitterrific 5 takes the freemium route, demands in-app purchases for advanced features

Christian Zibreg ∙ March 25, 2014

Iconfactory has just issued a new version of Twitterrific in the App Store. Previously a $2.99 download, the new Twitterrific version 5.7 has changed the business model from paid to free. Sort of.

The iPhone and iPad application, now supported by revenue from Deck Network ads displayed at the top of the timeline, is available free of charge for new customers, but some of the more advanced features like push notifications, Today view, ad removal and tweet translation are hidden behind a one-time in-app purchase.

That's an interesting change for Iconfactory, but what about Twitter-imposed token limits? Developer Sean Heber ensures customers that Iconfactory has grandfathered a whole lot of tokens so going free should not be a concern. Besides, they can always switch from the freemium model back to the paid one...

Report: upcoming Apple TV refresh to serve as full-on cable box replacement

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated November 19, 2018

Two months ago, the reliable blogger Mark Gurman was first out of the gate with a report painting a pretty rosy picture of an upcoming Apple TV hardware refresh, said to include full-blown downloadable games via an Apple TV App Store of sorts.

He also learned from sources that the box could sport a built-in TV tuner to effectively control your existing cable boxes and TV stations, helping put the real TV into Apple's $99 set-top box.

A new report yesterday by former WSJ writer Jessia Lessin's new outlet, The Information, provides additional tidbits regarding the gaming and cable box functionality...

New ‘Your Verse’ feature: how iPad helps diagnose athletes’ concussions

Christian Zibreg ∙ March 25, 2014

After highlighting last month the many ways mountaineers use iPad for their extraordinary climbs, Apple last night refreshed its 'Your Verse' microsite with a new feature outlining how the popular post-PC device is being used to help diagnose athletes' concussions.

The section features athletic trainer Jason Cruickshank of Ohio's St. Edward High School who uses C3 Logix's concussion assessment iPad app to discover the symptoms moments after an event occurs and before they show up on the imaging test...

Video: excavators tearing through old HP buildings on iSpaceship site

Christian Zibreg ∙ March 25, 2014

An interesting video has popped up on YouTube seemingly depicting excavators tearing through old Hewlett-Packard office buildings on Apple's 176-acre parcel, the future home of the company's upcoming 2.8 million square foot ring-shaped iSpaceship headquarters, also known as Campus 2.

Apple received unanimous approval for the project from the Cupertino City Council last October, prompting the company to start demolishing the site the following month. A set of aerial photographs dated February 2014 show most of the existing buildings demolished so the video was most likely captured late last year...

Apple caught testing related search suggestions in the App Store

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated December 2, 2016

With over a million apps now available in the App Store, discovering software related to your needs outside the charts and featured sections increasingly feels like finding a needle in the haystack. Apple two years ago bought a company called Chomp, presumably to make app discovery easier, but thus far the acquisition - apart from a few functional tweaks here and there - hasn't yielded visible improvements to how folks discover iPhone and iPad applications.

Then on Tuesday, one developer noticed a sweet new feature in the App Store storefront on his iPhone which offers a way to filter search results based on Apple-provided suggestions. I was able to test this on my iPhone 5s and though the feature appears a bit rough around the edges, it pretty much works as you'd expect.

Read on for the full reveal...